West
Alaska faces teacher shortage as education funding debate dominates legislature
Cory Hughes moved to a remote Alaska village to teach and would happily stay and retire there if he could afford to — despite the dark winters and the fact the bathroom for his housing unit in the school’s kindergarten building has a sink that comes to his knees.
But Alaska is the only U.S. state that does not offer teachers a pension, and researchers say teacher pay and benefits have not kept up with other states. Hughes has bought a house in Ohio and he’s wondering how long he can remain in Nunapitchuk, the southwest Alaska village with a population of 525 he has come to love.
“I’ve taught for seven years, and my retirement wouldn’t even last me, like, a few months,” said Hughes, 28. “So I know that my time here is going to have to come to an end at some point, probably sooner than later.”
WHAT IS ALASKAPOX? FIRST FATALITY REPORTED FROM ANIMAL-BORNE VIRUS, LIKELY CONTRACTED FROM STRAY CAT
School funding is dominating the Legislature as lawmakers meet nearly 1,000 miles away in Juneau. Districts are facing teacher shortages and, in some cases, multimillion-dollar deficits. They say unpredictable levels of state support tied in part to Alaska’s fluctuating oil wealth make long-term planning nearly impossible.
Schools have had to cut programs, increase class sizes or have teachers and administrators take on extra roles. Hughes was tapped to help coach basketball, a sport he had not played.
Teacher turnover is nothing new, and Alaska is not alone in struggling to fill positions. But the effects can be acute in high-cost, hard-to-reach communities that rely on barges or planes for supplies, places so remote they sometimes have polar-bear patrols to keep residents safe. Eggs can cost more than $9 a dozen in some areas.
People rally outside the Alaska Capitol on Jan. 29, 2024, in Juneau, Alaska, in support of increased funding for public schools in the state. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)
Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a former educator, is promoting charter schools and a three-year program that would test whether paying teachers annual bonuses of $5,000 to $15,000 keeps them on the job — with higher amounts going to those in the most remote districts.
Dunleavy questions whether simply bolstering state aid to K-12 schools will turn around Alaska’s dismal performance in reading and math assessments. Alaska led the country in the share of students who missed at least 10% of the 2021-22 school year, and there has been an increase in the number of kids who are homeschooled since the pandemic.
School officials aren’t necessarily opposed to the bonus idea but say districts simply don’t have the resources they need. They are seeking a large, permanent increase in the state’s per-student funding formula to counter the toll of inflation and high energy and insurance costs.
“We can’t improve things if we’re always scrambling for crumbs,” said Erica Kludt-Painter, superintendent in the fishing community of Petersburg. Her district’s budget has been augmented by federal and grant funds but is now “at the breaking point,” she said.
Alaska residents get a yearly check from the state’s oil-wealth fund, and there’s no personal state income tax. Those are often billed as perks, but lawmakers over the last decade have struggled with budget deficits tied to the volatility of oil prices. They have had little appetite for considering new taxes as the state has continued drawing down savings and relying on oil-wealth-fund earnings to help pay the bills.
Even some lawmakers sympathetic to school officials’ pleas question whether the roughly $360 million more they are seeking is politically realistic. The state provided about $1.3 billion to K-12 school districts for the current budget year. Lawmakers approved a one-time, $175 million boost, but Dunleavy vetoed half that.
Some districts, including Alaska’s largest in Anchorage, have been recruiting teachers from overseas. A group that’s been involved in past litigation against the state over the adequacy of school funding is weighing another lawsuit.
The state Senate passed a bill to reinstate pensions — nearly 20 years after lawmakers closed the system — but its prospects are unclear. Majority House Republicans have proposed legislation that includes Dunleavy’s bonus plan, charter provisions and a roughly $80 million increase in aid through the formula. The bill could come up for a vote this week amid objections the proposed funding is not enough.
“It’s not rocket science in the sense that it is a combination of compensation and working conditions that attract and keep teachers in schools,” said Dayna DeFeo, director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research. “We can’t just buy our way out of it, but that is definitely going to have to be a part of it.”
Hughes was seeking adventure and a “different view of the world” when he became a social studies teacher at a K-12 school in Nunapitchuk about seven years ago. He saw the central role schools play in such small communities when he was invited to a funeral at the school the day after he arrived.
He immersed himself in the predominantly Alaska Native village’s culture to avoid feeling isolated, especially during what he described as a “make or break” first year in rural Alaska. He enjoys the hunting and fishing lifestyle.
There are challenges: the school is near the top of a state list for major reconstruction needs. The village faces threats from climate change. Thawing permafrost is undermining infrastructure.
It’s unclear whether the proposed bonuses aimed at full-time teachers would apply to Hughes. While he supervises some online classes, he is currently the dean of students. He doesn’t have the degree to be an administrator and is paid as a teacher, he said.
