Ketchikan students who don’t speak English as their first language got a win recently. The Ketchikan School Board voted to restore its English Language Learning department at its most recent meeting.

School board member Ali Ginter said that reestablishing the department is a matter of dedicating resources. She said it wouldn’t add an extra cost to the district. 

“We can provide sustainable support for our ELL students without financial strain. We’re focusing on the pivotal role of the superintendent’s appointment of an ELL department head,” she said at the meeting.

PJ Ford Slack is the interim Ketchikan school superintendent. The school board’s vote means that she is tasked with reestablishing the department and organizing ELL instructors. Ford Slack said at the meeting that she wasn’t yet sure what that entails. She said that the district has lost a lot of staff in the last year.

“I am just nervous about not being able to do a good job, especially in light of getting certified people to do ELL. I looked at our numbers, and I understand why that might be a good thing. But I just I need to hear a little bit more about how the committee thought that this would work here,” she said.

English Language Learners’ programs are federally mandated in schools. They support students who are navigating school in a new language. But Ketchikan schools have seen a sharp decline in these resources over the last decade. The department dwindled from half a dozen staff to none. Teachers have reported that the non-native English speakers in their classes have begun to fall behind. 

Board member Paul Robbins Jr. said it was a “no brainer” that resources should be restored but he disagreed that it would be “at no cost.”

“We have to task an administrator to be the head of this thing, which means we have to either pull them from another program or overload already overloaded administrators, because this board has removed so many administrators from the district that we are now so low on them that’s what’s going to happen,” he said.

The vote to restore the department passed unanimously after debate. 

The post Ketchikan school board to restore English Language Learners department in schools appeared first on KRBD.

Sunshine and warm temperatures brought a heat advisory to Juneau and surrounding communities on Monday.

The National Weather Service issued the advisory for Juneau, the Upper Lynn Canal, Gustavus, Hoonah, Tenakee Springs and Yakutat – where temperatures were expected to reach 80 degrees.

It’s the first-ever heat advisory for Juneau and much of the region, though the Weather Service issued similar advisories for the Haines Highway and Klukwan earlier this summer.

Heat advisories are new for Alaska. National Weather Service Forecaster Grant Smith says they started issuing them this year after establishing localized criteria that allows them to distinguish extreme heat conditions in Alaska from the Lower 48.

“We’re just not used to those warmer temperatures, and so we were starting off just working with our state climatologist and local management,” Smith said. “We have a threshold of 80 degrees is our starting point, and then we’ll adjust as need be going forward.”

Smith says Alaskans generally are not used to such high temperatures since they don’t happen very often. That can make it more dangerous for people with health issues and for pets.

“When we get to these warmer temperatures on sunny days, a car parked in a parking lot in the sun, an 80 degree temperature, the inside of the car can reach over 100 degrees in 15 to 30 minutes,” he said.

He also said that many people who have spent time outside Alaska notice that it often feels much warmer here than what thermometer shows. Part of that has to do with the sun’s angle.

“It’s so much more direct on us because it’s so much higher up,” he said. “It’s just all that sun’s energy is beating down right on you more directly, and so it feels warmer.”

Cloudy conditions are expected to return in the coming days, but while the warmth persists it’s important to stay hydrated, wear sunscreen and keep an eye out for heat exhaustion.

Last month’s commercial salmon harvest in the southern Alaska Peninsula was the lowest in four decades, according to the state’s preliminary data for the management region known as Area M.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, fishermen in the Shumagin Islands and South Unimak areas harvested about 720,000 salmon through the end of June — the second-lowest June on record since the 1980s.

Technically, the lowest harvest occurred in 2001, but Area Management Biologist Matthew Keyse said that year was an outlier due to a price dispute that kept many boats off the water.

“There was almost no fishing, so I would say, with fishing occurring, this is probably the lowest harvest in June,” he said.

Now, additional restrictions are further limiting the July harvest in an effort to conserve king salmon. A section of Area M where roughly 65% of the king harvest takes place was closed this week after the fleet harvested 1,000 fish, the limit for kings in the area.

Sockeye salmon, the primary target species, came in at under half a million fish last month. That’s less than a third of the 10-year average.

One possible factor is that the purse seine fleet has been voluntarily avoiding areas with high chum concentrations to support conservation goals. That’s because of record low chum returns in parts of western Alaska.

