Jamie Diep

Update, 3:52 p.m. Tuesday:

The Juneau School District is canceling all extracurricular and school-sponsored events Tuesday and Wednesday. 

According to a district press release, this includes the first day of school for high school freshmen at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé scheduled for tomorrow.

The district is also closing Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen Elementary School, Mendenhall River Community School and Thunder Mountain Middle School at 4 p.m. today until the City and Borough of Juneau issues an all clear. District administrators and staff are working in the buildings until the closure.

The district has not yet made a decision on closing schools on Thursday. It will make an announcement by Wednesday at noon. If any schools need to close, the district will close all campuses.

The district will continue to update families through automated calls, texts, emails, the Juneau Schools app and the district website.

Update, 10:45 a.m. Tuesday:

The Juneau School District will make a decision on closing schools by Wednesday at noon. Superintendent Frank Hauser said during a press conference Tuesday the district is requesting families update their contact information in PowerSchool to ensure they receive the most up-to-date information from the district.

Original story:

With school set to begin on Thursday, the Juneau School District announced Monday that it plans to close all schools this week if any campuses are impacted by glacial outburst flooding.

The glacial lake that releases water annually is full. That means the Mendenhall River could flood at any time this week, but it’s not clear exactly when that will happen.

Three schools in the Mendenhall Valley – Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen Elementary School, Mendenhall River Community School and Thunder Mountain Middle School – could experience flooding.

At a press conference Monday, Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said one of the reasons for closing all schools is because of district staff who may live in the flood zone.

“They have teachers, and they have staff that are in that flood inundation, that are going to be in that 17-foot impact area that we’ll be recommending an evacuation for,” he said. “From their point of view, [it’s] hard to operate the rest of the district when their faculty, when their staff, are potentially impacted.”

In an email to KTOO, Juneau School District Chief of Staff Kristin Bartlett wrote additional road congestion from school related traffic and road closures cutting off people returning home as other reasons for the plan.

In a press release, the district said it plans to announce any closures before the school day begins if possible. But it’s also prepared to evacuate schools as needed.

Students and staff will move to a safe location outside of the evacuation zone. Only guardians and emergency contacts listed in PowerSchool will be able to pick up students.

Students who take the bus and live in the evacuation zone may also be taken to a different location for pickup if they attend a school outside of the flood zone. Photo ID is required to pick up students. 

The district’s website has information on flood procedures. District leadership says families can receive updates through the Juneau Schools app. The district will also email updates to families through its Blackboard communications system.

Find the latest news on glacial outburst flooding and resources for how to prepare at ktoo.org/flood.

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Students used hammers to stamp different shapes into pieces of leather in the last moments of a maker space class at Thunder Mountain Middle School. Shortly afterward, another class filed in and got to work. Student Nia Paw learned how to dye a leather wallet from her classmates. She put on latex gloves and poured out thick, dark dye to make the wallet brown.

“We have dye and, like, some sort of cloth, and we have to rub it in, in like, a circular motion,” she said.

This isn’t a typical class – it’s part of the Juneau School District’s summer school program to get students ready for middle school.

Around 40 to 50 incoming seventh graders spent three weeks at Thunder Mountain Middle School in July as part of a transition program. Students from across the district navigated a larger building, juggled a class schedule and hit a major milestone – learning how to open lockers.

Paw, who went to Sayéik: Gastineau Community School in Douglas, said she liked meeting new people from outside of her school. But it wasn’t all fun and games.

“I think the only downside is the amount of stairs,” Paw said.

Working alongside her is Xander Thaler, who went to Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ – Glacier Valley Elementary School on the other side of Juneau. He said he feels ready.

“I’m excited I get to have the opportunity to finally go to middle school after waiting six years,” Thaler said.

He said summer school also introduced him to many other students from around the district.

“I like the socializing that I’ve done,” he said. “I feel like I’ve made new friends. I feel like I’ve met new people, and also I can get comfortable to the people I meet next year.”

His mom, Casey Locklear, said she was glad Thaler and his twin brother got to do the program, and wants them to pay that forward when the school year starts.

“If they saw somebody that did seem lost or they didn’t know where to go, what to do, to make sure to help them, so that we could expand the knowledge of the program itself, and help their friends,” Locklear said.

Lexi Razor is the principal of summer school this year. She spends the school year teaching math at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé. Razor said students from all backgrounds do the program, and that it’s good to see them become more comfortable on the large campus.

“There’s a range of kids here,” she said. “There’s kids here that don’t typically like school or go to school, and so getting them here to kind of learn the environment is going to be helpful. And then we also have kids in the program that like school and are good at school, but they’re also building some confidence.”

These programs don’t just help students. Mae DelCastillo is a parent of an incoming seventh grader. She said the program puts her at ease as it prepares her daughter for middle school.

“As a mom, it really did give me so much comfort because she’s just now mentally prepared and just excited to start middle school,” she said.

