AyaprunElitnaurvik Principal Sam Crow will be stepping down starting this July and Zach Bastoky will be taking his place. KYUK’s Christine Trudeau sat down with both the incoming and outgoing principals at the Ayaprun campus on Thursday.
With the 2016-2017 school year officially over, Bethel’s Yup’ik Language Immersion School, Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, will be saying goodbye to Principal Sam Crow. Crow will be moving on to teach English for the Kuskokwim Learning Academy next fall.
The Lower Kuskokwim School District, or LKSD, has already selected his replacement: Zach Bastoky. For the past year, Bastoky has been the Assistant Principal for Bethel Regional High School. Before that, he was a school principal in Tuntutuliak.
“It’s a privilege and an honor to be serving as the new principal of Ayaprun,” said Zach Bastoky. “I’m excited to be continuing in Sam’s footsteps and really continue to build and maintain positive strong culture and climate.”
Bastoky, like his predecessor, doesn’t speak Yugtun, but will be taking a class this summer with long-time LKSD Yup’ik language teacher Sally Samson. His contract starts July 1 at Ayaprun. Bastoky and Crow met again on Thursday during a series of meetings they’ve held throughout the transition process.
“Sam’s been great during the transition process,” said Bastoky. “He’s been very helpful and supportive.”
Sam Crow the added that their morning had been focused on going over paperwork.
“We’ve just been going over some paperwork and sharing some things we have in place that he’s gonna take and run with. We’ll exchange keys in July and then he’ll take over full-time,” said Crow.
Sam Crow has been with Ayaprun for the last two years and his own son attends the school. Crow said he’s grateful for his time at Ayaprun, though times have been rough, recently. Their old building burnt down in 2015, which Crow said impacted both him and the school profoundly.
“I was able to witness the rallying of the community of Bethel. I was witness to communities around the state of Alaska, reaching all the way down to the lower 48, reaching out with money, donations, labor… with love [pauses]. I’m not going to get choked up talk about how it was after the fire, but I was so glad to see Bethel at it’s best and Alaska at it’s best,” said Crow.
Crow said that they lost nearly everything to the fire.
“There is no luck that the school burnt down, but I feel fortunate that I was a part of rebuilding it, at least to this state,” said Crow.
Crow said that now the school is moving on and looking forward to a new building on the horizon.
“We’ve never had our own new building here at this school. We just finished our twenty-first year as a charter school and we haven’t had our own building,” said Crow.
Crow said he’s eager to get back to his teaching roots at KLA, though. Before coming to Ayaprun, Crow was teaching and was coaching basketball and track at BRHS.
“Maybe next year. There is basketball and cross country at the school I’m going to, and so maybe that’s an opportunity where, maybe, I’ll coach a little if there’s something, maybe,” said Crow.
“And you’ll probably see him running around in the road,” Bastoky, jokingly, was quick to add.