By DAVID BOYLE
The Anchorage School Board decided to repurpose one of its closed schools — Lake Hood Elementary School — and make it into a Alaska Native Cultural Charter School.
The board defied the Administration’s recommendation that the Rilke Schule German Immersion Charter School be transferred to the closed Lake Hood campus.
But the board instead pulled the DEI card and pushed the Rilke Schule kids to the back of the proverbial bus.
More than a hundred Rilke Schule parents and students have testified to the excellent learning occurring at the school. The school has outperformed most of Anchorage’s schools by a significant margin in PEAKS state standardized testing for all grades:
| School/District | English Language Arts | Math |
| Anchorage | 36% | 36% |
| Rilke Schule | 60% | 60% |
| Alaska Native Cultural Charter School | 23% | 17% |
So much for rewarding outstanding performance.
On the other hand, the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School students are vastly underperforming other average Anchorage students.
Rilke Schule is also more cost-effective to operate than the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School.
As background, here is the per student cost comparison between Rilke Schule and Alaska Native Cultural Charter School:
| School | Local, State & Federal | Local & State Only |
| Rilke Schule | $14,047 | $10,224 |
| Alaska Native Cultural Charter School | $19,15 | $11,545 |
(The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School receives more than $5,000 in federal dollars per student.)
The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has been housed in district buildings for several years. It last shared facilities with Bettye Davis East High School, which was not a good fit for the younger students. Two years ago, it moved into the recently closed Abbott Loop Elementary School for at least five years.
Unlike the Rilke Schule Charter German Immersion Charter School, the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has not had to pay rent for its facilities, which can be a substantial expense for any charter school. Rilke Schule pays $738,000 in rent, which takes up to 20% of its operating budget. The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has paid zero rent.
The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School finally came to the discussion at the 11th hour on Feb. 6, when its representative testified that the Lake Hood Elementary School campus was a good fit for its school.
An Alaska Native Cultural Charter School representative stated that because her school was a Title 1 school, it should be able to move into Lake Hood, which was also a Title 1 school. That reasoning makes very little sense in determining which school should move into the closed Lake Hood campus.
The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School Academic Policy Committee president stated that, “Awarding this facility to a school that does not require Title 1 funding would deprive our community of critical resources.”
He further stated, “By not choosing ANCCS, you are reinforcing a system in which our voices and needs are marginalized and our history of trauma minimized. It is one of equity, cultural preservation, and social justice.”
Enter Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — DEI.
That set off alarm bells for board member Pat Higgins (formerly the board representative from the Marshall Islands) who moved to amend the memo by replacing Rilke Schule with the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School for the move.
“I am not going to abandon the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School,” Higgins said. But he seems to have no problem abandoning Rilke Schule children.
Higgins also has some conflicts of interest, as was recently the senior director of human resources for Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
Board member Margo Bellamy wondered why the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School got so concerned at this last minute. She noted that the school had another three years it could stay in the closed Abbott Loop School. And voters approved a bond which has more than $2 million to bring Abbott Loop School up to code. That money is still available.
Remember, the administration recommended that Rilke Schule be housed in the closed Lake Hood School because its current lease was expiring this year. On the other hand, Alaska Native Cultural Charter School just moved into the closed Abbott Loop School and has another three years remaining with a fire code exemption.
Here are some more facts to consider. Rilke Schule has 485 students and Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has 342 students. Thus, the large Lake Hood School is a much better fit for Rilke Schule. Clearly, the Rilke Schule with 143 more students has a greater need for more space than does the ANCCS.
Here are the facts from the most recent Capital Improvement Plan that should be considered in this decision to occupy the closed Lake Hood School:
| School | Square Footage | Classrooms | Student Capacity | Student Count |
| Lake Hood | 61,549 | 29 | 469 | XXX |
| Alaska Native Cultural Charter School | 58,341 | 16 | ** | 342 |
| Rilke Schule | 39,500 | 23 | ** | 485 |
(** the CIP gives no student capacity for charter schools)
The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has more than enough current square footage to accommodate its students. On the other hand, Rilke Schule is squeezing its students into a very small building.
The Alaska Native Cultural Charter School only has 16 classrooms while the Lake Hood School has almost double that number. The Rilke Schule requires almost 50% more classrooms than the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School.
The choice is clear when one considers these facts: Rilke Schule needs much more space than does the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School; Rilke Schule’s lease expires this summer while the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has three more years in the Abbott Loop facility.
But facts don’t matter when DEI is dominant in the decision-making process.
The rationale for allowing the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School to move into the Abbott Loop School must fall under the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion guardrail the board has established.
The administration was right in choosing Rilke Schule. The board was wrong in choosing ANCCS.
Financially it makes no sense. Logically it makes no sense.
But when DEI enters into the equation, logic and finances are cancelled.
David Boyle is the education writer at Must Read Alaska.
Discrimination!
Trading success for failure is eminently Progressive. It is only imminent when the next sacrificial ritual will occur. Have you noticed the pattern? There is nothing Progressive that does not involve human sacrifice. Moral superiority is the peak of arrogance, Progressives’ scale, and then bestow upon the common man their immense wisdom and love for humanity. If that love and wisdom is a human sacrifice, yes. Public schools, like all public institutions, are abject failures. When the guiding light is trading success for failure. You will be standing in a dark tunnel. How long will it take before the peasants understand? Understand that their children and their lives are simply fodder for easy living public servants?
There is plenty of floorspace to accommodate both campuses.
ASD has capacity for 26,000 elementary school kids and is projected to only have 14,400 kids in brick and mortar schools by 2029.
