1 Sections

School board president Sally Saddler is a shoe-in for re-election. Saddler is the only candidate for two school board seats.

Randy Wanamaker is also unopposed for the District Two Assembly seat.

The filing period for municipal office has closed with few candidates. Both the school board and three Assembly seats are for three-year terms. Only two of the four races in the October 4th election are contested.

Three candidates are running for the Areawide Assembly seat: Loren Jones, Geny Del Rosario, and Carlton Smith.

Bradley Fluetsch and Jesse Kiehl will vie for the District One Assembly seat.

Wanamaker served on the Assembly for three terms ending in 2010, also representing District Two. Under city law, a candidate must sit out just one year before running again for municipal office.

With only one candidate for two school board seats, the board will have to appoint someone to fill the other seat. State law requires the board make the appointment within 30 days of the vacancy, which would be the October 4th election. The person selected will serve until next year’s regular election.

City Clerk Laurie Sica says it’s unusual to have so few school board candidates. A search of election records since the year 2000 shows at least one candidate running for each vacant seat.

Stories include the latest efforts by the Coast Guard to replace assets in Alaska and step up their presence in the Arctic Ocean.

In sports over the weekend, the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears trounced the Thunder Mountain Falcons by a score of 68 to zero in what was dubbed the first annual Glacier Bowl.

The two schools started their football season Saturday.

(Photos by Gail Fenumiai)

The public can weigh in on a possible move of the Alaska Commercial Fishermen’s Memorial to Marine Park at a meeting of Juneau’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee tomorrow night (Tuesday).

The memorial’s board of directors has asked the city’s Docks and Harbors Department to leave the monument where it is near Taku Smokeries, and not to build a planned cruise ship dock in front of it. But if the dock project goes forward, the memorial board says its preferred location is Marine Park.

Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee Chair Jeff Wilson says Marine Park is “the people’s park” and he wants to hear from the public about the proposed move.

“I just want to get some input from the users of that park of what they want to see in that park and whether the fishermen’s memorial really is the best place to be in Marine Park,” Wilson says.

He says the PRAC will likely make a recommendation to the Docks and Harbors Board at the end of the meeting. Docks and Harbors will use the input to decide whether the memorial should move, and take it to the CBJ Assembly for approval.

At last week’s assembly meeting, Assemblyman Johan Dybdahl expressed frustration at the assembly’s lack of involvement to this point.

“You know, I would have like to hear from all those people who have people on that memorial, and I don’t believe most of them support moving it at all,” Dybdahl said. “So, I was hoping that there would be sometime that the assembly would be able to weigh in and become a part of the decision process.”

The assembly approved the dock expansion project without considering its impact on the memorial or the annual Blessing of the Fleet held there. The project budget includes up to 2-million dollars for the potential move. The actual cost isn’t known until a site is chosen.

Tomorrow night’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meeting starts at 6 p.m. in City Hall Assembly Chambers.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Friday relocated a family of black bears that had been frequenting downtown Juneau this summer.

Wildlife biologist Ryan Scott says the department had been looking for the sow and three yearlings for a couple months. He says they finally caught up with them just south on the Baranof Hotel on the hillside behind Gastineau Avenue.

“These guys have been extremely active in the South Franklin, Gastineau Avenue area. And they’ve been around for a long time, and they just didn’t seem to be getting any better,” says Scott. “And we had actually decided awhile ago to remove them, but as you can imagine, with four bears it’s a little bit complex and we were waiting for the right time, and the right place, and the right personnel and the whole nine yards, and it all came together.”

Scott says the bears were tranquilized and relocated off the road system. The sow was about 180 pounds, and the yearlings – all males – were between 80 and 90 pounds each. He says it’s unusual, but not unheard of for a female to hang onto her cubs for that long.

Scott says food in the form of human trash was probably attracting the bears to the area. He says this has been a pretty busy bear year.

“We have a lot of bears that seem to be in neighborhoods and urban settings. On top of that we have what appears to be a large crop of yearling bears, and again those are the ones that typically find themselves in weird predicaments. So, it’s definitely kept us busy,” Scott says.

He says most people do a good job of keeping their garbage in secure containers so as not to attract bears. But with a couple more months left before they go into hibernation, he says Friday’s trapping and relocation is a good reminder to everyone to be bear aware.

Five of Juneau’s 14 schools made Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act last year, down from six in 2009-2010.

Auke Bay and Glacier Valley elementary schools, Juneau Douglas High School, the Community Charter School and Johnson Youth Center achieved academic targets in each of 31 different categories to meet AYP. Three schools – Yaakoosge Daakahidi Alternative High School, Mendenhall River Community School, and Gastineau Elementary – missed in just one category. And three more schools missed only two. Thunder Mountain High School missed three categories in its third year in operation.

For the first time in three years academic and graduation standards increased under No Child Left Behind, but Juneau School District Superintendent Glen Gelbrich says test scores show more students meeting the law’s targets.

“District-wide we met 95 percent of those standards. That’s up from last year, which was 94, and up from the year before, which was 93. So, even with the higher bar, we’re meeting more of the individual requirements than we were before. When you aggregate it all into the AYP formula it doesn’t add up,” Gelbrich says.

The standards will go up again this year. The goal of No Child Left Behind is to have 100 percent of students proficient in language arts and math testing by the 2013-2014 school year.

The law breaks students into nine different subgroups, including ethnic and socioeconomic status as well as students with disabilities. Gelbrich says that aspect promotes targeted improvements.

“It encourages you and you really need to do the drilling down in order to address what some of that criteria is,” says Gelbrich. “I would argue that, I’m not sure we need the law in order to do that. We want to know about each student, where is he or she in relation to where we want them to be.”

The district will host its second annual “School Summit” on Thursday August 25th at Thunder Mountain to share the AYP results with the community.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development released statewide results Friday. About 46 percent of Alaska schools met adequate yearly progress last year, a 14 percent decline from the previous year.

The Obama administration recently announced it would allow states to opt out of the Bush-era law’s requirements starting this fall. State officials say they’ll review the waiver requirements when they’re announced, and decide whether Alaska will opt out.