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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
What defunding public media would mean for the West
Sage Smiley, KYUK's news director, and Morris Alexie visit the proposed site for the climate-driven relocation of Nunapitchuk, a village of about 600 on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska. Alexie is the community's relocation manager. (Photo by Katie Baldwin Basile) Late last fall, members of Bethel, Alaska's search and rescue team met at the local public radio station, KYUK, for a program called River Watch. Over an hour and a half, they took calls from listeners around the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, comparing notes on the safety of the ice at different points along the Kuskokwim River. 'Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there,' said a caller from the village of Kalskag, his voice muffled over the phone. He said he'd recently flown over the river to the east and observed lots of holes in the ice. He wanted to warn listeners in other towns: 'There is no trail right now. None of the open water is marked. So it's advised not to be traveling back and forth from Aniak.' KYUK is the only daily news source for this region, which is roughly the size of Oregon, and River Watch is a staple of its programming. In dozens of Southwest Alaska villages — including many Yup'ik, Athabaskan and Cup'ik communities — residents who live far from the U.S. highway system rely on boats and snow machines to get around. 'The Kuskokwim River in this region is like our highway,' said KYUK news director Sage Smiley. During freeze-up and breakup each year, knowing the condition of the ice can be a matter of life and death. And in the Y-K Delta, where Internet access is often limited, public radio plays a crucial role. But if the Trump administration gets its way, programs like River Watch could soon disappear. Last month, the president signed an executive order aimed at preventing congressionally approved federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) from going to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). CPB, NPR, PBS and a host of local stations have all filed lawsuits in response. Meanwhile, in its proposed budget, the administration outlined a plan to eliminate funding for CPB entirely — and this week, Trump asked Congress to take back more than a billion dollars that had already been set aside for public broadcasters. Lawmakers have 45 days to make a decision on the request, with a House vote expected as early as next week. Defunding public media would hurt stations across the U.S., but for ones like KYUK, which relies on CPB for nearly 70% of its revenue, it would be 'catastrophic,' Smiley said. The data show that stations serving rural and Indigenous audiences in the West would be the hardest hit. Here's why, by the numbers. CPB is an independent nonprofit created by Congress nearly 60 years ago to distribute federal funds to noncommercial TV and radio stations across the U.S. Today, it funds more than 1,500 stations, many of which buy NPR and PBS content to distribute locally alongside local news, music shows and other programming. Collectively, the stations in the public media network give 99% of the U.S. population access to public broadcasting. Nearly half of CPB grantees are rural, and together they employ close to 6,000 people. As nonprofits, local public media stations rely on a variety of funding sources, including federal funding, state funding, listener donations, grants, and underwriting from local businesses. On average, federal funding accounts for 16% of a local public media station's revenue. But for many stations, that percentage is much higher. Three factors unite the stations most reliant on federal funding: They are located in the West, they are rural, and they are tribal stations. Among stations in the 50 states, those in the Western U.S. are by far the most dependent on federal funding, according to a recent analysis of station financial reports for fiscal year 2023, carried out by former NPR product manager Alex Curley. (Limited data is available for American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but according to Curley, the few stations there rely even more heavily on federal funding.) On average, Curley found, Western stations depend on federal money for just over 20% of their revenue — compared with just under 15% for the next highest region, the Midwest. The states with the highest average dependency, in order, are West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico and Montana. In Alaska, the most dependent Western state, public media stations rely on federal funding for an average of 36% of their revenue. If all the stations with a dependence of at least 20% were forced to close, Alaska would lose 15 stations — half of its total, Curley said. More than 50 stations around the country belong to the Native Public Media network, and they are also particularly vulnerable to funding cuts. All but one of the Native Public Media stations with available data relied on federal funding for at least 20% of their revenue, and the average reliance was more than 50%. Source: CPB defines rural stations as those whose coverage areas have a population density of 40 or fewer residents per square kilometer. The stations defined as rural on this map come from CPB's FY 2024 list of rural station grantees. The funding percentages come from a list of the most vulnerable public radio stations compiled using CPB data from FY 2023, the most recent available. Tribal stations are defined as stations that are 'tribally owned, managed or staffed by tribal members,' according to this map and station websites. (Map design by Luna Anna Archey/High Country News) According to CPB data shared with , 79 radio stations in the U.S. relied on CPB for 30% or more of their funding in FY 2023. More than half of those stations (42) are located in the West. Of the vulnerable Western stations, all but two are rural — and 20 are also tribal stations. Not only would these stations be drastically impacted by losing federal funding, they would also find that money especially hard to replace. Urban stations have large audiences to turn to for help, but rural stations by definition serve sparsely populated areas and often lower-income communities. According to CPB, 40% of the average non-rural station's revenue comes from listener donations, compared with just 28% of the average rural stations. Meanwhile, the average rural station relies on CPB funding nearly twice as much as a non-rural station does. This past fiscal year, KYUK raised just under $20,000 from a total of 413 members, comprising 2% of the radio station's revenue. 