Education

A windfall of state education money means the Juneau School District Board of Education can pay off debt and hire new positions. But looming funding uncertainties on a state and federal level could mean future cuts.

The board had $994,688 extra to work with after legislators boosted state education funding, even after Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto. At a meeting Tuesday, members opted to put most of it toward the district’s transportation and food service deficits, as well as a new school librarian and a registrar for the district’s homeschool program.

Board member Amber Frommherz said they have to really consider what’s necessary.

“Everything right now is a moving target and … we are all trying to budget for a moving target with disappearing pots of money,” she said.

Last week, the federal Department of Education blocked millions in grants for Alaska schools. The district is supposed to receive $419,694 of funding for those programs.

That money pays for a high school computer science class, as well as support for English language learners, professional development and four staff members. District officials say they could reassign some staff members, but the board set aside $80,000 to keep the programs’ administrator if the blocked funding doesn’t come through.

Board member Emil Mackey said the district shouldn’t count on the frozen federal dollars.

“I regard them as gone until proven otherwise, because that is the stated intent of this administration, and it’s the stated policy of the Supreme Court to allow that to happen,” he said.

There’s state funding uncertainty, too. A proposed regulation change from the state Department of Education and Early Development could cost the district $8 million in funding, as well as services provided by the City and Borough of Juneau.

Several board members like Mackey were in favor of closing the deficit in transportation and food service.

“This is an intergenerational deficit that if we don’t address each single year, we pass it on to the next group of students,” Mackey said. “It will compound, and eventually there will be a day where this becomes an oppressive amount.”

Mackey said he would only approve the deficits, but later voted to approve the homeschool and federal grant administrators.

The district also approved adding an administrator to act as a registrar for the growing number of homeschool students. State data shows HomeBRIDGE had 224 students in October last school year, and 164 were in high school.

Board member Steve Whitney supported the position because it would support students who he said really need it.

“I just think it’s worthy that for that number of students we have. It sounds to me like this is understaffed and and especially relative to other schools, especially if you compare the amount of services students are getting,” he said. “So I think that is justified to add back in.”

The Dzantik’i Heeni campus, which houses three schools, will also be getting a librarian. Member Elizabeth Siddon said the students need it, even with funding uncertainties.

“These are hard conversations and frustrating conversations, and there’s a lot of, like … theoretical crises happening all around us,” she said. “But when I think about those students at that Dzantik’i Heeni campus, you know, walking to school August 15, they deserve a library.”

The board funded the positions, but the district still needs to recruit and hire staff to fill them.

These additions took up most of the additional revenue the district received. The board chose not to continue the long-running universal free breakfast service, and did not add staff to support teaching math and reading at elementary schools.

The school year begins Aug. 15.

Editor’s note: Amber Frommherz is a member of KTOO’s board.

The budget vetoes that Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued last month included millions of dollars proposed by the Legislature to bolster child care and early intervention services for children with disabilities or developmental delays.

Dunleavy vetoed a proposed $1.86 million in additional funding for child care grant programs and place-based and home-based child care centers, citing declining state revenues. The budget retains $5.87 million for those programs for next year.

For early education and infant learning, the Legislature proposed a significant boost — $5.7 million more — for the state’s 17 programs that provide intervention services for families with children from infancy to 3 years old experiencing disabilities or developmental delays. Dunleavy rejected the increase, and allocated $10 million for the statewide programs.

“Governor Dunleavy’s goal is for Alaska to be the best place in the country to raise a family,” said Grant Robinson, a deputy press secretary for the governor in an email on Monday responding to a request for comment. “The budgeting process requires the Governor to consider all line items in view of the State’s fiscal situation. The budget the Governor signed still provides more than $5.8 million of funding for childcare benefits. Given the State’s revenue outlook, the Governor made the difficult yet fiscally responsible decision to veto increasing and expanding infant learning programs.”

The governor vetoed more than $127 million from the Legislature’s proposed budget, including $50 million for public schools. In a prerecorded video released with the veto announcement in June, Dunleavy cited lower state revenues due to falling oil prices.

“Basically, we don’t have enough money to pay for all of our obligations. So as a result of that, you’re going to see some reductions in this year’s budget. It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s certainly not a fun thing to do, but it’s necessary,” he said.

Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel, who also serves as the Senate majority leader, agreed that the state is facing fiscal challenges, but said child care and early education programs should be prioritized, as the Legislature had proposed.

“We had a balanced budget. It is true, it was very difficult to arrive at that balanced budget,” she said in a phone interview. “We searched all the couch cushions for one-time funding to fund this balanced budget, but we achieved it. The governor’s vetoes of these two critical services are just going to mean future costs, because these services were not provided for kids in their earliest development stages. So I was very disappointed.”

An estimated 1,800 Alaskan families are currently served each year by the state’s infant learning programs, funded by the state and federal Medicaid, at no cost to families. Children and families work with developmental specialists, and can receive speech, physical and occupational therapies. In addition, parents receive training and education on child development.

