Anchorage Daily News

(Editor's Note: This story first appeared November 9, 2005)

Willow Crest Elementary and Romig Middle School will try out a program to make education more inviting and suited for Alaska Natives, Anchorage School District officials and Native education advocates said Tuesday.

The program aims to make school staff members more sensitive to the culture and communication styles of Alaska Native kids and to establish better relationships with Native parents, administrators said.

The move stems from a meeting earlier this school year when about 300 people, mostly Alaska Natives, crowded Central Lutheran Church to share sometimes painful stories about their experiences in local schools. Parents complained they felt ignored and invisible and were horrified by data showing their children are more likely to fail tests and drop out of school.

They asked Superintendent Carol Comeau for a pilot program to make education better for Native children. She agreed, and since has met with Native representatives to pick two schools for such a program.

"Romig and Willow Crest are anxious to do it too," said Patty Jacobus, a moderator at the earlier meeting. She helped with the research and home visits that led to that gathering. "They were willing and happy and excited that they were picked."

Diane Hoffbauer is principal at Willow Crest, where more than one-quarter of the students are Alaska Native, representing all Native-language groups and from as far away as the North Slope and Atka in the Aleutians.

"This will help us recognize and support a large segment of our school, because very few of us have lived in rural Alaska and grown up in a remote Alaska lifestyle," said Hoffbauer, who previously worked in Barrow. "They can only imagine how hard the transition is to Anchorage. So we can become a staff that's well educated about where our kids come from."

Willow Crest and Romig might not seem obvious picks. At the fall meeting in which the complaints were aired, Native advocates focused on schools with larger Native numbers such as North Star Elementary, Mountain View Elementary and Clark Middle School.

But Willow Crest and Romig have more Native students than the district's average. With about 13 percent Native enrollment overall, it's 16 percent at Romig and more than 25 percent at Willow Crest.

"And even though they say they're doing well with their students, we still find their scores are very low" for Natives, said Sister Donna Kramer with the Catholic Native Ministry. Her church and the Alaska Native Lutheran Church brought forth the pilot program request.

The project calls for cross-cultural training for all school staff members with a focus on "cultural and communication techniques of Alaska Natives."

"It's about educating the staff about how to communicate better with the Native people, because they do have a different style than white folks have," Kramer said. "And also the outreach part of the project is to have teachers go out and visit families in their homes and get to know the Native parents."

Comeau calls it "customer service with a culturally sensitive twist." The training should rub off so staff members are more welcoming to all families, she said.

She said she thinks Romig and Willow Crest are good fits. For one, Willow Crest students later attend Romig, so families with students in both schools will benefit. Romig students eventually go to West High, Comeau said, so she'd like to see the program eventually expand to that level too.

Also, both Romig and Willow Crest's principals have worked in rural Alaska, she said.

The next step is to develop training, with help from local Native leaders and organizations such as the Native Heritage Center and Cook Inlet Tribal Council. Comeau wants to start schooling staff members in early 2006.

"We couldn't have asked for a warmer reception," Kramer said. "I think (Comeau) said she had no idea that this kind of stuff was still going on. She was just on fire with correcting the wrongs that have been done to these kids and their families, making it right for the future for all minority groups."

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