The Sitka School District is trying to get the ball rolling again on its strategic plan, but there’s not agreement yet over what that “ball” is.

Educators and school board members met Wednesday night (9-13-23) to pick up the threads of a planning process that had just begun when it was interrupted by the pandemic in 2020. The group decided that the first task now was to reassess some of that work, and decide what’s achievable in the near term.

Strategic planning doesn’t sound like the most exciting topic, but you can’t argue with the results: Sitka’s Wooch.een Preschool emerged from strategic planning; so did the emphasis on student emotional health that saw the district put a trained counselor in every building. Have you been enjoying City League Basketball or Volleyball? Sitka’s Parks and Recreation Office was an idea that came out of strategic planning, after district budget cuts forced the closure of a very popular Community Schools program.

At the first meeting of 2023, there were no concrete ideas on the table; the planning process had not got that far in 2020. Instead, there were six broad goals like “we will identify strategies to close learning gaps,” or “we will strengthen culturally responsive programming.”

Each one of those goals had five or six “action plans.”

Assistant superintendent Deidre Jenson, in her first year in the district, stepped into the role of facilitator, and invited many of the district staff who worked on the plan before the pandemic to come back and refocus.

“If you are juggling so many balls, there’s going to be ones that drop,” Jenson said, “or you’re just doing so many jobs, you’re not going to really do any of them well. So I think that is a good question: Which ones are priorities? And how do we decide those priorities?”

The number one goal of the district for at least two decades has been to close the “learning gap,” the difference in achievement between different student demographics, the most glaring being the difference between Native and non-Native student populations. There was consensus that the other five goals were all indirectly related to this one, like a Venn diagram of circles and arrows.

Sitka High math teacher Ryan Myers said that the results of strategic planning should be quantifiable.

“You cannot have an intelligent conversation about how any of these things go, if you don’t know where you were, and you have no way of measuring where you’re going,” Myers said. “So I’m very happy to pick three or four things or whatever we want to do. But it has to start with, Where are we now? What do we have? And then, What is success going to look like?”

The conversation touched briefly on the cost of implementing new programs, both in actual money and in human resources. Former assistant superintendent Sarah Ferrency, who now is the education director for the Sitka Tribe, observed that education research had demonstrated that success often meant trade-offs.

“What they actually found is that if you implement something a little, you get nothing. If you implement something medium, you get nothing,” she said. “You really only get results when you fully implement with fidelity and consistency. So it really is prioritization and focusing, and focusing all of your resources – your human resources, your financial resources. And that does mean something’s going to have to go away, which is very difficult in public schools.”

Tim Pike agreed. In addition to teaching in the Career and Technical Education program at the High School, Pike sits on the Sitka Assembly. He thought that strategic planning was really about deciding where to effectively spend money.

“The strategic plan is also to drive resources in a particular direction,” said Pike, “and to make sure that the financial and human resources go where we need them to go. And I’ll just circle back to what I said before, there’s way too much stuff up here for us to implement. And I think you see that as the result is why we’re here now. Right now, it’s not an implementable plan.”

Although the school board ultimately will sign off on a final strategic plan, it’s the district staff and community partners like the Tribe and the Sitka Sound Science Center who will make it happen. When the board suggested waiting to move forward until a permanent superintendent had been hired after this “transition year,” Ferrency pushed back, arguing that students themselves were the critical timeline, rather than teachers or administrators.

“We’ve been in transition for four years now,” she said. “So the kid who was in kindergarten in 2020-21 is now in third grade. And guess what? Those are the crucial years for learning to read. So if that kid has not learned to read now, and if we every year say ‘Well, it’s a transition year,’ the average tenure for a superintendent in the state of Alaska is three years.”

In the end, everyone agreed more discussion was needed to pare down the list to a couple of achievable priorities, and implementable action plans. The administration will present a proposed schedule for additional work sessions on strategic planning for the board to adopt at its next regular meeting.

“And so we’re at $8.8. So we’re funding almost a million dollars over the cap,” Eisenbeisz said. “And I think that’s a very important part of the conversation as we go forward.”