For example, in the Northwest Arctic region, an early learning and family program is administered by the Northwest Arctic Borough School District. It is based in Kotzebue and serves all the Northwest Arctic villages, as well as Point Hope in the North Slope Borough.

“We’re spread very thin,” said Tracey Schaeffer, one of the program’s three staff members. “And we definitely could use another staff person to help with traveling and seeing families and spending time in the villages.”

There is only one air carrier, Bering Air, serving the region, down from four companies operating a few years ago, she said, so with weather events and disruptions, it’s increasingly challenging.

“We have to change reservations a lot because of the weather,” she said, estimating the total cost for travel and flights at up to $25,000 per year, plus significant time. “As it gets warmer, we have a lot more days that are not very safe to fly here.”

Schaeffer said they work as much as possible by phone, but intervention services are very personal. “And all the while, you’re trying to kind of build a relationship with this family, because it’s a really intimate, sensitive situation when you’re working with a family who has a child that experienced, you know, something that wasn’t expected, a disability, or something, a medical issue, that has put their development at risk,” she said.

The proposed state funding increase would have been welcome, she said. “That would have been a huge relief, because there’s a lot of pressure. I mean, (with) early intervention, three years is a short period of time, you know, and we lose so much time because of weather, flight cancellations or something,” she said. “So there’s a lot of pressure there. We’ve done this job for a long time, and we know the time goes fast, and we want to provide as much intervention as we can. And it’s just hard to do that.”

Schaeffer also runs a small child care center in Kotzebue, serving eight children, the first licensed provider to open in the community in over a decade. She said more local and state support is needed to address the lack of child care and rippling impacts for the community. “We lose people all the time because of a lack of child care. You know, we have educators or providers that come and they start a family, and then they realize, like, ‘Wow, I can’t find a child care provider,’ and we lose them because of that.”

Shaeffer and her daughter opened the child care center in 2023, a challenging process documented in a short film by Laura Norton-Cruz, a social worker, public health advocate and film producer. She and filmmaker Joshua Albeza Branstetter created a documentary film series focused on the challenges of child care and early education programs called the “Early Childhood in Alaska” series.

“Child care is just not a profitable business model. It’s an investment in child brain development and family well-being, and the economy,” Norton-Cruz said, emphasizing the need for increasing state and federal funding support. “Staffing is the majority of the costs. But also, if you run a home-based child care center, you have to pay your mortgage or you have to pay rent, you have to pay utilities: Those things cost money. And we need support from the government to be able to offer this essential service, to have a workforce, and to have children who are kindergarten ready.”

In April, Anchorage’s largest child care provider, Bright Beginnings Early Learning Center, closed, displacing 125 children. Norton-Cruz said while some progress has been made, like raising awareness around Alaska’s child care crisis, families and providers are still struggling.

“Others have cut back on hours or cut back on the number of rooms, or the number of kids they can take, in order to have this essential service for parents to be able to go to work, which we need them to do,” she said. “Because we have major workforce shortages, and parents need income to pay for, you know, rent and everything else, we have to do a better job of funding and supporting the sector.”

In 2023, Dunleavy launched a child care task force with the stated goal to develop a plan to improve availability and affordability of quality child care throughout Alaska. Norton-Cruz said the work of the task force was positive, and would like to see the governor put more state funding toward its recommendations.

“When we don’t have policy that supports child care and early childhood, we basically just rely on the unpaid labor of women,” Norton-Cruz said. “Whether that’s moms, or whether that’s grandmothers, or aunties, you can’t just say, ‘Oh, but grandmas and aunties can step in.’ That’s not policy. That relies on something that may not always be there for everyone, and isn’t fair. … People need to be able to make that choice, rather than have that choice made for them.”

Giessel also said there is a need for state funding for the governor’s own task force recommendations. She pointed to new state revenue measures that Dunleavy has opposed —like oil taxes — that leaders in the Alaska House multipartisan and Senate bipartisan majority caucuses want to pursue to bring in more state dollars.

“First of all, we have a huge gap in our tax structure on our oil resources,” Giessel said, referring to the difference between taxes paid by traditional corporations and by those corporations that report their income through their owners, known as “S corporations.”

“The S corporations pay no corporate tax to the state,” Giessel said. “There is legislation that would institute a requirement for S corporations to pay a corporate tax to the state, conservatively estimated, that would be $100 million per year.”

A bill to tax these corporations is in the Senate Rules Committee.

“That would pay for a huge amount of these child care and early education funding requirements,” Giessel said.

“For him to say that these cuts are because of declining revenue and ignoring his responsibility in this, is just amazing to me,” Giessel added.

The Legislature will meet for a special session on Aug. 2, when they will consider whether to override the budget vetoes.

The U.S. Department of Education is withholding about $6.8 billion in education funding for programs serving students in programs that range from migrant education to English language instruction and gifted education.

A Tuesday estimate from the Senate Congressional Appropriations Committee says that breaks down to more than $47.6 million withheld from Alaska.

Lon Garrison is the executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards. He said that’s about 15% of federal funding the state receives for education. Garrison said the funding loss builds on an overall lack in education funding in Alaska.