“They’ve been doing an excellent job of self-imposing these restrictions, and trying to avoid high, abundant chum areas, curtailing their own fisheries,” Keyse said.

Still, he said those efforts alone don’t fully explain the steep drop. The fleet has followed similar voluntary practices for the past three years, and the June harvest has never been this low.

On the other side of the peninsula, Bristol Bay is seeing a strong run that’s right on par with preseason forecasts. That contrast has Keyse scratching his head.

“Unfortunately, my fish crystal ball is pretty fuzzy,” Keyse said.

Fisheries on the southern peninsula include salmon stocks from multiple regions, so Keyse said it’s difficult to pinpoint a single cause. Factors like ocean conditions, migratory routes and stock origin could all play a role.

July numbers, so far, are looking much stronger, but Keyse said it’s still very early and didn’t make any predictions.

Among the 22 mushers who have signed up so far for the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is a longtime backer competing under modified rules.

Norwegian businessman Kjell Inge Røkke’s entry is drawing mixed feelings from the dog mushing community.

“My initial reaction was a billionaire just bought his way into this race,” six-time Iditarod finisher Mille Porsild said.

Companies and subsidiaries owned by Røkke have sponsored the Iditarod since 2018. Røkke has even mushed sections of the trail with dogs trained by 2020 champion Thomas Waerner.

The Iditarod’s new Expedition Program will allow Røkke to race with outside support – unlike other competitors. Porsild said the announcement, which was released at midnight on June 14, caught her by surprise.

“What is it he bought himself into? Where are the rules? What is this?” Porsild said.

In the announcement, the committee’s CEO, Rob Urbach, called the creation of its Expedition Program a “new chapter in Iditarod history.” He claimed it would enhance the sport’s “global visibility, financial sustainability, and cultural outreach.”

Røkke will receive a modified “Expedition Class Finisher’s Buckle” for finishing the race, but is ineligible to actually win.

A spokesperson for the Iditarod Trail Committee said in an email that Røkke’s exemptions from the rules “mostly pertains to no outside assistance.”

Røkke will also skip the requirement to qualify by competing in shorter races like the Yukon Quest. Porsild said that troubled her the most.

“Anybody is not going to go, you know, participate in the Olympics,” Porsild said. “He needs to qualify, like any other musher, and show that he can actually manage a team of 16 dogs.”

Saturday signups

At the June 28 sign-up event in Wasilla, 2024 and 2025 runner-up Matt Hall said Røkke’s name didn’t come up.

“It was a fun day, and that’s how it should have been. I take that as a really good thing, you know, that whatever the little initial drama over it was and et cetera, has kind of passed,” Hall said.

Hall said he was holding out for more information, like how many snowmachines may be running support for Røkke.

“This gentleman isn’t there to take the first-place prize,” Hall said. “We don’t even really understand if he’s gonna be listed officially as a position or just a finisher. It’s information I want to know closer to date so that I can plan accordingly.”

Nic Petit, an 11-time Iditarod finisher, said he hoped Røkke’s inclusion would benefit mushers at the back of the pack.

“I understand you can’t hold volunteers over forever, but the biggest problem is that they can’t keep vets there forever,” Petit said. “But if this guy’s gonna be traveling with his own vet crew, then it’d be great for his vet crew to sign on to helping the back of the packers not have to go home.”

In exchange for being exempted from the full rulebook, Røkke is adding $100,000 to next year’s race purse and pledging $10,000 each to 17 villages along the race’s route. He also halved the registration cost for mushers entering the race and sent some cash to Iditarod HQ too.

Røkke’s contributions only apply to next year’s race, unlike other multi-year sponsorship agreements the Iditarod has brokered. In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Urbach said he hoped the Expedition Program would attract the likes of Elon Musk, Richard Branson or Snoop Dogg. But Petit said he took issue with that model.

“That’s one of the things about this guy, he’s been around the dogs,” Petit said. “I don’t think that you should be allowed to just hop on a sled you lease because you got some money and you know nothing about what you’re doing.”

Røkke declined a request for an interview, but told Norwegian news outlet VG that planning for next year’s race had been underway for over three years.

The U.S. Department of Education is withholding about $6.8 billion in education funding for programs serving students in programs that range from migrant education to English language instruction and gifted education.

A Tuesday estimate from the Senate Congressional Appropriations Committee says that breaks down to more than $47.6 million withheld from Alaska.