'We live in a subsistence region,' Smiley said. 'The way people survive and thrive here does not necessarily follow the traditional Western economic model.' To her, this is part of the beauty of public media: Stations like KYUK allow people to get thoughtful, nuanced coverage of the place they live, whether or not they can afford to pay for it. In Bethel, that includes public safety alerts and emergency coverage on shows like River Watch — but also, local news accessible to everyone in the region. The oldest Indigenous-owned and operated bilingual radio station in the U.S., KYUK broadcasts local news in both English and Yugtun, the Yup'ik language, three times a day. The station also airs several other Yup'ik public affairs and culture shows throughout the week, sharing traditional knowledge and conversations between elders. Villages in the Y-K Delta — like many rural and Indigenous communities — tend to receive a flattened portrayal in the national media, when they're covered at all. Outside reporters often miss the good news: The Bethel student robotics team bringing Yup'ik dance to an international stage, say, or a Cup'ik artist using traditional carving techniques to tell the evolving story of hunting and fishing in his community. Celebrations of berry picking and high school graduation — the everyday activities and special events that make headlines at a local publication run by the same people who coach youth sports and act in community plays. These are stories at stake in the fight over federal funding, Smiley said: 'This idea that a region that has been historically underserved by the state and by the country could lose a public media organization that is focused on providing what people here need, which is public safety information and a reflection of a life that is multifaceted and beautiful — that really, really tears my heart out.' This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Serious condition of dilapidation': Alaska lawmakers show renewed interest in school maintenance funding
Mar. 16—Alaska lawmakers are showing renewed interest in addressing a backlog in school building maintenance in the wake of a report detailing the costly ramifications of years of underfunding school infrastructure in rural Alaska. An investigation published by KYUK and ProPublica earlier this month highlighted the impacts of neglect of state-owned schools in predominantly Alaska Native communities, including one in Sleetmute that has been condemned after the state failed to fund its 19-year-old maintenance request. The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development broadly recommends that 3% of building values be allotted annually to meet capital renewal needs. Since 2020, the state has spent less than a fifth of that recommended amount annually, leading to a maintenance backlog that likely amounts to billions of dollars. The backlog has also had a chilling effect on school districts' willingness to apply for funding from the state — as administrators know their costly proposals could languish, unaddressed, for years. Alaska legislators largely pinned the blame for recent underfunding on Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his administration. This year, Dunleavy's budget draft includes no proposed funding to cover the $333 million in appropriations recommended by the education department for school maintenance. "Has the governor's lead agency, the Department of Education, really been the strong voice that's been necessary in terms of the ranking and the putting forward of these projects into the governor's budget submission?" asked House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent. "I can look back in time and tell you the Legislature should have done more, but so should the executive branch." [A rural Alaska school asked the state to fund a repair. Nearly two decades later, the building is about to collapse.] Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Bethel Democrat, pointed to St. Paul, where he said a problem in the HVAC system led more than half the students in the school to become ill. A $4.2 million request from the Pribilof Island School District to replace the system was ranked sixth on the state maintenance list and granted no funding in Dunleavy's budget draft. "I believe it is the governor's intent that the Legislature evaluate the fiscal situation and provide what it can," Lori Weed, school finance manager for the state Department of Education and Early Development, told the Senate Finance Committee on Friday. Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican, pointed out in response that though the governor did not include funding for school maintenance, he did ask for $6.5 million to purchase a new airplane for the Department of Public Safety. "My concern is that the priorities of the request to the Legislature are questionable," said Stedman. "I personally would put the HVAC system substantially higher than the airplane." The governor did not respond to an interview request and a list of written questions about his approach to school maintenance funding. The state for years has underfunded its aging school infrastructure. Unaddressed, small repairs have become massive expenses. The problem has been exacerbated during Dunleavy's tenure, according to Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat. "This has been building for a very long time," he said, but "it seems to be intensifying in the last six or seven years." In the five years between 2011 and 2015, the state spent 111% of the recommended amount on school building maintenance. In the most recent five years, that has dropped to 19%. And the schools are not getting any easier to maintain: The average age of Alaska's school buildings is 45 years. Dunleavy has regularly vetoed school maintenance funding from the budget, including a $21.6 million appropriation in 2021; $62.5 million in 2022; and a $10 million appropriation in 2023. Asked if he was worried about Dunleavy again vetoing funding for school maintenance, Kiehl said he is "often concerned with this governor's veto decisions." Still, lawmakers were noncommittal about the amount of school maintenance funding they would be able to fit into this year's budget, amid a tight fiscal outlook that has left lawmakers balancing education funding against the size of the Permanent Fund dividend. Kiehl said he hoped to address "the top rural schools" on the major maintenance list. He also said he wanted to lift a moratorium on school bond debt reimbursement, which was first imposed in 2015 and is set to expire this year unless renewed by lawmakers. Dunleavy has proposed extending the moratorium until 2030. School bond debt reimbursement allows the state to help local jurisdictions — including Anchorage — by covering half the cost of school building construction and maintenance through bonds. The program also sends funds to unincorporated areas of the state that do not have the ability to issue bonds. By eliminating the state's share of bond debt payments, "we're just shifting costs 100% to local taxpayers and pretending that we're not raising everybody's taxes," said Kiehl. 'Kasayulie 2.0' Hoffman said that without a broader solution to the problem of maintenance in Alaska's rural schools, the state could again face a costly lawsuit over its unequal treatment of education in rural, largely Indigenous communities. In 2011, the state announced a $146 million settlement in a 14-year-old lawsuit, known as the Kasayulie case, that alleged funding inequalities for rural public schools. "I would assume that we are on the brink of another Kasayulie 2.0 coming to us that may be more costly to the state than if we came forward and tried to do something about the condition of these schools," Hoffman said Friday. Weed, with the education department, said it would take "a significant investment" to bring all school buildings across the state up to industry standards. She said that maintenance backlogs were exacerbated by stagnant funding for school operations. Dunleavy has repeatedly resisted and vetoed requests to increase overall education funding for public schools. "Many school districts' — in the last decade — financial situation has gotten tighter," Weed said. "Districts want to keep money in the classrooms. Maintenance personnel are often not emphasized in the budget, so things do play a losing catch-up process." Jim Anderson, the chief operating officer for the Anchorage School District, said the district would have had to lay off 300 additional teachers in order to meet its recommended building maintenance target this year. Lawmakers last year attempted to significantly increase permanent operational funding for what would have been the first time in years. Dunleavy vetoed the bill. As the Legislature has again taken up the task this year, Dunleavy has warned he would again veto funding boosts if they were not tied to policy changes. 'Serious condition of dilapidation' It is up to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to rank the requests submitted to the state. Rural district administrators say the system, as it is currently designed, heaps obstacles on schools that don't have the resources to navigate a cumbersome application process. The St. Paul HVAC replacement is ranked sixth on the major maintenance list, behind a roof repair for a high school in Anchorage and a Soldotna high school exterior repair, among other projects. Weed said the education department does not currently evaluate its list ranking to ensure it complies with the Kasayulie settlement. The settlement requires the state to adequately maintain rural schools. "It would seem to me that the department should do that evaluation because I think there has been discussion that many of the schools in rural areas of the state are in serious condition of dilapidation," said Hoffman. Some long-unaddressed projects from rural districts have dropped over time in the state's ranking as other projects take top spots, according to data from the Alaska Council of School Administrators. The Yupiit School District's request to replace a fuel tank for the Tuluksak school was ranked 42 in 2018, and 57 in 2025. A Kake High School plumbing replacement went from 70 to 73. Lisa Parady, director of the council of school administrators, said that disincentivizes school districts from investing the staff time and funds in putting together applications. "New entryways in urban Alaska sometimes are scoring higher than roof replacements in rural Alaska. Maybe somebody's consultant dollars are paying off a little too well," said Kiehl. "But rural Alaska still has the needs." Rod Morrison, superintendent of the Southeast Island School District, said the district for 18 years has been requesting funding to replace underground storage tanks for the school in Thorne Bay, a community of 470 residents. In 2008, the