From mittens to groceries: Meet the woman helping kids thrive at Anchorage’s Russian Jack Elementary

At the end of recess at Russian Jack Elementary School in Anchorage, on a snowy November day, kids sledded down hills on the seats of their snow pants and slid across patches of ice.

As recess finished, Marti Guzman enticed the kids inside with the day’s lunch menu: chicken nuggets.

“Chicken nuggets! Chicken nuggets!” the kids shouted back.

While she supervised recess, Guzman had something else on her mind. It was the first really cold day in Anchorage, around 15 degrees, and she made mental notes of which kids didn’t have mittens or warm coats.

“Some of our families moving from the Lower 48 up here just don’t understand how cold it can get,” Guzman said.

She said she aims to talk to all families in the early fall about preparing, but some need reminders. And if they can’t afford to buy winter gear, Guzman finds it for them, or she connects them to organizations that can help.

Guzman is what the school calls a “family service coordinator.” A big part of her job is helping families with challenges so they can prioritize their kid’s education. Elementary school is a crucial time for kids in terms of both education and development, and if families face instability or insecurity, that can interfere with their kids’ education. At Russian Jack, about 90% of kids qualify for free lunch, making it a Title I school. So, federal funding pays for Guzman’s role.

She’s been in the job for 17 years and at the school for 23 years.

“These kids who are here at Russian Jack are going through a lot of things,” Guzman said. “And so, it’s peeling back the layers of, ‘How do I not only celebrate all of the wonderful things that are going on in your life? But if you do have a tragedy, or an emergency, or a scary situation, we’re also going to talk to you about it, if you want to.’”

Family service coordinators like Guzman are less common than they used to be in the Anchorage School District. Only six schools have them, out of 34 eligible schools. Fifteen years ago, there were three times that number. School district leaders say, recently, more principals have asked about adding family service coordinators and their numbers are increasing. This year, twice as many schools have family service coordinators compared to last year.

The role is a little hard to define because each family has different needs, but Guzman said she’s helped families who are staying in homeless shelters get their kids to school, she’s helped parents who want to go back to school themselves and she’s helped families going through separation and divorce. During those times, kids are more vulnerable to falling behind in school, acting out or feeling depressed.

That’s a transition Guzman helped Sam Reid with. She has two kids at the school: a daughter, Sofia, and a stepson, Silas.

“When the separation happened, she checked up on me constantly,” Reid said. “It was making sure I was good, making sure Sofia was good. She even pulled more resources out that I didn’t know about.”

Reid had to move in with family in a different area of Anchorage after the separation. She said she was worried her daughter would have to leave Russian Jack, but Guzman connected them with a program that now gives Sofia rides to school. And when Sofia showed up to school crying one day, Reid said Sofia rested and recovered in Guzman’s office.

Then, when Guzman noticed the kids were bringing home food from lunch, she reached out. Reid was facing a bureaucratic hiccup in her food stamps case.

“We were talking months before we got food for our family,” Reid said. “And she was able to get us food for the house. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough and it helped. And, she was just like, ‘This is what I’m for.’”

Russian Jack vice principal Molly Sharp said Guzman’s position is key to help families at the school with whatever they’re facing.

“A lot less falls through the cracks with our families,” she said.

In addition to helping families, Sharp said Guzman also supports teachers and staff and reduces the number of non-teaching tasks teachers have to do like planning family nights. She said that’s a big relief in an educational system where teachers are typically overloaded. While Sharp said the role of family coordinator is important, she also said Guzman is irreplaceable.

“Her presence here is immense,” Sharp said. “She knows all of the kids by name. She knows their family. She knows their history. Many of the kids, they’re at their second generation, so she knows their parents. And then, she knows the workings of the school inside and out.”

Guzman is nearing retirement age and has started thinking about what her transition out of Russian Jack might look like. Sharp can’t imagine the school without her and Guzman said after retirement, she might continue on as a volunteer or substitute.

She wants to stay connected, like she does with kids who graduate from Russian Jack.

“We always stay in touch,” she said, sitting at her desk in her office. “I ran into a kiddo at Carrs. He gave me this cool picture.”

She laughed in delight and held up his seventh grade school photo. Then, she nodded toward a bulletin board to the left of her desk, covered in layers with photos of smiling kids.

“He knows I have the board, and he’s like, ‘do I make it on the board?’” Guzman said.

She stepped around her desk to reach the bulletin board and tore off a piece of clear tape.

“You’re never kind of gone,” she said. “You’re always here. That’s the way I think about it. So I’m gonna just put this up here.”

She taped the photo in place.

“Oh, there we go,” she said. “I just love my job. I do. I love, I love it.”

Guzman said the next person in her job needs to be vulnerable, to see the big picture, and to ask students and families, ‘How can I love you?’

Originally published by Alaska Public Media and republished with permission.