For eighteen years, Leonardo DRS has consistently delivered cost-efficient, reliable, and scalable information and communication technology solutions throughout Alaska’s remote and challenging environments.

School safety has never been more important. As students and staff continue to adjust learning and living amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, school safety is a top priority.

Often, we focus on the physical, and not the mental, aspects of safe learning environments. With student and staff mental health being significantly impacted by the pandemic, administrators can provide simple, easy-to-use safety tools that mitigate crisis and help individuals receive support.

In an effort to balance safety and the desire to gather and learn from each other in person, attending the 2021 AASB Annual Conference requires one of the following three items:

The MacKinnon Educational Excellence and Human Recognition Award was established in 1985 by the Alaska Association of School Administrators to recognize Don MacKinnon's service to education in Alaska and honor his work to forge professional relationships on behalf of Alaska’s young people,

The award is presented each year to Alaska school board members who have provided meritorious service to their school districts and communities.

Don MacKinnon was born in Juneau on February 12, 1933 and grew up in various Southeast communities. He attended grade school in Wrangell, and graduated from Juneau Douglas High School in 1951.

In the mid-1970s Don was hired as Superintendent of schools in Cordova where he worked for two years before returning to Juneau in 1976 to accept a position at the Department of Education assisting rural districts establish and develop their schools.

When the REAAs were formed in 1976, the Department of Education assigned experienced educators to help the brand new school boards get organized, hire staff and form policies. My district, Alaska Gateway, was fortunate to be assigned to Don MacKinnon.

I have had the opportunity over the years to work with and get to know personally some really good people. And as I reflect on those relationships, I find that there are some who truly stand out as special— individuals who have been helpful to me and have made a lasting positive impression on me.

The clerk of a local government meeting or the secretary on a nonprofit board has a high calling.

While there is a lot to be said about direct student engagement, the School Climate and Connectedness Survey (SCCS) can be another great way to understand youth perspectives.

Federal regulators could approve the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5-11 in a few weeks. And the Biden Administration announced Wednesday it will have enough shots for every eligible child in the country.

Meanwhile, the state of Alaska is working on a plan to make sure kids can get vaccinated as soon as possible.

The state’s education department calls the lack of teachers in Alaska an emergency issue and says the pandemic is only making things worse. It’s willing to pay up to $300,000 to figure out how to attract — and keep — more teachers in the state.

Teachers and the union support the move, but they say the number one reason they’re leaving is pretty obvious.

Facing the loss of key visitor-based revenue streams, we announced last July we were on the verge of closing our doors. In response, you showed us that losing the Alaska SeaLife Center was not just another loss you’d allow during the pandemic. So you rallied and kept us alive. Today, we’re writing to say thank you.

For much of September, the “devious licks” TikTok challenge drove young people to rip soap dispensers off bathroom walls, steal random classroom items and even remove entire toilets from their stalls. Some students have been criminally charged for partaking in the challenge, and TikTok has attempted to scrub videos and hashtags associated with the trend from its platform.

The Anchorage School District and thousands of its teachers and support staff are at odds over contract negotiations that have dragged on since the last school year. More than 3,000 teachers and others represented by the Anchorage Education Association, and about 1,300 educational support staff represented by TOTEM Association of Educational Support Personnel, have been working under three-year contracts that expired in June.

Tess Williams, Anchorage Daily News

A student was arrested Friday afternoon after threatening on social media to “shoot up” West High, the Anchorage Police Department said in an alert. A school resource officer assigned to the school responded after a staff member reported the threat, police said. The school went into “stay put” mode while the threat was investigated, and within minutes it was determined the school was in no danger, Gustafson said.

Klukwan families and community members are urging the Chatham School District to address the causes of its low enrollment ahead of a possible November vote on whether to close the school. They talked with board representatives at an emotional community meeting last week via Zoom. Recommendations for saving the school included hiring a permanent head teacher, repairing the school bus and creating stability for the school community to draw students and families back.

The grant, “Innovative Approaches to Literacy” will be spread out over five years and used to fund a project that the district calls “LINKED.” That stands for Literacy Innovation for Neighborhood Kids’ Education Development. Superintendent Jason Johnson laid out several goals and activities in emails to KDLG that included a PowerPoint for the project.

After deliberations during a special school board meeting, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District has announced the appointment of Karen Melin as interim superintendent for the 2021-22 school year. Melin is currently the Deputy Commissioner for Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, and previously worked for FNSBSD as a District Mentor, Intervention Specialist, and Assessment Coordinator.