request was for $152,686. This year, the request is up to more than $1.1 million. The project is ranked 75th in the state's maintenance list. The district has also been requesting funding to upgrade a school in Port Alexander for 18 years. In 2008 the district requested just over $110,000. This year, it is requesting more than $1.8 million. The project is ranked 60th. The funding application "is almost impossible for our smaller schools," said Morrison. He said that it is up to him — the superintendent — to fill out the funding applications to get on the list. "We cannot afford to spend $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 to have an engineer come in," he said. "Because that's $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 that I have to take from somewhere else." Weed, with the state education department, said some project requests have been successful even if the district has not hired outside engineers or other contractors to help with the application process, "but probably the best practice would be to go out and get a professional option done, just for the certainty." During a hearing held by the State Board of Education earlier in the week, board chair James Fields requested that the state education department prepare possible recommendations to make the funding application process easier for rural school districts to navigate. "Obviously, our system is problematic," Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said during the board meeting. "We would be, I think, positioned in a very good place to be able to see the troubles that others are finding and be able to recommend solutions." However, board members — all of whom were appointed by Dunleavy — did not discuss the long-term impact of the apparent lack of funds to cover the projects that do make it onto the list, nor the governor's repeated decisions to veto funding for school maintenance. "It's been a problem that rural legislators have been all too familiar with," Edgmon said Friday. "We have done everything we possibly could to steer money towards school maintenance and construction. I feel a little bit defensive in any sort of portrayal that rural legislators are just ignoring this problem. We are not." 'The step-child' The state-owned Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a residential school in Sitka serving students from predominantly Alaska Native communities, is the only school facility operated directly by the state education department. It is also the only school facility that is not funded through the ranked school maintenance list. The school requested $22 million in maintenance funding this year. Stedman, who resides in Sitka, said that the school is at a unique disadvantage because it is funded through a separate appropriation process, and is typically lumped together with requests from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. When asked by lawmakers, Weed did not know how the transportation department had ranked the school among road and facility projects. Funding for the school's maintenance is not included in Dunleavy's budget request. "DOT has never in my 20 years advocated for Mt. Edgecumbe," said Stedman. "It's all about, you know, a mechanic station on the Dalton Highway or road problems down on the Kenai or in Anchorage." The Legislature has repeatedly added specific line items to the budget to address requests from Mt. Edgecumbe, only for the funding to be cut by Dunleavy. Dunleavy vetoed $2.8 million in maintenance funding for Mt. Edgecumbe in 2024; $1 million in 2023; $6.1 million in 2022; and $7.8 million in 2021. "Mt. Edgecumbe ends up being the step-child of the entire school system in the state," said Stedman. Daily News reporter Sean Maguire contributed to this report.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Think sled dog racing is fading? In Alaska's mushing-crazy Kuskokwim Delta, it's booming
This story was produced by KYUK and Northern HerzNorthern JournalCharlie Chingliak is a budding high school basketball player in the Western Alaska Native village of Akiachak, and he looks the part — sporting two stud earrings in each ear and a stylish hoodie during a recent school day. But a few nights a week, you can find the 16-year-old not on the basketball court, not hanging with friends or studying at home, but on a sled. Specifically, one being pulled along a trail by his dog team, as a headlamp-sporting Chingliak soaks up the night air and takes in the dulcet tones of Kendrick Lamar through his ear buds. Chingliak is not even the fastest teen musher in Wassillie Jr. won last year's Akiak Dash, a short-distance race along the Kuskokwim River, and the 17-year-old used his winnings to buy high-pedigree sled dogs for $2,000 apiece from a pair of Iditarod school boys in Akiachak can 'forget the muscle cars,' said Barron Sample, principal of the village's school. 'You get the muscle dogs,' he said. Welcome to the mushing-crazed Kuskokwim Delta — the one region of Alaska where the sport of mushing seems to be thriving, not just in the state, grim headlines about dog sled racing warn of diminishing participation and sponsors fleeing the sport. On the Kuskokwim last weekend, teams from villages up and down the river vied for huge cash prizes in a pair of races that highlighted how the region has become a stronghold of the sport. Casual fans of sled dog racing might have noticed that the winner of the weekend's marquee Kuskokwim 300 race, also known as the K300, was local hero Pete Kaiser, from the Delta's regional hub of 11 teams from Akiachak alone contested the lower-profile, 65-mile Dash from Bethel to the nearby village of Akiak and back. 