The good news of help on the way for the child care sector, reported July 29, is worth celebrating. We have seen considerable progress in child care policy and local, state and federal funding. Thank you to our policy leaders for making a change in the right direction for child care.

On the local level in Anchorage, Prop. 14 was approved by voters and will create a $5 million boost to early education and child care in the Municipality of Anchorage. While work is still being done to set up the program, it is heartening that an identified priority is to address the low wages of child care professionals.

On the state level, the Legislature and governor approved two budget items and one major piece of legislation that will provide operational support for child care programs, make child care more affordable for families, and ensure that Head Start programs receive more of their federal funding match.

$7.5 million in one-time child care grants: This represents a critical investment in child care programs with grants that can be used for operational and wage support. We hope to see this as an annual appropriation next year.

$2.6 million Head Start appropriation: This helps the state receive more of its allocated federal funding and can be used to increase wages and expand capacity for dozens of programs around the state.

$9.6 million child care assistance increase and business tax credits: Senate Bill 189, which includes elements of House Bill 89, marks the first-ever child care legislation passed in Alaska. This bill allows the state to help programs get reimbursed based on the actual cost of care of delivering services, not a preset market rate that is artificially low, especially for infants and toddlers. This bill also makes child care more affordable for thousands of Alaska families by expanding eligibility to the Child Care Assistance Program and offers tax credits to businesses that spend money on child care for their employees.

On the federal level, Congress’ most recent budget, supported by all three Alaska congressional members, increased funding for the child care Development Block Grant (CCDBG). This annual increase means a $1.3 million increase to Alaska to help administer the child care Grants and child care Assistance programs.

While we are celebrating progress in policy and funding, the child care crisis in Alaska continues. Child care programs continue to close faster than new programs open, and workforce shortages and high turnover remain, creating a growing supply gap. Despite stopgap funding, child care needs more long-term solutions for a sustainable and thriving sector.

All in all, to offer child care stability to Alaska families, we need to give child care programs the fiscal stability they need. One-time funding from federal COVID-19 relief and the state has been an important Band-Aid for the child care system, but the adhesive has worn off. We must continue working toward long-term funding relief that reflects the importance of child care to Alaska families and our economy.

Even though our state has made historic investments in child care this year, programs will not see the benefit until next year, and more needs to be done to build on this success and stabilize our child care system. Let’s keep up the momentum of new policy and funding for child care.

Alana Humphrey is the public policy committee chair on the board of Thread, Alaska’s child care resource and referral organization. She was formerly the chief executive officer at Boy and Girls Club-Alaska.

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Updated: 1 hour ago Published: 2 hours ago

A scorching hot day in Alaska’s Arctic set multiple records Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

At Deadhorse, the industrial camp community next to the Prudhoe Bay oil field, the temperature hit 89 degrees. It was not only an all-time high for Deadhorse but appears to be the highest temperature ever recorded at any site above 70 degrees latitude in North America, said Brian Brettschneider, an Alaska climatologist.

The 89-degree reading beat the previous Deadhorse record of 85 degrees, set on July 13, 2016. And it beats the previous Deadhorse August record of 84 degrees, set almost exactly a year ago.

It is possible that areas at similar latitudes in Russia have had higher temperatures than 89 degrees, but Russian information is not reliable, Brettschneider said.

The heat was the product of a combination of factors, including chinook winds from the south, winds that prevented cooler air from seeping in from the sides and a variety of upper-atmospheric conditions, Brettschneider said. “If you would have asked me two weeks ago, ‘What would it take for Deadhorse to hit 90 degrees?’, I would have described what happened,” he said.

While extreme weather can emerge on any individual day, more such events can be expected on the North Slope and elsewhere because of climate change, Brettschneider said.

“In a warming world, you can now set records when the conditions aren’t so extreme, and it’s easier to achieve extreme events,” he said.

Across the North Slope, average annual temperatures rose by 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1969 to 2018, according to researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. While all of Alaska has warmed, the North Slope had the biggest increase in average temperature over that period, according to the UAF scientists.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, other high-temperature records were set elsewhere on the North Slope, according to the National Weather Service.

At Barter Island, which lies east of Deadhorse and is near the Canadian border, Tuesday’s temperature of 74 degrees was a new record for August, the service said. The temperature at Utqiagvik, the nation’s northernmost community, also hit 74 degrees, setting a similar record, according to the National Weather Service.

For people doing physical labor in that part of the state, especially those wearing heavy safety gear, the unusually warm conditions could be bothersome, Brettschneider noted.

