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Tribal members can apply for a fourth distribution of federal pandemic relief funds administered by the Wrangell Cooperative Association. This round of financial aid is limited to $2,000 per household. The application period closes May 16. Tribal members can select to receive the assistance for utilities, groceries, heating fuel or gasoline, or a combination of any of the four choices in increments of $500, $1,000 or $2,000 if the applicant prefers that the aid go all to one category. Previous rounds were limited to covering utility bills or...
Awards are always appreciated, and thank you to the chamber members who honored the Sentinel as the business of the year, announced at the annual dinner last Saturday. I’d like to dream that the award means everyone agrees with every opinion I have shared on these pages in the past 15 months since I bought the Sentinel. Or at least agrees with me 90% of the time. I’d also like to dream my arthritis will magically go away, but then the doctor would need to treat me for being delusional. Truth is, I’d probably settle for people agreeing with me h...
Art students are decking out their deck shoes. Wrangell High School was one of 250 schools across the country picked to participate in the Vans Custom Culture art contest and could win up to $50,000. It was an opportunity that almost didn't happen. "We were supposed to get the shoes mid-February. (Vans) sent them but they got lost," said art teacher Tasha Morse. She contacted the company, which told her to keep a lookout for the shoes. If the two pairs didn't arrive, they would send...
Picking a senior project was just like ringing a bell for Caleb Garcia. Since 2013, the 17-year-old has been involved with The Salvation Army, so being the volunteer coordinator of the nonprofit's Red Kettle fundraising effort made perfect sense. Born in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley, Garcia grew up in southern part of the state around Los Angeles, where there's no shortage of people in need. His mother, Lt. Rosie Tollerud, of The Salvation Army, said her son was always ready to...
As Native Americans cautiously welcome Pope Francis’ historic apology for abuses at Catholic-run boarding schools for Indigenous children in Canada, U.S. churches are bracing for an unprecedented reckoning with their own legacies of operating such schools. Church schools are likely to feature prominently in a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior, led by the first-ever Native American cabinet secretary, Deb Haaland, due to be released later this month. The report, prompted by last year’s discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at...
Betty White was a veteran of the armed forces. Ruby Bridges was the subject of a Normal Rockwell painting. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is 4-foot, 8-inches tall. Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. These are just some of the facts learned by Evergreen Elementary students during a March art project for Women's History Month about famous and not-so famous women who have left their mark in the world. The art project began last year, with 20 children from the...
March 30, 1922 Probably the largest audience seen in Wrangell during the past year was the one that greeted Alaska Territorial Delegate to Congress Dan Sutherland at the Redmen’s Hall on Tuesday evening. In his opening remarks, Mr. Sutherland touched briefly upon the disarmament conference, which he considered one of the greatest events in world history. Mr. Sutherland began reading an editorial in an Alaska newspaper calling on him to explain why he disregarded the wishes of the people of Alaska and failed to support Judge Wickersham for t...
Senior James Shilts cares about his school so much that it became the focus of his senior project. Shilts and wrestling teammate Rowen Wiederspohn grappled with the idea of beautifying part of Wrangell High School to satisfy a graduation requirement. "I was at a wrestling meet in the afternoon (last fall). I was walking outside, and I noticed the benches and how bad they were looking," Shilts said. "The next day, I went and talked to (assistant principal Bob) Davis to see if it was a good...
It takes a lot of extra work to do what one Wrangell High School student has done to get a jump on her future. Junior Adriana Nelson will graduate with this year's senior class in May, having satisfied all the coursework to do so. But it wasn't easy. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only about 3% of high school students nationwide graduate early. "I had to take three extra classes," Nelson said last Thursday, while taking a quick break from class. "Then I have an...
For 41 years, a Wrangell High School student was chosen as Shop Student of the Year. The honor was put on hold for two years but has been revived. Shop teacher Winston Davies decided to start giving out the award again, picking Logan Ritchie, who graduated last year, as the recipient for the 2020-2021 school year, when larger shop projects couldn't be finished due to COVID-19 restrictions. "I'm just carrying on a tradition that was started back in the 1980s," Davies said. "There are 41 previous...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for multiple positions in the 2022-2023 school year. All positions are open until filled. K-12 Special Education teacher: This is a full-time teaching position in Grades K-12 Special Education. The position requires an Alaska teaching certificate with appropriate endorsements in Special Education or documentation of enrollment in a program to achieve an appropriate endorsement. Secondary Language Arts Teacher: This is a full-time teaching position in Grades 6-12 English/Language...
Island Salon has moved to a new location on Peninsula Street, but the mission remains the same: Keeping clients looking their best. The move was to combine the salon with Wrangell Fitness, so clients can not only look good but feel good. The salon and the fitness studio are both owned by Clay Culbert and Heidi Milazzo, and both opened five years ago at separate locations. "Part of the reason for moving into here was to consolidate both businesses and to keep things easier," Milazzo said. "Our...
Wrangell schools need substitute teachers, and they’re looking anywhere and everywhere. The substitute drought has been a problem for a few years, but it’s been made worse by COVID-19 and a lack of people willing to work. “Currently, we have 16 substitutes on the list, which means three or four are available on any given day,” said Kimberly Powell, administrative assistant for the school district. “We could use 10 more.” Powell said in the past they have had 25 substitutes on the call list, making it easier to cover for any staff — from teac...
