A tribal government is filing suit against the state of Alaska, alleging mismanagement of the Sitka sac roe herring fishery. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska has retained a major Anchorage law firm that specializes in tribal advocacy and subsistence issues.

For 20 years, tribal leaders have been worried about the health of Sitka’s herring. The silvery fish return every spring to spawn and are pursued by commercial fisherman, subsistence harvesters and marine mammals alike. As a forage fish, they’re a cornerstone of the ecosystem.

Jessie Johnnie told the story of Herring Rock to the Alaska Board of Fisheries in 1997 — one of a young Tlingit woman sitting on the rock and lowering her hair into the ocean for the herring to lay their eggs.

“All the herring would come to the rock and swim around,” Johnnie said, “and she would sing lullabies to them.”

Herring have cultural, ecological and economic significance for Sitka. But the message to the Board of Fisheries back then was that the herring weren’t spawning the same way in the same places, and subsistence harvesters were struggling to gather enough roe.

Herman Kitka, testifying at that 1997 meeting, feared for the worst.

“If nothing is done,” Kitka said, “we will lose the herring stock that is left in Sitka Sound.”

In 2018, his son Harvey Kitka went before the Board of Fisheries to say the same thing: Act now, or potentially lose our herring. STA proposed capping the commercial harvest of herring at 10 percent. But the board took no action, maintaining a formula that calculates a sliding scale of 12-to-20 percent depending on the size of the biomass.

KCAW’s Emily Kwong spoke with Kitka afterwards. He said he wasn’t surprised by the board’s decision, but he wondered if his father’s forecast was coming true.

“It’s happening right now, what we were concerned about back then,” Kitka said back in January.

In March, the herring fishery opened and ran into trouble. Because the commercial herring fishery is driven by processors, they need fish of a certain quality to market their product, largely to Japan and other Asian countries.

Eric Coonradt, the Sitka area management biologist for the state, said the fish this year  — most of which were four-year-olds — were simply too small.

“The quality with which processors needed to market these fish was 125 grams or better and 11 percent roe or better, and if you look at our forecast, 92 percent of the fish didn’t meet that demand,” Coonradt said.

In other words, they were looking for the biggest and best fish out there but didn’t find enough. The fleet fell over 8,000 tons short of their quota, and the commercial fishery closed early for the fourth time in six years. The fishery is driven by the formula, and Coonradt noted it’s up to the Board of Fisheries to change it.

“Unless we had a biological concern, we couldn’t close this fishery ourselves. What they’d have to do is bring it to the Board of Fish as an emergency petition. That’s their option,” Coonradt said.

Subsistence harvesters didn’t have much luck either.

Jeff Feldpausch is the resource protection director for STA. While his team bagged hemlock branches covered with herring eggs for distribution to elders, he pointed to bare spots on the branches.

“People don’t want trees in their freezer. It’s all about putting eggs in their freezers, not branches,” Feldpausch said. “This is looking grim. This is really grim.”

Although the harvest was insufficient for both commercial and subsistence purposes, the state is preparing for next season’s fishery under the same model. In December, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced they anticipate a spawning mass of 64,000 tons of herring in Sitka Sound, around 9,000 more pounds than was originally predicted — and set a commercial quota at 20 percent of that forecast.

This infuriates the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. On Dec. 11, STA filed a lawsuit against Fish and Game and the Board of Fisheries in Superior Court. They’re not calling for an all-out closure of the fishery; they’re asking for an injunction against Fish and Game, requiring them to develop a new management plan for the fishery prior to the start of the season next March. STA also wants the court to find that the actions of the Board of Fisheries and the Department of Fish and Game are illegal under Alaska law.

In a press release on Friday, STA chair Kathy Hope Erickson called for protection of the subsistence way of life.

“The time is now,” Erickson said, “to ensure our people have the chance to fulfill their cultural responsibilities which have been interwoven with the herring since time immemorial, and to fill their freezers. We cannot sit by while the State of Alaska shirks its statutory and constitutional duties to citizens. We demand action by the state.”

STA has retained the Anchorage law firm of Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP as legal counsel. The state of Alaska has 30 days to reply to the suit.

Editor’s note: Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP is an underwriter for Alaska Public Media.

The Juneau School District has been randomly drug testing student athletes since 2009. But among administrators, students, parents and coaches, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus about its purpose or its effectiveness.

Nine years later, apart from anecdotal reports, there is little hard evidence to show that it’s succeeded in keeping kids off of drugs and alcohol.

The policy originated from a grassroots effort to address growing drug use among high school students. Since then, the district has spent anywhere from $11,000 to $46,000 a year on drug tests. Even in the face of budget cuts in 2013, the district opted to keep the policy in place.

“The feedback from the administrators at the high schools at the time was that, even if they had to figure out a way to administer this process without additional staff, they would figure it out because they felt like it was so important,” said Kristin Bartlett, the district’s chief of staff.

Here’s how it works: A kid will get pulled out of class to take a urine test, and then a technician analyzes it immediately. They test for a range of substances, including cocaine, marijuana, opiates, oxycontin, tobacco and alcohol. Depending on budget constraints, as much as 15 percent of each sports roster is randomly tested, once a week and only while in season.

If the test is positive, parents are notified and the student is asked to produce another sample, which is sent out to a lab for confirmation. Every week the testing service sends the school a report of positive results. The consequences for a confirmed positive test include suspension from sports as well as an online course about the effects of substance abuse. Suspensions from sports range from 10 days to a full year depending on how many times the kid has been caught with a positive test.

(PDF courtesy of Juneau-Douglas High School Site Council)

Jake Jacoby, Thunder Mountain High School’s activities director, described the number of positive tests he’s seen in fours years on the job as steady and low.

“Not very many,” Jacoby said during an interview, adding, “I would say at least half of the maybe eight to ten positive tests we’ve had in the last four years have been tobacco-related.”

But beyond handling these cases one by one as they come up, the district doesn’t seem to be tracking the program’s effectiveness — that is, has mandatory testing actually reduced the number of kids using drugs and alcohol over the years?

“It would be hard for us to measure that with some kind of statistical validity of any sort,” said Juneau-Douglas High School principal Paula Casperson.

To try to compile that kind of data for Thunder Mountain athletes, Jacoby said he’d have to go back through years of hard-copy weekly reports.

“It’s not going to happen anytime soon,” Jacoby added.

Higher-ups have the same answer. Interim Superintendent Bridget Weiss said in an email that “anecdotally we have few positive [test results],” but that the district does not keep yearly records of the number of positive tests. The consensus there is that the district doesn’t have the time or capacity to keep track of year-over-year testing results.

So how do they know it’s working? Weiss says that the program is meant to give kids a reason to say “no,” rather than catch them in the act. That’s something Casperson as well as Rhonda Hickok, assistant principal at Thunder Mountain, echoed.

