Lisa Phu

Montessori Borealis is preparing to be its own school starting this fall. That entails creating a new preschool and kindergarten classroom, and an additional lower elementary classroom.

Montessori Borealis will welcome 15 preschoolers and nine kindergartners next school year. This comes as part of its expansion approved by the Juneau School Board in December, allowing the program to become its own school within the district. Borealis will now serve students from preschool to eighth grade.

Because Borealis is open to any student in the district, enrollment is based on a placement process. The district will accept applications for all grade levels from March 1 to April 17. The expansion also includes a third lower elementary classroom for 25 first through third grade students.

“We really encourage everyone who’s interested to come and do an observation in the Montessori Borealis classrooms and see what it is and make sure you really want to enter into the placement process and really want to apply,” says Kristin Garot, principal of Montessori Borealis.

Preschool and kindergarten students will be in a classroom called the Children’s House located in the Marie Drake building with the rest of the Borealis classrooms. Preschool tuition for school and childcare from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. is $990 a month. Kindergarten from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. is free.

Garot hopes the Children’s House will attract a spectrum of Juneau families.

“We want to make sure that we’re getting the whole range of families with socioeconomic backgrounds that are diverse. There will be some scholarships available for low-income families who qualify to cover the tuition for preschool,” Garot says.

Borealis will also accept childcare assistance for preschool payments.

Garot says students in the Children’s House will not automatically advance to a lower elementary classroom at Borealis. Students will have to re-enter the placement process to get into first grade.

Students in the tuition-based preschool will automatically advance into the free kindergarten. Garot says there will still likely be a few openings for kindergarten, but the goal is to not have students enter at the end of a three-year classroom cycle.

“We don’t want brand new students to the class at kindergarten necessarily. We want them at age 3 or age 4, so then by the time they get to kindergarten, they’re the class leaders and they know the system and they understand how the classroom works,” Garot says.

Due to Montessori Borealis’ new designation as a school, the Juneau School District could receive an additional $700,000 in state and city funding. Most of this will be used for additional Borealis staff, including two more teachers, more specialists, three part-time para-educators and an administrative assistant.

Montessori Borealis is holding informational sessions at the Marie Drake building tonight at 6 p.m. and Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Meetings on preschool and kindergarten will take place next Thursday at 6 p.m. and Saturday at 10 a.m.

James Hoagland is in the business of wigs. Not just your ordinary costume and fashion wigs – his are specifically for drag queens.

He spends hours styling hair and stitching it into wig caps. Last year, he sold 300 mostly to clients in the Lower 48 and internationally.

Hoagland does it all from a little studio in Juneau.

“I’ve got Buxom and Cover Girl. I’ve got the Vanilla Raspberry Swirl,” James Hoagland lists off a small sample of the wigs he offers. “The best wig name is Sandy Pecan Avalanche, which is exactly what you’d imagine it to look like.”

Despite such enticing names, most of Hoagland’s business is custom.

On this day he’s recreating Elsa’s hair from the Disney movie “Frozen.” Usually, for character wigs, Hoagland has a picture to work off of, but he doesn’t need one in this case. He’s already made eight other Elsa wigs.

“One thing with drag queens is they’re very tied to pop culture and their shows are better when they are doing the latest song or the latest character from the hit movie,” he says.

Hoagland starts off with a manufactured blond wig about 3 feet long. It cost him about $30 and when he’s done styling it, he’ll sell it for $120.

Of everything it takes to be a drag queen – the makeup, shoes, costume, music – Hoagland says, “The wig will make or break you. It really will.”

People watching drag queens are drawn to the face. The next focal point, he says, is the hair.

“If your wig looks horrible, people really won’t be able to focus on anything else. They’ll be staring at your ugly wig,” Hoagland says.

The reason that Hoagland knows so much about the drag queen business is because he is a drag queen. He’s not performing regularly now, but he spent 8 years touring the country singing in night clubs, casinos and theaters. He found stable work as a Liza Minnelli impersonator. His drag name is Gigi Monroe, which is also the name of his wig business.

