Newscasts

In this newscast: The Juneau School District Board of Education appointed Steve Whitney to the board on Saturday; Senator Lisa Murkowski has introduced a bill that would reauthorize funds for landslide monitoring projects across Southeast Alaska; The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development failed a test that allows it to include millions of federal dollars towards its contributions to education funding; Tribal leaders from across the country spoke out last week at a U.S. Senate hearing against changes within the Department of Health and Human Services; Curious Juneau: What’s the story behind the Fiddlehead Cookbook’s North Douglas chocolate cake?

In this newscast: Five candidates have applied to fill an empty seat on the Juneau School District Board of Education after Will Muldoon resigned; Alaska regulators have assessed a $49,000 fine against Hilcorp for lapses in Cook Inlet offshore well management, the Alaska Beacon reports; Some Southeast Alaska communities had their earliest harmful algal bloom on record this year, and there is currently a paralytic shellfish toxin advisory across region for recreational and subsistence harvest; Local and state transportation officials are wrapping up a study that hones in on five locations for a potential second bridge; Thousands of new books are landing in the hands of kids across Southeast Alaska this month as the result of a partnership between the region’s largest tribal government and a Native-led nonprofit with roots in the Navajo and Hopi nations

In this newscast: A German Shepherd who was on the lam for nearly three months has been captured to returned to her family; The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation says 400,000 gallons of process water spilled at a large lead and zinc mine in Northern Alaska yesterday; The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is considering whether to reduce the amount of money local governments can give to school district, but a new bill would allow local governments to continue to fund school districts as they have been; Juneau’s city-owned ski area expects to run a deficit for the foreseeable future, and their plan to dig out of the deficit relies heavily on revenue from a gondola that has yet to be built; Lawmakers rejected two of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nominees for state boards and commissions in a joint session of the state House and Senate yesterday

In this newscast: Lawmakers are setting aside until next year a bill that would kick off a pilot program for tribally-run public schools; The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska can now receive reimbursements for providing child welfare services directly from the federal government; Alaska officials who help resettle immigrants say they’re facing a lot of uncertainty amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on legal and illegal immigration; Alaska would be in the same time zone as Seattle for four months of the year, if a bill passed Monday by the Alaska Senate becomes law, the Alaska Beacon reports; The Trump administration has started cancelling grants to tribal libraries in communities across the state, which could be debilitating for Klukwan’s library

In this newscast: Juneau was one of nine communities selected for an annual grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health philanthropy group; Flood inundation maps that model how Juneau’s Mendenhall River levee should perform have finally arrived; Initial results from a study of humpback whale health in Juneau found that the area is particularly important for females and their calves, and the findings could drive the city to consider restricting the growth of the whale watching industry; A Washington state-based conservation group is suing the National Marine Fisheries Service over king salmon, again 

In this newscast: The filing period to run for an elected position in Southeast Alaska’s proposed Xunaa Borough closes this Friday. But, a pending appeal of a state commission’s approval of the new borough could halt the special election scheduled this July, when residents will be asked whether to create Alaska’s 20th borough; Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he’s ordering a freeze on most state hiring, out-of-state travel and new regulations as oil prices tumble. Dunleavy outlined the freeze in an administrative order released Friday afternoon; Learning a language is hard. Learning a language without a teacher regularly checking in is even harder. But this year, Kake City Schools students got the chance to learn Lingít while creating multilingual poems that give people a glimpse of where they come from.