Klukwan School students have rafted the Chilkat River and helped butcher a moose since classes started Aug. 25.

The school, with 13 students, launched a federal lunch program this year and may investigate an onsite preschool program, said Kathy Carl. Carl, who teaches grades K-6, replaces teacher Cynthia McFeeters and works with junior high and high school teacher Carson Buck.

A half-dozen upper valley and Klukwan residents have expressed interest in a preschool, which might start as a parent play group. “Going all the way to town is a long trek for these little guys,” Carl said. The school has a classroom for a preschool. Combined with the school gymnasium, there’s plenty of room at the school for a preschool program, Carl said.

“(Chatham School District officials) will visit in the next few weeks and see how we might do it, whether we want to start with a play group first or fund (a teacher). We’d just have to look at ways of funding a (preschool teacher),” Carl said.

Chatham doesn’t offer preschool programs at its schools but its Gustavus school rents a building on its property to the Gustuvus Community Preschool, said Nancy Moon, who recently became Klukwan principal. She’ll be coming here with Bernie Greive, who recently became Chatham superintendent.

The village school’s advisory school board meets 4 p.m. Thursday in the school library annex.

Klukwan students enrolled this year represent all but fourth and 10th grades, said teacher Carl. “That means a lot of work for us,” she said. There are four new students at the school and enrollment includes one student who formerly attended Mosquito Lake School. Carl said she didn’t know how many students were villagers.

John Hunt is music teacher and the school is looking to bring on an art instructor, Carl said. “We’re trying to get art. We’ve had people submit proposals and they’re at the district office, awaiting funding.”

The new U.S. Department of Agriculture lunch program operates out of a kitchen at the school and includes breakfast and a mid-morning nutrition break. Valentino Burratin and Kodi Carl are cooks and will be incorporating subsistence-harvested moose and other wild game into meals.

“(The school) has been working on it for several years. They got all their paperwork in all the right spots, so they decided to finally let us do that,” Carl said.

Carl is a returning teacher who worked there 2006-11. The student body is shifting to younger students, with more in elementary and primary grade-level.

Carl said the school is using new reading, science and math instructional materials after a revision of curriculum two years ago. Each student has a laptop or iPad and high school students attend classes from Angoon and Gustavus via video conferencing. Other distance offerings include foreign language and calculus and pre-calculus.

Carl said she thinks cultural opportunities – like Tlingit language class and student involvement in a week-long “moose camp” – are among the school’s attractions. “It’s a small school. It’s like a homeschool. Each student has an individual learning plan and now we have a hot lunch; (parents) don’t have to pack a lunch.”

The school library is open to the community and keeps after-school and Saturday hours. Librarians are Gen Stevens and Jamie Katzeek. Open gym basketball is offered at 7 p.m. Mondays and Fridays and sometimes on Wednesdays.