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HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the following positions for the 2023-2024 school year: - Paraprofessional: This is a part-time position working with students in Grades 6 through 12, 5.75 hours per day in the Special Education Program at Stikine Middle and Wrangell High School. A high school diploma or equivalent is required. An associate degree, equivalent credits, or the ability to pass the para pro assessment is also required. - Middle School Volleyball Head Coach: This is a part-time, contracted position coa...
The Wrangell school district will have to do without federal pandemic-era grants for the next school year, creating a sizable gap in revenues and requiring spending cuts and/or pulling money out of savings to balance the budget. At a work session Jan. 15, the school board reviewed with district business manager Kristy Andrew a draft budget for the 2024-2025 school year. The district has been using the federal aid to cover the salaries of its two school principals, but this is the last year that money is available. “With the exhaustion of our CO...
To ensure that potential buyers know as much as possible before putting in their bids for any of the 20 lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision, the borough is putting together an information fair for people to talk with builders, lenders and municipal officials. “You can go around to individual booths and talk with people,” said Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director. She described it as similar to a health fair, with information booths — not a set schedule of presentations. “Come as you are, whenever you...
Jan. 24, 1924 A new device that is a wonderful improvement in the power trolling gurdy and which will be a boon to fishermen has been invented by Steven A. Shepherd of Wrangell. With the aid of this new line-hauling device, the fishing lines are readily drawn up by power so that it requires no effort on the part of the fisherman to haul in his lines. One of these machines is in actual operation on Mr. Shepard’s gas boat, and the numerous fishermen who have seen it in operation are very enthusiastic over the machine and pronounce it a w...
Pick your cliché: Push comes to shove; between a rock and a hard place; money is tight; living within your means; don’t spend more than you can afford. Children need a quality education to succeed in life. Just because the cliches flow easily, don’t expect the answers to be as easy. The school district is in its last year of federal pandemic relief aid, which it has used to cover the salaries and benefits of Wrangell’s two school principals. That means district officials and the school board will have to absorb those expenses into an already ti...
Throughout her high school years, senior Mia Wiederspohn has been very invested in "everything Tlingit," learning Indigenous studies and its history in Wrangell. She worked with mentor and teacher Xwaanlein Virginia Oliver to learn the language, then assisted Oliver to create the radio show "The Application of Learning Tlingit Language," 41 three- to five-minute episodes teaching words and phrases. She also created and hosted her own five-episode radio program called "Mia's Gift," sharing her...
The Alaska Legislature failed on Jan. 18 to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of $87 million in one-time additional state funding for the 2024-2025 school year. The vote was 33-26 and did not fall along party or political caucus lines. Forty-five votes were needed to override. The failed override capped days of legislative maneuvering and months of unsuccessful lobbying by public-education advocates. Attention now switches to a bill that would permanently increase the state’s funding formula for public schools. Unable to agree last year on...
Longtime Wrangell resident Doreen "Stretch" Gale Keso (Ellingson), 84, passed away on Jan. 7, 2024, in Anchorage, where she had resided since February 2021. Stretch was an Alaska pioneer, living in Wrangell for more than 60 years. A celebration of life will be held this summer in Wrangell. The date, time and place will be announced at a later date. Honoring her wishes, burial will be at the Masonic Cemetery in Coquille, Oregon, at the family plot. She was born in Coquille, Oregon, to Ira Denton...
Peter Engwall, a former Wrangell resident and a member of the Big Rapids High School Class of 1969 in Big Rapids, Michigan, died Feb. 17, 2023, in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. After graduation, Peter eventually made his home in Wrangell, where among other occupations he worked for many years as a salvage diver. He was well known in the community and often led the annual Fourth of July parade through town. “Peter will be remembered as a lifelong traveler and seeker of unusual adventures that included a canoe trip down the Yukon River, a year spent s...
Zoey Grace Clark has the honor of being the first baby born this year to a Wrangell couple. She was born Jan. 7 at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, weighing in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 21.5 inches for the happy parents, Jason and Michelle Clark. The dad works as a station agent at Alaska Airlines. Mom is a kindergarten teacher and has been with the school district about 10 years. The family returned to Wrangell on Jan. 12, Jason Clark said. "We just beat the weather,"...
State lawmakers went back to work this week in Juneau, with two familiar topics likely to dominate the budget-writing work. “The real question is what are we going to do for the Permanent Fund dividend … and what are we going to do for education,” Rep. Dan Ortiz told the Wrangell borough assembly Jan. 9. “That’s what the argument is going to be about.” Ortiz, a retired schoolteacher in Ketchikan, also represents Wrangell and Metlakatla. He’s been in the state House since January 2015 and serves on the Finance Committee, which is in charge of...
Since Artha DeRuyter arrived in town three years ago with her husband, clinical psychologist and current school board member John DeRuyter, she has provided flowers and floral arrangements for residents from their floating home in the harbor, in addition to selling her wares at other venues like the monthly community market at the Nolan Center, prompting her to name her blooming business OnTheWater Floral. Originally hailing from Fairbanks, DeRuyter has been involved with flowers, whether as a...
