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2 inches of fresh sewage. Permanent chemical leaks. Asbestos insulated pipe. Bat invasion. Black type. “Some of the things I found in public schools blow my mind,” says Emily Schwing, reporter for Kyuk and partner in Propublica’s local reporting network. Recently we published her investigation into the dangerous situation in the worsening public schools in rural Alaska villages. Reporting this story, Schwin is a national fellowship at the University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism, where he spoke to dozens of sources, including local resident Taylor Hayden.
Propublica previously reported how Idaho’s restrictive funding policy contributed to the equally dangerous school situation.
In Alaska, a unique set of circumstances means that school repair responsibilities in many rural villages are based solely on the state legislature. But for the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests from local school districts to fix the issue of leaving Alaska’s collapsed public schools despite the state owning these buildings. As rural school districts wait for funds, the building continues to deteriorate, pose public health and safety risks to students, teachers and staff. This impact is most felt by the Native Americans of Alaska.
For Schwing, the “recorded scratch” moment came when several school districts realized they were spending $200,000 on their money in one case. Other districts told her they couldn’t do so without cutting their education position.
“Why are public school districts paying lobbyists to persuade lawmakers to invest in public schools, and even ordering them to invest in state-owned infrastructure?” she thought.
I called Schwing to discuss the process of reporting this investigation and how different it is for Alaskan students to go to school. Our conversations were condensed and edited.
What we see
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Why did you get interested in this story?
I travel a lot to rural Alaska communities thanks to what I have to cover. And usually, when you are traveling to the village, you stay at school. I was always surprised at what I had experienced there. There are schools on the coast of Chukchi that have a very hole in the wind that make it impossible to see out the window. Last year there was a school where I was in a sled dog race. That’s not normal. So I kept a list of the weird things for public schools.
Taylor Hayden then called me and told me what was going on at The SleeTmute School. So I went out there. He showed it to me [the conditions] In a wooden shop. And we went under the building. This is crazy. “We took off from there.
How will seeing that black mold and guano directly change the story for you?
I want to talk about these two little kids I met, Edward and Loretta [in Sleetmute]. They are in fourth grade. I’m at their school, and they’re giving me a tour: “This is our library, this is our piano in our kindergarten room. This is my favorite book.” They show me their artwork. These kids never once said, “Where is this the moldy part of our school?” It was sad to think that they thought this was normal for their school, but it was also proud to be a fourth-grade child.
You can throw away the numbers and statistics and look into records in these states, but until you’re in the building, I don’t think of the reality of how bad you are. Kids do homework at lunch table or high school kids have really cool science projects, but they sit in school if the wooden shop collapses, water systems, heat systems, HVAC, all the essential infrastructure, electricity that makes it easy to use.
“Alaska ignored hundreds of requests to fix the collapsed public schools.”
What does school mean for places like fletmute?
I have visited over 45 villages from the Alaska road system at this point in my career. Schools are at the heart of these communities. It is the largest building. They are one of two buildings that guarantee that there is running water. They are places where people gather, places where people socialize. They have a pickup basketball night and fundraiser.
Rural Alaska public schools also offer emergency management features that are often overlooked. If there is some kind of natural disaster – if there are floods, huge storms, severe drops in temperature, or other critical infrastructure that is problematic – if the water plant burns out, the lights go out, or the heating fuel is not released, people go to schools looking for shelter. Wildland firefighters and National Guard will be based in these buildings if they are responding to disasters.
But for it to become an effective emergency management tool, it needs to be something safe and operational. There are so many features that public schools offer more features than just a simple school.
Why do you think there is so urgentness about these repairs?
There are many conversations about operational funding to pay for textbooks and teacher salaries. Now in our legislature, it’s all that lawmakers can talk about.
All those who provide testimony to urban lawmakers are to fund the curriculum and maintain teachers. Then there’s a pot or pan on the floor that grabs a leak from the roof, or there’s a bucket of buckets next to the classroom, and one in the hall. There is a very clear boundary between what rural members experience and what urban components experience with regard to education.
It’s very easy to forget the hundreds of villages that exist in Alaska from the road system. Because they are very small. That’s where the real problem is – when you don’t notice, you have a leaking roof for 20 years, which turns into a real public health and safety crisis.
This story was translated into Yugtun’s central Yup’ik dialect. Why was it important?
The Yukon-Cuscok Wim Delta, served by Kyuk, has over 50 villages. It is the main dialect spoken in the Delta, with many elders speaking Yup’ik as their first language. The majority of Kyuk’s audience is Yup’ik.
Another thing you notice in this story is that the majority of the population served by rural public schools are indigenous peoples. Therefore, the biggest impact of a lack of investment in school infrastructure lies in the native Alaska population. So, for those most affected, I think it’s really important for us to tell stories like this indigenous people and often in first languages.
A rural Alaska school asked the state to fund repairs. Almost 20 years later, the building is about to collapse.
This article was created for Propublica’s local reporting network in collaboration with Kyuk and NPR station research teams supporting local investigative journalism.