The maximum local contribution to schools – or the cap – applies only to instructional expenses, however. In recent years, Sitka’s assemblies have approached non-instructional expenses differently – sometimes counting them against the cap, and sometimes not.    

There was little discussion and no debate after assembly member Thor Christianson made a motion to notify the schools of the funding allocation. Member Kevin Mosher said he was fully behind it. 

“And I think just we need to recognize too, it’s an investment in our community. It’s a large investment,” Mosher said. “And I think it’s worth it. [It] seems tough sometimes, but if we can afford to do it, let’s do it.”

The assembly unanimously approved the proposed funding breakdown for Sitka schools. 

Canada’s extension of its ban on large cruise ships until 2022 will have a big impact on communities in Southeast Alaska — and could directly affect schools. When the Sitka Assembly and the school board met last week to discuss next year’s school district budget, the news from Canada cast considerable uncertainty over how much funding would be available.

School funding is the biggest single expense for the city of  Sitka, falling somewhere in the $7 million-range most years.

Property taxes alone don’t cover that bill, and it can fall to sales taxes collected during a busy visitor season to support the budget. Meeting just hours after Canada’s announcement, Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said it was unclear what  the absence of large ships would mean for school funding.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to have a cruise ship season,” he said. “That’s going to be a chunk out of the city’s revenues and I haven’t had enough time to go through our projections to digest exactly what that means for us.”

“I came into this meeting prepared to listen to assembly arguments and prepared to potentially give the full ask,” he said, referring to the school board’s budget request. “With an unknown and such a recent unknown it’s going to be my goal to try and give you the best that I can,” he said.

The school district plans to trim a projected $1.8 million dollar deficit by tapping into their reserves, boosting enrollment with a small upcoming “bubble” of kindergartners, and eliminating three positions plus the assistant superintendent post. They’re negotiating early retirement for some teachers to save money, and are hoping for some extra padding from the federal Secure Rural Schools program.

That still leaves the district with a deficit of just over $800,000. And that’s assuming that the assembly funds the school district to “the cap,” or the maximum allowed by the state. Last year, the assembly voted to fund schools to the cap,  but this year the state raised the amount.

Finance Director Melissa Haley presented a preliminary budget two weeks earlier that accounted for a thin or non-existent cruise ship season between July and September of this year. But her budget assumed the same amount of  funding for the Sitka School District as last year. Flat funding would mean a bigger deficit for the district, and potentially more cuts. 

School Board President Amy Morrison said if they had to make cuts, it would be staffing.

“So then it’s a matter of, is it larger classroom sizes?” she said. “Do we cut music and arts? That’s really, you know, we can’t close buildings, it’s staff. And then it’s the decision of what programs we’re cutting there.” 

School Board member Blossom Teal-Olsen noted the reductions the schools have seen over the last few years, pre-COVID, like the loss of Blatchley’s librarian and full-time Physical Education staff. 

“The school board did spend a considerable amount of time listening to our educators and our schools throughout these last few weeks. The resonating reports we have heard is that they are already at their bare minimum,” she said. “They are already skeletal.”

During assembly deliberation, member Kevin Mosher said he would support flat funding and splitting Secure Rural Schools if it comes through, but funding to the cap was not practical given budget constraints.

“The state says we can spend more but they’re not giving us more money for it. Enrollments are down but we’re being asked to fund a lot more money,” he said. “The cruise ship industry, yes, it may not be as bad as we think, but it’s not going to be as good as we thought.” 

Member Thor Christianson continued to push for funding schools to the cap.

“I think this is our core job,” he said. “I would rather see cuts in lots of other places before this.”

Christianson made a motion to do just that. But several assembly members, like Crystal Duncan, said they wanted more time to review the numbers before voting.

“You don’t have to convince me with additional information about what the school district is going to do, I just want more information on the city’s budget.” Duncan said. “Tonight is not the night to vote, and if we did vote, I think I would have had to vote ‘no’ on it at this point in time.”

Ultimately, Christianson’s motion failed to get a second (Initially, Rebecca Himschoot seconded the motion, but subsequently withdrew it). The assembly will revisit school funding at another meeting later this month. 

