Alaska

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Seventeen-year-old Quinn Branch was among the young fishermen socializing at the Hangar on the Wharf ballroom in downtown Juneau on Tuesday evening as part of the Alaska Young Fishermen’s Summit.

Branch traveled to the summit from Kodiak because she said her dream is to spend the rest of her life setnetting on the Island. 

“So my grandpa, who I’ve been fishing for for three years now — we’re a setnet site out in Kodiak — he sent me here pretty much because I want to take over the family business one day,” she said. 

Branch said she’s got the fishing part down, but wants to understand the behind-the-scenes work, including filing taxes, applying for loans and hiring staff. 

She said she’s also connected with role models at the summit. 

“Just getting to see other women who are doing the same thing, you know, the same passion and the same desires as I is pretty cool,” she said.

One of those women is Rowan Miller, a 24-year-old from Valdez who’s starting her own fishing business. Miller said she’s spent half of her life fishing for salmon on her dad’s boat in Prince William Sound.

Now, she’s buying a 50-foot steel seiner from a family friend. She said people keep asking why she doesn’t just take over her dad’s boat when he retires. 

“I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going to wait that long,'” Miller said. “He’s, you know, he’s 58 now. I’ve got another 25 years to wait ‘til he retires, so why would I do that?”

She said some skippers she knows have fished well into their 70s and even into their 80s. 

Alaska’s fishing fleet is aging out, and that’s one reason why Alaska Sea Grant hosts the summit — to support the next generation of Alaskan fishermen. The organization started the summit in 2007 and hosts it every other year. 

The average age of a permit holder in 2014 was 50 years old. That’s a decade older than it was in 1980. Between 1980 and 2013, the number of young people holding permits dropped significantly. After the state limited entry into the fishing industry, hundreds of high-cost permits drained out of Alaska and were sold to out-of-state operators. That left many rural villages that relied on fishing without a fleet to support their local economies. 

Miller said seeing other young people at the summit is a good sign for the industry. But she said there are other obstacles outside of her control that make buying into the industry feel like a gamble.

“Between climate change and uncertain fish runs and uncertain markets with global things like tariffs and whatnot — there’s just a lot of uncertainty going on,” she said. “So it’s a big leap of faith.” 

Along with learning how to run a business, Miller said she’s also interested to learn more about what she could have a say in: fisheries policy. She said she wants to have a hand in shaping the future of the industry.

That’s another goal of the summit, said Gabe Dunham, fisheries specialist at Alaska Sea Grant and chair of the event: “How to engage with the public processes that influence their business, like the council process and the Board of Fish, and also how to interpret the science and the management around them.” 

Dunham said older, experienced fishermen volunteer to host sessions and pass on their knowledge. But he said fewer people attended the summit this year — around 20 — compared to the 30 to 60 people who typically go. 

Two Alaska school districts filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Anchorage Superior Court against the state, its governor and its education commissioner over what they say is a long-running failure to adequately fund public education.

In the complaint, the Kuspuk School District and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District argue “the state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation” both to provide Alaska students “a sound basic education and meaningful opportunity for proficiency” in vital subjects, and “to fund schools and school districts at a level that is adequate to provide students with a sound basic education.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgment that the state is violating the Alaska Constitution by failing to sufficiently fund public education. They say the state is violating the plaintiffs’ and students’ rights to substantive due process. They’re also seeking an injunction directing the state to fulfill its constitutional obligations, and requesting a court-ordered adequacy study to determine what it costs to educate students.

“Alaska, we don’t believe, has ever done an adequacy study to really understand what it would take to allow Alaska students a fair opportunity to learn the skills they need to participate and contribute to society,” said Matt Singer, a trial attorney representing the plaintiffs. ”If you don’t know what something is going to cost, then you can’t have a conversation with the Legislature about how to fund it,” he said.

The lawsuit points to low proficiency assessment scores, reductions in teaching staff and the elimination of fine arts, career technical and vocational education programs as direct impacts due to years of chronic underfunding. It also cites dangerous conditions inside school buildings.

