University of Alaska

The cuts Governor Mike Dunleavy proposed to education funding Wednesday are deep. His proposed budget does away with about 25% of K-12 funding and cuts the University of Alaska system’s funding by 41%. Those numbers have caused education leaders in Sitka to worry.

The cuts to education funding are especially worrisome for the University of Alaska system. If the governor’s proposed budget is enacted, it could mean the shutdown of expensive programs and staff layoffs. At a press conference on Wednesday, university president Jim Johnsen said the cuts could lead to closure of campuses across Alaska.

“This is devastating news for the University of Alaska,” Sitka Campus Director Leslie Gordon said. “Everyone is rightfully very nervous about what’s going to happen over the next few months.”

But it’s too early to tell if the Sitka campus will close, Gordon said, not until legislators in Juneau pass the final budget and the governor signs it. At any rate, she can’t help but worry. With such a big cut being proposed, she says UAS is being forced to evaluate which programs and courses to prioritize.

“We need to be looking at data to programs that have low enrollment,” Gordon said. “Most of our courses here in Sitka are pretty full and our faculty are self supporting in most areas so it’s hard to say. We don’t have low enrollment programs on the Sitka campus.”

The rest of UAS staff are worried too, Gordon said. The Sitka campus employs 44 full time employees and 3 people who work part-time. That’s why Gordon thinks closure of the campus would have a profound impact to the local economy and the community.

“The community in Sitka is on edge over this,” Gordon said. “The campus is on edge. I have been trying to let people know don’t panic at this point. We don’t know if this is going to affect us. We may not know until April or May. We’ll keep going forward with plans to be open.”

The proposed cut to K-12 education was smaller, percentage wise, but the Sitka School District is no less worried. Superintendent Mary Wegner called the Governor’s proposed cuts to public education “unconscionable.”

“If implemented, it will decimate public education in Alaska,” Wegner said. “Overall, this is a 25% cut for the Sitka School District.”

Governor Dunleavy’s proposed budget cuts to public education come weeks after he proposed cutting already-approved school funding by $20 million dollars. That cut has impacted funding to the Sitka School District by more than $187,000 dollars, according to the district.

In his press conference Wednesday, Governor Dunleavy said the cuts will “compel school districts to evaluate how they spend their money.” But that doesn’t justify the cuts, Wegner said.

“I would really like to know what data the governor had that shows that this level of cut to public education would still provide to educational adequacy,” she said. “Just saying we can make decisions on what’s priority to us is not reality.”

On top of that, the district is also suffering from budget constraints brought on by low enrollment projections.

Wegner is unsure about the dollar-for-dollar impact of the latest proposed cuts. It’s too early to tell. But like UAS Sitka, the district is reviewing every line of their budget. Wegner said everything the district spends money on is vulnerable to cuts. That includes cuts to personnel, which make up 84% of the district’s expenses.

“Everything is vulnerable,” she said. “Everything has to be up for consideration as we look at our priorities but it’s way too soon to tell what that would be or what would have the least impact. But you can’t just take a table with four legs and cut a leg off and think it’s going to be functional.”

The budget is far from being final. It will be reviewed by legislators and likely hotly contested over in the next few months, as the legislative session continues. In the meantime, education leaders across Alaska will have to wait and determine their spending priorities.

One of the areas most affected by Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s budget proposal is education. About 23 percent of K-12 funding would be cut. The governor also proposed a 44-percent cut to the University of Alaska system.

During his unveiling of the budget proposal, Dunleavy said education is one of the largest cost-drivers in the state, and that efficiencies needed to be made.

“It’s going to compel school districts to evaluate how they spend their money,” Dunleavy said. “As you know, spending is a local control issue. It’s not controlled by the state. The funding is.”

In a press conference held shortly after the budget was released, University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen stated that in the past few years, the university has already made significant cuts to adjust to smaller budgets.

“We’ve laid off over 1,200 faculty and staff. We’ve cut over 50 academic and degree certificate programs. We have been forced to raise tuition, and we have watched our enrollment decline,” Johnsen said.

He called the cuts proposed by the governor “devastating.” He said the university has never had to deal with cuts of this magnitude. One of the programs that the budget proposal would cut is the WWAMI medical school program.

Johnsen said if the budget proposal goes through, he’s confident that other programs would also have to be cut and campuses would need to shut down.

