In 2022, shortly after Sitka’s privately owned marine haulout announced it would close, voters overwhelmingly approved city funding to construct a new one. When the facility opened its doors last September, it was a relief for many in Sitka’s fishing fleet. They now had a local option to haul boats for repairs.

Since then, Highmark Marine, the contractor that operates the city-owned facility, has pulled more than 56 boats out of the water. But some of Sitka’s fleet is out of luck, because their vessels aren’t insured. Either they can’t secure a policy, or it’s too expensive. At a meeting on May 22, Denise Klinger told the Gary Paxton Industrial Park board that she owns an uninsured vessel, but prefers the term “self-insured.”

“It’s a decision we made, like 30 years ago, after putting money out for insurance, that every time we did something to the boat to improve it, the premiums went up. You put a new engine in, the premiums went up. You put new planks in, the premiums went up,” she said. “So we finally said, ‘You know what, we can set aside the money and have this in a fund…if something happens, we have that to fall back on.” 

Klinger said she was excited when the haulout opened, but soon found its insurance policy kept them from hauling locally. So they went to Wrangell’s haulout instead. 

In addition to working uninsured vessels, Eric Calvin said there are derelict or abandoned boats in Sitka that pose a risk to local waters if they’re not hauled. Calvin urged the park board to support waiving an insurance requirement for those. 

“I’ve helped raise several boats here in the harbors over the years, and you’re either going to pay for it on the front end or you’re going to pay for it on the back end, and I would suggest getting them out of the water before they sink, even if the people can’t afford it,” Calvin said. “We’re going to end up paying for it.”

Park Director Garry White said Sitka has the same insurance requirements as many other haulouts it’s modeled after. He said the difference is Sitka’s haulout operators are double-checking for coverage. 

“We’re doing our own due diligence and we’re checking to make sure you do have your certificates of insurance,” White said. “Every single lease back in the day, people just say, ‘Yep, I got the insurance.’ Now we have to have a certification of insurance to verify that.”

Insurance requirements are a part of the contract agreement between the city and Highmark Marine. Jordan Young is a project manager with the marine fabricator, which is in the middle of its busy season. 

“Basically, right now I’m focused on holding up our end of the contract and doing it in an ethical and honest way,” Young said.

While Young said he believed there was a path forward toward hauling uninsured boats and was eager to work with all parties to find a solution, for now the company’s insurance broker recommended against it. 

“They don’t want to see us get pulled into a scenario of compromise that could basically, like, it could ruin the company if things were to go wrong,” Young said. “We don’t keep a fire extinguisher under our sink because we, you know, plan on not having a fire. You do it just in case.”

At the work session, several options were explored in addition to an insurance waiver, like requiring uninsured vessel owners post a $5000 refundable bond before having their boats hauled, or charging a flat fee that would go into a city fund. Municipal Administrator John Leach told the board that city staff had begun developing a waiver for consideration, but ultimately it comes down to a policy decision and who wants to accept the risk.

“If a waiver is put in place, that is an option that the city could waive that requirement, but the city would eat the risk at the same time,” Leach said. “The unique situation with this is the operator would get the benefit of it, while the city would would take the risk.”

Because the facility is city-owned but operated by a private contractor, establishing a policy is more complicated. 

“Simply waiving the insurance requirement doesn’t mean we wave a magic wand and it’s done,” Leach said. “Since it is part of a contract, we need to negotiate and determine what the modification of that contract is going to look like.”

Board member Lauren Howard said working toward a solution is essential because the problem extends beyond the fishing fleet.

“It’s a community-wide issue, and so it’s just, it’s a decision of whether we want to serve our fleet,” Howard said. “We want to get people to, you know, be able to work on their boats so that they don’t sink at the dock, because there’s a lot there.”

“Annual maintenance is what preserves a vessel, period,” she continued. “If you’re not taking that boat out of the water and doing the maintenance, it’s only a matter of time. So, it’s a huge importance to get these boats out of the water.”

At a meeting immediately following the work session, park board members asked staff to continue working on an insurance waiver. White, the park’s director, said he would bring a draft back to the board for review at their June meeting. Once the park board makes a recommendation, it will go to the assembly for consideration. 

Phone and internet service was down for a portion of Sitka on Friday (5-22-26).

