By DAVID BOYLE
The Anchorage School Board finally decided to close only two of the originally seven proposed schools.
If the board had more time, it may have even taken the final two schools off the closure list. Five hours of Tuesday night’s board meeting was just not enough time to remove Lake Hood and Nunaka Valley schools from that closure list.
Remember, the original closure list consisted of seven elementary schools: Lake Hood, Fire Lake, Nunaka Valley, Bear Valley, Baxter, Wonder Park, and Tudor. The list of proposed closures has been whittled down to only two.
The ASD has too many elementary schools for far fewer students. It currently has a “program” capacity of 26,432 students in its elementary schools. But there were only 19,484 elementary students in the 2022-23 school year.
That’s alarming enough. But the future looks even worse. The district projects it will only have 16,826 elementary students in 2027, almost 10,000 fewer students than the district’s school capacity.
Here are the seven proposed schools with their student capacities:
| School | Percent Filled |
| Bear Valley | 69% |
| Lake Hood | 39% |
| Tudor | 69% |
| Fire Lake | 47% |
| Nunaka Valley | 63% |
| Wonder Park | 66% |
| Baxter | 56% |
Before the night was over, there were several amendments offered to remove schools from the closure list.
School Board member Kelly Lessens offered amendment #1 to remove Lake Hood from the closure list so those students transitioning to Turnagain School would not affect the Russian immersion program at Turnagain School.
She brought the international scene into her reasoning. She said, “I wouldn’t want to kneecap the Russian immersion program (at the Turnagain School) given Alaska’s strategic place in world affairs at this time.”
That’s quite a stretch! Who knew that affecting Turnagain Elementary Schools’ Russian immersion program would influence Vladimir Putin?
But that’s not all. Lessens also was concerned with the “green spaces” at Lake Hood and how those students need those spaces.
To close, Lessens said, “Do I close Lake Hood and bring a charter school there…I think the answer is no.”
But don’t those charter school students also need the “green spaces?”
Board member Pat Higgins asked Lessens, “So my question would be, are we looking to continue to remove schools from the list. Are we looking to not close any schools?”
Apparently, member Higgins broke the code!
Lessens’ amendment to remove Lake Hood School from the closure list failed 2-5, with members Margo Bellamy, Dave Donley, Andy Holleman, Carl Jacobs and Dora Wilson voting no.
Then Donley decided to remove Fire Lake School from the closure list due to projected future housing growth in that area. That amendment passed, 4-3; Bellamy, Wilson, and Jacobs voted no.
Higgins got into the act by amending the original memo to remove Baxter School from the list. His reasoning included that it was a Title I school (high number of low-income students) and many special education students. So, Baxter was removed from the closure list on a vote of 4-3 with Bellamy, Donley, and Holleman voting no.
The final vote on the original, much amended memo #73 was to close Lake Hood and Nunaka Valley on a 5-2 vote with Higgins and Lessens voting no.
It looks as if the Eagle Academy Charter School in Eagle River will not be moving into the Fire Lake School. But Rilke Schule Charter School may be moving into the Lake Hood School.
So, the effort to close excess schools and repurpose them into mostly charter schools was stymied. It doesn’t appear that the district will save much expense after all.
To sum this all up, board member Jacobs blamed the Legislature and the governor for not funding the K-12 system adequately. He wants to rely on the Legislature to increase funding to inflation proof the Base Student Allocation, with 2010 as the baseline. The Anchorage schools had at least 5,000 more students in 2010 than they do today.
Relying on the state to increase the BSA will not solve the problem of too many schools for too few students. Increased funding will only perpetuate the problem and lead to more and more inefficiencies.
In the end, the Anchorage School District did what it does best: Make decisions through indecisions and kicking the can down the road. Its only hope is that the Legislature will step in and save it from making the hard decisions.
David Boyle is the education writer at Must Read Alaska.
The sooner the charade ends the better off the children will be.
The ones to blame for the budget is the school district board and their loser policies. If you have 10,000 less kids, then you don’t need as many administrators, teachers schools, buses janitors. Again people the union is controlling this so they can put more money in their pocket and pay the fat cats wages to sit there and do nothing but bellyache about the taxpayer, not paying enough. Everybody, the testified that they want the schools to remain open need to belly up and pay to keep those schools up and open. If you want them, you pay for them it doesn’t make good common sense to have way more schools than needed. So people that don’t want to get rid of the schools need to belly up and pay more to keep them open.
These are the same people think that the federal government has an endless supply of money coming off the trees. People it’s only a matter time till the federal government goes bankrupt. We are 36 trillion in the hole and they want more tax dollars more money borrowing more spending.
The well is running dry and the day of reckoning is coming, so just keep voting these people in that spend every dime and then want more