For what it's worth, I did look into the Alaska opportunity, but they are now booking slots two months or more out. The hardest part is getting your proctor to be approved by the group. The standards are faily easy to meet, mostly about getting someone "trustworthy" to proctor the exam. It doesn't have to be a VE and they don't even have to have a ham license themselves (though a licensed operator is the better choice in my opinion). But whoever you use, they will have to meet standards setup by the folks in Alaska.
So far, there is no word -- that I've seen -- on whether the Extra exam will be swapped out at the end of June, 2020. I know the study site I've been using has announced that both the current exam and the upcoming new exam are available for study. It occurs to me that someone studying at this point is going to be torn between studying for the current exam or just moving on to the next version. I figure the same amount of time in studying anyway. But if you start now on the current exam, there's so far no guarantee that the FCC will delay rollout or if there will even be a chance to test before June 30.