Mental health crisis occurring among students at MEHS
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
10% of students have withdrawn during school year following staffing reductions and leadership changes, parents and staff tell state education board
By Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Six people, including former Mt. Edgecumbe High School staff members and parents of current students, testified to the Alaska Board of Education on Wednesday that a student mental health crisis is unfolding at the state-operated boarding school.
School records show about 10 percent of students have withdrawn since the start of the school year, and health care providers are seeing record rates of suicidal ideation among students, following staffing reductions and leadership changes at the school.
In public comment at the beginning of the Board’s work session and business meeting Wednesday, community members spoke about the conditions at Mt. Edgecumbe this year, and asked Board members to review current operations at the school, and to support students with solutions.
Mt. Edgecumbe High School is operated directly by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, which is known as DEED; the Board of Education is the head of DEED.
Wednesday's meeting was held online via Zoom, with the Board taking comment remotely. In accordance with the Board's policy, the officials accepted the public comments without any response or discussion among themselves because the issues were not on the published agenda.
Some who commented at the meeting aired grievances with the new superintendent, David Langford, who was hired for the position in July this year. Langford, DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop, deputy commissioner Karen Morrison, legislative liaison Jacob Almeida, and state Board of Education members Sally Stockhausen, Kimberly Bergey, Amber Sherman, Kathryn McCollum, Barbara Tyndall, James Fields, James Fowley, and Pamela Dupras, attended the board meeting and heard all the public comment.
Sitka nurse practitioner Kristen Homer, who manages the SEARHC Mt. Edgecumbe High School student health center, gave public testimony to the Board explaining the extent of the mental health crisis among students this year.
She spoke as a private citizen and concerned health care provider with 14 years of experience working with MEHS students.
“I appreciate the opportunity to express my concerns over the change in leadership at Mt. Edgecumbe this school year and the negative impact it has had on student safety and well being,” Homer said at the beginning of her testimony.
“Between November 12 and November 26 of this school year, eight students were admitted to the Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center for suicidal ideation,” Homer said. “Four of these students intentionally overdosed on medication.
“So far this year, at least 40 students have withdrawn from Mt. Edgecumbe,” Homer said. “This is double the number of students that withdrew at this same time last year.”
Staff members reported 413 students were enrolled at the beginning of the current school year.
Except for a few students from Sitka who can live at home, Edgecumbe students are housed in campus dormitories during the school year. The students come from all parts of Alaska, mostly from rural villages, and live on campus during the school year.
Homer said issues with student mental health and attrition this year are “unprecedented and multifactorial.”
“The budget crisis resulted in resignations, staff turnover and a significant overall reduction in staff,” Homer said. “Three days prior to the arrival of students in August, the superintendent chose to move the behavioral and mental health services coordinator position over to an academic counselor position. This left a huge gap in the dorms.”
Homer said the former behavioral and mental health services coordinator “led, was responsible for providing counseling, case management, suicide prevention and substance use programming.”
At the beginning of the school year, she wrote an email to Langford expressing her concerns about the loss of the residential health services position.
“I received a response 10 days later, stating that he appreciated my insights, I should look to the residential principal and that ... the academic counselor could still see students after school,” Homer said. “I have expressed my concerns repeatedly throughout this school year, and most recently I asked to have a meeting with administration and wellness to discuss the crisis of this number of student suicidal ideation admissions over the last week.”
“At that meeting, I was told that seven students over a two-week period was not a huge number, that 20 or 30 students would be a huge number, and that I should be cautious with whom I speak to and refer to this as a huge number, because it comes back to him,” Homer said. “I feel like Mt. Edgecumbe High School is in the midst of a crisis that has been inadequately addressed, and I am pleading for the Board of Education to look into this and how things are run, and to help support the students of Mt. Edgecumbe High School.”
Rachel Moreno spoke from 25 years of experience working at MEHS. She noted that the school has a legacy of nurturing success among students and fostering Native leaders, and has previously been recognized as one of the best high schools in the country.
“Over the years, students have gone on to work at SEARHC Hospital, some have gone on to become attorneys, doctors, physicians, assistants, nurses, you name it,” Moreno said. “The structure at Mt. Edgecumbe High School provides for, or has provided for, that kind of success.
“The decline in student morale and staff morale now is alarming,” Moreno said. She said cultural programming has been key to student success over the years.
“This year, students have told me that the culture room is only open a few hours a week,” Moreno said. “They have one, possibly two staff members to accommodate the 425 enrolled students at Mt. Edgecumbe High School to provide cultural activities.”
“The cultural activities that these students participate in makes them feel at home,” Moreno said.“It helps with attrition. It helps with homesickness. Most of all, it supports their cultural identity. To let Mt. Edgecumbe High School basically burn to the ground this year is an affront to all of the alumni who've gone there, the families and communities who have supported the school over the decades that it's been open, and mostly to the students there this year, who are witnessing a drastic change in the quality of student life and quality of education they're getting.
