Education

A Missouri man has been hired as Juneau’s new library director.

Robert Barr is currently Information Services Manager for Johnson County Library in Kansas City.  He will assume the Juneau job next month.

City Manager Kim Kiefer announced Barr’s appointment Thursday.

The city conducted a nationwide search. Kiefer says Barr has been working in libraries for about a decade and is particularly interested in growing and diversifying the value of libraries to the community.

Barr will replace Barbara Berg who is retiring as CBJ library director, a post she has held since 2003.  But her history goes back to city and borough unification.  She moved to Juneau in 1972, when CBJ was taking things over.

“I was the first city employee at the Douglas library after Borough unification when they brought the Douglas library into the system,” Berg says.

In fact, she has worked in libraries or bookstores since her first job in college.  And over the years, she’s seen tremendous changes in technology.

“My first job in a library at Fort Richardson was typing catalog cards and filing them in the card catalog.  Then we went through the era of converting our collections to online and barcoding everything,” she says. “Now the systems keep getting more and more developed until many times in the catalog you can click through and you actually get to the electronic book. You get to the source material from one point so that’s a real change.  But the book is still here, and I firmly believe it’s not going anywhere.”

But Berg says public libraries of the future will not be warehouses of books.

“I think we’re going to move in new directions where there’s more electronic books and the cream of what you want in the physical format,” she says. 

She says the real electronic revolution is the online search.

Barbara Berg has been at the forefront of planning for the new Mendenhall Valley library, to be built next year in the Dimond Park area.   She believes the brick and mortar library is an important community gathering center.

“It builds a sense of community when people are sort of separated by their electronic devices at their individual homes or their individual workplaces, not communicating face to face.  The library is a forum; it’s a place in the middle of our town that everyone can use.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Juneau Board of Education has appointed a 17-member committee to help write the school district’s budget for fiscal year 2014.

The committee will hold seven meetings between now and March 5th, beginning its work on Tuesday (Jan. 15). Superintendent Glen Gelbrich will present the district’s recommended budget during the committee’s third meeting.

For several years, the school board has asked community members to join a budget committee, but this year’s group will have actual authority to submit a budget.

School board member Barbara Thurston will co-chair the budget group.

“We did an evaluation after last year’s budget committee to see what worked and what didn’t work.  And one of the frustrations we found is it felt like there was not sufficient amount of resolution; the committee did not have the authority to finalize any recommendations,” Thurston said.  “So that’s one of the changes we made this year, is that  the budget committee will actually create a proposed budget that will be submitted to the board for full consideration.”

This year’s super-sized committee includes a representative from each of Juneau’s 12 schools and three education unions as well as community members.  Thurston says the seven-member education board also will be involved in the budget process, but will not have a vote.

“And the reason for that is there is so much discussion of priorities (and) there’s a lot of public input.  If the board members sat out that process and then only looked at the budget when it was presented to us in March, there wouldn’t be enough time to really absorb it.  We really need to be in on those discussions,” Thurston said. “I’m sure that board members will contribute things to the discussions during the budget committee, but we don’t actually have a vote.”

The school district must present its budget to the City and Borough of Juneau by the end of March.

The fiscal year 2014 school district budget will be about $90 million.  The operating portion of that is $77 million. The district is expecting a revenue shortfall of $1.2 million.

The school district budget committee will be asking for public input, and prefers written comments.  Two public hearings – one on January 22 and the second on February 19 – will be held to take personal comments.

Comments can be sent to budgetsuggestions@juneauschools.org.

 

 

As the world enters a new year, the U.S. is still involved in Afghanistan. Most U.S. troops are out of Iraq, but the future of post-war Iraq is very uncertain. According to the United Nations, the civil war in Syria has killed about 60,000 people. The so-call “Arab spring” countries are still unsettled. The hope for peace seems as dim as ever.

A decade ago, as the United States was getting more and more entangled in war in Afghanistan and Iraq, a small group of Juneau residents founded Juneau People for Peace and Justice. The group continues to be a visible and vocal organization dedicated to cultivating the message of peace.

Amy Paige helped bring the group together, because they were “anxious about what was going on in the world.”

There’s no membership and JPPJ has never organized as a non-profit, but the group has met once a week for ten years. While numbers often swell and ebb with world news, the core has worked to ensure that it’s having some impact. Even if it’s one conversation at a time.

