Juneau Schools

The Juneau School District has extended its contract with NANA Management Services, the food vendor whose worker mistakenly delivered floor sealant to a food warehouse this summer.

Staff served the floor sealant to students, thinking it was shelf-stable milk. The school board will vote in January whether to pursue a third-party investigation into the district’s communication about the incident.

At a school board meeting Tuesday night, the board approved a six-month contract with NANA starting Jan. 1. Cassee Olin, the district’s administrative services director, told the board it was the only food vendor to submit a proposal.

The contract includes a 12.5% increase in meal rates, which will be absorbed by the district to avoid passing on that cost to students this school year. Olin said the decision to make breakfast “grab and go” when the new contract begins – offering microwaveable or cold meals rather than hot meals – helped avoid an even higher increase.

The Juneau teachers union has declared an impasse in its negotiations over a new contract with the school district. Discussions will continue in the coming months with the help of a federal mediator.

The district’s initial proposal included a pay increase similar to the union’s. But the district also proposed cutting its monthly contributions to health premiums by $434. That’s more than a 25% decrease compared to this year.

Juneau Education Association President Chris Heidemann said that’s a major concern, especially for young teachers who might not have other insurance options, like a spouse’s plan.

“That’s a huge, huge cost to our members, especially the early career teachers,” he said. “That could be devastating to them.”

The union and the district have been negotiating for 10 months. The previous contract expired in June.

Thunder Mountain High School history teacher Jamie Marks said he thinks the district is willing to agree on a reasonable contract. But after the pandemic made teaching even more challenging, he said, the wait for a new contract has been frustrating.

“I’m upset that over the last three years, we have given what we have given and the board has not seen the need to be quicker in its response so that we’re feeling respected,” he said.

Several teachers expressed similar feelings at Tuesday’s school board meeting. Juneau School District Superintendent Bridget Weiss said it’s hard to hear.

“It is stressful on everyone the longer these negotiations go,” she said. “When teachers or any staff begin to feel undervalued, it’s heartbreaking.”

Weiss said the district is facing higher costs with less funding. The base student allocation — the amount of money per student the district receives from the state — hasn’t substantially increased since 2017. 

She said she’s hopeful they’ll reach a resolution soon, and the proposed health contribution cuts were meant to start discussions about where teachers wanted district funds to be allocated.

“Did they want money tied up in those insurance contributions at the same level, or did they want money in people’s pockets?” she said.

Heidemann said he’s optimistic they’ll be able to reach an agreement without a strike.

“We had a really great showing at the school board meeting the last two months, and they’re going to be seeing and hearing a lot more from us over the next couple months,” he said. “I think the leverage that we’ll be able to apply will move the school district in the right direction.”

He said he expects federal mediation to begin in January. If the two sides can’t reach an agreement with the mediator’s help, a federal arbitrator will meet with the two sides separately and decide the best way to move forward.

Correction: A previous version of this story said the district proposed cutting its annual contributions by $434. The district proposed cutting its monthly contributions by $434 per full-time teacher enrolled.

In the gymnasium at Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ Glacier Valley Elementary School on Friday, dozens of kids sang a song in Lingít at the top of their lungs. The song is about living through all four seasons as a tree, growing and losing leaves. 

The performance was part of a language and music program for kindergartners and first graders. Lorrie Heagy, who helps lead the program, said the violin lessons have been going for over a decade now, but the language part is in its second year.

“It’s not only a pedagogical tool,” Heagy said. “It’s a culturally responsive practice to be singing.”

Heagy said this program gives teachers an opportunity to make their curriculum more place-based and more reflective of Lingít culture. 

The older students play real instruments, but the kindergartners play model violins made of cardboard. For them, it’s a graduation of sorts. 

“That is a rite of passage to say you’re ready to hold the real one,” Heagy said. “Because they will drop it.”

Heagy is with Juneau Alaska Music Matters. She teaches the program as part of a team with musicians and language teachers. Her Lingít language teacher, Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield, contributes to the language plans and helps with the lessons over Zoom.

“When a teacher needs help with a phrase or something new or to correct their pronunciation, I’m right there,” Littlefield said. “And they just turn to the screen and say, “Koolyéik, a yax̱ ák.wé?’ is it like that?”

Yuxgitsiy George Holly is a teacher, musician and composer. Heagy asked him to help write the music.

“I didn’t have to think twice about that,” Holly said. “So I became part of that, started to write music to various poems and words of the various elders and (X̱ʼunei) Lance Twitchell. And it’s been a beautiful thing to see these children absorb it in such an easy and respectful and joyful way.”

Holly also conducts part of the performance. On command, the kindergartners raised their paper violins to their chins and bowed the imaginary strings with paper towel tubes. At the end of each song, the kids beamed at the applause. 

Next semester, these paper violinists will be fit for real violins and start learning to play. They already have a head start on the language.

Juneau School District Superintendent Bridget Weiss has announced that she plans to resign at the end of the school year. 

After weathering a pandemic and years of stagnant state education funding, Weiss says it felt like the right time to move on after 39 years in education. The number of school administrators resigning across the U.S. has grown considerably since the pandemic began. 

“There’s a reason why there is a lot of leadership turnover in the country,” Weiss said. “They’re just — the last years have been intense. The work is really real, to work through a pandemic.”

Weiss grew up in Juneau and graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School. She left to go to college and began her teaching career in Washington state. 

She returned to Juneau nine years ago to take a position as director of student services after a stint as the principal of North Pole High School. The Juneau school board voted unanimously to make her the superintendent in 2019. 

She was named 2022 Alaska Superintendent of the Year last fall and received recognition for her dedication to education and support for families and youth. 

Weiss announced her decision in an email to district staff on Monday. 

“I just really wanted to allow the district plenty of time to work through their processes, and try to do that as well as I could, you know, for the better of the district,” Weiss said. 

She will submit her letter of resignation to the Board of Education at its Nov. 8 meeting. After that, the board will decide how to proceed with the process of searching for her replacement. 

Weiss said she’s not certain what the future holds, but she plans to remain in Juneau.

Two representatives from the Religious Society of Friends in Alaska — or Quakers — read a formal apology on Friday for a school and orphanage the church opened in the late 1800s. 

The apology was part of an Orange Shirt Day gathering at Sayéik Gastineau Community School in Douglas, which was built on the grounds of the former Douglas Island Friends Mission.

In 2012, graves were found on the school grounds during renovations. 

The school was renamed five years later. Sayéik loosely translates to “spirit helper.” The Douglas Indian Association said at the time that the word reflects the original Lingít name of the land and a need to acknowledge historical trauma Indigenous people experienced there.

Cathy Walling and Jan Bronson are from the Alaska Friends Conference. They read aloud from the apology. 

“To the Áak’w Kwáan people, we honor you. We honor your lands. We hear you. We believe you and we are here expressing our deep wishes for healing, for transformation, for truth, and we commit to not stop at truth. But to move them to the reparations. We want land back for you. We want you back. We want your languages back.”

According to the letter, the Religious Society of Friends ran around 30 schools for Native youth in the U.S., with the intention of forcing Indigenous children to assimilate into white society. 

“The methods used in some of the Friends schools were harsh and often cruel. Alaska Native people have described to members of Alaska Friends Conference and other listeners what it was like for them or their relatives to go to a school where children were tortured and/or physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually or otherwise harmed.”

Bronson and Walling brought a written history of Quaker missionaries in Alaska as a gesture of the “truth” part of “truth and reconciliation.” The book contains a list of all members of the church in Alaska from part of the time the school operated, which they said may help family members of survivors and victims — or archivists researching the school — to find names of students.

Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist, with the Alaska Native Sisterhood, organized the gathering and worked with Bronson and Walling to include the apology in the event. She said the apology will “encourage other denominations to maybe help other denominations come forward with their own recognition of the past and the lasting effects of that.”

Daxkilatch Kolene and Xeetli.eesh Lyle James prepared a cleansing ceremony with cedar branches dipped in ocean water. 

“The symbolism of our cedar is peace and then but ocean water, of course, we go to to heal ourselves,” Daxkilatch Kolene said.

The boughs were handed out to those in attendance, who brushed them on the walls and doors of the school.

In the fall of 2021, Juneau schools still had a district-wide mask mandate in place when seven candidates for school board participated in a forum ahead of the local election.

Watching at home, Will Muldoon realized that at least two candidates were running just to overturn the mask mandate. He knew he had to do something.

He said 25 people called him — some he didn’t even know — encouraging him to run.

“So that kind of felt like critical mass for me,” he said.

He launched a write-in campaign less than two weeks before the election. And he won. It was the first time someone in Juneau had won any election as a write-in in almost 30 years.

Muldoon works as a data analyst for the state of Alaska. He doesn’t have kids. But he is passionate about civic engagement. He serves on six boards and commissions for the city and the state. The school board takes the most time and energy, though.

“The one thing I really didn’t fully consider was just how much of your life it takes over,” he said.

There are the meetings, of course, but there’s also homework between the meetings. And hours and hours of reading emails each week from constituents. People don’t usually write in to tell board members they are doing a good job. The tone is often less than civil.

In his first year, the board has taken public feedback on COVID-19 policies, bathroom use for trans students and reaction to the school district’s food vendor serving floor sealant to students instead of milk.

“It’s tough, because I think with schools in particular, I feel personally that it’s not my job to tell people how to raise their kids, or even really have an opinion on that item,” he said.

But it is his job to make policies informed by the public on the schools’ role in their kids’ lives.

Muldoon says people often ask him if he enjoys serving on the school board.

“‘Enjoy’ is never the word I’m going to use in my top five adjectives,” he said. “I think the work is valid. I think it’s important. It’s also impactful to me on an individual level — like, it’s tough.”

But he’s still enthusiastic about recommending people run for local office.

There are no contested seats on the school board this year. But Muldoon says it’s not too late to “pull a Will Muldoon” and enter the race as a write-in candidate.

“It’s tough to win a write-in campaign,” he said. “I’m aware of that, obviously, and the chances aren’t always the best.”

He ran for school board twice before last year — the first time, when he was only 18 years old.

“I tend to just be a born loser,” he said. “But I don’t mind losing. It’s okay to lose. It’s okay to make mistakes, because that is what really helps us get better.”

He recognizes that the last few years have been hard on everyone. The pandemic has left us burned out on work and on life, which includes our volunteer work and our civic engagement. But he also recognizes that we can’t make life easier for each other if people don’t step up.

“Do I want to be on six boards next year? Probably not,” he said. “Do I want a couple of more folks in our community to be on at least one or two? Yeah, I think so.”

Juneau’s election is by mail again this year and ballots have already hit most people’s mailboxes. But voters have until 8:00 p.m. on Oct. 4 to cast their votes.

There are also dozens of vacancies on Juneau’s boards and commissions.

Muldoon’s advice is always going to be to go for it.

“I wish that people would run and not be afraid to lose with that in mind,” he said. “And if your end goal is to be engaging, and advocating for the things that you believe in, losing is a real good door opener for that.”

This story is part of KTOO’s participation in the America Amplified initiative to use community engagement to inform and strengthen our journalism. America Amplified is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.