Juneau Schools

As the Juneau School District looks to figure out its budget next year, the biggest obstacle is not knowing how much money it’ll get from the state and city. So it’s come up with four scenarios, ranging from the best case to the worst.

The Juneau School District anticipates a deficit ranging from $1.3 million to $3.3 million. One of the variables is how much the state will give, which is determined during the legislative session. It could affect how much the city can contribute.

The district’s budget is due to the Juneau Assembly by the end of March, about three weeks before the legislature is scheduled to adjourn. .

“So we’re going to have to kind of guess what the legislature will actually do,” says David Means, the district’s director of administrative services. “But we have another two months almost to watch the legislature and usually sometime in there we’ll have some kind of sense of what their thinking is.”

In the past four years, district spending has been almost flat – one time retirement funding aside – while costs continue to rise. This has forced the district to scale back. Just last year, the district eliminated about 19 jobs.

“Special education took a huge cut last year and then classroom teachers also took a cut,” Means says.

In the best case budget scenario for next year, the district would get $65 million from the state and city. Superintendent Mark Miller says the district likely wouldn’t have to cut teachers. In other budget scenarios, it would.

“You really can’t solve multimillion dollar budget crisis by cutting $5,000 here or $4,000 here, you really have to look at the big ticket items when you have to make reductions that right now we’re being asked to make,” Miller says.

In the other scenarios, classes would get bigger in grades three to 12 and high school activities would take a hit, calling for student participation fees. District level expenses, like professional development for teachers and recruitment, would be reduced. Kindergarten to second grade classes would only grow in the worst case budget scenario.

Miller says it’s important to take a balanced approach when making cuts.

“Can I say we’re keeping our activity budget exactly the same, while at the same time putting more kids into a kindergarten class? And I don’t think realistically, you can do just one or the other,” Miller says. “I think realistically you have to try to balance your reductions between elementary, middle, high school and district to do what’s right.”

The district has already explored options suggested by the public, like closing an elementary or high school; Means says neither would save money.

The community gets to weigh in on the school budget during two public forums – one on Feb. 3 and another Feb. 9.

More than a hundred students from Pakistan are studying in the U.S. through a federal study abroad program. Hassam Bazil, 16, is one of them. He lives in Juneau.

When Taliban gunmen killed at least 145 people in a school shooting in his home country, Hassam felt faraway and helpless. But through the help and support of his friends and host family, Hassam found a way to feel better.

Hassam Bazil woke up last Tuesday morning to a text from his best friend from Pakistan who told him the news.

“His name is Faran. He’s exchange student in Chicago right now, but he’s from Peshawar, same state where this thing happened. I called him and he was crying on phone. Then he told me that he actually knew a lot of people and they died in that attack,” Hassam says.

He was in his host home in the Mendenhall Valley, but he instantly felt connected more than 6,000 miles away.

“Then I talked to my mom and she was crying so hard. It was like the first time she was crying on the phone after, like, four or five months I came to America. She was crying. She was like, ‘A lot of parents just lost their kids.’ It was pretty hard for all of us,'” Hassam says.

Back at his hometown in Talagang, Hassam didn’t live in fear of the Taliban.

“We are the victims of terrorism. A lot of attacks happen in Pakistan, like suicide bombings and stuff, but they never killed innocent kids who just went to school and never came back,” Hassam says.

At home, Hassam attends a private military school, just like the one where the shooting occurred. The Taliban’s attack of the school was an assault on Pakistan’s military, but Hassam says many students come from civilian families.

Hassam felt helpless being so far away from his family and country. So he and other Pakistani exchange students in the U.S. decided the best thing they could do is make people aware of what happened.

“I just took some ribbons and stuff and I went to my school. Then I shared those black ribbons and everyone wore them and it was like, this showed that we all know what’s going on in Pakistan,” Hassam says.

People around the world wore black bands of ribbon around their wrists and arms to show support for those affected by the school shooting in Pakistan.

“That’s the thing which made me feel good, that I could do something and I did,” he says.

Hassam’s host father Dave Ringle says having Hassam around has made the faraway tragedy more personal.

“When I talk to Hassam and realized he was connected to people who were directly affected by the massacre, that just puts a different spin on it,” he says.

Since being in Juneau, Hassam has given several presentations on Pakistan. He wants his peers and host family to know what he eats at home – often it’s spicy curry with rice and flatbread. He’s worn a traditional shalwar kameez, which is a long shirt and loose pants, to school a few times.

Host mother Valerie Ringle says Hassam has taught her there’s so much more to Pakistan than the conflict.

“We think of Pakistan as this war-torn country that has all this violence because that’s what we hear in the news. We don’t hear about the good things. Having met Hassam, I’ve learned about some really amazing inventors and intellectual feats that have been accomplished by Pakistani natives,” Ringle says.

Hassam says he’s lucky to be in the U.S. to represent Pakistan.

“I feel really good that I’m here so I can give a better image of Pakistan, my people. I can tell my peers in America that – what do we want? We want peace,” he says.

Hassam says a lot of people he’s met in Juneau don’t even know where Pakistan is. Now, more people do.

Juneau Schools Superintendent Mark Miller says the district will remove four controversial readers from the elementary school language arts curriculum. He announced his decision at a press conference Thursday at the Zach Gordon Youth Center.

Back in August, community members raised concerns about texts depicting Alaska Native and Native American tragedies. The readers were called distorted, inaccurate and insensitive. A district committee reviewed the curriculum materials and voted 7-2 to remove them from classrooms.

Superintendent Mark Miller didn’t announce his decision alone – he brought along three Native elders who had all attended Native boarding schools.

