Lisa Phu

Someone stole more than $2,000 from Pel Meni earlier this month.

Juneau Police Lt. Kris Sell says the thief entered the Merchants Wharf building downtown around 8:30 a.m. on March 14 and broke into the dumpling restaurant.

“It seems that they kind of jimmied the lock. It wasn’t really forceful, but it was getting the lock to open up,” Sell says.

A surveillance camera in the hallway outside Pel Meni shows the burglar wearing a blue jacket, khaki pants, gloves and something to cover his face. The suspect was carrying an orange and black backpack.

The footage shows the person had entered and left the building in less than four minutes.

Sell says there’s no reason to believe the person was armed.

Anyone with information can call 586-0600 or go to juneaucrimeline.com. You may be eligible for a reward.

Discovery Southeast is honoring a second grade teacher for regularly exposing her students to nature. The local outdoor education organization is giving the first annual Discovery Award to Allie Smith from Auke Bay Elementary School.

At least once a month, Smith takes her second grade class outside to walk on the trail behind the school.

“You have eight minutes to do some observations,” Smith tells the class. “Go. Make sure you can see an adult the whole time.”

The students run around the trail carrying journals to take notes and draw pictures.

Each time Smith takes her students outside, she gives them a task. She’s sent them on a hunt to find various colors in nature. Recently, she posed the question – Is it winter or is it spring?

Today, Smith lets the students come up with their own questions. She gives them an example – What would blueberry bushes look like right now? Some students have decided to focus on that question.

“That part is called a bud,” Smith says, looking at a blueberry bush with a student. “It’s turning into green, right? So what would come out of that bud, what do you think?”

“A blueberry,” the student replies.

“OK. So draw what you see and then write down what you think,” Smith says.

After eight minutes she calls the students back into a group to see if they answered their own questions. She asks for volunteers to share.

“My question was, will we find any pussy willows?” a student says. “We found the bushes but we didn’t find any.”

Smith started teaching at Auke Bay 10 years ago and has always taken her students outside. She says nature can really hook students into learning.

“I think it’s really important for kids to get comfortable with being outside and I also want to help foster that inquisitive attitude towards learning and nature, and I think that being outside and seeing the natural world around us can really help kids formulate questions and hypothesize,” Smith says.

Smith says different students have different feelings about nature. She has one student who is scared to go outside. Others think it’s too much work. But she says these attitudes tend to change over the school year.

“It kind of depends on what kids’ exposure prior to coming to second grade and coming to the trail has been,” Smith says. “I feel like the general trend that I’ve seen over the years is that the more kids come outside and do these activities, the more they notice and the more comfortable they feel.”

Shawn Eisele says that’s extremely important. Eisele is executive director of Discovery Southeast. One of its programs sends naturalists into 3rd through 5th grade classrooms for hands-on science lessons and field trips.

“There’s so many wild areas in Juneau that are right next to the schools and so it’s really easy to get kids out there. And, also, by going through the classrooms we get to reach all those kids who might not otherwise get outside,” Eisele says.

Discovery Southeast received several nominations for the inaugural Discovery Award, which is meant to honor educators. Smith will get the award at the organization’s annual fundraiser banquet Saturday night at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. Discovery Southeast is also sending Smith on one of its three teacher expeditions, which are continuing education classes. She’s chosen to spend a week in the Juneau ice field.

For the rest of the nature walk, Smith gets the class to be silent for a few moments, which as you may imagine is tough to accomplish with 22 second graders. They observe the sounds around them. They check the outdoor temperature and then play a version of hide and seek where some students are hawks.

Before becoming a traditional classroom teacher, Smith got her undergraduate degree in outdoor education at Northland College in Wisconsin. She’s always observed nature, but she says by bringing her students outside with her, she’s taking an even closer look.

The Juneau School Board has approved an $86 million budget for next school year. It maintains current class sizes, cuts three instructional teaching coaches and decreases funding for activities.

