Sitka is far behind state and national averages for the availability of childcare, and it’s creating a crisis of unintended consequences in business, education, and the overall well-being of the community. The first in a series of panel discussions sponsored by the Sitka Chamber of Commerce (10-9-24) lent some hard data to Sitka’s childcare crisis, and began to explore solutions.
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Sitka’s Indigenous Peoples Day celebration was a feast for the senses, and a rich lesson in what it means to be a contemporary Lingít person. The event spanned over four hours Monday evening (10-14-24).
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The Sitka School Board has agreed to a plan that would create a district preschool for up to twenty students – but it won’t be free. District administrators advocated for the plan as a way to both ease Sitka’s childcare shortage, and to better prepare students for kindergarten. However, at least one board member was concerned that the $1,000-per month tuition was not serving the district’s mission of equity.
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Sitka voters returned an incumbent mayor, and two incumbent assembly members during the municipal election on October 1, 2024. Voters also elected a new school board member.
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Research in Southeast Alaska could expand the changing story of how the first humans arrived and traveled in the American continents. A Canadian archeologist is looking for evidence of human activity along the coast, in areas long since inundated by the rise in sea level following the last ice age.
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The recent 16-day internet outage in Sitka revealed a lot about the humanity of its residents, most of whom stepped up in one way or another during the event. But it also revealed a startling dependence on a cable made of glass fibers, together no thicker than a garden hose, which runs for hundreds of miles along the seafloor.
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Sitka’s Community Land Trust has passed its first – and possibly most important – test. A cottage home built and sold two years ago by the trust has just been resold at a price far below the market rate for housing in Sitka. Yet the original homeowner still walked away with both her equity and considerable cash.
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Sitka’s economy is thriving – according to the numbers, anyway. At the annual presentation on Sitka’s economy delivered last week (9-12-24) by Rain Coast Data, residents learned that the workforce, wages, and other economic indicators had all returned to pre-pandemic levels – and then some. But there were a couple of very serious negatives, too.
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Rep. Rebecca Himschoot thinks the last legislative session had examples of both good and bad governance. Nevertheless, she believes the state government could be doing a better job serving Alaskans. She delivered a legislative update to the Sitka Chamber on August 28.
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As Sitka’s internet outage extends into a second week, plenty of people have felt the frustration of being unable to communicate, whether it’s a postponed surgical procedure that required telemedicine, or just setting up a carpool for their child. But something else is going on, too, and it’s not simply nostalgia for the days when the entire world wasn’t a click away. KCAW’s Robert Woolsey spoke with a clinical mental health counselor to learn more about the unexpected upside of being out of touch.
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