Hoagland says the very nature of being a drag queen is a paradox.

“You’re in a wig, you’re in pounds of makeup and heavy lashes and shoes and costumes that probably aren’t breathable fabrics. All of those things make it incredibly uncomfortable and part of your job is to look like you are the most comfortable and the most at ease, and you feel beautiful and glamorous when you might feel like a monster,” he says.

Hoagland started his wig business the summer of 2013 on a cruise ship. He was a costume designer for Norwegian Cruise Lines on the Alaska route. He was interested in earning extra money and experimented with making a wig, something he’d gotten adept at as a queen. After he made one, he put it online.

“It sold in, like, three minutes,” Hoagland says.

So he kept at it, trying different styles and putting all the wigs on Facebook.

“I had a network of 5,000 drag queen friends from all over the world,” he says.

Because of cruise ship employee rules, like not taking things off the ship, Hoagland kept his wig business under the radar; he didn’t want people to think he was stealing. He received packages of hair in Seattle and mailed wigs out in Skagway.

“I would sneak them off the ship in these bags and I would have my friends who were dancers on the ship carry some of them and it was just hilarious and it was so much fun,” he says.

Hoagland ended up making 50 wigs. As he was doing that on the ship, off the ship, he was falling in love. He met his partner while in port in Juneau and had a date every time he returned. They would meet up for dinner, have coffee, “we went on hikes, we went to the ice caves, just kind of got to know each other,” Hoagland says. “And he was really what I was looking for in a lot of ways.”

Hoagland says his wig business allowed him to take some risks – on a relationship and on Juneau. So far, they’re both working out.

The secret to good drag queen hair is height, and more height. Hoagland says wigs for men just have to be bigger. Makeup and body curves should also be emphasized, “whereas you down play things like shoulders and hands and feet or height, things that make people look more masculine,” he says.

Making big hair takes teasing and lots of hairspray – Extra Super Hold Aqua Net.

“This is, like, my light hairspray,” Hoagland says laughing. “The real stuff is the freezing spray. That stuff is like cement in an aerosol format.”

The teasing creates a nest of knots that you can’t see. Hoagland says it’s hidden under the pretty part, which in the character Elsa’s case is a long loose braid that falls down around her shoulder.

“It’s one of those styles that’s, like, ‘Oh, it’s supposed to look messy,’ but it can’t be messy. It has to look perfect,” he says.

For Hoagland, Juneau is perfect. He gets a lot of support from fellow small business owners who are also artists. And the post office treats his packages with extra care.

“In some ways, Juneau is the last place on earth you would ever expect a drag queen to be making wigs, but it’s also kind of the perfect place,” Hoagland says.

He doesn’t know how long he’ll be making wigs. But Hoagland does know, in one way or another, he’ll always be in the business of drag.

About 100 people, including students and legislators, participated in a rally Friday to end violence against women and girls.

Freda Westman is the program coordinator for the Alaska Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. She said the event, called One Billion Rising, is a global movement and allowed people to come together and stand up for survivors.

“Together we are so much stronger than if we are alone and in a corner somewhere hurt, but coming together we can overcome this violence in our lives,” Westman said.

Community groups organized a march through downtown from Marine Park to Rockwell where people sang, danced and listened to speakers like Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott.

Chantel Eckland, 18, had the day off from school. She says One Billion Rising is an important way to educate people on the prevalence of violence toward females.

“It’s kind of like an uncomfortable topic to talk about for some people and I think, like, making it more public and getting more people involved will make a difference,” Eckland says.

This was the third year Juneau has participated in One Billion Rising.

Alaska raised writer David Holthouse has told his story of being sexually abused as a child before. It’s appeared in newspapers, on the radio, on stage in New York City and may even end up on the movie screen.

But when he spoke in the Alaska Capitol building today, it was to support Erin’s Law. If passed, the bill would require public schools statewide to provide age-appropriate K-12 sexual abuse education.

