When village students are placed in such towns as Bethel or Nome, many are sucked into the town's social problems. Students may be pressured to drink by older peers in the town or by friends and relatives who come to town for amusement. Some students become involved with drugs or commit criminal offenses; others become victims of sexual assaults. Also, when placed in inadequate boarding homes, village students can become involved in the drinking and violence that occurs in some families. In dormitories, village students often suffer when intoxicated students return from town. While the problems of village students in dormitories are more conspicuous, students in many boarding homes develop equally serious social and emotional problems.

The most serious problems arising from a regional high school program, in short, have little to do with the school itself. The problem is the pervasive influence on students of the out-of-school curriculum—the influences of the town.

Certainly, better secondary school policies for programs in these towns could reduce many of the village students' conspicuous problems. For example, the 1973-74 policy in Bethel of placing only freshmen and sophomores in the dormitories, who have less access to liquor than older students, has been reported to alleviate drinking problems. Similarly, if village high schools were available and only a few students with special educational needs were placed in boarding homes in these towns, the weaker, inadequate boarding homes could be eliminated.

While such policies would reduce students' problems, these town influences are too pervasive to eliminate them entirely. Moreover, equally as serious are more subtle issues, such as the negative attitudes which village students learn in these towns. Village students absorb the attitudes of many town residents, that heavy drinking, violence, and suicide are just the way things are. Nor do village students receive the guidance that enables them to develop a set of unified standards and strong identities.

Dormitory and boarding home programs in such towns have extraordinarily high costs and offer few educational benefits. Typically, school absenteeism is high and academic standards are low. Yet, these are the most expensive high school programs (see Table 8-1). The rural boarding home program costs an average of $4,200 per student per year. Dormitory programs cost $5,600 per student per year, and actual costs per student often end up much higher because of the high student dropout while the dormitory's fixed operating costs remain the same.

Secondary school policy in Alaska should follow village parents' desires and not place their high-school-age children in towns with [high] levels of social problems. Despite economic and political pressures to the contrary, these programs should be closed. Above all, new high schools for village children (now considered "area" rather than "regional" schools) should not be built in towns with high levels of social problems.

Public boarding schools also have extremely high costs and offer low educational benefits. The level of social disorder in the dormitories differs from year to year, depending on particular policies, students, and staff members. However, years with high incidences of drinking, violence, and suicide threats and attempts are common and have occurred in every large public dormitory in Alaska. Moreover, even when social disorder is low and achievement high (as occurred at Beltz during some years), village students in dormitories tended to develop self-defeating attitudes and styles of behavior which have handicapped them when they left the boarding school environment.

While public boarding schools are generally recognized to be failures, private boarding schools for village students are often highly successful. Such a parochial boarding school at St. Mary's, for example, produces graduates who tend to do well both in college and in the village. However, the policies which are partially responsible for the success of the private boarding schools cannot be instituted in public boarding schools.

First, these successful private boarding schools are selective in admissions, and they expel students who demonstrate through minor offenses that they are not receptive to the developmental goals of the school. By selecting only students who are receptive to the school's purposes, the school creates powerful peer group support for its educational goals. In public boarding schools, however, such selectivity and expulsion policies for minor offenses are not politically feasible. Thus, the minority of disturbed students often sets the tone of the public boarding school, demoralizes the staff, and creates severe problems for the rest of the group.

Second, the success of private boarding schools is due to the intimate, extensive contact between teachers and students. A great deal of important adult guidance and informal education occurs through such teacher-student relationships. At St. Mary's, for example, teachers (unpaid volunteers and religious staff) live in the dormitories, organize school activities, and are continually with students in the evenings and on weekends. Such a workload, however, cannot be required of public school teachers. Hiring additional staff for the dormitory would help, but it would also substantially raise the already high costs of public boarding schools. In addition, large numbers of dormitory and school staff with separate roles is unlikely to result in the unity of developmental goals, which is also important to the success of private schools.

