Education

The Juneau school board will have two new board members and one returning member following the release of final election results Tuesday.

Steve Whitney and Melissa Cullum won three-year terms, and Jenny Thomas will serve a two-year term on the board.

The board appointed Whitney to fill a seat after Will Muldoon resigned earlier this year. He previously served on the board from 2016 to 2019. Whitney did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Cullum is a homeschool parent and a former teacher. She said she’s looking forward to working with other board members.

“We’re in a good spot of transition, and I’m really kind of excited about moving us towards a more positive feeling or climate in our district,” she said.

Jenny Thomas will serve the remaining two years of Muldoon’s term. She said she’s excited to bring community engagement and new ideas to the board.

“Hoping to make the meetings a little less bureaucratic where it’s just reading reports and getting a little bit more into the like, the meat and potatoes of actually what’s going on,” she said.

Thomas was one of the leaders of an unsuccessful recall campaign against board members Emil Mackey and Deedie Sorenson after the school board closed and consolidated schools last year to fill a $9.7 million deficit. 

Sorenson filed to run as a write-in candidate two weeks before Election Day. The retired educator and current school board president said she’ll find other things to keep herself busy after she steps down.

“I’ve always been, you know, an advocate for public education. So, I mean, I don’t think that I’m going to take that hat off,” she said.

Jeremy “JJJ” Johnson also was not elected. He said in a text message that he’s proud to have received close to 20% of the vote, but he’s disappointed by the results of the ballot propositions and now plans to support his wife’s desire to leave Juneau.

“I can’t justify keeping her and the children here in a community that is steering towards some of the most challenging experiences a school system can face, just because I’m committed to the people I worked with, went to school with, and enjoyed casual time with,” he wrote.

Board members will be sworn in at the next school board meeting on Tuesday.

Juneau School District’s high school graduation rate went up after the first year of consolidating schools.

Superintendent Frank Hauser said at a Juneau Chamber of Commerce lunch Thursday that more than 96% of Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé students graduated in four years last school year. 

The increase followed the first school year after the district consolidated its two high schools. The year before the consolidation, the rate was 93.8% at Juneau-Douglas and 90.44% at the former Thunder Mountain High School.

The rate for HomeBRIDGE, the district’s homeschool program, increased by 5.95% to 75%. And 4.24% more students at Yaaḵoosgé Daakahídi High School graduated in four years, placing the rate at 65.22%.

Hauser did not provide the district’s overall graduation rate at Wednesday’s presentation. According to the district’s annual reports on indicators of success, that number has stayed at or above 80% since 2016.

Alaska has joined more than half of the country in creating artificial intelligence guidance for education as it becomes a larger part of the school day.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development presented a set of guidelines on using AI in school districts last week. It includes recommendations and considerations on topics like cultural responsiveness and security when making AI policies.

DEED Computer Science Content Specialist Anthony White was part of an advisory group that drafted the state’s guidelines. He said at a State Board of Education meeting last Thursday the guidelines do more than just advise school districts on AI policy.

“It positions Alaska to be highly competitive for federal AI education grants and other funding opportunities by demonstrating a clear, unified-level strategy,” White said.

He said the guidelines will prepare students and teachers for a world increasingly driven by AI. A nationwide survey of teachers and sixth to twelfth graders from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that a majority of them used AI during last school year.

The guidelines recommend moving beyond bans. Instead, they suggest developing ways to responsibly use generative AI, which includes software like ChatGPT that relies on large language models to create content. A disclaimer in the document states it was written with help from generative AI to “model responsible and ethical engagement with AI technologies.” 

Board Member Kim Bergey said she is concerned about risks to data security. She wants to make sure more people know how to be safe when using AI.

“I think we need to take a really in depth look at the personally identifiable information aspect of AI, and not just from the aspect of students, but also from that of parents and for staff that work within districts,” she said.

Bergey said young students may not know how to avoid giving out personal information when using AI. The new guidelines recommend teaching users not to share personal information in order to protect data security.

Districts in Alaska currently have guidelines that range from school level rules that mention AI to a district-wide policy in Fairbanks. The Juneau School District has no district-wide AI policy, but the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé student handbook includes AI in its academic dishonesty policy.

The document is currently available on DEED’s computer science webpage.

Juneau School District Superintendent Frank Hauser is resigning.

In an announcement on the district’s app on Friday, Hauser said he will resign at the end of June next year.

“It has been my honor to lead the district during this time,” Hauser wrote. “But after several years of long days, late nights and weekends working, I have decided it’s time to make a change.”

Hauser was unavailable for comment on Friday.

Outgoing Juneau school board member Emil Mackey said he is grateful for Hauser’s dedication to the district and the state’s children.

“The Juneau School Board has been very fortunate to have such a competent and dedicated leader like Superintendent Hauser to guide us through the largest fiscal crisis that this district’s ever faced,” Mackey said.

He said he hopes the board will be able to find another candidate with similar qualifications.

The district hired Hauser in 2023, following the departure of former Superintendent Bridget Weiss. Hauser led the district through a $9.7 million budget shortfall that led to closing and consolidating its middle and high schools.

Hauser has also been a strong advocate for districts across the state against the Department of Education and Early Development’s proposed changes that would have limited how much funding municipalities could give to schools.

Hauser said in his letter he doesn’t have career plans following his resignation but looks forward to being able to make it to dinner with his family more often. 

