Education Week - September 11, 2019 - 13

Meanwhile, at the job fair, school and district administrators soldier on, even as the turnout seems to them to have
dwindled over the years.
The Northwest Arctic Borough school district-which
serves 11 small Alaska Native Villages in the state's far
northwest corner-was offering prospective educators
$1,500 for moving costs, health, dental, and vision insurance for an entire family for $90 a month, low rent, free
utilities in teacher housing, and a starting salary of $55,550.
The district's retention rate veers from 20 percent to 25
percent, leading the 1,800-student district to hire 40 to 60
new teachers annually.

Accentuate the Positive
Assistant human resources director Amie Gardner-who
moved to the village of Kotzebue in the district seven years
ago with a single duffle bag and $300 to her name-last
year prepared welcome bags for new hires. She filled a waterproof bag with snacks, a one-pound bag of coffee and
tea, stress balls, stickers with the district's logo, an iPad
holder, an eye mask to help block out the midnight sun,
candies, cold and hot packs, and other goodies.
"I thought it would help with retention, as a way to welcome them to our district with open arms," Gardner said.
"We do this because our teachers are important to us and

"We need people to understand what the communities are like
to get the best out of every student, every year."
-Harley Sundown, vice principal, Scammon Bay School
"For some, walking into a school building brings up pain.
They may not even realize it because it may not be their
pain, but it may be the pain of their parents or grandparents," she said.
"If an educator can't see a way to reach the kids and have
them be successful, [he or she] is not going to stay. We need
to transform what happens in those schools and then equip
teachers with the support they need, so they can thrive and
the children in their classes can thrive," Hirshberg said.
The consequences of teacher turnover and shortages can
be costly in terms of both student achievement and money.
ISER found it costs the state $20,431 for every teacher turnover, or roughly $20 million a year. Hirshberg, an author of
the cost study, found that low teacher retention and high
teacher turnover impact student learning outcomes for the
worse.
Even if the state university system were able to prepare
more teachers, though, it might not stem the shortages in
rural areas, Hirshberg said.
The educators coming through the state's university system tend to flock to Alaska's largest, urban districts upon
graduation.
"They don't want to go to rural districts because a lot of
our students are place-based," Hirshberg said. "They're
older and already have families, and there are limited opportunities if you have a spouse. ... There are a number of
reasons why it can be difficult if you're a more mature student to go out and teach in rural Alaska versus if you're 22
and kind of looking for that first exciting adventure."

Schools & Students in 2018-19:

* 509 schools
* 54 school districts
* 128,800 K-12 students
Teachers:

* 7,889 classroom teachers,
including part-time

* 16.35 to 1 student-to-teacher ratio
* $70,277 average annual salary

Online
Exclusives
Photos by Erin Irwin/Education Week

veloped where if you were dealing with life-threatening
conditions and the weather is bad, there are just no flights."
Teachers' pension issues also hinder recruiting, according to teachers at the Anchorage job fair this summer. Alaska, like many other states, changed its teacher
retirement system from a pension fund to a 401K arrangement nearly 15 years ago, and the teachers' unions have
expressed concern that the newer system may not yield
sufficient retirement savings for teachers joining it now.
To keep teachers in the classroom, Hirshberg said, it's
also important for districts to recognize that the teachers
they hire are adults and professionals, and to set up conditions for them to feel valued and lead independent lives
within these communities.
At the same token, she cautioned, outsiders should not
expect to walk into schools and dictate how kids should
learn in rural Alaska. She said communities need to feel
like they own their schools, especially so in Native Villages.
Recognizing the historical context of the state's formation is a critical piece of that. Up until 1867, when the Russians were colonizing Alaska, until the mid-1900s, long
after the Americans had purchased the territory, generations of students in rural Alaska were forced into missionary and boarding schools that sought to strip students of
their Native culture. The multigenerational trauma of
those experiences is still present, Hirshberg said.

the future of our children."
Mike Hanley, the superintendent of the 100-student
Chugach school district in Alaska's southwest coast, bordering Prince William Sound, said his district manages to
retain 90 percent of teachers from year to year, more than
most. The district accomplishes that by empowering teachers to be a part of district decisions, he said.
DeFeo said it was striking to find in her research that superintendents, despite their recruitment struggles, weren't
suggesting communities in rural Alaska were worse off in
some way than other communities. Indeed, the administrators at the job fair said they accentuate the positive
aspects of living in rural Alaska-the serenity, quiet, and
beauty of living in a village seemingly on the edge of the
world, the sense of community.
"Pretty much everything that happens in the communities happen in the schools-weddings, funerals, potlucks,
you name it," said recruiter Jim Hickerson, a retired school
employee of Bering Strait school district, a remote community where the schools are nearer to Russia than Anchorage. "If you're looking for shopping centers, movie theaters
and restaurants and vehicles, that's not us."
Cook, the Arkansas teacher transplant, said her years in
Scammon Bay have given her a greater sense of fulfilling
her mission as a teacher than she had before.
"I feel like I am able to make a difference and [that's] a
positive thing for them, and it's positive for me," she said.
"I think I made a difference in Arkansas, too, but I think
there is more need here because there is less opportunity."

* 12% statewide average annual
turnover, the 12th highest teacher
turnover rate in the nation

* 20% average rural teacher turnover
* 64% of teacher hires are from out of
state

* 5% of teachers are Alaska Natives
SOURCES: Education Week's Quality Counts;
Alaska Department of Education and Early Development;
National Center for Education Statistics; U.S. Census;
Arctic Council; Institute of Social and Economic Research,
University of Alaska Anchorage

Video
Watch teachers and
leaders from Scammon
Bay, Alaska, talk about
their teacher-turnover
experiences and
integrating teachers into
their remote community.

Instagram
Find video snapshots from Victoria
Petersen's travels and investigations in
Alaska.

www.edweek.org/go/
Alaska

About This Project
"Letters to Alaska" explores how cultural
and geographic barriers, teacher
shortages, history, environment, and
other factors have shaped schooling
in Alaska. The project is funded by
the Gregory M. Chronister Journalism
Fellowship, which supports enterprising
or investigative work each year in pre-K-12
education. The fellowship honors the
now-retired Gregory M. Chronister, a
longtime executive editor, managing
editor, associate editor, and Commentary
editor at Education Week.

About the Fellow
Victoria Petersen was born and raised
in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. Her
father came to the state during its 1980s
oil rush, and her mother's family moved
there before statehood, homesteading
in Anchorage's historic Spenard
neighborhood in the 1940s.
Petersen graduated from the University
of Alaska Anchorage in 2018 with
a degree in journalism and public
communications, and an emphasis
in digital media. She is the education
and local government reporter for the
Peninsula Clarion, the daily newspaper
that serves the Kenai Peninsula, just
south of Anchorage. She is also the
founder and editor-in-chief of The
Spenardian, a hyperlocal news blog and
a print magazine in Anchorage.

http://www.edweek.org/go/Alaska http://www.edweek.org/go/Alaska

Education Week - September 11, 2019

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