Lon Garrison is the executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards. He said that’s about 15% of federal funding the state receives for education. Garrison said the funding loss builds on an overall lack in education funding in Alaska.

“It continues to compound itself,” he said. “We’re losing federal funds to help do the things that we want to get done, and then the state itself is not funding education adequately, so we continue to be kind of hit from all sides, where the funding keeps getting rolled back for public education.”

On Saturday afternoon, downtown Juneau’s Overstreet Park was packed full of protesters. Tahku, the whale sculpture, towered over the crowd that gathered to partake in a No Kings protest — a nationwide protest against President Donald Trump’s recent policies and actions. 

The protests took place on the same day as a military parade in Washington to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. It coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday. Juneau’s protest was just one of thousands of protests held across cities in the U.S., including in many Alaska. 

More than 1,500 Juneauites joined hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Jorden Nigro emceed the event in Juneau on Saturday.

“Today, on Donald Trump’s birthday, he is throwing himself a military parade,” she said as the crowd booed. “A draft dodger who continues to destroy what our service folks sign up to defend.”

She said many of the president’s recent policies and actions are attacks on democracy and human rights. 

“Ripping healthcare for millions of people is violence. Hunger is violence, poverty is violence, and disappearing people is violence,” she said. 

A handful of speakers were invited to talk to the crowd, including Nina Edwards, a master’s of public health student at the University of Alaska Anchorage and a member of the Alaska Native Sisterhood.

“Although we’re a small town in southeast Alaska, I’m alarmed at how deeply and personally we have felt the effects of national policy,” she said. 

She raised an alarm about recent policies seeking to cut back public health funding. Billions of federal dollars could be cut from Medicaid and other government benefits if Trump’s spending bill becomes law.

“One by one, important programs are being dismantled when right now, we need more services and not less,” she said. “It is heartbreaking to be told that programs promoting health for us all no longer align with American values.”

Seasoned protester Jean Shannon said she’s proud to live in a community that embraces activism. Juneau voters were split in the 2025 presidential election. While downtown and Douglas voters overwhelmingly leaned blue, five precincts from the Juneau International Airport to Mendenhall Valley went for Trump.

“I’ve never been this scared for my life, and I protest against the Vietnam War,” she said. “After having lived through the 60s, I can see how momentum builds, and you can effect change when people stand up and just don’t lie down anymore.”

A live band sang an iteration of Bob Marley’s protest song ‘Get Up Stand Up.’ After the speeches, people marched to Egan Drive to continue the protest. 

The Alaska Board of Education unanimously approved new reading standards for Alaska Native languages Wednesday. This means students from kindergarten to third grade can have their reading skills evaluated in an Alaska Native language instead of in English.

The new standards are broader than the state’s current reading standards. This allows schools to fit the standards to their cultural and linguistic needs.

The standards recognize students can achieve literacy in state languages other than English.

Jamie Shanley is the assistant director of education with Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit tribal organization that helped create the standards last year. She said the standards give students learning an Alaska Native language another option to meet reading requirements set by the Alaska Reads Act. But it was a challenge to create the standards.

“That was a really hard clashing of two worlds, a Western ideal of education with this standards based system and an indigenous worldview,” she said. “And so this group really has [a] beautiful way of meshing those two things.”

She said the standards aren’t meant to dictate reading in one of the state’s 23 official Alaska Native languages in a confined way.

The standards also define reading differently. Shgen George is one of the owners of Teaching Indigenous Design for Every Student, an education consulting group. She said Alaska Native cultures do read, even if there wasn’t historically a written language.

“Reading is looking at things and gathering information.,” George said. “And so we really talked a lot about how we have been reading things this whole time. And so we really had these deep discussions about reading the weather and reading our environment and reading our regalia and our art.”

There are Alaska Native language programs and schools all around the state, including the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy school in Juneau.

Several educators from TCLL helped to form the standards. Principal Molly Yerkes said the school already uses elements of the new standards and that they will help schools take the next steps to develop ways to assess reading in Alaska Native languages.

“In Alaska, every community has to develop their own,” Yerkes said. “It’s not like something you can buy in Texas and McDougal Littell, so I think this adoption of these standards will support the creation of quality materials and also hopefully lead to a support for more native speakers of indigenous languages to become teachers.”

She said the TCLL staff are working with researchers to develop assessments for Lingít learners.