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story referred to school board member Blossom Teal-Olsen with a different last name. We’ve amended this report, and apologize to member Teal-Olsen for the error.

Sitka’s schools will be virtual for a few days following the holiday break, and return to in-person instruction in all buildings on January 11.

An overall reduction in Sitka’s infection rate is partially to thank for the move back into class — as is data that suggests that the coronavirus is not spreading in school buildings.

It will be exactly two months to the day from when they left, that Sitka’s students will return to their buildings on January 11. Interim superintendent John Holst says the restart day isn’t specifically tied to Sitka’s infection rate — which is down — but to district policies regarding holiday travel.

“Well, we had just a huge number of staff members who were traveling,” said Holst. “And we’ve wanted to stick with our travel guidelines which have kept our staff safe, and so we require seven days between the two tests after they arrive back.”

Even so, according to district metrics, which use the testing date of confirmed cases (rather than the reporting date), Sitka has dropped back into the green, or “low risk” alert level. The 14-day rolling case rate is at 5, and there are two active cases in the community. Back in early November, Sitka’s cases were surging past the 14-day rolling case threshold of 12 — and there were two district staff members who had tested positive. In consultation with SEARHC chief medical officer Dr. Elliot Bruhl and the rest of the Sitka Unified Command, Holst made the call to close all schools but Baranof Elementary on November 11.

Now, Holst believes the signs are favorable for getting back on course.

“It’s easy to close and hard to open,” said Holst. “That’s been the advice from (SEARHC chief medical officer) Dr. Bruhl. And as luck might have it, it’s going to be easy to open, because we’re back in the green.”

The district has updated its homepage with more detailed information about confirmed cases in each building, and the number of confirmed cases of transmission in the schools, which Holst says remains zero. He says mitigation measures in the buildings are working, and — compared to last July — there is a growing belief that schools are the best place for many kids to be during the pandemic.

“What would be the reason to shuffle kids out of a safe location to one that you don’t know if it’s safe or not?” he asked.

Along with in-person classes starting on January 11, the district will also resume extracurricular activities and sports — with an abundance of caution. At a listening session with the public in December, Holst shared survey results showing that 80-percent of parents wanted their children back in school. Holst says the district was already moving toward a return to extracurriculars — again, cautiously — and the return to “green” has made this decision easier.

“We need the students to have some sort of sense of normalcy in their lives,” Holst said, “I think that’s really important. The education stuff’s important, too, but the psychological value of kids going to school and knowing that they’re safe and that they’re with their friends and their teachers, and they’re learning stuff and having interactions — I think those are all really, really important things.” 

Holst says that in-person school will resume on the same terms that it ended back in November, with shortened school days, modified lunch programs, physical separation of classes, synchronous and asynchronous options for students who choose to remain at home, and regular testing of staff.

After testimony from the public, the Sitka School Board wasn’t willing to free up $200,000 to create mental health positions (full time counselors at Blatchley and Pacific High). “It seems really hard to cut existing positions to fund new positions,” said board member Amy Morrison. The board decided to spend $25,000 on the search for a new superintendent, but held off increasing the $25,000 contract for Community Schools (currently held by the Hames Center) until a budget adjustment this summer. (KCAW image capture)

The Sitka School Board Wednesday night (4-22-20) passed a $21 million-dollar budget for next year, after agreeing to hold off on any major staff cuts until absolutely necessary.

Last word on the schools  budget, however,  will depend on the Sitka Assembly.

The Sitka School Board wrestled more with possibilities than realities, as it forged a budget for next year.

Once federal Secure Rural Schools funding ($222,000) and Covid Relief ($152,000 deleted from operating budget, to be received as grants) were finally accounted for, the district budget for 2021 was actually ahead by just over $40,000.

But that didn’t stop the board from wanting to explore a more difficult scenario, just to see what it might be facing next year at this time, if the budget had to shrink by around $250,000. 

The district office and building principals responded with a list of over $900,000 in possible cuts, with a Keet Gooshi Heen elementary teacher and a Special Ed teacher at the top.

During public testimony at the board’s final budget hearing, Keet principal Casey Demmert made it clear that cutting one of his teachers would not be an easy call.