“It kind of gave kids an out, if they didn’t have the courage before,” Hickok said in an interview. “We know peer pressure is pretty high, and it could be a challenge for some kids to not be able to say no. Well now they had an out that they could say, ‘No, I participate in this program and I could be drug tested, so I can’t do this.’”

On top of that, Hickok said that the district has taken strides to train teachers to identify risk behaviors, including a two-day drug impairment training program for administrators alongside the Juneau Police Department. The school also holds educational sessions with athletes and their parents about the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse.

Another common refrain from administrators is that the drug policy opened the door to a larger community discussion about youth substance abuse.

“It really elevated the conversation, and people opened up about what the problems were, and people shared more information about how to get help and how to prevent it in the first place,” Bartlett said. “That, I think, contributed a lot to the reduction in the incidences that we were seeing.”

Even without hard numbers, Activities Director Jacoby said he’s confident reports of athlete drug use are just less prevalent. “That sort of conversation I don’t hear anymore,” he said. “I think that it’s a pretty serious deterrent to know that, that you’re in a pool of people that could be tested on a weekly basis.”

But talking to kids and parents, you might hear a different story.

At a Thunder Mountain wrestling practice last month, some players doubted the effectiveness of testing, and others weren’t even sure it’s happening. Wrestling sophomore Nate Houston and senior Derek Mason debated the latter point in the hallway outside the auxiliary gym.

“I haven’t heard of anybody on the team getting tested,” Mason said.

“We got drug-tested for football. I just didn’t get drug-tested,” Houston said. “Only just like a few kids got drug-tested.”

“Jacoby at the front office said that no one got drug-tested for football,” Mason countered.

The boys said their wrestling season was about halfway over, but neither of them had been tested yet. Over the phone, Jacoby confirmed that the school’s wrestlers are being tested, but because of the small size of the team, it’s at most one or two kids per week.

Most kids said they wouldn’t change the current system, but they also agree that testing doesn’t prevent kids who want to use drugs from using them. “It just depends on the kid, you know?” said Camden Erickson, a senior at Thunder Mountain. “I think if a kid really wants to do drugs, it’s not going to matter if he’s in season or not.”

The small sample size might actually be part of why some athletes feel comfortable risking it. “I knew some kids that got drug-tested five or six times in a season,” said Trevor Jones, a former Thunder Mountain swimmer who graduated in 2015. “And then like, my last two years in high school, I didn’t get drug-tested at all.”

Beyond the testing, some student athletes say that even the educational part of the district’s drug policy isn’t particularly effective.

“A lot of students, it just goes over their heads,” Sunny Tveten, a senior on the Juneau-Douglas swim team said over the phone, adding, “They don’t pay much mind to it because many of the students who have done it, they know how to work their way out of getting caught.”

How do they work their way around it? Parents, students — and even Jacoby — report that some kids cheat. “They’ll have other people like, pee for them or whatever,” Erickson said. “I mean, it’s hard to cheat, but it happens.”

It’s not clear just how often kids try to subvert the system, but their attitude does throw into question the value of the testing budget. To be clear, even at its highest in 2010, $46,457.50 for the year, the testing budget is a drop in the bucket in a district budget that has grown from around $65 million to over $80 million in the last nine years. That’s one explanation for the program continuing without thorough understanding about what it’s doing.

Merry Ellefson, a Juneau-Douglas cross country coach and parent of a Juneau-Douglas student, said over the phone that she’s unclear on the effectiveness of the policy, but “the money that we’re putting into it is so small right now that perhaps it’s doing what it needs to do.” She noted, however, “We also know that there’s a lot of the young people that have figured out the system, and we know there’s kids in our schools walking around with clean pee … in case they get called out.”

She laughed, adding, “I mean, they’ve figured it out.”

For Ellefson, the bigger issue is making sure kids have a positive, supportive environment in which to get help.

“I’m feeling like, if I have kids on my team caught smoking, I’d rather have them smoking and running than not coming to practice,” Ellefson said. “I’d rather have them with this group of young people that are active and making good choices and traveling with me, than spending more time on their own and perhaps unsupervised.”

At the same time, parents like Ellefson say it’s unreasonable to expect the district to be solely responsible for solving the issue of substance abuse.

“And at the same point, it’s where we are at,” Ellefson added. “We’re all participating … and $11,000 might be an important little wedge in trying to keep our community healthy.”

National studies of high school drug testing programs haven’t shown a strong correlation — if any — between testing and lowered substance abuse, arguing that improvements in school environment may be a more effective use of resources to reduce substance abuse. A 2015 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics denounced “widespread implementation” of testing programs due to a “lack of solid evidence for their effectiveness.”

Drug testing is just one part of Juneau School District’s strategy to address the issue, along with education and outreach resources. But seemingly satisfied with anecdotal evidence, it appears unlikely that administrators will be changing the program anytime soon.

The Farm Bill Congress passed last week will be known for many things. It increases subsidies for farmers and legalizes industrial hemp. But for Alaska, the bigger impact might be what the bill does for fish sticks served in school lunchrooms across America.

The national school lunch program has for decades required school districts to buy American-made food. But that doesn’t always happen when it comes to fish.

“There was a major loophole,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said. “Major. That allowed, for example, Russian-caught pollock, processed in China with phosphates, sent back to the United States for purchase in the U.S. School lunch program.”

Let’s break that down: Rather than buy fish sticks made of Alaska pollock, many school districts buy fish caught in Russian waters that are frozen, sent to China, thawed, cut up, sometimes plumped up with additives, refrozen and sent to the U.S. And it qualifies for a “Product of USA” label because it’s battered and breaded here.

Aside from being bad for Alaska’s fishing industry, Sullivan said the twice-frozen Russian pollock is bad seafood and kids won’t like fish day at school.

“Literally turns a generation of kids in America off of seafood when they have this as fish sticks in their school lunches,” Sullivan said.

Alaska pollock producers have been working on this problem for years. Jim Gilmore, director of public affairs at the At-Sea Processors Association, said up to half of the pollock served in schools now is from Russia. Gilmore credits Sullivan for getting a provision in the farm bill that closes the school lunch loophole, or clarifies what many thought the Buy American requirement meant all along.

“We wanted it to be unambiguous, absolutely clear that product has to be U.S. harvested seafood in order to qualify for food purchases for school when you’re using federal dollars,” Gilmore said.

Gilmore says an exception remains allowing school districts to buy foreign product if it’s substantially cheaper.

“So schools will still have that opportunity if we can’t be competitive on price,” he said, “but we’re confident we can be competitive on price.”

(The school lunch amendment doesn’t change the labeling rule that allows Russian pollock that’s breaded in the U.S. to be sold as a “Product of USA.” Gilmore said that’s a larger fight for another day.)

The pollock producers didn’t fight this battle alone. They joined forces with American producers of apple sauce, canned peaches and dozens of other stalwarts of the school lunch tray.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

Alaska Permanent Fund looks to pay investment managers incentives

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

The corporation and its board of trustees argue the policy could help recruit talented managers. But it’s up to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration and the Alaska Legislature to make it happen.