“To not replace retiring teachers is neglect, and I want to see all of this change and it is within your responsibility and power to just do it,” Moreno told the Board.
Moreno’s mother, Harriet Miyasato Beleal, a 1953 graduate of MEHS, said she is concerned about the lack of mental health support, lack of staffing and loss of student enrollment at the school.
“Professional staff should have been prepared for the students to make them feel welcome when they arrived at school” at the beginning of the year, Beleal said.
Beleal said the state Board should form an ad-hoc committee to check into staff morale and conditions at MEHS.
Heather Lgeikʼi Powell Mills, who worked at Edgecumbe in the 1990s and is the mother of two current students and a former graduate, said she's “begging and pleading for an ad-hoc committee to come to our rescue.”
The loss of staff and cultural programming at MEHS has been detrimental to the student experience, Mills said, noting that MEHS students last year represented 171 of the 262 tribal nations that comprise Alaska.
She said she's currently staying in Sitka to be near her children as they navigate challenges at MEHS.
“I beg and plead for help, for the state of Alaska to take a look at what you're doing,” Mills said.
Former residential principal and activities director Andrew Friske spoke as a longtime employee, current parent and parent of a graduate.
Friske said he retired from his role at MEHS this summer “due to major concerns with understaffing leading directly to student safety."
“I've also been really vocal about this, about my concerns these past 10 months,” Friske said.
He noted Homer’s comments regarding a crisis in the number of student suicidal ideation admissions this year.
“In my experience in 20 years, this is unprecedented,” Friske said.
“There's fewer supervised activities, fewer adults,” Friske said. “Out of my staff last year, I had 14 (people), there are four (people) left, to give you an idea of what's been happening at the school and in residential life.”
Friske also asked for an ad-hoc board committee to address issues at the school.
“I'm asking you, as the only governing body at Mt. Edgecumbe, to step up before another crisis occurs,” Friske said.
Dorothy Chase, a 1992 graduate of MEHS, a MEHS parent and member of the MEHS Advisory Board, spoke last, and echoed all of the testimony that the Board had already heard.
“I really hope and pray that the state board takes all of this public comment and testimonies very seriously and actually looks into what's going on,” Chase said. “Last year, we already started seeing issues, you know, with the budget and such, and we knew that there was going to be some cuts, and I didn't think that it was going to be as bad as it is, and it's really impacting students.”
She said that a report of suicidal ideation or a suicide attempt by even one student “should be alarming to begin with.”
“Alaska Natives have the highest rate with suicide,” Chase said. “All of this should be taken seriously. We would love for the state board to come in to take a look, a deeper look into everything, every concern that you're hearing about today. It affects staff. It affects students. It's impacting parents that are concerned about their students that are attending Mt. Edgecumbe.”
In a time for Board of Education member comments at the end Wednesday's meeting, multiple state Board members acknowledged what they’d heard from MEHS parents and community members.
Board Chair Sally Stockhausen spoke “in response to the comments, the public comment that we heard today for, regarding Mt. Edgecumbe.”
“I would like to ask Commissioner Bishop and members of the, related members of the department to gather some more information regarding the concerns that we heard today, as well as more information regarding the ad-hoc committee, and to come back to us at our January meeting, so that we can see what needs to be done, if we need to have an ad hoc committee, and just so that we can know more information," Stockhausen said.
The Board is scheduled to meet Jan. 22 for a special meeting regarding state legislation and budgeting.
The public comments to the Board on Wednesday followed up on concerns shared in an Oct. 9 Zoom meeting of the MEHS Advisory Board, when more than a dozen parents of Edgecumbe students discussed 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 in the Oct. 9 meeting was on the decision by Superintendent David Langford to replace Andrew Friske as boys basketball coach following his decision to retire as residential principal and activities director.
Ahead of Wednesday’s state Board meeting, Friske on Tuesday sent an email to a number of Sitka and MEHS community members, informing them that the Board would be taking public comment at noon, and sharing a joint letter asking that the Board and MEHS Advisory Board conduct a formal review of current conditions at MEHS.
Friske’s Tuesday letter states that “if gaps in student support systems are identified during this review, we recommend that the State Board of Education and Early Development establish a temporary ad hoc committee focused solely on student safety and residential stability at Mt. Edgecumbe High School.” The letter asks that the MEHS Advisory Board formally recommend creation of the ad-hoc committee.
“This request is being made to protect student well-being and to re-establish systems that have historically supported safety, stability, and retention at MEHS. We need to restore proven supports that have long benefited Alaska’s rural and Alaska Native youth,” the letter states.
Leaders of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Alaska Native Brotherhood, Alaska Native Sisterhood and other governments and organizations received Friske’s email with the letter.
Friske said today that 25 people so far have since co-signed the letter.
The Sentinel has reached out to DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop for comment.
The MEHS Advisory Board's next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 11.
• This story originally appeared in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
