KCAW

A Southeast Alaska coalition is hosting a landslide conference in Sitka next month. 

Southeast Alaska Landslide Information Preparedness Partnership, or SLIPP, is a regional coalition that formed several years ago with a goal to reduce the risk of landslides in Southeast Alaska and help communities better understand and prepare. In the last decade, 12 people have died in landslides across the region.

Lisa Busch, the group’s director, joined KCAW for the Morning Interview along with KK Prussian from United States Forest Service on Thursday (2-19-26).

“So the idea of SLIPP is really a community of practice. It’s this idea of sharing between communities,” Busch said. “In Southeast, we all live in our little own town, and we’re all on our separate island, literally, physically, and what can we learn from each other?”

Next month, the coalition will host a conference in Sitka, where they’ll share recent research, planning information, and provide opportunities for attendees to ask experts questions. An engineer will be available to answer homeowners’ questions about mitigating landslide risk, along with a representative from the Division of Insurance.

A representative from the Green Cross will also join the conference. That’s an organization that provides mental health first aid and training, something Busch said is critical in a small community like Sitka, which experienced a deadly landslide in 2015. 

“Once there is a landslide, a tragedy, we have these very unique circumstances in our small Southeast Alaska communities, where we have to help people in a very, very, very tender, vulnerable, tragic time. And do we have the skills to do that?” Busch added.

The conference runs March 3-4 at Sitka’s Harrigan Centennial Hall and online. Learn more and find a link to register here.

Drama, Debate, and Forensics, or DDF, is an after school activity where kids can showcase their public speaking skills by participating in 15 different events, like dramatic acting and persuasive speech. Sitka High School’s DDF team travels throughout the school year to compete with other Southeast Alaska schools, before heading to the state tournament in late February. Christian Litten, Francis Myers and Angela Bahna joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss an upcoming showcase this Sunday, Feb. 22, at 6 p.m. (previously scheduled for Feb. 21), at the Sitka Performing Arts Center, to highlight some of the events they’ll be taking to this year’s state competition in Anchorage. Listen to their conversation here:

Health sciences, welding, and scuba diving are only a minor selection of subsidized courses available to high school upperclassmen to take through a special dual credit program with University of Alaska Southeast-Sitka. Sitka High School teacher Mike Viera and counselor Megan Reid, alongside UAS welding instructor Luke Gibes, joins KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the dual credit program and how rising upperclassmen can get involved in the upcoming fall semester.

The deadline to comment on the U.S. Interior Department’s review of federal subsistence management has been extended to the end of March. Hundreds of Alaskans have submitted comments so far on the proposed changes, and the City of Sitka and residents of rural communities throughout Southeast Alaska are no exception. 

“As a rural community, the vast majority of Sitka residents harvest large quantities of traditional, personal, and subsistence use fish and game year-round both for themselves and for others.” That’s central to a resolution passed unanimously by the Sitka Assembly on Feb. 10, and submitted to the federal Departments of the Interior and Agriculture.

Assembly Member Katie Riley, a sponsor of the resolution, said it weighs in on questions put forward by the Interior Department. One of those questions is the board’s process for rural determinations — something Riley said is particularly important to Sitka, which has defended its rural status for years. 

“I am grateful that we are making a strong statement about how subsistence users and local and traditional ecological knowledge holders are the ones that are best suited to occupy those boards, and that subsistence is extremely important to our rural way of life here in Sitka and in Southeast Alaska,” Riley said.

Safari Club International submitted a petition in May of last year to amend the Federal Subsistence Management Program, which has authority over fishing and hunting on federal public lands. In the petition, the national sport hunting and fishing group calls for changes like eliminating a rural priority and removing public seats on the Federal Subsistence Board, which were added to ensure Indigenous and rural representation. 

Rural subsistence users across Alaska say those regulatory changes would undermine subsistence harvest rights in the state.

Addressing the assembly, local Indigenous rights advocate Yeix Anatsees Tom Gamble said he’s grateful the city is taking a stance on subsistence.

“My worry is that there’s going to be an increased discrimination by the state troopers against Natives, in particular, who may not understand some of these changes, but they’re going to continue to live their life anyway,” Gamble said. “So what you’re looking at is the possibility of criminalization for someone making a choice about just maintaining the life.”

Patty Phillips agrees. She’s a resident of Pelican, a community of about 90 year-round residents on the northwestern part of Chichagof Island, and serves on the Southeast Regional Advisory Council for federal subsistence management. The Pelican City Council passed a similar resolution to Sitka’s at its meeting on Wednesday (2-11-26). In a phone interview, Phillips said she grew up on subsistence resources. 

