On a Sunday morning final month, James Taq’ac Amik was huddled on a small bridge together with his girlfriend. At 4 a.m., they’d scrambled into an 18-foot aluminum motor boat, fleeing floodwaters from an enormous storm surge that inundated Kipnuk, a village of 700 within the coronary heart of western Alaska’s sprawling Kuskokwim river delta.
“I couldn’t make it up. I attempted, however the wind was too sturdy to try to go by boat, so we ended up staying on the bridge for 5 hours,” Amik mentioned. Issues solely grew extra dramatic. “The homes began drifting away round 5:30 a.m.,” Amik mentioned. “There was nonetheless lights in them, there was folks in them.”
Once they set out, the couple had been heading to Kipnuk’s public college, the biggest constructing within the Alaska Native Yup’ik village. No less than that constructing, they hoped on the time, could be safe.
The storm that hit Alaska’s west coast in mid-October was the remnants of Hurricane Halong, which picked up momentum in a warmer-than-normal Pacific Ocean. After the wind died down and the floodwaters receded, the village lay in ruins. However whereas the college nonetheless stood comparatively unscathed on its metal pilings greater than 20 toes above the muck and wreckage, there have been different issues inside. District employees had been engaged on much-needed upgrades to its primary generator. Then the college’s backup generator sputtered. Everybody in the neighborhood, together with Amik and his girlfriend, stayed for 2 days till native leaders determined the storm had accomplished an excessive amount of injury and arranged a mass evacuation.
When catastrophe strikes, public college buildings are integral as protected havens in tons of of predominantly Indigenous villages scattered throughout Alaska’s huge panorama. In lots of distant communities, colleges are among the solely buildings with flush bogs and their very own mills. Faculties are sometimes the one buildings that stand on pilings — essential amid the rising waters of local weather change — and in addition the one buildings massive sufficient to deal with dozens if not tons of of individuals for days at a time.
“It’s a recognized proven fact that if it’s essential to evacuate, you evacuate to the elementary college,” mentioned Alaska state Sen. Löki Tobin, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Schooling Committee, who grew up in Nome however now represents Anchorage.
“These are lifeboats,” mentioned Alaska’s emergency administration director, Bryan Fisher. “They’re the final place of refuge.”
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican and former educator, has declared greater than a dozen disasters since August 2024, and in at the least half of these instances, public colleges had been used as emergency shelters. The state reported injury in 52 communities in October, and the impacts pressured tons of of residents to sleep in gymnasiums and on classroom flooring in rural public colleges. Since 1998, Alaska has seen greater than 140 state-declared disasters, and dozens of these required colleges to operate as shelters.
However Alaska’s rural colleges have been uncared for for many years. Earlier this 12 months, ProPublica, KYUK Public Media and NPR documented a health and safety crisis inside many rural school buildings across Alaska. In some instances, the buildings that operate as protected havens in instances of emergency have gotten emergencies themselves.
The state is required by legislation to fund development and upkeep tasks in rural college districts as a result of they serve unincorporated communities the place there is no such thing as a tax income to assist fund schooling. Within the final 28 years, Alaska’s rural college districts have made near 1,800 requests to the state for cash to take care of and restore deteriorating colleges, however solely 14% of these requests have been authorized. And because the backlog of main upkeep tasks continues to develop, the state budget has been shrinking.
“Simply the upkeep that goes in every single day to maintain up a constructing, that’s actually the place the flaw is,” mentioned Alaska Schooling Commissioner Deena Bishop. For years, her division has struggled to satisfy the rising want for {dollars} to take care of college amenities, together with greater than 60 owned by the state. “The crux of the scenario,” she mentioned throughout an interview in Juneau final 12 months, is that “we get to an emergency as a result of we didn’t maintain it.”
The primary generator that gives energy to the college in Kipnuk was not working earlier than tons of of residents fled there throughout ex-Hurricane Halong. Decrease Kuskokwim College District Superintendent Hannibal Anderson mentioned the generator “was working properly sufficient to supply what it wanted for the college.” Nevertheless it was rapidly overwhelmed by the sudden enhance in demand for energy as soon as the college grew to become Kipnuk’s main emergency shelter. A smaller backup generator additionally couldn’t meet that demand to cost cellphones and hold the constructing heated after the group’s residents piled in.
The varsity district waited 14 years for the state to approve funding to do a serious renovation in 2015, nevertheless it has not requested for funding since then. Yearly, the functions college districts submit for development and upkeep funds are ranked. Information evaluation and interviews with superintendents throughout the state point out that submitting an software that ranks excessive sufficient to win funding is cumbersome, they usually really feel strain to incorporate skilled inspections and surveys, which may be costly. Anderson defined that though the generator required upkeep, he believed Kipnuk’s wants wouldn’t be thought of pressing sufficient to obtain funding. “Kipnuk is a comparatively new college,” he mentioned.