“That wasn’t a flippant ‘Hey, we can give up a teacher at Keet,’” said Demmert. “Giving up that position would have significant impact on our building and our students, and we would probably give up the Science position, which is part of our state testing, and would tax our teachers heavily with adding Science into their curriculum.”

Kelly Buxton is that Keet Gooshi Heen Science teacher. She didn’t comment on the fact that her position was at the top of the list of hypothetical cuts. Rather, she stressed the value of retaining as many teachers as possible. 

“I would just like to request that the board please try to minimize cuts to our staff,” Buxton asked. “I really think that the impact from remote learning and other impacts based on this whole covid situation for parents and teachers has been a lot to handle, and it will definitely impact our students’ learning next year.”

Buxton supported the district’s move toward putting an iPad or a laptop in the hands of every student — the so-called 1:1 Initiative. The initiative is budgeted at around $25,000 next year. Technology director Ian Crane believed it was a good investment.

“Technology’s merely a tool, and the connections that matter in school are teachers,” Crane explained. “But there are ways that technology can actually save money. Similar to what Kelly (Buxton) was saying, in a 1:1 scenario with digital resources replacing books and those costs being lower, there are ways in which moving forward, and not cutting technology too heavily can actually benefit the school fiscally.”

Crane said the savings provided by technology allowed for more human staffing in the buildings, and that to cut technology too far “would be going backward, financially.”

After hearing from the public, the board lost its appetite for exploring the worst-case scenario. Members began to build a consensus on making only a couple of small cuts, in order to keep the $40,000 surplus in reserves.

“I know that it doesn’t give us a lot in reserves,” said board member Brady-Howard, “but trying to hold off on any drastic cuts until they’re absolutely necessary is where I’m at as far as what I’d like to see us do for next year’s budget.”

Member Anne Morrison was one of two board members most interested in learning if large cuts could allow the district to restore counseling positions at Blatchley and Pacific High School. Morrison, and other members, were also interested in bumping up funding for the Community Schools contract with the Hames Center, which was only $25,000 last year.

But Morrison didn’t see any logic in trading out teaching positions to make these things possible.

“It seems really hard to cut existing positions to fund new positions, but I support especially the two counseling positions,” said Morrison. “You know I would love to see those happen, but there just doesn’t seem to be the money anywhere to make those happen. So I would also agree with you guys, and put those at the top of our priority list if we were to get some money. And I would also like to revisit in July or August, when we do our budget revision, to see if there is potential to add money for Community Schools at that time. But I think there are so many unknowns between now and then that I feel more comfortable keeping that $40,000 in reserves for right now.”

In the end, the board made three decisions about the budget: It cut $7,000 for membership in the League of Innovative Schools, and $18,000 in expenses due the closure of schools this spring. And the board chose to spend $25,000 on the search for a new superintendent, while leaving $40,000 in the bank.

The Sitka School District is within $700,000 of having a balanced budget for the next school year — a significant contrast from the budgeting picture this time last year. A member of the public referred to it as “the nicest deficit we’ve had in several years.”

Note: The next school board budget hearing is scheduled for 6 P.M. Friday, March 27 in the Sitka High School Library. Here is information from the February 19 presentation.

In 2019, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed cutting funding for public education by 25-percent, which would have meant a loss of around 45 positions in the Sitka Schools in the current school year.

The state legislature pushed back, and the governor subsequently relented — but not until a campaign to recall him from office collected signatures at a record pace.

With no imminent crisis or threat this year, the first public budget hearing of the Sitka School Board was lightly attended last week (2-19-20), and — compared to the recent past — the projected deficit for next year seems manageable: only $684,000.

The reauthorization of the federal Secure Rural Schools funding is one reason the district’s numbers are better balanced looking ahead to next year; another is the Sitka Assembly’s recent decision to fund local schools to the maximum allowed by state law.

The municipality of Sitka contributes 37-percent of the district’s $20 million budget. School board president Elias Erickson said having the city’s full backing at this stage of budgeting process was significant.

