Published Feb 12, 2024 by Annie Berman

In his State of the State speech last month, Dunleavy said, “This past November, research from Harvard confirmed that Alaska’s charter school system is the best in the country. That’s right. You heard correctly. Alaska’s charter school system is leading the nation. This fact should be a cause for celebration.”

But the study, published in November, is drawing scrutiny from Alaska lawmakers, school officials and researchers — including many who are pushing to increase the state’s Base Student Allocation — who expressed concern that that national study could have an outsized impact on state education policy despite its small sample size and other limitations.

“I am concerned that we overreach on this conclusion that charter schools are the solution for improving school performance, rather than taking a hard look at why” some schools are performing so well, said Diane Hirshberg, director of the Alaska Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Hirshberg, ISER director and a professor of education policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage, said in an interview she thinks drawing conclusions about student performance is complicated by the makeup of Alaska’s charter schools, which are unique from other states.

The small proportion of Alaska students who attend charter schools “are likely not representative of the broader population,” she said. Many schools have student bodies that skew wealthier and white. The several Alaska charter schools that serve mostly lower-income students are “Indigenous-run,” Hirshberg said — which also sets them apart from schools in the Lower 48 that don’t have similar schools, and makes it harder to compare them.

Those schools “are grounded in Indigenous ways of teaching and learning,” — including the Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Yup’ik Immersion school in Bethel — “using place-based methodologies and strategies grounded in the culture of the children,” which could be why those schools are so successful, she said.

She said it’s also generally difficult to compare students of similar demographics who opt in to charter schools because of the level of parental commitment the schools require.

There are also “vast swaths of the state where students have absolutely no choice” in where they go to school, she said, noting that for much of rural Alaska, the only options are attending a local village school or getting home-schooled.

Published Feb 11, 2024 by Gavin Struve

Less than an inch was seemingly the difference at the end of Alaska Fairbanks’ 78-75 loss to Alaska Anchorage on Saturday. Emma McKenney’s go-ahead 3-point attempt with twelve seconds remaining rattled in, then out. And after UAA made a pair of free throws, Destiny Reimers was unable to tie the game with a heave at the buzzer for what would have been her sixth made 3-pointer.

Of course, one could also attribute the loss to all that came before, including a subpar 11-of-19 mark from the free throw line and 23 UAF's turnovers to UAA’s 11. As a result, the visitors took 22 more shots. 

It took every bit of those advantages and extra opportunities for the visiting Seawolves to overcome a Nanooks team enjoying one of its better shooting performances (48% overall and 40% from distance), featuring signature games from Reimers and Emma Wass. The latter, a senior, was particularly motivated for her final rivalry game against UAA. 

Published Feb 10, 2024 by Ned Rozell

In the past decade, scientists such as Roman Dial of Alaska Pacific University and Paddy Sullivan of the University of Alaska Anchorage noticed on their long traverses that waterways they had remembered to be as clear as gin were suddenly flowing orange.

Some investigation and deep thought have led to this hypothesis: Though rivers and streams of the far north have probably turned rusty naturally to some extent for a long time, “things got more intense after 2018,” said Josh Koch of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center in Anchorage.

“It’s not totally unprecedented, but the scale and intensity seem to be something new,” Koch said during a December 2023 presentation at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

The oranging of northern rivers seems to be related to the recent permafrost thaw that has allowed streams to release previously captive iron, trace metals and acid.

Published Feb 10, 2024 by Megan Gannon

The Botany Department at University of Alaska Anchorage Natural Heritage Program, which tracks rare plants across the state, has documented less than 20 occurrences of the Alaskan glacier buttercup. Freeman noted that all of those known occurrences are relatively close to the Teller and Kougarok roads. So these spots don’t necessarily reflect the only places the species grows, he said, but might just reflect the habitats that have been easiest to access.

“One of the outcomes of highlighting not just this plant, but the incredible flora of the Kigluaik Mountains and the Seward Peninsula, is to get Graphite One to do plant surveys in the mine site, but also to encourage more plant surveys of the entire mountain range, so that we can better understand what increased protections are warranted,” Freeman said. “If you ask an Alaskan botanist where the most remarkable place for plant foods in the state, hands down, they’ll say, the Seward Peninsula. It’s a real hotspot of plant biodiversity across the Arctic globally.”

Freeman said the best available science “shows that this plant is severely under threat of extinction in a really quite terrifying timeline, looking at some of the most recent modeling.” The petition cites recent research that showed many plant species in the Arctic tundra will face a “no-where-to-go” scenario as the climate warms, losing all their environmentally suitable habitat.

“The threat of climate change will only continue to be amplified, leaving rare, range-limited Arctic endemics like the Alaskan glacier buttercup highly vulnerable to extinction as the planet rapidly warms,” the petition says.

Published Feb 10, 2024 by Alaska Public Media

A Kenai man died in late January from the Alaskapox virus, according to the state health department. He was immunocompromised and is the first known person to die from the Alaskapox virus, or AKPV.

Alaskapox was discovered in the state in 2015 and is related to other orthopox viruses like smallpox, cowpox and monkeypox. Epidemiologist Dr. Julia Rogers, who works for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is assigned to the Alaska Division of Public Health, said the virus primarily infects animals.

This AKPV strain is distinct from the strain found in people and animals in the Interior region of the state. So health department staff think the virus might be more widespread in Alaska than previously thought and are working with the University of Alaska Museum and CDC to test small mammals for AKPV outside of the Interior region.

The man who died of the AKPV was elderly and immunocompromised due to cancer treatment. His symptoms started with a large lesion in his armpit area. Later, he developed more pox-like lesions and his doctor sent a swab to the CDC, where it was identified as a unique strain of AKPV.

Published Feb 9, 2024 by Bethany Doudna

The Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is hosting a “Celebration of Black in Alaska: Interior Edition” event on Friday, February 9 between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

February is Black History Month, and Alaska certainly has its share of fascinating history starring the Black community. The museum says they look forward to the event to “celebrate the diverse narratives of Black Alaskans.”

Published Feb 9, 2024 by Patrick Gilchrist

Former University of Alaska Fairbanks Police Department (UAFPD) Deputy Chief Alana Malloy is battling to continue her suit against the school on claims her termination was retaliatory.

Attorneys for the university filed a motion to dismiss the case in November 2023; Malloy and her legal team in turn requested oral argument on the motion. That hearing is set for April 4, 2024, per log notes from a Feb. 1, 2024, scheduling conference.

A UAF alumna and once-detective at the Fairbanks Police Department (FPD), Malloy shifted her employment to UAFPD in May 2021 amid a separate lawsuit against FPD in which Malloy had and alleged harassment and sex-based discrimination.

Published Feb 9, 2024 by Caleb Jones

The UAF men’s basketball team (5-13, 3-7) attempted to pick up their third-straight GNAC victory when they squared off against the Central Washington University Wildcats (13-7, 6-5) on Thursday. CWU managed to fend off the Nanooks on their way to an 88-60 win.

After a rough start to the season, the Nanooks had seemingly found their stride in recent outings with wins over Western Oregon and Alaska Anchorage – which marked their first time beating the Seawolves on the road in over 20 years. However, their recent winning burst was put to an end by Central Washington, who advanced to a 10-1 record at home after the win over UAF.