Sorted by date Results 1066 - 1090 of 3090
The borough could receive about $300,000 under a Senate Finance Committee plan to pay back municipalities across Alaska for years of short-funding of the state’s share of local school construction bond debt. The committee version of the state budget includes $221 million to pay back municipalities for incomplete state reimbursement payments going back five years. Years of low oil prices and large state budget deficits prompted governors to short-fund the reimbursements, with legislators lacking enough votes to override budget vetoes. This y...
The school board on April 18 voted to hire a former Alaskan as the new principal for Wrangell High School and Stikine Middle school. Robert Burkhart will begin as principal for the secondary schools on Aug. 8. He applied for the position after another candidate was chosen and had withdrawn her application. The district received more than 30 applications for the position, which is a one-year contract. It will be paid with federal funds from an American Rescue Plan Act grant. The school board approved the contract for a new principal at...
April 20, 1922 Messrs. Hansen and Lystad arrived here from Seattle recently and will enter the mild-curing seafood business. They will be located where the Ripley Fish Co. formerly had its station, and they will also have a scow near Shakes Island where the shrimp cannery was recently in operation. This firm will ship salmon and trout. Both members of the firm are old-timers in Alaska, and are by no means new in the fish business. Wrangell welcomes this new firm and there is every reason to believe that their venture will be a success. April...
Amid all the legislative debate over the size of this year’s Permanent Fund dividend, the amount of state support for schools and loud pleas from communities across Alaska for more money for docks, sewage treatment plants, roads and building repairs, there is a bill that draws only a few people to its hearings. Senate Bill 45, sponsored by Kodiak Senator Gary Stevens, would bring vaping products, also known as e-cigarettes, under the state’s tobacco tax and regulation statutes. Stevens and other supporters have been trying for years to win legi...
Finding a home or business in the modern age is made easier with apps like Google Maps, but what happens when an address doesn't appear in those digital location services? The problem can be made worse if the place doesn't have an address nailed or posted on the building. Such was the case when high school senior Tyson Messmer was trying to find someone's home at Panhandle Trailer Court. It helped him decide on his senior project. "I couldn't find it anywhere," Messmer said. That experience and...
The annual Stikine River Birding Festival has a busy first weekend planned. It starts up Friday with a 1 p.m. virtual storytime at the Irene Ingle Public Library, then continuing the educational fun agenda with a Birding 101 class at 6 p.m. Friday at the Nolan Center, led by Bonnie Demerjian. The library event will present an Earth Day theme, with activity kits available for pickup at the library. The meeting ID for the Zoom event is 935 4298 0052, passcode 8743535. There are three events on Saturday’s calendar. A community cleanup is p...
A full house at the Nolan Center listened as the chamber of commerce honored Mia Wiederspohn as Wrangell’s youth leader of the year, Barbara Neyman as educator of the year, and Sarah Merritt as citizen of the year. The chamber presentation described Merritt, who has worked at the legislative information office in town since 1996, as “an outstanding citizen … understated, kind, solution focused, and devoted to the democratic process.” Merritt said she returned to Juneau after earning a degree in political science in South Dakota, later decidin...
In a special session last Saturday, the school board approved the contract for a new elementary school principal. Board members unanimously accepted the contract for Ann Hilburn as Evergreen Elementary School principal beginning the 2022-23 school year. Hilburn is in her first year as the special education teacher at the high school and middle school, having moved to Wrangell from Mississippi last fall. Hilburn was part of an applicant pool of more than 30 people, which was narrowed down to eight to 10 applicants. Schools Superintendent Bill...
Schools try to prepare students for life beyond the walls of academia and sometimes that requires more than classroom education. Last Tuesday, high school and middle school staff held a health fair that centered around not only physical and mental health but financial health and planning for the future. Separate sessions were held for the high school and the middle school and each was brimming with students actively going to various tables, asking questions, playing games and competing with...
April 13, 1922 The high school play, “Mary Jane’s Pa,” will be given in the Redmen’s Hall on Saturday, April 15. It is in three acts with a cast of 15 characters and will have two performances. At the afternoon performance, which is given so that schoolchildren may see it for a lower price and for mothers who cannot attend in the evening, the seats will be 25 cents for schoolchildren and 50 cents for the mothers. No reserved seats. At the evening performance, 160 seats at the front will be reserved at 75 cents each. The general admission to the...
The state budget plan adopted by the House last weekend includes an additional $143,000 in one-time funding for Wrangell schools, almost a 5% boost from a state aid formula that has not changed in five years. The district has been relying heavily on federal pandemic relief money and reserves to fill budget holes the past couple of years, and plans to do the same for the 2022-2023 school year. District officials acknowledge it’s not a sustainable financial plan. State funding to school districts is based on a per-student formula, and Wrangell h...
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....