Education

The Juneau School District Board of Education agreed to approve up to $180,000 dollars in funding to help pay for a new playground at the Dzantik’i Heeni campus in Lemon Creek.

During a special meeting Thursday, board members agreed to pull the money from an afterschool child care fund to match a foundation’s grant toward the project. The child care fund has previously been used for the district’s former RALLY program.  

Michelle Nakamura is a parent of two children at Montessori Borealis, which operates out of the campus. During public testimony, she said having a playground is crucial for children’s learning and advocated for the board’s approval of the funding.  

“Recesses where kids get their wiggles out and then come back to the classroom, ready to focus. Right now, our kids don’t have that,” she said. “They get a muddy field full of dog feces, and they’ve been making do for the last two school years.”

The Dzantik’i Heeni campus also houses students from Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School and Juneau Community Charter School. The Montessori school serves students from preschool through middle school, and the charter school serves kindergarten through middle school.

All three programs moved into the building in 2024. It used to be a middle school until the district consolidated Juneau’s middle and high schools that year to address budget shortfalls.

Right now, there isn’t a playground on the campus, and that’s meant students have access to a dirt field at recess. Since the consolidation, parents of students at the campus have been advocating for a playground to be built there. But, settling on who and how to pay for it has become a thorny issue.

The playground’s price tag is about $1.3 million including design, materials and construction, according to the district. In September, the Juneau Assembly approved $735,000 in funding for site preparation. This fall, the school district also launched a “Buy a Brick” campaign to raise funding for the project. As of Thursday, the district has raised about $71,000.

The Benito and Frances C. Gaguine Foundation, based in Juneau, agreed to match up to $250,000 to help pay for part of the project. Altogether that gives the district just under $500,000 for play structure equipment, specifically. 

Board Vice President Ebett Siddon made the motion to approve up to $180,000 dollars in additional funding. 

“I think we all wholeheartedly support a playground at this campus, and I hope people can appreciate that,” she said. “Both the school board and the assembly wrestle a lot with many, many competing needs, and this is just trying to balance all of those needs.”

The board also agreed to seek approval from the city to free up additional funding for the project. The city plans to begin work on the playground this summer.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Ebett Siddon at the board president.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska recently launched a new foundation. Its main goal right now is to fundraise for a new education campus in Juneau. 

The tribe announced the formation of the Tlingit & Haida Foundation last month. Jamie Gomez is the executive director of the nonprofit. 

“The mission is, we strengthen tribal communities through resources that advance education, wellness and self-determination,” she said. “It really covers almost all the programs and a lot of the work that we do at the tribe.” 

Gomez said the nonprofit’s first major goal is to help fund the tribe’s proposed tribal education campus in the Mendenhall Valley. Tlingit and Haida President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson announced plans to develop the campus during the 89th Annual Tribal Assembly in 2024. 

The 12-acre tribal education campus — slated to be located behind Fred Meyer — would serve students from early childhood into college. The tribe says its goal is to improve education outcomes for Alaska Native students by providing culturally relevant, place-based lessons.

In total, the campus is expected to cost $90 million. Gomez said the tribe plans to develop it in phases. She said the tribe likely won’t break ground on the project for at least a few years. 

“The foundation is going to be a big part of trying to help find funding to support the education campus,” she said. “Those in Juneau and the community know supporting our youth and future generations is really important to us, but there’s a lot of funding to be raised there.”

Other tribes in Alaska also have nonprofit arms, like Cook Inlet Tribal Council, which serves tribal members in communities from Chickaloon to Seldovia.

Gomez said the Tlingit & Haida Foundation plans to connect with the Juneau community in the coming months to share more information about the nonprofit and the education campus.

The City and Borough of Juneau has largely wrapped up shoveling on Sít’ Eetí Shaanáx — Glacier Valley Elementary School and began work on Mendenhall River Community School on Friday. 

This comes after record snowfall caused the district to close schools multiple times this week, including all schools Friday.