Sitka Tribe of Alaska sues state, claiming mismanagement of herring fishery

Katherine Rose, KCAW – Sitka

A tribal government is filing suit against the state of Alaska, alleging mismanagement of the Sitka sac roe herring fishery.

Alaska governor examines gas line project before weighing in

Associated Press

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration says the new Alaska governor is learning more about the $43 billion liquefied natural gas project before he sets a course.

Farm bill’s untold story: What Congress did for fish sticks

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.

The national school lunch program has for decades required school districts to buy American-made food. But twice-frozen Russian pollock, processed in China, is on the lunch tray in many U.S. schools. Sen. Dan Sullivan pressed Congress to close that loophole.

Former manager charged with embezzling from village utility

Associated Press

A southwest Alaska woman has been charged with embezzling more than $500,000 from a village utility company.

As Alaska warms, the Y-K Delta heats up even faster

Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel

Regional temperatures are a big deal because Y-K Delta residents can only travel to other villages by water or by plane. In the past the river usually froze thick enough before December to allow for an ice road, but that hasn’t been the case for the last couple of years.

Schools’ need for technology outpacing funding for faster internet

Renee Gross, KBBI – Homer

Technology is becoming an increasingly vital part of education. But in Alaska, getting the right internet speed to support new technology isn’t always cheap or easy.

Seattle’s new hockey team would be the closest team to Alaska

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Seattle is going to have a team in the National Hockey League. For Alaska hockey fans, it’ll be the closest U.S.-based team and one of only two in the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle is going to have a team in the National Hockey League, and for Alaska hockey fans, it’ll be the closest U.S.-based team and one of only two in the Pacific Northwest.

Alaska’s ties to Seattle are already strong in many ways, and former NHL player and coach — and now NHL Seattle senior advisor — Dave Tippett talked with Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove about how hockey could be yet another connection.

Grove: So you were hired before this announcement was made that it was actually going to Seattle. What was that like?

Tippett: It was interesting. I had some people that I knew through my years in the game that had contacted me and talked to me about the project and trying to bring an NHL team to Seattle. I jumped on board and been working towards finalizing that agreement with the NHL and we finally got that the first part of December, so it’s an exciting time.

Grove: What do you think it says about hockey in the Pacific Northwest that Seattle is getting this franchise?

Tippett: I think it just shows the growth of the league. The league, the game of hockey has probably never been played at a better pace or with more skill. Very enjoyable to watch. You know, the NHL is growing like crazy right now in a lot of different markets, and it’s not just your traditional hockey markets, it’s markets that haven’t had NHL. I’ve been a part of Dallas and Arizona, they’re both markets that are growing very, very quickly, and I think Seattle will do the same. And Seattle probably has more of hockey roots with it because they’ve had teams here before. Not NHL teams, but two good junior teams and then had some some minor professional teams in the past. So it’s going to be a great market for the NHL. We’ll have a great rivalry with Vancouver. And, you know, hopefully we can be a team that people in Alaska can jump on board with also and cheer for a team in the Pacific Northwest.

Grove: You know, Alaska has this connection to Seattle sports just generally, and I wonder what you think it means to have a hockey team now this close what it means to Alaska hockey fans.

Tippett: I think it will… we talk about how it’s going to grow the game in the Washington region here, but I think that will continue to grow into the Alaska region, and I know they have some good college hockey. They’ve had some minor league hockey up there, but I think you’ll see that same connection between Seattle and Alaska that in the do you have another sports. I know there’s a ton of Seahawk fans up there and we’d like to do the same and, you know, eventually we’d love to see getting a situation, whether you play an exhibition game up there or a couple days of training camp up there, and really solidify that bond.

Grove: What’s the name going to be? Could it be the — we used to have our minor league team that you mentioned — could it be the Seattle Aces or something? Do we know what the colors are going to be?

Tippett: You know what, if I had a dollar for everybody that’s asked me that, I’d be a wealthy man. They’re still still lots of discussions going on and started with, I there was upwards, you know, over 500 names that were submitted, and I think they’re down, you know, probably between 10 and 20 now, but there’s a whole process you go through, branding, and our ownership, they continue to work through it and try to listen to the fans opinions, and eventually will come to the name you think fits best for everybody. So, if I knew it I’d tell you, but I don’t have a clue right now. So we’ll have to wait for that for a while longer.

The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation wants to start paying its investment managers something called incentive compensation. That would mean that state employees who manage the fund’s investments would be paid in part based on how the fund itself performs. That could help recruit talented managers — and keep the ones who are already here.

The corporation’s board supports the policy, but it’s up to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration and the legislature to make it happen.

The corporation used to have all of its assets managed by outside organizations. But it’s shifted an increasing share of assets to corporation employees, scaling up from 40 to 61 positions in the past four years. This has saved the state money. And it means that they’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately.

The corporation recently had a job applicant for a position managing investments. CEO Angela Rodell said the staff loved him as a candidate, and he loved the idea of moving to Juneau. They topped another job offer he had by $5,000.

“It’s taken much longer to recruit than even any of us would have thought,” she said. “And the first question we get is, ‘Do you have incentive comp, and will I be eligible for it?’”

Ultimately, the candidate took the other offer because it included an incentive worth up to 75 percent of his base salary, depending on how well his investments performed. Currently, the permanent fund doesn’t offer incentive compensation like this.

Rodell said it’s become difficult for the Permanent Fund Corporation both to recruit and to retain investment managers.

“We are on the fourth chief investment officer in the last 10 years, so that’s a pretty high turnover for that position, and that one in particular concerns the board,” she said.

The Permanent Fund Board of Trustees has adopted a policy to start paying incentives, worth up to 50 percent of investment managers’ salaries. The payments would be a small fraction of the $63.9 billion fund. For next year, these incentive payments would be up to $1.4 million.

State Revenue Commissioner Bruce Tangeman, a member of the corporation’s board, said it’s a reasonable discussion to have.

“Obviously, the permanent fund is a rather large endowment,” he said. “And it’s critical that we have the best and brightest managing that on our behalf.”

But Tangeman also said that the proposed spending increase will be scrutinized by state Office of Management and Budget Director Donna Arduin. And she’s looking to cut the budget, not add to it.

“Now that we have a new governor in place, everything will be converging at OMB, and Gov. Dunleavy has made it very clear that downsizing government is going to be critical,” he said.

Bob Maynard worked in Alaska for 17 years beginning in 1975, including time as the permanent fund’s deputy executive director. He’s now the chief investment officer of the Public Employees Retirement System of Idaho. In that system, he used to receive incentive pay, but Idaho stopped it.

He said any incentive system that depends on the legislature deciding whether to appropriate money every year is a problem. Incentives are designed so that if a person reaches a goal, they’ll receive the incentive. Maynard said that will never be certain when a governor or lawmakers could decide not to pay it.

