Alaska education board takes steps to assess boarding school conditions after outcry
- Alaska Beacon
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
State board will create a new committee to review concerns, including student services and maintenance needs after roughly a quarter of students disenrolled this year
By Corinne Smith
Alaska Beacon
The Alaska State Board of Education moved to establish a special committee to review ongoing issues and make recommendations to improve operations at the state-run boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School.
After a turbulent year of budget cuts, staff and administrative changes and more than 100 students disenrolling this year, a delegation of lawmakers made an impromptu visit to the school in February to investigate.
Legislators have pressed school officials and the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, which operates the school, for explanations and improvements. Their interest has spotlighted the school’s ongoing maintenance needs and sparked a conversation about ways to increase support for remaining students.
The state Board of Education is charged with administering the school, along with DEED. The school normally serves roughly 400 students, the majority of whom are Alaska Native and from rural communities across the state.
After hearing a presentation about the issues at Mt. Edgecumbe at their annual meeting in Juneau on Mar. 10, board members voted unanimously to establish an ad-hoc committee. The committee will be tasked with reviewing concerns related to student disenrollment, student services, academic performance and school climate before it presents recommendations to the full board in October.
After the vote, board chair Sally Stockhausen said the new committee will interface with the board and the current local Mt Edgecumbe High School Advisory Board — a local board that advises the superintendent. The specifics will be negotiated in the coming weeks and months.
“This is brand new. We’re going to figure it out,” Stockhausen said. “My basic understanding is they will come to us with recommendations, and then we’ll decide how that’s going to work, and if and what type of action we’ll take based on that.”
Within the next 30 days, officials with DEED will be tasked with assembling the new committee. It may include representatives from the local advisory board, parents, students, staff members, alumni, an education expert and tribal representatives.
On Monday, Stockhausen appeared before members of the House Education Committee as part of the confirmation process for her reappointment for another five-year term on the state board. She answered some questions about the board’s oversight of Mt. Edgecumbe High School, and said board members are working to improve communication with the school.
“We used to always have the superintendent come and give a verbal report. And at some point it kind of just shifted, and it became, we would get written reports. So we did ask for that to come back,” she said.
Stockhausen said she’s also requested updates from the local advisory board to the full state board of education.
“The advisory board’s role is to advise the superintendent, but it would be good, I think, to add a component where that could come back to us,” Stockhausen said. “We just need some communication improvements.”
Board hears update on conditions at Mt. Edgecumbe
Mt. Edgecumbe High School Superintendent David Langford and Deena Bishop, state education commissioner, have given a series of presentations to lawmakers in recent weeks following legislator’s visit to the school on the conditions and improvements being made at the high school.
On Mar. 10, they gave a similar presentation to the state board, which is charged with managing the school.
Langford and Bishop described the state’s recent efforts to address the school’s budget deficit and maintenance needs at the school this year, after budget cuts, reductions to staff and a change in administration last year.
Langford said those efforts include significant upgrades to the kitchen, dorms and common areas, and more facilities upgrades are planned for this summer, including replacing dorm roofs and ventilation systems. DEED also hired a new contractor to run the residential dorms, and have created more opportunities for student input and leadership in school operations.
“This is a problem decades in the making of funding not coming through, projects not being managed, maintenance not being kept up, and funding being cut. I think six, seven years ago, we had seven maintenance people, and today we have one-and-a-half,” Langford told the board on Mar. 10. “And keeping up with a campus that size, with one and a half people, they do an amazing job, but they just can’t do everything that needs to be done. So it is a funding issue for Mt. Edgecumbe.”
Bishop emphasized that the administration is making improvements, and the school is moving in a positive direction.
“A lot of school issues are adult issues and not children issues,” Bishop told the board, pointing to management of the school. “I would say a lot of these concerns were more about adults than they were students and what they were receiving. So I do believe that you know that we’re moving forward with sorting out the adult issues, and moving forward in the right direction for kids.”
Following the board meeting, board member and Mt. Edgecumbe alumni Pamela Dupras said she was shocked by the photos Langford presented of school facilities before some upgrades were made in August, including rusted kitchen appliances, leaks, and broken and worn dorm furniture.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, and I was shocked to see the condition of the dormitory, the kitchen, and within a short period of time that has been resolved,” Dupras said. “So I’m curious to see, I want to know what the deeper story is and why this is necessary. So I am glad that we will have an ad hoc committee that can look further into it.”
Stockhausen said in an interview at the meeting only that the maintenance needs had been “longstanding,” and that the ad-hoc committee will be reviewing them. She said she has confidence in Langford managing improvements. “I think Mr. Langford is doing an outstanding job addressing all of those, and it’s just a steady, steady improvement,” she said.
Lawmakers and the local advisory board have raised concerns about Langford being superintendent of both Mt. Edgecumbe and the Chatham School District, which serves approximately 175 students across rural schools in Southeast Alaska, particularly considering the challenges at Mt. Edgecumbe.
Langford has maintained he is able to fulfill the duties of both roles of superintendent. At the board meeting, Langford said in an interview he is looking forward to working with the new ad-hoc committee.
“I’m very, very hopeful that all the attention is going to result in really good things for the school and for the students,” he said. “One of their directives is to investigate academic performance, which I think is really important, and maybe something really good can come from that. And they’re also tasked with looking at buildings and funding and all the current issues that we’re addressing. So I don’t see any problem with it at all. So looking forward to having people come and visit and go through the school and give recommendations.”
But Langford admitted reporting to four school boards is a challenge. He currently reports to the state board of education, the local advisory board, the new ad-hoc committee, as well as the Chatham school board.
“All these boards, that’s probably the hardest part of my job,” Langford said, and added that he was attending the two-day state board meeting and also attending the Chatham school board meeting taking place online in the evening. “So yeah, that part of it is a bit much. But okay, it’s part of the job. I’m up for it. People have a right to have their voices heard and be a part of the process. So I’m happy for that.”
• Corinne Smith started reporting in Alaska in 2020, serving as a radio reporter for several local stations across the state including in Petersburg, Haines, Homer and Dillingham. She spent two summers covering the Bristol Bay fishing season. Originally from Oakland, California, she got her start as a reporter, then morning show producer, at KPFA Radio in Berkeley. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