A Wrangell couple that escaped Prague during the 1968 Soviet Union-led invasion of Czechoslovakia is finding parallels to the Russian invasion of Ukraine - and it is bringing back old memories of escaping Prague shortly after they were married. Ivan Simonek, 78, and Gina Simonek, 77, arrived in Wrangell in November 1968 with swimsuits packed - not because they were planning to take a dip in the Zimovia Strait, but because the couple, 25 and 23 at the time, had a honeymoon planned in Yugoslavia....
Hard work and dedication took the Wrangell High School girls basketball team all the way to the state championship game, and it earned recognition for the coach and honors for three players. Head coach Christina Good was selected as the 2022 Division 2A Girls Coach of the Year by the Association of Basketball Coaches All-State Team, while players Kendra Meissner, Kiara Harrison and Jamie Early were selected for Division 2A first team honors. Meissner and Early, as seniors, were also selected...
March 30, 1922 The best news in Wrangell in a long time came this week in the form of a letter from the Federal Power Commission, indicating a willingness to grant an exclusive permit to the town of Wrangell for the purpose of water power development on Mill Creek. The town council has been working very hard on this proposition for several months. Through their efforts B.F. Heintzelman, special representative of the Federal Power Commission, recently came to Wrangell to go into the matter with the council personally. Several special meetings of...
The borough set a record last year for sales tax collections, exceeding budget estimates for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2021. And so far this year, sales tax receipts are continuing on another record pace. Multiple factors are leading to the increase in sales tax collections, officials said. The borough collected $3.26 million from its 7% sales tax on goods and services last year, about $300,000 more than in the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019 and $600,000 above the 2017 number. Sales tax revenues have exceeded budget estimates each of...
Wrangell schools are not short of dedicated staff, engaged students or supportive parents. But what the district is short of — and getting shorter — are students and funding. That is a bad combination, putting stress on the schools as management puts together a budget for the 2022-2023 school year, and creating a serious long-term problem that needs the full attention of the school board, borough assembly and, most importantly, the community. The Wrangell School District has been losing students for the past 25 years, dropping from more tha...
High school basketball is over and withdrawals have sunk in. Hi, I’m Marc and I’m addicted to sports and sports coverage. Things weren’t always thus. When I accepted the position of editor with the Sentinel, one of the things I knew I’d have to take on was sports reporting. I dreaded it. My previous experience in that field of journalism was limited to editing sports stories, giving feedback on page design and discussing story ideas with reporters. As long as I didn’t have to attend a game or try to speak the lingo, I was perfectly fine in that...
It only takes a fraction of a second for a school, health care center, municipality or others to be the victim of a cyberattack. It could take months or even years to recover, if at all. Brittani Robbins, executive director of the chamber of commerce, and Matt Gore, an educational technology leader and former IT director for the borough and Wrangell School District, are working together to educate Alaska communities about the threats to cybersecurity and how to mitigate them. They are also advocating for strategic partnerships to develop disast...
An adult slow-pitch softball league is in the works for this spring. Kassee Schlotzhauer, manager at Wells Fargo, is organizing the teams. She started a Facebook group, Wrangell Adult Softball, on March 15 and posted they have five teams in the making, at 10 people to a team. About 50 people expressed interest, she said March 18. Schlotzhauer, who moved to Wrangell in 2014, played softball throughout high school in Cave Junction, a town in southern Oregon. Her dad played in a slow-pitch league in Stanislaus County, California. “That was fun a...
The Wrangell nonprofit BRAVE (Building Respect and Valuing Everyone) will be busy in April, taking part in the statewide effort to promote National Child Abuse Prevention Month. A couple of high school students are recording public service announcements that will be read on KSTK throughout the month, and the community group will provide information packets for families of Evergreen Elementary School students, said Kay Larson, of BRAVE. “Each year, thousands of cases of child abuse and neglect are substantiated in Alaska. Our Alaska c...
The biggest lesson Darryl Smith has taken away from his high school senior project is the benefit of teaching others - even his teacher. Smith's project centers on creating signs for the U.S. Forest Service, but it required him to learn and employ woodworking technology that can have long-term benefits for the community. Ten road signs are being milled by Smith with road names engraved in Tlingit and English. The signs, which are 18-inches high by about four-feet long, will be transported to...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for a long-term Substitute Elementary School Teacher. This position is anticipated to begin Aug. 22 and run through Nov. 23, 2022. An Alaska Type A Teaching Certificate with the appropriate endorsements is required. Contact the district office at 907-874-2347 for more information. It is the Wrangell Public School District’s policy to not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, national origin, sex or disability. WANTED Looking for galvanized planters in good condition, and W...
The anticipated return of visitors means that Wrangell business owners are readying themselves for customers to reserve lodging, stop into their shops and book tours on the waters of the Inside Passage and the Stikine River. Of the more than dozen bed and breakfasts and other rentals in town, one is in its second life. Tyla Nelson and Jimmy Nelson live at 2.9 Mile. Tyla works at the post office and Jimmy works for the Forest Service. Jimmy bought the decommissioned Binkley Slough Forest Service...