“That is a problem,” he said. “Because if you’re the legislature, you’re sitting there saying, ‘Are we creating a band of aristocrats?’”

Maynard likes the concept of incentive pay. But he said the media and public criticized incentives paid to public employees who managed investments that lost value. That was true even when they did better than the market during the recession a decade ago.

“And it was just too much of a burden on my board, on my chair, on the governor, etc., to have to defend the headlines,” he said. “Because the press will say … it’s a bonus.”

Incentive pay schemes can be complicated. Rodell said the Permanent Fund Corporation avoided that.

“Let’s keep it very simple and straightforward and very tangible for people to grasp that investors making investment decisions will benefit from the positive decisions that they make and they won’t benefit from the negative decisions they make,” she said.

Managers would receive all of their incentive pay based on a combination of how the overall fund performs and how the particular assets that they manage perform. It would be based on performance over the past five years, with more weight given to the most recent year. The formula fits on a chart that takes up half of a page.

The Alaska Permanent Fund’s performance has been good, growing nearly $5 billion more than a benchmark over the past five years.

But Rodell is concerned that it will be a challenge to maintain that level of performance if the fund struggles to hire and keep talented investment managers.

“Not only are we asking people to move to Juneau and to Alaska, we’re asking them to take a significant pay cut from what they would be offered down in the Lower 48. So part of this is for me. It’s more about positioning for new recruits than it is for retention,” she said.

The deadline for Dunleavy’s administration to decide whether to ask the legislature for incentive compensation for the permanent fund is Feb. 13.

Students in Kenai Peninsula schools could soon be forming esports teams.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District activities board considered officially sanctioning esports back in November, but decided to approve club-level teams.

District spokesperson Pegge Erkeneff said the decision to approve club-level video game — or esports — teams came after the Electronic Gaming Federation approached the district about joining a statewide league.

“So that began the whole conversation about the district and potentially any schools or principals (being) involved in the league,” she explained.

The Electronic Gaming Federation sets up both college and high school level esports leagues around the country. Teams compete in video games such as Overwatch and League of Legends.

Erkeneff said that no schools within the district have expressed interest in forming an esports team quite yet, and that was part of the reason the district strayed from officially sanctioning the activity.

“Due to possible budgetary costs and the cuts that might be coming, we decided to keep it at a sport or club activity level,” Erkeneff added.

The approval of club-level status allows schools within the district to use one of a set number of stipends to pay someone to coach and organize a club-level team. Teams could then compete against other clubs in the state, but those matchups would have to be organized by the individual clubs because there is currently no statewide structure for esports teams.

Alaska Schools Activities Association Executive Director Billy Strickland said that could soon change. The ASAA organizes statewide high school sports and activities. Strickland said the ASAA board will consider sanctioning esports in February.

“Sanctioning sets it up for potential state championship competition, if you will, and just some of those things,” Strickland explained. “Kids can now letter in an activity, per se, depending on how the school deals with those types of things.”

Students participating in esports would then need to meet the same grade and attendance requirements other student athletes do.

Strickland said there are club-level teams currently in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and Dillingham that could help start a statewide league. He added that other districts and schools have expressed interest in forming teams as well.

“Homer could be playing Barrow in a competition that doesn’t involve any travel and travel expense and time out of school. I think that’s pretty enticing to schools,” Strickland said. “Also, we feel like this is an opportunity to engage some students and connect them to the school that may not be already participating in something as a school member.”

However, Strickland explains there are some concerns about the number of hours students would spend in front of a computer screen and the types of games they may be playing.

“Particularly anything that involves a first-person shooter game, just because the message that would be sending students,” he said. “But again, some of these games are really the electronic version of chess and involve a lot of high-level thinking skills and are very good for students.”

Both the Electronic Gaming Federation and a similar organization named PlayVS will give presentations to ASAA board members in February.

If the board does move forward with sanctioning esports, Strickland said the ASAA would likely work with one of the organizations to set up a statewide high school league.

However, he doesn’t expect the board to come to a decision until its April meeting.

With help from the Trump White House, a criminal justice reform bill is cruising through Congress. The First Step Act shortens sentences for some federal inmates and provides more opportunities for rehabilitation. It passed the Senate late Tuesday by a vote of 87 to 12.

But both Alaska senators voted against it. Sen. Dan Sullivan cited Alaska’s experience with SB 91. That’s the state criminal justice reform bill the Alaska Legislature passed in 2016. Many associate it with an increase in car theft and burglaries, particularly in Anchorage and Juneau.

Sullivan said it would be great if the federal bill works as intended, to trim unfairly long sentences and increase rehabilitation opportunities without compromising public safety.

“But I have my doubts,” he said, a few hours before he voted. “And right now, the concern about crime and criminal justice reform in Alaska is so high. That’s the main reason why I’m voting against it.”

Sullivan said the national legislation, like SB 91, aims to reduce sentences for less serious crimes, but he says the leniency goes too far.

“I think that was one of the big challenges of SB 91, where some of the – quote – lower level crimes had sentencing reductions, and even going from a felony to a misdemeanor,” he said. “And you saw, in many ways, a significant increase in crime.”

While the Alaskan senators are cool on the bill, the White House and much of Congress is celebrating the bipartisan support for the First Step Act. And in Alaska, SB 91 has its defenders, too.

“There’s not unlimited money and if we’re going to try to have resources for treatment, we have to do something different with non-violent offenders (who) have little criminal history,” said state Rep. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage.

He said Alaska’s crime increase coincided with the opioid crisis and both started well before the Legislature passed SB 91. Claman said a report last month by the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission shows the state’s reform laws are working.  

“We actually have a higher percentage in Alaska prisons of violent offenders and a lower percentage of non-violent offenders,” Claman said. “We have fewer people in prison for simple possession. We have more people in prison for drug dealing. And we’re spending more resources on rehabilitation.”

But amid a highly visible spike in urban crime, criminal justice reform remains controversial in Alaska.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski issued a statement before her no vote saying Congress needed more time to evaluate the bill.

The Senate moved to take up a pkg that could reduce time that drug traffickers & other convicted felons spend in federal prison in the name of rehabilitation. Reforming our troubled criminal justice system deserves the Senate’s full attention & should not be rushed through.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) December 18, 2018

Proponents have been working on it for months, but it got a sudden boost in recent days with President Trump’s support.  

When you think of “fashion,” military uniforms probably don’t come to mind. Practicality and conformity are the point, not the latest styles or trends. But there are some definite gaps in the clothes and accessories available to service-members, and an Anchorage entrepreneur is trying to fill a market demand that’s particularly acute for women in the military.

“This is a gym bag,” Amy Slinker said, showing off a simple black sack inside her small downtown storefront.

