Education

More than 3,100 students are enrolled at three University of Alaska Southeast campuses for the fall semester. And while that’s fewer than last year, the number of full-time students is up.

The final report for fall registration indicates a 3.9 percent decrease in headcount, which shows up in the number of part-time students, usually a staple for the small Southeast school.

Chancellor John Pugh says he’s not sure why there are fewer part- time students. Full-time students are more economical for the university.

“Thirty-nine percent of our undergraduates are full-time. Last week it showed 31 percent, so it just keeps climbing,” Pugh says. “So we see a lot of kids wanting to go to school full time and work toward their degree completion and that’s a good thing.”

While the total number of registered undergraduate students is down slightly in Juneau – the number of graduate students is up nearly 7 percent. Fewer undergrads are enrolled in Sitka, but Ketchikan is seeing a small increase.

Classes started Thursday; Juneau campus dorms are full, and Pugh describes a “great atmosphere” on the Auke Lake campus.

He says the number of traditional students – those 18 to 24 years old — continues to increase at all three campuses.

“They’re coming from local high schools, Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas high school, [and] all around Southeast Alaska, particularly. We are getting students from Anchorage, Fairbanks, Kenai Peninsula, and Mat-Su as well in our mix now,” Pugh says. “It’s a good thing that we’re growing with traditional-age students right out of high school from around the state. As they see more and more of our graduates kind of spreading out across the state, they’re beginning to see what UAS is like and what kind of graduates we produce and I think that’s making a real difference in our recruitment.”

Still, the average age of UAS students is 32, due to the large number of older non-degree seeking students.

Pugh says students outside Alaska primarily come from the Pacific Northwest states, and this year from Colorado, Texas and the East Coast.

Twenty-five percent of UAS students have enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences. Other top majors include School of Management and Education, while 20 percent of undergrads have not declared a degree.

UAS undergraduate tuition is $165 per credit hour for lower division courses and $200 per credit for upper division courses. It is set by the University of Alaska Board of Regents.

The University of Alaska Southeast has received a $50,000 memorial gift from the estate of Emma G. Widmark, given in the name of her father Dr. Alfred E. Widmark.

UAS Director of Development and Alumni Relations Lynne Johnson says the gift will be used to permanently endow the university’s Alaska Native and Rural Student Center.

“The center provides help registering for classes, they give them career counseling, they make sure academically that they’re taking the right classes. I think it’s one of our strengths here,” Johnson says.

The donation is believed to be just the second memorial gift given to UAS since the school was established.

Alfred Widmark was a Tlingit, born in Haines in 1904. He served in the Alaska State Legislature from 1961 to 1962. He also served as Mayor of Klawock, President of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp, and as an executive committee member of both the Grand Camp and the Tlingit & Haida Central Council. He was an ANB representative to and vice president of the National Congress of American Indians and a member of the Sealaska Corporation board of directors.

Widmark received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Alaska Southeast in 1979.

Emma Widmark passed away in 2008.

The Juneau School District is holding its annual School Summit Thursday evening.

Billed as a report card to the public, school administrators will explain the school district vision, the strategic plan, academic progress as well as indicators of success.

“These are measurements the board of education has put in place to provide accountability for different means of measuring progress,” says Kristin Bartlett, district spokeswoman.

Bartlett says the board is using seven so-called indicators of success, with the primary focus on achievement, then professional development, which is support for school district staff.

“One of the other indicators will be attendance for both students and staff members, graduation rate, core standards, resource allocation and then school readiness, meaning how ready are young children when they enter our school district and what can we do as a community to help support families and getting their children ready for school,” Bartlett says.

But the summit isn’t all a list. Bartlett says parents and community members should bring questions and observations, because they’ll have a chance to talk with principals of individual schools.

One session will focus on a district improvement plan to increase student achievement.

The 3rd annual School Summit runs from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, in the Thunder Mountain High School auditorium.

On the eve of the new school year, the Juneau School District and Juneau Education Association have reached a tentative agreement.

After months of negotiations, the administration and teachers union reached impasse in May and called for mediation.

Juneau attorney Vance Sanders met with both sides on Wednesday and Thursday. JEA president Ben Kriegmont called them intense days.

