Juneau Schools

The Juneau Police Department said in a Facebook post Monday night, the student who made a possible shooting threat against Thunder Mountain High School is no longer a danger.

Lt. David Campbell with the police said they are trying to quash rumors that the 17-year-old boy was missing Monday night.

“What we were hearing was a lot of conjecture on social media saying that the student that had made the threat was unaccounted for and people were still worried,” Campbell said. “As of last night, we knew that conjecture was not accurate.”

Campbell said the police knows the boy’s location and that he cannot hurt anyone.

He said he can’t reveal the boy’s location or explain why he isn’t a threat because of the sensitive nature of the case.

“Given the juvenile, his age and the nature of the situation, unfortunately, we’re prohibited from telling exactly what did take place last night,” Campbell said. “But, I can safely say the necessary steps were taken to assure the safety of the student and the community.”

Juneau police said officers will maintain a presence in local schools “in the coming days.”

Campbell said it’s now as safe as any other day for parents to take their kids to school.

Luann Powers is the school nurse at Auke Bay Elementary School. She’s in a class checking on a student whose blood sugar is too low – which can be dangerous, unlike head lice.

“Well, I guess when you think about bugs in your head, it’ll creep anybody out,” Powers said. “People are embarrassed when they have head lice, and it can take away — because of the time it takes for treatment — it can take away from a student’s time in the school.”

Head lice are an ongoing problem for Juneau schools and Powers said this is a common time of year to find them. She said lice are mostly a social problem.

“Head lice are a little creature that is spread through contact … close contact of, it could be hats, combs, any kind of headgear, clothing, bedding,” Powers said.

The creepy crawlers don’t mean an automatic ticket home. Only live lice can keep a kid out of school and Powers said when they’re found, usually the host student can stay through the end of the day.

“Because if they’ve had them in the morning, they’ve probably had them for a few weeks anyway once they’re noticeable,” Powers said.

Parents are asked to get rid of the lice when they get home and then the student will be checked when they return the next day. If there are still live lice, the kid goes back home until they’re gone.

“They are a nuisance,” Powers said. “They’re not a health hazard. They can create discomfort because they need to feed off a human blood supply to survive. They can create a lot of itching, but not always.”

Scratching can lead to infection if the kid’s fingernails are dirty. She said it’s especially important to educate parents and explained how to get rid of lice using special hair products.

“Over the counter products that families use, such as Nix or RID and LiceMD is another product in the community,” Powers said. “It’s a cream rinse or a type of shampoo that they are supposed to leave in the hair for a certain period of time and then rinse it out, and then it’s a matter of combing out the nits.

Nits are lice eggs. Powers said nits aren’t enough to force kids out of school, but they aren’t welcome either. Powers said some products claim to remove them, but she still advises parents to literally nitpick their kids using special combs to take them out. This can take as long as two hours.

Powers said people who catch head lice are often considered dirty, but that’s not accurate. She said lice can be caught by anyone and kids tend to catch them outside of school.

“As a matter of fact, I used to work for a pediatrician a few years ago and he said, ‘Gosh, if you haven’t had head lice, you haven’t had friends,’” Powers said.

Powers said when she finds lice, she tries to be discreet and downplays the situation for the kids’ self-esteem. But she said in her experience, it’s usually the adults who overreact.

Jessica Collins’ social studies classroom in Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School is full of energetic seventh- and eighth-graders. Chairs and desks are pushed to the sides of the room.

The students are separated into groups of four and they’re frozen in awkward poses.

One group is sitting with their legs crossed and all four kids are facing each other. Their heads are bowed, their arms are stretched up into the middle of the circle and they’ve stacked their hands on top of each other.

One boy’s right arm is above the others and it’s pointing straight up into the air.

The kids have made a tableau – a picture made with nothing but their bodies. They’ve become a pumpkin.

Jessica Collins asked the kids to make something related to Halloween.

“I really want to see that they get — showing me what they know in a different way because they’re used to paper and pencil,” Collins said. “Some kids do really well with that and some need a different method of learning and communicating what they know.”

What Collins is doing is part of an initiative called Artful Teaching that Juneau School District officials said was adopted about a year ago.

The district, in partnership with University of Alaska Southeast and Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, has been inviting artists into classrooms to show teachers how to use art to teach their classes.

The point is to help kids learn and express themselves in ways they can’t through standard book learning.

Amy Rautiainen, the artful teaching coordinator for the district said it’s, “kind of like coupling arts, whether it’s drama, or visual arts, or music with curricular content – so math, or reading, or language arts.”

Rautiainen said the district-wide project is funded through a grant provided by the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation.

She doesn’t have documentation, like test scores, to prove it’s making a difference, but she said it has been researched.

“An organization that we work with a lot is the Kennedy Center, out of Washington D.C.,” Rautiainen said. “They have funded a lot of research based around arts integration as an effective instructional method.”

Back in Collins’ classroom things are escalating. Now they’ve got the steps down and she’s asking the kids to make something related to their subject material – ancient Egypt.

“You’re going to show me: Why might it be difficult to travel upstream on the Nile River,” she asked.

First, the kids get to think about the question. Next, they share ideas on how to answer with their group. Then they decide what they’ll do. Once they know what they’re making, they have 30 seconds to create their tableau.

One student said two members of his group represent, “boat like … rowers … (they have) like lack of energy because the river is really long.”