Though minimalist-chic, the array of bags, accessories and jewelry are not aiming for high fashion. And that is because in the military, finding something as basic as a gym bag that meets regulations is harder than you’d think.

“You cannot have an obvious logo,” Slinker offered as an example of the many rules governing gym bags. It’s the same for a long list of other everyday objects: card-holders, wallets, purses, laptop cases, backpacks and more.

Each branch of the military has its own voluminous set of uniform regulations. Slinker is an officer in the Alaska Army National Guard, which defers to the Army’s 73-page document called the AR 670-1 for its compliance standards. The details are excruciatingly specific, all the way down to the millimeter diameter of earrings (six). In their rule book, the Navy regulates mustaches to the quarter-inch. Several pages of the Marine Corps’ 247-page handbook are devoted to proper sword presentation, and include an unequivocal ban on any handbags made of “exotic materials such as eel skin.”

For the last few years, Slinker has been gradually rolling out a business called WilCo Supply that caters to service-members and military spouses.

“WilCo stands for ‘will comply,'” Slinker explained. The idea began as a blog rounding up clothing and accessories. In its current form, the business does no manufacturing. Rather it sources bags, brands and accessories from other companies, and vets them to make sure they meet uniform guidelines.

Though she has a small physical store in a downtown office, Slinker doesn’t think brick-and-mortar sales will be the business’s mainstay. Instead, she wants WilCo to be a one-stop shop for, among others, service-members at isolated bases far away from shopping centers, those without the time, ability, or interest to spend hours combing through department stores in the hope of finding compliant items.

“We’re here to supply the force with bags and accessories that meet regulations,” she said.

WilCo is a side project for Slinker, one outside her guard duty and day-job as president of a real-estate development company.

Moving between the civilian, military and business worlds is part of what drew her attention toward the dearth of accessories that fit within the professional standards of each one.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a vanity thing,” Slinker said. “More of just having something that fits the environment that you’re in.”

She pointed out that increasingly, modern soldiering happens through computers and within offices, places where the technology and professional mores have sometimes outpaced the standard issue offerings for carrying cases and outfits. And particularly for service-members needing to make professional impressions at conferences or in the Capital, camouflage patterns and tactical clips are not the right look.

There are some accessories that are uniquely hard for women in the service to find. Formal high-heeled shoes for example, or purses. Dopp kits, a requisite item for deployments, may be aesthetically compliant but lacking the internal design that meet practical needs for women in the service.

“One thing that a lot of women in the military have is a lot of bobby pins and hair-ties because we have to keep our hair in a bun,” Slinker said, showing off a dopp kit with an abundance of internal zippered pockets for said pins and ties. “So this is just one of our favorite items.”

Though no one thinks this topic is the most important confronting the American armed forces, soldiers say the struggle is real.

Abigail Meyer is a veteran who left the Army as a sergeant and now works for the Defense Department, training women who are new to the military. She feels a lot of the compliance codes are reasonable and easy enough to obey. But plenty that left her scratching her head.

“Every now and then when you really start to think about, ‘well, why can’t I have an umbrella?'” Meyer posed rhetorically. “You feel like there’s a little bit of a lack of common sense.”

She thinks a store like WilCo Supply would have been convenient when she was still in uniform, at least to avoid the time and effort of vetting new accessories to make sure they were compliant.

There could be more military personnel looking for that assurance in the near future.

Nearly two decades of conflicts overseas have made for a high operational tempo across much of the military.

“A lot of the basic things like shining your shoes and having uniform inspections, things like that, they kinda went out the window because we were more concerned with preparing for war,” said Katie Vail, a Captain in the Army Reserve, West Point graduate and blogger who writes about, among many topics, fashion for military women.

According to Vail, in recent years there have been renewed calls for getting “back to basics,” including closer adherence to uniform standards.

There are not a whole lot of businesses like WilCo Supply out there, Vail said. Though it’s a niche market, on her blog she called the business an “amazing resource.”

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

Why Alaska’s US senators say ‘no’ to criminal justice reform bill

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

President Trump is congratulating the U.S. Senate for passing a criminal justice reform bill that shortens sentences for some federal inmates. But both Alaska senators voted against it.

St. Paul Island fears losing air service in Ravn purchase

Zoe Sobel, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Unalaska

St. Paul Island could lose all air service starting Thursday and the city fears it will not return until Ravn Alaska’s airplanes are certified to fly over open water.

Alaskans see extended health insurance enrollment period following November quake

Kirsten Swann, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Regular open enrollment closed December 15, but when FEMA issued an emergency declaration in response to the Nov. 30 quake, it triggered something called an exceptional circumstances special enrollment period — and extra 60-day window to apply for health insurance via the federal exchange.

After big earthquake, aftershocks continue to rattle Alaska

Associated Press

Nearly three weeks after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook up Southcentral Alaska, the state continues to register frequent aftershocks.

Alaska man charged in bogus threat against Lafayette College

Associated Press

Federal authorities say an Alaska man has been charged in a bogus online threat that disrupted exams and a graduation ceremony at an eastern Pennsylvania college earlier this year.

Donlin Gold signs deal with AMHTA to protect Cook Inlet wetlands 

Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel

Donlin Gold has signed an agreement with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to protect some of its wetlands in Cook Inlet.

US future in Arctic hinges on expanding its icebreaker fleet, Coast Guard says

Davis Hovey, KNOM – Nome

There’s a heavy demand from scientists to use the Coast Guard’s icebreakers to do research in Arctic waters. But with only two icebreakers in its entire fleet, the Coast Guard’s capabilities are limited.

Anchorage biz supplies military women with practical fashion

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Gaps in the clothes and accessories available to service-members led an Anchorage entrepreneur to try meeting a market demand that’s particularly acute for women in the military.

Anchorage plastic bag ban postponed to March

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Anchorage’s pending ban on plastic bags is getting a slight delay.

Fairbanks borough installs energy-efficient LED lights at recycling center

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

The Fairbanks North Star Borough replaced all the old fluorescent tubes at the Central Recycling Facility Monday with much more-efficient LED lighting. It’s one of several energy-efficiency efforts the borough has undertaken this year that will save taxpayers nearly a million dollars in the coming years.

State flags will fly at half-staff New Year’s Day for Skagway Mayor Monica Carlson, 61. The mayor and her mother were struck by a bus in a crosswalk in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night.

Carlson and 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams were sightseeing in Washington and staying in a downtown hotel. They toured the White House on Wednesday. That night, shortly after 9:30, they crossed Pennsylvania Avenue at 7th Street NW. That’s just north of the National Mall, about halfway between the White House and the Capitol. Police say a tour bus turning onto Pennsylvania hit them. The weather was good and the intersection is well lit, so the cause of the collision wasn’t immediately clear.

“Eyre Bus, Tour & Travel wishes to express their sorrow and sympathy for the family,” said Melanie Hinton, director of communications for the American Bus Association. She said the bus company is cooperating with the police investigation.