The Alaska Board of Education unanimously voted to send a proposed regulation change that would have limited how much money local governments can give to schools back to the state education department on Thursday. It comes after public outcry and a change in stance from the department.

The Department of Education and Early Development, or DEED, backtracked on its initial recommendation to the board to change the state regulation that defines what counts as local contribution. That’s school funding that comes from municipalities. State law restricts the amount of funding local governments can give to their districts.

Instead, DEED recommended the board take no action on the change. DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop said the department has been working with district leaders since August to clarify their intentions with the proposal.

“I think just the stress about school funding, a lot of trust isn’t there,” Bishop said. “The department wants to earn that trust back and continue with the work.”

Many district leaders voiced concerns about how it would affect out-of-cap spending. That’s money that local governments give to districts outside of the maximum legal amount. It’s for non-instructional purposes, like transportation, child care and extracurriculars. Many, like the Anchorage and Sitka School Districts, also worried about how in-kind services would be impacted.

The proposal spurred hundreds of written public comments against the change last summer. Several Alaska district officials and parents testified when the regulation was considered in June and again at Thursday’s meeting.

Part of the initial reason for bringing this forward was something called the disparity test —  that allows the state to use federal impact aid as part of its contribution to districts, which can save the state money. The state failed the test this year and in fiscal year 2022. It’s currently appealing the decision. Bishop said during a work session on Wednesday that the department is moving through the appeals process.

But she also said that the focus on the regulation is to make sure districts are following state law.

“We’re not reacting to the federal government,” she said. “What we are, is trying to meet the state statute that calls for that equitable funding.”

In a memo for the regulation when it was introduced in June, Bishop wrote that one of the reasons for bringing the regulation change forward was to make sure it was in line with the federal disparity test.

In his public testimony, Juneau School District Superintendent Frank Hauser referenced a letter from DEED appealing the results of the federal disparity test. The state claimed it would pass the test through a different calculation method, and does not mention local contribution. Hauser said he wants the department to drop this regulation change.

“I am terrified of version 3.0 of this regulation,” he said. “Each subsequent attempt at this regulation change has had exponentially more negative impacts, impacts beyond what the department realizes, even to REAAs, homeschool and correspondent students.”

Juneau officials estimated the district would have lost $8 million in funding if the regulation had gone through. In an email to KTOO after the decision, Hauser said he appreciates the board bringing the regulation back to the department to get more input, but “that action begs the question why stakeholder input was not sought in the first place.”

Several testifiers, including Valdez City Schools Director of Technology Megan Gunderson, also mentioned a back-and-forth between the Anchorage School District and the department. The department posted on social media, calling the information from the district inaccurate.

“When the agency responsible for leading and supporting Alaska schools uses public mockery and personal targeting, that is not communication,” Gunderson said. “It is the breakdown of an essential partnership.”

State Board of Education member Lt. Col. James Fowley only had an advisory vote on the issue, but he said he wanted to ensure the department would come back with a list of districts it engaged with and recommendations.

“In my learning on it, it is going to be incredibly complex, and it’s probably going to vary between every single one of the districts,” Fowley said. “And so for the department, I think you’re going to have to sharpen that pencil and really nug down through this.

In the meantime, the department said it will work with local stakeholders like district leaders and officials to gather more information.

Out-of-state undergraduate students at the University of Alaska Southeast will see lower tuition rates beginning next fall.

The campus is getting rid of out-of-state tuition for all undergraduate students as part of the Alaska Unlocked program. Out-of-state students made up 12% of the entire student population last fall. Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Lori Klein said it is part of a strategy to make UAS more accessible for out-of-state students.

“At UAS, we’re focused on enrollment growth, and in order to do that, we have to remove the barriers, or in this case, through Alaska Unlocked, create the pathway for out-of-state students to join us in this amazing place, at this amazing university, with our programs and our faculty and our services,” she said.

This comes as enrollment at UAS has fallen since 2012, with a slight increase beginning in 2022. Klein says the state’s declining population means they are looking to applicants outside the state to bolster enrollment. And she said they benefit both the university and the state.

“Our out-of-state students have strong retention and completion rates,” she said. “And not only are out-of-state students, not only do they stay with us through completion of, they often then stay in Alaska, and they work in Alaska.”

Klein added that they are also continuing to improve recruitment efforts within the state as well.

Tuition at UAS this year is $240 to $290 per credit hour depending on the level of the course. Out-of-state tuition is currently $600 more per credit hour. Klein says many of the out-of-state students at UAS currently pay 1.5 times in-state tuition under the Western Undergraduate Exchange. That’s a program where students from specific states and territories can pay a lower tuition rate at participating universities.

Separately, the University of Alaska Board of Regents is also considering a 3% tuition increase across the entire university system for next year.

Klein said in an email to KTOO that UAS estimates it will lose about $400,000 in tuition with the change. The campus will need 70 new out-of-state students taking 24 credits in an academic year to make up the difference. 

But Klein said they’re committed to exceeding that goal in the coming years.

“The loss of revenue is a risk, but we, we believe in the quality product that we have, and we believe that this is this school, UAS is a right fit for so many students,” she said.

Klein said the campus has also doubled its recruiting staff. She said three out of the four positions are currently filled, and they are traveling in and out of the state to recruit students. 

The university accepts applications on a rolling basis until Aug. 1 for the following school year.