Juneau Schools

A number of Juneau parents are worried about the price of EpiPens, according to Auke Bay and Glacier Valley Elementary School Nurse Luann Powers.

Most allergic reactions can be treated with Benadryl, but if there’s a life-threatening reaction, known as anaphylaxis, it usually sets in within two hours, she said.

“It can start with simple hives and then there can be problems with your respiration because it can cause swelling inside of the breathing tubes,” Powers said. “It can cause vomiting — severe vomiting because the gut is responding.”

That’s why it’s important for adults in charge of an allergic child to know how to recognize and respond to shock, she said.

“As soon as you give an EpiPen, you need to call 911 or have somebody calling 911 when the occurrence is happening,” Powers said. “That child will need to be seen at the emergency room following an EpiPen.”

Mylan, the pharmaceutical company that makes the EpiPen, said in a news release last week that it plans to offer a more affordable a generic version of EpiPens.

Mylan said the generic’s list price would be about $300. That’s less than half the EpiPen’s current list price, the release said.

The company expected to launch the generic in several weeks.

“I think it’s great if we can have generics. I think that will reduce the cost,” Powers said. “Although, I did query over at Costco this weekend to see what the difference in cost was and it’s not really that much.”

Juneau’s Costco pharmacy said before insurance, its current EpiPen alternative costs customers about $512. The price for a two pack of name brand EpiPens is about $680.

Those prices change drastically between pharmacies.

Juneau Drug Company only carries an EpiPen alternative for about $497.

At Ron’s Apothecary Shoppe, an alternative sells for $538 and the brand name costs $695.

Powers said the medicine generally expires after one year, so parents have to keep buying more.

She said she has 12 students with allergies who have EpiPens at Auke Bay Elementary. There are a few more who don’t have EpiPens but still have allergies.

“That number for me has gone up tremendously,” Powers said. “I’ve been a school nurse for 13 years and when I first started I only had a few kids, just at this school.”

She said the number of kids with allergies is going up around the district.

She said each school does keep a stock of EpiPens, provided for free by Mylan; but only a nurse, a health assistant or a teacher trained to give the injection can use them.

Juneau’s unexpectedly high student count for the new school year is a big deal for local education officials, but it’s also a good indicator for how the local economy is doing.

Economics, demographics and spreadsheets make a lot of people’s eyes glaze over, but they’re sort of Meilani Schijvens’ jam. She’s the director of Rain Coast Data, which tracks economic indicators and produces economic reports about Southeast Alaska.

She is also a mom with two kids in the school system.

“So I’m doubly curious about how enrollment is going,” she said.

She was eager to dig into the Juneau School District’s preliminary student count.

On her office desk in downtown Juneau, she’s spread out three multicolored charts and the student count spreadsheet in front of her. Her head’s down, bopping from chart to spreadsheet to chart as she works the new information into her picture of Juneau.

“You can see that I’m kind of obsessed with all data about Southeast Alaska, with all numbers,” she said. “Tracking population is a really good way to track the economic health of a community, and tracking student enrollment numbers is another good way to track that.”

The conventional wisdom says that the size of state government and its budget are also good economic indicators in the capital city, since so much of the money moving around is that of state workers.

So with policymakers hacking away at the state budget — about $800 million and more than 300 jobs this year alone:

“Yeah, it’s really interesting because I keep running the numbers, and I keep trying to see that. I keep trying to see this decrease,” she said. “And I think, you know, when we pay attention to the news and when we pay attention to the budget and what’s going on at the state, we’re all expecting to see this fiscal contraction and a reduction in economic indicators. But the reality is that what’s going on at the state level hasn’t hit the communities yet. It hasn’t hit Juneau yet.”

The way state jobs are being shed could also explain why the contraction hasn’t pushed school enrollment numbers down, Schijvens said. Many of the jobs are being shed through attrition by leaving retirees’ positions unfilled. Retirees typically also don’t have kids to pull out of school.

That’s Schijvens’ take on why student enrollment isn’t declining.

But why’s it growing?

It could be millennials’ kids starting to enter the school system, she said. She thinks this could be the end of a school enrollment trough that began in the 1998-1999 school year. And,

“In many ways, the Juneau economy is booming,” she said.

Juneau has a strong private sector, Schijvens said. Juneau’s population and job numbers are the highest they’ve ever been. More people are flying into Juneau than ever before.

“And so you haven’t had that impact yet,” she said. “It’s coming, I think it’s coming, I’m not looking forward to it. But 2016 is still appearing to be a really strong year for the community.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story overstated the number of kids Meilani Schijvens has. She has two kids, not three. 

A bullet struck a Juneau school bus Wednesday with two students aboard, according to a news release from Juneau Police Department.

The bus was on Riverside Drive. The driver and an aide were also aboard, the release said.

The bus driver told police a window of the bus shattered and two men in their 20s ran out of a house in the 9200 block of Sharon Street. One of the men was a 21-year-old from Juneau, who police say fired the round from a Glock 9mm handgun through the front door of the home that struck the bus and lodged in the window frame.