David Holthouse has distinct childhood memories of learning how to stop, drop and roll if he ever caught on fire. He remembers McGruff the Crime Dog telling him to stay away from strangers.

“But neither McGruff nor anybody else warned me about the homecoming king,” Holthouse says.

In 1978, Holthouse was 7 years old and his family had recently moved to Anchorage. They befriended another family with a daughter his age and a son in high school. The son was a star athlete, good looking and well spoken. He was nice to Holthouse.

But he changed his demeanor the night he invited Holthouse to his room to play karate.

“He took those ninja throwing stars and he pushed me up against the wall and he started throwing them like a knife thrower at the circus – thunk, thunk – so they landed right next to me saying ‘Don’t move’ – thunk – ‘Don’t move,'” Holthouse says. “And then he took a samurai sword off the wall and he drew it out of the sheath and he put the blade to my neck and he said, ‘If you don’t do exactly what I want, I’m going to kill you.'”

Holthouse was raped, and then threatened with death and the death of his family if he ever told anyone. After a state of shock, Holthouse quickly realized what happened, but he didn’t know what to call it.

“I didn’t have a word for what had happened to me. To go back to McGruff – McGruff had never taught me about ‘safe touch’ and ‘unsafe touch,’ or ‘good secrets’ and ‘bad secrets.’ If I had even been able to come forward and say, ‘That thing we talked about in school – that happened to me.’ I didn’t need any graphic terminology. I just needed a few words and the invitation to speak them,'” Holthouse says.

He says if Erin’s Law had been in effect before he was raped, he might have never been assaulted.

“Perpetrators of these crimes, they rely on shame and silence. They rely on our collective conspiracy of denial and silence about this. And if that silence had already been shattered, which educating every kid in a public school statewide will do, he might have thought that he couldn’t get away with it,” Holthouse says.

But he says he can’t know that for sure. What he does know is that Erin’s Law will prevent kids from being sexually assaulted. He says schools need to have curriculum and talk openly about it.

“I’m not just speaking on my own behalf. I’m speaking for tens of thousands of Alaska children and the adults they’ll grow up to be. And what I’m saying is, ‘Help us,'” Holthouse says.

Democratic Rep. Geran Tarr introduced the bill last year and it appeared poised to become law. Then-Gov. Sean Parnell supported Erin’s Law, the Senate passed it and the House version had 21 co-sponsors. But the bill got stuck in committee.

This year, there are four identical Erin’s Law bills – two from Republicans and two from Democrats. And Gov. Bill Walker wants it on his desk. Democratic Sen. Berta Gardner’s version was the first to get a hearing in Senate Education.

Tarr hopes the bill will pass this session. She understands some lawmakers are uncomfortable with Erin’s Law being a requirement, but she says there are likely community resources and private dollars available.

“We approached the Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska Children’s Trust, Mat-Su Health Foundation and just put the idea out there of would they be a resource for helping implement a curriculum and they all responded in a positive way,” Tarr says.

Erin’s Law has passed in 20 states and is pending in 21 others, including Alaska.

Blockbuster is closing after 20 years in Juneau. The downtown movie rental store shut its doors Monday and the Mendenhall Valley branch will close in April.

Alan Payne is the president of Texas-based Border Entertainment, which owns 11 Blockbuster stores in Alaska. He says sales in the capital city had been slowly dropping for the past 5 years.

“We just can’t make it work anymore. I don’t think it’s any secret that the business has been in decline for a long time because of online options primarily,” Payne says.

This doesn’t signal closures anywhere else in the state though. Payne says the ten other Blockbuster stores in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Wasilla, Kenai and Soldotna are still doing fine.

“We will run it as long as we can profitably run it. There’s no endgame in mind,” he says.

Border Entertainment owns half of the roughly 40 franchise Blockbuster stores remaining the country. In its heyday, the Blockbuster chain had more than 900 stores.

Payne says the first Blockbuster to close in Alaska was in Ketchikan 5 years ago. Two more closed in Anchorage leaving three in the city. Kodiak’s shut down a couple years ago.