Superintendent Mark Miller says the district isn’t putting any operating fund money toward high school activities travel, coaches, officials or supplies.

“The only way money is going to get into that pot of money, if you will, is through what the CBJ gives us and what we get from the people who participate in the activities and what we can get from the community and businesses as support,” Miller says.

The budget approved Tuesday night includes a number of placeholders, as the school district waits for the city and state budgets to be adopted.

It assumes the Juneau Assembly will give the maximum local contribution allowed by state law, almost $25 million.

It also assumes the Assembly will contribute $565,000 to high school activities. Another $200,000 will hopefully come from a student activities fee and community fundraising. The district is putting close to $500,000 toward a high school activities director, and elementary and middle school activities.

Director of Administrative Services David Means says another big assumption is state funding. For one thing, the district doesn’t know whether it will get the $1.1 million in one-time state funding that was in last year’s education bill. The approved budget assumes it’ll get half.

“The second thing is, is there’s uncertainty whether they’ll continue to fund the Alaska pre-K pilot program. We use that to support our Head Start classes in our schools here in Juneau,” Means says. “The third program that’s up in the air is their funding for the Construction Trades Academy.”

Means says the pre-K program and trades academy account for roughly $650,000 in the school budget.

If the district doesn’t get any of the $1.1 million in one-time state funding, Superintendent Miller says class sizes in grades three to 12 will get bigger. If there is one-time funding, he says the administration and school board can discuss restoring items like instructional coaches and activities.

The school district will submit the budget to the Assembly on March 31. The Assembly Finance Committee will start looking at it on April 8.

At a legislative committee Thursday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says it could absorb part of the responsibilities of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission if it was eliminated.

The House Fisheries Committee heard Kodiak Rep. Louise Stutes’ House Bill 112, which would transfer duties of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to the Department of Fish and Game and the Office of Administrative Hearings. Twenty-five full time employees would move to Fish and Game.

Kevin Brooks is Fish and Game deputy commissioner.

“The department believes that we could make this work without service degradation to commercial fishermen. I think that’s important. Issuing permits, doing emergency transfers, those types of things,” Brooks says.

The CFEC is responsible for deciding what commercial fisheries to limit, who gets to participate in them and adjudicating appeal cases. It also issues permits and licenses, which bring in the majority of the agency’s revenue.

This is not the first time a lawmaker has tried to eliminate the CFEC. Homer Rep. Paul Seaton first introduced a similar bill at the end of the last legislative session and initiated a legislative audit.

Fish and Game conducted its own review that came out in February. It made several recommendations and highlighted some inefficiencies, like a backlog of 28 application cases more than 15 years old.

Sitka Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins sits on the fisheries committee.

“There seems to be some stubborn resistance getting to the number zero with that backlog. The backlog is low, but it doesn’t seem to be working its way down, at least quickly. And just put directly, why has the backlog not been worked through?” Kreiss-Tomkins asks.

CFEC Chair Bruce Twomley says he and the other two commissioners adjudicated 143 cases last year, mostly permit transfers. He says they are committed to finishing the backlogged cases in 2016.

Stutes’ bill would do away with the agency’s three heads and add an executive director, saving $424,000, according to a Fish and Game estimate.

The House Fisheries Committee will take public testimony on the bill to eliminate CFEC Thursday at 10 a.m. As of Friday, at least two letters of opposition have come from the fishing community, including the United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters Association.

Two local hikers were rescued from the Mendenhall Glacier area early this morning.

Michael Spano, 24, and Joy Bartlett, 22, got disoriented after sundown yesterday and were unable to find the trail. They called for help around 8:45 p.m.

Alaska State Trooper Andrew Neason coordinated the search from the Haines office.

“An officer from the U.S. Forest Service was able to actually see where they were at on the trail because of their headlamps,” Neason says.

Juneau Mountain Rescue located the hikers around 11 p.m. and everyone was off the West Glacier Trail around 1 a.m. Neason says no one was injured.