Internet and telephone service in Sitka is provided, in large part, by two Alaska-based companies, GCI and Alaska Communications, or ACS. A representative from ACS declined to comment. However, a message on the ACS answering machine gave some information.

“We are experiencing intermittent internet disruptions in Sitka. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible. Thank you for calling Alaska Communications,” the message said.

The outage impacted phone service for some residents, businesses, and public offices, including the Sitka Police Department and Fire Hall’s non-emergency lines. A city press release said staff are actively working to resolve the issue. 911 service is still operational and should be used for emergencies. 

GCI Senior Director of Communications Megan Webb said the company has received no reports of outages from GCI customers.   

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and may be updated

A Coast Guard helicopter crew is standing around a long table in Air Station Sitka’s hangar. They’re suited up in orange, and Lieutenant Commander Mick Klakring is reviewing their flight plan for the day.

Sitka High School junior Bristol Clifton is standing at one end of the table, taking it all in. It’s her first flight in an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, and Klakring says it’s about time.

“Bristol’s been around, gosh, for a couple months now, right?” Klakring says. “Took a bit of an internship upstairs and now we’re getting her airborne, which, sounds like it’s a little late in the game, but we’re gonna fix that.”

Clifton is a lifelong Sitkan and her interests reflect that fact. She loves the outdoors, and she’s planning to work as a fly-fishing guide this summer. She likes math and science. Her eyes light up when she tells me she’s also interning with the Sitka Sound Science Center’s hatchery program. 

But she’s really interested in aviation. In an interview weeks before today’s helicopter flight, I ask her if she gets nervous when she’s airborne, and she responds with a quick and comfortable, ‘no.’ She’s had a lot of exposure to flying. After all, you can’t take the bus to an away game when you live on an island.

“I do sports all year round, I do volleyball, basketball, and softball, so anytime we travel it’s flying, so I just feel like I fly all the time,” Clifton says. “I like going to different places in Alaska, and like seeing different communities and stuff. I think it’s really fun.”

So this semester, her teacher Mike Vieira set her up with an internship at the Coast Guard base through the school’s Career and Technical Education program. So for the past few months, Clifton has been at the air station twice a week. While she initially was interested in commercial aviation, she is eager to explore every path toward becoming a pilot. 

“My brother is a Marine, and my stepdad, he was also marine, so like I have family that’s been in the military before, so I’m just interested in learning more about that, or like what they do, to see if I would want to go into the Coast Guard,” Clifton says.

Back at the hangar, flight mechanic Cameron Rex shows Clifton where she’ll be sitting on their flight today, and reviews the safety protocol, including what to do in the event of an emergency, and how she may be able to help.

“If you see something we don’t, feel free to speak up. You know, maybe it’s an eagle coming our way. The eagles don’t really respect us, they don’t understand there’s other predators in the sky, or bigger things than them,” Rex says. “You’ll be part of the crew in that sense.”

“Crystal clear? Or clear enough?” he asks, and Clifton laughs and nods her head.

Then, they’re off, and for their first stop, they fly over some familiar territory — her house.

“Everything just looks so much different from up there, obviously,” she tells me the next day.

Over the next four hours, they flew to Hoonah, Gustavus, and landed at the Cape Spencer lighthouse. And her lack of fear was helpful, because, as the crew told her, it’s not unusual to get a touch of motion sickness on the first flight. 

“Compared to obviously flying in the big jets, like Alaska Airlines, it’s completely different, because it’s just so much smaller,” Clifton says.

“Luckily I didn’t get motion sickness, which I thought I was going to, and at the beginning, I was kind of, a little like, ‘whoa,’ because obviously it just feels different,” she adds “But then I got used to it, and I was fine.” 

Clifton says while the weather wasn’t great, she took everything in, and got a lot out of it. 

“You couldn’t really see the tops of the mountains so much, but you could still see all the ocean and like the muskegs and everything,” Clifton says. “Just to get to see everything from a new perspective, I think is really cool.”

So cool, she plans to go up in the Jayhawk again tomorrow.

The Sitka Medical Center closed abruptly last Thursday (5-14-26), after the organization reported a “potential measles exposure.” While no other details were publicly disclosed, the health clinic and urgent care facility notified the Alaska Department of Health and sent a specimen to its lab for testing. The negative results mean there are no confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus in Sitka. 

