The school's sewage system repeatedly freezes, the water supply continues to fail, heat is lost in the buildings, and my house pipes are frozen. Someone needs to be hired ASAP, but there are few qualified applicants for the job.
Last week I exhausted myself shoveling snow to clear the entrance of one of the teacher housing units vacated in February by the second replacement teacher who only lasted three months. Once I got a propane torch (never used one before), I learned to light it in the fierce wind to melt the door lock. Finally, I managed to break the ice jamming the internal mechanism and forced the door open.
I had not been in this particular apartment since our third/fourth grade teacher left. The inside was warm with nasty blue houseflies swarming the bright sunlit windows – never realizing the death awaiting them in the Arctic temperatures just outside the double-paned glass. Most importantly, the water pipes are not frozen. I carried my dirty clothes and linen over to wash them in the washing machine and carried the clean clothes back home to dry them in my electric dryer. I now have a place to shower for the next several days it may take to get another maintenance manager.
The teachers just learned that all teacher aides who work in the school must now have college hours. It is rare that small isolated villages have college-educated persons who are not already employed. Even with years of experience, our local adjunct teachers will lose their jobs in May unless they earn college credits and pass a difficult state exam covering advanced topics such as trigonometry.
The Alaska Standards Based Exams are next week. The children and teachers have spent the year preparing for these tests to learn that the rules are changed. Students who passed the High School Qualifying Exams last fall must still attend school with lesson plans from certified teachers who are proctoring the exams. In the past, the substitute teachers have been teacher aides. Now, we are not so sure who will be the qualified substitutes teaching the students when they complete their exams.
There is a new requirement of one teacher for each grade level in a separate room for testing. We have three teachers and three rooms for six grades. We have been advised by the district to be creative in meeting the new state requirements. The state is sending additional educators next week to observe how well we split between multiple levels of testing and teaching. We are trying hard to be creative. The evaluators are not allowed to help fill in the gaps for our inadequate supply of teachers.
It is almost as if the school is being setup to fail. Even Wishbone misses the children playing outside.
President Obama announced this week exploratory oil drilling can begin offshore Kivalina beach on the Chukchi Sea. Kivalina residents are divided on the issue: Save the Polar Bear or Save the Town.
Dr. Ali Fant was was born in Texas and raised by bush school teachers on St. George Island. She is a former U.S. Antarctica Research Scientist, US Department of Defense Dependent Schools teacher, NASA Manned Spaceflight Controller trainer, IBM Trainer, and now the high school science/math teacher in Kivalina. Read her previous letter here.
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