In the last two years, JPPJ has sponsored students from the Middle East at Juneau high schools. Rich Moniak hosted a student  last year. He says the next generation “is part of the hope” for peace.

Moniak started coming to JPPJ meetings after his son was deployed to Iraq for the second time. He’s a firm believer in the sense of hope for peace that such groups can bring.

“What I saw in this group was a lot of people working hard for something larger than themselves,” he says.

Over the years, the group has taken out an anti-war newspaper advertisement, signed by more than 1,000 Juneau residents. A peace march across the Douglas Bridge also drew about a thousand people. There have been demonstrations, town meetings, teleconferences with Alaska’s congressional delegation, and letters to other political leaders. But Judith Maier says affiliating with the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program was “one of the most important things we’ve done. Last year we had four young people here from the Middle East and this year there are three.”

Maier says she can’t think of a better use of her tax dollars.  The YES program was founded ten years ago after the terrorist attacks on America. It is funded by grants from the U.S. State Department to provide scholarships for students from countries with large Muslim populations.

This year high school juniors Mohammad Qabani and Ayah Tafesh are studying at Thunder Mountain High School. Hadi Kamj, from Lebanon, is spending the school year at Juneau-Douglas High School, and just enrolled in classes at the University of Alaska Southeast.  They live with Juneau families.  All three are of the Muslim faith.

Other than the cold, Qabani, from Israel, says he likes Juneau and has met lots of people who are respectful to his culture. At first he experienced some bullying at school, including one youth who told him “Arabs are terrorism.”

“But when he like sat with me and we had a conversation, he changed his opinion,” Qabani says.

Tafesh is from Gaza. She also has worked one on one with some students. She likens her experience in the U.S. to a mission.

“I like that I’m here to represent my country and people are respectful to me,” she says. “I think that I have a job to give a better point of view about my country, because I think most of the people either don’t know about it or they have a bad point of view about my country.  So I want to present my country and make them change their point of view, maybe.”

As they meet people throughout Juneau, the Muslim students believe they have helped change some minds about their culture. And it’s one way Juneau People for Peace and Justice believe the group has made a difference since the first gathering a decade ago.

[quote]“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”   (Margaret Mead)[/quote]

 

Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed fiscal year 2014 operating budget would continue funding to put Alaska Grown foods on school lunch menus.

The $3 million “Nutritional Alaskan Foods in Schools” program is available to all 54 school districts this year. The grant reimburses participating districts that buy Alaska fish, produce and even honey.

Scott Ruby directs the program in the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. He says it helps Alaska become more self-sufficient.

“It’s called food security where we can provide our own and not be reliant on shipping in food from outside,” Ruby said. “It’s a good deal.”

Ruby says the Department of Natural Resources’ Farm to Schools program helps connect schools with suppliers.

 “I think that’s been one of the larger benefits of this is that there were products available out there at reasonable costs that the school districts didn’t know were available,” he says.

Juneau School District Food Services Supervisor Adrianne Schwartz says the cost of a meal is the same for students whether they choose local halibut or pizza.

“The issue is that to maintain a meal price that’s affordable for everybody,” Schwartz says. “The majority of the local produce and fish would be too expensive without this funding.”

The Juneau School District received $86,000 for the current year and has served salmon and halibut from Southeast waters as well as fresh produce from the Matanuska-Susitna region.

The governor’s proposal to fund the program next year would allow Juneau and other districts to expand the menu and serve more local foods on a regular basis.

 

 

 

Eight-year-old violinists and arts in Juneau schools have drawn the John F. Kennedy Center to the capital city. Representatives from the nation’s performing arts center are scoping out Juneau as a finalist for the Any Given Child program.

Nearly 300 students are in the Juneau, Alaska Music Matters program that started at Glacier Valley and has also expanded to Riverbend and Auke Bay elementary schools.  JAMM has recently garnered national attention. Last month, PBS filmed JAMM for a music education documentary due out in 2014.

Last week, Glacier Valley second graders in colorful Tlingit regalia, picked up their pint-size violins and bow to play the “Can-Can” for two representatives from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C, who clap and one takes photos with his cell phone.

