Energy costs place lower as migration explanation

ALEX DeMARBAN

December 04, 2008 at 9:10AM AKST

The energy crisis in rural Alaska partly explains why people are leaving villages for larger communities, but it’s not among the top three reasons, according to the preliminary results of a new survey conducted by First Alaskans Institute.

People listed more job options, better educational opportunities, and being closer to families — in that order — as the main reasons they moved, said Janie Leask, FAI head.

The research institute conducted the informal and “totally unscientific” survey during the Alaska Federation of Natives convention last month, Leask said. She said a formal analysis will be released in early December and cautioned that some information could change.

In the survey, people attending the state’s largest Native gathering were asked if they’d left one community for another and were given nine choices to explain why. Leask said she did not yet know how the price of energy ranked among those choices. 

Nearly 300 people from all over the state said they had moved, she said.
Information that has not been released includes when those people moved. The survey asked participants whether they had moved sometime in the last year or at an earlier time.

The population shift has been happening steadily for years, though it seems to have accelerated this year. Rural leaders have often blamed the cost of living — buoyed by rising energy costs — for pushing many people over the edge.

Rural energy prices hit new highs this spring, when river barges arrived with the diesel fuel and gasoline that powers rural economies. The drop in the global price of oil that reduced petroleum prices around the nation has not been felt in many villages, since they purchased most of their fuel in the spring.

In general, rural Alaskans pay two to three times what Anchorage residents pay for electricity, even after accounting for a state subsidy that reduces rural residential rates. Also, stove oil and gas is running more than $7 a gallon in many villages this winter, more than doubling current gas prices in Anchorage.

Leask, who presented the information Saturday during a discussion about the trend at the University of Alaska Anchorage, said the results mirror a 2007 survey done by the institute.       

“People are moving where they can give their children an advantage and maybe to find work they couldn’t find (before),” she said.

In all, more than 1,000 people responded to the survey.

Many said they planned to move.

The influx is impacting the Anchorage School District, said Doreen Brown, supervisor of the Indian Education program at the Anchorage School District.

For example, students who speak Native languages — often taught in rural schools — can qualify for bilingual education services in Anchorage, she said.   

In all, 258 students have been identified as Yup’ik speakers and their parents want them to get English help. The next most common request for bilingual help came from Inupiaq speakers, she said.  

“So what does that mean for the district? We need more translators,” she said.

Teachers need to have patience with the new students, Brown said. She’s heard many students are being moved to special education courses without getting much transition time.

For example, a mother recently complained to Brown that her first-grade daughter had been moved to special education three days after she arrived at her new school in Anchorage.

The problem? The student spoke Yup’ik — she had attended an immersion program in Bethel. Both her English and Yup’ik may have been limited, Brown said.

She said Anchorage teachers mean well, but some may need additional professional development to address the new students in their classrooms.

Most of all, teachers and others need to be empathetic and active listeners to help children and parents deal with culture shock, she said.

“Many of the schools we have are bigger than the village (the students) are coming from. The metronome, the speed of life, is just a lot faster (in Anchorage) than it is in the rural areas,” Brown said.    

Brown doesn’t know where all the new students are from, but she provided some numbers from a preliminary report. She could not say how many of the students were Native.  

Forty-two students have come from the Dillingham area.

Many others have come from the Valdez and the North Slope Borough school districts, as well as other areas.

Thirty students came from the small Kuspuk School District serving villages along the Kuskokwim River, she said.  

The Kuspuk district lost 42 kids this year, dropping enrollment to 342 students in the eight villages served by the district, said superintendent Brad Allen, from the district’s headquarters in Aniak.

District officials have heard that many families moved to Anchorage or the Wasilla area, Allen said.  

“We think the biggest reason were jobs and the high price of fuel, but also the energy relief and PFD package gave people the impetus to move,” he said. “People had that little extra money to go with.”

The district expects to lose more than $300,000 in state funding as a result of the drop, he said. This year, the district plans to avoid cuts by relying more on grants. But reductions to programs and staff could come next year, he said.