Sadly, many parts of Alaska are showing the impact of leftist progressive propaganda. Discrimination is just as illegal against non-natives as it is against natives. Maybe if this is brought to the attention of the Trump Administration, which is denying federal funding to any schools/school systems that are following DEI policies, it would help to balance the scales back to common sense and fairness. I can tell you that we have, in SE AK, a hard-core group of leftist progressives that just don’t want to face reality.
You’re wrong, Native Americans are exempt from the civil rights laws concerning discrimination, Europeans however are subject to it. If you’re not White you can have ethnically based clubs, scholarships, political groups, grants, small business loans, communities, etc.
White people are NOT allowed to have ANYTHING on earth publicly designated as White only. Whites are quickly becoming minorities in all their nations and make up only 7% of global population.
“For us and our posterity” hasn’t really worked out. My children are the first generation of Americans born minority, they are descendants of founding colonial stock . Apparently we spent 400 years working to build a better future for everyone but us.
For the record, I voted for Rilke Schule and against changing the Administration’s recommendation. It was a 4 – 3 vote. I support upgrading the Abbott Loop building to ensure that Alaska Native Cultural Charter School has a permanent home. Several years ago the voters approved bond funds to upgrade Abbott Loop so there is already some of the funds needed to do so.
Speaking only for myself and not the ASD or Anchorage School Board.
Dave Donley
As a Rilke Schule parent, I greatly appreciate your support. We are so upset and shocked by this decision made by the school board. This has proven to be a most challenging thing to explain to our 2nd grader; why he and his fellow students were not granted this space when it was already recommended by ASD, facts, numbers and performance were all on our side. He depends on adults to make fair decisions and do what is right. How do we teach our children to make sound decisions with impartiality when those in authority over them choose not do so. Incredibly disappointed.
Pay up and cover your current lease! Fundraise if you have to! ANCCS has nowhere to go and is stuck in a crumbling building. What a disgrace! It wasn’t enough that the elites had a school specially built for them… now they throw a fit and weaponize DEI because Native children finally have a permanent school of their own?
The Anchorage School District put the repairs for the Abbott Loop School in a recent bond that the public approved. There is more than $2 million in that bucket of money. Shouldn’t the district use that money to bring Abbott Loop up to code? The Lake Hood School is much too large for the ANCCS number of students.
BTW, name calling and pitting one group of parents against another should never be allowed. One more thing. Did you notice that the Pat Higgins who worked for a Native organization was THE person who made the motion to replace Rilke School with the ANCCS? Kinda a conflict of interest?
Why should our taxpayer dollars go to throw money at a building that was set to be demolished in three years? Instead so called conservatives like you weaponize DEI? For a population of children who are demonstratively doing better? Rilke is succeeding far and above and will continue to do so as elites do yet your focus is to squash the native children like a bug and ruin any chance of success? You’re disgusting.
Also didn’t the board say that Rilke Schule would have to shed 130 plus students to inhabit Abbot Loop 485 (current Rilke Schule)- 130 looks to be 355 (about the number of students that currently inhabit ANCCS). I also heard their enrollment grew over 100 this past year from a friend.
Dave, speaking only for yourself and not making any interpretation can you provide any guidance on where a person could go to review school board policy as it relates to modifying this memorandum? That is to say if the details were to change where could I look into if and how the board could revise this decision?
It’s a shame to think how many kids lives have been wasted over the past few years due to the incompetence of the ASD. The window to learn the skills needed to prosper in our society is narrow for students. Lack of those skills can have a debilitating impact on kids for the rest of their lives. ASD seems to always be focused on DEI, teacher contracts etc………anything but the education of the children. No private enterprise would survive being run by the likes of the nitwits we employ to run ASD…….but, in the end, the kids will pay a lifelong price for this incompetence.
If there are Federal funds involved, Alaska Native Cultural Charter should take a “back seat”. Rilke Schule pays rent.
I believe there are other charter schools who don’t pay too. And up until 2021/22 I heard them say that ANCCS was paying rent. Isn’t their old building the one that was demolished by NE Costco on Bragaw? It must have been pretty bad to not be able to go back…
How is being able to use Abbott Loop School rent free for five years “…reinforcing a system in which our voices and needs are marginalized and our history of trauma minimized”? (History of trauma – haha!)
It’s a building, people!
This argument that it needs to be a Title I school at Lake Hood Elementary is idiotic. Neither charter school is a neighborhood school. It is my firm opinion that the members of the school board (with the exception of Dave Donley) HATE success and innovation, especially when it highlights the failures of their stewardship of conformity at all costs.
The next question now becomes, what is the Rilke Schule going to do? Who owns the building they are in? Where are they going to go?
I don’t think they were saying it needed to be a title I school. I think their argument was that Rilke Schule can not take any students other than kindergarten and maybe 1st graders where the other school can enroll students from pre k- 8th grade. Language immersion schools can’t take on new students past a certain point. And because the neighborhood serves students coming from economic disadvantages (title 1) some of these students might like to apply to a school that serves students from predominantly economically disadvantaged homes.
This reminds me of the famous quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm:
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Is there any reason you posted peak results? I thought they were last administered 2021 post pandemic… when ANCCS did not have a stable building or was located at East (not sure which). I wonder if there has been significant growth since then.
As far as I know, Rilke Schule has been in the same building for some time during and post pandemic.
Comparing this data set seems a little misleading. And if you are a board member it seems like you should know more about the educational data sets that currently exist. This makes me concerned if you don’t know what information to look at when informing others.