Two full-time and 14 part-time employees worked in Juneau’s Blockbusters. Inventory from the downtown store is moving to the Valley branch. Starting on Friday, manager Vanessa Early says rentals stop and the blow out sale starts.

“We are just selling everything, everything that you can think of besides the walls and the floors,” Early says.

When the Valley Blockbuster closes in April, the space will be remodeled for Bullwinkle’s Pizza to move in late fall. It’s relocating from the Mendenhall Mall across the street.

Bullwinkle’s owners Mitch Falk and Lynette Anderson bought the building that houses Blockbuster 2 years ago with the intention of eventually moving the restaurant there.

“We need more space. We need a remodel. We haven’t had a remodel since 1983,” Falk says.

That means Bullwinkle’s may be neighbors with take-and-bake pizza store Papa Murphy’s. Falk says that store’s lease is up in two years and it’s already looking for a new space. Gerry’s Barbering & Styling Shop, also in the building, will stay put.

Juneau’s Parks and Recreation Department is “at risk of failure unless immediate changes are made.” That’s according to a 36-page report produced by a consultant and made public in late January.

Before the $35,000 report came out, city manager Kim Keifer was already considering implementing one of its recommendations — new leadership.

“It wasn’t a cause and effect. It definitely just confirmed what I was going to do,” Kiefer says.

Kiefer made the change as a cost saving measure, but the report says it was needed to inject new life into the department.

Former city Public Works Director Kirk Duncan took over Parks and Rec Jan. 5. Previous director Brent Fischer is now a buildings maintenance and parks and landscape superintendent.

Before leading Public Works, Duncan was the manager of Eaglecrest Ski Area for 7 years. He says he’ll bring new ideas. He agrees with the report when it says the department suffers from a culture of negativity.

“Parks and Recreation has taken a lot of cuts in the budget cycle and you can get into victim mode when that happens or you can take that as a challenge and opportunity to reinvent what we do and so that’s my role here,” Duncan says.

Parks and Rec employs more than 300 people. Most work a few hours here and there as game officials for recreation leagues. Duncan plans on conducting customer service training for the department’s 61 benefitted employees. Comment forms will also be placed at facilities and on the Parks and Rec website.

The report also recommends the department develop a fee policy. Duncan says he wants to establish a variable pricing model at the Treadwell Ice Arena and the city’s two swimming pools.

“If you’re in the pool at a very busy time, you’re going to pay a different rate than if you’re in the pool at a less busy time,” he explains. “So looking at doing some deep discounts in the off-peak times to get people into the facilities.”

Duncan says he’s injecting a business mindset into a government operation and will come up with a marketing plan. He wants to roll out a $99 pool pass during the winter. Other fee changes could be made in the coming months.

The report mentions deteriorated facilities and a lack of upkeep at parks. In addition to the swimming pools and ice arena, the department manages Centennial Hall, Jensen-Olson Arboretum, Zach Gordon Youth Center and parks throughout Juneau. Duncan says they’re maintained as well as resources allow.

He says a solution, also outlined in the report, is a private-public partnership in the form of a parks foundation, which has been discussed by the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee.

“There is money out there in the community — private people as well as other foundations — that want to give us money to improve our facilities. We’ve got to look at non-conventional ways to finance what we need to do,” Duncan says.

One recommendation Duncan is not sold on at the moment is putting all youth programs under Zach Gordon. He says the center does a great job and he doesn’t want to dilute its mission.

Duncan does agree that parking shouldn’t be under Parks and Rec, as recommended in the report. In December the city hired consultants to look at the parking issue. Their report is due mid-March.

While Duncan doesn’t plan on eliminating any jobs, he’s not going to fill the aquatics manager position. The current manager is leaving at the end of the month. But if the Assembly decides to form an empowered board for the swimming pools, those kind of staffing decisions will no longer be made at the Parks and Rec level.

The Assembly plans to discuss the empowered board option at its committee of the whole meeting Monday night.

Full disclosure: Kirk Duncan is on KTOO’s Board of Directors.