Money for Alaska Native education keeps flowing, but no new competition has opened in nearly two years

Federal money for Alaska Native education is still reaching the organizations and school districts that run these programs. What hasn't happened, for nearly two years, is a new competition — a fresh chance for anyone not already receiving a grant to get one.

The U.S. Department of Education obligated $41.3 million on Aug. 5 for the Alaska Native Education Program, funding continuing years for grantees selected in 2024 and 2025. But the department has not opened a new competition for the program since November 2023. Instead, it has kept the program going by reaching back to that same 2023 applicant pool: in the last fiscal year, the department says, it awarded 17 new grants worth about $27.5 million by "funding down the slate" of high-scoring applications from the 2023 competition. The program's application status is currently listed as closed.

That pattern isn't unique to this program. Across the Education Department, the notices that open new grant competitions have fallen sharply — from the 80s each year in 2021 through 2023 to 54 in 2025 and only a handful so far in 2026 — and none of the recent ones have been for the Alaska Native Education Program, even as the department opened competitions for other Native education programs in the same span. That leaves the funding intact for current recipients but no clear entry point for new ones.

For now, the money is continuing to flow. Twenty-six grants worth about $59.4 million reached the end of their listed terms this summer, but all 26 of those grantees have since received continuation awards. The largest single recipient is Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, which held seven of the grants, worth about $25.1 million together — among them its Baby Raven Reads early-literacy program and Opening the Box of Indigenous Science. Other recipients span the state, including Cook Inlet Tribal Council, the Bristol Bay Foundation, Doyon Foundation, Iḷisaġvik College in Utqiagvik and several rural school districts led by the Bering Strait School District in Unalakleet.

The delay drew political attention this summer when the Aug. 5 obligation came about a month later than expected. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she pressed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to speed the release, and her office has said the department maintains that continuation funding remains available and will fully support current grantees. That assurance about future funding reaches the public only through Murkowski's office; none of the grantees speaks in the records this account is drawn from. And the absence of a new competition notice shows only that none has opened — not that none is planned.