The clinic and urgent care is operated by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC. In an email to KCAW, SEARHC representative Matt Carle wrote “While we are relieved the results were negative, this situation served as a reminder of the value of preparedness, strong internal protocols and close coordination with public health partners.” Carle expressed appreciation for the understanding of patients and the larger community as the healthcare organization worked through its established safety protocols. KCAW reached out to officials from the Alaska Department of Health for confirmation. 

Read SEARHC’s full statement posted to social media here.

The United States Coast Guard will soon begin construction on a mooring project on Japonski Island in Sitka. When it’s finished, there will be room for a new addition to its local fleet – a fast response cutter.

Erin Hale is an environmental protection specialist with the Coast Guard. At the Japonski Island Boat House on May 13, she presented updated construction plans to Sitkans. She said they haven’t started building yet, even though an audience member thought they saw a truck full of construction materials heading that way. 

“So it sounds like we’re going to mobilize at the end of summer. So that big truck you saw shouldn’t have been us,” Hale said.

Hale said construction will likely begin in September, with plans to complete the project sometime in 2028. When it’s finished, the fast response cutter Douglas Denman, which is currently moored in Ketchikan, will make its way to Sitka. It will be staffed by around two dozen Coast Guard personnel.

That means more families coming to Sitka who will be in need of childcare and housing. Here’s assembly member JJ Carlson, who was in the audience, asked if the Coast Guard was planning on additional housing or childcare associated with the project.

“We have a couple projects in the works…to address our housing because we are a little bit deficient, even just to meet current needs,” Hale said.

While Hale said they won’t be providing childcare, they’re currently working on a separate project to refurbish 60 existing units of Coast Guard housing and add 20 new units. 

The new cutter will be homeported next to the 255- foot Kukui, which has been in Sitka since 2018. Community member John Stein asked how operations could change with more boats at the Coast Guard base. 

“With lots of boats in place, will there be lights and sirens and zooming up and down the channel and that kind of thing? Stein asked.

“It’s a little bit smaller and a little bit sleeker, but they generally don’t go zooming around up and down the channel,” Hale responded as the audience of about a dozen Sitkans laughed. “So we should be okay.”

The land next to the new dock will also look a bit different once the project has wrapped. A row of rose bushes will be removed and transplanted elsewhere, and a public swing set will be moved to the adjacent lot. The area will also include historical signage. 

Editor’s Note: John Stein is a member of KCAW’s board of directors.

Tom Williams was appointed to a vacant school board seat in 2023, and ran for a full term unopposed later that year. Amanda Williams, who is Tom Williams   ’ daughter-in-law, is a former science teacher who lost her job when the board cut over a dozen teaching positions in 2024. She ran for her seat later that year. At a school board meeting on May 6, both tendered their resignations.

Tom Williams said while they disagreed at times, he looked back on his time with the board fondly.

“Even though, when I look back, we had some spirited conversations in executive session, and at the table, and at conferences, it was all very professional,” Williams said. “I know I learned from some of the discussions and the dissents.”

“I’ve worked on a lot of boards, and I think that this board worked together better than any board that I’ve been on,” Williams continued. “Not necessarily as productive, but I think we had really good chemistry. So I appreciate my time and the opportunity.”

Amanda Williams did not make a statement at the meeting. In her formal resignation letter, she said she was grateful for the opportunity to serve on the board, but it was time to move on. “I have appreciated working together with the board members to tackle some of the challenges the district has faced throughout this term,” she said.

The board took a pensive moment to thank both of them for their service before accepting their resignations. Board president Phil Burdick told Tom Williams it was a pleasure working with him, and that he’d learned a lot from him about governance and efficiency. Board member Courtney Amundson complimented Amanda Williams’ effective, even-keeled approach to board discussion. Board member Paul Rioux said he’d worked with her on the policy committee, where she had great ideas and “really showed up for it.”

“Sometimes it’s hard doing that stuff to, like, see the long term value. It feels like it’s just words on a piece of paper and not like that reality. And I feel like you did a good job of bringing it back to like, ‘Well, what does this really mean in the classroom or in the school?” Rioux said. “For Tom, you know, I really appreciate that you’re always willing to ask the tough question, and and that we’ve been able to move, you know, win, lose or draw…move forward and tackle the next thing, and I really appreciate your willingness, and setting the example to do that.”

