The Juneau School Board is considering consolidating Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and Thunder Mountain High School to help address the district’s $9.7 million budget deficit for next year.
On Saturday, the board proposed putting 10th through 12th graders at Thunder Mountain and putting seventh, eighth and ninth graders — along with students from optional programs — at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé. That would let the district close some other schools.
Dozens of students from Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé rallied on Tuesday in opposition to that idea, saying ninth through 12th grades should be at their campus instead.
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“It’s not JD versus TM, it’s one building compared to the other,” said Bristol Casperson, a junior. “Which one has the most space? Which one has the proper classrooms — wood shop, auto shop, metal shop? If TM had that, if they had the space for us, if they were the proper place to receive a good four year education, then we would have to put it aside and go there. But J-D is that space. This building has those amenities.”
Thunder Mountain opened in 2008 under the assumption that Juneau’s population would continue to grow. Instead, the school-aged population shrank.
According to the school district, Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé has 545 students this year, putting it at 50% capacity. Thunder Mountain has 569 students, which is 76% of its capacity.
Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé can fit 1,091 students. The district expects there to be 1,050 students in 9th through 12th grades next year.
Junior Maisy Messing said she thought ninth through 12th grades should stay together.
“I think that our upcoming ninth graders deserve to have the same high school experience that we did,” she said.
Freshman Sabine Auger joked that if the high school became 10th through 12th, she’d find herself back at the “bottom of the food chain.”
“But I think it’s inevitable that we’re probably all going to be in the same school together, so we should just accept that,” she said. “I really, really hope that the school board knows that we want to be together at JD, which has the bigger capacity, and that it needs to be ninth through 12th like it always has been.”
In 2017, the city and school district hired an architecture firm and consultants to create a school facility master plan. Their report listed challenges and strengths of the two campuses.
Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé had been newly renovated. It’s next to the University of Alaska Southeast Technical Education Center and the Augustus Brown Pool. It has a wood shop, metal shop and garage. But it has smaller classrooms, minimal parking and not enough outdoor space.
Thunder Mountain was a newer, well-organized building. It has a football field and track, and the Dimond Park Aquatic Center and Mendenhall Valley Public Library are nearby. But it had minimal space for career and technical education classes and underutilized teacher planning rooms, the report said.
“The big argument is that TM has the pool, the library and all the amenities there, which is true, but they don’t have the capacity,” Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé senior Maggie Higgins said. “There’s lots of neighborhoods with residential parking that you can park in when people are at work. Maybe it’s a little more of a walk, but I walk to school every day. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”
Freshman Sam Uyanik said many families have a deep connection to the downtown school. Elders and leaders representing the Áak’w Ḵwaan and T’aaḵu Ḵwáan gifted the high school its Lingít name in 2019.
“A lot of our ancestors and our families went there,” Uyanik said. “I think it would be pretty disrespectful, if you ask me.”
Mary Canapary, a junior, said the rivalry between the high schools can be fun.
“But at some times, I think it’d be really nice to just get everyone together, standing together, for a common goal,” she said. “And I think education should be that common goal.”
The school board is set to decide on a school reconfiguration model at a meeting on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. The board will consider two models at the meeting. One puts seventh through ninth grades and optional programs at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé while putting 10th through 12th grade at Thunder Mountain. The other puts seventh and eighth grade at Thunder Mountain and all high school grades at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé.
Members of the public can attend the meeting at the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé library or on Zoom.