Her daughter Lucena said she’s the only person from her group of friends at Auke Bay Elementary School to do the program. She said she’s excited to show her friends how things work when the school year begins.

“My friends are gonna be like, ‘I’m so scared,’ she said. “And I’m like, ‘You’re not gonna be scared, because I’m gonna be like, right there.’” 

Seventh graders do have another chance to familiarize themselves with the middle school. The district will offer a tour on Wednesday, Aug. 13 in the evening, one day before the official start of the school year.

Registration for after-school child care in the Juneau School District opened last Friday, but the information the district provided to families did not line up with the actual application process. The district will cease to operate the Relationships and Leadership Learning for Youth program, known as RALLY. It will be operated by Auke Lake Preschool beginning in September.

The district announced that registration for RALLY would begin Aug. 1 on Auke Lake Preschool’s website. But enrollment information and registration links for RALLY weren’t available then and are still not active as of Monday afternoon.

Auke Lake Preschool’s co-owner Derik Swanson said in an email to KTOO that families should instead submit a preschool application that is available on its website with a note that it is for RALLY. He said to add a first and second choice for site preference to the application as well.

Lauren Sanzone has been sending her children to RALLY since 2022 and tried to register this week. She said it’s stressful but they want to continue using RALLY for afterschool care. She’s also working on a backup plan for child care.

“I am fortunate that I have a good paying job and I have the privilege of being able to pay for childcare, but I also don’t have confidence that I could even find an alternative at any price that would provide consistent afterschool care for my kids,” she said.

The district said RALLY will run at Auke Bay Elementary School, Harborview Elementary School and Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ – Glacier Valley Elementary School. The district said in a frequently asked questions page that Auke Lake Preschool will maintain the same monthly cost as the district.

The district-run summer child care program is scheduled to end this Friday, but the district will continue to provide transitional care for children enrolled in Auke Lake’s program until the end of the month. The district has not provided details on the transitional care.

The new RALLY program is expected to officially open Sept. 1.

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A Juneau child care center is set to open in a new location nearly a year after being displaced by flooding. But challenges in finding and preparing the site have left families with few options to fill a monthslong gap in child care. 

Glacier Valley Kids, one of about 20 licensed child care providers in Juneau, went through many changes in the past year.

They started when the center – which Carolina Sekona runs out of a house in the Mendenhall Valley – was damaged by last year’s glacial outburst flood. The City and Borough of Juneau then placed the center temporarily in the recently vacated Floyd Dryden Middle School to maintain child care coverage for about a dozen families.

“They wanted me to avoid closure because child care, it’s in crisis right now in Juneau,” she said. “So the idea was to continue to provide care while my home was being renovated.”

But Sekona had to move again this spring, and she couldn’t find a place to go. She gave families 30 days notice that Glacier Valley would close.

Kimmy Lamb was a parent with a child at Glacier Valley. She said 30 days didn’t feel like enough time to figure things out for her youngest son, Liam.

“It was definitely a shock, because we were just getting used to – or Liam was just getting used to – being around other kids, and he really likes Carolina and the other gals, and so it was very stressful,” she said.

Lamb said her parents came back to Juneau from the Philippines in time to step in and provide child care for her son. And Lamb was able to help Sekona find a new, permanent location for Glacier Valley in the Twin Lakes neighborhood. It’s a former private school run by Juneau’s Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Sekona was able to renovate the space with additional help from the church, the city and Southeast Alaska Association for the Education of Young Children, a local nonprofit that supports child care. And she expanded the center’s capacity from 12 children at a time to 30 when it reopens.

Lamb said she’s glad she was able to help Sekona find a new space. But she’s waiting until the end of the year to bring her son back to Glacier Valley Kids in order to save money. 

“We’re excited for that,” Lamb said. “I know he’ll probably miss out on the socialization with the kids, but I feel confident that it’ll be still a good time with his grandparents.”

Ashley Anderson, another former Glacier Valley parent, has already been forced to find alternative child care several times. Still, she said this most recent experience was hard on her family.

“We went into panic mode,” she said. “We were kind of freaking out, and, you know, starting to think like,’ oh my gosh, we have bad luck with child care, like, what’s going on?’”

Anderson was able to find another provider, but she said it was hard for her and her child. She said she hopes it’s the last transition for him before he goes to school.

There are some bright spots to the moves. Sekona had to leave the temporary space at Floyd Dryden so a bigger child care venture – with money to renovate the space – could move in. The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska plans to house four of the tribe’s early education programs there, including the Lingít language immersion program Haa Yoo X̲’atángi Kúdi and Head Start. That will eventually expand child care options in Juneau when they open Aug. 26.

Tlingit and Haida also worked with tribal citizens receiving subsidized care at Glacier Valley Kids to find child care alternatives and added them to enrollment lists for the Floyd Dryden programs.

