Jamie Diep

Update 6/3/25 5:06 p.m:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development released documents updating the status of the proposed regulation. Now the board must decide whether to adopt it as an emergency regulation, or to open the 30-day comment period for the proposed change.

An emergency regulation means the board could approve the change without a public comment period. It would take effect immediately after approval from the state’s lieutenant governor.

If approved as an emergency regulation, the change would last only 120 days unless the board later approved a permanent regulation change.

The board may also consider the regulation without emergency status and open a 30-day public comment period before taking action.

Original story:

The Alaska State Board of Education is considering a regulation change that would further limit how much money local governments can give to school districts. At its regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday the board will decide whether to open a 30-day comment period for the proposed change before deciding on approval at a later meeting.

The new regulation would narrow the definition of what kind of spending counts as a local contribution. State law currently limits how much municipalities can give to districts. 

Several school districts interpret the limit to apply only to money for instructional services. Some municipalities like the City and Borough of Juneau give additional money to their school districts for non-instructional services like transportation and preschool. The regulation change would end this practice.

If the regulation is approved, the Juneau School District would need to cut more than $2 million in funding for student activities, food services, after-school child care and more.

Leadership from the Alaska Council of School Administrators said in an email to KTOO the change could affect districts that represent nearly half of the state’s students.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, or DEED, drafted a version of the change last November. DEED wrote in a memo to the board that it’s proposing the change to match federal definitions and to remain in compliance with a yearly federal disparity test.

The non-instructional local contributions haven’t been considered in the test. Alexei Painter, one of the state’s legislative fiscal analysts, told KTOO it also wasn’t included in this year’s test, which the state failed.

DEED officials didn’t respond to questions from KTOO Tuesday.

The board will decide whether to open a 30 day public comment period during its business meeting tomorrow. DEED has requested the board include the regulation change at a special meeting in July if the board opens public comment this week.

There is also an opportunity for the public to comment on agenda items early Wednesday morning at 8:25 during the virtual board meeting. Meeting information can be found on the board’s website.

The University of Alaska Southeast hired two new administrators. One will lead its School of Education and the other will oversee the campus in Sitka.

Carlee Simon is the new dean of the UAS School of Education. She’s worked as the school’s interim dean since 2023 and led its accreditation efforts, according to a news release from UAS. The campus appointed her as the permanent dean last December.

Simon said she’s excited to work with faculty on larger projects. This includes developing a new masters of teaching program with a specialty on Indigenous languages, and teaching apprenticeships.

“I think everybody feels that they can kind of settle in and start working on the big efforts and initiatives that we’ve been wanting to get to, but have been waiting for, you know, the stability and leadership,” she said.

UAS also hired Jeremy Rupp as the new Sitka Campus Director. He’s replacing the previous director who retired earlier this year. As director, he will oversee the day to day operations of the Sitka campus.

“This position is meant to support the really important work that others are doing,” he said. “And it’s a community campus, and that means that it’s really meant to support the community.”

Rupp moved to Sitka from Carlton, Minnesota. He started the position about a month ago and said he’s looking forward to being a part of the local community.

Friday is the last day of school at the Juneau School District, and high school seniors graduate on Sunday.

It will be the first graduating class since the district consolidated Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and Thunder Mountain High School.

Two hundred eighty seniors are expected to walk at the 4 p.m. ceremony, which will be held at the high school auditorium.

Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School will hold its graduation for 38 seniors that same day at the Dzantik’i Heeni gymnasium at 1 p.m.

A district spokesperson said the district is working on a streaming option for Juneau-Douglas High School’s ceremony, which will be posted on its website.

Listen here: 

The Juneau School District is restructuring one of its specialized education programs. While staff and administrators say the change is desperately needed, some parents are concerned about how it will affect some of the district’s most vulnerable students. 

District staff reviewed the changes during a board meeting last Thursday at Thunder Mountain Middle School. Teachers, paraeducators, principals and parents filled the lecture room. Heavy silences punctuated the special education staff’s descriptions of dire circumstances.

“When all you can do is do your absolute best to make sure nobody dies today, that’s a significant problem,” said Phil Buettel, a paraeducator for the Developmental Education Communication Classrooms, or DEC-C, at Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen Elementary School. 

The class is meant to support students as they develop communication skills. But Buettel said that’s not happening.

“We don’t have the bandwidth to accomplish our most basic objective, because we’re more concerned with making sure that kids aren’t killing each other or us,” he said.

The class has 19 students this year. If the program remains unchanged, that number would jump up to 26 students next fall.

Tim Owen is the head teacher for the class at Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen. He’s been there two years, which makes him the longest serving teacher for the program in recent years. But Owen is resigning at the end of the school year. At the meeting, he said 26 students is too many for one class.

“I know 26 doesn’t sound like a lot for a general education teacher, but with the kids that we have and the needs that they have, it is impossible,” Owen said.

The increased enrollment prompted the district to work with Owen and other employees to restructure the program.

The current specialized education program has four classes based at Harborview Elementary School, Mendenhall River Community School and Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen Elementary. Student Services Director Jason DeCamillis said the new program will focus on training to help staff better meet students’ needs.

“We’re not training folks in this really broad, really shallow way,” he said. “We’re going deep and we’re going very narrow to ensure that students are getting the exact right people who have the exact right training.”

In the restructure, each class will focus on one specific skill set, like communication, social emotional skills or navigating different environments. Classes will be placed at a specific school. The proposed class sizes will be smaller, too. The district plans to have no more than 11 students in a given class.

