Rural Alaskan schools are crumbling as the state fails to provide funding to fix them

Rural schools in Alaska are plagued with health and safety issues. The state has failed for nearly two decades to provide the funding needed to fix them, despite repeated requests.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Rural schools in Alaska are crumbling. The state has failed for almost two decades to provide money to fix leaky roofs, exposed wiring and other health and safety issues. We know this thanks to an investigation by NPR member station KYUK and ProPublica. KYUK reporter Emily Schwing visited an Alaska town that I just looked up on Google Maps. It's one of those towns where when you ask the route from Anchorage, there isn't one.

EMILY SCHWING, BYLINE: Every morning, before kids in Sleetmute head to class, Angela Hayden leads them in the Pledge of Allegiance.

ANGELA HAYDEN AND UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: I pledge allegiance to the flag.

SCHWING: This seems like a typical school day. But here in Sleetmute, it's anything but.

ANGELA HAYDEN: The roof was leaking when I first started teaching here 17 years ago.

SCHWING: Hayden is the lead teacher and principal at the K-12 public school in this tiny, mostly Indigenous community of fewer than a hundred residents. Nestled along the northern bank of the upper Kuskokwim River in Alaska's interior, Sleetmute has no roads or shopping malls, and internet and phone service are spotty.

A HAYDEN: I figured coming to a remote place in Alaska, I'm probably going to be more than just a teacher. You have to have a lot of knowledge of so many different things just to survive and live out here.

SCHWING: Building maintenance is one of those things. Hayden's husband, Taylor, also helps with the school's upkeep. Two years ago, he was under the building to fix the heating system when he discovered damage caused by a leaking roof.

TAYLOR HAYDEN: I mean, you can see the water has...

SCHWING: Oh, wow.

T HAYDEN: ...Migrated in here...

SCHWING: Yeah.

T HAYDEN: ...From just - from the snowmelt throughout the course of the winter.

SCHWING: There's a huge pool of water in front of us, and a block of concrete that's supposed to hold up part of the building has crumbled.

T HAYDEN: Yeah, just like somebody took a jackhammer to it.

SCHWING: In 2021, an architect hired by the Kuspuk School District to assess this building said it should be condemned. Since then, the boys' bathroom, the gymnasium and the wood shop have all been closed. Now students are relegated to the front of the building, where teacher Sheree Smith says bats occasionally terrorize them.

SHEREE SMITH: Everybody was quietly reading their books, and then we saw the bat flying around our classroom. And then we went to get a tennis racket out of the gym. And it came out into the hallway, and I smacked it down with a tennis racket.

SCHWING: Unlike most school districts in the U.S., Alaska's rural districts don't have a tax base to fund schools, so they rely on the state. Alaska owns just under half of the schools, including Sleetmute, and is required by law to fix them. In 2007, the Kuspuk School District asked for $411,000 to fix the roof in Sleetmute. They've asked 18 more times. Today that request has grown to more than $1.6 million. Madeline Aguillard is superintendent.

MADELINE AGUILLARD: We've also tried to remedy, you know, the conditions on our own. However, the equipment doesn't exist within some of our communities. The resources aren't there.

SCHWING: Nearly all of Alaska's rural public school districts serve communities that are predominantly Indigenous. It's a population that has historically been discriminated against in education. In the 1990s, a group of Alaska Native parents sued the state, arguing the way it funds rural public school infrastructure violated Alaska's Constitution and the federal Civil Rights Act. A judge determined the state had a responsibility to provide education to Alaska Native children. Bryce Edgmon, an independent, is the speaker of Alaska's state House and an Alaska Native.

BRYCE EDGMON: We have not upheld our constitutional duty to provide quality of education that we're bound to providing.

SCHWING: Occasionally, a tile falls from the ceiling while students attend classes in Sleetmute.

NOLAN ADAM SMITH: This one right here fell down the wall, came down (ph), and this one fell down.

SCHWING: Last spring, kindergartner Nolan Adam Smith pointed them out when he gave a tour of his classroom.

NOLAN: And it's been leaking.

SCHWING: Oh, it's been leaking. Is that why that bucket is there?

NOLAN: Yeah, that bucket's there because it's been leaking.

SCHWING: Smith and his classmates have never been inside a classroom that didn't have water damage in the ceiling or mold in the walls. Andrea John has three kids enrolled in the Sleetmute school.

ANDREA JOHN: They should have helped us when we needed help in the beginning, not wait 20 years. Those city people - they wouldn't let their kids go to school here. Would you let your kids come to school here?

SCHWING: John knows the school is unsafe and unhealthy, but she also refuses to deprive her kids of their education. She says it's simply too easy for the state to overlook a tiny, rural community like hers.

JOHN: We have no choice 'cause they're dragging their asses. And they're choosing to look the other way and say to hell with us.

SCHWING: Last June, Sleetmute got some good news. The state finally approved its roof repair after legislators passed a bill that funded school maintenance and construction to its highest level in more than a decade. But Superintendent Aguillard says the Sleetmute school is beyond repair.

For NPR News, I'm Emily Schwing in Sleetmute, Alaska.