Assistant City Manager Robert Barr said at a press conference Friday the rain from the current atmospheric river could increase the weight on roofs.

“We expect snow weights to increase because of the rain, until it is able to warm up sufficiently for that snow-ice melt to drain both through the roof drains, which we’re giving careful attention to, as well as off the roofs through through, you know, gutter and gutter style systems,” he said.

Juneau School District Superintendent Frank Hauser said shoveling on the roof of Mendenhall River Community School is expected to continue this weekend. He said CBJ engineering teams plan on inspecting schools through this weekend to make sure it’s safe to occupy them on Monday.

Hauser said schools will move to remote learning if there’s any need to be closed for snow removal next week. He said a wider number of factors will determine if another districtwide closure is needed.

“Though none of our schools are in the avalanche zones, it is something that, you know, could inhibit transportation,” Hauser said. “And so as we’re looking at that and looking at the road conditions, those are factors we take when we look at a more broad potential school closure.”

Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and Harborview Elementary School sit just outside the Behrends Avenue slide path avalanche zone, which is included in the evacuation alert issued Friday.  

Hauser encouraged families to make sure their contact information with schools are up to date, and to download the district’s app to receive the latest alerts.

Update, Thursday 7 p.m.:

All Juneau schools are now closed Friday due to the storm.

The Juneau School District notified parents and staff of the closure Thursday night and said that no remote instruction will take place Friday.

Update, Thursday 5 p.m.:

As of Thursday afternoon, Juneau School District Chief of Staff Kristen Bartlett said the district hasn’t received information that more schools need to be closed for snow removal. She said the city’s engineering team is monitoring schools daily, and that decisions are made on a day-to-day basis.

“It’s a balancing act of making sure that we’re continuing to educate kids and making sure that everyone can be safe while that’s happening,” Bartlett said. 

Students successfully evacuated to Thunder Mountain Middle School where parents were able to pick them up Thursday afternoon. They have mixed feelings on how the district has handled the winter storm.

Michael Kohan is a parent of a preschooler at Mendenhall River Community School. She said she appreciates the way the district has handled its response to the storm.

“I’m glad that the school took the precautions that they did, to act out of an abundance of caution and move the kids to TM today and cancel school tomorrow to get snow removal taken care of,” she said.

Sarah Overton has multiple children at the school. She said she wishes the schools weren’t open at all this week.

“I’m glad that I was able to come get them and nothing happened, but I feel like they shouldn’t have had school in session at all if there was any sort of concern, and if they hadn’t shoveled the roof,” she said. 

The district expects snow removal at Sít’ Eetí Shaanáx — Glacier Valley Elementary to wrap up Friday as it begins work at Mendenhall River Community School.

Juneau School District Facilities Director Kristy Germain says the school will offer remote learning while closed. 

“That process of clearing the roof will continue through the weekend, is the plan,” Germain said. “And then our public announcement to families also includes that we will be communicating if it needs to continue with remote learning on Monday.”

Original story:

Students and staff at Mendenhall River Community School were evacuated from the elementary school Thursday morning due to growing concern about the snow load on the gym roof. 

In a news release, the Juneau School District said everyone inside the school is being relocated to Thunder Mountain Middle School “out of an abundance of caution” and that “all students and staff are safe.”

The district is instructing families to pick up students after 1 p.m. from the middle school. Parents and guardians should go to the Thunder Mountain gym entrance facing the Dimond Park Aquatics Center for pick up and must show ID. Any Mendenhall River students not picked up by 2:30 p.m. will be sent home on a school bus. 

Crews will start clearing snow from the roof of Mendenhall River school Friday. While the building is closed, the school will offer remote learning.

“Crews will be working through the weekend clearing MRCS. We are hopeful that MRCS will open on Monday, but remote learning may need to be extended into next week if shoveling is not complete,” the district said in the release. 

