Adelyn Baxter

Fall classes began Monday at University of Alaska campuses, including the Alaska College of Education in Juneau. While students can still earn a teaching degree at any of the university’s three main campuses, the education college’s administration is based at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Kake resident Louise Kadake found out last spring she had won the 2018 Teach for Alaska Scholarship to study at UAS.

UA staff had arranged for her to join University President Jim Johnsen on a video conference call, telling her she was one of five finalists.

When he told her the real news, she thought he was speaking to someone else. In a video of the call, a staff member interrupts to reassure Kadake that Johnsen is talking about her.

“Oh! I didn’t know where he was looking!” she says, laughing.

Kadake won a $12,000 undergraduate scholarship to study education at UAS. It’s letting the 21-year-old pursue the plans she put on hold after giving birth to her now 2-year-old son, Braxton.

She said she’s known she wanted to be a teacher since she was a sophomore in high school.

Since graduating as valedictorian in 2015, she’s worked with kids in her community and as a paraeducator in Kake City Schools last year.

She said her coworkers encouraged her to apply for the scholarship. Once she gets her degree, she plans to return to Kake and teach elementary school.

“It’s actually helping me a lot. I actually applied for a lot of scholarships, I was busy,” she said.

She arrived in Juneau last week for orientation and to get her on-campus apartment ready for Braxton.

“It’s a really big change,” Kadake said. “I cried when I left home and my son’s still at home, but he’ll be here next week.”

Recruiting students like Kadake — rural Alaskans and Alaska Natives with a passion for teaching — is one of the main jobs of the new Alaska College of Education.

According to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, there were just under 8,000 full and part-time teachers in Alaska last school year. That number has declined by about 500 teachers since 2010.

The college’s new Executive Dean Steve Atwater is tasked with helping the university reach its goal to see 90 percent of Alaska’s teachers trained in-state by 2025.

According to the university, two-thirds of the state’s teachers come from outside.

Many of them end up in rural villages. Atwater said they often lack the training or cultural understanding to connect with students.

“What you have is a churn of teachers in rural Alaska, and it doesn’t really help the students in terms of their achievement,” Atwater said. “The students need to form relationships with the teachers and if there’s a fear that they’re going to leave after a year, it’s hard to invest.”

Atwater himself came from out of state. After training at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, he spent two decades in rural Alaska schools.

He said he witnessed the churn firsthand with talented teachers arriving only to realize they were unprepared for the challenges of living in remote villages.

To fix that, Atwater said they’re narrowing in on three specific areas: recruitment, preparation and retention.

Teacher-specific scholarships and investing in existing programs like Educators Rising, a career pathway for high school students, are a big part of that.

Atwater said the college will also hire a full-time recruiter based in Juneau.

Besides undergraduates and high school students, they will also look to college graduates who might already be out in the workforce and considering a career change.

Improving teacher preparation will hinge on finding operational efficiencies between the three campuses.

“Really what it’s going to take is the collaboration between all three units to come up with best practices and share best practices and really to think in terms of operating as a unit even though we are issuing separate degrees at the three,” Atwater said.

Looking at retention strategies, the university wants to expand its role in the Alaska Statewide Mentoring Project, partnering with school districts to provide support for early-career teachers.

As for campus-specific changes, Atwater said classes and faculty remain largely the same.

Later on, they may look to have campus programs concentrate in specific areas of education, like special ed or early childhood.

In the meantime back in Juneau, efforts are still underway to meet the City and Borough’s commitment to create a $1 million endowment for teacher education.

The city made that promise to the university’s Board of Regents back when it was deciding where to base the education college.

A fundraising committee spent the summer recruiting local donors. Committee chair Laraine Derr said they’re still a few thousand dollars away from reaching their goal.

“A bird in the hand is worth, what is it, three in the bush? But I got a couple more donors yesterday so I’m hoping by the end of the week we will be there,” Derr said.

The campus has said the CBJ Teacher Excellence Fund will go toward additional scholarships and support programs for students in Southeast and the rest of the state.