The board must now fill the two vacant seats from June until the municipal election on October 6. Burdick encouraged Sitkans to apply, pointing to the relatively lower workload the board typically undertakes in the summer months.  

“There’s no meeting in July. The August meeting is really light. The September meeting is pretty light, and then the October meeting, and you’re done,” Burdick said. “If you want to just have a taste of what it’s like to be on a school board, now’s your chance.”

Any Sitkan interested in filling one of the board vacancies must submit a letter of interest to the Sitka School District office by June 22 at 4 p.m. At a special school board meeting on June 30, the applicants will be interviewed and then two will be appointed to the board by majority vote. 

More than 100 Sitkans turned up at a community listening session earlier this week (4-27-26) to give input on the Tongass National Forest land management plan. For the first time in around 3 decades, the United States Forest Service is in the midst of revising the plan that shapes how the agency makes decisions on the forest. Some pushed back on the methodology and speed, as well as the proposed maps, which include designating parts of nearby Kruzof Island as “high commercial use.”

The room was so packed in Sitka’s Harrigan Centennial Hall, that some community members asked organizers to remove a temporary wall on one side to make more space. Folks squeezed in to share their thoughts on the land management planning process for the Tongass National Forest. 

The draft plan is not out yet- that will be released later this year. But the Forest Service is looking for feedback on some preliminary content. Here’s Deputy Forest Supervisor Barb Miranda:

“I fully expect that our forest plan will end up not looking anything like the maps up there,” Miranda said. “We want to hear what you think about these ideas, and we want your reaction to them.”

Miranda noted posters lining the walls around the room that illustrate a potential “rezoning” of Tongass into fewer management areas. Some of the same designations like “old growth habitat” are still in use, along with  some new ones, like “community use” and “high” and “low” commercial recreation. 

“So how did we come about drawing these lines on a map? It was a geospatial exercise. Commercial recreation was only drawn for towns with large cruise ship docks, and the thought was that maybe we should, maybe, and these are all just conversation starters, maybe we should have some places where you can expect there to be high amounts of commercial recreation,” Miranda said.

There wasn’t an opportunity to provide public testimony at the event. Instead the audience was asked to share feedback through various surveys and activities set up around the room. Still, during a quick question and answer session after Miranda’s presentation, several community members raised concerns about the content that was shared. Some flagged the map designating parts of nearby Kruzof Island, the location of Mt. Edgecumbe volcano, as “high commercial recreation.”

Charlie Skultka Jr. wanted to know who made that proposal.

“My question, who did that? How do we find out who suggested that internally?” asked Charlie Skultka Jr.

Caroline Hodur reiterated his concerns. 

“The reason why it’s so important is that we want to be comfortable with these decisions and who is driving them, because if there are groups who are driving them, that we all kind of know, then we also know that our opinions don’t matter,” Hodur said.

“And there’s groups that are even higher than the city and the state that are driving this deregulation,” Skultka said.

“So that’s that’s why we’re animated, because this is very, very important to us,” Hodur said.

Miranda said there was no outside influence on how the map lines were drawn. 

“That was just like, ‘What can we put out there so that you guys can react to something?’ We got you here,” Miranda said. “If there is a place where…you want protected, then please. That’s what, exactly what we want to hear.”

Concerns were also raised about how Alaska fisheries were prioritized in the plan material – and about the speed and methods of the process itself. Tory O’Connell Curran said the maps should be born out of the community first. 

“Could we just make a gray map for each of these communities, redo these community groups, and ask people, like Charlie, to draw the map that he would like?” Curran suggested. “And sure you’re going to have disagreements, but the final product of that map will reflect the actual community use and their concerns about fisheries, their concerns about surfing, their concerns about how we’re trying to get by in this changing climate.”

Miranda said they wished that was an option, but they’re on a tight timeline. Linda Behnken pushed back. 

“Is it true, though, that you are moving this at a faster timeline than you’re required to by law? I mean, this is a rush job, right?” Behnken said. “And I think that’s what you’re hearing from communities. You’re pushing this through too fast, and these are huge changes being proposed, and our communities don’t want it changes way, and we certainly don’t want to be rushed through a process that has this big impact on our livelihood.”

Miranda said, “There are some things that are in our control and some things that are not.” But they want the public involved.