“The last eight years, we’ve experienced a governor that has put forward a zero dollar budget going into budgeting,” said Kuspuk School District Superintendent Madeline Aguillard. “That’s almost a decade of just starting at nothing and when you have to claw your way to even less than minimal funding, that takes a toll,” said Aguillard.

A spokesperson with the governor’s office deferred to the state Department of Law.

“The responsible path is legislation — not litigation,” Department of Law spokesperson Sam Curtis wrote in an email Tuesday night, noting that “we have not been served with this lawsuit and have not yet had an opportunity to review the claims.”

The education clause in Alaska’s constitution does not specify a dollar amount for education. Instead, wrote Curtis, the constitution “vests the power of the purse squarely in the Legislature and the Governor. The legislative session began today. That is where education policy and funding decisions are meant to be debated and resolved.”

It’s not a coincidence the suit was filed on the same day legislators convened in Juneau for this year’s legislative session, according to Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Superintendent Luke Meinert. “I think it sends the message that the work on education funding is not done,” said Meinert. “We’re calling on this year’s Legislature to continue to work on that issue. They have the power to do so. Nobody else does,” said Meinert.

Education Commissioner Deena Bishop did not respond to a request for comment as of Tuesday evening. When she was superintendent of the Anchorage School District, Bishop consistently advocated for increased state funding for public schools through a change to the state’s education funding formula. But Bishop changed her stance when she became education commissioner under Dunleavy, arguing that the state’s budget is strained and that she preferred a more targeted approach to increasing school funding, like providing more money for tutors.

In the past, Bishop has said her department is not responsible for allocating funds for education. “The levers that I can pull aren’t levers for funding,” Bishop said in a 2024 interview. “I don’t create the money. The Legislature creates that, but we can certainly support policy that would help support schools as their needs come up,” she said.

Caroline Storm, executive director of Alaska’s Coalition for Education Equity, a nonprofit organization that is helping finance the lawsuit, said that “legal action is not the only way, but it raises the public awareness.” Storm said years of advocacy from her organization and others simply “hasn’t moved the needle enough” in Alaska to pay for wide-ranging needs from curriculum to building maintenance.

Storm said the lack of financial support for public education should be central to this year’s election cycle. “In my mind I don’t frame that as using politics, but ensuring something that is in our constitution,” said Storm.

According to Article VII of Alaska’s constitution, “the legislature shall by general law establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the State.” For years, the complaint alleges, the state has failed to do so.

“This does not come as a surprise to me,” state Sen. Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said Tuesday. “In this conversation around adequate school funding, our local school boards have been bleeding,” she said.

“They have come to Juneau, they have talked to our commissioner, they have elevated the desperate need that they are under to have adequate state funding. We know that the state support for schools has been slowly diminishing,” said Tobin, who is also a member of a task force formed at the end of last year’s legislative session to address education funding, among other issues.

Alaska’s public schools receive funding from two state budgets. Capital funds pay for building maintenance, upgrades and construction. Money for operations, often referred to as the Base Student Allocation, or BSA, buys things like textbooks and pays for teachers’ salaries. According to the complaint, Alaska allocated $5,800 per student in 2015. Over a decade, the number had risen only 2.2%, totaling $5,960 in 2025.

“The state is failing in all regards,” said Singer. “In order to provide a basic sound education, you need a lot of different things,” he said. “One of the things is a safe school building with a roof and heater. Another thing you need is a competent teacher standing in front of a classroom educating young people.”

After years of relatively flat state funding for schools amid rising operational costs, Alaska lawmakers during the 2025 legislative session passed a $700 increase to the BSA, then gained enough support to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of the bipartisan education bill — and later overrode his veto of $50 million in education funding from the budget.

While advocates celebrated the funding increase, many education leaders have said it still falls short of what school districts need to effectively operate, and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Tuesday said the increase in the BSA was “woefully insufficient to keep pace with inflation, which had eroded purchasing power by 37% in the preceding decade.” After last year’s protracted battle over school funding, and with state revenues projected to be lower than expected, it’s unclear whether there’s enough traction in the Legislature to pass another increase this year.

