Margaret Hart had a circuitous route to her first full-time teaching job. She thought she wanted to teach music at the secondary level but a few years into her studies realized her passion was for elementary school. She had to stop her studies at one point for financial reasons. She also started a family. 

“Working, going to school with two kids takes a little bit longer but I finally finished, finally student-taught and last year I got hired just 10 days before school started,” Hart said. “I got a 4th grade position. I got my classroom all ready and it was just a magical wonderful time for it finally to all come together.”

Hart knew she had landed in the right place.

“The school district in general, but especially Keet Gooshi Heen is just a wildly supportive school. I feel like my first year teaching went really well. I had a great group of kids.” 

And then came budget season and layoffs. The Sitka School District had to cut 16 positions.

“There is always a bit of uncertainty and always a little bit of worry but it’s always this idea of well we figure it out every year and this year probably around the end of April, early May, it really started feeling like this year was going to be different.” 

When the chips fell Hart was among 14 staff whose contracts were not renewed. 

“It’s devastating to so many families but at the same time it is what we deal with and something that is a yearly cycle,” Hart said. “We go into it with our eyes wide open. It doesn’t make it any less difficult.” 

Longtime Sitka teacher Stephanie Peterson said the layoffs are disheartening. “For everybody. I know it’s not what the board wants, it’s not what the administration wants. It’s not what anybody in town wants.”

Peterson feels for Hart and her colleagues. “Most of them obviously haven’t been teaching for very long; they’re not tenured. And I’m pretty sure most of the community has no idea how hard those first year and second year teachers work and how many hundreds of unpaid hours they put in. And when you start teaching, you know, the first year is so exciting, but it’s so difficult. And you work so hard.”

Peterson knows from experience how early-career teachers start looking ahead to the following school year, thinking about what they want to improve and change.

“Next year I’m going to try this, and I learned this, and next year I want do this, and then all of a sudden, through these circumstances, it’s taken away,” Peterson said.

There are also financial realities.

“When you get a new job like that you might buy a house or you might have insurance,” Peterson said. “You know a lot of these teachers, their spouses work in the charter industry or the fishing industry or a small construction company. They don’t have insurance, so economically of course it’s really frightening. “

Margaret Hart is fortunate to have a partner with a steady job and benefits. But she knows that’s not the case for everyone. 

“We’re going to stick around for this year and keep our fingers crossed that things equal out,” Hart said. “In the future, if it doesn’t, you know, I want to stay in this field. I want to stay in education. So we’ll probably look at other places, at least for short period stints.” 

Hart’s biggest takeaway is just how much uncertainty permeates the education system right now. 

“It affects more than just me, you know, not having a job, it affects, you know, my child who’s in the school district, there’s uncertainty of what grades people will be teaching, there’s uncertainty of how many teachers at each grade level, how many kids are going to be in each class. So it’s just uncertainty across the board.”

Both teachers worry about the impact of these layoffs on kids and class sizes and opportunities. Peterson shakes her head at Alaska’s lack of a dedicated source of revenue for education. Hart urges people to stay tuned in and involved. Meantime she’s looking forward to getting back into the classroom as soon as she can.  

“Even with all the uncertainty. I would do this uncertainty again year after year if I had to. Because this is something I really care about and I love doing.”

Showgirls in the Ramshackle Cabaret. (Brielle Schaeffer/KCAW photo)

What began as a fundraiser for the local Planned Parenthood clinic in Sitka is now a bonafide cabaret company. While Ramshackle Cabaret specializes in spicy performances, the group has also evolved into what organizers call a safe zone of sexual empowerment and body positivity.

Downloadable audio.

“OK, condom roses tutorial, you wrap it around …”

Teal Gordon is the co-director of the Ramshackle Cabaret.  The night before the debut she was running around getting everything in order—the larger than life playing cards that act as set pieces, bean-bag sized dice and teaching her performers how to make flowers out of 400 prophylactics.  

“As long as you don’t poke holes in them that’s rule No. 1,” she said. “And don’t worry if they’re not perfect. Last year we had some really funny ones.”

A bouquet of condom roses. (Brielle Schaeffer/KCAW photo)

Gordon was a performer in the first show four years ago.

“The whole night was so magical,” she said. ‘It was incredible.”

The organizers had decided to donate proceeds to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sitka and thought they would only raise a few hundred dollars. In the end, they raised $7,000. The cabaret has snowballed from there, raising some $10,000 last year for the reproductive health care organization.

This year, some proceeds from the shows will go toward renovating the shelter run by Sitkans against Family Violence. Although the local Planned Parenthood office closed last year, other funds will be donated to Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest and are specifically earmarked for low-income women in Alaska.

The fact that the cabaret empowers women and supports sexual health is important for Casey Rhea, the show’s aesthetic director.

“It’s OK to be comfortable with your body of any type and be comfortable with sexuality in general as long as you’re safe and educated it’s not a bad thing,” Rhea said.

She says the boundary-pushing performances that involve nudity and suggestive themes are really a creative outlet.

“It has such a negative undertone in the entertainment realm in thinking that it’s just cheap and provocative when really it’s an art form,” she said. ‘Burlesque is a really classic form of art.”

The show this year has stand-up comedy, belly dancers, fire-breathers, glowing hula hoops, and even a boa constrictor. The organizers have really gone all out. There’s even a male revue for the first time.

At eight months pregnant, Margaret Hart is the big mama of the show. She’s wearing a skin-tight gold sequined dress. And it’s sexy.

Being a part of the cabaret helped Hart embrace her body.

“It’s a challenge for me personally to feel good about myself in my body,” she said. “I’m a curvy girl and it makes me really like myself and say, ‘hell, yeah, this is my body,’ and people love it. They enjoy what I give them when I give it to them, it’s also about personal choice and when they can see things and when they can’t.”

And the guys like it, too.

Adam Litten is one of the emcees this year.

“It’s the greatest show the town does every year,” he said. “It’s the only thing that’s straight up an adult entertainment show that is fun and safe and promotes the right values of women’s health and the right amount of appropriate sexuality that is sometimes repressed in this town.”

And just in case anyone’s been a little too repressed, the Cabaret is heavily-staffed with security, and no photography whatsoever is permitted. The only things audience members can take with them are their memories, and a bouquet of condoms.

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