Yvonne Krumrey

Juneau’s fire department is piloting a paid internship program this year that equips locals with certifications and skills needed to work in the field. It’s a long-term investment in the department’s future after years of understaffing woes.

CCFR plans to hire six interns who will earn emergency medical technician and firefighter certifications over a period of 10 months. The program will qualify them for a permanent position with the department. 

Capital City Fire Rescue’s Sam Russell leads the program and said he wants to hire more people with roots in Juneau. 

“I can see, in the long term, this being a really good way to keep the community protected by locals, and not have to bring people in from the outside to do things,” he said.

Since the program covers a lot of training and eligibility requirements, Russell said he’s looking for applicants that have the right personality—self-motivation and the ability to get along with others.

“And so we’re looking for those things, as opposed to certifications or past job history or anything in particular,” he said. “We’re really looking for that right attitude, right person.”

Russell said he wants to see more people from all of Juneau’s communities working as firefighters, too. He says Alaska Native and Filipino people are underrepresented in CCFR staff.

“The fire department really should be a representation of the entire community, and we should be fairly diverse,” Russell said. “And I’m hoping the internship program gives people the opportunity to get into the service when they might have thought that they couldn’t.”

He said that for some, taking time away from work and families to get certified isn’t feasible. This internship breaks down that barrier by making the certifications part of the job. Interns will make roughly $3,700 a month

The application period is open until all the spots are filled. But Russell said he plans to start interviewing people on June 27. 

The Juneau Career Firefighters union is in negotiations with the City, and it says there are currently extreme levels of mandatory overtime and injured staff. Union representatives said earlier this year that the department needs higher wages in order to be more competitive with other departments who are hiring. 

The Juneau School District is cracking down on cell phone use in schools. The Board of Education passed a policy amendment Tuesday.

Students in kindergarten through high school will now have to turn off any phones, tablets, and laptops and stow them in their backpack or locker for the day. High school students will be allowed to use phones outside of school buildings at lunch or during free periods. 

Previously, the district’s phone policy left decisions about whether students could use phones to principals.

The change comes following a change to state law that requires districts to adopt a policy that limits phone use during the school day. And restricting phones in schools is part of a nationwide trend.

The policy change passed 4 to 2 with members Amber Frommherz and Steve Whitney opposed.

Whitney said he disagrees with students’ freedoms being limited. 

 “Our country is based on freedom of speech and also privacy and I think those foundations need to be enforced —or need to be introduced and instilled—before people are adults, while they’re young,” he said.

Board member Emil Mackey said he agrees with Whitney philosophically but he believes phone use in classrooms harms students. 

 “I think that there really is a problem from online bullying, from distractions in the classroom to the inability for students to concentrate, to falling test scores,” he said.

The policy allows staff to search students’ phones if they have reasonable suspicion the student is breaking a rule. The board debated the legality of that provision.

City attorney Emily Wright said the policy is legally sound, and pointed out that educators are allowed to to search backpacks and lockers without a warrant. 

But Wright suggested turning to other districts’ policies for wording if members felt the policy violated students’ privacy. 

“But I think that if you are unsatisfied with that language, there are many, many, many schools that have been grappling with this,” she said. “And we can help you find better language that feels like the right balance.”

In a district survey of more than 700 students and teachers, only 22% of respondents said they would support a stricter policy or total ban on cell phones in schools.

The policy allows for exceptions if students use devices for medical or translation purposes, in case of emergencies, and if teachers give permission for educational purposes. Laptops are also allowed in class for instructional purposes. 

Juneteenth will now be an observed holiday for most City and Borough of Juneau employees, starting next week. 

Juneteenth is already a national holiday and, for the first time this year, an Alaska state holiday. It commemorates the day when enslaved people in Galveston learned from a Union soldier that they were free — more than two months after the end of the Civil War. The holiday is recognized on June 19.

The change for most city staff comes after negotiations with a union representing some city employees resulted in the addition of the holiday and wage increases over the next few years. 

