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Less well-known at the time, the administration also was instigating a teacher exodus in Kotzebue, where local residents were circulating petitions and pouring into public meetings, supporting local teachers. Nevertheless, 62 percent of the Kotzebue Middle/High School teachers, many feeling forced out, left the school that year.

Feeling stonewalled by the central administration and advisory and regional boards, local citizens vowed to shake things up at the ballot box.

They did. In the fall 2002, voters defeated several long-time regional board incumbents by whopping margins. But it would still require two more elections before a transformed board could oust the central administration, which as recently as last spring nearly passed a "speech code" bylaw that would have prohibited teachers, other district employees and regular citizens from talking freely to board members.

The district also was being infiltrated by trendy educational jargon.

But today, our 9-year-old twins are no longer in grade "intermediate entry" at the local elementary school. Or was it intermediate exit? Can't remember. They are still in the same class, but now it's once again called "fourth grade." Also, now our kids and everyone else's kids in the Northwest Arctic schools will again be receiving traditional letter grades such as A's and B's.

"We're going back to regular grades," said Norm Eck, the district's newly appointed superintendent. "Instead of all that jargon, we're going to be calling a grade a grade. The vast majority of feedback from the school board and community was, 'We don't understand our kids' report cards.'"

Some of the district's seemingly constant testing also will stop so teachers can teach more. Holding kids back is gone, too, Eck said, because the research shows it actually hurts student achievement.

How did Norm Eck, who says an "A" is an "A" and fourth grade is fourth grade, suddenly jump from principal of Kotzebue Middle/High School to the district's top job mid-year? Well, when Robert Boyle, the outgoing superintendent, tendered his resignation recently, he expected to exit in June. Instead, the regional board immediately installed Eck, a veteran Northwest Arctic administrator whose experience includes five years as principal in Selawik, an outlying village.

"I've spent my whole career working with Native Americans," said Eck, whose doctorate degree targeted Native American education. He also worked many years with the Navaho tribe in Utah.

Just prior to this October's local elections, we had written a commentary for the local newspaper predicting that voters would finally oust the regional board's "old guard," triggering "a major shakeup."

The housecleaning came far sooner than many had anticipated. Eck himself fully expected to finish the school year as a principal. But with a recently signed two-and-a-half-year superintendent's contract, Eck said it's time to bring people together "to do what's best for kids."

"We are certainly looking to the future now, but I do appreciate all the hard work of former school board members and administrators who got the district to this point," he said.

With an upbeat spirit on the board, in the administration, and in the classroom, and as schools in the region improve, maybe our twins and other students can stay home for high school instead of following their older siblings to Mount Edgecumbe boarding school in Sitka or other places in search of a better education.

The Northwest Arctic is a great place to live. But now it's even better, thanks to the wisdom of its citizens as expressed at the ballot box.

• Susan Andrews and John Creed teach are humanities professors at Chukchi Campus, the Kotzebue branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and co-editors of "Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers."