Juneau Schools

The Juneau Assembly approved funding to get started on a new playground at the Dzantik’i Heeni campus in Lemon Creek. But the decision brought up budget concerns as voters consider reducing taxes in the upcoming municipal election. 

The $735,000 project is the next step in what’s turned into a yearslong process to build a new playground for the campus that houses Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School, Montessori Borealis and Juneau Community Charter School. 

The building used to be a middle school before the district consolidated middle and high schools, so no playground was necessary until elementary-aged students moved in. The money will go toward installing safety surfacing and fencing. But the school district will be on the hook to fundraise for playground equipment.

The final decision hit a brief bump in the road when one Assembly member asked the body to consider potential reductions to the city’s tax revenue. There are three ballot propositions in this year’s election that could change how much money the city brings in annually. Assembly member Neil Steininger moved to table the decision until October. Steininger said he wants to wait until after the election to see what the city’s budget looks like.

“I think it’d be prudent when we’re talking about a dollar value this large to wait until we have a better understanding of the revenue available to the city before we make this commitment,” he said.

Juneau School District Superintendent Frank Hauser said a delay in the decision could make it harder for the district to get that equipment. He said the district needs to order it in December or January to get things installed in time for next school year.

“It just makes it really tight to do the fundraising, not sure if we’re going to be able to move forward with this until the October 27 [meeting] and then trying to put all that together and get pieces in place for installation hopefully for the next school year,” Hauser said.

The district received a donation from the Juneau Rotary Club to put some musical play equipment and Gaga ball pits at the school in the meantime.

Other Assembly members agreed with Steininger’s point but said they should still move forward with the site preparations. Member Wade Bryson said the neighborhood as a whole has access to far fewer playgrounds than other parts of the city.

“So we’re not doing this just to make sure that a school has a playground,” Bryson said. “We’re doing this for social equality to one of the most socioeconomic depressed parts of our community.”

Steininger ultimately backtracked after the Assembly members opposed him. He said he wanted to make a point.

“This is the kind of thing that is at stake at the ballot box here in October, and these are the types of considerations and questions we have to ask,” Steininger said. “And the comments before me about equity in Lemon Creek and the count of playgrounds is very apt.”

The Assembly unanimously approved the funding. In a Finance Committee presentation Wednesday, Juneau School District Director of Operations Kristy Germain said the district plans to begin work on the playground next summer.

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Joel Bos stands outside Sayéik: Gastineau Community School, rinsing tray after tray of freshly harvested potatoes with a hose. He’s a naturalist with Discovery Southeast, a nonprofit that connects Juneau residents to the outdoors. They partnered with the school to build and maintain a garden.

Bos has been working with students on the project. He said they participate in every part of the process, from planting seeds to eating the crops.

“Now this is not just something that one person is doing here as, like, kind of on the side, this is an entire school event, and that, to me, is really special,” Bos said.

There’s still more to harvest, including several beds of carrots. Bos said those are his favorite vegetables to grow in Juneau. 

“They’re super sweet if you grow them up north,” he said. “The kids just absolutely go bananas for them. I think we all do. Everybody who’s had a carrot that was picked and washed and eaten in the same day understands the difference in sweetness and flavor.”

Sayéik: Gastineau Community School librarian Monika Haygood walks through the school garden, pointing out the different crops separated by type.

“This side, the left side here, we have, of course, onions, kale,” she said. “And so they’re just dedicated to one crop, because you can just get so much more out of it.”

The garden is a project for the Ocean Guardian School program run by the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. Schools commit to protect local watersheds and the ocean through various conservation projects and schoolwide practices. Schools can also get start-up funds for projects like a school garden.

Sayéik has been an Ocean Guardian School for the past seven years. Haygood is also the lead teacher for the program. She says the school garden in particular teaches students more beyond math and reading in the classroom.

“It’s science. It gets them outside. It gets them working together, gets them thinking and talking, and all those pieces are just such an important part of  learning as a whole picture,” she said.

Building and maintaining the garden is a school and community-wide effort. Teachers incorporate the garden into the curriculum: students might try their hand at scientific illustrations or calculate the volume of a garden bed to find out how much soil it needs. Local businesses also donated materials for the garden.

The garden even runs when school is out. Haygood said teachers and some families water the plants through the summer. Bos also brought students from a summer camp to maintain the garden.

Haygood said she’s proud of the garden the school has created.

“I love to just see kids out here and learning and digging and, yeah, just making those connections,” she said. “I think that is the most powerful, just seeing the kids out here, and how inspiring that is for me. But it’s also so inspiring for them.”

