With more than 40 schools today separated by land, water and culture, it’s no surprise that the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has been called the “most unique in America” by current superintendent Clayton Holland. But its one-of-a-kind dynamic goes back to the school district’s preformative days.
On view at the Kenai Chamber of Commerce are more than 80 artifacts documenting the region’s early education system. In it, one can find anything from a bell used in Kenai’s early Russian school to a 1936 liquor license, which is how the former Kenai Territorial School was funded.
“Our early days as a museum or cultural center, a lot of our founders and early donators were local school teachers, and so we ended up with a lot of things that came from the original schools," said Kenai Cultural Center Coordinator Danielle Lopez-Stamm. "And so we have a lot of these things in storage, and I wanted to bring them out and just highlight education in this area.”
Kenai’s first school was its Russian school, opened in the 1890s. Then came the Kenai Territorial School, which for a while ran simultaneously with the Russian school. During that time, Lopez-Stamm says students would attend one school for Russian lessons and the other for English lessons.
Lopez-Stamm also made it a point to indicate that the Kenai Peninsula’s early education didn’t just happen in the classroom. The installment also has artifacts on early subsistence lifestyles, a hat tip to the Dena’ina people and homesteaders. The region saw a homesteading boom in the 1950s, which Lopez-Stamm says is part of the reason the school district was formed in the first place.
While she says the new exhibit’s scope likely won’t go beyond local recognition, Lopez-Stamm says it's important to highlight it in light of recent federal actions.
“Education is important and it's valuable, and I think museums and cultural centers help to highlight that," Lopez-Stamm said. "And working collaboratively with local schools and just encouraging studying the history of those local schools and how they formed, I think, helps people respect them better and understand why they are valuable and important.”
Although some of the museum’s artifacts have been displayed in the cultural center’s recent history exhibits, many have not seen the light of day since they were actually in use in local schools. They’ll be on view through the end of the month.
