Jeff Mayrand was in his downtown Anchorage office last month when a former student who got his diploma in 2010 walked in with a simple question for a job application.
"What school did I graduate from?" he asked.
The answer isn't quick. He graduated from the CyberLynx Correspondence Program's high school completion program, run by the Nenana City School District in partnership with Nine Star Education and Employment Services in Anchorage. The program targets high school dropouts.
Mayrand, youth education services director at Nine Star, gave the graduate a quick description of the two parts of the school district that he graduated from: CyberLynx, which serves correspondence students across the state; Nenana City School, which he said is "the biggest building in the middle of town."
"It literally occupies the entire block and then CyberLynx is in a little portable across the street. It's kind of funny, actually," he said.
Most of the students at CyberLynx will never see that portable -- located in the Interior town better known for putting a tripod on the icy Tanana River and awarding money to the best guess on when the ice will break.
Nenana School District Superintendent Eric Gebhart said that 257 students enrolled this school year in CyberLynx's year-round high school completion program, which fills a unique niche in the state's vast educational landscape, providing long-distance education to students who dropped out of high school.
"I don't really care where they are," Gebhart said. "If we can help them, we want to help them."
A niche market
There are no other programs in the state quite like CyberLynx, Mayrand said.
CyberLynx's high school completion program enrolls students who are homeless, who have parents in jail or who are in and out of jail themselves. Others had behavioral problems at their old high school or are balancing full-time jobs. One way or another, all have previously quit school or gotten kicked out, he said.
"The program was designed to pick those kids up and give them the opportunity to finish the Alaska public high school diplomas that they've already started," Mayrand said. "Nobody wants a dropout."
The state-funded Nenana City School District operates the public high school completion program in partnership with Nine Star, a nonprofit. They split responsibilities. With the school district providing an Anchorage-based teacher, special education teacher and administrative assistant who handle curriculum, grading and diplomas, Gebhart said.
Meanwhile, Nine Star provides computers and study space for the students who complete their schoolwork on their own time. It also has academic coaches to help students with day-to-day tasks. Last school year, the district paid Nine Star $292,652 for its services, Gebhart said.
At his downtown Anchorage office, Mayrand said that the CyberLynx program serves students in "grades 10, 11 and 12, although in reality it's probably 10, 11, 12, 12, 12, 12."
Students can enroll until they turn 20 years old. Some may enroll at CyberLynx with one class to go, while others have years of schooling ahead of them.
A budget stabilizer
Statewide correspondence programs have a long history in Alaska, dating back to 1938 when the state education department opened the Juneau-based Alyeska Central School for rural families.
It was Alaska's only correspondence school for decades. Then in 1997, the education department changed regulations to allow individual school districts to operate statewide correspondence schools and enroll students across Alaska.
This school year, there are roughly 9,455 students enrolled in 13 statewide correspondence programs. Many of the programs are based in smaller, rural school districts like Galena, Chugach, Copper River and the Yukon-Koyukuk region. Most of the students are urban -- 88 percent live in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Kenai and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, according to state education department data.
Mayrand said that Nine Star once partnered with a different rural school district to operate the Anchorage degree-completion program. But it wanted the program to operate year-round, so it connected with the Nenana City School District. The program started within CyberLynx around 2007, he said.
Marilyn Duggar, president of the Nenana School Board, said that CyberLynx started in 1997, enrolling home school students.
Around the time the Alyeska Central School closed in 2004, she said the board "saw a window of opportunity" to expand its correspondence program and it grew fast.
"Our school was small, and you know it was just a way to bolster our student population," she said. "It's not a big cash cow, but it keeps the whole body moving along."
Without CyberLynx the tiny school district would only have 180 students. With CyberLynx, the student count tops 1,000 -- double Nenana's entire population.
CyberLynx still enrolls traditional home school students — more than 600 of them — as well as students in the more unique high school completion program.
Correspondence programs get 90 percent of the per-pupil funding from the state, or about $5,380 per student. The money pays for curriculum materials, teacher salaries, office space and extracurricular activities, Gebhart said.
However, it also contributes to other expenses. Nenana City School District's total budget for this school year was about $8.6 million, Gebhart said. Roughly $250,000 of the state funding for the correspondence program goes toward the district's general operations, including administrative salaries, he said.
"It gives us that broader base and it allows us to plan," Gebhart said.
Low graduation rate
While CyberLynx has bolstered the district's funding and student count, it has pulled down its reported four- and five-year graduation rates.
According to education department data, only 17 percent of CyberLynx students graduated in four years last school year compared to 84 percent from the Nenana City School.
John Abrams, the CyberLynx principal, said that the low rate was triggered by the graduation completion program. Mayrand said that sometimes students just stop showing up, and most of the times when students do graduate it's not in four years.
"As much as I would like to be the number one priority, with this population, I'm lucky if school is in the top five," he said.
But for Mayrand, having just one student who has dropped out of high school get a diploma is a success, he said. In his office he has a large board with lists of student names separated into columns by how many credits each has completed. A list of names was placed in the end column last month, meaning they were headed toward graduation.
Mayrand said the CyberLynx program at Nine Star graduates about 50 students each year, split between a winter and summer ceremony.
In January, 17 students got their diplomas — 15 of whom arrived at the BP Energy Center in Midtown Anchorage dressed in royal blue graduation gowns, some with entourages of family and friends who packed the tiny room with cameras, flowers, cards and a couple of crying babies.
Gage Cantamessa, 20, was one of the student speakers during the 20-minute ceremony. Cantamessa was a ninth-grader at Anchorage's West High School when his mother went to jail. His father wasn't around.
"I was out on my own," he said. "High school kind of wasn't a priority, getting a place was."
Cantamessa stopped going to classes, moved between friends' couches and got a job. A friend told him about CyberLynx and he enrolled, but he still struggled to balance bills, housing and employment. It took him a couple of years before he started to earn credits, he said.
During his graduation speech, he thanked his mother, his girlfriend and his girlfriend's mother. He thanked Abrams, the CyberLynx principal whom he said he never met until that day, "But I want to thank you, too."
He also thanked his Nine Star academic coach, Steve, for his patience and his text messages.
"I would get three or four texts a week of one of three things: 'You've got something do tomorrow. You've got more stuff to do. And you've got new stuff to do,'" Cantamessa said.
With scruffy brown hair and a Motley Crue T-shirt under his gown, Cantamessa said he's not sure what's next for him now that he has a diploma from Nenana City School District.
"There's a lot more opportunities now and that's something I hadn't really considered before," he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Nenana School District Superintendent Eric Gebhart as "Eberhart" or "Eberhardt" on several occasions.