“Subsistence, to me, is a way of life,” she said. “It’s something that my parents taught me. I learned from other people in my community who would involve me in their activities. And then I also did it with my husband and his family, and then we did it with our children, and we bring in our grandchildren at times. So it’s just a full community way of life, or full family way of life connected to a community.”

Phillips said removing the rural priority would be detrimental to that way of life. Losing it could mean hunters from anywhere would have equal access to their fish and game on the federal lands in their backyard. 

And Phillips said with the high cost of living in Pelican, that would be devastating. 

“It’s really important to us as a community to have that priority access to resources, because it is our food security,” she said. “When you look in my freezer, you’re going to see fish and game in there, and that’s what we’re living off of now.”

Last November, Pelican went more than a month without a mail plane or ferry run, and Phillips said all of a sudden, their “lifeline” for staples out of Juneau was cut off. 

Matt Anderstrom is the Food Sovereignty Coordinator with the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe. He agrees that the financial strain on families if the rural priority gets eliminated will be astronomical. Currently, he said, people in Yakutat pay $11 a pound for burger at the store and $22 for a gallon of milk. 

“Everybody that stays there year-round is harvesting year-round,” Anderstrom said. “It’s like having a second full-time job. This one’s to put meat in the freezer. You have families like mine, and we’re not the only ones, we’re close to 90% subsistence protein because that’s what you have to do if you’re going to afford to live here.”

“Year-round” means getting shellfish from the beach and seaweed in the spring. Herring eggs in early April and hooligans from the river. Salmon throughout the spring and summer, followed by moose and deer season in the fall. Anderstrom said he’s afraid outsiders will come in and take up the quota before locals have had a chance to harvest. 

“This is not something we go out and do for fun,” he said. “This is not something that we go out and do so we can hang a trophy somewhere, so we can show pictures to our friends and say, ‘Oh my God, look what we did. I went up here and I got this big moose and hey, you want to come next year?’ No, that’s not how we do things. We go out, we handle our business, we fill our freezers, we go home. And to me, it just seems like folks don’t understand that this is a way of life. This is what we do to survive.”

The deadline to comment on the proposed changes to the Department of the Interior’s federal subsistence review was extended from Feb. 13 to March 30. Public comments can be submitted at regulations.gov.

State lawmakers questioned Mt. Edgecumbe High School leadership about conditions at the Sitka school this week. So far, a quarter of the students have withdrawn this school year. The hearings follow months of concern about student welfare at the boarding school that serves primarily Alaska Native students from rural communities around the state.

Schools around the state are struggling to keep up with building maintenance, teacher turnover, and increased costs. Mt. Edgecumbe High School is among them, with one key difference – it’s state-run. At a House Education Committee hearing on February 11, Sitka Representative Rebecca Himschoot, an Independent, highlighted that distinction. She said legislators are directly responsible for the safety and quality of life for students attending the boarding school.

“That is why we are here today. Like all school districts across Alaska, Mount Edgecumbe is experiencing rapid changes with impacts to student health, safety and mental well being. We are not here today to point fingers or to condemn any one person or any one decision,” Himschoot said. “Rather, we are here to bring facts, transparency and perspective to the situation, because Edgecumbe is the only school in the state for which the state is directly responsible, it is critical that the dialog today is open, productive, and honest.”

Last fall, a group of alumni advisory board members, along with a handful of former and current staff, addressed the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development with concerns about student welfare at Mt. Edgecumbe. They said recent funding and staffing cuts led to fewer programs and extracurricular opportunities, along with more restrictive policies on campus. They said the changes were taking a toll on students’ mental health, and more students than usual were changing schools. As of February, school leaders say 100 students have withdrawn this year, around a quarter of the student body.

Every year, dozens of students leave the school early. School staff say it’s for a variety of reasons, but this year’s departures also align with a dramatic dip in the school’s budget, and longtime staff departures. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop told legislators that during the coronavirus pandemic, the school expanded its staffing with around $5 million in relief funds. After the money ran out, they found themselves $1.6 million over budget last year.

“At the time, what alerted me was that there was a recommendation…to eliminate 14 teaching positions. And I knew from having run high schools and other things over my time that there’s no way that you could have a comprehensive high school with 14 less teachers,” Bishop said. “We would not be able to do that.”

Instead, last summer, the state balanced the budget by cutting four teaching positions along with one administrator and two administrative support staff. Bishop said the state reviewed the school’s finances and found spending for the dorm and food contractor was up significantly, even though they weren’t meeting federal requirements (Bishop said a USDA inspection in FY25 yielded 59 violations). So they switched to a new contractor, NANA Management Services. Around the same time, the longtime dorm supervisor and other residential staff stepped down. The superintendent also resigned in April, and was replaced by David Langford in August.

