Resiliency in funding requested for Tlingit Culture Language and Literacy Program
- Jasz Garrett
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
Program teaching culture, history and resilience calls for long-term sustainable funding from the school board
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The majority of testimony taken during a Juneau Board of Education public budget forum on Thursday focused on the importance of supporting the Tlingit Culture Language and Literacy program, plus staffing districtwide since teacher contract negotiations that began a year ago remain unresolved.
“The Juneau School District and school board have the opportunity to offer our union a very competitive agreement; instead, your actions have left us in limbo for a year now,” said Hans Chester, a Tlingit language teacher with TCLL.
The year-old negotiations are currently in arbitration, according to Kelley Harvey, co-chair of the union’s negotiations support team. The Juneau Education Association union released a statement in November that the decision to enter arbitration was made without consulting its negotiation team.
Chester also advocated for funding TCLL, a place- and culture-based optional program in JSD, known as a “school within a school.” Tlingit language and culture are integrated into daily instruction through the program that began with Sealaska Heritage Institute in 2000. The tribal nonprofit organization partners with the school district to host classrooms in Harborview Elementary School for grades K-8.
“It is critical to acknowledge that this board’s decisions may continue to reinforce raciolinguistic and sociolinguistic ideologies, which continue to create, subjugate and displace our language and culture within Western education,” Chester said. “I ask for the three positions for our TCLL program to get added to next year’s budget. I understand one of them already has.”
Applause in the form of clapping and traditional Tlingit stomping throughout the Thunder Mountain Middle School auditorium followed Chester’s testimony.
A school board retreat on Jan. 24 reviewed the preliminary budget and parameters for fiscal year 2027. Included in a presentation were slides outlining grants ending this fiscal year. Three full-time equivalent positions — one principal position and two Tlingit language and biliteracy specialists – will end under a Sealaska Heritage Institute grant.
The school board asked the Juneau School District administration to move one language instructor into the preliminary budget, according to board Vice President Elizabeth Siddon.
She said the school board chose not to cut TCLL positions last year through the same conversations that are happening right now in the preliminary budget stage. A preliminary budget is a “rollover” budget created based on maintaining current programs and services.
About 90% of the district’s preliminary $81 million operating budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 is to fund salaries and other costs for employees.
A key challenge for district leaders is a projected $6.1 million shortfall in this year’s budget and $5.37 million shortfall next year. According to JSD, those will have to be covered with the district’s savings account, which is expected to be about $7.8 million at the end of the current fiscal year.
“What’s important to note, though, is the board can cover that deficit with projected fund balance, like the board chose to do in developing the FY26 budget, but that leaves the district with a projected remaining fund balance of approximately $1.48 million projected, and that’s with two contracts in negotiations,” Superintendent Frank Hauser said.
Hauser said the board’s options for the next fiscal year are to use fund balance or to reduce services. He said since the board will be able to cover the projected deficit with the fund balance, there is currently no consideration to increase pupil-to-teacher ratio, reduce staff or services, or eliminate and reduce curriculum offerings.
“But remember that the school board must pass a balanced budget,” he said. “The inconvenient math is that to maintain current services next year, it will require at least $5.3 million in fund balance, or without the use of fund balance, $5.3 million in reductions.”
Thursday’s budget forum heard pleas urging the board to find a way to move all formerly SHI grant-funded TCLL positions into the preliminary budget.
Jamie Shanley is a director at SHI who oversees the language of primary education departments. She also manages the grant that supports TCLL, which ends on Sept. 30.
“SHI is constantly and aggressively looking for funding to support all of the programs we do, one of which is the TCLL program, and we are committed to doing that into this year,” Shanley told the board. “And we’ll work in partnership with your staff to create a grant that will continue that support. We’re calling this next school year, the gap year, and so as a good partner, we’re looking to you to support the positions that the grant is currently funding into the gap year.”
Shanley added the school and community is growing in TCLL — there are 121 students, meaning the program has doubled in size since the start of the grant.
One of those students is Tsimshian nine-year-old Silje Haven Marr. She has been in the program for five years. Marr said she decided to testify for the first time because she was told at school that same morning two teachers would be leaving and it saddened her.
“I am here because I want to support TCLL,” she told the board. Her friend stood nearby for moral support.
“I care about TCLL because they are like my second family,” Marr said. “TCLL impacts my life by teaching me my history and culture. TCLL is important to this community because it teaches students the true history.”
The history of boarding schools and continuing generational trauma was also highlighted at the meeting to show the impact the language and culture program has on Alaska Native students, teachers and elders.
“TCLL is something that my late grandmother, Arlene Haven, a boarding school survivor, could have only ever dreamt of,” said Heather Evoy, Marr’s mother.
“Now is not the time to have uncertainty in funding for our language teachers,” she said. “We know that connections to language, culture and community are resiliency factors. Resiliency is built into being Tlingit — in our ways of life and our values. We know the more resiliency factors a young person has, the better they do in school and are less likely to harm themselves or others.”
She asked for accountability and funding from the board to “help build resilience in such an amazing program such as TCLL.” Evoy noted grant funding, if secured in the future, is not sustainable long-term. Other testimonies pointed out how on top of the grant ending, TCLL teachers are working without a renewed contract.
Mazelle Joseph, a sophomore at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé, like others, introduced herself her in Tlingit before giving her testimony. She said the ability to do so is a gift TCLL teachers gave her.
“I was not alive when the government was stealing little Tlingit children from their families, but it still affected me, and will continue to affect generations not even born yet,” she said. “That is unless the TCLL program is allowed to continue the hard work undoing everything the boarding schools did.”
Freda Westman stepped up to say she was alive when people were in residential schools.
“My three oldest brothers were in residential schools. My mother refused to teach us the language because she did not want us to suffer how she has and how her three oldest children did,” she said. “The language that is being taught to children today is everything for their self-esteem and their standing in the community. Not just the Native community – for themselves to be proud and productive and contributing.”
Delton Claggett, a former Juneau teacher, testified last year that he would be leaving the district due to uncompetitive wages offered in contract negotiations. He said he now earns more money in the whale-watching industry.
At the forum, Claggett said he hopes to enroll his son in TCLL “so that we can learn a language together, but that can only happen if there’s still a program. That’s how we can heal.”
Before testimony opened to principals and the public, Hauser gave an overview of the preliminary budget for FY27.
Hauser said the school board is currently receiving feedback. The preliminary budget will be worked into a proposed budget, which will receive two hearings before being adopted and submitted to the City and Borough of Juneau by April 1. Once the city goes through its process, the adopted budget must be submitted to the state by July 15.
A FY27 priority survey is accepting public feedback and will close Feb. 11. The district is also planning to release a new online tool called Balancing Act this week so the community can build a balanced budget and submit feedback that way.
According to the budget calendar, the school board plans to approve the budget by March 12.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
