Tanana City School District
The Tanana City School District (TCSD) is the school district of Tanana, Alaska. Its sole school, Maudrey J. Sommer School, serves grades K-12.[1]
The school had 104 students in 1998.[2] As of August 2008, the school had five full-time teachers and five aides serving 56 students.[1] By January 2009 the enrollment had declined to 39 students. At the time, many villagers were leaving to find other jobs.[2]
In 2008 the district did not pay $100,000 worth of bills and invoices. Some of the bills had been left over from two years prior. In 2009 John Banna, the superintendent, announced that the school was in $200,000 worth of debt. He stated that he would either stop paying teachers or stop paying bills, unless the State of Alaska gave the district a bailout.[2]
A biomass system is used to power and heat the teacher housing. The school was scheduled to get a biomass heating system started before January 1, 2013.[3]
References
- 1 2 "Welcome" (Archive). Tanana City School District. August 4, 2008. Retrieved on May 4, 2014.
- 1 2 3 Hopkins, Kyle. "Tanana school district runs out of money." Anchorage Daily News. March 18, 2009. Retrieved on May 4, 2014.
- ↑ Brehmer, Elwood. "Biomass saves big bucks to heat, power rural schools." Alaska Journal of Commerce. November 28, 2012. In: December Issue 1, 2012. Retrieved on May 4, 2014. "In Tanana, the city shop, teacher housing and water treatment facilities have already received biomass upgrades thanks to AEA dollars. City Manager Bear Ketzler Jr. said the city’s school project is expected to be up and running before the new year.[...]The furnace is designed to cover 80 percent of the school’s heat at peak draw. That equates to a savings of roughly 80 gallons of heating oil on Tanana’s coldest days. “The school normally burns about 15,000 gallons a year and that’s down from about 25,000 before we did the weatherization project a couple years ago,” Ketzler said. “By burning wood we’ll be saving 10,000 gallons a year, that’s $50,000 to $60,000.”"