Schools Of The Frozen North

I just came across an article on the logistical challenges of building schools in the Bush. The term for the native people is pronounced and spelled differently in different places--here it is Yup'ik, upriver it's Yupiit. This isn't the whole article, but I pulled quite a few paragraphs that I found interesting because they hint at not only the difficulty and complexity of such a project, but also the scale of the investment in these new schools and how central they are to the communities they serve.

Two new schools for the native Yupiit people are challenging the Anchorage-based building teams... the $23.1-million, 41,491-sq-ft Marshall Replacement School, and the $20.9-million, 31,900-sq-ft Russian Mission Replacement School.

“Like all Bush Alaska, everything you need, from a bolt to food to a Band-Aid, must be ordered six to eight months ahead of time to come in on a barge or you have to fly it in on small planes,” says Cal Myrick, Neeser’s project manager.

The nearest town to both villages is 6,000-population Bethel, about 118 mi away. Anchorage is 384 mi. Marshall and Russian Mission each are home to about 350 people.

Carl John, director of capital improvement projects for the owner, the Lower Yukon School District in Mountain Village, agrees that contractor mobilization and materials availability are two major problems in the area. He says the third is permafrost winter conditions typically registering temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

On 3.1 acres, the approximately $22-million Russian Mission school will accommodate about 108 students. [How cool is that?] The building is characterized by two wings in a V-shape because the community’s native name translates to “people of the point” in reference to the village’s location at a bend of the Yukon.

Each school has an elementary playground and exterior exercise areas. At Russian Mission, there is a concrete half-size basketball court with a curb, allowing it to be flooded in winter for skating. Marshall has a play field but no concrete basketball court because permafrost causes concrete to crack and settle.

Russian Mission is built into a hillside on conventional concrete footings and cast-in-place stem walls, with structural insulated panels, HardiPlank siding used on the exterior envelope and composite roof shingles. Aggregate and backfill was mined from an island in the Yukon River, while similar material at Marshall was excavated from a former runway.

Both buildings incorporate approximately R-30 in the walls and R-40 in the roof systems.

Working crew logistics are unique in rural Alaska as well. The subcontractors live in containerized camps set up by Bering Pacific and Neeser. At Marshall, Neeser’s crews work seven 12-hour days, six weeks on and two weeks off. “We fly in perishables and barge in canned and dry goods,” Myrick says.

For both rural Alaska communities, the schools are essential hubs—community centers as well as educational buildings.

“It’s not only the largest building in town, it’s the most important,” Burkhart says. Because of this, completing them on time depends on keen collaboration, he says. “The school district, the design team and the contractor must communicate and coordinate effectively to resolve the inevitable challenges that arise in such remote environments.”