Even these big-dollar items, however, wouldn’t
close the books on “Molly Hootch.” The issues of self-determination raised
first by federal, then state and now local control of education in Bush
Alaska linger for all residents, urban and rural.
What happens, for example, if Hammond
persuades the legislature to pick up 100 percent of urban school costs?
Will state control increase, as well?
“I think that’s merely a perceptual problem,”
Lind said in an interview this week. “That hasn’t been our history (in
rural Alaska).”
Recent history, at lease since state-operated
schools were disbanded in 1975, tends to back up the commissioner’s view.
A broad range of responsibilities, from the selection of architects to
design new schools to the hiring of teachers, have been turned over to
local districts.
The result, an investigation by The Daily
News shows, hasn’t been uniformly smooth.
In Napaskiak and Tooksook Bay,
secondary schools opened within the last year have been successful, while
those in Kwethluk and Aniak have not. The lessons learned in these four
villages could serve as examples for both urban and rural educators, as
the state pours more and more money into the classrooms.
Generally, it appears education has worked
best in these villages where grassroots are strongest and the community
has had an active role in deciding by whom and what its children are taught.
“A big part of the success of these schools,”
Lind believes, “will hinge on local control and planning.”
A 1979 report by the Center for Cross-Cultural
Studies at the University of Alaska is more to the point.
“Whatever problems small high schools have,
they will not be solved by simply tinkering with the list of courses to
be taught.
“Fundamental structural, functional and
organizational changes must be considered if high schools are to be effectively
adapted to contemporary conditions in rural Alaska,” the report says.
That observation is directed primarily at
the teacher, whose experience as a one-member faculty in the Bush often
leads to “burn out” and early departure.
“We used to be a nation of one-teacher schools,
but we’ve forgotten how,” says Howard Van Ness, professor of education
at the University of Alaska. “We no longer train
generalists, and we find teachers who are exhausted just keeping up.”
The university, Van Ness said, is trying
to ease the problems of Bush educators sired on urban teaching methods
but concedes “we have a long way to go.”
The absence of Natives among the ranks of
superintendents, as well as in the classroom, also may figure into long-range
solutions. States the UA report:
“Although it may be easier for the moment
to purchase a pre-packaged curriculum from elsewhere than to develop a
local curriculum design, experience indicates that such an approach will
only prolong, rather than solve, the schools’ problems.”
Providing an education serving Bush students
may even require pulling them away from home on occasion.
In the Kuspuk School District, for example, a $3.9 million vocational center is
being built in Aniak to serve the seven small high schools of the area.
Although such a move goes against the thrust of what “Molly Hootch” was
all about, Aniak officials—beset by controversy chronicled in this series
of articles—see the center as the only efficient way to offer a broader
scope of education.
“We do need to have a great deal of latitude”
in the aftermath of the state’s huge school construction effort, Lind says.
In general, problems of high administrative
and construction costs, teacher turnover and confusion in the chain of
command are not unique to the state’s newest school systems. One of the
oldest, the UA and its far-flung branches, has been no less immune to growing
pains.
In fact, the problems of both systems have
become intimately tied together in Kotzebue.
At the same time school district officials
are sparring with three neighboring villages over control of secondary
education, the Northwest Arctic REAA is lobbying to take over Chukchi Community
College from the university.
Sen. Frank Ferguson, D-Kotzebue, has spearheaded
this battle, hoping to affiliate the school with Stanford University and
merge the two-year-old college with a $6.2 million vocational-technical
center funded this year by the legislature.
His aim, Ferguson
said this week, was to develop local skills in the mining industry, one
the NANA Regional Corp., hopes to establish on mineral deposits it owns
in the area.
But, in the fight over Chukchi’s future,
the college was closed this fall when a veto of money for the transfer
to local hands left the campus without any operating funds.
“To me,” Ferguson said, “the college has
been run as kind of a social program…I’ve gotten assurances from (UA President
Jay) Barton that he will try to change the philosophy of the community
colleges, but this takes too long.”
Such impatience about waiting for the state
to act figured heavily into the Hootch lawsuit and the construction of
126 new schools. Eventually, as the case of Chukchi Community College, illustrates, the rebellion may spread to post-secondary
education in the state, shaking the foundation of the university’s dozen
community colleges.
Indeed, says Commissioner Lind, one of his
top goals in the 1981 legislature session will be “working with the university
about the role the department and the UA have in post-secondary education.”
For new rural high schools, such coordination
maybe the first step toward writing the next chapter in the “Molly Hootch”
saga—home-grown high schools followed by home-grown teachers and administrators
from kindergarten to college.
“All of this has happened exceedingly fast,
and we’ve had our problems, Lind says of the Hootch case. “But it has to
be done, and considering all the responsibilities that have been laid out
for them, the school boards have done a first-rate job.”
An aide to the commissioner, referring to
a pamphlet from one rural school district, puts is another way.
“If you think education is expensive,” the
pamphlet says, “just try ignorance.”
