Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with emotional distress or suicidal thoughts, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide Crisis Line for 24-hour support. Or contact the Alaska Careline at 1(877) 266-4357.
At a state Board of Education meeting on Dec. 3, alumni and former staff from Mt. Edgecumbe High School raised concerns about safety and student support at the state-run boarding school in Sitka.
Dozens of students have withdrawn since the start of the school year, and the administration is still working to fill a number of vacant positions.
KCAW’s Hope McKenney sat down on Wednesday with Superintendent David Langford — who joined the administration in July — to discuss the claims. And a warning to listeners, this story mentions suicide.
TRANSCRIPT:
LANGFORD: We take all concerns very seriously and especially accusations about student health. I will tell you that the report that was made to the State Board of Education and signed by a number of individuals, none of them contacted me to actually find out the real data and the real story. So where they got their information, I have no idea, because it didn’t come from myself or any administrators here.
KCAW: Yeah, and so you talked about that people hadn’t consulted with you over what you called the “real data” and the “real story.” Several speakers at that meeting said over 40 students have withdrawn enrollment so far this year. Is that number accurate? Is this unusual? Can you speak to that?
LANGFORD: No, that number is not accurate. It’s actually 43 students, and that’s just to date. But compared to total number of students last year is 72, 2023 is 57, 2022 is 69, 2021 was 91 and 2020 was 94 and those were COVID years so [we] expected a lot more. Traditionally, we have approximately 20 students that don’t return after Christmas. I don’t know of any yet that have said they’re not returning, but that usually happens every single year. So I expect that 43 number to go up, but it’s definitely not double, and it is in line with all the previous data, actually.
KCAW: A nurse practitioner at the school also said that eight students were hospitalized for suicidal ideation between mid and late November. Is that number unusual?
LANGFORD: That number is not unusual. We don’t track that specific item, so all I can go on is I interviewed dorm staff that had been there for as long as 17 years, and they said that’s not an unusual number, that they’ve often had eight students within a week identify. I don’t know where she is getting that number or how she got the authorization to release that number, but we do have students with suicide ideation. I was just in a meeting with superintendents across the state this week, and all of them identified the same problem. So it’s not a Mt. Edgecumbe problem, it’s a state problem. Mt. Edgecumbe gets a cross section of students throughout the whole state, so it’s not unusual that we would get students that have suicide ideation. Every one of those is taken extremely seriously, and every student is evaluated by a psychologist. We have to get a clean report from the psychologist to readmit them back into the dormitory, and then we meet as administrators to decide, are they safe to be in our dormitory? Just because the psychologist says they can come back doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re safe to be in a dormitory where we have one to 80 aids to students. So sometimes we decide, no, we really can’t support them, and in that case, we work to move them on to higher treatment facilities. And, yeah.
KCAW: Okay, so just to clarify, it sounds like the number of students who’ve withdrawn enrollment this year, the number of students who’ve been hospitalized with suicidal ideation, those numbers aren’t out of the ordinary.
LANGFORD: No, and I’m sure there’s people that would disagree with me on that, but you know, recently, maybe we had an increased number of suicide ideation in a single period of time, and that just means we jump into gear and everybody helps. In a strange way I actually look at that as a positive thing, because it means more students have confidence in our wellness staff and counselors that they’re reporting that they have those thoughts and need help. And I would look at that as very positive, that we can get them the help that they need right away.
KCAW: Thank you so much. Is there anything else that I should have asked you, or you’d like to share?
LANGFORD: You know, everybody has fears. I have fears every day, of students that need help, and are we getting the right help, and are we identifying students, etc? And I would say everybody on the staff, both in the dormitory and academic building, is totally focused on just that. And we’ve had multiple meetings on prevention techniques and basically preventing our students from getting access to, you know, any kind of over the counter drugs or anything else that could encourage suicide, that kind of thing. And we have really good relationships with entities around the state [for] students [who] need to be placed in a higher level of care. We work directly with them and transport them. And so we do everything possible to support kids that have that suicide ideation.