Most of the vegetables will go toward a schoolwide dinner next week. The garden activities will continue to run after the big harvest. Students will start growing different plants indoors from seed under grow lights through the winter. The garden will also continue to grow. Next to it is a field peppered with dirt and weeds. Haygood said they’ll fill the area with native plants.

“We’ll develop this trail over here with some signage so that we have some plants that students can learn about, that are local, that grow here,” she said.

As for the remaining uneaten veggies, Haygood said they won’t go to waste. Students and teachers will take the leftovers home to their families.

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Learning outdoors is nothing new for students in Juneau’s Tlingit, Culture, Language and Literacy program. That’s what they did on their first field trip of the year, where they learned about Lingít language and values through foraging and processing local foods. 

Students, teachers and families walk through squishy, mossy muskeg near the Eagle River United Methodist Camp north of Juneau. First grader Owen Roehl crouches over small, short bushes peppered throughout the area, putting green and yellow leaves into an empty yogurt container looped around his neck.

“We’re picking s’ikshaldéen, also known as Hudson Bay tea,” he said.

Owen said picking tea has been his favorite part of the day so far.

Seventh grader Cassius Allen is one of the older students picking tea. Cassius said he thinks the tea will taste good once they process it. 

“Probably gonna have to mix it up with some other flavors so it tastes not plain and normal,” he said.

Cassius got help from eighth grader Leighton Heppner to identify the tea leaves. Leighton said he learned from friends and teachers.

“They said, ‘always make sure it’s yellow at the bottom, like fully yellow or partially yellow, and it will still work,’” he said.

Overall, Cassius appeared to have some fun while picking tea, getting part of a leaf up Leighton’s nose when holding it out for him to smell.

This is part of a longstanding field trip for students at Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy, a Lingít language immersion school. It’s not just for the students. They’re joined by families and volunteers, as well as students from Haa Yoo X̱’atángi Kúdi, a Lingít language preschool. That’s a language immersion preschool where children primarily speak in Lingít.

Things have changed slightly after the program expanded to middle school. While it’s normally a day trip, it’s turned into an overnight field trip for the older students.

Naakil.aan Hans Chester is a biliteracy specialist at the school. He said getting students out of the classroom opens the door for a lot of learning. 

“In this context, it’s real living, and they hear us using the language with each other and communicating, or just even expressions, to say when you’re doing something, and it’s in context and it makes sense,” he said.

In addition to tea, students also learned to fillet salmon and make jam. Chester said the jam was going to be given to guests at a Ku.éex’ – or potlatch – the next day.

“When we do our Ku.éex’, it’s to honor our lost clan members,” Chester said. “And so, you know, it’s really important for us to teach these skills to our kids, so when they grow up and they lose their mom or their sister or their cousin or whoever that’s in their family, they’ll have these skillsets to rely on so that they can do what we do.”

Chester said this field trip makes him feel like the school is in a stronger place than it was before.

“Hearing them use the language more, some of them stepping up and becoming leaders out here, is really awesome to see”

In the camp kitchen, Lingít language teacher Nae Tumulak portions out bowls of fish soup. The middle schoolers filleted coho salmon for it the night before. Tumulak said she likes getting to know the students more, both new and old.

“Just seeing them in their element, being able to witness a lot of their growths and everything like that, it’s been a lot of fun,” Tumulak said. “They’re also incredibly hilarious. So it’s been entertaining.”

Once they’re back at school, Chester said they will process the tea and give it away to community members.

The Juneau School District Board of Education greenlit bringing back the district’s universal free breakfast program this week.

The school board unanimously approved reinstating the program a little over a month after the Alaska Legislature restored state education funding previously vetoed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The district received more than $1.5 million in additional funding. It’s putting  $230,000 of that toward universal free breakfast this school year.

The district is hoping to keep program costs down by encouraging families to apply for free and reduced lunch. That’s a federal program that reimburses schools for providing free meals to qualifying students. Juneau School District Chief Financial Officer Nicole Herbert said there’s still an incentive to apply, even if universal free breakfast is restored.

“We’re not providing universal free lunch, so that’s a direct incentive to the families to fill it out so their students can still have a free or reduced lunch,” she said.

Herbert said getting more students in the program helps the district get more federal funding, such as Title I grants and internet reimbursements. She says students who qualify can also get discounts and fee waivers for tests like the SAT.

