LKSD Schools

Hmhm. The g A dream is coming true in the lower casket quim school district. A difficult dream that required the resources of the

state of Alaska, the lower casket quim school district board, the school administration, teachers, parents, and students from throughout the region. It was a dream that seemed almost impossible when it first emerged, a dream of village high schools so that district youngsters would no longer be forced to leave their homes to pursue their right to education. The necessity of leaving home, which forced rural students to attend urban high schools in other parts of Alaska, or even outside the state, resulted in a long and dismal history of dropouts and disappointments. A landmark legal settlement, popularly known as the Māli Hooch case, provided that the state of Alaska would build the needed village schools, despite conditions that made the task seem almost insurmountable. School superintendent Carl Peterson talks about what that settlement meant for the lower casket quim school district. We were awarded a approximately thirty million dollars as part of a hundred and ten million dollar

appropriation from the legislature last year, and as a result in a very short period of time, about 90 days from the start of design until we had the projects out and on the street being bid on, we put together the construction projects for the 16 schools in this area. We also have two other schools in the area being built by the state and just recently completed one at AKIAC and one at Kipnuk. The planning began with the lower casket quim school district board which sought community involvement and community input in the process. The board reviewed and approved the contract documents in the plans for each school, put the projects out to bid and awarded contracts. The board also monitors the projects on a monthly basis with detailed financial breakdowns. Peterson described the public input process that began at all. Basically we go into the community and involve the community in writing the educational specifications

which basically tells us what kind of a facility we're going to construct. For example, most of the communities said they would like to have a facility which would allow them to play some type of basketball. So they would like some type of a multipurpose rumor gymnasium and so of course that comes part of the educational parameters that you design into the building. Then the architect who is involved early on in the process designs a schematic which he takes back to the community and has input again from the community members on the building and then goes on to lay out the plans. Now we're also we have to conform to various Department of Education and Department of Transportation specifications and we have any number of guidelines that are laid on us by various agencies such as environmental protection agency, biomarkers, those types of agencies. The building size and design was essentially tailored to the size of the community and its projected student

population. The size of the buildings are governed by the number of students or potential number of students to be enrolled and so we have within the square footage we can do some juggling but we are pretty well limited on the actual square footage that we can put in the building. We basically for the 16 that we have under construction utilize three different size prototypes and we're able to show that with the economies of scale rather than trying to design each building to each specific site that we were able to use three different prototypes and by doing that we're able to cut the costs considerably both in the basis of money and the basis of time. Now we did involve and have involved in the new schools that were under our underweight the villages very

closely in site selection. There are certain parameters which we have to meet the course such as concern for floodplain concern for glide path into the various air fields and things of this nature but within those limitations we pretty well go with where the community wants us to put the school. Carl Peterson serves as the district's contract officer the head of an in-house organization created to monitor the construction process. Jean Dodd laughingly refers to himself as the head pin pusher. He's actually the construction finance administrator working in partnership with Mike Franks the construction contracts administrator who gained much of his experience on the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Hargest engineering was retained to do the actual building inspections maintaining a team of two engineers in the Bethel office and five field inspectors who visit the sites on a rotating basis two or three times a week. No dream in the scope of the LKSD school

construction project can be without its nightmares and according to Jean Dodd they start from the ground up. Tundra soil conditions provided the biggest single problem. Well the soil is really aren't different they're consistently bad. So that's that's sort of a given and here again I'm no soils expert but basically from a more or less elements point of view is it the soils are I mean permanent foster areas or marginal permafrost areas and tundra type conditions in essence we have a problem where if you used a traditional foundation like you'd find down below a concrete block or concrete foundation the building would sink. Several different solutions were designed to solve the problems of soil conditions. In some cases pilings were set in a permanently frozen slurry a process that Dodd described as being something like a popsicle stick. Another solution employed massive

post and pad construction. Much of the technology employed in the building is relatively new as Dodd points out. A lot has been learned about artic construction and artic soils through the construction of the pipeline and the level of knowledge that's known about this now I think 10 years ago a lot of these facilities people would block have had a building and today while they realize it's a problem and it's difficult it's not you know if the proper precautions were taken I think people don't look at it as an impossible task. Dodd also talked about the various design variations being used to meet the needs of each individual village. Basically we've got the 16 facilities that were building for the one of five different categories and we've got two sort of anomalies and then three sort of homogeneous groups. First we have platinum

and platinum was basically just a one-room addition to handle the secondary students there. That was a 1200 square foot addition so I mean really built a new school there that was a rather small job. The other end of the spectrum we have Kwitlock which is the biggest and that's 11,000 square feet and that's a little more due to the size of the more traditional in that it has permanent walls and this sort of thing. The other ones while some are bigger they fall from 4,400 to they go 4,400 to 60, 480, 800 square feet while they're bigger the concept is basically the same in a way we offer these the multi concept that a space has to serve more than one purpose. So for the most part we have