But DeCamillis said there are some downsides to the restructuring. Up to 22 students would have to move schools to go to their new program if families want to participate in it.

“Students will have to move from one school to another, and so understanding what individual student needs and family needs are related to that transition is going to be a huge key to the work that a lot of the folks on this team are gonna have to focus in on,” he said.

The district’s plan includes working with families over the summer to develop ways to make the transition go smoothly for students.

Alyssa Cadiente-Laiti-Blattner has a son in the class at Kax̲dig̲oowu Héen. She said parents weren’t involved in initial discussions when the district first announced the program.

“We are our children’s best advocates. We are there with them every day,” she said. “We live this life with them, and so I wish there had been more parent involvement.”

After learning more about the program, Cadiente-Laiti-Blattner said she is hopeful about the smaller class sizes. But she’s still concerned about the district’s ability to carry it out.

“I know that they do have the best intentions for our children, but it still brings concerns, and this hasn’t changed for me, that they have the plan, but they don’t have the staff, they don’t have the paras, they don’t have the logistics,” she said.

The district is hiring two special education teachers for the current programs, according to job listings on the district’s website. DeCamillis said in an email the district is finalizing where to assign existing staff. 

Owen, who is leaving at the end of the school year, said teachers are reaching out to each student’s family to help ease their transitions.

He said in an interview with KTOO that, in the end, the new program will be good for students.

“For the first time in a long time, I’m actually really excited to share this with families, and I feel like they have reason for hope more than they ever have,” Owen said.

The restructuring, which doesn’t need board approval, is set to move forward. The district will continue working with families through the summer to help students with the transition if they decide to opt in to the program. The district expects it to begin in the fall.

 

In this newscast:

• The local advocates who filed a petition with the City and Borough of Juneau last month to put harder limits on cruise ship tourism have withdrawn it.
• The Juneau Assembly passed an ordinance mandating the Juneau Police Department release body-word camera footage no more than 30 days after a city police officer shoots someone.
• Another Ketchikan school board member stepped down, following the district’s board president, superintendent and another board member.
• It’s still not clear why the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development failed a federal test that saves the state millions of dollars.
• Juneau residents held a tree-planting ceremony in honor of Arbor Day yesterday.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, or DEED, failed a federal test that saves the state millions of dollars. It is not yet clear why the state failed, but the state will now be on the hook for more than $80 million if it can’t appeal the decision.

Alaska school districts receive money from the federal government called federal impact aid. That’s money that makes up for lost revenue from land that can’t be taxed, like federal, military or Alaska Native-owned land.

If the state passes a test to show that it’s funding education equitably, called a disparity test, it can put a lot of that impact aid toward its own contribution to school districts. But a letter sent by the federal Department of Education last week says the state failed the disparity test this year.

Alexei Painter is the director of the state’s Legislative Finance Division. He said Alaska is the only state that still uses the disparity test, and it’s getting harder to pass.

“The increasing difficulties with passing the test is a lot, because education funding has gotten more complicated over the last five or 10 years,” he said.

Painter says the federal government doesn’t require DEED to take the test, but state law does. School districts that qualify for the federal money will get it regardless of the results. DEED estimates Alaska districts will receive more than $110 million in impact aid for the next fiscal year.

But the test allows the state to put federal money toward it’s own contribution to education funding – basically saving the state millions of dollars each year.

Failing the test forces the state to pay those funds itself in its obligation to schools. But there are other calculations the state’s education department can make to pass the test after requesting a hearing. If it continues to fail the test, the state could owe districts more than $80.8 million this year.

Painter said the way the budget is structured means that the money would automatically be appropriated for schools, but he says there isn’t enough money budgeted for that.

This isn’t new for DEED. The state also initially failed the test in fiscal year 2022. But it’s allowed to request a hearing with the federal government to figure out a way to pass the test. Painter said the state was able to change how it accounts for transportation funding to pass the test last time.

“I would expect them to do something similar where they hold a hearing and then ultimately resubmit a test,” he said. “Hopefully they can find a way to reconfigure and pass.”

Last Friday, DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop said the state is considering its options moving forward. DEED officials didn’t respond to questions about its plans to address the failed test.

The test is really complicated. But basically, the state passes if the funding gap between school districts is less than 25% – after getting rid of the top and bottom 5% of funded districts.

The test also doesn’t include all of the state’s education funding in its calculations.

State education funding can largely be split up into two pools. The first is foundational funding – that’s money that goes to school districts’ operating funds, paying for things like teacher salaries, curriculum and anything else needed to run schools. 

The second pool is state transportation money – that’s money that goes to school districts to provide transportation for students.

In the disparity test, DEED can exclude state student transportation funds. That’s because it qualifies for adjustments that account for significant differences in spending across the state for transportation.

But that’s not the only money many school districts spend on transportation. Some districts, like the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, use operating funds for transportation as well. Painter said DEED changed its calculations this year and tried to take those extra transportation funds out of the test calculations. 

“Under the way that they had submitted the test in prior years, they would have failed,” Painter said. “So it was an attempt to try to pass by submitting the numbers differently, and so the federal government rejected that attempt.”

DEED has 60 days from the day the letter was sent to appeal the decision and make different calculations for the test.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that while the federal government doesn’t require the state to take the disparity test, state law currently does. It was also updated to reflect that DEED officials gave a statement last week.