Greg Sarber: Mismanagement of Alaska’s Public School Funding

By Greg Sarber

In the last session, the legislature passed HB 57, which greatly increased funding for public schools in the state. They did so because they were told that schools in Alaska were facing dire financial difficulties. However, to do this, they took a significant portion of the PFD check from every Alaskan to pay for it. Now, the construction of a brand-new elementary school in Anchorage calls this urgent need into question. Was there really a need for last year’s funding bill, or was the funding crisis actually the result of financial mismanagement on the part of the state and local governments? 

This all revolves around the decision to build a new school in Anchorage. The long history of declining enrollment in the district has already forced the closure of 5 schools in the past 15 years, and they are considering additional school closures, yet they still decided to replace the Inlet View Elementary School building. Since the original facility was one of the oldest buildings in the Anchorage School District (ASD) and had reached the end of its useful life, it would have made sense to include Inlet View Elementary in the list of schools they were planning to close, but this did not happen. 

Even though there are ~8,300 fewer kids enrolled in Anchorage schools today than at the peak in 2002, the ASD instead decided to tear down the old Inlet View school building and build a new one in its place. Readers should note that the new Inlet View School only serves about 233 kids. Building this new school does not appear to be a pressing need to meet the requirements of the district, and perhaps something else motivated the construction plan. 

The decision to build a new school was controversial, even by the standards of the liberal voters who live in Anchorage. In the 2022 election, they rejected approval of a construction bond to pay for the new school, which was estimated to cost 31 million dollars. 

However, the creative financial geniuses in the ASD found a workaround. To pay for it, they used 26 million of a 100-million-dollar grant the legislature had given them in 2022. This grant was intended to reduce school bond debt and using it for that purpose would have lowered the property tax burden on residents in Anchorage. Instead, the ASD chose to use part of the grant to pay for replacing Inlet View Elementary. Then, in 2024, the ASD told Anchorage voters that they still lacked funding to complete the school, because the construction cost for the new school had ballooned up to 50 million dollars, and another bond package would be required to pay for the remaining 19 million dollars. 

Not only didn’t the residents in Anchorage get a reduction in their property taxes as intended by the state’s grant, but they got an increase in property taxes to pay for finishing the school. 

Now I don’t care what Anchorage voters do. If they want to pay higher property taxes to build another unneeded school, that is their business. However, when they start wasting state grant money, it impacts every Alaskan. The 26 million dollars of state money spent on this school could have been used for the benefit of everyone living in the state, not just a pampered few people living in Anchorage’s South Addition neighborhood. 

The decision to build this new school appears to be an inappropriate use of state funds. While the individuals in the school district responsible for approving it will likely escape accountability, I think it is noteworthy that Democrat State House Representative Zack Fields represents District 17, and Inlet View Elementary is located in his district. 

You might remember Rep. Fields’ name. In the last session of the legislature, when the first school financing bill, HB69, was vetoed by the governor, the Democrats needed to pull a last-minute legislative Hail Mary to get a school funding bill passed. With little time left before the end of the session, they did this legislative sleight of hand by gutting an existing bill, HB57 (a bill related to cell phone use) and changed it to include the school funding verbiage. 

HB 57 barely passed and survived a veto attempt by the governor. Interestingly, the original sponsor of HB57 was Rep. Zack Fields, the Representative who lives closest to the brand-new Inlet View Elementary School. There are no coincidences in politics. 

Increasing public school funding levels has cost every Alaskan a portion of their PFD. While the funding from HB57 was not used to build the new school in Anchorage, the school construction does illustrate financial mismanagement that is present in the public school system, making us question whether HB57 was necessary in the first place. The construction of the unneeded new Anchorage school was not a wise use of the public’s resources, and the Democrats, both in the Anchorage School District and in our legislature, are responsible for the waste. 

Fortunately, this is an election year, and the voters will be able to hold the Democrats in the legislature accountable for their profligate spending habits. They should start by voting Representative Zack Fields out of office. If he is looking for something to do, maybe he can get a job shoveling snow off the sidewalks at the new school near his house. 

This story was reprinted with permission from the author. It was originally published 1/12/25 on “Seward’s Folly” the author’s Substack.

Greg Sarber is a lifelong Alaskan. He is a petroleum engineer who spent his career working on Alaska’s North Slope. Now retired, he lives with his family in Homer, Alaska. Greg is a former board member of Alaska Gold Communications, Inc., the publisher of Must Read Alaska.