Stedman leads inspection tour at MEHS
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Legislature schedules hearings with state education leaders Wednesday about Sitka boarding school that has lost 25% of its students this year
By Shannon Haugland and Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
After an investigative visit to Mt. Edgecumbe High School Friday and hearing from students about their concerns such as the discontent that caused 25 percent of the student body to withdraw since the start of the school year, Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman said legislators will do their best to "right the ship” at the state boarding school.
“We’re going to do what we can to right the ship at Mt. Edgecumbe,” Stedman said in an interview with the Sentinel today, “It might take a little bit of work and time.”
The Senate and House education committees have scheduled separate hearings Wednesday at the Alaska State Capitol to get updates about the school’s situation from education commissioner Deena Bishop and other top officials.
Stedman, who is co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was accompanied by three other committee members, Sens. Lyman Hoffman, Donald Olson and Mike Cronk, as well as Rep. Robyn Niayuq Frier (Burke) on their full-day visit to the boarding school. Frier is a Mt. Edgecumbe graduate and parent of a student presently enrolled.
The legislators toured the campus with school officials including the superintendent, residential principal and academic principal before winding up their visit with a student body assembly where students spoke of concerns about changes at the school this year, and asked how legislators could address staffing shortages and a lack in resources.
The meeting ran an hour longer than scheduled, with students eager to relate their experiences with the elected officials.
Stedman said this visit was triggered by the voluntary departure of some 100 students since the beginning of the year, and concerns over students' mental health issues reported by the the school's clinical staff.
“It’s very, very uncommon for the Senate Finance Committee to shut down during session on an issue in a community,” Stedman said by phone from Juneau.
“The majority of the committee -- there was four out of us out of seven that went to Mt. Edgecumbe, because we’ve been working for several years, dealing with operating and capital, and the condition of the facility.”
He cited the “desperate need for upgrades” in the buildings, particularly the main academic building, which has water leaks, electrical issues and problems with windows, and the girls dorm building, which needs a new roof; both the girls and boys dormitories have leaks and window problems, among other worries.
But mostly, he said, “We went there to hear from the students. We went there to find out what is going on with the school. Why is there such an exodus of students at one of our most (pre-eminent) schools in the state? If this isn’t our top school it’s right at the top and it’s very alarming what is taking place.”
“Then there’s the issue with students: mental health issues were a paramount concern with the students, and having recreation reduced,” he said. “This was not a casual visit to the school because we had nothing else to do. We thought we’d go take a look.”
During the assembly with legislators on Friday in the activities center, students spoke about vacancies in key mental and behavioral support positions, the loss of staff members who provide healthy recreational opportunities, sanitation concerns, and the lack of communication between school administrators, staff, parents and students about these and many other issues that have contributed to record dis-enrollment this year.
Stedman said the departure of so many students students this school year “rang the fire alarm,” but he said he has been concerned about the condition of the school buildings for years, particularly the older buildings and the Legislature’s inability to get funding for capital improvements past the governor.
He noted that since 2022 Gov. Dunleavy has vetoed more than $11 million that legislators had put into the budget for improvements.
Stedman was surprised during Friday's tour by one of the buildings that welcomes visitors, where trophies were piled up in a corner. He was reassured plans were in the works to “spruce that up to look better, which is good but they don’t have the funds in the budget.”
Stedman talked about the ongoing problem of the lack of advocacy for Mt. Edgecumbe in the budget process. The state Department of Education and Early Development, which operates the school, does not go to the Legislature to speak up for the the Mt. Edgecumbe appropriations.
“And we’ve been told by employees (at MEHS) that they’ve been told not to interface with their elected officials, not to tell them anything,” the senator said. “We expressed to the superintendent that that’s unacceptable, and if people want to talk to us, they can talk to their elected officials.”
Stedman said the process is just beginning to determine the best way to address problems at the school, and his next step is to meet with the state commissioner of education, Deena Bishop.
“That's where the rubber hits the road," Stedman said. "We’ll express our displeasure with the physical structures of Mt. Edgecumbe, and why they’re not included in the budgetary process -- we’ve had vetoes in the last four years totaling $11.2 million." A $1.3 million window replacement project in the dorms was vetoed last year.
He and other senators are also planning a conversation with the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, which is responsible for repairs and upgrades at the boarding school.
“The governor needs to not veto them, and they need to be fixed,” he said. “If the governor is going to just veto funding, nothing’s going to happen but more deterioration until we get another governor.”
Stedman and his colleagues are also interested in addressing the lack of funding for recreation, including adding staff who can facilitate healthy activities and provide emotional support for students, and improving recreation infrastructure such as the softball field.
He said when he has conversations with commissioners, he will include both information about what the delegation observed with infrastructure, but also students’ concerns about their lives on campus, “so they get the whole ball of wax.”
“I guess my question is, where is the Department of Education and their supervision? Do they wait till it collapses before they take notice?” Stedman asked. “It’s going to take some cleanup appropriations to right the ship.”
Stedman and others have heard the suggestions and ideas of converting MEHS from a boarding school to a charter school. He said that “from my perspective, there’s no chance in hell that school is going to get converted.”
Stedman said he and others appreciated hearing the thoughtful observations and comments from the Mt. Edgecumbe students, and enjoyed meeting them during the all-day tour.
“We should be very proud of those students,” he said. “That’s the norm. ... It’s the culture of the school. They are future leaders, a good percentage of upcoming leaders in the state are from Mt. Edgecumbe, and we don’t want to have a gap in that role, in those leaders from communities all the way up to the largest corporations in the state.”
Stedman said he also appreciated the willingness of the other legislators in his group to take the full day to come to Sitka, and spend time learning more about the problems at the school, and hearing from the students.
"Without help, it'd be very difficult to move forward," Stedman said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
