A Kodiak student's suicide-prevention resolution goes before Alaska's school boards

A resolution written by a Kodiak student goes before Alaska's school boards Sunday. It would require every middle and high school in the state, public and private, to run at least one student-led mental health or suicide-prevention program.

Delegates to the Association of Alaska School Boards are scheduled to vote on it at the group's annual conference in Anchorage.

Grace Acker, the student representative on the Kodiak Island Borough School District's board, wrote the measure with the Eagle River Student Government. The Alaska Association of Student Governments passed it at its fall conference in Healy, she told the board. The Kodiak board voted unanimously to send it on at an emergency special meeting Oct. 7, the association's deadline, according to the minutes.

Under the proposal, schools could use an existing club or start a new one. The students' version also requires an adult advisor for each program.

That requirement didn't make it into the part delegates will vote on. In the association's working draft, the advisor and other limits sit in the rationale, and delegates debate and act only on the resolution itself, according to the association's guide. The rationale says a student group can't replace counselors, hotlines or other professional help and should help students reach adults or professionals.

The resolution doesn't say who would require the programs or pay for them. It refers only to "reasonable resource expectations."

A resolution isn't a law. It sets the association's position and guides its legislative and advocacy work. The association's board is scheduled to pick its priority resolutions Monday.

The students point to state survey data. In 2023, 19% of Alaska high school students said they had attempted suicide in the past year, up from 8.7% in 2011, and 23% said they had seriously considered it, up from 14.5%. The state's table shows no significant change in either rate since 2019. The resolution also cites state health data showing Alaskans ages 11 to 19 had the highest rate of emergency-room visits related to suicide attempts of any age group from 2020 through 2024. In August, a state bulletin found the youth suicide rate reached a 10-year high in 2025.

The association already has a suicide prevention resolution, first adopted in 1997 and renewed in 2024.

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available to anyone in mental health-related distress.