In short, we cannot change the public boarding school environment to be educationally beneficial for village students without making extensive changes, and such changes are neither politically nor economically feasible.

For most village students, the urban boarding home program is a failure. Since so many students must be placed, the program is forced to use inadequate boarding home parents who do not have the ability to provide needed emotional support and guidance. Students in boarding homes often suffer severe homesickness and become involved in serious social problems in the city. Most village students receive little educational benefit from the wide range of courses available at urban schools because they do not have the academic background to take advantage of them. Frequently, they end up in courses for slow learners.

The urban boarding home program does, however, provide crucial educational opportunities for a small group of academically inclined village students, especially when they are placed in outstanding boarding homes. These students have the academic skills to do well in specialized courses and their success as well as the personal qualities which contribute to this success makes them less vulnerable to social and emotional problems. Those students in our study who had higher reading achievement levels when they entered the Anchorage program were much less likely to develop school-related social and emotional problems. In excellent boarding homes, village students receive other educational benefits through the informal education provided by parents. Urban boarding home program graduates tended to have sophisticated analytic skills, complicated views of the world, and tended to be more successful in college.

Opening the urban boarding home program to only academically inclined students would require a set of selection procedures. Such a method as the following might be used. Village teachers would explain to students the option of entering the urban boarding home program. A village student who wished to enter the program could petition the state Board of Education for the state to pay tuition and boarding costs. He would obtain parental consent and write an application outlining his educational needs and why he required an urban high school program. The state board would make their decision on the basis of the application as well as on the basis of achievement test scores and recommendations regarding the student's maturity.

The urban boarding home program is the least expensive high school program now in existence, costing only about $3,200 per year per student. About 10 percent of village students could probably benefit from this program if they desired this type of education. Thus, the state need pay for, at the most, only 250 students per year. Placing such a small group of village students would allow selection of only excellent boarding homes.

It is important not to neglect the needs of unusually academically talented village students in providing for the needs of the majority. From this group could come many highly educated Natives who would likely play key roles in meeting current social needs.

The area high school plan presently being considered consists of a high school of 60 to 120 students located in a larger village. The area high school would draw students from neighboring villages, and most students could go home on weekends.

Area high schools, if (and only if) located in villages with low levels of social problems, would be a substantial improvement over present programs. However, such schools could have important disadvantages. The effect of a few demonstration area high schools should be carefully evaluated before secondary school policy is established in this direction.

First, placing large numbers of additional adolescents in a village of perhaps 200 to 600 people could overwhelm the village and create serious social problems. In addition, some of these adolescents will be problem students when they enter the program. Thus, a village which is viewed as a good site for an area high school because it has a low level of social problems might turn into a village with a high level of social problems, after the area high school is built there.

Second, the school would have to take the responsibility for providing a program that offered alternative activities to wild drinking. Such activities would require more staff and additional program expense. In addition to such expenses, operating costs for an area high school are higher than for village high schools because large numbers of students have to be boarded. Developing the needed extracurricular program is likely to substantially raise costs.

Third, strong animosities sometimes exist between the neighboring villages whose children would attend an area high school. Village parents may resent a high school program being placed in a neighboring village so that it is their children who must leave home. Also, if hostility occurs between students from rival, neighboring villages, it might make very difficult the development of a unified peer group that supports the school activities. At Beltz, for example, the threat of outsiders welded the Savoonga and Gambell students into the cohesive "islanders." But, on the island, they are likely to become the Savoonga kids against the Gambell kids. The school staff could overcome such student divisions, but it would be a very difficult task. Such interpersonal animosities may seem trivial from the viewpoint of a distant educational planner, but they can and do destroy educational programs. In certain areas, where neighboring villages have positive relationships, area high schools may work well; but they may not work well where negative relationships exist.

Such disadvantages would not occur in village high schools, but in an area school they might well outweigh the educational benefits of the few additional teachers and courses that could be provided for a larger student body. A village high school program which included travel and internship experiences would provide much greater educational benefits than a few extra courses in an area high school.

