Wrangell Sentinel -

Now that in-person school is available, the Wrangell homeschool community has shrunk to roughly pre-pandemic levels, though community awareness of alternative education options has increased. Homeschool education, which has been growing steadily...

Twenty-six places in Alaska received a new name Sept. 8 as part of the Interior Department’s initiative to remove a derogatory word for Indigenous women — a change that affects more than 650 sites and geographic features across the country. Of tho...

Given my aversion to long planning sessions, whiteboards with erasable markers and consensus building exercises, I can’t believe I am saying this: The town needs a plan for its economic future. A forum to start making that plan is a good b...

The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium’s expansion of its long-term care unit at the Wrangell Medical Center remains on target for construction completion at the end of 2022. In June, SEARHC broke ground on an 1,800-square-foot addition t...

As Wrangell’s population continues to age, an increasing number of homes in town qualify for the state-mandated exemption from property taxes. About 25% of the assessed value of residential property in Wrangell is senior-owned and exempt from taxes,...

More than 100 Wrangell households will see their food stamp payments reduced beginning in September as a result of the official rescinding of the state’s public health emergency order on July 1. As of May, 125 Wrangell households were p...

Two key economic indicators are falling in Wrangell—the unemployment rate, and the number of people in the labor force. Combined, the two datapoints help explain the ongoing worker shortage in the community, stressing out business owners who have t...

JUNEAU (AP) — Alaska House Majority Leader Chris Tuck said he will not seek reelection this year, citing a redistricting map that put him in House and Senate districts where he would have had to run against friends and fellow Democratic lawmakers. T...

All of the nearly 11,000 Alaska households that applied for financial aid under a state-administered, federally funded program — including 40 in Wrangell — will receive some level of assistance toward mortgage payments and utilities bills. The Ala...

JUNEAU (AP) — The Alaska Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court ruling that the board tasked with redrawing the state’s legislative district boundaries “again engaged in unconstitutional political gerrymandering” and ordered the use of a new map fo...

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a new map of state Senate districts for Anchorage “constituted an unconstitutional political gerrymander violating equal protection under the Alaska Constitution” and must be redrawn before its use in this y...

Challenging the U.S. Census undercount for Wrangell would not change the numbers, but presenting the case to the state could be a profitable use of borough time. While the census count showed Wrangell dropped from 2,369 residents in 2010 to 2,127 in...

The U.S. Census Bureau and Alaska Department of Labor both say Wrangell has lost population, though the numbers don’t match other statistics. The Census Bureau last year said the community lost 242 residents, about 11%, between the 2010 and 2020 c...

Black, Hispanic and American Indian residents were missed at higher rates than a decade ago during the 2020 census, according to a report released last Thursday that evaluated how well the once-a-decade head count tallied every U.S. resident. Even...

Alaska’s state housing agency has distributed more than $243 million in financial aid the past year to help renters hurt economically by the pandemic and will soon embark on a $50 million federally funded program to help homeowners, too. The aid c...

An Alaska judge upheld most of the state’s newly redistricted legislative district map on Feb. 15 but overturned a decision that created two East Anchorage Senate seats linked with more politically conservative Eagle River. The judge also ruled in f...

The number of students enrolled in Wrangell Public Schools has dropped by nearly half in the past 30 years. According to data from the Alaska Department of Education, enrollment for the 1991-92 school year totaled 527. The 2021-22 school year...

There were about 1,000 stories in the Wrangell Sentinel last year, covering state and local budgets, the ailing state ferry system, ongoing pandemic and more — including a new owner for the Sentinel. On Jan. 1, Larry Persily bought the newspaper ...

JUNEAU (AP) — The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is suing the Alaska Redistricting Board over recently drawn legislative boundaries that it says dilutes the votes of borough residents. The lawsuit was filed Dec. 2, said Stacey Stone, borough attorney. It...

JUNEAU (AP) — A fast-growing area north of Anchorage known as a hotbed of conservatism gained the most population since the 2010 Census but will keep the same number of House seats in the Legislature under a new map of state political boundaries t...

A divided Alaska Redistricting Board voted last week on a final map that could give one of the more conservative areas of the state, Eagle River, a second seat in the state Senate. All three board members appointed by Republican elected officials...

The Alaska Redistricting Board has adopted a new map of legislative districts for the state, keeping Wrangell and Ketchikan in the same district. The board had considered other proposals that would have put Wrangell in with Sitka, not Ketchikan, alon...

Wrangell’s public library is 100 years old this week and ready to turn the page for its next century. The library’s history includes several chapters, starting with 802 books on the shelves on opening night Oct. 31, 1921, about equal to the 821 res...