PHOTOS: Students in Stebbins returned to class Aug. 21 for their second year in temporary buildings, after the communityโs only school was destroyed by fire last summer. The blaze consumed the Bering Strait School District campus and left the Bering Sea island school without classrooms, a gym, or a cafeteria. Last year, students and staff adjusted to a patchwork of portable classrooms, split schedules and meals prepared on their teachersโ home stoves. The Tukurngailnguq School’s third-year principal, Robert Cooper, said those first few months after the fire were especially difficult. โWe didnโt have hot meals for six months,โ Cooper said. โWe had an operation in our houses where people were heating up chicken nuggets and then running them over to the classes.โ
By January, the district built a makeshift cafeteria inside a new, Quonset hut-style multipurpose building. A temporary basketball court was set up in another building, but it was cramped and split time serving other purposes. Cooper said in some ways, losing the gym hurt the village of just over 600 people the most. โYour team feels kind of defeated because they don’t have a real place to practice,โ Cooper said. โI think there’s an overall grieving in the community because you couldn’t have any basketball.โ Instead, basketball players and their fans have had to make a 30-minute drive to the nearby village of St. Michael. In the winter, the road is impassable except by snowmachine.
