Update:
On Sept 21, Fort Yukon School District’s superintendent and school board laid down the law — all teachers in the rural Alaska district would need to be vaccinated for Covid-19.
Not all complied. Numerous sources now say eight teachers in the Yukon Flats School District were fired — in front of their classrooms. That’s a third of the teaching workforce in the district.
Teachers fired are said to be three from Fort Yukon, two from Chalkyitsik, and one from Circle.
Yukon Flats school district is spread across the vast northeastern region of Alaska known as the Yukon Flats, with small settlements along the Yukon River and its tributaries. The northernmost community, Arctic Village, is at the base of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the foothills of the Brooks Range.
MRAK sources say the superintendent walked into the classrooms and told the teachers they were fired, in front of the children.
“You’re not getting any teachers to come up here at this time of year,” one source said. It’s a tough district to work in, as it is some of the most remote and cold places in Alaska. Fort Yukon’s school has 92 students and is the largest, with nine teachers, meaning that a third of the teachers in the school have been fired.
There are about 211 students in the entire district, which has six schools and about 21 teachers total, nearly all of whom come from other places to teach in some of the most rural and traditionally Native communities in America.
A parent in Fort Yukon wrote that his children were devastated and don’t want to go to school anymore. One of the Fort Yukon teachers who was fired has been there for 10 years — a long streak for rural Alaska schools, which often churn through teachers on an annual basis.
There is a community meeting scheduled today in Fort Yukon about the situation. It’s apparent the teachers who were fired knew they had a deadline to get their vaccinations and decided to stay until they were terminated by the district, rather than to allow the district to say that they left on their own accord.
Photo: Yukon Flats School District teachers participate in an in-service training in September.
Are you a teacher in the Yukon Flats School District who has been fired? Reach out confidentially to suzannedowning at protonmail dot com.
