Sorted by date Results 701 - 725 of 814
A planned $10-million cut in state contributions to employee retirements could affect budgets here, officials said. Legislators in both the Alaska House and Senate have trimmed $10 million from the previous year’s contribution to the Public Employee Retirement System, known as PERS. Gov. Sean Parnell’s budget had originally included a $3 billion infusion into the system. PERS is a shared burden between municipalities and the state government in order to provide retirement pensions for public employees at the municipal and state level. The sta...
The school board voted 5-0 Saturday to select Jay Thomas of Unalakleet as the next superintendent of Wrangell Schools. Both of the two finalists for the position – Thomas and Delta-Greeley High School principal Patrick Mayer - were equally qualified, said school board President Susan Eagle. "I don't think there was anything in particular" that led the board to choose Thomas and not Mayer, she said. "I felt that the candidates were very well qualified, and we just made the decision to go with M...
The Wrangell school board selected two finalist candidates for the position of superintendent in executive session Monday. According to a press release issued Tuesday morning, the finalists are: Patrick Mayer, principal since 2010 of Delta High School and the short-lived Delta Cyber School for the Delta Greely School District in Delta Junction, near Fairbanks; and Jay Thomas, Assistant Superintendent and Curriculum Director in the Bering Strait School District in Unalakleet on the shores of the Bering Sea. The school system reviewed 14...
Bill Andrew Dodson passed away unexpectedly Jan. 8, 2014. He made his home in Edna Bay, Alaska for the past twenty years. He moved to Alaska in 1980, first living two years in Point Baker, then ten years in Wrangell before relocating to Edna Bay in 1994. Bill was born July 3, 1947 to Vernon and Irene Dodson in Walla Walla, Wash. He was raised in Anacortes, Wash. and graduated from Anacortes High School in 1965. He received an Associate of Arts Degree from Skagit Valley College in 1968, plus a...
The Wrangell School board voted 4-0 Monday to fill two critical positions. The board offered Deidre Jenson, interim principal of Evergreen Elementary School from early in the second semester, the same job full time. Jenson, formerly of Thorne Bay, previously said she would accept the position if it were offered. She said Monday she was happy to have been offered the position. The board also voted to offer the position of secondary principal – the joint position for Wrangell middle and high schools – to Colter Barnes, currently a principal in...
A campaign targeting the issue of interpersonal violence in Wrangell will pick up steam this month. Today and tomorrow, patrons of the Stikine Inn Coffee Shop may notice a small green sticker on the side of their morning pick-me-up, as well as a nearby informational table. The green dots appeared Monday, and will continue throughout the month, said Julie Falle, the Alaska Island Community Services Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant administrator, who is helping organize the campaign. The red dot and green dot campaign started...
Five Wrangell High School students attended the State Drama Debate and Forensics meet at East Anchorage High School the weekend of Feb. 15. Ben Florschutz, Tyler Eagle, Matthew Covalt, Molly Prysunka and Malachi Cole all performed, debated, and interpreted their way to the Alaska finals. Unlike other school activities, Drama, Debate and Forensics, or DDF, doesn't divide schools into different divisions based on school size. The Wrangell team thus competed alongside teams as large as 15 students....
School board members and officials reviewed a second draft of the 2015 budget at Monday night's regular school board meeting. The second draft cuts projected shortfalls by $192,168, or almost 88 percent. A first-draft version of the budget circulated among city officials, board members, and the public had projected a $219,461 gap between revenue and spending. The second draft circulated Monday night shows a gap of only $27,293. Officials expect additional drafts as the school system revises figu...
The Wolves downed Region V power Metlakatla Friday night but were unable to repeat on the Chiefs Saturday. The Wrangell High School boys' varsity basketball team put double digits on the board for three quarters Friday night, and won the opener handily, 31-49. They were outscored every quarter but the first and lost the closer 54-37. "It was nice to get a win, especially against the king of the conference, I guess," said head coach Ray Stokes. "We did it pretty handily, but then we...
Native Alaskans will elect four of seven candidates to the Wrangell Cooperative Association’s leadership council today. The WCA is an umbrella organization for the local Alaskan Native community and maintains, among other things, the Chief Shakes House and the carving shed cultural center. The group has played an increasingly important role in civic affairs, primarily as a go-to organization to obtain funding for infrastructure projects when state or federal authorities are sometimes unwilling to foot the bill. The association appears in discus...
A Wrangell Public Schools budget presented at the Jan. 20 school board meeting and distributed to the borough assembly shows a $219,461 shortfall. Business manager Pam Roope characterized the drafts as very preliminary, and meetings to refine the numbers are ongoing. The figures have been presented before the school board, but only as a discussion item, and not an action item requiring a vote. Since the budgeting process is only now just beginning for the 2015 fiscal year, potential cuts to programs or other things would likely take place in...
The school board presented the annual Report Card to the Public at a public hearing before the Jan. 20 school board. The document compiles testing results for the entire school system, as well as individual testing results for the component schools, down to the level of individual grades. Preliminary results showing a five-star rating for Stikine Middle School – the only traditionally structured middle school in the state to achieve the Department of Education’s highest five-star ranking – were released over the summer. The Report Card to th...
