The need for families in Hooper Bay, Alaska, to send their children away from home to get a high school education will be ended, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Morris Thompson announced today. A contract to construct a new, $3.2 million high school complex has been awarded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Walsh Construction Company of Anchorage, Alaska.
The new school is designed to serve 100 students in the 9th through 12th grades. The BIA now operates an elementary school with an enrollment of more than 200 in the area.
The new complex will include classrooms, science lab, home economics lab, a vocational shop area, administrative facilities, gymnasium and kitchen. There will also be an addition to the existing sewage treatment plant and an apartment building with five sets of quarters for staff personnel.
There is now no high school serving the Hooper Bay region and consequently, the students have had to participate in boarding school or other dormitory-type programs in larger cities.