This comes after back-to-back snowstorms dumped more than four feet of snow on Juneau, leading to the city and tribal governments issuing a joint disaster declaration Tuesday. The district says it will continue to monitor all schools as an atmospheric river is forecast to hit Southeast Alaska late Thursday night. 

The district closed Sít’ Eetí Shaanáx — Glacier Valley Elementary Wednesday to clear snow off its roof and planned to keep it closed the rest of the week. This followed district-wide closures Monday and Tuesday. 

This story has been updated. 

The Juneau School District plans to close at least two schools to remove snow on the buildings’ roofs following recent record-breaking snowstorms. 

The district closed Sít’ Eetí Shaanáx – Glacier Valley Elementary first and reopened the rest of its schools Wednesday, following district-wide closures Monday and Tuesday.

During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Juneau Assistant City Manager Robert Barr said a team of engineers determined the elementary school needs to be shoveled first. 

“We started there due to pre-existing damage that we knew about at that facility that made us more concerned for them,” he said.

Barr said the city contracted with a 25-person, out-of-state team to work on the school.

As of Wednesday, the district says no school is above its load capacity based on measurements taken. Sít’ Eetí Shaanáx – Glacier Valley will remain closed for the rest of this week.

Mendenhall River Community School is next in line for shoveling. 

Though most schools are open, Superintendent Frank Hauser said students will be excused if they can’t attend school due to unsafe weather conditions.

“Even when schools are open, you know the conditions in your immediate neighborhood and are the best judge of whether or not to send your child to school,” he said.

With parking limited at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé, the district encourages high school students to take the school bus or public transit to school. Students also have the option to park at Thunder Mountain Middle School and take a school bus in. 

School buses will be running snow routes all week, the district says, and will not be going to trailer parks due to conditions. 

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, or DEED, found that the Juneau School District did not provide occupational therapy services to some students that were supposed to receive them last school year.

According to a report from the department, the district lost an occupational therapist last year and did not follow the correct procedure to ensure students would continue to receive services. Some students with an individualized education program, or IEP, require a certain amount of occupational therapy during the school year.

Don Enoch is DEED’s special education administrator. He said when a school loses staff that provide a specific special education service, a replacement should be found as quickly as possible and a compensatory education plan must be offered to students in the meantime. 

“The IEP guarantees the parents will receive those services for their students, and when that’s not done, the district’s obligated to make that right,” he said.

The report states that the district must offer services to make up for lost time. JSD also has to send a spreadsheet to DEED that lists which students qualify for services, and whether families decided to go through with the services.

The initial complaint was filed in June, and DEED issued the final report in November. In an email to KTOO, Juneau School District Student Services Director Jason DeCamillis said the district was already addressing the issue before the complaint was filed, and had resolved the issue before November.

He said fewer than 30 students were affected. Before the state’s report was completed, DeCamillis said the district hired new staff, provided make-up services or created a plan to provide services in the current school year.

“We do take these gaps very seriously and proactively address known issues as soon as possible, with as much communication as possible,” he wrote. 

In addition to a systemic complaint made about occupational therapy, an individual complaint was also filed to the state this year related to occupational therapy services. An investigation concluded that specific student is owed 330 minutes of compensatory occupational therapy services.

Enoch said many parents don’t realize the state is a resource to help students with IEPs. In addition to investigating complaints, DEED can also hold due process hearings and mediate meetings between parents and the school district about IEPs. 

He said DEED can also help explain an IEP to parents. He wants more parents to reach out to DEED if they are having issues.

“We don’t get very many calls from parents at all, and it’s kind of concerning sometimes, because we hear things that are going on out in the communities, and we have to go out and investigate,” Enoch said. “But one phone call from a parent could help clue us into problems that a district is having.”

The district has until the end of next year to complete all compensatory services as outlined by DEED. Parents with concerns about their children’s special education services can call DEED’s special education office at 907-465-8693.

Clarification: This story has been updated to better reflect the Juneau School District’s response timeline.