“37-percent of our revenues we can be certain of at this point in the process,” said Erickson, “which is much more helpful than where we were last year at this point in the process, not knowing where 100-percent of our revenues were going to land.”

The other 63-percent of the district’s funding comes from the state — specifically the Alaska Legislature — which historically has never  cut funding to schools. Most likely, state funding will remain the same as last year. Flat funding, plus slight increases in costs like salaries, utilities, and insurance, has created the $700,000 gap for the Sitka district next year.

Career and Technical Education teacher Tim Pike was one of only three people who attended the budget hearing. He suggested that audiences would be larger if people better understood what programs or facilities were on the line.

“And so I’ve witnessed you in the last couple of years turn your March work session into a hearing-then-a-work-session,” Pike said. “And I’d encourage you to do the same again. Because at that point a lot more clarity will be available to people. And a presentation about where you’re headed could then elicit more response from the community, because at this point in time we have nothing to work with.”

The other two members of the public present were also teachers. Elementary music teacher Susan Brant-Ferguson advocated for restoring a full-time counseling position at Blatchley Middle School.

“Probably part of the reason that’s not filled is that it’s a half-time counselor, half-time P.E. which is not a position that most professionals would be aiming toward,” said Brant-Ferguson. “And I think that it’s an essential position to every level of our school, and it needs to be budgeted for as a full-time counseling position.”

Brant-Ferguson said she knew it was a difficult ask in light of the budget deficit, but she said this was “the nicest deficit we’ve had in several years.”

Mike Vieira, also a shop teacher, agreed with the need for a full-time counselor at Blatchley. The district had contracted, down seven teachers since 2018, and he thought it was time to rebalance positions. He also had concerns about the high school building, which still feels new to many people, but is actually starting to show signs of age.

“We think about this building as being brand new because it’s such a nice building that got remodeled, but we’re 20 years into the remodel,” said Vieira. “And if you start walking down the hallways and looking at the carpet, it’s starting to fade. And there’s a spot down here where the floor’s starting to slope. And I guess my question is: How long do we expect the carpet to last?”

Vieira had similar worries about tile in bathrooms and locker rooms. A member of the teachers union, Vieira said it felt strange to be advocating for building maintenance instead of teachers, “but at some point we have to think about keeping this place up.”

The school board took no official action at the hearing. The members agreed that the next hearing and meeting in March should include some specific options for closing the $700,000 budget gap for next year.

Given the district’s recent history, being only three students below projections is good news. Last year, the district missed its mark by 38 students.

Wegner says there is a lot of variability in trying to anticipate enrollment from year-to-year.

“Well we go through a protocol where we take a look at our actual numbers,” said Wegner. “We assume students are going to move up. We take out people who are leaving, such as Coast Guard families who are at the end of their three years. So we do some things like that. We started a couple of years ago. The first year we did it we were within one student from our projection, this year we’re within a handful. And it was last year that was unique and from talking with my superintendent colleagues around the state, it sounds like it was just a big hit around the state of decreased enrollment that was unexpected last year.”

The 38-student drop last year put Sitka in a budget bind. October is the month when the state formally counts enrollment in every school district for funding purposes, and the lower-than-expected numbers immediately threw Sitka into a $100,000 deficit. This year’s 3-student drop is almost insignificant by comparison; nevertheless, Wegner says she’s worried about school funding in general. Gov. Mike Dunleavy last year proposed a statewide cut to education of 25-percent. Under threat of recall, the governor has pulled back from that extreme, but Wegner says no one’s really sure what number he’ll land on.

Even though enrollment is holding, Wegner says uncertainty over the budget looms as large as ever.

“It will probably be another past-the-date in April when we have to have our final budget set, that we’ll know what the state is going to give us,” Wegner said. “We don’t know what the governor’s budget is going to look like. So there are just a lot of unknowns this year.”

Despite the good news that enrollment in Sitka is on track for the year, the total number enrolled is still lower than last year by about 17 students — continuing a downward trend seen in Sitka since the mid-90s.

The Sitka School Board will meet in regular session 6 p.m. Monday, November 4 in the Sitka High library.