Per Alaska Administrative Code, regulations typically take effect 30 days after they are filed by the Lieutenant Governor.

A team of about 10 people just returned from their second trip mapping and surveying the old shipwreck site of the Star of Bengal, about 80 miles west of Wrangell close to Coronation Island. Over 100 cannery workers died when the ship went down.

Local fisherman and mariner Gig Decker first dove at the site in the 90s. 

He’s a member of UChart, Underwater Cultural Heritage Archeological Research Team, which has been investigating the site for a few years. Decker said the team had a goal in mind for this last dive – to recover the ship’s bell. He said a biologist found the bell at the site a few years ago, and they wanted to recover it for conservation purposes.

“For shipwreck enthusiasts, the bell is as important as the anchor,” he said. “It’s a very important part of it (the ship)”.

The Star of Bengal sank during a storm when it was heading from Wrangell back to San Francisco. 

Star of Bengal’s artifacts

The UChart team shipped the vessel’s bell to Texas A&M Conservation Lab with the intention to preserve it at the Wrangell Museum in the future. 

The group wrote about the bell on their Facebook page. It says “Watching it breaking the surface after 117 years under water was an emotional moment. Once the conservation is completed, we will hear the voice of the ship again.”

Decker said they also located other artifacts – the debris pile, the anchor and the chain. But there’s something else that’s more pressing on his mind.

“The thing that we’re more interested in than anything is the fact that the majority of the Asians that died on the wreck were locked in the forward hold,” he said. “And of course, there’s been a lot of testimony both ways about whether they were locked down or not.”

Researchers found that over 100 cannery workers, mostly Chinese, Japanese and Filipino, perished in the boat while roughly 30 mostly white crew members survived.  

“we’re all in kind of the same game”

Decker said he hopes an underwater forensic investigation leads to some answers.

The team researching the shipwreck included the captain of the research vessel Endeavour Bill Urschel, cook and Endeavour Program Director Corky Parker, underwater archaeologist Jenya Anichenko, divers Stephen Prysunka, Gig Decker, Shawn Wells and Kevin Landowne; remote sensing specialists Sean Adams and Tayller Adams.

Decker said UChart is a sister organization to the Wrangell Mariners Memorial, which honors people who’ve died at sea. He’s also a board member of Friends of the Museum, which will eventually help rehome the bell at the museum.

He said, “I think it’s really important to recognize the fact that we’re all in kind of the same game; we’re trying to preserve the memory of the history of Wrangell and the significance to our community.”

Decker said that Wrangell’s history goes back hundreds of years and the stories that UChart is uncovering at sea will help enrich the local museum.

Uchart will put on a talk about this experience at the Friends of the Museum spring membership meeting at the Nolan Center on Thursday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m.. 

The event will also be a potluck.

The post Underwater archeological research team explores more of shipwreck site; recovering Star of Bengal’s bell appeared first on KSTK.

Photo: Sitka election workers deliver ballots from Precinct 1

Sitka voters have overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have capped the number of cruise visitors beginning next year.

Wednesday’s special election brought out almost 3,000 voters, 73% of whom rejected the proposition. This was the third largest turnout for any municipal election in Sitka since 2018.

Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal owner Chris McGraw led the opposition to the proposition. His group, called Safeguard Sitka’s Future, organized early in the process, and even campaigned to discourage residents from signing the petition initiative.

McGraw was heartened by the night’s results.

“I think it, you know, shows that the community understands the benefits of cruise tourism and that the proposed ballot initiative wasn’t the right answer at this time,” McGraw said in an interview with KCAW after the election returns were released at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Although the outcome was a decisive “no,” McGraw is aware that the industry has work to do to address the concerns of the 27-percent of voters who supported limiting cruise visits to Sitka, like acquiring better buses, and refining the terms of a memorandum of understanding – or MOU – with City Hall to make sure the 7,000 passenger-per-day cap called for in that document is met.

“But I think that’s all a conversation that you have with the Tourism Commission, and the public, and everybody weighs in so that we don’t jeopardize the economic impact, but still maintain what makes Sitka great place to live,” McGraw said. 

Although it was not a good night for the proposition’s supporters, one of its authors, Larry Edwards, was glad to have had a chance to put the issue before voters – a process which took him two years, and four attempts.

Edwards said voters were faced with a very narrow choice on a complicated issue, and he does not consider the outcome an endorsement of the cruise terminal’s MOU with the city.