“As for details, there were no passengers on the bus at the time of the accident,” Hinton said, speaking on behalf of the bus company. “The seasoned driver has been with Eyre for 18 years.”

Both Alaska senators say Mayor Carlson did not pay an official visit to their offices this week. A spokesman for Sen. Dan Sullivan says his staffers helped her get a tour of the White House, as they do for other visiting Alaskans who apply in advance.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she met Carlson one busy summer day in Skagway.

“Here she is on a Saturday afternoon, standing up in her office,” Murkowski recalled. “It was one of those conversations where we talked about all the business of the city and the issues and the concerns while she’s juggling multiple balls.”

They bonded over a shared political experience: Carlson pointed out that she was elected as a write-in on the ballot, just as Murkowski was in 2010. Murkowski says she was impressed with Carlson’s dedication.

“Skagway, even as a small town, has some issues that divide them. She was really working very, very hard to knit together the differing views in a small community,” Murkowski said. “Everybody has to live with one another and work with one another. And she just seemed so, so perfectly suited to do just that. So our hearts are very heavy for the people of Skagway.”

Carlson and Adams are the 11th and 12th pedestrian fatalities of the year for Washington, according to an unofficial list compiled by traffic safety advocates.

The Washington Post reports that two women died at the same intersection in 2007. They were also hit by a bus. The driver in that case was convicted of negligent homicide.

More than six weeks after the election, the Alaska House of Representatives still doesn’t have a majority. It’s taking longer to organize a majority caucus this year because the House has almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans (and one race that’s still unresolved).

The delay means lawmakers don’t know their committee assignments. They also don’t know how many staff members they can hire, and which Capitol office they’ll have.

Former lawmakers say there are pitfalls of organizing a closely divided House.

Craig Johnson is a former representative who was in charge of office assignments as the House Rules Committee chairman from 2011 to 2016. The Anchorage Republican said House members will start to feel pressure as they move closer to the session. It’s particularly tough for the people who want to be their aides, who have to wait to see if they’ll have a job.

“The people that have to move to Juneau – that’s where … I think, the real problem is,” Johnson said. “There are already some people on their way down. And so you got people that are in kind of a no man’s land, not knowing if they get there, if they’re going to have a job. Should they leave? Should they not?”

Johnson noted that Alaska could have a situation where the House is evenly split. That happened in Oregon in 2011, when there were Republican and Democratic co-speakers who shared power.

But he said that even if there’s a narrow majority, it may be difficult for it to get things done.

“The majority, as slim as it is, regardless how it forms, the committees are going to be evenly split,” Johnson said. “It’s not like where you’ve got the ability for anybody to miss a day.”

It’s taken time to organize a majority before. The most noteworthy instance was in 1981, when the House didn’t organize until the 22^nd day of the legislative session.

Sally Smith said there may be lessons from that time that today’s lawmakers can learn from. She represented Fairbanks as a Democrat, and was the rules committee chairwoman once the House organized that year.

At the time, the Democrats had 22 members. But they couldn’t agree on who should chair the Finance Committee. And once they formed an organization, some newer and rural Democrats still felt their voices weren’t heard.

“You really need to have leadership that takes into account every one who is at the table, regardless of their political party. And tries to accommodate … not so much what they want to take from the table, but what they bring to the table,” she said. “And then we get to a system that starts to work as it should.”

The narrow Democratic majority wasn’t stable during that session. In June, four Democrats left the caucus and joined with 16 Republicans and two Libertarians to overthrow the majority that Smith was a part of.

“There was a lot of talent and it was really unfortunate that … the organization as it turned out, just didn’t keep their perspective,” she said. “I think we all started out on the right track. But we got perhaps full of ourselves.”

Smith said majorities work best when all of the members are treated equally. It also helps if there’s a limited number of goals they all agree on, rather than having the leaders dictate the goals.

“On the Democratic side, it was, ‘we’re going to tell you guys what to do. You’re just supposed to fall in line.’ And on the Republican side, it was, ‘Where do you want to go?,’” Smith said. “And they said, ‘We want to hold the leadership.’ And they developed their plan and they executed it. And they executed it well.”

The first day of the session will be Jan. 15.

A year after Congress voted to allow oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Trump administration is taking another step towards making it happen.

The Interior Department announced Thursday that it’s releasing the draft environmental review for the planned oil leasing sale in the refuge’s Coastal Plain.

“An energy-dominant America starts with an energy-dominant Alaska,” outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement.

Alaska leaders celebrated the step, which keeps Interior on track to hold a lease sale next year. But it was immediately condemned by environmental groups, which issued statements blasting the over 700-page draft within minutes of its release. They say it threatens polar bears, migratory birds, the Porcupine caribou herd and other species that live in the Refuge.

When finalized, the environmental review will guide where and how oil leasing should happen in the Coastal Plain, also known as the 1002 area. It makes up 1.6 million acres in the 19-million-acre refuge.

“Alaskans have anticipated the release of the draft environmental statement for decades,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement. “We are eager to inform and educate our fellow Americans that it will be done utilizing the highest environmental standards and safeguards to protect its land, waters and wildlife.”

In a call with reporters before the review’s release, top Interior official Joe Balash — a former Alaska commissioner of natural resources — said he is looking forward to the results of an oil lease sale.

“There aren’t many basins on the planet where we have a very high degree of confidence that there’s significant hydrocarbons that haven’t been explored yet,” Balash said. “There’s going to be, we expect, significant industry interest in being a part of finding out what’s there.”

Balash said that the oil leasing options in the draft protect the Porcupine caribou herd’s calving habitat.

He also stressed that Interior consulted with Alaska Native communities while writing the draft. Balash said he personally met with Gwich’in representatives in the village of Venetie, from whom, he said, “I could not have received a warmer greeting.”

“My message to them was straightforward: that I was not there to convince them, I was not there to change their minds,” Balash said, “But I wanted to know everything they could share to help us craft a better plan than we would without them.”

The vulnerability of the Porcupine caribou herd is one of the main reasons conservation groups and Alaska Native Gwich’in people oppose oil development in the refuge. They argue any oil drilling there threatens the herd.

Those groups expressed immediate alarm about the leasing program spelled out in the draft. Lois Epstein with the Wilderness Society in Anchorage said she was surprised by how much acreage could potentially be put up for oil leasing.

“In no way can we argue that this is going to be protective of the wildlife there,” Epstein said. “The caribou that arrive there every summer after they’ve been calving are going to encounter enormous amounts of infrastructure. It’s devastating.”

Alternatives laid out in the draft envision nearly all of the 1.6 million-acre coastal plain being offered for oil leasing. But at any given time, no more than 2,000 surface acres could contain infrastructure.

Epstein said environmental groups are waiting until the final record of decision on the oil leasing program is released to pursue potential legal action. But Epstein added their ultimate goal is to convince Congress to reverse its decision to allow drilling in the refuge.