The city then passed a resolution granting the holiday and wage increases to non-union represented city employees in order to maintain equity across departments and to be a more competitive employer. Employees represented by two other unions won’t see the additional holiday or wage increase this year. Juneau’s city manager says the city is still in negotiations with those unions.  

The union that negotiated the change is the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA).

Most city employees will also see a 3% wage increase this year and next, and a 5% increase in fiscal year 2028. They will also get two lump sum payments of $2,750 and $2,000 the next two years respectively. 

The addition of the Juneteenth holiday is effective immediately, and will be observed next Thursday.

On the first Saturday in June — National Trails Day — Juneau’s trail maintenance nonprofit gives volunteers a chance to pick up a shovel and help with trails.

Trail Mix Inc Director Meghan Tabacek stood in the back of a pickup truck, holding up tools for volunteers to see. 

“We have the shovel, the tried and true,” she said. “Not a lot of concerns with the shovel.”

She gave volunteers advice on how avoid the shovel’s few dangers.

“My one concern is, I highly recommend holding the shovel both hands on it like this,” she said, demonstrating proper form to avoid injury.

Volunteers file up the trail with rakes, hoes, and mattocks in hand to pack muddy spots with gravel.

The volunteers came out because they care about Juneau’s trails – and lately their work has felt more vital than ever. This spring, federal funding uncertainty meant that trail work on some of those beloved trails could have been deferred. Now, the situation is more hopeful: trail workers have their jobs back, and funding may still come. 

It was Rachel Disney’s first time volunteering with Trail Mix. Instead of a hand tool, she pushed a motorized wheelbarrow full of gravel.

“Being able to get out and hike and be in the woods was my main reason for staying in Alaska when I got here,” she said. “So I want to be able to make sure that people can continue being out in the woods here.”

Disney said the future of Juneau’s trails means a lot to her. 

But that future has been uncertain. After the Trump administration canceled federal grants and fired federal workers— including dozens of U.S. Forest Services employees based in Juneau—Trail Mix leadership decided to reduce its scope in case its federal funding was canceled.

With that in mind, the organization pivoted to fundraising, and planned to work only on city-owned projects — not Juneau’s heavily-used Forest Service trails.

At the time, job cuts halved Juneau’s Forest Service trail work crew.

Donors stepped in, and Trail Mix raised just over $54,000 to put towards previously scheduled work on two heavily trafficked Forest Service trails and other projects. Tabacek said people often submit complaints about the condition of Peterson Lake and the Amalga Trail that reaches the Eagle Glacier cabin, so the group had planned the work before federal cuts came down.

“The work was already planned,” Tabacek said. “We were already hoping to do it. And so it was really great the community stepped up so we could do it.”

Tabacek planned to use the money to hire fired off Forest Service trail crew, but when she went to extend the offers, she found they had been rehired by the federal government.

“They have one full trail crew of all returning staff,” she said. “Which was really great for them, just because returning people have a lot of experience.”

And Tabacek says it looks like the majority of their expected federal funding will be honored after all. The Forest Service has not confirmed the staffing levels in Juneau. 

But she said, RIFs—or Reduction in Force efforts—still loom for the Forest Service employees. Now, federal rulings are blocking them, but Trail Mix is reserving some of the fundraised money to be able to hire two Juneau trail workers who may lose their jobs in future cuts.

“There is still kind of the omnipresent threat looming over the heads of federal workers that they might lose their job,” Tabacek said.

If there are no more cuts to trail jobs in Juneau, then the money set aside will go towards trails people want to see improve, she said. 

Trail Mix crews are currently working on a reroute trail to Mt. Jumbo, also called Sayéik, and the Thunder Mountain Bike Park.

In the basement of Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau sit thousands and thousands of photographs. They were taken by a Lingít elder who has since passed on, but for decades, he documented important events and everyday life. Now, the organization wants help identifying people and places in the photos.

Listen:

Ḵaalḵáawu Cyril George Sr.’s family unearthed the photo collection in the wake of his death 11 years ago. His granddaughter, Lillian Woodbury, says she was astounded at the volume of photos he kept in his small Juneau condo.  

