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Chatham School District Migrant Education Contact:
Tina R. Gamble
tgamble@chathamsd.org
The Alaska Migrant Education Program
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was amended in 1966 to provide funds to establish or improve educational programs designed to meet the special needs of migrant children. Congressional support has increased steadily. The State of Alaska became involved with the program in 1980 in five sites when changes in the federal definition were expanded to include both logging and fishing as qualifying activities. Currently 44 of Alaska’s school districts have a Title I Migrant Education Program.
Alaska’s migrant population is based predominantly on qualifying moves for the purpose of commercial fishing and subsistence fishing with some logging, and very little agriculture. While we have some children who move between Alaska and the “Lower 48,” the majority of our migrant population moves between school districts within the State or within the school districts in Alaska that are larger than 15,000 square miles each.
The fishing and seafood processing industries have always been important to Alaska’s work force. More people work on fishing boats and in processing plants than in any other private industry in the State. Alaska’s waters support one of the world’s richest fisheries. In fact, most salmon, crab, halibut and herring sold in the United States come from Alaska Department of Fish and Game. There are also a variety of aquatic plants and marine life such as kelp, urchins, whales, seals, and walrus that are harvested in the waters of Alaska.
Alaska covers 586,412 square miles, or one-fifth the area of the “Lower 48” states. This makes it larger than Texas and the next three largest states combined. Alaska also has 33,904 miles of shoreline. This is longer than the combined coastline of the “Lower 48” states. While Alaska is of immense size, the population centers are few and the distances between them are great.
As a result of Alaska’s immense size, the federal migrant education law was amended on June 12, 1984 to allow districts of over 18,000 square miles in size to identify children who have moved 20 miles or more to a temporary residence for their parent or guardian to engage in a fishing activity. A large number of people qualifying under this definition move to engage in personal subsistence fishing activities. In 1994, the law was amended again to change the district size requirement from 18,000 square miles to 15,000 square miles.
The following 16 large rural school districts now qualify under the 1994 amendment that allows them to identify children under the revised definition of migrant:
Alaska Gateway
Kodiak Island
Northwest Artic
Aleutians
East Lake and Peninsula
Southeast Island
Bering Strait
Lower Kuskokwim
Southwest Region
Chatham
Lower Yukon
Yukon/Koyukuk
Iditarod
Matanuska-Susitna
Kenai Peninsula
North Slope |
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