'This seems to be the only growing mushing community in the state,' said Lev Shvarts, an Iditarod veteran from Willow, north of Anchorage, who competed in this year's K300. He added: 'I don't know how to explain it. I just see it and I like being a part of it.'Locals agree that a driving force behind mushing's persistence in the region is the Kuskokwim 300 — the name of not just the 300-mile mile race but of a nonprofit that organizes other mushing events like the Dash and the Bogus Creek 150, set for later this of those races pays out substantial cash prizes not just to podium finishers but to teams much farther down in the standings, in amounts that have risen with growing sponsorship in recent years. The payments serve as powerful motivators to mushers and also are essential supports for kennels in an area where dog food must be shipped in at steep the 16 mushers who competed in this year's Akiak Dash — all of whom were Kuskokwim locals, including a 15-year-old from the village of Napaskiak — just one was out of the money. The 15th-placed finisher earned a $2,200 paycheck, while winner Raymond Alexie of Kwethluk took home $7,000. 'Seems like every year we get one more sponsor to make a pretty substantial increase or join the fold,' said Paul Basile, Kuskokwim 300 race manager and the nonprofit's sole full-time employee. 'They're mostly Alaskan companies that have a presence in the region. And associating themselves with a popular event is just good marketing for them.'This year's 300-mile race was the 46th annual. Its founding, in 1980, came at a moment when old-timers say that mushing was waning in the Kuskokwim Delta, as snowmachines replaced the dog teams that locals had long relied upon. Mo Napoka, a 71-year-old retired Indigenous language teacher in the Kuskokwim River village of Tuluksak, said he learned how to mush from his father, who ran dogs for his whole life.'We'd use 'em to go spring camping. We'd use 'em for getting wood for the houses, and racing too,' said Napoka, who still maintains a kennel in original K300 was the brainchild of Myron Angstman, an attorney who had moved from Minnesota to Bethel to work as the community's first public defender and developed a mushing side had raced the 1,000-mile Iditarod but thought it took a little too long, 'if a guy had a job.' So he went home and announced that the Delta should put on its own race.'Everybody jumped in and it was a complete community, volunteer event,' Angstman said in an interview at Monday's K300 musher's banquet. 'And most of that community event has survived.' Volunteers still power the K300, with local doctors, nurses and even a local superior court judge and his kids pitching in last weekend. They run checkpoints, live streams and a complex dog delivery system for the mushers from events like the Iditarod fly in from the road system with their dogs to compete for the $30,000 first prize in the 300-mile event. Each of the 17 teams that finished this year received at least $5,000 in prize money. Shvarts said the race is far cheaper than the Iditarod, which commands a $4,000 entry fee; the K300 plus a required membership fee cost $500, with all but $100 refunded to mushers who actually show up on the start line.'I can run a K300 with a smaller kennel, which means less hours training, which means less dog food,' Shvarts said. 'And the paycheck is still very sizeable.'It's not just the visiting mushers who compete in the 300-mile race, though. Kaiser, the Bethel resident who won this year's event, now has nine K300 titles. Mike Williams Jr., who lives in the Kuskokwim village of Akiak, was fourth, just a few minutes off the podium. Another musher from higher up on the river, Isaac Underwood, put his dogs in boxes in his home village of Crooked Creek and towed them 200 miles by snowmachine down the Kuskokwim to the starting line — a journey that took 17 39, said he's been inspired by some of the younger mushers whom he now encounters on training runs — including Chingliak, the 16-year-old who also happens to be Williams' nephew.'It lifts me up. I'm not one of the young guys any more,' Williams said. 'I used to be one of the young guys. Now I'm one of the old guys.'Chingliak said he got a couple of dogs from Williams and started his own small team when he was 14. He now has 10 dogs and placed 12th in last weekend's an interview Monday at the Akiachak school principal's office, he said he does it for the feeling.'I love mushing," he said. "It just makes me fulfilled — the nature out there, beautiful, calm."Between basketball, running his dog team and school, 'my whole days are, like, busy,' Chingliak said. But, he added, 'I get my work done.'Mushers like Chingliak appear set to sustain the sport along the Kuskokwim for years to come — though one source of anxiety is the region's and poor snow conditions interfered with training and forced multiple local mushers to abandon plans to compete in this year's 300-mile race. And long-term climatic predictions are grim.'This zone has always been subject to mid-winter rains. And it's becoming way more prevalent,' said Angstman, the K300 founder. 'It discourages people.'Still, the mushers visiting the Kuskokwim for the first time last weekend seemed delighted to experience the region's enthusiasm for their craft. Especially Emily Robinson, a 17-year-old from Alaska's Interior who's won three junior editions of the Iditarod. Robinson, who finished sixth in the 300-mile race and won the Rookie of the Year award, acknowledged that her sport's future feels a little shaky on the road system. But along the Kuskokwim, she added, it's 'on a completely different level.' Young racers and veterans are competing, she said, plus a huge community of volunteers supports them.'There's just going to be this pocket of Alaska, no matter what happens in the rest of the state with dog mushing — the Kusko's just going to continue to happen every single year,' she said. 'It's just going to stay alive forever.'This piece was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter and news website. Subscribe here.
