April/May 2021
Aarigaa,
On behalf of all our staff and students on the North Slope Borough School District, we want to congratulate the Nuiqsut Trappers for winning the 1A Regional Mixed-Six Volleyball Tournament. They will be attending the state meet in May. We appreciate the participation of all the other volleyball teams! We also want to congratulate the Tikiġaq Harpooners for winning the 2A State Basketball Championship. This is very important as we only opened up recently for student athletics. We want to thank the M&O staff, namely Craig Jones and his team, as well as Jeremy Goodwin, and Fadil Limani, and the Business Office for their support. We also thank all the coaches and chaperones that were patient as we worked through some untimely events during the Mixed-Six Volleyball season.
We want to wish the whaling community’s success this spring as they go out onto the ice to harvest the bowhead whale. We thank Ronald Brower for working closely with the whaling captains on the Whaling Standards for our Middle School and High School students to earn credit during this time: Aġviqsiuġnikun: Whaling Standards. We thank the teachers and principals for their close work with the IED department for making this happen. Our thoughts and best wishes go with the communities of Barrow, Wainwright, Kaktovik and Nuiqsut.
We want to congratulate all our seniors in the district that are graduating during this most challenging year of the Covid19 pandemic. We send you out with hopes that your dreams will be met as you seek further endeavors. We thank the parents, teachers, principals and support staff for your support during this year. We look forward to hearing of your success in the future years. As you’re probably aware in May, graduation season is in full-swing across the District. Thank you to all board members that have so graciously given of their time to attend and speak at the graduation ceremonies. It means so much to the graduates, parents, school staff and community members.
We will be holding Summer School from May 17-June 4, 2021. As a result of the COVID19 Pandemic, and the challenges with broadband and distance learning, we are holding an extended summer school program for loss of instruction for our students that were impacted by this. We have about 150 students enrolled. The goal is to use this time for literacy and credit recovery. Students will have the opportunity to participate as long as they have been registered along with the teacher and administrator overseeing the process. This will also be a fun time for students to interact in a smaller group setting.
As the year draws to an end, we are in the midst of preparing already for the fy21-22 school year, and are looking forward to a more “normal” year where all the schools will be open every day five days a week, alongside the fun student athletics and activities that the students and communities are accustomed to. I would like to commend the sites for thinking outside the box this year and providing activities that did not involve travel or the regular sports like basketball and volleyball. We have seen other types of activities such as fencing, virtual competitions like Horse and other fun events.
We want all our students to be fully prepared academically for a world of success in college, trade school, or for employment in their field of choice. In order to do so, they need to have the basic fundamentals in literacy of language arts and math. We will be making a huge push in the next academic year to have our students begin showing growth in those areas. We want all our students to have a sound beginning and graduate with high reading and math skills. This will take time to develop and show academic growth, however we are confident we can provide that over time.
“TOGETHER WE CAN”
Respectfully,
Pauline Siqupsiraq Harvey
North Slope Borough School District Superintendent