The neighborhood surrounding Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé was packed Thursday morning. It was the first day of school for the Juneau School District.
Cars lined the streets, buses filled the roads and students shuffled down the sidewalks.
Juniors Ximena Ramirez and Aurora Cole were headed to their first classes. Ramirez said she had a lot of emotions running through her head.
“I think it’s chill. I’m excited for it. I’m just, like, nervous,” she said. “I think everybody’s nervous to just be with everybody, find parking and stuff.”
This school year is the first time in 16 years that all high school students in Juneau are under one roof, instead of splitting between Juneau-Douglas and Thunder Mountain High School in the Mendenhall Valley. That’s because that building is now Thunder Mountain Middle School.
This past winter, the school board voted to consolidate Juneau’s high schools and middle schools — among other cost-cutting measures — in order to fix a multimillion-dollar budget crisis.
Ramirez went to Juneau-Douglas last year, but this is Cole’s first year here from Thunder Mountain. She said it’s nice to have some friends like Ramirez to help guide her through the new building, but she’s still nervous.
“It’s kind of exciting, just because of all the people, but it’s also scary because you know nothing,” she said.
And, it’s not just students who are on edge. Brooke Rohweder is a parent of a junior starting his first year at Juneau-Douglas after spending his first two years at Thunder Mountain, which is closer to their home.
“There are just a lot of unknowns I guess,” she said. “I think we’re trying to go into it optimistically, but it’s a big, big, big shift for us.”
Rohweder said she might be more nervous than her kid.
“He’s been positive the whole time, as well as all of his friends that I’ve talked to,” she said. “They’re just going into it more positively I think than I feel right now.”
Juneau School Board Member Britteny Cioni-Haywood was at the high school Thursday morning to check in on how things were going. She said she heard a few concerns like the lack of parking downtown, a few late buses and scheduling issues for some students.
But overall, things were going better than she hoped.
“At this point anyway, from the little that I’ve seen, feels like it’s going fairly smoothly,” she said. “I believe that there probably will be some rough spots as we kind of try and get those smoothed out — patience and grace.”
Across town at the newly combined middle school campus at Thunder Mountain, the parking lot was a lot more empty than in years before.
As parents lined the drop-off lane and said goodbye to their kids, seventh-grade student Cianna Kahl stood in front of the sign outside of the school so that her dad, Neil Kahl, could take her photo.
“I’m feeling pretty confident because I have some friends so I’m excited to see them here,” she said.
One downside for Cianna and her dad is that they live right next to the former Floyd Dryden Middle School, which she would have attended had it not closed down this year under the consolidation plan. Floyd Dryden, along with the Marie Drake building, are now owned by the city.
But Neil said they’re staying positive.
“That was kind of a bummer,” he said. “But it’s a really nice facility here, so the middle schoolers are gonna have a good learning experience. And that’s the main thing.”
In an interview earlier this week, Superintendent Frank Hauser said he is confident that consolidating schools is a major milestone for getting the district back on track financially.
“I think the district is positioned to be more responsive, but at the same time being able to provide those opportunities for our students and really expanding out and not having to reduce more because of those costs,” he said. “The consolidation really made it possible to put us on firm financial footing.”
But, with state funding for education in unknown territory heading into the next legislative session, Hauser warned there still could be more bumps to come on the road ahead.
