Juneau Schools

The Juneau School District announced it is ending the RALLY program Tuesday. 

The after-school child care program serves more than 100 Juneau children during the summer. It will end Aug. 8.

Kristy Germain is the district’s director of operations and oversees the program. She said the district could not reliably keep the program staffed last school year. The district already closed the RALLY site at Sayeik: Gastineau Community School about a month before the end of the school year.

“This decision to close our RALLY program is not one that we have taken lightly, and our focus is in providing a continuity of supervised after school coverage, because we know that is so important to our JSD families,” Germain said.

She said maintaining child care remains a priority for the district, which is working with a local preschool to provide after-school care at the start of the next school year. While Juneau is in a better position than other parts of the state, many families struggle to access and afford child care.

The district is finalizing a lease agreement with Auke Lake Preschool, a licensed provider that currently serves children from six weeks to 12 years old. Germain said the preschool is the only provider that formally came forward to work with the district. The plan is for the preschool to provide child care at different sites independently from the district.

Derik Swanson co-owns the preschool. He said the district has been accommodating during negotiations and he’s invested in the success of a Juneau after-school program.

“I grew up in the RALLY program too, so it would be kind of sad to see it go” he said. “I know it had several closures in the past here, but it’d be an honor to kind of pick up the mantle and keep that service running as long as we’re able to.”

Swanson couldn’t give an estimate of how long it would take to set up the program after an agreement is finalized.

Emily Wright is a local parent. Her oldest child participated in RALLY both during the school year and summer. She’s a nurse and said RALLY worked best with her family’s needs compared to other providers.

“The RALLY program was really consistent for our family and affordable. I mean, we felt like we had made it, you know, getting a kid into that program – it was fantastic,” she said. “So we’re devastated to hear that it’s closing.”

Wright says she already switched to working part-time to care for her younger preschool-aged son. Without another child care option, she said she’ll probably have to take more time off work to care for both children when the school year begins.

“We don’t have a backup plan at this moment,” Wright said. “It seems like a lot of the day care centers that provide after-school care is not as affordable as RALLY was, and it was just really convenient to pick her up there at her school.”

The school year begins on Aug. 14.

The fate of Juneau School District’s universal free breakfast program remains uncertain after  the Board of Education delayed a decision Thursday. The board will instead consider it against a list of staff positions and programs it may add to the budget following a higher increase to state education funding than anticipated.

Nicole Herbert is the district’s chief financial officer. She told board members at a meeting earlier this month that some districts saw an 8% drop in participation after free meal programs from the COVID-19 pandemic ended. She said it’s likely fewer students will get school breakfast if the district starts charging for it.

“Since Juneau has been providing universal free breakfast, I think a little bit longer than that, it’s safe to say that we could probably see a bigger than 8% drop,” Herbert said. “But that’s kind of an unknown factor going into this.”

A daily average of about 600 students ate school breakfast this year. District data from the past two school years shows the number of students eating breakfast at most Juneau schools has declined.

Herbert estimates continuing to offer free breakfast next school year would cost the district more than $220,000. The district already paid an additional $115,000 to continue the free breakfast program this year.

She says one way to reduce the cost is to get more students approved for free and reduced meals. She told board members yesterday Thursday the district is working on communicating with families and processing applications quickly.

“What I have heard is that some families, even though they know they’ll qualify, until they have that actual approval, they’re very hesitant to participate,” Herbert said. “And so making sure that we get those applications turned around quickly, and so they feel more confident that they qualify for free and reduced.”

The district gets federal reimbursements for students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. The process generally requires families to apply for the program.

Rep. Maxine Dibert, a Fairbanks Democrat, introduced legislation this session to provide free school meals to all students in the state, but it stalled in the House Education Committee in February.

The board expects to meet on July 9 to discuss what to add to its budget, including universal free breakfast.

The Juneau School District is cracking down on cell phone use in schools. The Board of Education passed a policy amendment Tuesday.

Students in kindergarten through high school will now have to turn off any phones, tablets, and laptops and stow them in their backpack or locker for the day. High school students will be allowed to use phones outside of school buildings at lunch or during free periods. 

Previously, the district’s phone policy left decisions about whether students could use phones to principals.

The change comes following a change to state law that requires districts to adopt a policy that limits phone use during the school day. And restricting phones in schools is part of a nationwide trend.

The policy change passed 4 to 2 with members Amber Frommherz and Steve Whitney opposed.

Whitney said he disagrees with students’ freedoms being limited. 

 “Our country is based on freedom of speech and also privacy and I think those foundations need to be enforced —or need to be introduced and instilled—before people are adults, while they’re young,” he said.

Board member Emil Mackey said he agrees with Whitney philosophically but he believes phone use in classrooms harms students. 

 “I think that there really is a problem from online bullying, from distractions in the classroom to the inability for students to concentrate, to falling test scores,” he said.