Independent Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, a retired teacher from Sitka in southeast Alaska, said lawmakers should figure out how to pay for what districts say they need. Otherwise, schools may not be able to offer athletics, art, theater or other aspects of a well-rounded education.
“What is the school system we want to have?” Himschoot said. “Because we’re really quickly headed for the school system that doesn’t offer the opportunities that people in my generation all had.”
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NFL Draft prospects rate themselves on Madden
USAT’s Chris Bumbaca asks some of the top NFL Draft prospects what they would rate themselves in Madden after their rookie year.
Sports Seriously
The San Francisco 49ers selected Indiana running back Kaelon Black with the No. 90 overall pick of the 2026 NFL Draft on April 24.
Black is a 5-foot-10, 210-pound scat back who ran a 4.45 40-yard dash at the NFL combine. In his 2025 season at Indiana, Black ran for 1,040 yards and led the Hoosiers with 10 rushing touchdowns. Black averaged 5.6 yards per carry.
San Francisco is hoping that Black can come in and earn his way to taking some of the wear-and-tear off veteran star running back Christian McCaffrey.
Here’s how USA TODAY Sports grades the 49ers’ third-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft:
San Francisco 49ers draft grade for Kaelon Black
- The grade: C+
- Why? Black goes from a combine snub to a third-round pick. No one will confuse him for Christian McCaffrey, but he can be a reliable inside runner for San Francisco. – Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz
Expert takes on Kaelon Black
- “Compact runner with ideal contact balance for early-down runs but lacks breakaway speed and receiving skills.” – Ayrton Ostly
- “A 1,000-yard runner for the national champs last season has the goods to take some snaps off Christian McCaffrey’s overloaded meter.” – Nate Davis
- “Teams scouting Indiana in the Rose Bowl will likely kick the tires on Kaelon Black. The running backs’s contact balance and powerful run style — he’s a known weight room warrior who squats 500-plus pounds — broke Alabama’s will in the 38-3 win. He always finds a way to fall forward and will fight for tough yardage. He didn’t get a combine invite, but shined on Pro Day with an impressive 4.4-second 40-yard dash and 37.5 vertical jump.” — Michael Niziolek, The Herald-Times
49ers 2026 NFL Draft picks
- 2nd Round, No. 33 overall: De’Zhaun Stribling, WR, Mississippi
- 3rd Round, No. 70 overall: Romello Height, DE/OLB, Texas Tech
- 3rd Round, No. 90 overall: Kaelon Black, RB, Indiana
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton have spent dozens of drafts inside team headquarters during their respective decades-long careers in the NFL.
They have rarely waited so long to get in on the action.
The Broncos on Friday selected Texas A&M defensive tackle Tyler Onyedim with the 66th pick. That came at the top of the third round, after the Broncos acquired a sixth-round pick from the Bills to hop back from the 62nd spot. The result was that the Broncos, for only the third time in franchise history, did not make a first- or second-round pick during a draft.
“It fell like we thought it would,” Paton said.
The Broncos never felt the urge to dart up the board in search of an instant upgrade. It was the continuation of a message the Broncos have sent to members of their roster this offseason, a group that finished 4 points shy of a trip to the Super Bowl. Denver may not travel the same path in their championship quest this season, but it’ll largely be bringing the same cast on the journey.
Denver has added exactly one veteran free agent since the new league year began in March: Tycen Anderson, a part-time safety and full-time special teamer. The Broncos on Friday became the only team in the league to end Day 2 having made only a single pick.
There was the major splash, of course, that brought dynamic wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to Denver. Can you imagine the pitchforks that would be out in the Mile High City if Waddle hadn’t penguin-danced into town back in March?
“Yesterday, that was a boring day,” Paton said of the draft’s opening round Thursday. “But we forget that we did trade (their first-round pick) for one of the better receivers in the league, so it was a good day.”
Go ahead and scan the initial 53-man roster the Broncos put together last fall, the one that embarked upon a journey that ended with the AFC’s No. 1 seed. A conservative projection right now could point to somewhere between around 43 and 45 of those same players being on the roster that Payton and Paton put together ahead of their 2026 season opener in September. Open starting spots on this roster? They are in short supply. The foundation is largely set.
Quietly, though, the Broncos have set themselves up for a substantial Saturday. The trade with Buffalo pushed Denver’s total of Day 3 picks to seven. The work they do with that capital will be critical to Denver’s quest to ensure its status as title contenders becomes an annual occurrence for the foreseeable future. A massive contract for quarterback Bo Nix looms, but that’s an anchor only if the Broncos can’t continue to reinforce critical rotational spots on their roster through the draft.