A common proposal presently being considered calls for establishing junior high schools in the villages and sending only the older high school students away to present boarding home and dormitory programs. This proposal is based on the theory that village students suffer social and emotional problems in present high school programs primarily because they leave home too young; if they left home during their junior and senior high school years, they would adjust better.

Our study suggests that this theory is incorrect. Students who were 15 or 16 when they left home developed school-related social and emotional problems as frequently as students who left home at 13 or 14 (see Table 8-2). Students who were 17 or 18 developed school-related problems a little more frequently (in part because over-age students often have more problems to begin with and are more susceptible to the negative influences of school and town environments).

The social and emotional problems village students suffer in present high school programs are not fundamentally caused by the students' immaturity. If this were the case, the problem could be alleviated simply by sending them away when they were older. The problems, however, result fundamentally from the destructive pressures of the school and town environments, and these do not change simply because the students are older when they enter these programs.

For most students, village high school programs, if well-planned, would offer the greatest educational benefits with the lowest costs. Such schools would reduce the high rates of drop-out and school-related social and emotional problems in present programs away from home. Village high school programs can be developed which include educational experience far more appropriate to village students' academic and developmental needs. Most students require a core basic skills curriculum taught in a personal atmosphere. This curriculum should be supplemented by itinerant teaching specialists to provide a wider range of courses, community projects, travel experience, and senior-year transitional program to college or employment. Most important, small village high schools could take advantage of the potential of small group situations and location in the home community to create the unified educational directions, personal adult guidance, and peer group values which better enable village students to solve the central developmental problem of adolescence—strong identity formation.

Village high schools have the lowest operating costs ($2,200 per student per year) of any high school alternative. The major obstacle to establishing a high school program in each village is the high cost of school construction. Village high schools presently being built are costing between one and two million dollars. However, these costs could be drastically reduced if, for instance, these high schools did not include expensive multi-purpose rooms. Village parents should be given the opportunity to decide whether they would prefer a less elaborate facility to no high school at all.

In addition, innovative uses of present village facilities for high schools should be explored. Double shifts, where high school students attend afternoon or evening classes in village elementary schools is one possibility. Indeed, teachers sometimes comment that village teenagers seem to have a late afternoon and evening attention cycle, which might make such a late school day an educational advantage. In addition, other village facilities could be used for high schools. Churches are being used for schools in some villages, for example. From an educational standpoint, the school building is one of the least important factors in providing high-quality instruction. Indeed, many of the "store-front" high schools in other states use makeshift facilities not only for budgetary reasons but partly because they contribute to the informal, comfortable atmosphere the staff is trying to create.

It should also be kept in mind that the costs of village high school construction are much overestimated in current policy debates because the figure used represents the total cost of constructing a high school in each village. This is a misleading way to look at the expense of high school construction because such construction is financed by selling bonds. As in buying a house, the total cost is spread over many years. Thus, the more relevant figure is the yearly cost to the state of debt retirement on the bonds, not the total cost of high school construction.

Unless village high schools are carefully planned, they will not provide the educational benefits possible. They will instead provide a limited academic program, except in villages where there happen to be outstanding teachers. The state should establish a village high school development program to obtain needed planning information, to develop school programs which take advantage of the educational potential of small village high schools, and to present parents with choices between available alternatives.

Village high school programs should be established for the majority of village students. Village high schools, however, need to be carefully planned so that they take advantage of the opportunities provided by their small size and their location within a community. Such programs could develop the unified educational directions and personalized school climate that would assist village students in solving the problem of identity formation.

The urban boarding home program should remain open to a small number of village students whose educational needs cannot be met in a village high school. The needs of especially academically talented students should not be sacrificed in meeting the needs of the majority. Through a combination of village high schools and the urban boarding home program, the state of Alaska can provide equal educational opportunity for village students.