“That tiny little room had been harboring all of these memories he captured in photo,” she said. “I mean, every time we thought we’ve got them all, we pulled out another box or another container, and I’m like, ‘oh my god, Mom, it’s another box of photos.’”

To Woodbury, George was “grandpa.” But Ḵaalḵáawu Cyril George Sr. left a mark on thousands of people in Southeast Alaska. He was a Lingít leader from Angoon who lived to be 92 years old. Videos of his speeches are used for Lingít language classes, and a collection at the University of Alaska Southeast library is named after him.

A family friend suggested to his family that they donate George’s photographs to Sealaska Heritage Institute, to preserve and store them. For the last few years, archivists like Emily Galgano have been combing through them. 

“There’s so much just joy in these photos,” she said. It’s one of my favorite things, looking through them and seeing people just having a good time, people dancing, people talking to each other, cooking out on the beach.”

Photos of everyday life

Some of the photos are now online, and printed in books that are available in Juneau and Angoon for elders to look through. 

SHI hopes people will recognize some of the faces.

“The first thing is, we tried to find photos where you could see people’s faces clearly, because the point of the book is really to try to get some identifications,” Galgano said.

There are 20,000 photos in the full collection. A lot of them are pet photos and landscapes. But of the 1,600 SHI has made available, most are of people: dancers in full regalia, fishing trips with strung up halibut, graduations and meetings. 

The photos are full of life — basketball games and Fourth of July parades. They show Lingít people living, working, teaching and making art. They show elders, and babies, and elders with babies. And those babies may be elders now themselves.

Lingít photographer Brian Wallace helped SHI scan the photos. He knew George growing up, and looking through the photos, he was surprised by how many there are of everyday life. 

“They seem mundane at the time,” he said. “But looking back into the whole scope of things, it’s just an amazing body of work.”

Wallace said the photos of ku.eex and early Celebrations stand out to him — that they show how Southeast Alaska Native cultures have endured. 

“They’re thriving when he took the photos, and still thriving,” he said.

Cyril George Sr.’s legacy

Some of the photos were deeply personal for Wallace. 

“And then I loved finding the photographs that he had of my parents,” Wallace said. “And to see some of those photos, and then also lots of photos of my aunts. My aunties cooking dinner or singing songs or just in the background of photos. It was always fun to see those.”

Woodbury, George’s granddaughter, said it was hard to part with the collection. The memory of his loss is still fresh, more than a decade later. 

“But we also didn’t want a lifetime of him making sure he carried that camera around to be lost,” she said.

She hopes that others, like Wallace, will look through the collection and find photos of loved ones who have passed on.

“I think if people walk away seeing these photos and they feel like he gave them that one moment in time back, that makes me happy,” Woodbury said. “And that will be a small part, a small part of this legacy.”

Another part of his legacy is Woodbury herself – she’s a photographer, too.

“I think I was 16, the first time he gifted me a camera. And that was all it took,” she said. “That was all it took.”

If you recognize any of the people, places or objects in the photos, you can contact SHI’s Archives and Collections Department at SHIArchives@sealaska.com. 

Here are more images from the Cyril George Photo Collection. You can expand by clicking on any slide. 

This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.

Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.

This week’s word is saak, or hooligan. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say saak.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Saak. 

That means hooligan.

Here are some sentences:

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Saak eex̱í aag̱áa yatee át akamdulgaaní.

People light hooligan grease.

Keihéenák’w John Martin: Táakw.eetíxʼ áyá yaa yaga.eich saak.

The hooligan always run in the spring.

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Ḵúnáx̱ áwé yaawa.aa wé saak.

The hooligan were really running.

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Taakw eetíxʼ yéi daaduné saak.

People work on ooligan in the spring.

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Saak eix̱í ax̱ x̱ʼéix̱ aawatée.

They gave me hooligan grease to eat. 

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Additional language resources:

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Watch a video introducing Lingít sounds here.