Anchorage parents speak out against elementary school closures, and in some cases plan to fight them

At 2:30 p.m. on Monday, parents lined up for pickup outside of Anchorage’s Lake Hood Elementary School, one of the elementary schools the district is proposing to close over the next several years.

Famatta Onumah, whose third-grader has attended Lake Hood since kindergarten, said she expects relocating her son will be hard. Her older son had switched schools the year prior, and it’s been challenging. Now, Onumah worries about her youngest.

“I don’t want to leave this school,” 9-year-old Victor Onumah said from the back seat of his mother’s car after pickup, clutching a spider made of pipe cleaners he constructed in class. “It’s very fun. I like how they take care of me.”

Victor Onumah is one of more than 1,300 Anchorage elementary students among seven schools whose school might be closing or repurposed over the next three years. That’s according to a Friday announcement from the Anchorage School District, citing declining student enrollment, budget shortfalls, aging school buildings and other challenges.

For the students who have grown up in their schools, and the parents who have anchored their lives around them — in some cases, moving to be close to the schools — the news is a huge blow.

“This kid learned to walk in these hallways,” Tudor Elementary Parent Teacher Association President Crystal Hans said of her second-grade son, who she said was “hysterical” all weekend after the news. ”He is invested in this building, and his teachers, and his environment. And now I’m just going to have to rip him out of it.”

The proposal, which will need to be approved by a school board vote on Dec. 17 before it can be implemented, suggests closing or repurposing three schools in the 2025-26 school year: Bear Valley Elementary, Lake Hood Elementary and Tudor Elementary. The following school year, it proposes closing or repurposing Fire Lake Elementary, Nunaka Valley Elementary and Wonder Park Elementary. Finally, if approved, the district would repurpose Baxter Elementary in 2027.

In each instance, the school district plans to reassign students to elementary schools in their area, based on their resident address. The district also said it will retain most of its staff at closing schools by relocating them to schools with increased capacity.

The district plans to hold five community conversations throughout November on the proposed school closures.

“Our focus now is to listen to the community and support the school board in its decision-making process,” district spokesperson Corey Allen Young said in a statement. “We encourage community members to continue to participate in the conversations.”

After having a weekend to process the news, some shocked and upset parents say they’re ready to make their case to the school board for why their children’s schools must stay.

Bear Valley Elementary school parents were particularly galvanized by the Friday announcement. About 100 parents gathered in person and over Zoom for a meeting Monday morning to discuss a strategy for defending their school from closure, said Parent Teacher Association president and mother of three at Bear Valley Elementary, Katie Rohrs.

“The sentiment now is: You poked the wrong bear,” said Rohrs, who dressed as the school’s mascot Monday morning at school drop-off to drum up support among parents. “We’re not going down without a fight. We’re going to try to do our best to convince the school board that we’re worth saving.”

Parents knew that school closures were impending after a 2022 proposal to shut down six schools was met with intense resistance, resulting in the lone closure of Abbott Loop Elementary, she said. But Rohrs said Bear Valley community members felt safe from future cuts, given their school’s performance — it has twice been given a federal Blue Ribbon award, for exemplary private and public schools — and the unique needs Bear Valley Elementary meets in their top-of-the-hill community.

“The general consensus is: This doesn’t add up,” Rohrs said. “We looked at testing data, and Bear Valley scores are the highest in ASD for reading and math, and we’ve gotten the Blue Ribbon twice. We’ve got kindergarten with presidential science awards.”

According to the district, they’ve determined schools to cut based on a number of evaluation factors, including special programs, long-term growth and decline expectations, operational efficiency, and necessary school investment.

Some parents disagree with the district’s calculations.

Hans said that the Montessori program that runs out of Tudor Elementary has given access to families who live farther from — or were waitlisted for —another Montessori elementary in downtown Anchorage, Denali Montessori.

Hans has doubts that the Tudor Montessori’s 124 students can all be absorbed by Denali Montessori, which currently has a 50-student waitlist, according to a Sept. 30 report from the district.

“There’s no way,” Hans said. Her priority is to keep her son with the classmates and teachers he knows, she said. That means advocating to keep Tudor Montessori intact, regardless of its location.

“At this point, we have to stop fighting for the building, and just fight for the program,” she said. “We have to find somewhere else for our program to be, so we can continue with Tudor Montessori.”

Not every parent in Monday’s pickup at Lake Hood Elementary had longstanding ties to the community, but most agreed that closing down their school would be a shame.

Two sisters, 8-year old Christine Sudaria and 6-year-old Allysson Sudaria, started at Lake Hood in September. They just moved to Anchorage from the Philippines, their dad Juancho Sudaria said.

Christine Sudaria said she liked reading and playing.

“They are adjusting to a new place,” Juancho Sudaria said. “And now they’ve got to be transferred to a new school.”