Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Haines Borough Manager David Sosa directed Mosquito Lake School advocates in December to describe the future of the school in relation to Klukwan School, an elementary and high school located less than five miles away inside the boundaries of the Chilkat Indian village.

“If we have a situation where we have two struggling schools, that is not helpful. That conversation needs to be had,” Sosa said in a recent email to the Chilkat Valley News.

Sosa didn’t say what he wanted the conversation to entail, but such a discussion would be groundbreaking.

Former teachers and school officials interviewed this week said decades of relatively high enrollment allowed the two schools to operate without much consideration of each other. In the mid-1980s, Mosquito Lake enrollment peaked at about 28 students and Klukwan spiked to nearly 50.

“We had kids coming out of the woodwork,” said former Klukwan principal-teacher Bob Andrews, who worked there 1984-90.

There were always a few highway youths who chose to attend Klukwan, Andrews said, and administrators noticed it. “There was some pissing and moaning between districts, but it was an administrative deal. The superintendents saw it as a money thing.”

Years of dwindling enrollment at the schools – as well as a flow of students between the two school districts that operate the schools – have raised new questions about the relationship of the schools to one another.

Holly Cervin, who served as principal of Klukwan School in 2013-14, said in May that only two of the 15 students attending Klukwan lived in the village. The village school operated by Angoon-based Chatham School District sent a bus each day to pick up three or four upper highway students and as many as a half-dozen students from town.

Last winter, on the cusp of a decision to close Mosquito Lake, Haines Borough School District officials held meetings aimed at determining whether 10 students could be found to keep the school open. One option included busing students from town to Mosquito Lake aboard Klukwan’s town bus, under a cooperative arrangement with Chatham School District.

That idea fizzled after a Haines-led survey failed to find enough students interested in attending Mosquito Lake School. But highway residents seeking to reopen Mosquito Lake recently resurrected it, specifically under a scenario in which the school would offer an alternative curriculum.

As with busing students to help maintain enrollment, Klukwan got out ahead of Haines in offering an alternative curriculum. The village school offers what advisory school board chair Lani Hotch describes as a “large cultural component,” including Tlingit language instruction taught by village elders.

Cultural considerations factored into Klukwan’s decision in the early 1980s to align with Chatham School District – which serves small, rural Native villages – instead of with the Haines school district, Hotch said.

“We wouldn’t have the opportunity (to offer cultural programs) if we sent our kids to Mosquito Lake School. And there are probably things that highway parents wanted in a school that they couldn’t get in Klukwan. There were probably enough differences there to merit two different schools,” Hotch said.

Relations between highway residents and villagers weren’t always good, either. Former Mosquito Lake principal-teacher Ron Weishahn taught from 1981-82 at Klukwan’s old Bureau of Indian Affairs school under an arrangement that combined students from both schools while Mosquito Lake was being built.

A few “feisty” parents of upper highway students made a list of about 17 concerns they had with the village school, a list Weishahn said was trivial and included wanting parental notification of the school lunch menu and concerns about inadequate playground equipment.

“That was as insulting as you can imagine,” Weishahn said, as Mosquito Lake students were essentially guests of the village school that year. “When Klukwan had a choice to come to Mosquito Lake, I think that action closed them off. I think that was part of the decision why Klukwan decided to build its own school, and not join Mosquito Lake... It may have only been 40 percent of their decision, but it didn’t help.”

Klukwan School opened in 1985, two years after the opening of Mosquito Lake School.Weishahn went on to serve as principal-teacher of the highway school until retiring in 1994.

Former Klukwan principal-teacher Andrews said he first disagreed with Klukwan’s decision to join the Chatham district, but his opinion changed. He also came to support the village school’s decision to offer high school instruction, a decision made in part to ensure the school had 10 students required by the state for separate-site funding.

“As it grew, it became a successful program, and I think it’s a good thing,” Andrews said. Some village students struggled at Haines High School, Andrews said. “I don’t think all their needs were being met very well.”

Also, the idea of sending their children to Klukwan became more palatable to highway parents over time, said Andrews, whose wife Margaret taught at the school until 1995. “We went through kind of a building period. I think now a lot of (highway) parents would rather see their kids go to Klukwan than ride the bus the whole day.”

Even with Mosquito Lake School now closed, Klukwan School’s future isn’t assured. Enrollment this year is 12 students, including seven from the village, plus two preschoolers. Using grant funds, Chatham recently added a preschool program at Klukwan, in part to recruit future students.

“If we can add numbers to the preschool, it would help with the overall (enrollment) numbers,” Chatham superintendent Bernie Grieve said this week. The district also wants to expand Internet bandwidth to offer distance classes and to boost Tlingit cultural offerings.

It’s considering similar initiatives at Tenakee Springs, where a Chatham school that closed for lack of students recently reopened with 12 enrolled.

Grieve said the Chatham district and villagers are committed to keeping Klukwan School open. “The villagers definitely value having a school there… We’re doing everything we can to make sure (dropping below 10 students) doesn’t happen.”

Students transferring between Haines and Klukwan schools is “kind of a touchy subject,” said Klukwan’s Lani Hotch. “We don’t want to undermine Haines’ efforts to keep (Mosquito Lake) open. I’m sure if the shoe were on the other foot, we would want Mosquito Lake to support us having a school.”

Highway and Klukwan residents aren’t hostile to each other, she said. Mosquito Lake students in recent years came to cultural events in the village, and adults come to the village’s open gym program.

“We’re hoping Mosquito Lake can keep their enrollment up,” Hotch said. “I know how important it is to have a (local school). When my kids were little, I was at the school all the time. In a small-school setting, you can do that. If I didn’t have a good relationship with (former teacher) Teresa Hura, I may have been a home-school mom.”

Haines School District board president Anne Marie Palmieri said this week the local district was “committed to looking at Mosquito Lake School this year.”

Palmieri said the Haines district has a different mandate than Chatham’s. “Their district is made up of Native schools in small villages. That’s the way their district is designed. We have to make decisions based on what’s best for our district.”

The Haines school board will revisit the question of reopening Mosquito Lake School at its March 3 meeting. The school closed in May with about six students enrolled. A committee of highway residents has been exploring options for keeping the building open.