In mid-October, when a storm surge driven by the remnants of Typhoon Halong crashed into the Yup’ik village of Kipnuk, residents raced for higher ground. James Taq’ac Amik and his family climbed into an 18-foot aluminum motorboat at 4 a.m. and spent five hours huddled on a small bridge as houses began to float away. Their intended refuge was Chief Paul Memorial School, the largest and sturdiest structure in the roughly 700-person village. The building’s pilings and design kept it standing when much else was swept away, but its backup generator, already strained because the main unit was under repair, was overwhelmed once nearly the whole village poured in. Hundreds sheltered there for two days before officials organized a mass evacuation to regional hubs; some families were eventually transported nearly 500 miles to Anchorage.
Kipnuk’s crisis is part of a broader pattern across rural Alaska, where school buildings routinely double as emergency shelters. In many villages, schools are the only structures with flush toilets, elevated foundations or pilings, large gym floors, and generators capable of supporting dozens or hundreds of people. Local and state emergency officials describe them as the practical lifeboats for coastal and river communities that face flooding, erosion, storms, and other hazards.
At the same time, a joint investigation by KYUK Public Media, NPR and ProPublica documented widespread building failures that undermine that role. Inspectors and school leaders report failing boilers, broken pipes, nonfunctional fire sprinklers, rotting exterior siding, and electrical systems that cannot handle the loads required for large-scale sheltering. At Kashunamiut School in Chevak, a sprinkler test failed. Many districts face chronic boiler and piping problems.
Funding shortfalls and a cumbersome approval process have left repairs and upgrades backloged. The state is legally responsible for funding construction and maintenance in many rural districts because these communities are unincorporated and lack a local tax base. Over roughly the last 28 years, rural districts submitted nearly 1,800 requests for funds to maintain or repair school facilities; only about 14 percent of those requests were approved. Superintendents say the application process is onerous, requiring professional inspections and surveys that are expensive to produce, and proposals must be ranked against one another for a limited pool of money.
Specific examples highlight the delays. The Kashunamiut district’s $32 million renovation request for fiscal year 2025 was one of 114 proposals statewide; the state funded only 17 projects that year and Chevak’s request was not among them. Kipnuk’s district waited 14 years for approval of a major renovation request that finally moved forward in 2015. The Lower Yukon School District has repeatedly asked for $2 million to more than $5 million annually since 2018 for repairs to the Kotlik school and others, with little success. Hooper Bay, perched near a rapidly eroding coastline, submitted 29 requests totaling more than $8.4 million; last year it received roughly $2.3 million for exterior repairs, but many needs remain unaddressed.
State agencies acknowledge deteriorating buildings and the heavy reliance on schools during emergencies, but they also point to gaps in responsibility and funding. The Alaska Department of Education emphasizes that schools are designed primarily for education and are not inspected specifically to certify their readiness as emergency shelters. The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which depends on schools during disasters, has no formal agreements with the education department to designate or maintain shelter-ready facilities and lacks a dedicated funding stream for preparing or upgrading schools for emergency use. Some limited grants exist for emergency preparedness, but they fall short of the sustained investment districts say is required.
The disconnect surfaced publicly during a February 2024 budget meeting when state Sen. Löki Tobin asked Craig Christenson, deputy commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, whether maintaining schools for shelter use would cost less than repeatedly evacuating whole communities. Christenson replied that his department does not maintain schools, even while acknowledging that his division uses them in crises.
Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop summed up the problem bluntly, saying deferred maintenance often turns predictable repairs into emergencies. For remote communities with few alternative safe buildings and many homes that lack plumbing, reliable heat, or steady electricity, the stakes are high. When a school cannot provide dependable power, heat, water or fire protection during a disaster, families face stark choices: remain in a compromised village, cram into a building that may itself be unsafe, or leave home for expensive regional evacuations.
Local leaders, educators and emergency planners are calling for clearer lines of responsibility between the education department and emergency management, a simpler and fairer process for prioritizing and approving repair requests, and predictable, sustained funding for maintenance and emergency upgrades. Priorities include robust backup generators, upgraded electrical systems, reliable plumbing and fire protection, and other resilience measures so schools can fulfill both their day-to-day educational mission and their de facto role as community shelters.
For families like the Amiks, the need is immediate. In Kipnuk the school’s structure prevented the building from being swept away, but without reliable backup power and other targeted investments the very building acting as refuge risked becoming another emergency. Residents sheltered in the school as the storm destroyed homes and scattered debris through the village, a vivid example of why communities and state officials say coordinated, sustained investment is needed to keep rural schools safe in both everyday life and disaster.