“I respect the governor’s boldness and his vision for a sustainable and growing Alaska,” Johnsen said. “This budget, however, at least how it impacts Alaska’s university system, guts one of our state’s most powerful tools for realizing that vision.”

In Anchorage, University of Alaska Anchorage Chancellor Cathy Sandeen said in a tweet on Wednesday she would meet with students on Friday to discuss the cuts, and then she’s going to Fairbanks to meet with the other two chancellors in the UA system about how to move forward.

Hi, Seawolves. As you may already know, the governor released his proposed budget earlier today, which includes a $134 million reduction to University of Alaska funding.

Closed captions available on Facebook: https://t.co/JSlNnYCOR8 pic.twitter.com/FZMCYCl9yq

— Cathy Sandeen (@CathySandeen) February 14, 2019

Public schools across the state would see a total loss of about $300 million under the governor’s proposed budget. Anchorage School District Superintendent Deena Bishop said that in the state’s largest school district, about one-in-six Anchorage residents will be affected by these cuts.

“Forty-eight thousand students, 6,000 employees, and that’s not even including parents that come in and out of our doors,” Bishop said. “So we’re a significant piece of what we know as our society here in Anchorage.”

Under the proposal, the district would see a decrease of about $110 million. Bishop said that would take the district back to budget levels from more than a decade ago.

That doesn’t include inflation and rising costs.

“Over 10 years, the increase in salaries went up about 30 percent, but the increase in health insurance went up 160 percent,” Bishop said.

Bishop said in that time period, the district also introduced more STEM programs as well as career technical classes. She said these classes, while beneficial to students going into Alaska’s workforce, are also more expensive, serve smaller class sizes and likely would be the first programs to be cut.

Bishop added that while the cuts would be felt hard in Anchorage, rural districts would have an even rougher time getting quality educators to teach there.

“Even with resources, it’s been hard to attract people to our entire state given the setup of different systems, whether it’s retirement, distance, things like that,” Bishop said. “It’s different in rural Alaska.”

During his campaign and as governor, Dunleavy prioritized public safety and job creation. Bishop argues having a strong education system is vital to those goals, and education cuts run opposite to the governor’s priorities.

The Solutions Desk looks beyond Alaska’s problems and reports on its solutions — the people and programs working to make Alaska communities stronger. Listen to more solutions journalism stories and conversations, and share your own ideas here.

Tarah Hargrove stands before a massive painting. One side is dominated by gray cinder blocks and stencils of guns, the other by a yellow sky filled with birds. And in the center is a giant portrait of Hargrove herself. Her chin is lifted, and she looks defiantly at the viewer, magenta radiating from her hair.

“So my inner narcissist was like, ‘Yay! My face!” Hargrove said, laughing about her first impression of the four-panel mural painted by University of Alaska Anchorage students. Though she’s lighthearted, she knows that sharing her story — her truth — through the artwork is essential.

Last fall she was invited by a professor, Steve Gordon, to tell a group of beginning art students about her life. She started with her unstable childhood: Her abusive stepfather had substance misuse problems, she was raped and she attempted suicide. Despite that, as a young adult she did well in school, started her own business and helped raise her younger sister.

Things got rocky again in her early 20s, and eventually she started using and selling street drugs and ended up in prison. Hargrove said she feels like being open and honest about her decisions, both good and bad, has ripple effects.

“When we’re being honest, and we’re being vulnerable, and we’re being intimate — intimacy is the key to having connection,” she said. And through those connections, people are more likely to care about others and take time to stop and help people. To engage with them.

Hargrove wasn’t always so willing to engage with others or with herself. She said her turning point is illustrated on the mural with the overlapping, seemingly endless images of guns. Before going to prison, she was violently beaten by her ex-boyfriend.

“Like, I got my ass beat so bad it changed my life,” she explained. “And my gun was involved. It was my gun that they used on me, on my head. So it was, I mean, it’s kind of pinnacle (for me).”

She permanently lost hearing in one ear and realized she needed a dramatic change in her life. When she went to prison, she participated in different programs that helped her deconstruct the way she looked at the world and start her path to recovery. She said she started removing the layers of dishonesty and bitterness she used to justify her actions. She wanted to be candid and straightforward.

And those are some of the traits that struck Arlitia Jones when the two women first met for the mural project. Jones is a playwright who took the nighttime art class at UAA because she wanted to learn to paint. She thought she’d be painting flowers and still lifes, not someone’s intimate story of trauma. It made her nervous because she wasn’t sure someone could be truly open about their difficult past.

