The federal government will be releasing billions of dollars in education funding this week, including $46 million in Alaska, after freezing the funds last month.
The Trump administration announced in late June that the funding was being withheld pending a review. Multiple advocacy groups and school districts sued the Trump Administration, including some in Alaska. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would be releasing the frozen funding.
Part of that funding is Title I-C funding for migrant education. A quarter of students in the Petersburg School District qualify for that money.
Families can be considered migratory if they leave their community to engage in their livelihood, like families who commercial or subsistence fish.
“You’re leaving your community to go out to catch fish for income, and then you move back to your hometown, so you’re leaving your community to go and do work,” explained Petersburg School District Administrative Assistant Mara Lutomski.
She said that other migratory jobs in Petersburg include logging and agriculture. Families in these industries who qualify can apply for migrant funding.
Over 100 students across the district qualify as migratory.
Title I-C funds exist to help migratory students be successful in school and graduate. Lutomski said that the district takes feedback from families on what programs they would like to see. In the past, these funds have paid for tutors, school supplies, classroom fees, workforce training, and staff.
Lutomski said that there’s a misconception that the grants pay for migratory families’ work, but she said that’s not true.
“The fund’s not there to support their migratory work, it’s to support them in their education, reaching graduation,” she said. “Because the work that they do often takes them out of the classroom.”
Finance Director Shannon Baird said that while the migratory funds can fluctuate from year to year, last year the district received around $150,000.
Without that funding, the district would have been forced to pause the programming entirely. Superintendent Robyn Taylor said that losing that grant funding would have impacted students.
“There’s no doubt that reduced funding impacts student success, because anytime you have a reduction in funds as a district, we have to make decisions as to how we best allocate the resources that we do have,” Taylor said. “So any reduction impacts students in the classroom.”
Taylor said in a follow-up email that having the migratory funding back is “great news.”
The U.S. Department of Education is expected to begin releasing the Title I-C funds on July 28.