There are more than 50 school districts in Alaska, and most are located within cities or organized boroughs, which have access to local tax revenue to help fund education.

Nineteen districts are nearly entirely reliant on the state for funds, because they serve rural, unincorporated communities where money from local taxes is simply not available to help pay for schools. Dozens of those school buildings are owned by the state education department, including in the Kuspuk School District, which straddles the middle stretch of the Kuskokwim River and covers an area roughly the size of Maryland in Western Alaska.

State assessment data on student performance within the Kuspuk School District “are dire,” according to the complaint. The numbers show 90% of the district’s 330 students during the 2024-25 school year were not proficient in English language arts, math or science. Aguillard said chronic underfunding from the state is having an outsized impact on districts like hers, where the student population is predominantly Indigenous.

Those students aren’t only struggling with classwork. For years, Aguillard said her district has had to pull funds from its operational budget to keep buildings open. Over the last two years, an investigation by KYUK Public Media, NPR and ProPublica uncovered a public health and safety crisis inside many of Alaska’s public schools and in particular, in rural schools that serve predominantly Indigenous student populations. In one school, bats occasionally fly through classrooms and the hallway. At a school above the Arctic Circle, maintenance staff struggled for years with a persistent toxic chemical leak from the heating system, and in several cases across the state, failing plumbing means kids have to leave school to go to the bathroom.

Dozens of studies cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency highlight negative impacts on student performance as a result of poor maintenance and conditions inside schools. The investigation found black mold inside several Alaska schools. Exposure can increase the risk of asthma and is linked to higher rates of absenteeism. According to the agency, leaking roofs and problems with heating and ventilation can also impact academic performance.

The situation isn’t unique to rural school districts, however. In an interview, Meinert described at length the tangible impacts a $5 million budget deficit has had in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, one of the three largest in the state.

“The state does have a responsibility to provide safe and adequate facilities for our students not only in rural Alaska but also in urban Alaska,” said Meinert. In the last five years, seven schools in his district have been forced to close due to a budget shortfall. Meinert said the district opted to outsource its custodial jobs and eliminate more than 70 positions. Since 2019, Meinert said, his district has terminated more than 300 teaching positions districtwide, which means class sizes have swelled to more than double what the National Center for Education Statistics reported for the state five years ago.

Meinert contends that a lack of state financial support within his district is also disproportionately impacting the minority student population. State assessments show that more than 76% of Indigenous and economically disadvantaged students in the district are not proficient in English language arts.

On Monday, Aguillard got word from an architect that most of the roof joints that hold up the roof of the school gym in Aniak are broken. “We are closing the high school immediately and beginning plans to demolish before it collapses,” she wrote in a text message. In the last three years, experts have said at least three buildings in her district should not be occupied.

Aguillard has also been scrambling with maintenance staff over the last two weeks. This winter, communities across the state experienced a prolonged and extreme cold snap in December and January. Eight of the Kuspuk district’s nine buildings could not open in time for students to return from the holiday break because there was no running water, heat or electricity. The majority of the buildings in the district are owned by Alaska’s education department.

”It’s unsettling,” Aguillard said. “Our buildings should not be shutting down so easily. It’s really just evidence of the decline of the capacity of those buildings,” she said.

More than eight years after 19-year-old Kake resident Jade Williams was killed at a party, a man has been sentenced for causing her death. 

On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Marianna Carpeneti sentenced 33-year-old Isaac Friday to 20 years in prison for manslaughter. Friday has already spent several years in prison since his 2019 arrest. The judge suspended the remaining years of the sentence. 

Instead of serving more time in prison, Friday will be on probation for seven years, and if he violates his probation, he will face the remaining prison time.

Williams was found dead on August 15, 2017 at a party in her family’s house in Kake, according to court documents. Investigators from Juneau didn’t reach the scene until the next afternoon. Williams and Friday, who was 24 years old at the time, had been in a relationship, and the case was tried as a domestic violence case. 

Friday was first indicted in 2019 on four charges: two murder charges, a manslaughter charge, and a criminally negligent homicide charge. As part of a plea deal, Friday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge in February 2025. All other charges have since been dropped.