The bus driver shortage: Searching for a solution

Haines school district will keep its COVID policies in place. That was the consensus reached by the school board as the community comes out of another wave of coronavirus cases. COVID-19 cases surged in Haines last month reaching as high as 43 active cases in a town of about 2,000 people. There were at least four cases on campus and dozens of close contacts have had to quarantine since the start of school. Masks are required on campus, and the school provides rapid asymptomatic COVID testing for students, staff and some families that homeschool their kids.

Getting sworn into office is a little trickier during a hybrid meeting that’s happening in person and virtually, but Juneau Superior Court Judge Amy Mead made it work for the newly elected and re-elected members of the Juneau Board of Education. Mead swore in new members Will Muldoon and Amber Frommherz, and Elizabeth Siddon, who was re-elected to her second term and will continue to be the board president.

The Juneau Board of Education adopted a land acknowledgment during a recent meeting. It will be used during all future meetings of that board. The acknowledgment is intended to express appreciation and celebrate the context of the indigenous presence and history in the community.

The Ketchikan School District will return to operating at the high risk level of its Start Strong COVID-19 mitigation plan through Saturday after one week spent at the substantial risk level.

There were a total of 104 active cases in Ketchikan on Friday, measuring above the 50-case threshold that would keep the district at the substantial risk level, according to the Start Strong mitigation plan guidelines.

The amount of money needed to pay for maintenance projects in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is more than three times what it cost to run the district last school year. Excluding the amount of money the district spent on salaries and benefits for staff, it was about 12 times more. The cost of inaction is not insignificant. About $420 million worth of maintenance is needed at Kenai Peninsula Borough School District buildings, but Director of Planning and Operations Kevin Lyon will settle for focusing people’s attention on the roughly $166 million worth of “critical” needs.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is giving staff 10 extra days of emergency leave in response to COVID-19. That’s according to a memorandum of agreement between the district and the district’s teaching and support staff unions that members of the KPBSD Board of Education approved during their Monday night meeting. The leave would not require staff to use personal sick days, sick bank days or leave without pay. The policy will also be retroactive back to July 1, 2021, meaning staff can pull from their 10 new days to make up for leave taken already this school year due to COVID. It applies to teaching and certified staff and to district support staff, regardless of whether they are members of the unions that represent district workers.

COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta are soaring to near all-time highs due to the more infectious and dangerous delta variant. Despite that, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation says that children should keep attending school in person. “Studies have shown that when you take students out of school it has the opposite effect: they are exposed to more virus in the community, and they are more likely to get COVID,” YKHC Chief of Staff Dr. Ellen Hodges said during YKHC’s COVID-19 virtual town hall. Hodges said that’s because schools have mitigation measures that protect against the spread of the virus.

Olivia Ebertz, KYUK, Bethel

Bethel City Council unanimously voted to create a new school police officer position within the Bethel Police Department using more than $100,000. The city created the school officer position so it can apply for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant will help the city fund its police department. The officer will be stationed at Bethel Regional High School. The position will be funded in part by the COPS grant and by the Lower Kuskokwim School District.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in Nome, Norton Sound and the Bering Strait region. The Nome Public School District implemented precautions and moved the school district’s sports classification to Red on Monday. “No sports travel is permitted while in RED, mask wearing is required of all students in high-risk sports, and unvaccinated students must test weekly,” according to an announcement from the school district. “We will monitor the situation closely and adjust as needed.” Currently, about 30 percent of all positive cases in Nome are in children still too young to receive their vaccines.

Unalaska students still must wear masks at school, even while the city is operating at its low COVID-19 risk level and only encouraging masking indoors. The Unalaska school board decided that the district will drop to its low transmission level and students can stop wearing masks in school buildings when the city’s COVID-19 case count drops to zero and the Emergency Operations Center advises the change. Unalaska had four active, community-acquired COVID-19 cases by Wednesday.

A Southwest Alaska teacher is accused of sexually abusing one of his students, according to charges. Troopers received a report on Saturday about sexual abuse involving 48-year-old John Hammonds, according to an affidavit signed by a trooper and filed Monday. Hammonds is a teacher at Akiachak School. Hammonds sexually assaulted the girl in August at his home, the affidavit said. And on the first day of school, he asked the girl to undress in his classroom while he was alone with her, the affidavit said.

Nine athletes from Dillingham City School District qualified for the cross country state championship at the Southwest Cross Country Regionals. Athletes from the Southwest Regional School District could not attend due to COVID-19-related travel mandates in their respective communities.

Nearly a year after everything went wrong for the Soldotna football program, nearly everything went right Friday night at Justin Maile Field in Soldotna.

As residents of an island, Wrangell student-athletes often have to travel to compete. But the City and Borough of Wrangell has travel testing and quarantine mandates in place for unvaccinated people over the age of 10. Wrangell’s school superintendent Bill Burr says that’s causing disruptions.