large open classroom spaces and just you know it might be enough to divvy up to two or three or four classrooms depending upon whether it's 44 or 66 but the ideal that it's open space it's flexible space it can be used and of course as you get more students there's a formula by deal department of education we have smaller gyms in some places in another because based on the number students you get so many square footage for vocan stuff but basically the general classroom the instructional space the non-specialized area and not talking about shop space is open space that can be either divided in half or three parts or four parts by the use of movable partitions so while some schools are bigger that those those inner three categories they are the 14 schools make up the 44, 64 and 1800s like I say are basically the very similar in design just more classroom space that allows it to be divided up more ways here again with the idea that the classroom space needs to serve a

multitude of purposes you don't have the traditional concept where this is the social studies room and this is the science room and this is the whole mac room and this is the business ad room and this is the English room the spaces have to be versatile they have to be used for more than one thing nearly everyone concerned with a construction commented on the logistics problems created by distances between supply points and construction sites dot noted that the materials to be used on each building are carefully detailed in the contract specification and that the lack of any part can result in costly delays well needed materials are shipped in from anchorage or even from outside the state experienced the last can contractors are usually aware of these problems and plan carefully to get all the needed items on site and on time dot noted however that citizens in other parts of the state are often not aware of these problems or of the scope of the school projects themselves you said you don't just build schools you build you build power systems you build

water systems you build sewage systems when people in Anchorage you look at how much it cost to build schools out here one of the things that they feel to taking consideration is first not only where you're building them that has a obviously heckling impact you build a building in Anchorage you don't need to set up a camp I mean your employees drive to work in the morning you don't need to furnish mills you don't need to worry about airfare okay those are things you have to worry about here besides the logistical problems but in addition to that when they build a new school in Anchorage or Palmer they don't have to build a power system for it they don't have to build a water system for it they don't have to build a water treatment system for it in many cases we have to build all three and so you know that adds considerably to the cost you know I'd say in the average job another two hundred thousand dollars about two hundred to four hundred thousand dollars to the cost of the structure by having to provide these auxiliary services that either aren't available in the villages are aren't available at a level which would allow us to run the

building in the manner we'd like to. stringent environmental controls were written into the school construction projects. Dodd pointed out that the school locations were chosen with an eye to future village expansion which often means that they were set at a distance from airstrips and from varge unloading facilities. Contractors were required not to disturb the tundra or if it was disturbed to restore it to its natural condition as Dodd explained that prompted some novel solutions. We had the biggest airlift operation of materials in the history of the state by Alaska diversified fishback they reviewed the situation and of course here again you know getting your materials in the summer you have poor conditions to move across land and so they they charted a helicopter for a period of a couple weeks and offloaded they had charted their own barges up out of Seattle and offloaded the materials via air just picked them up and

helicopter them to the sites and so that was probably I could say that that was as I understand the largest operation of its type in the history of the state so there's an example of some of the environmental restrictions we had on the contractors. Another mandate for the contractors was the contract requirement that local workers be used in the school construction whenever possible. Yes that's been an extremely high priority unfortunately we're relatively powerless in requiring the contractor other than asserting our moral force to actually hire local inhabitants the contractors have been quite cooperative it makes good sense to them because it costs much more to sustain a person in a camp than it does to hire a local person so if there have been locally qualified people available the contractors have pretty much attempted

to hire them there had been a few instances where we've had to get after sub contractors such as painters or things of this nature that have brought in a crew from Anchorage and we have raised some concerns on that point. Problems during any phase of the construction process are brought up and ironed out quickly. Peterson named this quick management response is one of the single most important parts of the construction administration since it saves time for the school district and money for the contractor. Problems in any of the schools under construction are reported by the Hargis Engineering Inspection team during weekly meetings with the LKSD staff. Solutions are discussed and then reviewed with the contractors in subsequent meetings. Peterson noted that the district has not experienced any major difficulties in the new buildings that are now being taken over. Well in the two brand new schools that we have that are really part of the Molly Hooch settlement, Akiak and Kipna. We haven't had any

major problems. There were some problems made in construction and these were handled by the state on behalf of the district and there were a couple little minor things like building the generators at ground level and not a flood plain level so that when the breakup occurred next spring we would have flooded out the generators. These types of problems have necessitated correction. The school Kipna which the district is just taking over. We found that when we got there that one of the switches had been turned off and the the septic tank is frozen. Well these types of problems I think are probably inherent in any new facility. Part of our construction plan has been to absolutely minimize those types of problems by being on the spot with good inspection and with correcting problems as they come up in any building whether it's built in downtown Anchorage in the middle of June or in