It appears the man did not believe the handgun was loaded at the time, the report said.

A class B misdemeanor charge of shooting a firearm within a quarter mile of a roadway has been forwarded to the City Attorney’s office.

No charges have been filed as of Thursday afternoon. The name of the man has not been released.

Summer vacation is over and as hundreds of students walk back into classrooms, school administrators are eagerly counting how many kids they’ll have under their watch.

This year, the Juneau School District is bucking a trend of declining enrollment. The district has counted more students than expected and higher enrollment could land it enough money to cover part of a near $450,000 cut in state funding.

Michelle Coutu just moved to Juneau from Ashburn, Virginia. She recently registered two of her boys at Harborview Elementary School, and a third in middle school.

“It was pretty easy, I’ve got three boys so I had to do the same paperwork for three boys. I probably should have photocopied it. It probably would’ve made it a little easier,” Coutu said.

Like every other parent who enrolled kids in Juneau schools this year, Coutu is a contributor to what could turn out to be a huge win for the Juneau School District. According to a district budget document, enrollment has mostly fallen over the past decade. This year it could be at its highest since 2013.

David Means, the district’s director of administrative services, said more students mean more money from the state.

“We’re about 230 students more than projected at this point in time. However, our projections really count during the month of October,” Means explained.

In October, school districts send a tally of students to the state to determine exactly how much of the education money appropriated by the legislature each district will get.

Means said his projections don’t include all the new kindergarteners or dropouts, and he doesn’t know how many special education students the district will have. He said the district gets about 13 times the money for some students with special needs.

In October, Means will have more certainty on all those numbers.

“Usually our initial numbers are (a) little bit high at this time of year and they come down a little bit in October,” he said.

Means believes the actual increase will fall somewhere between 160 and 200 additional students. That would give the district a boost in funding it could really use.

In June, Gov. Bill Walker cut the state’s education budget by more than $58 million through a series of vetoes. The vetoes left the Juneau School District with a $200,000 cut to its operating fund and a $250,000 cut to its student transportation funding.

Means believes the additional funding from higher enrollment could cover much of the loss.

“Plus, because we have more students, we’ve had to add almost the equivalent of three additional teachers in various schools across the district,” he said. “So that additional state funding will pay for the salaries, and benefits, and supplies of those new teaching positions as well.”

Means doesn’t know why there’s a gap between this year’s actual and projected enrollment. He said the higher numbers are unusual. In the past three years, the district’s final enrollment was either the same as projections or it was lower than predicted.

He may not be able to explain the increase, but Means said it’s a big help. Parents like Michelle Coutu may have unknowingly saved the school district the trouble of solving a bothersome funding problem.

Editor’s Note: Originally this story stated Juneau School District faced a $200,000 deficit. That was inaccurate. Governor Walker’s vetoes led to a near $200,000 cut to the district’s operating fund and a near $250,000 cut to its Pupil Transportation Fund.

There are four candidates for two school board seats this year.

Juneau School Board members Lisa Worl and Barbara Thurston chose not to seek re-election. The two candidates who receive the most votes Oct. 4 will win three-year terms.

The Juneau School Board oversees the school district’s $80-plus million annual operating budget and more than 600 employees.

This year’s candidates are Kevin Allen, Dan DeBartolo, Jason Hart and Steve Whitney.

Kevin Allen graduated from Thunder Mountain High School in May. He already sat on the school board as a student representative; he was a member of the Alaska Association of Student Governments and Model United Nations. He believes the school board needs the perspective of a recent student and he wants the Juneau School District to continue efforts to bring Alaska Native culture into education. He’s Tlingit and Athabascan.

Dan DeBartolo is the administrative services director for the Alaska Department of Revenue. In a written statement, he touted his experience building efficiencies inside the state agency as an example of how he would support the school district’s mission at a time of budget uncertainty

Jason Hart lost the 2015 race for school board. Hart is also worried about the State of Alaska’s fiscal dilemma. He stresses that he will take a “common sense approach” to budget questions.

Hart is a contract administrator for Hecla Mining Co. He has a son starting fifth grade this year. DeBartolo also has a daughter starting first grade.

Steve Whitney could not be reached for comment on his campaign.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the candidates. Dan DeBartolo is running for school board, not David DeBartolo.

The Juneau School District’s superintendent got high praise on his annual performance review by the Juneau School Board.

Superintendent Mark Miller is under contract to oversee the district and its 4,600 students until the end of June 2018. He joined the district two years ago.

Miller met with the school board for his annual evaluation last month.

Board President Brian Holst complimented Miller, his management team and staff for the district’s “significant progress building an effective education system in Juneau.”

According to a press release, in the past year the district has negotiated multiple labor agreements with its 664 employees, continued updating its core curriculum, and implemented a new system to help students who struggle to meet curriculum standards.

During a school board meeting Tuesday, Miller gave credit for the district’s recent accomplishments to his staff.