Meanwhile, Sekona and Glacier Valley have moved back to her old place in the Valley. She can provide child care to four children this month while waiting on a license to operate at the permanent location near Twin lakes. But that state license has become an obstacle – and Sekona is on a deadline. She needs to leave the house before the next outburst flood that’s expected in August. 

She said it’s been difficult getting her application processed.

A state task force established by Gov. Mike Dunleavy recommended the state take steps to ease the application process including developing an online application that can track paperwork. But Sekona said she had issues uploading paperwork, and had to email documents directly to a caseworker. And she faced another set of challenges with that.

“I turn all my paperwork to one caseworker, and then days later, I hear that caseworker is no longer there, so I’m transferred to another person,” Sekona said. “And this other person does not know what’s going on, and then I have to resubmit everything that I just submitted to the other worker, and it’s been a nightmare.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health, which oversees child care licensing, wrote that the department is still improving its system as they receive feedback from providers.

Sekona said the state won’t be able to inspect the permanent space until the first week of August, and she won’t get licensed until September at the earliest. That means families who use child care vouchers that require them to go to licensed providers will have to wait at least another month before they can enroll in Glacier Valley Kids.

But Sekona said she’s ready to fully open again, which is a big deal as child care centers across the state struggle to hire and retain qualified staff.

“Lucky me. I do have all my staff,” she said. “Everybody has their certifications, and everybody’s been through the process and the trainings, and, yeah, we’re all ready.”

In the meantime, Sekona plans to provide care without a license in her new location starting next month. That means she and a coworker can care for only eight children, instead of the 30 she will be able to care for when she gets state approval.

Contract negotiations between the Juneau School District and the Juneau Education Association stalled Thursday when both sides declared an impasse. This comes as the district and the teacher’s union enter their sixth month of negotiations.

In a joint press release, the district and union cited state education funding uncertainty as one of the obstacles in negotiations.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed more than $50 million in state education funding this year. The Alaska Legislature is scheduled to meet in a special session this Saturday to vote on overriding the veto. 

The district is also waiting to see how a proposed state regulation change for municipal funding contributions and a federal disparity test appeal will impact its budget.

District and union representatives could not be reached Monday for comment.

Negotiations began in February this year. The district’s initial proposal included a 2.5% salary increase for the contract’s first year and a 1.5% increase in the second year on top of raises for more work experience and training.

The district is also proposing an additional 1% retirement plan match and flat funding for health insurance contributions. Teachers have several options for health insurance plans, including a free employer-compensated option.

JEA’s proposal includes a 10% raise in salaries for both years and for the district to cover 85% of health insurance premiums. The district estimates JEA’s proposal would cost nearly $28 million more than its version.

The district and union will now enter mediation. Both parties also declared an impasse during the previous bargaining cycle in 2022, which lasted more than a year.

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Nearly all the staff of Juneau’s only print newspaper have left the publication for a new, web-based local news outlet. 

Large-scale changes for the Juneau Empire began last month, when former Managing Editor Mark Sabbatini resigned and launched the Juneau Independent. 

The Empire’s publisher did not respond to an interview request. The company posted a job opening for a local government reporter on Monday. Reporters from Carpenter Media Group’s other Alaska papers on the Kenai Peninsula have been publishing articles to the Empire’s website this week.

Erin Thompson, editor for the Empire’s sister newspapers on the Kenai Peninsula, now oversees the capital city’s paper. She said she was not authorized to speak on the matter.

In the meantime, the Juneau Independent has achieved state nonprofit status. Sabbatini said he is also working to get tax-exempt status, which he says will open the door for more grant funding. 

The Independent is now flush with new staff, including a managing editor, two contributing reporters, a student intern and a volunteer reporter. Sabbatini said he didn’t expect this level of interest, which is both a boon to the publication and a financial responsibility.

“[The] challenging and tricky part, which we’re now taking on, is, you know, having an actual paid staff and running this as an actual nonprofit corporation,” he said. “That takes more money and more effort.”

Sabbatini is working to make the Independent financially sustainable. He says running the publication as-is would cost about $200,000 a year. He says he started the venture with about $20,000 of seed money from four donors. Since launching, he says it has raised over $40,000 more from contributions.

Bruce Botelho is the Independent’s board president. He said he believes the Independent will be able to sustain itself.

 “I think there is a viable path, or actually would say several different paths, forward, and I think it will come from folks who are willing to donate to get this level of coverage in Juneau,” Botehlo said. 

But another board member is less sure about the Independent’s future. Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist and owner of the Wrangell Sentinel. He framed the Independent’s challenge in an Alaska-themed metaphor.

“It’s certainly not an adult salmon. It’s a very young salmon leaving freshwater, going out in the ocean to grow up, and whether it lives and comes back, is uncertain,” he said.

For now, Juneau residents can find new articles on both publications’ websites and in the twice-weekly print edition of the Empire.