Juneau’s downtown homeless shelter will henceforth be known as The Glory Hall, putting an end to decades of snickers.

That’s according to Executive Director Mariya Lovishchuk, who confirmed the change via email Thursday morning.

The shelter formerly known as The Glory Hole was named when it opened in the 1980s for an old mining term hearkening back to Juneau’s gold rush days.

Over the years, the name drew attention from outside media thanks to an alternative definition used in sexual slang.

Lovishchuk said they decided it was time for a change.

“Every day folks would walk by the sign, especially the visitors to Juneau, and not necessarily make our patrons feel great, due to comments that our patrons were hearing,” Lovishchuk said.

She said the wooden “Glory Hole” sign outside the building has already been taken down. The “Glory Hole Garden Project” sign will stay up.

Glory Hole t-shirts are still available for purchase. Lovishchuk said they can be ordered online or by calling the shelter.

This story has been updated to reflect additional information from Lovishchuk.

Volunteers working on the Treadwell Ditch Trail made an unwelcome discovery Monday morning — $1,200 worth of materials had been stolen from the Blueberry Hill parking lot.

Trail Mix Executive Director Erik Boraas said the wooden boards went missing sometime between Friday and Monday morning. They belonged to kits being used to build new bridges over the north fork of Eagle Creek and over Falls Creek.

They were specially made in Oregon. With the added cost of shipping, the trail maintenance organization is looking at a setback of up to $3,000. And it’s losing valuable construction time.

“It’ll put us back a month, so it’s a real blow to the community because we’re trying to get these in before the end of the summer,” Boraas said.

Trail Mix has spent the last few years making improvements to the Treadwell Ditch trail. Last year, they put in three new bridges.

Boraas said volunteers have been on the trail multiple times a week this summer laying down gravel on muddy portions.

Boraas said the boards are 10 feet long and 6 inches wide, have pre-drilled holes and smell strongly of a preservative chemical.

“If they could be returned, we don’t want to press charges, we just want to get these bridges in,” Boraas said. “Put them back in the parking lot and we’ll be very happy and so will the community.”

Trail Mix’s day-to-day operations are funded by local donors.

The organization receives funding for construction projects like bridges from federal and state grants, as well as the City and Borough of Juneau.

An escaped inmate led to a brief manhunt in Lemon Creek on Wednesday afternoon before being recaptured.

According to an Alaska State Troopers dispatch, a 25-year-old male inmate kicked out a security window in a troopers prisoner transport van on its way to Lemon Creek Correctional Center. The inmate escaped through the window around 2:30 p.m.

The inmate was reportedly wearing a Lemon Creek prison uniform and belly chains when he took off on foot near Anka Street.

State and local law enforcement officers responded, set up a perimeter and searched. The inmate was located in an abandoned car nearby on Jenkins Drive about 20 minutes after the initial escape.

Troopers say he was taken back into custody without further incident and will be charged with escape and criminal mischief. His previous charges include theft, burglary, resisting arrest and trespass.

Damage to the van he escaped from is estimated at $3,000.

The dispatch did not name the inmate, and the troopers could not immediately be reached for comment.

Longtime Juneau School Board member Andi Story secured the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s state primary to run for the Alaska House of Representatives in the Mendenhall Valley.

Story received three times as many votes as independent candidate Rob Edwardson. Edwardson was endorsed by outgoing Rep. Justin Parish when he announced he would not run for re-election in District 34.

Surrounded by supporters in her Valley headquarters, Story promised to continue listening to voters and looking for solutions.

“There has been a lack of civility in politics today, but I am committed to working with anyone — whether a D, an R, an I — for a better Alaska. And that starts now,” she told her supporters.

Story thanked the voters and volunteers who helped her get to this point.

Story also thanked Edwardson for running a positive campaign and the many volunteers who joined her in going door to door and getting the word out about her campaign.