Jones said Hargrove was not what she expected. “My first reaction to Tarah was when she walked in and I saw this woman, I was like, ‘Wow. That woman doesn’t look like she’s had anything happen. She’s very physically beautiful, and so strong.’”

And then Hargrove opened up about her story and laid out all of the details.

Meeting Hargrove made Jones re-evaluate some of the assumptions she makes about people and their life experiences.

“Now walking around, I’m not going to say that, ‘Oh, I never judge people anymore,’ because I do. Every day,” Jones said. “But just there’s this little voice in the back like, ‘Wait a minute, you know, you don’t know that whole story and how we cover up.’”

Jones said she hopes that when people see the mural, they’ll see Hargrove’s strength and determination. That she has to work hard every day to keep her relationships strong and to care for her daughter, but that she’s doing it. Her story, like the painting, has moved from dark to light.

Hargrove wants people who see the piece to think about all of the young people they meet.

“So you’re going to Christmas and there’s like that one kid who acts like an a˗˗˗˗˗˗, and you’re like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ There’s probably something really wrong with them,” Hargrove said.

She asks that people don’t just write the kid off — like adults did with her.

Hargrove never says her life was hard. She likens her experiences to special access to extra information about the world that helps her connect with others.

“I’m not trying to be like, ‘The quality of my life is better than other people’s,’ but the quality of my life is better than other people’s,” she said matter-of-factly. “Because I’m aware, and I get to love people for real. I have no qualms about that.” She said she’ll take extra steps to help people, even if others judge her for it.

The two women hope this mural and the six others that will be on display around town will change perceptions about the effects of childhood trauma. Because if people receive love and support, their stories don’t have to end with more pain. They can begin again — with hope.

The murals will be on display from Feb. 8 to March 8 by the Downtown Transit Center in Anchorage. In April, they’ll be at the Loussac Library before moving to the Mat-Su Health Foundation in May.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development announced Tuesday that it will continue to recognize teaching license recommendations from the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Education. The decision comes just days after the university’s education department lost its national accreditation.

The state says it will recognize the students who meet licensure requirements during the 2019 spring and summer semesters.

State Director of Educator and School Excellence Tamara Van Wyhe said the decision was made quickly to support students who were blindsided by the loss of national accreditation from the Council for the Accreditation of Education Preparation, or CAEP.

“There are a lot of folks in the UAA pipeline who are finishing up their teacher credentialing programs, and we just don’t feel like it’s fair for those pre-service teachers to be out in the cold, for some of them just months before they graduate,” Van Wyhe said.

Van Wyhe said that while the students will still receive licenses despite a lack of national accreditation, the state plans on providing additional support to them as they move on to their careers.

“There will be something additional that we will offer, either in terms of resources or support, to those teachers and the districts hiring them so that everyone can feel confident and comfortable that those folks are prepared for the classrooms and the challenges they’ll meet,” Van Wyhe said.

On Feb. 4, the state’s Board of Education will take a critical look at the timeline that led to the loss of accreditation and discuss the next steps for the university. Van Wyhe said it’s a serious problem that could have important consequences for UAA’s program.

“It will not be a quick, ‘Let’s look the other way and allow things to keep going,’” Van Wyhe said. “Losing CAEP accreditation is a big deal, and the state Board of Education takes it very seriously.”

State education commissioner Michael Johnson says in Tuesday’s press release that the review is crucial “at a time when Alaska ranks at the bottom of our country in fourth grade reading.”

In the meantime, UAA Chancellor Cathy Sandeen said the university is already looking at options for prospective teachers who will be graduating after summer 2019, including transferring to one of the other University of Alaska campuses.

“Regents policy now limits the number of total credits that can transfer from one to the other. We need to see about getting an exception to that policy for this group of students,” Sandeen said. “So there’s a lot of things that need to happen to help the students make that move. And we are working together with the other universities.”

The University of Alaska Fairbanks and University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau both still have national accreditation for their education departments.

Sandeen also clarified that the loss of accreditation for UAA’s education department is not reflective of the university as a whole — and that UAA is still an accredited institution.

Meetings between the state and the university are set to kick off on Tuesday with School of Education Interim Director Claudia Dybdahl attending a work session with the state Board of Education.

University of Alaska Southeast students working on becoming teachers don’t need to worry about the University of Alaska Anchorage losing accreditation at its school of education.