Another group of students made cataracts – waterfalls or rapids that they say will smash a boat up against rocks.

That is how a tableau works.

Collins has been teaching her kids about Egypt and then asking them to demonstrate what they learn. She said the strategy helps kids use skills they don’t usually get to tap into.

“Through the experience of working together and moving their bodies … a lot of students learn better that way than traditional reading from a book, or listening to a lecture and taking notes,” she explained.

“They can make connections between the information that they read and the movements that they make.”

Collins said this method also helps kids learn from each other and acting these concepts out might help them hold onto the information they learn.

But at the same time, she admitted some kids learn better from standard book work.

“This is kind of an equalizing sort of thing where if you’re a really strong reader and writer, you may not be comfortable with acting and cooperative group work – so it pushes kids equally,” she said.

As much as Collins and the kids seem to enjoy this artful way of teaching, she doesn’t believe it can defeat the teenagers’ short attention spans.

Soon she said they’d drop the tableaus for a while and start learning about Egyptian hieroglyphics, cartouches and of course, the pyramids.

David Means, the Juneau School District’s director of administrative services, delivered good news on top of more good news to the Juneau School Board during a weekend retreat.

He told the board that additional state funding triggered by a surprising growth in the district’s student population, along with some financial juggling, might give the district enough money to close its spending gap for student transportation.

The district was in a bind after Gov. Walker vetoed hundreds of thousands of dollars from its budget this summer. Some of that money was restored, but the district still had to figure out how to replace about $248,000 it intended to spend on its busing contract.

“We’re looking at carry-over money from last year, and we did reduce one school bus route,” David Means said. “So the bottom line is basically the reductions and that additional carry-over money, and additional revenue will offset Gov. Walker’s veto.”

Means said the kids who used the route the district scaled back are being picked up by other buses.

He added that his math is based on budget projections. He won’t know the exact balance until the school year is almost over.

Means first learned the district’s enrollment was higher than expected when the school year started in August.

Back then, he estimated there were about 230 more students than expected but he said that number could change.

He said he’d get more headcounts in October and those numbers would help determine how much additional money the state would give the district.

The numbers did change. Means said in the past couple of months, enrollment has fallen a little but there are still about 180 more students than originally expected.

“That will bring in, probably $1.4 million,” he said. “In addition to that, we’re finding the number of special education students who are receiving intensive levels of service has gone up from where we thought we would be. It’s gone up by 16 students.”

Means said the state gives school districts about 13 times more money for each intensive needs student than for other kids.

“So altogether on the state monies, we’re going to have about $2.6 million more than what we have budgeted for,” he said

Those additional students also mean some additional costs. Means said the district is paying for about three additional teaching positions and more paraeducators have to be hired to handle the increase in intensive needs students.

Means told board members he would send the district’s latest enrollment numbers to the state within the next week.

The newly elected members of the Juneau School Board will be busy learning how the board operates shortly after election results are certified Tuesday.

Dan DeBartolo and Steve Whitney were the winners in the race for two school board seats that will be vacated by board members Lisa Worl and Barbara Thurston.

School board President Brian Holst said once they’re sworn in, Whitney and DeBartolo will continue an orientation they started as candidates.

“A further, deeper orientation to try to catch them up with all the different aspects of policy, the way we operate as a board, and responsibilities, the budget, et cetera,” Holst said.

Holst said right now, the board is updating the Juneau School District’s policies. He said in their first board meeting on Oct. 19, the new members will have an opportunity to voice their opinions on policy.

“An example of that we’re going to be dealing with at our next meeting is around bullying,” Holst said.

Holst said on this particular issue the board will be considering recommendations developed by both the district’s administration and by students.

“Then a few meetings from now, the entire set of policies are going to be up for a vote,” Holst said. “(That’s) really important because after that our job really becomes making sure the administration implements the policy.”

Other than policy, perhaps the most important item Holst said the board will consider in the near future is the district’s budget.

He said after the new members are sworn in, the board will hold an election for officers and the new members will be asked which committees they’d like to join.

Holst added that those committees include the: Facilities Committee, Program Evaluation Committee and special committees that work closely with other organizations.

“(With) the Alaska School Board Association, with our Indian Studies Program, with our Early Literacy Council, with (the) Native Education Advisory Council, the Teen Health Center …” Holst said.

The new school board members are scheduled to be sworn in during the Oct. 19 meeting.

Unofficial election results have Steve Whitney and Dan DeBartolo winning the two open seats on the Juneau School Board.

Four candidates competed in the race. The two candidates with the most votes win.

DeBartolo finished first with 2,886 votes and Whitney came in second place with 2,577 votes Tuesday night. Jason Hart had the next highest number of votes, followed by Kevin Allen.

Both of the winning candidates were traveling on business as the votes were counted.

DeBartolo said he saw the results right before his flight landed in Juneau. He said he is grateful to all the candidates and he is looking forward to the new position.

“For my part, I’m going to be reaching out to the school board to see how soon they need us to plug in so I can hop in with both feet and start making a difference,” Debartolo said.

Whitney was at a hotel in Anchorage when he saw the results. He said the race was grilling but he enjoyed the process.

“I’m very grateful for all the forums we have. I think it’s a great way to vet candidates in Juneau,” Whitney said. “It really helps the public process. Having money is less important than actually going and facing all the different groups.

The results are unofficial. Absentee and questioned ballots still need to be counted. The results will be reviewed for certification next Tuesday.