The rural Southeast Alaska school district that serves students in Klukwan, Angoon, Gustavus and Tenakee Springs has named a new top administrator.

 

The Chatham School District’s board of education selected an administrator working in the North Slope to be its next superintendent.

Ralph Watkins is the principal of the Meade River School in Atqasuk in the North Slope School District. He’s served in teaching, principal and superintendent roles in Alaska schools for the past eight years – including in the Bering Strait, Valdez, and Hoonah School Districts. Prior to Alaska, Watkins taught in schools in Oregon, Wyoming and Nevada, and coached gymnastics in Southern California for 17 years. But he says he’s long considered Southeast Alaska home. 

“I spent five years in Hoonah, and so I have a real connection with Chatham (School District) as Angoon is Hoonah’s sister community,” he said. “And it’s a Tlingit community. And that’s my adopted community. And I just am really, I feel blessed to be going back home.”

The Chatham school district currently serves 160 students across schools in Klukwan, Angoon, Gustavus, and an independent learning center in Tenakee Springs. 

Watkin says he’s passionate about serving the regional district’s majority Native students and school communities. 

“As an African American, I have a strong connection with Native indigenous people, just because our stories intersect so much. So I’m really interested and connected, in supporting Native educational sovereignty and identity. And so, it just seems like the right place, the right time and the right fit for me,” Waitkins said.

He says his background and skills have prepared him well for administration of the regional school district, focusing both on the needs of individual schools and the district as a whole. 

“Because the district serves all of the communities,” he said. “And so how we think, act, develop policy processes and procedures have to be reflective of the individual communities, but they have to support the whole. And so I feel like that’s a strength of mine. I’m excited to bring that to the district.”

Watkins has degrees from Pacific University in Oregon, the University of Wyoming and a superintendent endorsement certificate from the University of Alaska Southeast. He is currently working on his PhD in Educational Leadership from Pacific University focused on non-Native leaders serving predominantly Native schools in Alaska.

“What are we as non native Native leaders doing to support the culture, the cultural identity, the revitalization of cultural values in the support of indigenous knowledge systems? What are we doing? How are we doing it? And who’s teaching us how to do it?” he said. “And so as I started to research that I realized there’s very little out there, and I think that that’s something that needs to be brought to the front you know, we need to start prior prioritizing indigenous knowledge.”

Watkins was one of two candidates that the board interviewed and hosted one public meet-and-greet forum via Zoom last month. The other finalist was Kary DelSignore and administrator with the regional Yupiit School District.

The previous superintendent Bruce Houck passed away suddenly at his home in Angoon in December of natural causes. The board hired John Holst to serve as interim superintendent. Holst has spent 52 years in education – all but 10 of those in Alaska. He mentors new superintendents, and will be a mentor for Watkins during his first year with Chatham.

“Ralph is a really good match for the board. I think there’s going to be a very good relationship between them,” Holst said. “And Ralph wants to be in Southeast Alaska. I mean, this is a priority for him. So I think this is going to work out really well.”

Board president Elizabeth Hooge did not respond to requests for comment.

Watkins will be relocating with his family to Angoon, and will start his tenure as Superintendent in July. He’s signed a three year contract with the district, for a salary of $140,000 per year. 

Watkins says his connection to Tlingit culture was profound and immediate, when he first visited Hoonah during a traditional celebration when applying for the job of principal. And it grew from there.

“As an African American, my ancestral culture in history was taken from me, and there’s no way for me to get it back,” he said. “And so I was so moved by their efforts, it left such a hole in me, like a such a longing to know more about who I was and where I came from. And I just decided, if they can fight this hard for their identity, I can get down with that. And it was, like that moment, I just decided that that’s where I was gonna be. I think I would have moved to Hoonah whether I got the job or not, just because I wanted to be among a group of people who celebrated who they were as indigenous people and in spite of everything.”

Watkins echoed the school board’s support for Klukwan school to stay open next year. Klukwan school community faced a challenging year as enrollment dropped below 10 students, risking closure. Watkins says he’s committed to supporting Klukwan and building enrollment next year, by highlighting the uniqueness of the school offering Tlingit language and cultural education. 

“We’re going to take a positive approach to building that school, and building that community up. So that the families that are there will see Klukwan school as a viable option for getting a quality education for their students. It’s going to take some out of the box thinking, it’s going to take some patience, there’ll be some ebbs and flows. They’ll probably be some missteps. But the commitment is there,” Watkins said.

He says his first steps as superintendent is to build relationships with school communities, teachers and board members, and make regular site visits.

“I’ll be working with the board to set up a regular schedule of site visits and spending quality time in these communities and supporting them at the district level, so that they can, you know, so that they can grow.”

Watkins says he’s already started meeting with the Chatham school board, interim superintendent, local advisory school boards, and school staff as part of the transition. 

The Chatham school district is working to finalize its budget for next year, including spending over $700,000 in federal COVID relief funding across its four school sites.