That’s the word from Steve Atwater, executive dean of the Alaska College of Education at UAS. Atwater helps coordinate University of Alaska education programs across the state, but he has no decision-making authority at UAA or the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Each of the three UAs — Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau — they all have independent accreditation, and so what happened at Anchorage, at UAA, does not impact UAS directly,” said Atwater.

However, Atwater said UAS could feel indirect impacts. The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development announced Tuesday that it will continue to recognize teaching license recommendations from UAA for students who earn teaching degrees this spring or summer. But UAA students with farther to go may choose to transfer to Juneau or Fairbanks to finish their teaching degrees.

And as part of the same university system, Atwater said what happens at one school can make everyone look bad.

“This is kind of a dent in the fender, the UAA dent,” he said. “It’s not something the system wants at all, so it’s something that we’re all gonna have to react to.”

Specifically, Atwater said it could hurt statewide efforts to recruit more people to become teachers.

But while he calls it a setback, he said, “It’s not gonna knock us off the rails. We’re gonna keep going and keep pushing forward.”

UAS is in the middle of the same accreditation process that ended in disappointment for UAA last week. According to Atwater, the Alaska College of Education at UAS will submit a self-study to the accrediting organization, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, next month, and evaluators will visit the Juneau campus in November.

Atwater expects a final decision in March 2020. He said he’s confident the college will earn the accreditation. Its current accreditation, through an older program, is good until summer 2020.

At the University of Alaska Anchorage, 250 students in teaching programs are wondering if they’ll qualify for teaching licenses when they graduate. That’s because UAA’s education program lost its national accreditation late last week. The news has left the university scrambling to come up with a plan and students with a lot of unanswered questions.

UAA Chancellor Cathy Sandeen and School of Education Interim Director Claudia Dybdahl discussed the future of the education department with about 60 students packed into a classroom Monday at UAA — even more crowded outside the door or listened to a livestream.

“You’re asking us to believe in you and what we’re doing in this program, and yet, it’s not there,” said Keith Boswell, one of the students at the meeting.

Boswell said he found out about the loss of accreditation from the news and not from the university. In response, Dybdahl said that the university was only informed on Friday that its national accreditation had been revoked.

Without accreditation, the state of Alaska will not grant teaching licenses to graduates of UAA’s education department. Those include licenses for bachelor’s degrees in early childhood and elementary education as well as master’s degrees in secondary education. It also includes licenses for special education teachers.

Dybdahl said the department was blindsided by the news.

“We were very surprised at this,” Dybdahl said. “We thought that we would be accredited. That was our expectation.”

(Source: UAA School of Education Facebook page)

The agency that issues the accreditation is called the Council for the Accreditation of Education Preparation, or CAEP. Dybdahl said that CAEP is a pretty new accreditation agency, and in their review of the university, they focused most of their attention on assessments and data. She said that is where the university fell short.

“We didn’t really have enough data, consistent data and analysis of data, to meet their criteria,” Dybdahl said.

The earliest UAA can reapply for accreditation is January 2020. The process for this review took two years, but Sandeen said the process may be expedited due to the university’s situation.

In the meantime, university officials will meet with the Alaska State Board of Education & Early Development to discuss waiving the national accreditation requirements for UAA students, citing progress they have made since the review ended last year.

“We will find out the answer on the licensure issue, hopefully within the next couple of weeks,” Sandeen said. “So we know that is important. We need to get that information to our students as quickly as possible.”

Sandeen said she hopes the state will agree to recognize UAA grads as meeting license requirements. The board could also decide UAA cannot admit any new students to its education programs, but current students could finish their schooling. If the board says no to both options, she said the University of Alaska Fairbanks and University of Alaska Southeast both still have accredited education departments.

Kelsey Hernandez plans on graduating in May with a degree in early childhood education. She was frustrated by the answers she heard at the forum.

“So now that we are at the finish line for so many students, it’s just a bunch of smoke and mirrors,” Hernandez said. “And we’re just gonna have to hope that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in some other head shed, somebody is looking out for our best interest.”

Even if the state agrees to issue her a license after she graduates, Hernandez worries it won’t seem valid to potential employers.

Overall, the meeting lasted about an hour and a half. Dybdahl said similar forums have been scheduled with each section of the department, so more information can be conveyed to students.

Dybdahl said she plans on meeting with the state’s Department of Education & Early Development next Tuesday, Jan. 22.