Other district staff and parents brought up concerns about challenges in accessing the application and school meals in general.

Heather Miller is the meal coordinator at Mendenhall River Community School.  She said a delay in working with families on applications could be due to turnover in office staff at the schools.

She says fewer students this year ate school breakfast without the free program.

“I have kids that are obviously dipping into piggy banks, their own money,” she said. “I have kids who are like, ‘I’m hungry, Miss Heather, but I know I can’t — my parents can’t afford the breakfast. I have to choose whether or not I eat lunch or breakfast.’”

Miller hopes to see changes to make it easier for families to apply for free and reduced school meals.

The district plans to reinstate the program Monday.

The union that represents support staff for the Juneau School District is suing the district over its afterschool child care program. 

Juneau Education Support Staff, or JESS, filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the district didn’t follow the necessary steps in the union contract when it shut down the program last month. The union represents paraeducators, custodians and employees for the Relationships and Leadership Learning for Youth program, known as RALLY.

Auke Lake Preschool was the only private provider that stepped in to fill the gap. The Juneau-based provider is leasing space at three elementary schools rent-free to run an afterschool child care program called Auke Lake RALLY. That’s been run by Auke Lake Preschool since Sept. 2.

The district’s agreement with the union requires the district to go through an investigation to see if it would be cheaper to contract out work that’s normally done by JESS employees. That’s followed by a report to the union. Superintendent Frank Hauser said in an email the district followed the terms of the contract and reassigned former RALLY staff to other district positions

Jeff Kasper is a business manager for the Alaska Public Employees Association, the parent union for JESS. He said the district didn’t view the lease as contracted work.

“We’ve tried to work with them on this and ask them, ‘Where’s the analysis?’” Kasper said. “And then they’re [sic] just fold their arms and say ‘This isn’t contracting out.’ So we feel this is an intentional and blatant violation of the contract.”

The union asked the court to void the district’s lease with Auke Lake Preschool and to require the district to continue running RALLY until it completes the formal investigation process. JESS is also pursuing damages from lost wages and work. That would be determined in a trial, and the union claims that could cost more than $100,000.

The union also requested a temporary restraining order. It asks the court to prevent the district from passing the RALLY program to Auke Lake Preschool. Instead, the union is requesting RALLY employees remain at their negotiated positions until the lawsuit is resolved. But Auke Lake already started running the program early this month. Superintendent Hauser said RALLY employees have been reassigned to different positions in the district.

Kasper said he could not speak to what would happen to the afterschool program if the request is approved. The district issued an update on its website Wednesday that says Auke Lake Preschool will update families directly if there are any changes.

Juneau School District Chief of Staff Kristin Bartlett said in an email the district is working with its legal counsel to determine next steps.

“If the restraining order is granted, there will not be afterschool child care,” she said on Wednesday afternoon. 

The attorney representing the district declined to comment on the case Wednesday.

The Juneau School District Board of Education is fast tracking a move to restore universal free breakfast for K-12 students. 

This comes after lawmakers overrode an education funding veto and restored more than $1.5 million to the district. The Alaska State Legislature overrode the governor’s veto of more than $50 million in state education funding earlier this month.

The board typically considers action items over two meetings before approval. Board members officially took up the breakfast program during a special meeting Wednesday so that they can approve the program at the next regular meeting on Sept. 9.

The board didn’t include universal free breakfast in this school year’s budget. It added staff positions and paid off deficits instead of restoring the program during its last budget revision in July as well. The district estimates the program will cost $230,000 this school year.

Member Emil Mackey supports the program, but he said the district needs to find a way to get more families to apply for free and reduced lunch so the district can be reimbursed for some of the costs.

“I realize some of that might philosophically fall against the idea of universal free breakfast, but what I don’t want to happen is for us to fall into an unsustainability trap in the future and have to make this hard choice again,” he said.

Free and reduced lunch is part of the National School Lunch Program. It reimburses school districts to cover the cost of school meals for students who qualify.

Member Steve Whitney said when the district began the program, making breakfast free for everyone helped to encourage more students who already qualified for free and reduced meals to participate without judgement.

“To try to get around these – the amount of staff and effort and try to make it secret so kids weren’t embarrassed – it turned out to be cheaper just to make it universal, free breakfast,” he said.

The board may also discuss how to spend the district’s remaining extra funds under looming funding uncertainties from a proposed state regulation and contract negotiations with two of the district’s unions at its next meeting.

In the meantime, students will continue to pay full price for breakfast unless they qualify for free and reduced meals.