“What we’re doing now is trying to limit the damage before that can occur,” Epstein said.

In the 2017 tax cut legislation, Congress required that each lease sale in the Coastal Plain should offer “not fewer than 400,000 acres” up for bid to oil companies.

A 45-day public comment period on the draft starts December 28.

This post has been updated.

St. Paul Island could lose all air service starting Thursday and the city fears it will not return until Ravn Alaska’s airplanes are certified to fly over open water.

Ravn Alaska purchased PenAir this fall at auction for $12.3 million more than a year after the aviation company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“We’re in a situation where [because] the transition and possibly no planes available to PenAir Ravn to fly out to St. Paul, that we’re going to have a lapse in service,” said St. Paul Island City Manager Philip Zavadil.

A statement from Ravn said they found out Dec. 13 that the Saab 340 they planned to lease from former PenAir CEO Danny Seybert to fly to St. Paul will not be available, but they are working to get their aircraft certified to fly to the island as soon as possible.

Between now and February — when Raven’s Dash 8’s are expected to be certified to fly over water by the Federal Aviation Administration — Zavadil said there are nearly 500 passengers scheduled to fly to and from St. Paul Island.

For the past two days, community leaders from St. Paul have been in talks with the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as Ravn and PenAir in an effort to keep their flights running over the holidays.

“I find it unfortunate that the community’s been put in this position,” Zavadil said. “That we’re the ones that are having to address this, and make calls, and find out what’s going on when the airline is the one that has the legal responsibility to provide the service.”

Zavadil said Trident Seafoods has already set up charters to fly in about 240 workers for the snow crab season and St. Paul Leadership is exploring that option as well to ensure community members can travel over the holidays.

The attorney for the trustee overseeing the PenAir sale, Michael Markham said, “as always, it is the intention that the route to St. Paul will continue uninterrupted.”

The aim is to finalize the sale by the end of the year.

Construction is underway for an assisted living facility in Unalakleet, the first building of its kind in the entire Norton Sound region.

Robert Dickens is the project manager for this new facility, which is being spearheaded by the Native village of Unalakleet.

“There’s a total of ten rooms for occupants,” he said. “Two of them are independent living, and the other eight will be for those that have Alzheimer’s or dementia problems. And then we will have two to three personal care attendants [working] ‘round the clock.”

According to Dickens, the Native village has been working to provide services for elders in the region for the past 15 years or so. It is not necessary for a full-time doctor or nursing staff to be at the facility, so Norton Sound Health Corporation will only be a partner in the project as needed.

“What brought a lot of this on is Unalakleet and many of the Norton Sound villages have seen their elders when they get to the point where they can’t receive care from their family, then they get shipped off to Soldotna, Anchorage, Fairbanks and different places, and they deteriorate pretty quickly in that scenario,” he said.

As Dickens states, just because the region’s elders are old in years, they still have things to offer their families and communities. So this new assisted living facility in Unalakaleet will give elders in the region an option to receive services in a location closer to their home communities.

Dickens mentions that even though it’s not his realm of expertise, he believes the assisted living facility will be operated similarly to Quyanna Care Center in Nome when it comes to choosing residents and occupants for the ten available rooms.

The project is estimated to cost $7.7 million, so Dickens has been requesting funds from several organizations, including Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation, Norton Sound Health Corporation, and Bering Straits Native Corporation.

Last week, the Rasmuson Foundation joined the list, by awarding the project $649,730. Todd Shenk, a senior program officer at the Rasmuson Foundation, says the assisted living facility was given a Tier 2 grant from the Foundation because of the need it will fill in Unalakleet and the region.

“We do believe that all Alaskans deserve to age in their own communities and be with family in their home community,” he said. “This project will allow elders from Unalakleet and other villages in the region to stay at home when they need a little extra assistance.”

During the Rasmuson Foundation’s latest board meeting in November, the Foundation selected almost 20 projects across the state to award funds to, including Kawerak, Inc. According to the Foundation, Kawerak’s Head Start building in Nome will receive roughly $260,000 to expand its program and serve more children.

The Unalakleet elders’ assisted living facility project is not fully funded yet, but project manager Dickens says he hopes to find other block grants and is anticipating the facility will be completed by fall of 2019.

According to Dickens, the construction crew on the project, with 40 percent of its force being local hires, is taking a break for the holidays. Construction should resume in January or early February.

Donlin Gold has signed an agreement with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to protect some of the trust’s wetlands in the Cook Inlet area.

The company is trying to develop one of the biggest gold mines in the world in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The mine, if built, would disturb 2,800 acres of wetlands. Because Donlin can’t restore all of those wetlands, it is required to protect wetlands somewhere else.

This agreement is a big deal for the company if it develops the project.

“Basically what this does (is) we purchase the conservation easement on a portion of the Chuitna River — I think we’re talking 2,000 acres — so that restricts its use from any kind of development, so it protects that habitat,” said Kurt Parkan, spokesperson for Donlin Gold.

Donlin Gold just finished a lengthy — and expensive — environmental review that was led by the Army Corps of Engineers.

As part of that review, Donlin Gold had to lay out its plans to restore or mitigate the wetlands it would disturb. To meet mitigation requirements for the Army Corps and the state, the company proposed to protect wetlands somewhere else in Alaska, like this agreement with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority is a state corporation that manages a trust that benefits Alaskans with a broad range of mental health issues. And part of that trust includes 1,000,000 acres of state land.

The trust said this is the first such agreement with a corporation. The Trust Land Office — which the trust contracts to manage its lands — divides the land into different categories of development, and one category allows corporations to sign these “mitigation” agreements to help meet environmental requirements.

Wyn Menefee, who is the director of the Trust Land Office, said the agreement that Donlin just signed with the trust is complicated.

“Donlin hasn’t actually purchased the whole deed restriction yet,” Menefee said. “They’ve purchased an option for purchasing a deed restriction, so essentially what we’ve done is we’ve said, ‘We will keep that available for you.’”

Under the agreement Donlin agreed to pay $200,000 to the trust, plus additional money each year for 10 years. That buys Donlin time to decide whether or not to go through with the mine.

If they do go ahead with the mine, Donlin will pay $1.3 million to the trust to preserve those 2,000 acres for 99 years.

This agreement isn’t the only one Donlin has made, or will make, to mitigate impacts from the mine. Donlin also signed an agreement with the Tyonek Native Corporation for a conservation easement on 4,000 acres of land. And Donlin plans to sign another agreement with the Great Lands Trust to purchase nine credits — the equivalent of nine acres — to protect 4.5 acres of wetlands in the Mat-Su Borough.

Anchorage School District teachers have a new contract after months of negotiation. While there’s been a lot of focus on the salary increases, many teachers are just as interested in a change that allows for more flexibility in developing lessons.