The Sitka School District replaced 10 teachers this year, at a cost of over $200,000 according to superintendent Mary Wegner. While some turnover is unavoidable, Wegner wants to prioritize teacher retention to save money. (KCAW file photo)

Of all the expenses incurred in running Alaska’s public schools, one stands out as being especially hard to bear: the cost of teacher turnover.

Sitka’s school superintendent recently told the local chamber of commerce (12-19-17) that holding on to good teachers is an important way to save money.

Downloadable audio.

Sitka Schools superintendent Mary Wegner says that Alaska’s 54 school districts hired an average of 985 teachers a year over the last five years — at a cost of over $20,000 per hire.

This has nothing to do with salaries. According to a recent study by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska, recruiting good teachers simply takes cash.

“So what they’re defining as the cost of teacher turnover is separation, when a teacher leaves. The cost to a district when a teacher leaves, when they recruit new teachers, the hiring process. Also, all the training that’s needed. Even though teachers come with teacher certification, I graduated with my teaching degree in 1985, so a lot has happened in education in that time, and I’ve kept up to speed with my education over the years. But even if you’re five years out from getting your teaching degree, there’s a lot of need for training and best practices and what’s happening, and what we know about good learning and what that looks like in districts today.”

Wegner’s presentation was designed to inform Sitka’s business leaders about the financial pressures on the school district — which has no taxation authority of its own and must rely exclusively on local and state contributions for funding.

She noted that the ISER study only covered the expense of teacher turnover, and not its effects.

“None of this is addressing the impact that it has on student learning. When all of your resources are going to collectively hiring 985 teachers every year in the state. So it’s a huge impact to school districts.”

Wegner reported that she replaced 10 teachers in the Sitka School District this year, at a cost of over $200,000.

While some of that expense was unavoidable, she believes schools can save money through retention.

“Turnover’s going to happen. People retire. People move. People have life events that change their desire to work in any one community, and we can’t control that. What we can control as a district is how we treat teachers, how do we provide a place for them that feeds their professional growth, that allows them to have a rich life that they can count on, buy a home. They can feel comfortable in knowing that their job is secure as long as their professional work is up to snuff. But it’s not something that they have to worry about getting a pink slip every year. The retention is the key.”

Although Sitka is fully staffed, Wegner said the rest of the state is experiencing a teacher shortage. She said that as of mid-year, there were 153 classrooms in Alaska without teachers.

Former fifth graders (now sixth graders!) Levi, Cameron, and Dane eating salmon at the weekly Fish to Schools lunch. (KCAW file photo)

Sitka’s schools opened this week with full staffing.

After a funding scare last summer that could have left Sitka’s schools down three full-time teaching positions, with larger classes in the elementary grades, superintendent Mary Wegner says the district is operating at full-strength.

“We’re very, very fortunate that both the city and the state showed their financial support for what we’re doing in the schools here in Sitka and around the state.”

At risk last June were teaching positions in 2nd grade, 5th grade, and special education. Wegner says those jobs were filled, although changes in the district’s special needs population did not require the hiring of a full-time teacher after all, and the funding was applied in other ways to accommodate the affected students.

The music job at Blatchley Middle School has also been filled, after considerable anxiety last year that the program might be dropped.

The Alaska legislature passed an operating budget on June 22 that kept education funding at the same level as last year — although it dipped into a rapidly-depleting savings account to do so. The city also reversed a pledge to cut local school funding by over $200,000, to help the district make ends meet.

Nevertheless, Wegner says that after two years of flat funding from both government sources, inflation is a worry. The district’s business office has scoured the budget for savings. She thinks it’s starting to take a toll.

“We’re going backwards, even though we’re trying to go forwards. And I don’t want to sound like I’m harping, because I’m very appreciative of the funds from both the city and the state. I’m just very concerned about doing the work that we need to do for our students if we continue to backslide.”

Wegner is frustrated that education funding continues to be a distraction from the mission of providing “deep learning” in the schools. She’s disappointed that the legislature failed to pass a revenue plan in the last session. The state is again expected to grapple with a deficit of around $3 billion in the operating budget when it begins the next session in January.

But Wegner remains characteristically upbeat about education, and especially about the students themselves.

