Senate education panel hears pleas for stable funding, structural changes to Alaska Native Language Center
Loading...
Summary
University leaders, ANLC faculty and elders told the Senate Education Committee that recent internal reallocations and short-term funding threaten research, publications and teacher-training at the Alaska Native Language Center and urged the legislature to ensure predictable, hard funding and clearer statutory authority.
Sen. Lukey Gale Tobin convened the Alaska State Senate Education Committee on April 1 to hear presentations about the Alaska Native Language Center, the University of Alaska Fairbanks unit charged by a 1972 statute with researching, documenting and supporting Alaska Native languages.
Mike Sfraga, interim chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, opened the presentations by reaffirming the university's commitment to the center and stressing that "we are not closing" the center. "I will not ask you for money," he said, adding that recent budget growth reflected internal reallocations as the university and the College of Indigenous Studies shifted scarce resources.
Tisha Simmons, dean of the College of Indigenous Studies, described efforts to broaden access to language learning — including K–12-aligned course sequences for teachers in the YK Delta and lower-barrier community workshops — and said the college values community-trained instructors even if they lack formal degrees. Brian Newhair, interim vice chancellor for rural, community and native education, summarized two publishing agreements with the University Press of Colorado (a distribution agreement and a co-publication agreement) that the university reports will preserve ANLC copyright, maintain an ANLC editorial board and produce royalties; he said ANLC will receive an estimated 30% of revenues on new titles and 50% on existing stock under the arrangement.
Faculty who run the Alaska Native Language Program pressed sharper alarms. Sam Alexander, department chair, said sustained staffing cuts, reliance on one-time or "soft" money and administrative decisions have eroded ANLC's research capacity and archival stewardship. "By this fall, we will no longer conduct research into our languages," Alexander warned, arguing that the center must be evaluated and funded on its legislated mission — research, documentation, publication, training and dissemination — rather than on student-enrollment metrics alone.
Anna Bergey, a linguistics professor, described hiring and contract changes after ANLC moved into the College of Indigenous Studies: permanent positions replaced by term or adjunct roles, short-term contract extensions for an editor, and searches for a director that she said were curtailed before the department's search committee selections were implemented. "It appears that we do not have any kind of authority to make decisions for ourselves," Bergey told the committee.
Committee members asked for specifics about the apparent budget increase and whether funds were reallocated from other programs. Newhair said the recent funding came from multiple sources inside the university — a roughly $400,000 base transfer from the college, unspent balances carried forward, grant funds and tuition reallocations — and that some positions are sustained year-to-year on nonpermanent "soft money." Sen. Kiel pressed for follow-up in writing to better trace opportunity costs and the programs that lost funding when resources were reallocated.
Speakers also described work tied to K–12 assessments: the committee asked how ANLC supports the Alaska Reads Act requirement for reading screeners in immersion programs; Dean Simmons said faculty (including Sally Sampson) are reviewing and adapting assessment materials and developing curriculum with partner districts.
Several presenters urged legislative remedies beyond ad hoc university reallocations: calls ranged from mandating hard funding for ANLC to creating a statewide institutional home for Alaska Native languages or a Department of Alaska Native Languages. Chone Lance Twitchell of the University of Alaska Southeast urged structural transformation and referenced the Council of Alaska Native Languages 2024 action plan as a blueprint for statewide coordination.
Elder Florence Newman closed the hearing with firsthand testimony about intergenerational language transmission, urging parents to speak to children at home and describing decades of community teaching that undergirds language survival.
The committee did not adopt formal actions at the hearing. Chair Lukey Gale Tobin said she intends to work with stakeholders to reexamine the authorizing statute and to pursue steps to secure stable, predictable resources for the ANLC; she also asked university presenters for a list of ANLC publications to place in the public record. The committee adjourned at 5:13 p.m.