Jeremy Williams, Jade’s father, said at the sentencing hearing that his life hasn’t been the same since his daughter was killed. 

“I had one job — I failed — that was to protect her,” he said. “It eats at me every day.”

Williams said he believes the sentence is just a slap on the wrist, and that his family’s experience throughout the investigation and criminal proceedings has been traumatizing.

“I really don’t know what to make of this,” he said. “It’s been a nightmare”

He said Jade had plans to go to cosmetology school in Washington, and that seeing other kids graduate and go to college makes him feel her loss, even eight years later. 

But Williams said he hopes this sentencing means Jade’s family can begin to move forward. 

“I hope myself, my family, my friends, his family — we could start to heal,” Williams said.

Friday’s defense attorney Eric Hedland said at the hearing he believes it’s possible that his client didn’t kill Williams. He pointed to another man at the party, who Hedland said admitted that he had been in a fight with Jade that night and had injuries consistent with an altercation. Hedland said DNA evidence that came out years after Friday’s indictment pointed to that other man. The state never filed charges against that person in connection with Williams’ death.

“I don’t know what happened. I don’t think anybody does. I don’t think the state does,” he said. “And that troubles me.”

Friday himself took the chance to speak during the sentencing Wednesday, and said he wants to be able to serve his community again. 

“I’m ready to start giving back instead of taking,” he said. “I’m ready to help someone else rather than sitting in a room taking.”

Before delivering the sentence, Carpeneti said she also thinks the facts of the case remain muddled. 

“None of us will ever know with a lot of clarity every event that transpired that evening and all of the harm that was done to different people,” she said.

Carpeneti said she knows the legal system can’t fix the pain Williams’ death has caused.

“There is not a sentence in the world that will restore Mr. Williams, his family, Jade’s friends and the community of Kake,” she said.

But, she said, the court’s responsibility in a plea agreement is to find an outcome that both parties — the state and the defense — will accept. Friday’s sentence, which both parties agreed to, achieves that. 

With the second regular session of the 34th Alaska Legislature just kicking off, it’s a good time to check in with members of Juneau’s delegation to talk priorities and plans for the session. Rep. Sara Hannan (D-Juneau) spoke with KTOO’s Mike Lane last week just before the session started. 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Lane: How you are feeling about going into the second regular session of the 34th Alaska legislature?

Rep. Hannan: Well, you know, I came out of a education background, so I always like to say the start of session feels like returning to school and, you know, seeing friends you haven’t seen for a while. It’s always a good pace, of course. As a junior representative, this is my year-round office. I’m in the Capitol Building 12 months a year. But it gets kind of quiet in the fall, you know. The summer, we have all those summer visitors, but the pace has picked up. The building’s alive with new people, bright eyes, all the college interns who are, you know, here to to change the world in 120 days. And that’s always really good energy.  

Mike Lane: Is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to for this session? And is there anything that you’re not looking forward to for this session?

Rep. Hannan: Well, we have got to address our big fiscal issues in this state and we have got to figure out a path to pay for the things we need. Things haven’t gotten cheaper and our disasters have continued to grow in cost and scope, and keeping the lights on will be a struggle, but we have got to keep the state functional and the roads plowed and the ferries running and schools operational and public safety people eligible to respond and get people working in Alaska, keep people working in Alaska. So there are a lot of tough political discussions to have, and it’s the second half of a two-year session, so it makes it a challenge to get complex policy addressed, and then it’s a big political election year. You know, as a member of the House, every two years is an election year, but this is one of those where it’s gubernatorial and, you know, a high profile U.S. Senate seat, as well as every member of the House of Representatives.

Mike Lane: When it comes to the budget, where do you believe cuts are necessary?

Rep. Hannan: I don’t see a lot of areas for cuts. We have squeezed and cut the budget for over a decade, and so when we start talking about cuts, we are talking about basic services not being able to be delivered that people have an expectation of. You know, we can’t put more equipment on the road to keep our roads plowed without paying workers to drive them. And we compete with private sector. You know, operators and engineers, they can go to the private sector and make more money, and in variety of places, we can’t keep up with the services we need, so I don’t see a lot of places to cut.

