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The Native Village of Karluk on Kodiak Island in Alaska went viral this summer for an ad offering cost-free living in an effort to reopen its school.
But just a month after classes started, that school is closing again.
KMXT’s Brian Venua reports, the school’s student enrollment is back down to just two kids after both families chosen to move there left the village.
The decision to close the school was unanimous at an emergency school board meeting.
Cyndy Mika is the Kodiak Island Borough School District superintendent.
“It’s a sad day when you have to close a school. And it’s not anything that I ever wanted to do in my tenure – it’s nothing that I want to ever repeat again. It weighs heavy on your heart when you have to close a school.”
Karluk, on the southwest end of Kodiak Island, had just a few dozen year-round residents, with only two of them being school-age kids.
The village advertised free living expenses for two families to move there over the summer.
The state requires 10 students to be enrolled in order to receive funding.
The ad worked; two families with eight kids between them moved to Karluk in September, and the district’s board of education voted to reopen the facility.
Then both of the new families left Karluk.
Alicia Andrew, a Tribal Chief for the Tribal Council said in an email it was a blow to the community.
“It’s so disappointing, we thought we picked the right families.”
October is when the Alaska Department of Education does a headcount of students for funding.
But since the families left before the count was finished, Mika says they could be out about $80,000 in their already tight budget.
“We didn’t make it through the count and that’s predominantly the reason why – that is the really, solely, the only reason why we are closing.
The district is currently working with the state to try to get prorated funding for serving the 10 students for the weeks they stayed in the village, but otherwise that money will come out of the district’s fund balance, or savings.”
While it didn’t work out, Mika says she still stands by her recommendation and the Board of Education’s decision to reopen the school in the first place.
“We knew it was in the best interest of the students to open the school as a learning site and I think we did the right thing. It was a risk – it didn’t pay off. But we did our best while we had the school open.”
The representative for the Karluk Tribal Council said in an email they may look for other families to try again.
If they do find new families, the school board would have to vote to open the school again, even if they had enough students again.
The building will officially close on Nov. 2, exactly one month after it opened.
The kids still in Karluk are currently working with the school district to transition back to homeschooling.
Photo: Kimberli Mäkäräinen via Wiki CC
Artist Buffy Sainte-Marie is speaking out about a media report that questions her Indigenous identity.
As Dan Karpenchuk reports, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary suggests Sainte-Marie’s claim to Indigenous ancestry is contradicted by family members and a birth certificate.
The CBC says it found her birth certificate.
It says she was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Mass.
Her parents were Alberta and Winifred Sainte-Marie. The documents also lists the baby as white and includes a signature by an attending physician.
From her early days, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, that’s now being contradicted by members of her own family and an investigation suggesting she has European roots.
Sainte-Marie says the questions about her origins are hurtful.
“These questions hurt me. They still do. But they also hurt others. They’re questions I’ve struggled with my whole life.”
In the 1971 Buffy Sainte-Marie Songbook, which she wrote and illustrated, she said, “When I go home to the Cree reserved in Canada where I was born, I usually spend a few hours of every day teaching the Cree language.”
Also, in a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times magazine. she said had been born on the Piapot Reserve in Saskatchewan.
In her 2018 biography. there’s no official record of her birth.
“I don’t know where I’m from, who my birth parents are, or how I ended up a misfit in a typical white Christian New England town.
The 82-year-old Sainte-Marie says she realized decades ago that she would never have the answers.
Still some Indigenous academics say it’s unacceptable for non-Indigenous people to speak for Indigenous people and take honors they shouldn’t.
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A simple dna test will show her indigenous roots.
American records are notoriously inaccurate for adopted children because, at that time, adopting agencies deliberately lied and encouraged adoptive parents to carry it forward.
It would be abundantly wiser to choose families who live in Alaska already.. The decision to bring a family from Kentucky is ludicrous, unnecessarily expensive and just plain stupid.
My Mother was born in the early 1930s , birth certificates back then always said white or black. they didn’t say RED. that would have to be changed in later years.
just saying. doctors were lazy as well as white.