ConocoPhillips, one of the main operators in the North Slope oil fields, has worker-safety procedures that include water supplies and regular water breaks that can be adjusted as needed, said Rebecca Boys, a company spokesperson. There also are medical services available and communications systems to relay information about any medical need, she said.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.

More than a dozen communities in rural Alaska were unable on Wednesday to offer early in-person polling ahead of the state primary as required by law because of delays in the delivery of election materials.

State law requires absentee in-person voting locations to open two weeks prior to Election Day. Polling locations across the state opened Monday ahead of the Aug. 20 primary, when voters will choose between candidates for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat and 50 legislative seats.

But in at least 14 communities, absentee in-person voting locations were not open as of Wednesday morning, two days after early in-person voting had begun. And in 17 other locations, in-person polling was delayed by at least a day, according to the Division of Elections.

The communities where in-person polling had not begun as of Wednesday include Kokhanok, Nikolski, Akutan, Pedro Bay, Atka, Sand Point, St. George, Stony River, Napaskiak, Deering, Kivalina, Shaktoolik, Koyuk and St. Michael, according to the Division of Elections. The division provided the list in response to questions from a reporter but has not provided any specific details to the public.

[Early voting starts for Alaska’s Aug. 20 primary election]

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher attributed the delay to the short window between when ballots are printed and delivered to regional offices. In rural Alaska, she said voting materials must be delivered by mail to Nome and then distributed across a vast area “through a variety of mail carriers.”

“Weather and other considerations factor into delivery of the materials,” said Beecher, who was appointed to the role last year and is overseeing a statewide election for the first time this month.

Beecher was appointed by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican running for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat. As a candidate, she had used her social media channels to encourage voters to cast their ballots early. In her current role, Dahlstrom oversees Alaska’s elections. She had not publicly acknowledged the delay in the start of in-person early voting in some communities.

The area where the arrival of election materials was delayed falls within the Division of Election’s Region 4, which covers northern and western parts of the state. The area includes four state House districts comprising rural Alaska, where voters are predominantly Alaska Native.

Alaska Natives have faced unequal access to voting in the state, prompting a years-long federal investigation.

Ballots and accompanying materials, including the envelope in which the ballots are delivered to the Division of Elections staff, were mailed from Nome to voting locations in rural Alaska on July 30. Getting election materials to the polling locations within a week “has proven to be ongoing challenging, and this year is nothing new,” Beecher said.

Alaska law requires the director of the Division of Elections to distribute all election materials to election supervisors “not less than 25 days before the date of the election,” which would be July 26 at the latest. Beecher said the division is “fully compliant” with the statute.

Eight polling locations did not receive voting materials until Monday, the day voting was set to begin. Nine other locations did not receive materials until Tuesday, Beecher said in her email. She did not provide the names of those 17 polling locations but said all of those locations had allowed voting to begin as of Wednesday.

“Each bag mailed has a USPS tracking number that allows the division to see where and when it arrived,” Beecher said.

According to information that Beecher said the postal service provided Wednesday afternoon, several of the affected communities had received their election materials on Wednesday. Postal service workers were unable to contact workers in Nikolski or Atka to determine the status of their deliveries, Beecher said.

Robyn Burke, an Utqiagvik Democrat running to represent state House District 40, said she tried to vote absentee in person at the North Slope Borough building on Tuesday, but was told that the envelopes meant for ballot delivery had not yet arrived in Utqiagvik, so voting was not yet possible. On Wednesday, Burke said she again called the Utqiagvik polling location and was told that in-person absentee voting was still not available.

Burke said that after she was turned away from voting in Utqiagvik, she called the Northwest Arctic Borough Building in Kotzebue as well. There too, election materials had not arrived as of Tuesday evening, forcing election workers to turn away voters, Burke said.

Burke said she wondered why the Division of Elections staff did not spread the word on its social media platforms about the delay in the arrival of the election materials, so that voters did not have to find out by going to the polling locations.

“It’s just frustrating,” she said. “With all of the other issues that have to do with voting in rural Alaska — for our polling sites to not even be open and accepting voters — I think that’s just uncalled for.”

“When you’re sending folks away from the poll, what if that discourages them from coming back?” she asked.

This is not the first time the Division of Elections has blamed election problems in rural Alaska on the postal service. In 2022, the division certified election results without fully counting the ballots from several predominantly Alaska Native communities, because mail delivery to the Division of Elections was delayed.

Beecher said that voters seeking to cast their ballots early in communities that still have not opened polling locations can apply for a mail ballot — as long as they do so by Saturday.

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