And that doesn’t have to come, Paton said, with the glitzy Day 1 and Day 2 selections that garner all the headlines.
“As we go through our discussions, these two fourth-round picks will define our draft,” Paton said. “We should, if we’re doing our job, hit on the second-round (pick), now third. It’s really the middle-round picks that define your draft. We’re looking for young developmental backups with traits that we can develop.”
Onyedim fits that description. After four years at Iowa State, where he played one season with current Broncos defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike, Onyedim transferred to Texas A&M in 2025 and put together his best season. Importantly, the scheme at Texas A&M under defensive coordinator Mike Elko showcased his ability as a one-gap interior pass rusher.
“That defensive scheme sometimes, that’s one of the challenges to projecting (a defensive lineman),” Payton said. “The importance of him at the A&M exposure, you got to see a guy play a different position or technique. I think that probably helped a lot of teams (with Onyedim’s evaluation), not just us.”
Uwazurike produced his best season with the Broncos in 2025, his third in the NFL. He’ll enter the final year of his contract this season while playing alongside Onyedim and Sai’vion Jones, the second-year player whom Denver selected out of LSU in the third round last year. The Broncos lost John Franklin-Myers in free agency after he produced 14 1/2 sacks the past two seasons, but the Broncos are taking a developmental approach in replacing his production, while planning to lean more on freshly extended veteran Malcolm Roach.
It’s not a flashy process, but it’s one, extrapolated at positions across the roster, that explains how the Broncos have steadily risen from a five-win outfit the year before Payton arrived in 2022 to a team that ended Kansas City’s near-decade run atop the AFC West.
“The reason why we’ve been so good the last couple of years is because of our depth, and where you get that depth is the third day,” Paton said. “They may be backups in Year 1 like (outside linebacker) Nik Bonitto or (cornerback) Riley Moss, and then in Year 2, if you hit on them, maybe you get a starter or a key contributor. That is what we are looking for on Day 3.”
Bonitto (a late second-round pick in 2022) and Moss (third round in 2023) were actually Day 2 selections, but the Broncos have found other impact pieces on the draft’s final day since Paton became the team’s general manager in 2021. Edge rusher Jonathon Cooper, center Luke Wattenberg, offensive lineman Alex Forsyth, safety and special teams ace JL Skinner, wide receiver Troy Franklin and Uwazurike are all starters or rotational contributors taken in the fourth round or later. The Broncos drafted wide receiver Devaughn Vele in the seventh round in 2024 and were then able to flip him for one of the fourth-round picks they have in this draft in a trade with the Saints last August.
The reality is that good teams with complete rosters are rarely the most buzzy teams during the NFL Draft or the offseason writ large. The Broncos have embodied that truth to the highest degree in the months since their special season ended on the doorstep of a Super Bowl appearance.
Saturday could nonetheless prove to be a pivotal day for the Broncos. The pieces they need to make a championship run in 2026 are in place. But making similar chases in the seasons to follow demands that they hit the defining Day 3 picks ahead.
“We feel good about where we are at, and we feel really good about the day,” Paton said. “We feel good about the first day (of the draft). We got Waddle. Then, we got (Onyedim), who we really like. (Saturday), we’re going to have a good day.”
The last time the Broncos didn’t make a first- or second-round pick in a draft was 1995. A player they did pick? Running back Terrell Davis.
No pressure, George.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Arkansas defensive back Julian Neal became the first Razorback to hear his name called in the NFL Draft on Friday night when the Seattle Seahawks selected him with the 99th overall pick in the third round.
Neal is the first Arkansas defensive back to be drafted since Montaric Brown in 2022 when he was selected by Jacksonville in the seventh round. The Seahawks picked a Razorback for the first time in a decade when they tabbed the late RB Alex Collins in the fifth round of the 2016 draft. Neal’s selection in the third round makes it consecutive years a Hog has been called after Isaac TeSlaa (Detroit) and Landon Jackson (Buffalo) were third-round picks last year.
In his lone season on The Hill, Neal started all 12 games while making 55 tackles and intercepting a pair of passes. He quickly impacted the Razorbacks’ secondary in the team’s second game of the season with 11 tackles, one interception and a pair of pass breakups to become the first Arkansas defensive back since 1997 with 11+ tackles, 1+ interceptions and 2+ pass breakups.
Neal began his career at Fresno State, where he played four seasons. His final season in 2024, the San Francisco native played in all 12 games, including four starts, making 35 tackles with five tackles for loss and two interceptions.
For his career, he recorded 99 tackles with 8.5 tackles for loss and four interceptions across 42 games.
The NFL Draft’s final day, featuring rounds 4-7, begins tomorrow at 11 a.m. on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and NFL Network.
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