The Kuspuk school district has voted to temporarily close the Gusty Michael school for the 2025/2026 school year, citing a combination of factors.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced it will stop funding certain minority-serving programs in higher education. For UAF, certain awards supporting Alaska Native students will no longer continue.

After making do with makeshift classrooms as the Kuskowkim River encroached on their old school, Napakiak students are back to school under one new roof.

It could be as late as mid-January 2026 until the gymnasium and its respective wing at Bethel Regional High School are reopened for use, coming after inspectors found significant damage to floor trusses underneath the facility last spring.

A newly updated learning space aims to grow the potential of a Bethel-based nursing education program.

For the first time in years, students in Napakiak are at school under the same roof, in a school building that’s safe from the encroaching erosion of the Kuskokwim River.

As public media is threatened after cuts from the Trump administration, Indigenous radio also faces threats to how it preserves and grows language.

The vote was the second successful veto override after lawmakers convened Saturday for a special session called by Dunleavy.

Lawmakers only budgeted $40 million of the nearly $800 million that districts say is needed to fix and maintain schools to keep them safe and operating. Gov. Mike Dunleavy then vetoed more than a third of that.

On Monday, July 28, the governor called for legislators to address what he called “Alaska’s chronic education outcome crisis,” and to reconsider his executive order they had previously voted down, creating a new Alaska Department of Agriculture that he said would strengthen food security in Alaska.