Being homesick for Alaska, I scour the Alaskan news sites, yesterday this article grabbed my heart strings. We hear about how selfish kids are today, how they only think of themselves. These 6 students prove that axiom ever so wrong.
Reprinted from the
Alaska Dispatch
Written by Alex DeMarban
Desperate to keep their school, Stony River students raising thousands of dollars
Five
schools closed this year in rural Alaska for lack of enrollment, but
one on the verge of closure, in the village of Stony River, is surviving
on receipts from student-run store, an effort the superintendent calls
"heroic."
A
student shortage led to the shutdown of four rural Alaska schools this
year -- the most in a decade -- but a handful of gutsy kids in a fifth
village refused to let their school die. They've agreed to contribute
$18,000 to help keep it afloat, using money collected mostly from ice
cream sales at the student store.
The six students, ranging from the fifth to 10th grade at the Gusty
Michael School in Stony River, are "heroic," said Brad Allen,
Kuspuk School District superintendent.
"It's pretty phenomenal to see kids wanting to pay to keep their
school open when you have so many places in the U.S. where the kids
don't care about the school or are not willing to fight for it. It's
definitely a welcome change," Allen said.
The store, operated out of an empty teacher-housing unit because the
school building closed last year, is the only place to buy food in the
community of 40 that lies west of Anchorage across the Alaska Range.
Students, who also attend classes in the housing unit, sell everything
from ice cream sandwiches, the most popular treat, to staples like bread
and milk.
Enrollment slips under 10-student minimum
Store receipts -- plus donations -- had in recent years helped
students travel thousands of miles to southern California and
Washington, D.C., to visit places never seen by most of them, including
zoos, museums, and urban universities.
The California excursion made minor celebrities out of the kids and
their passionate teacher, Debi Rubera, as reporters witnessed them
experience everything from kiwi fruit to ocean sunsets with wide-eyed
amazement.
But last fall,
the school was on the verge of closing because enrollment had slipped below the 10-student minimum required to receive full state operational funding.
The
Legislature in 1999 established that threshold
to reduce the high costs of education in the frigid Far North, where
schools pay ginormous sums to heat and electrify buildings, ship in
supplies and import teachers.
Since that law passed, 31 schools have closed as rural communities
shrunk and families with kids have left town, often seeking better
opportunities elsewhere.
Lacking enough students to stay open this past school year were
Danger Bay School
in Kodiak, Clarks Point School in the Bristol Bay region, Nelson Lagoon
School on the Alaska Peninsula and Pitkas Point School on the lower
Yukon River, according to the Department of Education.
Accelerating closures?
The state has seen one or two rural schools close yearly since 1999,
but you'd have to go back to 2003, when six schools shut their doors, to
find so many closures in a single year.
The Kuspuk School District based in the village of Aniak along the
middle Kuskowkim River has seen it’s enrollment shrink dramatically --
dropping by more than a third, from 500 to 320 students, in 14 years,
according to Allen.
Families might be leaving because of the high price of heating fuel
and gas or too few jobs, Allen said. "People practice subsistence
livelihoods, but you still need gas for boats and snowmachines."
Gas in the village runs $7.38 a gallon, more than double the national
average of $3.56. And heating fuel can run thousands of dollars a year
per household.
Those items are expected to become more expensive in the coming
weeks, once the frozen Kuskowkim River melts and the river barge arrives
with the year's supply of fuel.
"It's a downward spiral," Allen said. As more students leave, the
district loses more state income, and more teachers and support
positions must be cut, leading to more families leaving, said Allen. The
district plans to eliminate five teaching positions next year, leaving
just 30.
Because the Gusty Michael School was below the 10-student minimum
last fall, the district lost $30,000 in state operational funds. It
expects to lose about $60,000 this coming school year and $90,000 next
year. To make up the difference, the district has trimmed expenses at
other schools in five other communities, including by implementing a
district-wide pay freeze, said Allen.
"We're trying to do what we can to keep things going," he said.
The Kuspuk district hasn't had a school shut down since Red Devil closed in 2010.
Anticipating preschoolers' arrival
The students in Stony River -- Beth Willis and Nels, Eric, Tyrel,
Michael and Nacole Gusty -- hope to make sure they're not next, said
their teacher, Debi Rubera.
At the school board meeting on Wednesday, the Stony River students
pleaded for another year of support from the district. The hope is that
if the school can stay alive two more years, a batch of preschoolers
will eventually push enrollment to 10 or more. If the school closes,
people fear it will be permanent because several families will leave at
once.
"I want it to stay open because it's where we learn and where we
live," said Michael Gusty, a seventh grader. "It's really important
because if we didn't have it people would be leaving (the village)."
At the meeting, the students told the board they would immediately
donate $8,000 from the store, money they'd hoped to use for their next
excursion Outside, said Rubera. They also committed to providing $1,000 a
month next school year.
"They said if we don't have a school, we won't travel anyway," said Rubera.
When rural communities lose their schools, students might attend
correspondence schools or travel far from home to attend statewide
boarding schools such as Mt. Edgecumbe in Southeast Alaska or the Galena
Interior Learning Academy in the Interior. Often, too, families pack up
and move, heading to bigger cities such as Bethel, Anchorage or
Fairbanks.
Rubera's doing her part to keep the Gusty Michael School open. This
year, the longtime teacher has served as everything from janitor to cook
to teacher aide. The only thing Rubera doesn't do is maintenance
because she doesn't know how. Local handymen volunteer for that, because
the person who used to fix electrical and plumbing problems is gone as
well.
"It has been a massive community effort to keep this school open," she said.
Motivated by the students’ commitment, the school board agreed to dig
into the district's pockets another year. And Rubera, who has a home in
Oregon and one year before retirement, has promised to stay in Stony
River until the school is back up to 10 students.
"I've never been in a school where kids took the money they earned to
travel and handed it over," she said. "It's inspiring to see kids that
are working this hard and doing everything they can to keep their school
open."
Postscript: It appears at least one more rural school will
close in the coming year. APRN reported that the Copper Center School,
about 140 miles northeast of Anchorage, will shut down because of low
enrollment.
Links:[1] http://www.alaskadispatch.com/authors/677769
[2] http://www.alaskadispatch.com/image/stony-river-students
[3] http://www.kuspuk.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=1
[4] http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/fading-regions-stony-river-among-rural-schools-struggling-survive-0
[5] http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/rural-alaska-villages-fight-extinction-once-schools-close
[6] http://education.alaska.gov/DOE_Rolodex/SchoolCalendar/Home/SchoolDetails/280150
[7] mailto:alex@alaskadispatch.com