A year and a half ago, Colette Czarnecki, the new news director at public radio KSTK, had been a trainee in NPR's Next Gen Radio, a five-day, audio-focused journalism project which finds, coaches and trains journalists for public media. Her mentor on the project advised her to try looking for jobs in Alaska. As Czarnecki checked out public radio jobs in places like Petersburg, Ketchikan and finally Wrangell, she said, "The people that interviewed me, they kept on contacting me and constantly tol...
When Lillian "Jing" O'Brien graduated from Wrangell High School in 2020, COVID-19 had taken over the nation and she had enrolled in Loyola University in Chicago with tentative plans to study pre-law and perhaps later corporate law. "I was fully planning to go, but then last minute around July, they sent out a message saying, unfortunately, due to the COVID restrictions, they were going to close down campus and move classes online." That unexpected complication pushed O'Brien to explore...
Juneau school administrators are facing a severe budget shortfall partly related to flat state funding and declining enrollment. But much of the crisis comes from accounting errors that “drastically” undercounted staffing costs. The city’s school board learned Jan. 9 that the district is projected to be $7.6 million in deficit for the current fiscal year and carrying over a $1.9 million shortfall from the prior fiscal year. The combined $9.5 million deficit equates to roughly 10% of the district’s total budget, and it’s expected to keep ball...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the following positions: - Facilities and Maintenance Director. The primary function of the Facilities and Maintenance Director is to plan, organize, direct, and participate in the maintenance and operations of school district facilities and grounds. This position is also responsible for short- and long-range facilities planning to include major maintenance needs, capital construction, budgeting, and forecasting. The Maintenance Director approves all purchases at the division...
Jan. 10, 1924 The library report given at the Civic Club meeting last Saturday showed the biggest cash receipts since the library was started, at $15.10. Patrons of the library borrowed 140 books during December and 46 magazines. About 30 books of fiction have been purchased recently from a private library. While these are not new books, they are some of the bestsellers of recent years and will be appreciated by many who have not already read them. Jan. 7, 1949 The barnstorming Priest River, Idaho, high school alumni basketball team played two...
The borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation have found an answer to preserve the Wrangell Golf Club’s low-cost use of 33 acres of state land on Ishiyama Drive for the nine-hole Muskeg Meadows course. When the state last year determined it needed to start charging a market-rate land rent to the nonprofit, the borough figured out it could lease the land from the state at no cost – and then sublease it to nonprofit for $1 a month. The borough assembly signed off on the deal Dec. 12. The golf club has operated Muskeg Meadows for more th...
It’s been eight years since the state last increased its per-student funding formula for public schools — a 0.5% nudge that year — and years of stagnant funding have caught up with districts statewide, including Wrangell. “We have to count on funding this year,” Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said. An increase in the state formula “is essential to us.” The state’s K-12 foundation funding covers almost 60% of the Wrangell district’s $5.3 million operating budget for the 2023-2024 school year, with borough funds filling about 30% and mostly fe...
Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, told community leaders she will push for federal funding to bolster monitoring efforts of hillsides out the road. "What we need to have is greater monitoring and greater data that will help inform. That is something that I'm committed to working on," she said at a meeting with borough officials on Dec. 20 in Wrangell. "How do you give people that certainty that your home sitting on the beach where you thought you were always safe, and now you're looking...
Over the past decade, landslides have cost Southeast Alaska communities in both death and destruction - 11 deaths and tens of millions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage. Now communities around Southeast are reckoning with a future in which more destructive landslides are likely, as climate change fuels the extreme rainfall events and storms that scientists say may lead to increasingly powerful events in the future. The most recent major landslide, on Nov. 20 at 11-Mile Zimovia...
Jan. 3, 1924 The liveliest event of the holidays for Wrangell was the big doubleheader basketball game between local teams and visiting teams from Kake. The first game was played between the All Stars of Wrangell and the Kake school team, and resulted in a score of 18-9 in favor of the visiting team. It was a good clean game and while the all stars put up a plucky fight, there was too much discrepancy in the weight and age of the two teams for the local boys to have a chance at winning. The second game was between the Wrangell High School and...
Wrangell is No. 16 on the statewide priority list and unlikely to receive any school repair money this year from the state’s Major Maintenance Grant Fund. The list, prepared each year by the Alaska Department of Education after reviewing engineering and condition reports on school buildings, determines which districts receive state funding for their priority repair and rebuilding projects. The Wrangell School District had requested $6.5 million in state money that it would use with $3.5 million approved by voters in 2022 to make $10 million o...
As we wrapped up the Senate session in late December, I was anxious to leave Washington, D.C., to return home to Anchorage, with a stop in Wrangell, a place I still call home. I wanted to share my condolences, see for myself the damage from the Nov. 20 landslide, and determine what resources I could assist with. I also wanted to thank the community members and assure them that they are not forgotten once the destruction is cleaned up and the road repaired. Seeing the open scar on the mountain scraped raw by the slide, massive trees littered...
The Economic Development Board has recommended to the borough assembly that it put up half of the 20 lots at the Alder Top Village (Keishangita.’aan) subdivision in an online auction to the highest bidders, with the other half going on sale by lottery. There would be no limit on how many lots an individual could purchase in the auction, but the board decided to recommend limiting the lottery to one lot per individual. The five-member advisory board voted unanimously Dec. 20 to forward its recommendations to the assembly, which has final say o...