As students across Alaska and the country return to class, a small school in the Aleutians is back in session for the third year. Nikolski’s school reopened in 2024 after remaining closed for 15 years because the community did not have enough school-aged kids.
Despite waning education funding and continued school closures across Alaska, parents and teachers say the school is thriving.
Tanya Lestenkof is the tribal administrator for the Native Village of Nikolski. She’s lived there for over two decades and said having a school makes the community feel more alive. She said she and the rest of the village pulled together to get the school ready to reopen.
“It was a whirlwind,” Lestenkof said. “It took like nine months, and the next year the school was open. So it was definitely a transition that the village came together for.”
Nikolski, the only community on Umnak Island, has about 30 people. Its school closed in 2009 due to several years of low enrollment. Alaska requires at least ten students to be enrolled for a school to receive the full state funding amount. This year, Nikolski has eleven.
Re-opening the school meant finding a new schoolhouse building and a teacher, securing teacher housing, and learning about the students’ educational needs.
Lynette Hull moved to Nikolski from Allakaket in 2024 to be the new head teacher. She said that, despite statewide funding challenges, every year in Nikolski has gotten better.
“Everybody is thinking in terms of, what are some outside-the-box ways of getting things done, or getting things that we need, or making do with what we have,” Hull said.
She said they’ve continued to iron out kinks with the curricula and make improvements to the one-room schoolhouse building. They’ve also invested in new equipment. Hull said a community member wrote a grant to buy an off-road vehicle for student field trips.
Deborah Clayton, the Aleutian Region School District’s new superintendent, said she loves that her schools are providing that kind of place-based learning.
“They're learning deeply about their culture as it's integrated into their school and their community,” she said.
As of July 1, the school district’s projected funding for the upcoming school year was approximately $1.3 million. This will support the district’s two schools in Nikolski and Atka.
But that school budget relies in large part on student enrollment numbers, which means Nikolski must remain a place where people with children want to live. Tanya Lestenkof said they’re working on new housing to continue attracting families to the community.
Lestenkof is a parent, too — three of her five kids represent a substantial share of Nikolski’s school-aged population. She said they adapted quickly from homeschool life after the school reopened.
“They get themselves ready,” she said. “They're ready before I even wake up.”
