KIYU NEWSROOM

Military Youth Academy update
8-4-06
KIYU

The Alaska Military Youth Academy continues to look at Galena as a possible site for a new campus in the Interior. 

The Academy is currently based at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, and demand for its Challenge program is higher than the spaces it can offer to students.   

The Challenge program targets high school drop-outs, or students having trouble with high school.  The program centers around a 5-month boot camp, involving classroom instruction, intense physical activity, and various vocational training opportunities. 

When the intensive portion of the program is complete, the students remain under the Academy’s supervision, but return home and work towards their diplomas or G-E-D.

The Academy first showed an interest in Galena in the early part of this year, and since then, other state and military officials have questioned whether Galena is an appropriate site, because it is not an active military base.  Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base, both near Fairbanks, have also been considered as potential sites of expansion – but neither has existing facilities to offer, and it would take approximately 6 years to construct them. 

The most recent site visit to Galena by the Military Youth Academy was made by two former directors of the Academy, who are now retired.  Colonel John Flemming and Colonel Gary Peterson are assisting the current Director, Tim Jones, with the site selection process.  Jones indicates that their visit helped underscore the pluses, and minuses, of Galena and its Air Force facilities.    

"Galena has some great opportunities for partnering, along with the local school, both the GILA [Galena Interior Learning Academy boarding school] as well as the [City School]. But one of the things we [are] concerned about up there [is] that if we bring in a fairly large program, staff housing [will be] an issue, as well as transporetation of students," Jones says.

In particular, the Academy has shown an interest in obtaining building number 1769 - the 34 thousand square foot supply warehouse on the western edge of the base - and turning it into two-story dorm and classroom building capable of handling 100 students.  The Academy also wants to determine if the Iditarod Inn dormitory could be used for staff housing. 

The investigation of potential expansion sites is paid for by a 500 thousand dollar appropriation from this year’s capital budget.  Some of the start-up money for the Interior campus is also included in that grant.

The final decision about where the put the Interior campus of the Military Youth Academy will ultimately rest with the Governor, and Jones can’t speculate on when that decision will be made…or what will happen if Murkowski fails to win reelection this year. 

"From our point of view, being apolitical, we are just establishing known facts and barriers to success, and costs of operating in all those different locations" says Jones.

"Whoever is that deciding person, whoever the people of Alaska decide, that will be on their plate. And I wouldn't want to speculate on whether it is the current governor or someone running against him."

Governor Murkowski directed the Division of Military and Veteran’s Affairs to have an Interior campus up and running by the fall of 2008.