To Foster Community Support in Alaska, add ICE

Accessible only by boat and plane, Wrangell is a remote little town tucked away on a rugged green island, carved out ages ago by the glaciers in southeast Alaska. Wrangell (population 2,100) is a place with no stop lights; where you make sure to buy your milk on Friday because the store may run out before the barge arrives on Monday. High school sports teams going to out-of-town competitions must hop on a plane or a ferry, be away four or five days, and stay overnight as guests in their competitors’ homes. They return the favor when the opponents come to town.

While the roads are few, Alaska’s distances are immense. If you cut Alaska in half, both halves would still be larger than Texas. But the state’s total population is only 660,000. Scattered in this vastness are rural communities like Wrangell, many of which scrape to make ends meet. “Yet each has its own strengths and resources that can be energized and enlisted to support kids,” says Sally Rue, a former local school board member in Juneau. In 2003, Rue became director of the Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement (ICE), the community engagement component of Quality Schools/Quality Students (QS2), a school improvement service overseen by the Association of Alaska School Boards (AASB). Says Rue, “We help communities recognize the strengths they do have.”

During one chilly winter week in 1994, every one of the 900-plus homes in Wrangell got a phone call asking a question. No product sales pitch this time. Just a point-blank question from neighbors they knew, “What can YOU do to make our kids feel valued?”

Making kids feel valued

A group of Wrangell citizens and school board members had gotten energized by the idea of community involvement as a way to strengthen student achievement. As a result, they wound up dividing all the phone numbers in their local phone book to take turns calling their fellow townspeople.

“It didn’t have to be something big—our point was, everybody could make a difference,” remembers one of the callers. “You can be a retired fisherman who sits on a boat, but when you see a kid on the dock fishing, you can talk about tying knots, and you can make a connection. Even if you were ninety-eight, you got call.”

 Wrangell citizens started responding in ways that—collectively—began knitting the community more tightly to its young people. A woman in a wheelchair said she couldn’t get out much but would write a congratulatory note to every student who made the honor roll (she’s still writing). A local artist painted Wolf Paws (mascot signs) to recognize businesses that contributed to Wrangell schools.

Such fledgling efforts to focus a community on its kids were gathering steam when the local pulp mill, one of the biggest employers in town, closed. Morale sank. Unemployment jumped. Over the next few years, Wrangell’s population dropped by a third, as families despaired of finding new jobs and moved away. There were cascading effects as businesses like the machine shop downsized. The elementary school lost half its students.

“Wrangell could have cycled downward, but they didn’t,” recalls Sharon Young, AASB associate executive director. As Wrangell spent a decade trying to rebound economically, its leaders also kept focused on getting adults to recognize how they could relate to kids and help young people to develop the internal and external attributes they need to succeed (called the 40 Developmental Assets).