MEHS advisory board hears complaints about staffing, programs, other concerns
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- Oct 16
- 8 min read
By Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
More than a dozen parents of Mt. Edgecumbe High School students shared concerns with the MEHS Advisory Board on Thursday regarding changes in staffing, academics, extracurriculars and residential life at the state-run boarding school.
Parents’ comments touched on teacher and staff shortages, cafeteria food options, changes in recreation options, the discontinuation of student shuttles to Sea Mart, communication challenges and declining student morale. About half of the public testimony was on the decision by MEHS Superintendent David Langford to replace Andrew Friske as boys basketball coach.
Mt. Edgecumbe High School is operated directly by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, and the discussion last Thursday came during a regularly scheduled meeting of the school's parent advisory board.
Langford presided at the meeting, conducted entirely via Zoom, and addressed some of the parents’ concerns during staff reports at the end of the session that drew about 50 online attendees.
Parent/student concerns
In public comment at the beginning of the meeting, parent Andrea Adams read a written statement from her daughter, a sophomore, who said the school wasn't informing parents about policy changes or cuts in important programs such as recreation and residential life support.
“We also have no security, which makes it easier for students to be mischievous and more troubling,” the student wrote. “There are no more Sea Mart runs and it takes too long to get mail, and the dorms are becoming more strict without any student, parent or school staff input. The lack of these things is making a lot of students leave, which could cut funding for the school, more and more of the good students leave, which leaves the school to have less academic acceleration, which would lower the standards of the school overall. All of these changes are made and are not being shared with the parents, which is the main point.”
MEHS staff said the current enrollment is 383 students, down from the 413 enrolled at the beginning of the school year.
Alaska House District 40 Rep. Robyn Niayuq Burke, a MEHS alumna whose child now attends the school, said she’s concerned about declining quality of life at MEHS from what she has heard about the selection of food available in the cafeteria, and the cessation of Sea Mart shuttles.
Burke said members of the greater MEHS community are concerned the school will close by next year.
“I think that if you go anywhere across the state, you can see the sense of pride in any Brave,” Burke said. “It would be quite a shame if that were to be (gone).”
Blossom Teal-Olsen, a 2000 graduate, the parent of a current student and a former member of the Sitka School Board, commented on her perspective as the on-site general manager for the dormitories this year.
“When I was confirmed in my position, I took a moment to go over to Mt. Edgecumbe,” Teal-Olsen said. “The conditions of the dorms at the beginning of this school year floored me. The conditions were deplorable, and that was purely because of management.”
She said she’s very proud of the staff that immediately “went in with very little time and cleaned up and made the dorms the way they are.”
“And we have a long, long way to go to make them to where I know the history of the dorms to be,” Teal-Olsen said.
Boys basketball coach
Roughly half of all the public comments addressed the decision by Superintendent Langford to replace Andrew Friske as coach of the boys’ basketball team.
Friske retired in July after two decades as Mt. Edgecumbe’s residential principal and activities director. He became the boys basketball coach in 2024 following the departure of longtime coach Archie Young, and applied this year to continue.
Langford told the Sentinel in a phone call on Tuesday that he verbally offered the coaching position to Friske, but later declined to offer him a contract due to a “personnel issue” that he could not discuss further.
Marshall Vest has been hired as the new boys basketball coach for 2025 and will be certified by the Alaska School Activities Association before the season begins, Langford said.
Most of the parents speaking at the meeting described the impact Friske had on thousands of students over two decades at the school. The parents praised his mentorship, dedication and fundraising contributions, and some linked his recent absence to declining morale at the school.
Teal-Olsen said she trusted Langford’s personnel decision.
“(Friske) does have a full long history at Mt. Edgecumbe, and being part of the MEHS life, and I fully agree that it’s a great loss that he’s no longer on board,” Teal-Olsen said. “I do not understand why he was removed, but I have a history of working on a school board as well. … I fully understand that if he was removed, it was in the best interest of the students. We may not know the whole history behind it, but if he was removed, I trust there was a good cause.”
Friske, who attended the online meeting from Langford's office, also gave public comment. He asked the advisory board to pen a letter to the State Board of Education supporting his reinstatement.
“This isn't just about a coaching role,” Friske said. “It's about fairness, transparency and accountability – values our students deserve to see modeled by the adults who lead them.”
He also voiced a wide range of concerns about school operations, leadership and the direction of the state DEED.
MEHS student representative Martin Karmun said in his report near the end of the meeting that “students are wondering why this happened and want a clear understanding" regarding hiring for the coaching role.
After Karmun’s report, Langford said: “That was a personnel issue that happened, and I can't really discuss that. ... So the decision was made to move on for multiple reasons, I've already discussed them with Mr. Friske, even though he may not admit to that, so to leave it like that, as a ‘personnel issue.’”
The superintendent said Friske hasn't been banned from the campus, nor been barred from signing out students with the advance approval of their parent/guardian designee.
