By DAVID BOYLE
The Anchorage School District is trying to fill its self-inflicted $68 million budget hole by “closing” six neighborhood schools. But only one school will be closed.
Five of the schools will be actually “repurposed” for other functions; two will be used to house enlarged pre-K programs.
The district has held town halls in the six schools to get feedback from parents and community members. Resistance to closing the schools has been strong.
Most of those opposed to the changes of their schools love their neighborhood school because it is the center of their community. They voiced the same reasons that rural community members do.
Interestingly, at five of the town halls no one mentioned how well their kids were learning or how great the school was in improving student achievement. Apparently, parents were not informed how poorly their kids were doing in basic math and reading at these five schools.
However, parents at the proposed closing of Birchwood ABC school voiced strong support for its curriculum which includes Saxon math and Spalding language arts programs. These parents also said how well their kids were achieving.
Birchwood ABC is one of the schools the district wants to repurpose and move its students to Homestead Elementary School. It makes one wonder if ASD just doesn’t want non-Common Core schools that do well.
Here are the latest scores for the State’s STAR tests in the six “closed” schools for all grades:
Would the parents of those five other schools selected for “closure” still want to support those schools if they knew how poorly they were performing? Or would they want to keep their schools as community centers?
We know all parents want their children to be able to read and do math at grade level.
Note that the Birchwood ABC school is performing well above the average of the Anchorage School District in both English language arts and math. The Saxon math and Spalding language arts programs seem to be the reason for this exceptional performance.
Many of the parents who spoke at the Birchwood ABC town hall were either active-duty military or retired military. These parents have moved their kids usually every 3 to 4 years due to relocations and they know what a good school is.
Will the district learn a lesson from the Birchwood ABC school that its curriculum works? Or will these students just be moved to another under-performing school?
One Birchwood parent said that if they close this effective program, she will remove her kids from the district.
It would make more sense to move the Eagle Academy Charter School to the Birchwood ABC building and co-locate the Birchwood ABC program with it. They have similar curricula.
At every town hall, the district strongly encouraged parents and community members to contact their legislators to demand an increase in the Base Student Allocation (BSA).
But they did not ask parents to lobby for better test scores and accountability for dollars spent.
It’s hard to imagine why the district needs more money when the number of students has decreased by more than 5,000 in the last five years.
It seems the primary objective of the district is to activate parents of these “closed” schools to pressure the Legislature to further inflation-proof the BSA. Otherwise, their beloved neighborhood schools will be closed.
To follow its principle of full transparency, the district should also provide the STAR test results to all attendees at these town halls. Then parents will know how well their children are doing.
The school district should also inform parents of the STAR scores of the school they are transferring their students to. Will the performance of these students increase, stay the same or decrease?
And will the ABC curriculum at Birchwood disappear once its students are transferred to a “Common Core” curriculum school?
A school building is just that and nothing more. What happens in the classroom is what is most important. An effective classroom teacher and an effective curriculum are the keys to student success.
The Birchwood ABC school reflects that and is notable for its success.
David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.