“I want you to continue to look over our shoulder, and we’re going to be as transparent as possible,” Miranda said.

The Forest Service will take comments on the draft plan’s initial content until May 6. The draft plan will be released in November, which will be followed by a 90 day comment window. The final plan will be released next summer. 

View the draft plan content here

Comment on the plan materials here

Hames Corporation owners Roger and Mary Hames announced plans to sell the business last summer. In November they reached a tentative sale agreement with Albertsons/Safeway. In a letter published to the grocery store’s social media on Tuesday (4-28-26), the Hameses said over the past six months they’ve been working closely with the Albertsons team, and have been impressed with the national chain’s commitment to a smooth transition for customers, vendors and employees.

The sale includes Seamart’s liquor store, Watson Point, Market Center, and Cascade Convenience Center. The Hameses say the new owner has agreed to keep the stores’ names the same.

In the letter, the Hameses thanked Sitkans for their patronage over the last seven decades. “We’ll see you around town and in the Seamart parking lot, watching the whales swim by and the sun set,” they said. 

Sitka school leaders say the budget scenario is worse than they thought, which could lead to a reduction of up to 16 staff, depending on which budget scenario the Sitka School Board ultimately chooses. While the board did not make a decision at its meeting on Wednesday (4-1-26), the message from the audience was clear.  

The Sitka School Board is staring down the barrel of a budget deficit next school year that has continued to grow.

At a meeting on April 1, the group considered three possible scenarios that would leave them with a balanced budget. The plan with the most severe staff reductions would cut 16 staff, including 10 teaching positions. The best case scenario for staff would still cut 12 positions. Some of those cuts would be teachers who are already retiring, but their positions would not be refilled.

School Board President Phil Burdick said the situation was “dire” no matter what they choose.

“We have no money. There is no money coming from the state. All scenarios look like we can either spend down our fund balance and all of the Secure Rural Schools we think we’re going to get, and the Secure Rural Schools money we have,” Burdick said. “And if we don’t, then we are going to cut deeply into staff. That is a super rough synopsis. No money, staff cuts.”

Cutting more positions could mean keeping some money in savings, depending on how much the district receives in federal Secure Rural Schools money–that’s a federal program that supports schools surrounded by federal lands which don’t contribute to the local tax base.

The budget deficit is worse than what was presented to the board a little over two weeks ago. At that time the district anticipated a status quo budget would leave them with a deficit of between $1.2 and $2 million, depending on whether the district’s health  insurance costs increase. 

But since then, district staff discovered a “significant error” in their accounting spreadsheets to the tune of around $800,000 in unaccounted for expenses. Superintendent Deidre Jenson pointed to several reasons for the error – a late audit, a rushed budget process, and historical knowledge lost from staff turnover, as well as an antiquated budget system on an Excel spreadsheet. 

“[In the] hurried process, then things get missed a little bit. We don’t double check quite as easily or thoroughly. And that’s where some of this has come up,” Jenson said. “[A] hurried process just makes for room for errors.” She said the district does not have an accounting system that actually helps build the budget, and investing in a new program would prevent issues like this from occurring in future years.

The news leaves the district with even less wiggle room in the budget for next year. Sitka’s assembly has already committed to fund schools to the cap or maximum allowed by state law, plus additional non-instructional funds. The district had already instituted a spending freeze, and is anticipating some savings from that- all scenarios suggest spending the full amount, around $500,000. So the question now is whether to spend most of the money the district anticipates it will receive from Secure Rural Schools. The federal funding pool that could be as much as $1.7 million, but 2025 and 2026 disbursement amounts are not yet confirmed, and are still subject to assembly approval.

Educators and administrators advocated on behalf of their schools to the board, calling for them to choose the scenario that cuts the fewest staff. Many, including Blatchley Middle School science teacher Alex Dailey, said more cuts just weren’t sustainable. 

“If you look in the last 12 years, you’ve gone from over 100 teachers to 66. You know, that’s a third of the colleagues that I work with,” Dailey said. “I started in 2020, and the number here was 94 when I started. That’s a third of the people that I’ve worked with that I’ve seen go.”

“To cut us down is going to be brutal for our kids. There’s hope on the horizon. We don’t know who the governor is going to be next, but it’s guaranteed it’s going to be friendlier to education, whoever it is,” Dailey continued. “Please, hold out, until then for us and for our kids”

Some board members, including Paul Rioux firmly opposed the scenario that would cut the most staff.

