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After Wrangell voters chose not to take on debt to finance repairs to the Public Safety Building last month, the facility’s future is uncertain. Borough officials are racing against time to identify alternative sources of funding before the building, which houses essential government services, becomes unsafe for workers. At the Oct. 4 municipal election, the community approved $3.5 million in bonds for school repairs but voted down the ballot issue that would have approved $8.5 million to repair the Public Safety Building, which would have b...
On the second day of the Wrangell Cooperative Association's new Tlingit language program, instructor Virginia Oliver stood next to a whiteboard nearly twice her height, covered in Tlingit words and phrases, and introduced herself to her students. "Virginia you xat duwasáakw." My name is Virginia. "Wáasáiduwa sáakw?" What is your name? She worked her way around the packed classroom, helping each student introduce themselves and rewarding correct pronunciation with an enthusiastic "yak'ei!" Oli...
Volleyball The Wrangell High School girls volleyball team left on Wednesday for the Southeast regionals in Klawock, having earned the No. 1 seed. The squad beat every team in four days of competition Nov. 5-8 in Skagway, winning 18 out of 20 sets, to win the No. 1 seed going into regionals. The Lady Wolves were supposed to travel to Petersburg last weekend to compete but the trip was canceled due to students being ill, said head coach Alyssa Allen. Wrangell played Metlakatla and Petersburg in...
It's becoming a tradition in communities across the United States, and Wrangell is no exception. Every Thanksgiving Day morning, several hundred thousand walkers and runners across the country brave cold temperatures to race in turkey trots, footraces to help burn lots of calories before lots of calories are consumed. The amount of people can vary. The Buffalo, New York, turkey trot averages about 14,000 participants a year. Run to Feed the Hungry in Sacramento, California, attracts 27,000 per y...
Wrangell voters cast their ballots to re-elect Gov. Mike Dunleavy and to toss out congressional incumbents Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola. While a majority of Alaskans also voted for Dunleavy, though by a slightly smaller margin than in Wrangell, the statewide count gives Murkowski and Peltola solid odds to re-election. The Alaska Division of Elections will announce final vote counts and ranked-choice voting results on Nov. 23. Statewide, as of Monday, Dunleavy was ahead of challengers former Anchorage Democratic state Rep. Les Gara...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the following position for the 2022-2023 school year: This is a part-time position working with students in Grades Pre-K-5, 5.75 hours per day in the Special Education Program at Evergreen Elementary School. Salary placement is Column C on the Classified Salary Schedule. 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. Contact the district office at 907-874-2347 for more...
Student involvement is integral to solving the problem of bullying at school. Building a Supportive Environment, a student group better known as BASE, will be a main ingredient toward implementing a bullying prevention program school staff are looking to use. Students who participate in BASE said they're already working to connect with students and to reach out when they believe there might be problems. "My idea is ... having simple acts of kindness or as simple as holding a door open for...
Nov. 9, 1922 At a public meeting at the city hall Thursday evening, the Alaska Game Protective Association of Wrangell was organized. Officers elected were: Chas.Benjamin, president; J.G. Grant, vice president; Dr. R.J. Diven, secretary-treasurer. John E. Worden served as secretary pro tem. At this meeting, the association endorsed the Alaska Game Bill, with two changes recommended, and passed a resolution asking that there be undertaken an extensive program of stocking lands with furbearers and game. This work had already been started by the...
Ander Edens was quite vocal about landing a spot in the state music festival. Literally. The Wrangell High School sophomore submitted a singing audition to the Alaska All-State Music Festival with some uncertainty, but was good enough to land in the top percentage of students who made the cut. Edens is only the fourth student selected from Wrangell in the past 15 years for the state concert, which takes place on Nov. 19 in Anchorage. He's also the only male student selected on the local level...
An art teacher has created art for teachers. Tawney Crowley, the art teacher for Evergreen Elementary School, embarked on a logo design project over the summer for the Alaska Science Teachers Association, incorporating elements that each region of the state is known for. The background of the logo is a silhouette of Alaska overlaid with items like glaciers and salmon in Southeast, volcanoes and a mammoth skull in the Aleutians, the aurora borealis over the northernmost portion of the state, a...
Brother and sister wrestlers Della and Randy Churchill expressed excitement last Friday as the siblings prepared to leave for a meet in Anchorage. That excitement translated to fierce grappling and big wins. The Wrangell High School wrestling squad took on competitors from all over the state at the Anchorage Christian Schools tournament last Friday and Saturday, with seniors Randy Churchill and Ethan Blatchley winning first place in their weight classes. Churchill bested his first three...
Junior Jack Roberts was the lone Wrangell High School swimmer to compete at the state meet in Anchorage over the weekend, coming off a first-place win in regionals. Roberts gave his best effort in the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard freestyle, but it wasn’t enough to sink the competition. Roberts came on strong in each heat, powering through each lap. He finished ninth in the 200-yard individual medley preliminaries with a time of 2:06.48. The top eight swimmers advance to finals. In the 100-yard freestyle preliminaries, he finished e...
The Wrangell High School girls volleyball team traveled to Skagway to participate in the north seeding tournament last Saturday through Tuesday, winning 12 out of 13 sets and four matches in the first three days. The weekend’s scores are: Versus Haines: 25-17 (Wrangell), 25-16 (Wrangell) and 25-12 (Wrangell). Versus Skagway: 25-19 (Wrangell), 25-8 (Wrangell) and 25-9 (Wrangell). Versus Klawock: 25-18 (Wrangell), 25-19 (Wrangell), 22-25 (Klawock) and 25-16 (Wrangell). Versus Craig: 25-19 (Wrangell), 25-22 (Wrangell) and 25-20 (Wrangell). W...
