Inside Alaska’s Deteriorating Public Schools — ProPublica

Two inches of raw sewer. Sustainable chemical leaks. Pipes, isolated asbestos. Infection of the bat. Black mold. “This is kind of choosing me some things I found in public schools,” says Emily Schwing, Kyuk reporter and Propublica Local networking network partner. We recently published her investigation Dangerous conditions in deterioration of public schools In the rural villages of Alaska. Schwing, who reported the story, and also participated at the University of South California, the National Scholarship of the Health Center Annenberg, made tens of sources, including local Taylor Haden, who showed its specific foundations that were brought to the rubble in one rural school.

Propublica previously reported How much restrictive funding policies in Idahu They contributed to similar dangerous school conditions.

In Alaska, a unique set of circumstances means liability for the repair of schools in many rural villages that rely solely on the state legislative body. However, over the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests for rural school districts to correct the problems left by state schools across Alaska, although the state owns these buildings. As rural school districts are expected to finance, buildings continue to deteriorate, creating students, teachers and health care staff. The influence is felt by the most native of Alaska.

For Schwing, the moment of “recording” came when it realized that some school districts spend their own money, in one case $ 200,000, in desperate efforts to take a higher list of financing priorities, even going to hiring a lobby. Other areas told her that they could not do it without reducing teaching positions.

“Why are the district schools paying a lobbyist to convince legislators to invest in public schools, and even more so as to invest in the infrastructure owned by the state?” she thought.

I called Sving to talk about the process of notice about this investigation and how it could be a schoolboy for students across Alaska. Our conversation was reduced and edited.

What interested you in this story?

I travel a lot to rural settlements in Alaska, only because of the things I cover. And usually when you go to the village, you stay at school. I was always surprised at what I felt there. There is a school on the coast of Chukchi, in which you no longer see the windows because they are so exposed to wind. There was a school where I was last year during Race on sledding What I covered where I could smell Bathrooms from the corridon. This is not normal. So I kept a list of things that were strange for public schools.

Then Taylor Heiden called me and told me what was happening at Sweetmute school. So I went there. He showed me (conditions) in a wooden store. And then we went under the building, and I thought, “My God. It’s crazy.” From there you will fly.

How do you see that this black mold and guano personally change your story?

I want to tell you about the two young children I met, Edward and Loreto (at Sweetmute). They are in fourth grade. I am at their school, and they give me a tour: “This is our library, and this is our piano in the kindergarten room, and this is my favorite book.” They show me their works of art. They never said, “There is a moldy part of our school here.” I was sad to think that they thought it was normal for their school, but it also made me so proud that they were only fourth -grade children.

You can throw away numbers and statistics and investigate these state records, but until you are in the building, I don’t think in reality how horrible things are you. Children perform homework at dining tables, or high school children do really cool scientific projects, but they are sitting at a school where, when a wooden store collapses, it also accepts the water system, the thermal system, the BEC, like all the critical infrastructure, the electricity that supports this school.

What does school mean like Sleetmute?

At that moment, I visited my career more than 45 villages from the Alaska road system and the school is the center of these communities. This is the largest building. They are one of the two buildings with a guarantee that there will be running water. These are the places where people come together where people talk. They have basketball evenings and fundraising.

State schools in rural Alaska also perform the function of emergency management, which is often ignored. If there is a natural catastrophe – floods, a giant storm, a serious drop in temperature – or if there is another part of the critical infrastructure that has problems – the water plant burns either electricity or heating fuel is not delivered – people will seek shelter at school. Firefighters of wild land and the National Guard will be based on these buildings when they respond to the catastrophe.

But in order for this to be an effective tool for managing extraordinary situations, you must have it safe and operating. There are so many more functions that perform a public school than just a school.

Why do you think there is such a small perseverance around this repair?

There is so much talk around prompt financing to pay for textbooks and salaries of teachers. Currently, in our legislative body, these are all legislators that they can talk about.

People who offer testimony from the urban areas tell about the financing of the curriculum and the support of teachers. Then you hear the public testimony of people in rural settlements that cannot even reach it, because there are pots and pans on the floor to catch leaks from the roof, or in their class there is a bucket of oil, and there is one in the hall. There is a very clear limit between what the rural voters are experiencing and what urban voters are felt against education.

It is very easy to forget the hundreds of villages that exist in Alaska from the road -transport system because they are so small. This is where the real problem is – if you have not noticed it, you have a roof that has been traced for 20 years, and then turns into a true health and security crisis.

This story was translated into the Central Dialect of Yugtun. Why was it important?

There are more than 50 villages in the Yukon-Kuskvim delta. This is the main dialect that speaks about the delta and there are many older ones who speak their first language. The vast majority of the tummy audience is yup’ik.

The second thing you notice in this story is the vast majority of the population that serves rural public schools are indigenous. Thus, the greatest influence from the lack of investment in the school infrastructure is on the natives in Alaska. So I think it’s really important for the most affected people we would have delivered Such a story in their indigenous and often the first language.