Nicole Holta is a second grade teacher at Scenic Park Elementary School. She has more than a decade of experience teaching reading to her class. She says she’s always followed a curriculum, but she used to have the freedom to introduce activities or supplemental materials to focus on individual student needs. A year ago, the school district mandated a new reading curriculum — which includes priority plans and scripts for the lessons. Holta says there wasn’t a lot of room for interpretation.

“When we were trained on the materials, it was the expectation that we follow them,” Holta said.

The district implemented the changes in an effort to boost reading test scores in the district. District-wide, about 54 percent of Anchorage students had below average reading scores during the last statewide standardized test.

Holta’s colleague Jennifer Kueter understands the idea behind the new curriculum. But she says in practice, it wasn’t working for most of her first grade students.

“So, your high [performing] students, this is a skill they already know, are forced to sit through it and get bored and get antsy,” Kueter said. “And then your struggling kids, they just kind of tune out because they know it’s gonna be hard. And they’re just gonna let the high kids choral answer, it’s all choral answer, we all repeat together. Well they just don’t answer.”

Kueter says there were some benefits to more deliberate curriculum. But she lacked the freedom to adjust her lessons to individual student needs.

Superintendent Deena Bishop oversaw similar curriculum changes when she was the superintendent of the Matanuska Susitna Borough School District. On standardized tests the district went from being the worst performing district among the five largest districts in the state, to the highest performing for the last two years.

Bishop says the Anchorage curriculum was made with participation from about 60 teachers from around the district.

“When we discussed the issues, it’s about are we teaching kids the standards for which they need to learn to move to the next grade level,” Bishop said.

The lesson plans and scripts received a lot of backlash from teachers. During public testimony at Anchorage School Board meetings this fall, teachers spoke for hours about the negative impacts they felt they were seeing in their classrooms. During one meeting, teachers staged a walkout to illustrate their frustration. All of this was happening while the Anchorage Education Association, the union that represents teachers, negotiated new contracts with the district.

Union president Tom Klaameyer says that the new contracts do a better job of providing academic freedom to teachers.

“We got specific language in here to make sure that teachers can modify curriculum according to their students learning styles and needs, and respond in real-time, right now, to what the students need at the moment,” Klaameyer said.

The contracts add language that says teachers have more freedom to frame their lessons. The curriculum isn’t different, but teachers have a little more flexibility to add different materials that relate to their lessons, or do more small-group exercises to focus on individual student needs.

Additionally, a new section of the contract allows for committees to be created that would present new academic recommendations to the Superintendent. The committee would be made up of union-appointed teachers.

Superintendent Bishop is happy with the changes. She says the new contract allows for a better balance between the art of teaching and the science of learning.

“It’s honoring and understanding that art of teaching and people bringing their profession and their expertise to the table. And also looking at data of kids,” Bishop said.

Scenic Park teacher Jennifer Kueter say she’s optimistic the new contracts will help give teachers some much needed flexibility.

“The academic freedom doesn’t say, I can do whatever I want to,” Kueter said. “I mean it really is small in what they’re saying, but it is allowing us to have some choice. And it is allowing, I’m hoping, to work in small groups, to do some of those things we’ve always been doing.”

Most of the new contract changes will start to kick in once students and teachers get back from winter break next month.

It was standing room only at a question-and-answer session for Eagle River residents still recovering from the November earthquake. Local, state and federal officials were on hand to give information on how property owners should be filing damage claims, and what comes next.

Around 200 people crowded into the gym at Alpenglow Elementary, some spilled out beyond the doors and into the hallways, craning their necks to hear the meeting.

Eagle River resident Jesse James had lots of questions for officials.

“We had complete foundation failure,” James explained after the meeting.  “We’ve got doors that are cocked sideways, windows cocked sideways everywhere.”

Their home got a red tag from inspectors, deeming it uninhabitable. The family of five is currently splitting two hotel rooms.

“We’re just waiting for answers,” James said.

He thought the Q-and-A with officials was helpful once it ended and he could talk to people one-on-one to get advice. But he and his family are still in limbo. They have to check out of their hotel by January 6th.

“At that point we may move into the temporary housing side of things where we might have a rental house or, I dunno, we may have to see if we can buy another house,” James said. “I’m not sure what the options are yet, we’re still waiting it all out.”

Even though much of the major infrastructure damage in Anchorage is fixed, residents and public officials are realizing it will be a long road to full recovery.

Eagle River and Chugiak were hit hard by the quake. Two schools are closed, forcing students to relocate to new classrooms in different schools. That’s bringing all kinds of new problems with busing, schedules and school breakfast programs.

According to Municipal Manager Bill Falsey, Anchorage is navigating a recovery effort like this for the first time in recent memory.

“The city generally has pivoted pretty successfully through the initial response phase, and now we’re dealing with the aftermath. And it is a new process to all of us. People are having to grapple with where they can sleep if their home is red-tagged tonight and what they’re going to do to finance some of the needed repairs,” Falsey said.

As the state catalogs damages for its accounting of the earthquake’s aftermath, residents are still waiting for an official disaster declaration from the Trump Administration that would allocate federal funds for recovery.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

Trump administration takes next step towards oil lease sales in ANWR

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

One year after Congress voted to allow oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Trump administration has taken another step towards making it happen.

Skagway mayor and her mother die after hit by DC tour bus

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

D.C. Metropolitan Police say 61-year-old Monica Adams Carlson of Skagway, and 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams of Washington state were struck in a crosswalk on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Skagway responds to the loss of Mayor Monica Carlson

Claire Stremple, KHNS – Haines

Skagway Mayor Monica Carlson and her mother died in a traffic accident last night in Washington D.C. Residents and city leaders are grappling with their loss.

Alaska regulators approve rules for onsite marijuana use

Associated Press

Alaska regulators have approved rules for onsite consumption of marijuana at specially designated shops, a significant step for the cannabis industry in the state after years of debate.

What does the Dunleavy administration mean for the proposed Pebble Mine?

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage and Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

Officially, Gov. Mike Dunleavy is not taking a position on the mine, unlike his predecessor, Gov. Bill Walker, who opposed it. But the new governor is already making moves that have encouraged the mine’s backers and worried its opponents.

Judge backs Alaska elections division in disputed recount

Associated Press

A Superior Court judge says the Alaska Division of Elections properly recounted a state House race in Fairbanks that ended with a one-vote margin between the candidates.

Former House members see pitfalls to narrow split, point to lessons

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

The split is particularly tough for the people who want to be legislative aides, who have to wait to see if they’ll have a job.

Crowd packs Eagle River school for quake recovery update

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Local, state, and federal officials were on hand in Eagle River to give information on how property owners should be filing damage claims, and what comes next.

Anchorage School District teacher contracts include updates for ‘academic freedom.’ What does that mean?

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Anchorage School District teachers have a new contract after months of negotiation. While there’s been a lot of focus on the salary increases, many teachers are just as interested in a change that allows for more flexibility in developing lessons.