The school board voted Monday 3-2 to approve a contract for an interim principal for the rest of the 2013-14 school year. Board members Krissy Smith and Cyni Waddington voted against the proposal. Deidre Jenson, formerly of Thorne Bay, started at Evergreen Elementary School Tuesday morning as the first in a series of administrative changes proposed in the wake of the resignation of Superintendent and Elementary School Principal Rich Rhodes, approved in early December and set to take effect June 30. Jenson, who was on hand Monday to introduce...
The ideal new Wrangell School System superintendent could come from anywhere in the United States. He or she should be familiar with high technology schools. The new superintendent should be able to operate a Title I program, familiar with community involvement, high test scores. This person should be able to deal with a situation with high turnover, controversy, staff development, training, small schools, fishing communities, while also being a good communicator school board members told Norm Wooten, Director of School Improvement and...
The Wrangell High School varsity boy’s basketball team dropped two games to Metlakatla last weekend. The Wolves would lead Friday night by four points at the half, before losing 49-29. A tied score at halftime Saturday would turn into a 45-29 loss for the Wolves. Either game came down to guard play, and the Wolves are still developing offensively, said assistant coach Jason Clark. “We’re still a work in progress with our offense,” he said. “We have a really good defense right now, we’re just trying to get those extra pieces in on our offense...
The School board voted 5-0 Monday to hire an interim principal for Evergreen Elementary School for the rest of the year. The board also voted 5-0 to separate the positions of elementary school principal and superintendent, held by Rich Rhodes since the beginning of this school year, and to retain the services of the Association of Alaska School Boards to aid the search for a replacement superintendent. The board voted down 4-1, with Krissy Smith the lone dissenter, a motion that would have hired a lead teacher at Evergreen to provide...
The Chief Shakes House rededication was easily the biggest event of 2013 in Wrangell. However, the year was filled with events and news stories big and small. On the first edition of 2014, the Sentinel pauses to recollect the stories throughout the year. January An electrical fire damaged the fish tank at the Nolan Center, causing it to be removed. A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off of Craig Jan. 4, rattling windows and nerves in town. The quake caused no major damage in town, but...
Sentinel writer Wrangell Public Schools Superintendent Rich Rhodes will resign effective June 30. The board voted 4-0 to accept a letter of resignation dated Dec. 16. Rhodes said the primary reason he's resigning is to return to northern California, where he lived before taking on the position of superintendent – and later the position of Evergreen Elementary School principal as part of budget constraints – in 2010. Rhodes opted for a resignation and not a retirement because he's relatively you...
When bachelor science teacher Monty Buness started working at Stikine Middle School in the fall of 1989, a British scientist had just invented the world wide web, but it wouldn't be widely available for four more years. When the former Alaska Principal of the Year – now happily married to former library aide Linda Buness – retires at the end of the 2013-14 school year, every student in the high school will have his or her own laptop computer, and likely own a cell phone or other mobile dev...
In the Sentinel 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago. December 18: 1913: Some people imagine there is nothing in the lumber industry in Alaska but they are badly mistaken, next to mining and fishing our timber is a matter of great importance. The Bertha brought a consignment of 180,000 feet of spruce lumber to Seattle from Hadley to be used in the construction of buildings for the Panama Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. The commercial possibilities of the Alaska spruce, since this lumber has proved the finest of northwest soft woods, have been...
Christmas and commerce were on local minds Friday night. The Wrangell Chamber of Commerce's annual Midnight Madness, prominently features discount sales at larger stores along Front Street, as well as highlighting individual boutique and craft businesses. The event officially kicked off at 6 p.m. with the official lighting of the borough Christmas tree, which featured local high school students caroling in front of Ottesen's, a brief fireworks display, and roasted marshmallows. "Thank you to my...
In the Sentinel 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago. December 11, 1913: Last week the Karen took a party consisting of Harry Gartley, E.E. Noble, K. Johnson, H. Coulter and Leo McCormack to the flats on a duck hunt. They didn't break the record but they did get storm bound behind High Island for four days, they say the waves were rolling so high that the Karen was doing the submarine act. They have not decided which one of the party was the Jonah; sh-h-h methinks Leo Knows… On Tuesday last, Stikine Tribe No. 5 I.O.R.M. elected the following o...
To the Editor: I am writing in regards to the story that appeared on the cover of the November 21, 2013 edition of the Wrangell Sentinel. I must admit to having several emotions while reading the article regarding the school district’s disregard for child safety as it relates to food allergies. Those emotions ranged from sadness, to disgust and anger. It seems that one sided rumors and accusations not supported by any facts are becoming normal for our newspaper. I, of all people, know how difficult it can be to write for the Wrangell S...
When he was nine months old, Spencer Petticrew’s parents tried to give him a single pea. The pea didn’t quite make it into his mouth, but only brushed his lips, his mother, Sherri Pettcrew, said. However, Spencer turned bright red within 30 seconds, and started having difficulty breathing. The Petticrews rushed their son to an emergency room, where doctors determined that Spencer had a severe food allergy. “His entire face turned red, he got hives all over his body and he couldn’t breathe and we had to go to the emergency room,” she said. “It...