“When I was up at Sitka High School at the freshman orientation, and I was seeing people who just a few months ago walked across the stage as eighth graders during the Rites of Passage — the maturity level! They’re just growing up so quickly, even in that short span of time.”

And, Wegner adds, “We had a great first day of school.”

Students at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary use makerspace tools to create — anything they want. “My biggest concern,” says Jason Ohler, PhD, “is that makerspace doesn’t become another fad.” (Video capture/Digital promise)

The Sitka School Board stopped worrying about education funding for about an hour Wednesday evening (5-17-17) — to make stuff.

The board convened in a work session for a hands-on presentation on the district’s mobile makerspace cart, which just completed its first year of testing in elementary classrooms.

Downloadable audio.

banana tunes

School board members Jenn McNichol and Eric VanCise are transforming a banana into a piano keyboard. Member Dionne Brady is sketching a birthday cake on a piece of paper, and she clips a wire to her drawing.

happy birthday

The wires and the pencil lead complete an electrical circuit — which is totally old school — but the circuit runs through a laptop which recognizes Brady’s drawing, and plays the tune.

happy birthday

School board members Jenn McNichol (r.) and Eric VanCise turn a banana into a musical instrument. Superintendent Mary Wegner sees makerspace as a “feeder program” for the advanced technology training already in place at Sitka High School (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)

The advocates for makerspace say that students quickly move through this initial — and slightly annoying — phase and find completely unexpected ways to use the collection of wires, gizmos, and software that travels around the district in a large red cabinet.

Cindy Duncan is a 2nd grade teacher at Keet Gooshi Heen. She told the board that students in her classroom created a language assist tool for a fellow student with disabilities.

“What we’re going to need are problem solvers, people who are creative in their thinking, and inventive. And so I think that bringing the maker movement into your classroom really emphasizes those areas and puts the learning back with the students. And it fuels that fire and gets them excited.”

As part of a pilot program with the League of Innovative Schools, Duncan received laptops, large screens, and a 3D printer and scanner for her classroom. She used “maker mornings” to research the effect of the program on attendance for her Masters’ thesis, and she said that it was significant.

Video: Maker Learning in Sitka (by Digital Promise)

The mobile makerspace cart was managed last year by Soshi Bieler, with the Sitka Fellows program. But it’s the brainchild of superintendent Mary Wegner and her longtime mentor in technological education, Jason Ohler, who’s been studying the makerspace movement.
He presented a lengthy report to the school board. He said that in recent years schools have been focused on teaching software — spreadsheets and word processing — but that is changing.

“And now digital technology has become so powerful that we’re able to take these things here and hook them to real-life objects, whether it’s bananas or circuit boards, and make stuff. So we’ve entered this era now everybody — everybody — can be an innovator. Not only that: If you’re not an innovator, you’re probably going to get the second-tier jobs that you don’t really want. If you want to be in the forefront, you want to be the people who can invent and make stuff.”

Ohler speaks passionately about makerspace. Ohler started the Masters in Education Technology degree program at the University of Alaska Southeast, and Sitka superintendent Mary Wegner was one of his students. Now she teaches a digital leadership and technology class at the university for school administrators earning their superintendent’s endorsement. Her fee — about $4,500 — covers the lion’s share of funding for the makerspace program in the district, and for Ohler’s travel expenses.

So it’s not a ton of money, but even with board support will makerspace stick? This is not Ohler’s first time down a path toward an uncertain future.

“If I have a concern about makerspaces, it’s that we need to keep it from becoming a fad. And I’ve seen so many fads. I’ve been in educational technology for 35 years, and stuff just comes and goes. Expensive stuff. And people have the best of intentions and no one can see the future.”

The use of the mobile makerspace cart in Sitka was open-ended in the last school year, and experimental. Next year the cart will move permanently to Pacific High, and Baranof, Keet, and Blatchley will get slightly scaled-down carts, and teachers will begin to integrate makerspace into the curriculum — as is already being done in Sitka High’s digital fabrication lab and career education facilities, which serve as one huge makerspace.

For students — and whatever comes next.

“So these are these little robots…”