It was a big transition. Ilana Kalke was one of two Mt. Edgecumbe students who addressed legislators. She said a disconnect between the contractor, NANA, and state staff was affecting students.

“It seems like they have trouble communicating, which impacts, this leads [to] inconsistent application of rules,” Kalke said. “At the beginning of the school year, there’s something where we can check out a lounge, and that wasn’t across all dorms. There’s been trouble communicating, getting rides, and just like less collaboration, which affects rec activities.” 

While Kalke, a junior, spoke highly of her education and experiences at Mt. Edgecumbe, she said the school’s aging facilities are affecting student life.

“There’s leaky pipes, washers that don’t work, malfunctioning showers,” she said. “And this isn’t just the dorms, but also the academic building. There’s leaks in classrooms, in the library.”

At the Senate Education Committee hearing, Superintendent Langford said they had been working on solutions with NANA to improve the student experience both in the lunch room and the dorm rooms, and they’ve addressed some deferred maintenance, but it’s an uphill battle.

“Not just last year or this year, but maybe a decade worth of neglect that has things have not been taken care of, and move to the next level,” Langford said. “So we’re moving as fast as we can to make changes and update the school.”

Bishop and Langford pointed to several fixes made in the past year, including replacing dorm furniture and beds, and kitchen equipment. Anchorage Democratic Senator Löki Tobin said the Legislature had approved funding for aesthetic dorm improvements, as well as structural repairs. She said that funding was vetoed by Governor Mike Dunleavy in FY24, but the legislature didn’t see another ask from the school for the funding. Tobin wanted to know why it hadn’t been pursued.

“I’m just kind of confused, a little bit, about your engagement with Mt. Edgecumbe, your responsibilities. You are the oversight body, and yet we continue to see the governor veto, since 2020, projects for Mt. Edgecumbe,” Tobin said. “It’s just very challenging for me to understand exactly what the oversight has been of this particular facility underneath your leadership. But I know that finance will dig much more into this.”

Legislators also questioned Bishop’s decision to hire Langford as the new superintendent when he had already accepted a job to run Chatham School District in Southeast which serves Angoon, Tenakee Springs, Gustavus, and Klukwan. He’s currently doing both jobs. Bishop said she was looking for someone with experience, and Langford agreed to live in Sitka and do the bulk of the Chatham job remotely.  

“Many superintendents don’t spend as much feet on the ground in their own local places, in their schools, as much as really the Mt. Edgecumbe superintendent can, because he lives about a couple blocks away from the school,” Bishop said.

Langford, who has been in the superintendent role for around seven months, told Legislators while 100 students was around 25% more than typical for this time of year, he was hopeful they wouldn’t lose any more. He said he was determined to turn enrollment around, and the school has already begun accepting applications for next year.

Listen back to the full hearings here:
House Education Committee
Senate Education Committee

The BANFF Film Festival is returning to Sitka for its 50th year. The local committee selected six films to showcase at the event, ranging from two minutes to 45 minutes. The films cover a variety of outdoor activities and cultural stories. The event is at the Sitka Performing Arts Center on Friday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online, at the door, or at the Hames Center. Event emcee Brian McLaughlin, Hames Center Manager Paige Craig, and KK Prussian, a past emcee, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming event. Listen to their conversation here:

Sitka’s Imagination Library will host a family “Octo-palooza” event this Valentine’s Day, in partnership with the Sitka Sound Science Center and the Emblem Club. Organizers Kari Sagel, Lisa Hodges, and Kari Paustian joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the event, which will feature story time, hands-on activities and a free book giveaway. Listen here:

The upcoming “State of the Sound” event aims to gather local residents, knowledge holders, researchers, and students to share observations and ask questions about Sitka Sound. The event, from Feb. 19 to 21 at Harrigan Centennial Hall, includes storytelling, roundtable discussions, talks, and field trips. Lauren Wild, assistant professor of applied fisheries at UAS, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to talk about what’s on the agenda and what attendees can expect. Listen to the conversation here:

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska is hosting a will-drafting clinic on Feb. 16, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at tribal headquarters. The clinic aims to help tribal citizens, particularly elders, with simple will drafting. Attendees should bring identification, property deeds, and life insurance policy numbers. The clinic will provide intake forms, legal assistance, and a will template. Realty Officer Luwinna Kubik and Annika Krafcik, Associate Tribal Attorney, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming worshop. Listen to their conversation here:

Ramshackle Cabaret presents “Atomic Bang” February 13 and 14 at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Organizers Shelby Williams and Christian Litten joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the upcoming burlesque and variety show, set in a post-apocalyptic world. This is the group’s 12th or 13th show since 2012, with a theme of a post-apocalyptic world. Listen to their conversation here: