In Napakiak, kids sat in clusters in the entryway of their brand new school building. They wiggled and listened as grown-ups from the community and school district gave remarks at a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Walter Nelson, coordinator of Napakiak’s erosion retreat efforts, took the microphone.
“As you all know, we have been dealing with erosion issues for decades and decades here in Napakiak,” Nelson said.
The new school building is a major step in the community's response to riverbank erosion.
While other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities are working to relocate because of climate change, Napakiak’s particular strategy is what’s called a “managed retreat." Walter has been helping manage the village’s 50-year plan that involves rebuilding in parts of town less impacted by riverbank erosion.
In addition to the new school building, Napakiak has been in the process of building a new housing subdivision away from the river.
The old school building sat just off the banks of the Kuskokwim River. For years, the waterline gradually encroached on the school. In 2021, the school district received funding for a partial demolition, removing classrooms close to the river to buy the school more time. High school students started that school year in portable buildings.
After a series of storms in 2024, water reportedly came within 6 feet of the school gym. It prompted the school’s evacuation, and classes continued for students in a hodgepodge of available spaces, including Napakiak’s bingo hall.
This school year, the nearly 100 students from pre-K through 12th grade are back under one roof in a new building. With about a mile of distance between it and the Kuskokwim River, the school runs on its own water well and water treatment, powered by its own generator.
The roughly $56 million project began in 2021, when the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD) used more than $5 million of its own funds to lay the cement foundations of the new school. The city received support from the Association of Village Council Presidents who built the stretch of road needed to transport materials. It’s been a long battle for the state funding necessary to complete the project — it took years for Napakiak to reach the top of the state’s priorities for new buildings. Nearly four years and multiple creative classroom variations later, the new school is open.
In his remarks, Warren Nicolai, the head builder of the school, spoke to the importance of having a place to gather for education.
“Our Elders used to live in … the men used to go stay in the qasqiq, and they were taught by local community leaders,” Nicolai explained. “And you know, the importance of a school is that is part of our culture.”
Nicolai said that the space is now a piece of the greater community. It can be a space for basketball, a sport that stokes fiery fandom throughout the region.
“The gym is the most important piece to the school to me,” Nicolai said.
It’s a space LKSD designed with its own kids in mind. The chairs, walls, and bulletin boards are colored to match the blue sky, green tundra, and gold bluffs seen out the many classroom windows.
In the elementary wing, student cubbies have built-in grates to make it easy to vacuum mud from boots when it dries during the school day.
It’s a space that former teacher Andrew West said the kids deserve. West was one of the last teachers in the former school building before it was torn down and classes were held in community spaces.
“You walk around with this new building, and there is among the community members a joy and they feel uplifted,” West said. “And for a community that's been through so much, they needed that, and it's wonderful to see.”
West described it as a solid place. And for a student body that’s been moved around in the face of erosion, that word — solid — means a lot.
Students and faculty have only had access to the building since the end of August. Books have begun to fill the library’s empty shelves, and bare display cases await future awards and art projects.
Outside of the school, the kids run to the playground. It’s brand new, and one of the fancy looking ones that resembles a modern art installation. Students hang upside down on monkey bars and climb on a spinning contraption that no one seems to know the name for.
Though they’re still settling into the new school, it’s a place that’s already theirs to love.