“I’m definitely a hard no on one, and I think that it’s irresponsible for us to not take a look at if we have another $700,000, what would it be possible to keep,” Rioux said.

Keet Gooshi Heen music teacher Susan Brandt-Ferguson said the board should spend the money now and not save it for a rainy day. 

“So you might think that it’s risky business to maybe be short on the expenses…It’s risky to not keep these teachers,” Brandt-Ferguson said. “Please understand budgeting with a school district is so different from budgeting for a family, budgeting for a business, budgeting for an assembly. We can’t make money. We are always at the mercy of someone else, and so all we can do is spend the money that you have, or that you think you probably will, maybe, hopefully have. That’s your job. Please spend it.” 

But board member Tom Williams felt the opposite approach was the risky one. 

“What’s the risk of funding a school year, and we don’t have the money to finish it, and those teachers don’t get a paycheck after December? Is that more of a risk than being conservative and funding what you have?” Williams said. “[If] the money doesn’t come in, what’s the impact to that family? I think it’s worth being honest up front with what you have, not necessarily what you hope to get.”

Both he and board member Amanda Williams voiced discomfort with building a budget on Secure Rural Schools money the district has not received yet. 

More numbers are still up in the air, like where health insurance costs will land. The board did not make any decisions at its meeting, and agreed to meet again on April 23 to discuss the budget further. The board is required to finalize its budget and submit it to the assembly by May 1. 

Maxine Duncan felt like something was bothering her teenage daughter. It was just about a month into the 2022 school year.

“I was just like, maybe she’s just having a bad day, but those days added up…When finally I asked her, I said, ‘What is wrong with you? What is wrong?’ I said, ‘Did something happen to you?’” Duncan recalled. “And then she started crying, and she said, ‘Yes.’”

Duncan’s daughter asked KCAW not to use her name but gave her mother permission to speak on-the-record. She told her mother she’d been sexually assaulted by a fellow student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School.

“And even in that initial moment of her opening up to me, and I knew it was bad, I didn’t ask her to tell me the story right then there,” Duncan said. “I said, ‘Hold on one moment, I’m going to call your dad so you don’t have to keep repeating yourself.’”

The family reported the assault to the Sitka Police Department immediately, and the police officer told them he would notify the school and initiate an investigation.

Duncan said over the next several weeks, they had three in-person meetings with school leadership. In that time, she said no safety plan was implemented, and getting information about the investigation was challenging. Throughout that process, she said her daughter was met with skepticism from school leaders.

“When a student reports a sexual assault, the expectation is not perfection, it’s protection,” Duncan said in a statement she shared with KCAW.

She says it was unclear what steps the school was taking to keep her daughter safe and their requests for information were getting them nowhere. In that time, Duncan’s daughter’s grades slipped, and she took to hiding in bathrooms between classes, skipping lunch and cheer practice to avoid the student in common areas. 

“They would have sent him home faster if he had started a fight than had put my daughter’s life in endanger,” she says. “Not only when it happened, but for the next three and a half weeks, while he wasn’t even being on restriction, and any type of little guidance that we got, it was never to make us feel safe.”

And she said the school’s protocol for responding to sexual assault allegations was also unclear. Peeling through the school’s handbook and website didn’t help. KCAW found the same problem.  

According to federal law, Duncan and her family should not have been left in the dark. Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools, including sexual harassment and assault. Kayleigh Baker is an attorney and senior supervising consultant with TNG Consulting, an organization that specializes in risk management in higher education, including Title IX. Baker says in 2020, Title IX regulations were updated to include detailed guidance on the formal grievance process.

“When we have an allegation, and a complainant files what is called a formal complaint, requesting an investigation, then the school has to do several things as dictated by these regulations, which are binding on all schools in the US,” Baker said. “The process is pretty rigid, and it’s pretty robust.”

If the grievance process is followed, Baker said there’s information that has to be provided to both parties before interviews can occur. Appeal rights must be offered, and before an investigation is finalized, all parties have the right to review and comment on any evidence that was collected. The final investigation report should include that feedback.