Performer Ricci Adan moved to Juneau in 2011. Her mother had passed away that year and she felt the need to get away from New York City, where her husband had been stabbed and killed 30 years ago.

Juneau ended up being exactly what Adan needed. And Juneau’s artistic world needed Adan.

It’s 10 a.m. at Riverbend Elementary School and Ricci Adan is leading her third dance class of the day. She teaches up to six a day, but she doesn’t get tired.

“How can you get tired with kids smiling at you and saying, ‘Hi, Ms. Ricci. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I did my homework,'” Adan says.

This is the third school that Adan has taught in since November as part of a residency program run by the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.

Adan is familiar with teaching in schools. She’s previously worked closely with the musical program JAMM and helped choreograph high school productions, like “Kiss Me Kate” and “Pippin.”

Aaron Abella, 20, was in both musicals as a student and loved working with Adan.

“She’s so sweet and so nice and so kooky, but then when it comes to class, she’s still goofy and funny, but she’s like business about it,” Abella says.

After going to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, with Juneau-Douglas High School in 2013, Abella decided to pursue musical theater as a career. He sought help from Adan.

“She was just like, ‘Well, OK, let’s get down to business,'” he says.

Besides dancing, singing and acting, Abella says Adan taught him the important lesson of not taking anything too seriously.

“Ricci can find humor in almost anything and that’s a really admirable thing because things can happen in life where, you know, you’re just not feeling so great and you have to keep your chin up and focus and keep moving, because if you stop moving, you die. She says that a lot,” Abella says.

Two months ago, Abella auditioned to get into musical theater programs at seven colleges. He’ll find out later this month if he made the cut. Abella says he’d never be where he is today without Adan.

“She’s inspired me so much. She sees the potential in people and she’s really good at detecting the people that have a hunger for it. She really made me believe in myself,” Abella says.

Artistic Director Art Rotch has worked with Adan at Perseverance Theatre. He says “Chicago” was one of her best works as a choreographer.

At first, there was doubt the dance heavy show could be done in the small theater. Adan said she could make the dancing work, and she delivered.

“It just blew me away. It exceeded all expectations how good it was. That team just worked really well together,” Rotch says. “They were magic.”

Rotch says he doesn’t know anyone else in Alaska who could’ve choreographed “Chicago” as well. Adan had danced with the daughter of famed Broadway master Bob Fosse, who choreographed and co-wrote the original “Chicago.” Several giants of dance and musical theater have taught Adan.

Rotch says Adan, who’s worked with several local theater and dance groups, has been important to Juneau.

“In terms of being a master of what she does and someone who can bring what she knows and teach it and share it and connect our dancers to the world outside, she’s really, really special. She’s one of the best we have,” Rotch says.

Adan’s work in Juneau over the past four years has given her a strength she didn’t know she could have. It’s allowing her to move on and revisit her painful past through art.

“It’s going to be a roller coaster, but it’s going to be exciting because now I’m ready for it. Four years ago, I was not ready for that,” Adan says.

She’s choreographing and writing a play based on her life. Broadway and film director Charles Randolph-Wright is a co-writer and an old friend. Adan is also writing an autobiography that is planned to become a screenplay and film.

She’s going to New York in May to work from a space that’s right next to where her husband was stabbed and killed in 1981.

“It’s whole different kind of writing than writing here in Juneau and trying to remember those moments. So I have to go back and forth in the past and I have to go through, again, the trial, the Supreme Court, the civil court,” Adan says.

As she prepares to leave Juneau, her students are saying thank you. Just the other night, she had dinner with one.

“He says, ‘Ricci, you’ve helped us so much.’ I said, ‘You know, it takes two to tango. If you think I’ve helped you, you have no idea how much you’ve helped me.’ And the whole community of Juneau has totally helped me,” Adan says.

Adan may be heading home to New York, to familiar stomping grounds, but she’s going back a different person.

Ricci Adan’s choreography and work will be highlighted this weekend during “Moving On,” a farewell performance at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. The show will feature work of Broadway masters.