On this day, 8-year-old violinist Amira Andrews is among the two dozen violinists and six cellists performing at Glacier Valley Elementary School.

“We have this thing called JAMM after school and we practice and we warm up and we practice songs and usually Ms. Heagy tells us who’s coming so we can get ready,” Amira says.

Glacier Valley Elementary began the Juneau, Alaska Music Matters program three years ago. JAMM is one reason Juneau is a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s national Any Given Child program.  Former Juneau Arts and Humanities Council president Annie Calkins wrote Juneau’s application.

 “The Any Given Child Program was initiated by the Kennedy Center as a way to increase equity and access to arts education for students across this country in grades kindergarten through eight,” Calkins says.

The Kennedy Center representatives were in Juneau last week to review and fact check the application, making sure city and arts organizations are working with schools to offer a diverse selection of arts programs.  They said they would not comment on their visit, which they called “unofficial.”

This is not the first time the Kennedy Center has been interested in Glacier Valley Elementary. In 2007, the school was one of five National Schools of Distinction winners.

Now Juneau is looking to expand its arts education. That’s where Any Given Child comes in.

Calkins says city government officials, businesses, arts organizations, artists, and the school district organized a community arts team. If Juneau wins, Calkins says the community will join ten other cities across America recognized by Any Given Child.  No prize money comes with the distinction.

“What we get from the Kennedy Center is up to five years of technical assistance and training and engagement with figuring out ways that Juneau can increase equity and access across all of our schools,” Calkins says.

While JAMM has expanded to two other elementary schools, Calkins says some Juneau schools have higher quality arts programs than others and the objective is to give more students access to these programs.

Glacier Valley Elementary music teacher Lorrie Heagy started JAMM.

“I think what makes our application so strong for the Kennedy Center is the fact that they were astounded by how much a community of just over 30,000 can support a symphony, three opera companies, just the amount of arts organizations that are here and how we support them.” Heagy says. As well as the rich cultural heritage that we have here and how we celebrate that here in Juneau.”

JAMM is inspired by El Sistema, a Venezuelan model that incorporates music into schools.

 “What I learned from that is music is used as a vehicle, for, in Venezuela it’s for social change. Here, music is an intervention for school readiness skills,” Heagy says.

Heagy says the children build their skills in confidence, teamwork, focus and memory.

Guo Hua Xia has been a private violin instructor for two decades. Heagy asked Xia to teach students in the JAMM program. Xia says students started when they were five years old, without their parents in the room to coax them along. They learned how to navigate their first musical experience on their own.

 “When I first saw them, they just, can’t believe how little they are. Very small size.” Xia says. “Now they grows, and also they can play better, that I’m happy to see.”

Now the students are in second grade. Eight-year-olds Garrett Strickler and Kitty Sweet are used to performing before an audience.

“In JAMM we practice all of our songs just in case there’s an assembly or like a concert,” Garrett says.

“I like when I play sounds and I can hear what I play. It makes beautiful sounds,” Kitty says.

JAMM students this week have formed quartets and are performing seasonal songs in Glacier Valley classrooms.

 “They are just so eager to absorb what they’re learning, the pace at which they are accomplishing their musical skills on the violin is astounding,” Heagy says.

The Kennedy Center is expected to announce a winning community for Any Given Child in the next couple of weeks.

Visitors to Juneau schools should expect a little tighter security.

The recent horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut has prompted a look at security at each of the 12 school buildings in the district.

District officials have been reviewing emergency preparedness plans for a variety of emergency situations.

Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich says each school will be more diligent about asking visitors to sign in.

“You know in our community where lots and lots or people know one another, sometimes people are a little perturbed by being asked to sign in, especially by someone they know really well, but we’re going to tighten that up,” he says.

Anybody who goes into a Juneau school building, including staff from the central office and other schools, should expect to sign in.

Gelbrich says school visitors — “whether they’re volunteers,or moms and dads, or central office staff, or custodians” —  should expect to wear a badge that indicates they are visitors.

“Just so people are readily identifiable,” he says.

Juneau schools regularly work with police and fire officers on everything from fire drills to being wary of strangers.  And Gelbrich says this week kids and teachers are going through various drills and having conversations about safety procedures.

District officials and administrators from individual schools also are reaching out to parents.  The school district website includes information on school safety and helping children cope with violence and tragedy.