“I can remember some of the people who volunteered on my campaign actually held signs at my first school board running, which was 15 years ago, so I think that was probably a big difference,” Story said.

Edwardson, who currently serves on the Juneau Assembly, watched the results come in with family and volunteers downtown. He said he called Story to congratulate her and offer his endorsement and support for the campaign ahead.

“I’m sure she and I will be getting together to talk about some things … at some point in the near future,” Edwardson said.

Story will face Juneau Deputy Mayor Jerry Nankervis in the general election on Nov. 6. Nankervis ran unopposed for the Republican nomination in District 34.

Juneau residents will not vote in October on public spending for a new arts and culture center, Centennial Hall upgrades or raising the hotel bed tax.

The Juneau Assembly voted down three separate ballot measures Monday night, largely because of the unusual influence of an Assembly minority.

Fourteen community members testified in favor of letting voters decide whether the city should partially fund the new Juneau Arts and Culture Center through a bond measure.

Bud Carpeneti co-chairs a volunteer committee for the New JACC, which is what they’re calling the roughly $31 million project.

“If our plan is successful, and we believe it will be, the New JACC will be funded by the public between 20 and 30 percent,” Carpeneti said.

A $12 million bond and a $7 million bond were the options before the Assembly. Each would partially fund the New JACC and Centennial Hall upgrades.

Assembly member Jesse Kiehl voiced support for the first proposal and for letting voters decide.

“I hope that we will put our faith in the same folks who put us here, especially when there aren’t nine of us on the Assembly to consider it,” Kiehl  said. “At times like that, it makes sense to give it the electorate.”

Kiehl referred to the fact that the normally nine-member Assembly lost two votes recently when members Beth Weldon and Norton Gregory resigned to run for mayor.

Any motion needs five “yes” votes to pass, which allowed a minority of Assembly members — in this case Mayor Ken Koelsch, Deputy Mayor Jerry Nankervis and Assemblywoman Mary Becker — to block anything.

Nankervis made it clear he would not support either version. He proposed an amendment to the second option, reducing the bond to $2 million.

“We are spending far too much money right now, and this allows us to do a little — a little — and still reduce the costs to everybody that lives here,” Nankervis said.

His amendment didn’t go anywhere, and both JACC propositions failed.

Juneau Arts and Humanities Council Executive Director Nancy DeCherney was unsurprised. but said she wasn’t discouraged about plans to rebuild the JACC.

“There’s no harm, really, in putting something forward to the voters to make a choice, so, oh well! We’ll keep going,” DeCherney said.

The other proposition before the Assembly would have asked voters to raise the city’s hotel bed tax from 7 to 9 percent. Proceeds from the tax help fund Centennial Hall and Travel Juneau, the city’s tourism bureau.

Travel Juneau previously raised concerns about the impact increasing the tax might have on large meetings or conventions coming to town.

Kiehl joined the minority voting bloc in opposing the measure.

Assemblywoman Maria Gladziszewski said she felt it was wrong for seven people to decide on issues of importance to Juneau voters.

“When I was thinking about my colleagues who oppose putting this on the ballot, I tried to imagine ballot measures that I would personally oppose but also keep it off the ballot,” Gladziszewski said. “I really couldn’t think of any.”

Gladziszewski later unsuccessfully attempted to bring a measure aimed at expanding access to affordable childcare back for reconsideration.

The advisory ballot question failed at last week’s Assembly meeting.

Association for the Education of Young Children and its partners have tried repeatedly to get the Assembly to address Juneau’s child care shortage.

Southeast chapter executive director Joy Lyon had choice words for the members who voted against the measure.

“It’s also I don’t believe a very good example for our high school civics students who are looking at, a very unusual opportunity where a minority is ruling,” Lyons said. “In our democracy that is not usually the case.”

Nankervis said after the meeting that he felt it was his responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the voters who elected him.

“Some things go out to the public and some don’t, and this was a night where I didn’t think any of those needed to go to the public,” Nankervis said.

Come Oct. 2, the ballot will feature candidates only.