Name calling. Spreading rumors. Shoving, tripping. Excluding. Those are just a few of the ways bullying can be perpetrated, and staff at Wrangell schools are working to prevent it and the damage and lasting trauma that can stem from it. About 20% of students ages 12 through 18 across the country reported being bullied, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ stopbullying.gov website. Of those students, 56% said they believed the bully “had the ability to influence other students’ perception of them.” Fifty percent...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy cares about Alaska and wants good things for its citizens. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has done serious and likely permanent damage to the state ferry system; that he has not supported adequate school funding; that he sliced the University of Alaska budget, cutting into student enrollment; and that his fixation on the size of the Permanent Fund dividend is politically popular but fiscally irresponsible. If re-elected, will Dunleavy’s second term be a repeat of his first year in office in 2019, when he was hea...
The wheels on the bus go round and round, but you might not hear them. Wrangell was the only school district in Alaska to be awarded with a $395,000 grant last month to purchase an electric school bus through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program. The awards are the first year of a five-year program totaling $5 billion created by the Infrastructure Act signed into law a year ago. John Taylor, co-owner of Taylor Transportation, had been approached by a school bus manufacturer in Anchorage about the grant. Taylor T...
When Matthew Gore arrived in Wrangell on the evening of Oct. 21, he took his dogs for a walk in the park before getting on his boat, the Andromeda, which he had been storing at the Reliance Float since late June 2021. Immediately, something “felt off.” As he walked down the stairs, he tripped over objects that he didn’t remember placing there. After inspecting the entire vessel, he discovered that it had been stripped. The generator, charger, batteries, fans, power cable, laminate flooring and more had all been removed and the anchor had been...
The Wrangell High School wrestlers traveled last weekend to compete in the Sitka Slam, with many team members placing high and turning in fast pin times. Although team scores weren’t kept at the tournament, the number of pins were tracked, with the Wolves turning in the second-highest number at 48 pins. Mt. Edgecumbe had the most with 52. Randy Churchill led the Wrangell team, winning first place in his weight class and placing third overall in the competition with five pins. Ethan Blatchley and Vanessa Barnes also won first place in their w...
The Wrangell High School swim team returned from Juneau last weekend with plenty of personal bests and one regional champion heading to state. Junior Jack Roberts won the regional championship in the 100-yard freestyle and will be heading to the state competition in Anchorage this weekend. He also won third place in the individual medley. Each heat was a personal best for the athlete. “Jack had phenomenal races this weekend,” said head coach Jamie Roberts. “He dropped almost seven seconds off his 200-yard individual medley, which is a lot o...
Dozens of hands small and large held a firm grip on the 30-foot-long dugout canoe they pushed down Angoon's Front Street despite their shoes slipping on the rain-soaked road. Neither the potholes on the road nor the rain on Oct. 26 seemed to discourage the more than 50 Chatham School District students and Angoon residents from pushing what was the first dugout canoe made in Angoon since the U.S. Navy bombardment 140 years ago. The 1882 bombardment destroyed all but one of its fleet of dugout...
Nick Begich, who is running against fellow Republican Sarah Palin and Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola for Alaska’s single U.S. House seat, will be in Wrangell on Friday. He is the only one of the three leading candidates to schedule a visit to the community. His conservative platform includes deregulating Alaska minerals development and bolstering the state’s role in supplying resources to the nation. Peltola won the House seat in August to fill out the unexpired term of the late Rep. Don Young until January. The Nov. 8 general election wil...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Senior Center is seeking an assistant cook. $16/hour DOE. Position is 25 hours a week. Benefits include a 403b retirement account, employee assistance program, 12 paid holidays, paid time off and optional supplemental insurance. Background check required. Apply online at www.ccsak.org/jobs. For more information contact Solvay Gillen at 907-874-2066. HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the following positions for the 2022-2023 school year: Paraprofessionals: These are part-time positions...
Years of flat state funding create budget stress for schools across Alaska By James Brooks and Lisa Phu Alaska Beacon The Anchorage School District, which is considering the closure of six elementary schools amid a projected $68 million budget shortfall, isn’t the only district facing a major fiscal problem. At the end of the last school year, Fairbanks closed three schools. In Juneau, the school board is considering whether to fire specialists intended to help students recover reading skills lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. In rural A...
Alaskans will elect a U.S. senator, a member of the U.S. House, a governor and several dozen state legislators on Nov. 8. It’s an important vote, with real consequences for the nation, the state’s future, school funding, the ferry system, civil liberties and social justice. And yet, judging from past turnouts in non-presidential election years, maybe half of Alaska’s registered voters will cast a ballot. Which means the other half stayed home — unconcerned, uninterested and unmoved in how their state and country are run. Really, 50% is a good b...
"Guys! Stop real quick! We need to make one adjustment because I'm seeing people get behind them," Jack Carney broadcasts to the room as he weaves about the grapplers engaged in practicing moves. He scans each pair, somehow seeing every athlete, every stance all at once. He stops to give them direction and they all focus intently on his instruction. "See this shoulder? You're going to punch it right here. Boom. I punch him. All my weight's on him, then I can block his spin. Push, snap and then...
