The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 22%.
Original Research by School Decision on Barry Craig Stewart Kasaan School
Barry Craig Stewart Kasaan School sits in one of the most isolated school settings in the United States. Kasaan is a Haida village on the east side of Prince of Wales Island, reachable only by a long gravel road branching off the Thorne Bay Highway. The village itself is tiny, with only a handful of residents, a café, a fuel station, and tribal government offices. The Organized Village of Kasaan, a federally recognized tribe, is headquartered here, and the community's cultural life centers on the nearby Kasaan Totem Historic District and Chief Son-i-Hat Whale House, the only traditional Haida longhouse still standing in the country. The school is part of the Southeast Island School District and serves pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, which means it carries an unusually wide grade span for a student body this small. Children of nearly every age share the same building.
The enrollment is very small, spread across the full pre-K-to-12 range. Some grades have no students at all in a given year, while others have only a handful. This is the reality of a community where the entire village population is counted in the dozens. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the limited local economy. The student body is mixed, with Alaska Native students forming a large portion alongside White students and students of two or more races. The school does not have charter or magnet status. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so we cannot characterize those populations.
Academic results are difficult to read in a conventional sense because the testing pool is so small. On the AK STAR assessment for English language arts in grades three through eight, the school reported a proficiency rate that sits low. Only a small number of students were tested, and the participation rate was below full. For math, the proficiency rate was suppressed, meaning the state did not publish a figure, likely because the number of test-takers was too small to report reliably. Science results were also suppressed, and the reported participation rate for science was zero. With a student body this small, a single child's performance can shift the entire picture, and a parent reading these results should keep that in mind rather than treating them as a stable trend line. No multi-year trend data was available, so there is no way to see whether performance is moving in a particular direction.
We looked for the school's graduation rate and found no data reported. This is common for schools where the senior class may consist of one student or none at all in a given year; a graduation rate calculated from such a small denominator is not meaningful and is often withheld. Program offerings, course access, staffing levels, attendance patterns, and discipline data were not available in the provided materials, so we cannot describe what electives, advanced coursework, or specialized services the school offers. A parent considering this school would want to ask directly about how the district supports a pre-K-to-12 curriculum with such a small staff, what high school coursework looks like in practice, and how students who need additional help are served.
The community has no separate downtown; the school, tribal offices, and homes all sit within the same compact settlement. There is no public transit and no library identified in available sources. The village has experienced population decline rather than growth, and no new housing developments or commercial expansion were reported. Housing values and rental data were not provided, so we cannot characterize the local market. Historical industries, a copper mine and a salmon cannery, closed long ago. Current institutional anchors are the tribal government, the school district, and Kavilco Inc., the regional Native corporation involved in cultural restoration. We searched for recent district-level changes such as curriculum shifts, referendums, or tax adjustments and found little of lasting impact reported.
What this school offers is a deeply place-based education rooted in a Haida community with strong cultural identity and a quiet, remote setting. What it cannot offer, given its size and isolation, is the breadth of courses, peer groups, and extracurricular variety found in larger schools. A family weighing this school should think about whether a small, multi-age, culturally grounded environment fits their child, and should ask the district directly about how it handles the academic and social needs that a larger school would address through scale.
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