Alaska's rural schools need major infrastructure investment. KYUK has been investigating
KYUK | By Sage Smiley, Emily Schwing
Published March 4, 2025 at 1:00 AM AKST
For the last several months, KYUK’s Emily Schwing has been investigating why Alaska’s rural public schools are falling apart. This week we’ll hear some of the work she’s done in partnership with ProPublica and National Public Radio (NPR).
SNIP
KYUK (Sage Smiley): Thanks so much for joining me today on ["Coffee at KYUK"], Emily. First of all, can you tell us what made you take on this project?
Emily Schwing: So honestly, I got a phone call and a couple text messages from someone in Sleetmute. He was very persistent, and finally I picked up the phone and he explained what was going on with the building in Sleetmute and all of the structural damage that the school district was trying to mitigate.
KYUK: For those who haven't interacted with KYUK's previous reporting, with your previous reporting on Sleetmute school, what's happening there?
Schwing: What is happening in the Sleetmute school is that the roof there has been leaking for almost two decades, and maybe even longer than that. It's caused a ton of other damage in the building. The water has run down into some of the walls; there's water damage in the ceiling. The wetness that has been left unchecked has caused a lot of black mold to develop in the building. And then the other thing that's happening is at the structural studs in the walls, particularly in the school's wood shop, which is at the back of the building. As that keeps rotting, the building's becoming structurally unsound, to a point where architectural inspections and engineering reports say that the building, the back end of the building, at least, is just not safe for use.
https://www.kyuk.org/public-safety/2025-03-04/alaskas-rural-schools-need-major-infrastructure-investment-kyuk-has-been-investigating
America's decline continues.
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