“There’s still the question of what numbers does the town really want, and would the town accept a regulatory approach, or does it really like the MOU approach, which is voluntary and really not that enforceable?” Edwards said.

Initiative co-sponsor Klaudia Leccese was unhappy in the outcome, but hopeful that Sitkans had a better understanding of the issue.

“It’s, of course, like he said, a disappointment, but on the other hand, the people got a chance to vote, and I think that’s really critical,” Leccese said. “Hopefully things will work out in the way that’s best for Sitka over the course of time.”

The final tally on Sitka’s Special Election to limit cruise ships was 773 in favor, and 2,071 opposed. Well over half of the electorate chose to cast their ballots early in this election. 121 absentee ballots will be counted on June 2, but they will not affect the outcome. The Sitka Assembly will certify the results at its first regular meeting in June.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story, and will be updated. 

What you need to know:

• The Mat-Su School Board is considering a districtwide ban on student cellphones and smartwatches during all school hours and activities, including lunch breaks. The ban would start in the 2025-26 school year.
• A yearlong pilot ban at three schools led to significant improvements in student learning and social interactions, officials said.. At Palmer High School, those included a dramatic increase in honor roll students and major drops in drug and alcohol use, reported bullying and disciplinary actions.
• If passed, the policy would be enforced through staff oversight and parent cooperation, officials said. The change also aligns with a pending state law requiring schools to regulate phone use. The policy will go before the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board for a vote later this month.

PALMER — A proposal before the Mat-Su School Board this week would ban student cell phones in all Mat-Su schools starting next school year, including during lunch breaks.

If approved, the policy would prohibit phones for the entire school day. It would require students to turn off and store their phones during all regular school hours.

The ban would also apply to smartwatches capable of sending and receiving messages, including Apple Watches, officials said. Health-related exceptions would be allowed, according to the proposed policy.

The proposal is scheduled for introduction at a school board meeting on Wednesday, with a vote expected at a meeting scheduled for May 21. If approved, the policy would go into effect in August for the 2025-26 school year.

The proposed ban is intended to improve student health and learning, officials said, and expands on a current district policy requiring that student phones be turned off during class and not disrupt school activities.

The plan follows a one-year pilot ban implemented last fall at Palmer High School, Palmer Junior Middle School and Su-Valley Jr./Sr. High School, which officials said had a dramatically positive impact on students and staff.

At Palmer High, Principal Dave Booth credits the policy with a 50% increase in the number of students making the honor roll with a 3.0 or higher GPA. The policy also coincided with a significant year-over-year drop in drug and alcohol use at the school and a decrease in discipline rates, he said.

“We had a 43% decrease in our use of alcohol. Everything else was 70 to 80% as far as discipline, bullying, tobacco or vape use, drug use – all of those things just dropped,” he said. “We used to deal with a cyberbullying incident two or three times a week for years. I think this year we’ve had two total.”

Booth said he links those declines to students no longer being able to coordinate inappropriate behavior through messaging or isolate themselves with devices during lunch and activities.

Initially, some parents were concerned about students’ ability to make contact during the day, Booth said. Today, those parents instead call the office to relay messages. If a student needs to contact home, they can take the phone to the office, make the call or send a text, and then turn it off, he said.

Booth said that parents also initially expressed concern about reaching students during a true emergency, such as an active shooter situation.

But keeping kids off their phones during such an incident could be a matter of life or death because a large influx of calls could overwhelm networks and hinder emergency response, he said. Phone sounds could also draw unwanted attention during such an incident, he said.

If approved, district officials plan to work with staff at each school to enforce the new rule, they said.

The pilot program initially used special locking pouches for student phones, but school administrators found them unnecessary and stopped using them early in the school year, opting instead to enforce the ban directly, district spokesman John Notestine said in a statement.

“We learned it is possible to achieve similar outcomes without the pouches if there is a strong policy in place, paired with consistent enforcement and parent support,” Notestine said.

Mat-Su’s proposed ban also fulfills a requirement included in a school funding measure passed by state lawmakers and awaiting Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature. If approved, that law would require Alaska school districts to develop their own policies regulating phone use during the school day or implement a state-mandated ban.

A draft version of the state policy was approved by the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development earlier this year.

This story was updated May 7 to correctly reflect Palmer High School Principal Dave Booth’s name.

— Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com