Mike Lane: And what does a successful session look like for you? 

Rep. Hannan: Well, when it comes to personal legislation, you always want to see improvements on that. If I could get House Bill 242 passed, that would be good. I see this as a bill with very little policy dispute because it’s very narrow in scope. We’re modernizing the sexual assault consent in this from knowing to unknowing being irrelevant. I think that in the 21st century, we understand the dynamics about how people respond in sexual assault cases and make it prosecutable, because it’s pretty horrific that medical providers could assault someone and not be prosecuted. I have a couple pieces of personal legislation that I think we can get passed. Tax on vape tobacco – that’s a bill I’ve been sponsoring since I first got in, but the Senate version of it is sponsored by Senate President Gary Stevens; that’s Senate Bill 24. It’s all the way over in House Finance. I believe that we are positioned to get that because, right now, vaped nicotine in Alaska is not taxed by the state. Our tax state statutes on tobacco specified type, so cigars, cigarettes, chew, snuff, et cetera, and the last time we amended that statute, vaping wasn’t a thing, so it’s not listed. Then there’s a little bill of just sort of local interest on charitable gaming, a snow classic, that we’ve gotten out of the house and is in the senate. We have charitable gaming in Alaska, classics being, you know, the Nenana Ice Classic is the one that people most know about. A fiscal plan would be helpful; that would be that would be a real success. But that’s pretty optimistic for 120 days.

The Alaska Legislature is back in session. Lawmakers in the House and Senate gaveled in this afternoon.

At the Capitol Tuesday, the atmosphere was a bit like the first day of school — lots of smiles and hugs, some what-did-you-do-this-summers. Blue delphiniums and yellow roses adorned the dais in the House chamber.

Despite the sunny mood, though, there’s a cloud over this year’s session.

“We know we’re facing even tighter revenue constraints than before. We know that demands will continue to rise, as they always have,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican.

Lawmakers have the next four months to act on a multitude of issues facing the state, from energy prices and the possibility of a gas pipeline to the perennial question of how the state will pay its bills.

For years, Alaska has had a structural deficit: the state treasury takes in less money than it pays out. Last year, lawmakers approved a Permanent Fund dividend of just $1,000, an all-time low when adjusted for inflation.

So this year, members of the bipartisan majority leading the state Senate say raising revenue is their top priority. Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Democrat from Bethel who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said at a news conference Tuesday that even a $1,000 dividend would present a challenge this year with oil prices persistently low.

“One way or another, if we are going to continue to provide the services that people of Alaska have been accustomed to, that is the million dollar question,” he said. “Can we come up with revenue measures this session?”

Lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have repeatedly butted heads on the best ways to raise money for state government and, of course, how to spend it.

Last year, Dunleavy vetoed the sole significant revenue-raising bill to reach his desk, saying he wanted lawmakers to make fiscal reforms part of a larger package. The bill would have tweaked the state’s corporate income tax structure to capture more revenue from out-of-state businesses. It wouldn’t have solved the revenue shortfall, though it would have eased the pressure a bit.

The state House and Senate plan to consider overriding that veto Thursday morning after a two-day delay at Dunleavy’s request, but it’s unclear whether lawmakers will be able to muster the necessary supermajority.

Palmer Republican Rep. DeLena Johnson, who leads the all-Republican House minority, says she’d like to see lawmakers consider something more comprehensive.

“I think we need to take up things as a whole, not as just individual items,” Johnson said.

And they may have a chance this year. Dunleavy told reporters in December that he’s planning to roll out a fiscal plan that would serve as a bridge to brighter days ahead. Growth in the Permanent Fund and a potential gas pipeline will eventually ease the pressure, but the coming years could prove a challenge, he said.

“I think the next five years, we’re going to have to be real careful, and we’re going to have to have in place things that will pay for government,” Dunleavy said at his holiday open house in December.

Dunleavy may provide some clues in his final State of the State address on Thursday.