The policy allows staff to search students’ phones if they have reasonable suspicion the student is breaking a rule. The board debated the legality of that provision.

City attorney Emily Wright said the policy is legally sound, and pointed out that educators are allowed to to search backpacks and lockers without a warrant. 

But Wright suggested turning to other districts’ policies for wording if members felt the policy violated students’ privacy. 

“But I think that if you are unsatisfied with that language, there are many, many, many schools that have been grappling with this,” she said. “And we can help you find better language that feels like the right balance.”

In a district survey of more than 700 students and teachers, only 22% of respondents said they would support a stricter policy or total ban on cell phones in schools.

The policy allows for exceptions if students use devices for medical or translation purposes, in case of emergencies, and if teachers give permission for educational purposes. Laptops are also allowed in class for instructional purposes. 

The Alaska Board of Education unanimously approved new reading standards for Alaska Native languages Wednesday. This means students from kindergarten to third grade can have their reading skills evaluated in an Alaska Native language instead of in English.

The new standards are broader than the state’s current reading standards. This allows schools to fit the standards to their cultural and linguistic needs.

The standards recognize students can achieve literacy in state languages other than English.

Jamie Shanley is the assistant director of education with Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit tribal organization that helped create the standards last year. She said the standards give students learning an Alaska Native language another option to meet reading requirements set by the Alaska Reads Act. But it was a challenge to create the standards.

“That was a really hard clashing of two worlds, a Western ideal of education with this standards based system and an indigenous worldview,” she said. “And so this group really has [a] beautiful way of meshing those two things.”

She said the standards aren’t meant to dictate reading in one of the state’s 23 official Alaska Native languages in a confined way.

The standards also define reading differently. Shgen George is one of the owners of Teaching Indigenous Design for Every Student, an education consulting group. She said Alaska Native cultures do read, even if there wasn’t historically a written language.

“Reading is looking at things and gathering information.,” George said. “And so we really talked a lot about how we have been reading things this whole time. And so we really had these deep discussions about reading the weather and reading our environment and reading our regalia and our art.”

There are Alaska Native language programs and schools all around the state, including the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy school in Juneau.

Several educators from TCLL helped to form the standards. Principal Molly Yerkes said the school already uses elements of the new standards and that they will help schools take the next steps to develop ways to assess reading in Alaska Native languages.

“In Alaska, every community has to develop their own,” Yerkes said. “It’s not like something you can buy in Texas and McDougal Littell, so I think this adoption of these standards will support the creation of quality materials and also hopefully lead to a support for more native speakers of indigenous languages to become teachers.”

She said the TCLL staff are working with researchers to develop assessments for Lingít learners.

Per Alaska Administrative Code, regulations typically take effect 30 days after they are filed by the Lieutenant Governor.

After multiple meetings and extended debate, the school board has agreed to fund more of a Lingít language immersion program in the upcoming school year – even amid statewide school budgeting concerns. 

The program in question is Át Koowaháa: Expanding the Tlingit Culture, Language, and Literacy Program — or TCLL. The school district and the nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation have historically roughly split the cost. 

The school board signed a memorandum of agreement Wednesday with Sealaska Heritage Institute to increase its investment in the TCLL.

But school board members brought up questions about whether the district should pay for more of the TCLL program amidst widespread concerns about funding. 

Board member Elizabeth Siddon said the school board supports TCLL, but it has to balance that with the needs of the entire district. 

“But we support it amongst how we support all of our 4,000 students,” she said. “So I’m trying to keep in mind that these 119 are not the only students we’re responsible for.”

The school board initially approved the change during its budget process. They were then under the impression that the grant SHI used for the program was ending, according to the school board president. But SHI was later approved for an extension of the grant. 

The program isn’t growing, but now JSD will fund eight of its 11 positions. The change requires an additional $233,802 from the school district’s budget. 

SHI Education Director Kristy Ford said the program is intended to increase the number of Lingít language speakers. 

“We have less than 10 fluent speakers left,” she said. “So the need and the urgency to put an intensive amount of support and instruction into the TCLL program was asked of us.”

Some school board members raised the concern that the program only serves a small percentage of Juneau students, but Ford said the scope is intentional. It is intense and immersive so that there is a group of dedicated speakers to make sure the Lingít language doesn’t go extinct.

Correction: This story has been updated to include a more accurate cost estimate for the two teaching positions. 

Friday is the last day of school at the Juneau School District, and high school seniors graduate on Sunday.

It will be the first graduating class since the district consolidated Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and Thunder Mountain High School.

Two hundred eighty seniors are expected to walk at the 4 p.m. ceremony, which will be held at the high school auditorium.

Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School will hold its graduation for 38 seniors that same day at the Dzantik’i Heeni gymnasium at 1 p.m.

A district spokesperson said the district is working on a streaming option for Juneau-Douglas High School’s ceremony, which will be posted on its website.