“Then they also get a copy of that investigation report before a separate individual, who was not the decision maker and who is not serving as the Title IX coordinator, makes a determination as to whether or not policy is violated,” Baker said. (Editor’s Note: The requirement for an independent reviewer was removed in a 2024 update to Title IX, but those updates were vacated by a federal judge in 2025, reverting the regulations back to the 2020 standards).

The accused has rights too. Under Title IX, until the investigation concludes they cannot be punished and must have equal access to educational services, so the decision to allow the student to attend events was in line with the law.

An emergency removal can only occur once the school has done a risk analysis and determined the student poses an immediate threat to health and safety- she says that’s a very high bar to meet. However, Baker said schools can still separate students as part of the investigation process. 

“There could be changes made to residence halls assignments, or perhaps changes made to academic class schedules, or perhaps staggering of dining hall times and some other things too,” Baker said. “Certainly the issuance of no contact orders or no contact directives are all very common supportive measures that can still be enacted.”

Duncan said her family didn’t receive any of that documentation at the time. After about a month had passed, a school administrator called them to say the investigation was complete and, Duncan said, the student was expelled. KCAW reviewed a letter that the family received from the state, which said the student had been charged with sexual assault. KCAW was unable to confirm the outcome of the charges since the student was a minor at the time. Duncan says at that moment, they didn’t want to pursue the case any further. Her daughter just wanted to feel like a high school student again.

More than three years have passed, and Duncan’s daughter is an adult now, and she wants to review the school’s files on her case. But when she reached out for documents, she got pushback. After being denied a couple of times, they finally secured their records from the city only after providing in-person identification, and the school could not find any relevant records to share with them, and directed them to the Sitka Police Department for investigation records.

If Title IX had been followed, a file from the grievance process including all of the collected evidence would still be available. Her family submitted a request under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act and waited 45 days. In early March, Superintendent David Langford  responded to their request via email, saying, “We have sent all the records we have. This is an event that happened years ago. If it was a serious incident it would have been reported to police,” and suggested they contact police for a case number.

Baker said it’s a common misconception in K-12 schools that if a police investigation is initiated, the school has done its due diligence, but it hasn’t. Schools are required to do an independent investigation that’s separate from a police investigation under Title IX. And they must keep files from those investigations for seven years.

“Not only do I wish that more administrators recognized that this school has an independent obligation to conduct an investigation and provide a process and provide support,” Baker said. “But I want families and students to know that as well, right, that going to law enforcement does not mean that you’re not entitled to a process at your school.”

KCAW reached out to school leadership and the Commissioner of Education, Deena Bishop for comment on this case and to learn more about how Title IX is currently being implemented at the school. In a response to our inquiry on March 19, Bishop said Mt. Edgecumbe takes all reports of sexual misconduct and their obligations under Title IX seriously.

Bishop said based on the available information the report was taken seriously by staff at the time and referred to the proper authorities. She said supportive measures were offered to Duncan’s daughter consistent with school practices, and the alleged student withdrew from the school shortly thereafter. 

However, Bishop said in reviewing the files, she and Superintendent Langford identified gaps in their Title IX process that were “concerning.” Specifically, that during and after leadership transitions between Spring and Fall of 2022, including the hiring of a new superintendent and principal, it was, “not clear how certain Title IX responsibilities and records were transferred during that period.” 

Bishop said she and Langford are expediting efforts to meet and exceed federal requirements, performing a review of their procedures to ensure they are in compliance with Title IX and expanding training for staff, including the Title IX coordinator. She said moving forward the school’s superintendent will assume that role. On March 20, the school’s website was updated to include information on Title IX, including how to report discrimination or harassment, to its homepage.

Duncan’s daughter gave permission for KCAW to use her voice in this piece. 

“As a teenager, you’re taught that if something bad happens…there are systems meant to protect you,” she said, reading from a statement.

“You’re told there are clear rules, clear processes and people who will step in when something goes wrong. But when I tried to rely on those systems, I saw how easily those clear rules were treated like suggestions instead of obligations.”

She and her family say they don’t want to see the school punished, they want accountability and policy change. They want to see the law applied.

“These protections exist because survivors before me fought for that civil right,” she said. “It’s a right I should have had, and having it properly applied could have lessened the emotion impact that I will carry for the rest of my life.

Commissioner Bishop said her office will continue to review the school’s records to determine whether more information around the case can be identified. Meanwhile, the Duncan family has obtained legal counsel and is looking into their options.