The board went into executive session at the end of the meeting to hear from Langford regarding the “personnel issue” in his decision to not offer Friske this year's basketball coaching contract.
Reports
In verbal and written reports near the end of the meeting, MEHS leaders outlined recent staffing changes, and touched on happenings at the school.
The student representative's report highlighted student council elections, and gave updates on the school's cross country, volleyball and wrestling teams.
He said fewer recreation activities are available for students this year, campus security has been reduced, cafeteria food has been low quality – and Sea Mart runs have been taken away. He said more than 300 students have signed a petition to reinstate the runs.
Academic Principal Miranda Bacha stated in her written report that MEHS is down five classroom teaching positions from last year, and the average class size is up from 18 students per class in 2024/25 to 23 students per class in 2025/26.
Because of the teacher cuts, fewer students are enrolled in Advanced Placement classes this year, Bacha wrote.
The school also lost three of the six non-classroom teaching positions; the three remaining positions are two school counselors and the residential dean of students, Deng Diing, who's new to MEHS this year, Bacha reported.
A silver lining is that MEHS received a $1 million reading grant this year, which will provide $250,000 per year for the next four years to reinstate a reading teacher position, Bacha wrote.
“We are fortunate that our newly hired reading teacher is also a certified librarian,” Bacha wrote. “Our plan is to provide her with training on the library program so she can serve in a dual role.”
Some highlights this semester include the senior hike up Mt. Edgecumbe, ACT testing and a college fair, Bacha said.
Residential Principal Nicole Ritzinger, who is new to MEHS this year, said in her verbal report that “we indeed do have recreation this year, even though it is not up to what the students have become accustomed to with the AmeriCorps.”
This year the school has no AmeriCorps volunteers, who previously held non-classroom teaching positions and helped lead recreation.
Two state staff members are heading up recreation activities, including open gym, adventure recreation, and opening of the Student Union Building. Because of retirements, no full-time staff member is maintaining the building this year, Ritzinger said. The school is working on hiring one more state recreation staff, she said.
Students also are keeping busy with chess club; drama, debate and forensics; recycling club; and student council, Ritzinger said, and the school is working with community organizations on future offerings.
A new athletic/activities director, Ryan Gluth, was hired on a teacher contract this year, she added.
The school’s StAR Center (Student Academic Resource Center) staff member is preparing to leave, Ritzinger said, and Langford said the school will be hiring for that state position.
Key state administrative positions also have seen turnover in recent years.
Bacha started in her role as academic principal in 2022. Langford was hired in July as MEHS superintendent, succeeding Suzzuk Huntington, who started in the role in the fall of 2022. Langford taught at Edgecumbe in the 1980s and early 1990s, and in addition to his three-year MEHS contract, he is continuing as superintendent of the Chatham School District, which covers four communities in Southeast Alaska.
In his staff report at the end of the meeting, Langford said “a lot of the difficulties that we're seeing we all inherited on July 1 and didn't come from anything that we've been doing.”
“The accounts from students are correct, that we don't have as many state staff in positions at that time but we're looking as fast as we can to get those positions filled,” Langford said. “And then we had one of the dorm staff just eliminated through budget cuts.”
He told the Sentinel today that, due to a state hiring freeze, the MEHS administration must complete additional steps in order to fill state staff positions. Hiring processes are underway for hiring one new dorm attendant and one additional security personnel, he said.
“By the time we have those filled we’ll have a lot more staffing and a lot more activities,” Langford said.
As for the school's unpopular stop to Thursday Sea Mart runs, Langford said “it was a number of things.”
“It was on a school night,” Langford said during the board meeting, “so that's why we moved to try to find alternatives on the weekend and to have runs.”
This fall, about 80 students each week can earn the privilege of going on a weekend Sea Mart run, Langford said. He noted that students can order groceries for delivery from the store.
He praised the school’s new contract with NANA Corp., which staffs the dormitories with aides, staffs the kitchen with chefs, and also pays students to work in the cafeteria at MEHS.
“When I came on July 1, the kitchen was a disaster, and had been left a disaster from the year before,” Langford said. “It was filthy. … NANA and our maintenance staff worked really hard before to get it ready before school started. ... Now it’s just night and day, from what I understand from both returning students and staff, from what the food was last year."
He explained today that the contractor last year "left the dorms a mess and the kitchen a disaster." He noted that much of the kitchen equipment was stolen over the summer.
He told the board Thursday that "the state was able to find $50,000 at the beginning of July to order new equipment for the cafeteria, because it's really our responsibility to supply NANA with equipment."
He said the state staff also "was able to find an additional $50,000 that's now going into dormitory furniture, and mattresses” and other items like foosball tables.
“So there's lots of stuff on the order and coming, but a lot of problems were inherited on day one,” Langford said. “And I'm really proud of all of our administrators and staff. They're working through these problems as fast as possible. And we, you know, we want students to really want to be here and enjoy the experience.”
• This story originally appeared in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