“It continues to compound itself,” he said. “We’re losing federal funds to help do the things that we want to get done, and then the state itself is not funding education adequately, so we continue to be kind of hit from all sides, where the funding keeps getting rolled back for public education.”

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.

Non-teaching staff across the University of Alaska system are working to form a union. Organizers delivered a petition and authorization cards to the Alaska Labor Relations Agency Monday.

The group is calling itself the Coalition of Alaska University Employees for Equity. The nascent union is organizing as part of the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, one of the largest unions in the nation.

Bee Bequette is an organizer and program support specialist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. They said UA staff are one of the only groups not represented by a union at the university, and staff want to make their voices heard.

“Equity is something that I’ve always personally been really passionate about, and this seemed like a great opportunity to elevate UA staff to the same playing field as all of our colleagues,” Bequette said.

Organizers estimate about 2,500 people are eligible to join the union. Their estimate is based on counts from the university’s staff directory. Eligible employees work in financial aid, advising, health care and more, according to a press release. 

There are still several steps to form the union. At least 30% of staff needs to opt in by signing a petition. Once the state labor relations agency verifies the number, the university has the opportunity to challenge the decision. Once any issues are resolved, staff can hold an election on forming the union.

A UA spokesperson confirmed through email that the university received a petition for a staff bargaining unit and is waiting to hear from the Alaska Labor Relations Agency.

A gravel road runs along the edge of HAARP’s array – that matrix of giant radio antennas on the tundra that’s been blamed for everything from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to chronic fatigue syndrome. On June 14, Fairbanksan Carl Triplehorn stood by that road crafting a hat out of tinfoil. Then Jessica Matthews, HAARP’s director, handed him a big picture frame to pose with.

It’s fair to say that HAARP’s staff is in on the joke.

“Some of the best calls I get are from people that tell me, ‘I have a wedding that’s coming up. Can you guys help us out with the weather?’ Matthews said.

Scientists at the Gakona-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program — known everywhere as just HAARP — open their doors once a summer to show the public what they’re up to.

It wasn’t the facility’s first open house, but it was the first since the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Geophysical Institute took complete possession of HAARP from the military this year — a process that started a decade ago.

The military built HAARP in the 90s to conduct atmospheric defense research. These days, scientists mostly use it to look into things like space weather, and how gravity acts on the ionosphere, the highest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

Matthews said security around there used to be much tighter, which probably fed the intrigue.

“Back in the Air Force days, when you came up to that gate, you saw that scary, big red warning sign: ‘No Trespassing,'” she said.

HAARP’s shadowy reputation has been hard to shake

Speculation about what happens there runs pretty wild. Some believe the facility is trying to do everything from reversing Earth’s magnetic poles to trapping people’s souls.

And sometimes those ideas are endorsed by public figures. Like last year, when prominent far-right activist Laura Loomer accused HAARP of creating a blizzard to blow then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances in the Iowa caucuses.

Matthews said the open houses pull the curtain back on what they’re really doing.

“Events like this give them an opportunity to actually ask some of those hard questions of the researchers and get an answer,” she said.

The people who work at HAARP are more than happy to talk about their research and day-to-day grind — when the mics are off. Most are wearing buttons that say, “No photos, please.” All of that is to safeguard against harassment and credible threats — which they do get from time to time.

“I take very seriously my obligation to protect our staff to the best of the ability that we can in every discussion that we have, in every meeting that we have,” Matthews said.

Taking off the tinfoil — and teaching the public about space physics

The idea behind the event isn’t just about clearing up dangerous misunderstandings. The scientists want to share what they’ve been learning about the upper atmosphere by beaming massive amounts of radio waves at it.

UAF physicist Craig Heinselman said the facility is like the “world’s best screwdriver” to poke at nearest space.

“Being able to steer the beam in various directions in very short time frames, transmitting at different frequencies,” he said. “The radio waves that are transmitted can also be polarized — kind of like polarized filters on your glasses — and they have different effects.”

He and his colleagues are looking into things that have practical applications, too. They’re studying how space weather interacts with the ionized layer of the atmosphere, which can sometimes disrupt GPS signals.

“We’re working on the basic research to get to there, but eventually we hope to get there and have better space weather prediction,” he said.

For Triplehorn — the guy with the tinfoil hat — that educational aspect was the biggest draw. And that’s true for most of the hundred or so guests, like UAF chemistry student Aggy Boldt.

“I think I’m just trying to explore my options, like what kind of career I could go into with chemistry,” she said. “I think it’s just cool to see what everyone else is doing and learn more about it.”

After a day packed with science talks, drone demonstrations, and walking tours that wound through the facility’s cavernous engine room and up to the array, Matthews, the director, said it was another successful outreach event.

“I’m thrilled that we had young kids that were asking for balloons and asking if they could steal two or three cookies for their siblings,” she said. “This is what I want to see.”

She says that she hopes each open house event makes the facility a little less frightening to the public.

“It’s just Alaskans that are helping to do some really cool science,” she said.