But it’s not just fiscal issues facing the state this year. The possibility of a natural gas pipeline connecting the North Slope and Southcentral Alaska moving forward will also be a topic of interest, lawmakers say. The developer of the project, which has been a dream for decades and is now a priority for the Trump administration, has said it plans to make a final investment decision early this year.

That’ll be the top issue in the Senate Resources Committee this year, said committee chair Sen. Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican.

“The Resources Committee will be looking at the resource itself and its impact and the project’s impact,” she said. “Then, we’ll be sending it on to the Finance Committee that will dig even deeper into the finances.”

And more urgently, lawmakers say they’d like to craft a funding package for a variety of infrastructure projects Dunleavy vetoed from last year’s budget. Trade groups recently sounded the alarm and asked lawmakers to quickly approve $70 million in construction funding, saying the vetoes risked as much as $700 million in federally backed construction projects.

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent, said lawmakers plan to dig into the issue promptly.

“I think there’s a lot riding on that decision, and I expect us to spend an ample amount of time, right from the opening moments, looking at it closely and figuring out what and how we’re going to approach it,” Edgmon said.

And that’s still not all — there’s education, health care, elections, a state pension plan, all priorities for various legislators in the coming session.

What will get done, though, is an open question. Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman says lawmakers likely won’t be able to address everything.

“We’ll have to prioritize that list,” Stedman said. “There’s only so much bandwidth in the Legislature.”

They have until May 20 to get it done.

Alaska lost about a third of its U.S. Forest Service employees in the past year due to federal staffing cuts led by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Before that, the agency had around 700 Alaska-based staff. This month, the agency told KTOO that 467 remain. 

Leading this workforce in flux is Jerry Ingersoll, the U.S. Forest Service’s acting regional forester for Alaska, covering both the Chugach and the Tongass National Forests. Ingersoll has worked for the Forest Service for 40 years and took on the role in November 2025. 

In this interview with KTOO’s Alix Soliman, Ingersoll talks about changes he’s leading Alaska Forest Service staff through, including the impending consolidation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Tongass National Forest plan revision.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Listen to this conversation:

Alix Soliman: What is your vision for this role?

Jerry Ingersoll: This is a period of change, and it is my job, I think, to keep the boat upright and the passengers in. There’s changes in national policy associated with changes in political leadership, and it’s my job as a professional civil servant, not only to implement those changes, but also to take care of the people in the communities involved.

Alix Soliman: Over the summer, USDA Secretary Rollins announced the consolidation and restructuring of the USDA, and the USDA made statements to the press that several Alaska forest offices will close. What is the timeline for that reorganization? Do you know what’s going to happen?

Jerry Ingersoll: I don’t, and that’s probably the largest piece of that answer is that I don’t know. The announcement of the Secretary’s decision and of moving forward with the reorganization has not yet come and I’ll hear about it when the rest of you do. And I’m in an Acting Regional Forester position because that’s part of this interim organization. I’m filling in until this larger reorganization takes place. Many employees left the agency over the last year, more in Alaska, even as a percentage of our organization, than in some other parts of the country. And so we’ve got people stepping up, covering for their departed colleagues.

Alix Soliman: Let’s talk about the Tongass Forest plan revision, which has been underway for a while now. Can you just go ahead and share where we are at now with the revision and what the next steps are?

Jerry Ingersoll: We expect within the next few months, maybe less than that, to publish a notice of intent to begin revision of the Tongass land management plan. As you say, that’s been anticipated for a while. So I would anticipate, after the notice of intent gets published, that we will host public meetings and engagement sessions around the Tongass — around Southeast Alaska — this spring. I’d expect that we will engage federally recognized tribal governments in government-to-government consultation. We’ve already begun that process, but we’ll do so even more as we officially launch the revision, and then we are hoping to complete the process and revise the forest plan over the next couple of years.

Alix Soliman: Some federal comment periods have been expedited. Do you expect a shorter public comment period than has happened in the past for this revision?

Jerry Ingersoll: You know, I think it’s too early to know for sure. We want to — we want to fully engage people in the development of their plan for their forest, and we don’t want to spend all of our lives on planning and not on doing.