In Kotlik, a village of simply over 650 residents virtually 220 miles north of Kipnuk, 70 folks spent two nights on the college. “We now have a church and a group constructing, however these are seldom utilized in evacuations,” defined Principal Cassius Brown. “That’s as a result of the college is located greater and it’s not as near the river.”
Since 2018, the Decrease Yukon College District has made annual requests starting from $2 million to greater than $5 million to the state’s schooling division to make in depth repairs to the college in Kotlik and one other in a close-by village. That work stays unfunded.
In Chevak, the place about 950 Alaska Native Cup’ik folks dwell lower than a dozen miles from the Bering Beach, college Principal Lillian Olson mentioned 65 folks spent a couple of nights on the gymnasium ground. “Our group is type of depending on the college for shelter,” Olson mentioned. “One time two years in the past, we had an electrical outage in a single a part of city that lasted for like per week, and since the homes didn’t have electrical energy and no warmth, we housed them.”
Olson mentioned a take a look at of the constructing’s fireplace sprinklers failed in September. In a telephone name final spring, Kashunamiut College District Superintendent Jeanne Campbell described a bunch of issues associated to the Chevak college’s boiler and damaged water pipes that impacted the hearth sprinkler system. “And that’s simply contained in the constructing,” Campbell mentioned.
Final 12 months, that college district made its first request to the state’s schooling division since 2001, asking for $32 million to replace and renovate the college. The proposal was one amongst 114 for fiscal 12 months 2025. The state allotted sufficient cash for less than 17 of these tasks. Work on the Chevak college was not considered one of them.
Simply over a dozen miles west, in Hooper Bay, Mayor Charlene Nukusuk mentioned between 50 and 60 folks sheltered for 2 nights in that group’s public college. The village’s location makes it extraordinarily susceptible: Over the previous few a long time, fall coastal storms have devoured a number of rows of sand dunes that used to guard the group of 1,375 folks. Now, the black and frigid Bering Sea laps on the seaside only some hundred toes from the far nook of the native airport runway. Nukusuk mentioned the college is without doubt one of the most secure buildings.
Hooper Bay’s college was rebuilt after it was destroyed by fireplace in 2006. Since then, the district has made 29 funding requests totaling greater than $8.4 million in wanted repairs to the state for a spread of tasks on the college together with roofing, emergency lighting and siding. Final 12 months, the district obtained cash for a kind of — slightly below $2.3 million for “exterior repairs,” in line with state information. The superintendent didn’t reply to questions on particular wants in Hooper Bay.
Alaska’s emergency administration division doesn’t have formal agreements with the state’s schooling division designating colleges as emergency shelters, and neither company has funding to assist keep colleges particularly as emergency shelters. Nonetheless, a division spokesperson mentioned there are some state grants that colleges may entry for emergency preparedness.
Kipnuk Neighbors Take Refuge within the College’s Foremost Atrium
“Faculties are constructed for instructional functions — different makes use of are incidental or secondary to design,” schooling division spokesperson Bryan Zadalis wrote in an e mail. He mentioned nobody from the schooling division visits colleges “to establish whether or not a facility is in situation to function an emergency shelter.”
“I don’t know if folks essentially correlated collectively that if you happen to’re going to make use of colleges as multipurpose amenities, that you simply even have to take care of them for these functions,” mentioned Tobin, the state senator. “They’re not simply establishments of studying. They’re additionally establishments of after-school actions, of group gatherings, and of evacuation amenities and catastrophe preparedness help infrastructure,” she mentioned. In February 2024, Tobin, who additionally sits on the state Senate’s Army and Veterans Affairs finance subcommittee, put the query of funding colleges for emergencies to Craig Christenson, deputy commissioner of the Alaska Division of Army and Veterans Affairs, throughout a price range assembly.
Alaska’s emergency administration division falls underneath Christenson’s division. “From my understanding,” Tobin mentioned to him, “if the college wasn’t out there in a few of these very small, rural, distant areas, we might be paying to evacuate folks, versus utilizing an asset that we’ve already put assets into however have already failed to take care of. Is that correct?”
“I can’t touch upon failing to take care of them,” Christenson responded. “Our division doesn’t keep colleges.” (The deputy commissioner declined to remark additional on final 12 months’s assembly.)
“However you do make the most of them?” Tobin requested.
“We do,” Christenson mentioned.
