Education Week - February 12, 2020 - 1

To inspire and empower.

Vol. 39 * Issue 21 * February 12, 2020

edweek.org

Ranks of Homeless
Students Surging

LETTERS FROM

ALASKA

Influx poses challenges for schools

A record-high 1.5 million students were homeless during
the 2017-18 school year, 11 percent more than the previous
year and nearly double the number a decade ago, according to new federal data.
To put that in perspective, imagine a school district bigger than New York City and Miami-Dade put together,
made up of children who are trailing other students-even
those in poverty-by 10 percentage points or more in math,
reading, and science. Eighteen percent of them have learning disabilities. Nearly that many are still learning English.
Virtually all of them experience stress and trauma.
Sixteen states have seen student homelessness rise 10
percent or more in the last three years alone, according to
the analysis released this month by the federally funded
National Center for Homeless Education, part of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Districts from Chicago to Grand Forks, N.D., from Paducah, Ky. to the Austin, Texas, suburbs are struggling to
The Kachemak Selo School is home to
39 students and serves a community of
the Russian Old Believer branch of the
Russian Orthodox Church.

PAGE 20 >

Unable to Dissolve Itself,
Wis. District Struggles On

A Village's Long Wait for a New School

By Daarel Burnette II
Palmyra, Wis.

By Victoria Petersen

It's rare that local school board members agree to throw
their hands up in defeat. So when the Palmyra-Eagle district's board did just that last fall-asking the state of Wisconsin to dissolve the district and send its students elsewhere in the face of plummeting enrollment and a fiscal
meltdown-the state's rejection left the community bitterly
divided.
Denied an escape hatch, the fractured Palmyra-Eagle
school community has just six months to figure out how
to retain teachers and students eager to flee the troubled
700-student district and, with barely any cash left in its
bank accounts, keep employees' paychecks from bouncing.
The state panel that turned down the request urged
Palymra-Eagle's leadership to "come together," "explore
their options," and "get creative."
That's proven to be a tall task.
"The state just poked a stick in the hornet's nest," said

Kachemak Selo, Alaska

At the headwaters of Kachemak
Bay and past the terminus of Alaska's
Kenai Peninsula road system sits the
village of Kachemak Selo. There's
technically no road to Selo-as locals
call it-just a steep switchback dirt
trail taking vehicles with four-wheel
drive 800 feet down to the rocky
beach where the community sits.
The community's remoteness is
one of the reasons Selo has been
struggling for nearly a decade to get a
new school. Kachemak Selo School-
a set of three buildings built in the
1980s and 90s by local residents-is
"deteriorated beyond useful capacity," according to the Kenai Peninsula
Borough School District. The community has little hope that a replacement
school will come anytime soon for the

Andy Manis for Education Week

PAGE 14 >

Amber Marinez, right, and Tara Lercy, left, watch a
basketball game at Palmyra-Eagle High School in
Palmyra, Wis.

school's 39 K-12 students.
While rural districts across the
U.S. struggle to pay to maintain adequate school buildings, Selo's challenges are particularly complicated,
compounded by the community's
distinct desire to maintain cultural
independence, a patchwork of school
finance regulations, deteriorating
state support, and the high cost of
construction in a roadless and remote
community.
The sole community enterprise,
the Village of Kachemak Selo Water
Company Inc., owns the two buildings that house the central office and
the elementary school. The building
housing the middle and high school
is owned by a private citizen and has
more visible damage than the others,
with cracks in the corners, crooked
door frames, and floors so uneven
that the furniture must be reinforced

to stay in place. Books stacked under
table legs keep the surfaces level.
The schools are among 42 operated
by the borough school district, which
serves nearly 8,500 students in an area
the size of West Virginia. The territory
includes some urban schools, rural
schools, three other Russian Old Believer schools, and a few Alaska Native
Village schools.
In 2011, Selo petitioned its borough
government for a new school. The
borough then petitioned the state,
which responded five years later, appropriating $10 million to build it.
To take advantage of those funds,
however, the borough had to provide a $5.5 million match. (The price
tag reflects the difficulty of carting
construction materials to the village.) Borough voters rejected the
bond petition for the matching funds
PAGE 16 >

"Our school is really crappy. I didn't mean to use that word.
But there are always earthquakes, and every time there's an
earthquake there's a bunch of cracks in the wall."
-Susanna Reutov, 16, Kachemak Selo student

This is the third and final in a series of articles offering snapshots of schooling and student and teacher experiences
in the 49th state. The project is sponsored by the Education Week Gregory M. Chronister Journalism Fellowship.

Ash Adams for Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 12, 2020

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