Students in Stebbins returned to class Aug. 21 for their second year in temporary buildings, after the community’s only school was destroyed by fire last summer.
The blaze consumed the Bering Strait School District campus and left the Bering Sea island school without classrooms, a gym, or a cafeteria. Last year, students and staff adjusted to a patchwork of portable classrooms, split schedules and meals prepared on their teachers’ home stoves.
The Tukurngailnguq School's third-year principal, Robert Cooper, said those first few months after the fire were especially difficult.
“We didn’t have hot meals for six months,” Cooper said. “We had an operation in our houses where people were heating up chicken nuggets and then running them over to the classes.”
By January, the district built a makeshift cafeteria inside a new, Quonset hut-style multipurpose building. A temporary basketball court was set up in another building, but it was cramped and split time serving other purposes.
Cooper said in some ways, losing the gym hurt the village of just over 600 people the most.
“Your team feels kind of defeated because they don't have a real place to practice,” Cooper said. “I think there's an overall grieving in the community because you couldn't have any basketball.”
Instead, basketball players and their fans have had to make a 30-minute drive to the nearby village of St. Michael. In the winter, the road is impassable except by snowmachine.
Stebbins' city administrator, Daisy Katcheak, said the lack of a proper gym left children without an outlet for recreation.
“A lot of anxiety. My city employees take time from their lives to go drive children over to have fun. That's the only way they're able to have fun,” Katcheak said.
Keeping on course
Last school year, the school split the days in two. Elementary students attended class before lunch while middle and high schoolers attended in the afternoon. The school day finished at 6 p.m., making for long shifts for the school’s 18 teachers.
This year, classes are running on a bell schedule instead of split shifts. Cooper said the goal this year is to build steady routines.
“When kids have a regular routine they can depend on, I think they feel real calm,” Cooper said. “That frees them up to try to absorb the material and be more comfortable asking questions.”
Cooper said some challenges remain, like not having hallways when huge drifts of snow infiltrate the campus grounds.
“We had lots of snow, and the people had piled it up in places that you had to kind of walk over mounds,” Cooper said. "And then in the spring, when the snow began to melt, they were like campus-wide lakes that were around, and they had to put down plywood so you get to your place without getting wet.”
Just five teachers from last year’s staff left campus, but not because they didn’t want to come back. Cooper said the teachers — all from the Philippines — had expiring visas. This year, all but two teachers are from the Southeast Asian country. Cooper said that cultural connection kept the staff together — and lifted the student’s spirits.
“Lots of Filipino food, that was really good, karaoke on Fridays or Saturdays, and more food,” Cooper said. “And then the people start singing, the women start singing first, and then the guys would start saying, and then they formed a little band, and they'd get together with the kids, they played instruments. I think a lot of that helped ease the pain.”
BSSD is working toward long-term solutions for Stebbins. A site for the new school has been selected on higher ground, away from the floodplain where the old building and current makeshift campus stand. Cooper said he expects pilings for the new campus to start hitting the permafrost ground this year. Concepts greenlit by local leadership envision a two-story campus.
The students are also looking to the future. Last year, high schoolers attended programs in Nome through the Northwestern Alaska Career and Technical Center, where they worked with mechanics during the Iron Dog snowmachine race. Cooper said those experiences gave students newfound confidence.
“They came back very polite, very mature — it was like a different group,” he said. “For some of them, it was life changing.”
As the new school year begins, Cooper hopes to rebuild school spirit by restarting a yearbook, bringing back student-led announcements and encouraging fundraisers. One idea is a sweatshirt with an image of a phoenix — a legendary bird capable of being reborn from ashes.
“In front of the fire was the artist's conception of the new school, coming out of the rubble,” Cooper said. “There was a lot of grieving, community-wide, about not having the school. What I've told the staff is, as far as kind of having this idea of establishing routines and having a school is going to be calm and focused on education, and also with a community with a cultural bent, I think that's going to be good.”