Point Beryl. There are going to be problems because any building is so complex by the time you put together the electrical mechanical sewage and all the other systems that are involved that you can't help but occasionally have some types of design problems. Peterson talks over a potentially expensive well-drilling problem with Hargis Engineer Dale Wagner. Dale what's happening with that well problem at Schofornick? Well as you know on the first well that they drilled they went down 240 feet and hit salt water and they were directed at that time to move the well location to a different area on the plant blockland. They drilled another 54 feet at that time and hit a rock. Now they went through the rock started driving casing but couldn't drive casing through it so

they were instructed to use a seven inch bit to go through it and try to put the casing through again. Okay this did not work so they flew in two powder monkeys in order to try to blow the rock and fracture it so that they could get casing through it. Well that didn't work either so they flew in an eight inch drill bit, moved the well again and they are now drilling at their fourth location. The last three locations were within a five foot radius of each other. They drilled through the rock, put the casing in and they're down approximately 200 feet now and they have good water. They're flying a screen in the night and so they can continue on. Excellent. Slowly but surely the problems are being ironed out and the parts of the LKSD's vast project are coming together. Dodd said that the anticipated

completion date for the new schools at Guifluk to Luxac and Platinum is May 1st and that the substantially complete inspection at Guifluk is already taking place. July 1st is the expected completion date for the buildings now under construction at Akiachok in the Puskyak. The schools at Good News Bay and Macquarieak are looking forward to completion by August 1st and schools at Atmouthluk, Jafornik, Ik, Guiglingok, Nuitok, Nunnapichok, Gwynnhawk, Tundituleak and Tannoonik are expected to be finished by September 1st. The new schools will mean substantial administrative changes for the district. We see one of the very largest changes is coming in the area of maintenance. Right now we have one maintenance man to service the space heater going in the corner in the honey bucket in the closet and that's a slight oversimplification but we're taking on

18 very sophisticated buildings and these are going to require a considerable degree of expertise on the part of our maintenance force. For example there will be something like 43 generators not counting those with the district already has and all of these are going to require maintenance. It's going to require a considerable training program to one preventative maintenance for the people that we have working in the schools at the village level. It's going to require training of our principal teachers to ensure that they do adequate monitoring of the various mechanical systems to see that when a problem exists that the call is put into the central office so that we can get the proper people out there to prevent major damages. The new buildings will also call for a staggering amount of new furnishings, materials and equipment. Dodd said that the budget for equipping the 16 new

schools is about 770,000 dollars a little over three percent of the construction contract amount. The state guideline for equipment is actually 10 percent of the total but Dodd explained that the district was able to trim the equipment budget in order to allow for more actual construction. The cutback doesn't mean that there'll be any shortages in the basic necessities, textbooks, desks, chairs and things of that nature. Dodd said however that some of the more exotic and expensive equipment such as videotape players and 16 millimeter projectors may have to be accumulated over the next year or so. To give an idea of the scope for the ordering process here are some of the items on the district shopping list. 478 student desks, 661 stacking chairs, 94 manual and 24 electric typewriters, 2,300 folding chairs and 384 tumbling mats. It's unlikely that the students who

occupy the new schools will miss some of the more elaborate equipment at least for a while. Many of those who've been attending school far from home will be glad to continue their educations among their friends and families. Many others have been attending schools and cramped and crowded temporary facilities in their home villages. In to Luxeck for instance the youngsters have been using a small community building for their school. Three classes are packed into a single small and crowded room divided by blackboards that do little to shut out sound or reduced distractions. There are no recreational facilities and sanitation measures are primitive. The building has two outhouses. Water for washing is packed from the river and drinking water is carried in jugs from the BIA well. Until the school's vocational education class build a small storage building behind the school

there was no storage at all and the classroom was jammed with school equipment and materials. Even with the storage building, much of that equipment is barely accessible when it's needed. There's also virtually no space for the teachers to work at administrative duties. In Toontatulliac the students occupy an old abandoned church that was given to the city. District principal Bill Ferguson described the facilities there as very very primitive. Students in Akiachuk, Jafornik, Ik, and Kasigluk study in community halls or city buildings. In Toonuk classes are held in an old abandoned two-story store that's been renovated. In the Puskyak the district leases a building from the village IRA council and in Kipnuk an old BIA school is used. The mood of parents, teachers, and students in the villages which will receive the new schools is one of excitement and anticipation.

The superintendent talks about the advantages as well as some of the potential disadvantages of those new schools. I see both positive and I see negative effects. First considering the positive effects. The opportunity for the children to attend school at home I think is a very positive effect. This year we had a district basketball tournament and we had 303 young people involved in that tournament. The tournament was held in Bethel which is the largest community in our district. One could not help but be struck with a fact that had we not developed high schools in those communities in many cases the many many many of those students would have had no opportunity for involvement. They would not have had the skills and that type of involvement or whatever reason if they were all lumped into one large central school.

That would be to my thinking to the very positive things. Ten in school at home an opportunity for involvement and development in their school. Some of the negative aspects which we're concerned about are the type and amount of curriculum that you can offer in a small school. We have some schools that are less than 30 students and it becomes difficult to offer quality educational program in those schools. The other thing is isolation. The difficulty of students to develop and adopt to urban ways of living are probably more limited if they're attending schools in attending school in their home communities and they would be if they were attending say in Bethel. So there are things on both sides of

coin. I don't have a crystal ball but I would say that in balance that I think the schools will be positive for the majority of the students involved. Only the future will make an evaluation possible of the degree of success of this ambitious project. In the meantime however the efforts of all the people who've contributed to the project, parents, teachers, the school board and administration, the architects, engineers and builders and the students themselves will be rewarded with brand-new school buildings. It seems fitting that this the largest rural school construction project in the state should take place in the region where it all began with a high school student named Molly Hooch.