Charlotte McConnell was 7 when her mother died and her father sent her and her siblings to boarding school.

She was told by her aunt, “‘You can’t speak no Tlingit, you got to speak English, you’re going to school.’ And so that’s where I got understanding English only.”

McConnell attended schools in Juneau, Seward, Wrangell and Sitka.

The loss of cultural identity at Native boarding schools is one of the experiences depicted in the McGraw-Hill Reading Wonders curriculum. Others were the Trail of Tears and the excavation of Native burial grounds.

Miller says the readers don’t meet the needs of Juneau students, but he thinks it’s positive the curriculum includes instructional time for understanding Native experiences.

“I am calling on the community to come together with the school district to document and tell your truth. Come into our classrooms. Help us teach our children about our local history,” Miller says.

Most copies of the readers will be returned to the publisher, he says, and replaced with materials developed by the district in collaboration with Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and Sealaska Heritage Institute. A few copies will be kept at the district office for students who wish to read them.

He says understanding culture and race is an important part of any student’s education.

“Whether in Ferguson, Mo., Juneau, Alaska, or anywhere in between, difficult conversations and debates need to occur. We are all products of both our own personal experiences as well as those of our ancestors. Academic institutes, by their very nature, are an important forum in which to have these conversations and debates,” Miller says.

Paul Berg is a curriculum developer and cultural specialist at Goldbelt Heritage Foundation. His report on the readers was the formal complaint that led to their removal. He said the texts misrepresented the historical reality and marginalized the experiences of the victims. Berg is pleased with Miller’s decision.

“It’s an opportunity to confront some uncomfortable historical facts and historical realities and it’s an opportunity to bring about healing, healing within the Native community but also within the non-Native community,” Berg says.

Freda Westman is Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. For her, the decision was the only one Miller could’ve made.

“This was not a Native issue; it was an issue for all children. All Alaskans want their children to be educated correctly and be given the information no matter what, but it depicts it truthfully. That’s what history is about,” Westman says.

She’s grateful for all the community members – Native and non-Native – who came together to make sure the materials were removed.

“We have been fighting these battles for a long time. Over 40 years, I’ve been doing this,” Westman says.

She hopes the district and the Alaska Native community will work together more closely from now on.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said Juneau School District will be working with Sealaska to develop replacement materials. The district will be working with Sealaska Heritage Institute. 

The Juneau School District holds its first public forum on next year’s budget tonight.

Superintendent Mark Miller and Administrative Services Director David Means will go over the budget calendar, present an overall “big picture” budget and compare past and present reductions and increases.

The school district expects next year’s deficit to be $2.5 million. The public will get to weigh in with ideas on how to balance the budget.

The meeting is tonight from 6 to 8 at the Thunder Mountain High School library. The next public forum on the school budget isn’t until February. Written comment can be sent to budgetinput@juneauschools.org.

The Juneau School Board voted this week to eliminate its budget advisory committee. Instead, it will use school site councils, board work sessions and public forums to gather community input. The district expects the next budget year’s deficit to be $2.5 million.

School board member Barbara Thurston says the decision means the board will have more opportunity to discuss the budget as opposed to just approving it.

“On the other hand,” she says, “I’m going to miss the input. We had several community members who, over the years, have contributed a great deal to the discussion in terms of knowledge, in terms of insightful suggestions, questions.”

The district will hold the first public meeting on the budget Dec. 2. In January, it’ll focus on working with school principals and site councils. Superintendent Mark Miller says all councils will meet together, then break into smaller elementary, middle and high school groups

“The input as to what’s critical and what could potentially be reduced is being made by the people who are going to be most directly affected by it,” Miller says.

School board member Lisa Worl wants the district to reach a more diverse population than it has before.

“I think that’s something that the board has struggled with, trying to find that voice. One easy way at least that we can do within this scope is to reach out and make sure that our community members, especially ones that we tend to partner with a lot with some of our diversity and equity, know about these key dates and invite them,” Worl says.

The district will release a preliminary budget Jan. 27. More public forums will be in February along with school board work sessions.

The school board also took care of a more than $130,000 deficit in its student activities fund by transferring money from a transportation fund.

The activities fund pays for coaches, advisors, officials and student travel mostly within the region. It gets money from the city and from the district’s operating fund. In the past few years, the money transferred from the operating to the activities fund has dropped significantly.

Superintendent Miller says the school board will have to make some tough decisions.

“What we spent really hasn’t changed. The difference is we’ve budgeted less and have not changed our practice. So the question that I think needs to be – Are we going to change our practice or are we going to change what we budget of some combination thereof?” Miller says.

Originally, the district had suggested resolving the deficit with operating fund money. But during public comment, Laurie Berg suggested transferring money instead from the transportation fund.

“As a member of the public, I’m much more concerned about you funding summer school for kids who need extra help or some of the money should go to some of your strategic goals. It’s just really troubling to me that you would bail out this activities budget with the general fund dollars,” Berg says.

District Administrative Services Director David Means says the transportation fund provided by the state has no restrictions. He expects the same deficit in the activities fund next year.

The Juneau School District and Juneau Education Support Staff have agreed to a tentative two-year contract to replace the union’s existing collective bargaining agreement.

The deal announced Friday is retroactive to July 1, 2014 and runs through June 30, 2016. The current contract was set to expire at the end of June 2015.

The district said in a release that additional details would be announced when the school board votes on the agreement. Both Superintendent Mark Miller and JESS president Cricket Curtain praised the deal in the release.

JESS members will vote on whether to ratify the contract on Nov. 22. The union represents more than 260 employees, including office and instructional support staff, school nurses, RALLY program employees, as well as custodians and maintenance personnel.