“Vance Sanders did a great job,” he said. “You know I think both the school district and JEA moved away from some things that they wanted so we could reach an agreement.”

In a news release, District Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich said the two sides “were able to develop an improved contract within severe financial limitations.”

The teachers’ last three-year contract expired on June 30th. Kriegmont said it’s disappointing the new agreement is for only one year.

“It doesn’t really put it behind us for very long. I believe December is when the district or the association would file a letter to open negotiations, which we’ll do,” he said. “When they’ll schedule the first negotiation sessions probably won’t be until January, but for the new year that’s where we’ll be; looking at getting back to the bargaining table.”

JEA has about 400 members. Kriegmont said they will vote by Aug. 30th on the tentative agreement. The school board will take a ratification vote the following week.

The 2012 – 13 school year begins Monday.

The state of Alaska next month will ask the federal government to approve new education standards to replace the so-called No Child Left Behind program.

The state has requested a waiver from the federal law, which has vexed educators for a decade. State education officials are now in the process of adopting new assessments to replace Adequate Yearly Progress.

Alaska’s Adequate Yearly Progress report for the 2011–12 school year came out earlier this week. Once the waiver is approved, Alaska will no longer have to meet AYP as defined by federal law, says Eric Fry, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

“If we’re granted the waiver, this upcoming school year would be the last year which we follow the AYP system. That would go away and we’d have our system, which would have to be approved by the federal government,” Fry says.

Under federal law, a school fails to meet Adequate Yearly Progress if it falls short in just one category. Schools also are not recognized for annual improvements. Fry says the accountability program Alaska is designing would treat each school individually.

“One of the things people didn’t like about the law is that it seemed a draconian way of dealing with schools that might be doing rather well, but are falling short in one or two areas,” Fry says. “In the draft proposal that we’ve put together, all of that would go away and instead we would ask schools to aim toward reducing their non-proficient students by half over a six-year period so each school would have its own target based on where it’s starting now.”

Schools would be ranked on a scale of one to five, with five being the highest. Fry says each level would be marked by a star.

“And so the public would see very quickly how their school is doing. And if schools are stars 3, 4, or 5, they’re doing rather well, so we would ask them to look at their students and see if they have achievement gaps: Are there subgroups of kids who are not doing as well as other groups, such as low-income students, or students with disabilities? Then the districts would have to work with their schools on improvement plans,” he says.

The lowest achieving schools in Alaska number about 60, Fry says. The state education department would step in to work with the districts to raise the achievement levels in each poorly performing school.

“At any given time the state might be actively working with the districts on maybe the 50 to 60 lowest-performing schools,” he says. “Meanwhile the districts wouldn’t be off the hook for helping non-proficient students, but you wouldn’t have this draconian system of consequences that are triggered by any little thing, and you wouldn’t have the same consequences no matter what the real situation is on the ground. So we think of it as a more realistic system of accountability.”

Before the U.S. Education Department will waive No Child Left Behind requirements, the state has to show that Alaska standards for reading, language arts and mathematics will prepare students for college and a career. The state Board of Education recently adopted such standards. Fry says the board believes federal education officials will approve Alaska’s standards.

Less than half Alaska public schools made “adequate yearly progress” last year under the federal education law.

The state education department says 236 of Alaska’s 507 public schools met all their targets during the 2011-2012 school year, or about 46.5 percent.

To make “adequate yearly progress,” each school must meet 40 targets, ranging from graduation and attendance rates to the percentage of students who are proficient in specific academic areas.

While the Juneau School District met 94 percent of the targets, fewer individual Juneau schools met overall A-Y-P.

Of the 14 Juneau schools measured, Auke Bay Elementary, Juneau Community Charter School, and Johnson Youth Center met all A-Y-P targets in the last school year.  Four schools met 38 and two schools met 39 of the 40 targets.

AYP is measured in Alaska by Standards Based Assessment (SBA) that tests proficiency in  reading and math for students in grades 3 – 10.

AYP results are available on the DEED website.

The Juneau School District will present the results to the public at the annual School Summit on Aug. 30 at Thunder Mountain High School from 6:30 to 8 p.m.