{"id":207,"date":"2026-05-23T17:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T17:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=207"},"modified":"2026-05-23T17:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T17:39:20","slug":"inside-the-schools-alaska-ignored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Schools Alaska Ignored"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two inches of raw sewage. Persistent chemical leaks. Pipes insulated with asbestos. A bat infestation. Black mold. \u201cIt kind of blows my mind some of the things I found in public schools,\u201d says Emily Schwing, a KYUK reporter and ProPublica Local Reporting Network partner. Recently, we published her investigation of dangerous conditions in deteriorating public schools in Alaska\u2019s rural villages. Schwing, who reported this story while also participating in the University of Southern California, Annenberg Center for Health Journalism\u2019s National Fellowship, spoke to dozens of sources, including local resident Taylor Hayden, who showed her concrete footings that had been reduced to rubble in one village school.<\/p>

Read more Texas Lawmakers Want a Charter School Network to Stop Paying Its Superintendent Nearly $900K. The School Board Says No.<\/a><\/p>\n

ProPublica has previously reported on how restrictive funding policies in Idaho have contributed to similarly dangerous school conditions.<\/p>\n

In Alaska, a unique set of circumstances means the responsibility for school repairs in many rural villages rests exclusively on the state Legislature. Yet over the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests by rural school districts to fix the problems that have left public schools across Alaska crumbling, even though the state owns these buildings. As rural school districts wait for funding, the buildings continue to deteriorate, posing public health and safety risks to students, teachers and staff. The impact is felt most by Alaska Natives.<\/p>\n

For Schwing, the \u201crecord scratch\u201d moment came when she realized some school districts were spending their own money, in one case $200,000, in a desperate effort to rank higher up the funding priority list, even going as far as hiring a lobbyist. Other districts told her they couldn\u2019t do so without cutting teaching positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are public school districts paying a lobbyist to convince lawmakers to invest in public schools, and even more so, to invest in infrastructure that the state owns?\u201d she thought.<\/p>\n

I called up Schwing to talk about the process of reporting this investigation and how different going to school can be for students across Alaska. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

What got you interested in this story?<\/h3>\n

I travel a lot to rural communities in Alaska, just by virtue of the things that I cover. And usually when you are traveling to villages, you stay in the school. I have always been surprised by the things that I\u2019ve experienced there. On the Chukchi coast, there\u2019s a school where you can\u2019t see out the windows anymore because they\u2019re so pitted from the wind. There was a school that I was in last year during a sled dog race that I was covering where I could smell<\/em> the bathrooms from down the hall. That\u2019s not normal. So I was keeping a list of things that were strange for public schools.<\/p>\n

Then Taylor Hayden called me and told me what\u2019s going on at the Sleetmute school. So I went out there. He showed me [the conditions] in the wood shop. And then we went under the building and I thought: \u201cOh my God. This is crazy.\u201d It took off from there.<\/p>\n

How does seeing that black mold and guano in person change the story for you?<\/h3>\n

I want to tell you about these two little kids I met, Edward and Loretta [in Sleetmute]. They\u2019re in fourth grade. I\u2019m in their school, and they\u2019re giving me a tour: \u201cThis is our library, and this is our piano in the kindergarten room, and this is my favorite book.\u201d They\u2019re showing me their artwork. Never once did these kids say, \u201cThis is where the moldy part of our school is.\u201d It made me sad to think that they think that this is normal for their school, but it also made me so proud of them for just being fourth-grade kids.<\/p>\n

You can throw out numbers and statistics and do an investigation into these state records, but until you\u2019re in the building, I don\u2019t think the reality of how awful things are hits you. The kids are doing their homework at the lunch tables, or the high school kids are doing some really cool science projects, but they\u2019re sitting in a school where if the wood shop collapses, it also takes the water system, the heat system, the HVAC, like all of the critical infrastructure, the electricity that keeps that school usable.<\/p>

Read more Parents Sue Trump Administration for Allegedly Sabotaging Education Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Watch \u201cAlaska Has Ignored Hundreds of Requests to Fix Its Crumbling Public Schools\u201c<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

What does a school mean to a place like Sleetmute?<\/h3>\n

I have visited over 45 villages off the road system in Alaska at this point in my career, and the school is the center of these communities. It\u2019s the largest building. They\u2019re one of two buildings with a guarantee that there will be running water. They\u2019re places where people get together, where people socialize. They have pickup basketball nights and fundraisers.<\/p>\n

Public schools in rural Alaska also serve an emergency management function that is often overlooked. If there is some sort of natural disaster \u2014 a flood, a giant storm, a severe drop in temperature \u2014 or if there\u2019s some sort of other piece of critical infrastructure that\u2019s having problems \u2014 the water plant burns down or the electricity goes out or the heating fuel doesn\u2019t get delivered \u2014 people will go seek shelter in the school. Wildland firefighters and the National Guard will be based out of these buildings if they\u2019re responding to a disaster.<\/p>\n

But in order for it to be an effective emergency management tool, you have to have it safe and operational. There are so many more functions that the public school serves than just school.<\/p>\n

Why do you think there\u2019s such little urgency around these repairs?<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s so much conversation around operational funding, to pay for textbooks and teacher salaries. Currently in our Legislature, it\u2019s all the lawmakers can talk about.<\/p>\n

The people who are offering testimony to lawmakers from urban areas are all about funding curriculum and keeping teachers. Then you hear public testimony from people in rural communities who can\u2019t even get that far, because there are pots and pans on the floor to catch the leaks from the roof, or there\u2019s a bucket of oil next to them in their classroom and there\u2019s one in the hall. There\u2019s a very clear boundary between what rural constituents are experiencing and what urban constituents are experiencing with respect to education.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very easy to forget the hundreds of villages that exist in Alaska off the road system, because they are so small. That\u2019s where the real problem lies \u2014 when you don\u2019t notice, then you have a roof that leaks for 20 years, and then it turns into a real public health and safety crisis.<\/p>\n

This story was translated to the Central Yup\u2019ik dialect of Yugtun. Why was that important?<\/h3>\n

There are over 50 villages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that KYUK serves. It\u2019s the predominant dialect spoken on the delta, and there are a lot of elders who speak Yup\u2019ik as their first language. The vast majority of KYUK\u2019s audience is Yup\u2019ik.<\/p>\n

The other thing that you\u2019ll notice in this story is the vast majority of the population that is served by rural public schools are Indigenous. So the largest impact from a lack of investment in school infrastructure is on Alaska Natives. So I think it\u2019s really important to the most affected people that we would deliver a story like this in their Indigenous and often first language.<\/p>

Read more A University, a Rural Town and Their Fight to Survive Trump\u2019s War on Higher Education<\/a><\/p>\n

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Read More<\/h3>\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n <\/div>\n
\nA Rural Alaska School Asked the State to Fund a Repair. Nearly Two Decades Later, the Building Is About to Collapse.<\/strong>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two inches of raw sewage. Black mold. A bat infestation. 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