Parents, teachers say Anchorage school closure plan disproportionately impacts ‘least resilient’ students

Students, parents and faculty at elementary schools that the Anchorage School District has recommended for closure say shuttering their schools and relocating 590 pupils, some of whom have special needs, would disproportionately impact the district’s most vulnerable population.

On Tuesday, the Anchorage School Board heard nearly three hours of testimony from community members who stand to be affected by the district’s revised proposal to close four elementary schools come May.

If approved by the school board, those closures would affect Baxter, Lake Hood and Nunaka Valley elementary schools in Anchorage, and Fire Lake Elementary in Eagle River. The district plans to repurpose each of those buildings to serve existing charter schools.

Fire Lake parents and faculty testified Tuesday that moving four of the district’s 11 “structured learning classroom” programs that provide additional support for special needs kids would displace 88 students with disabilities and be disruptive at best, and dangerous at worst.

The 23 structured learning students at Fire Lake Elementary include kids who are blind, hearing impaired, have Down syndrome or are on the spectrum, staff said. One staff member at Fire Lake who works in the program said the majority of her students are autistic, making them “the least resilient people” to move.

“The kids in the SLC program will experience a negative impact from a change of school, more severely than those not on the spectrum,” testified Rachael Gage, a Fire Lake staff member and parent of a child in the program. “People on the spectrum do not experience their world the way we do. Structure matters. Environment matters. Familiarity matters.”

Fire Lake Elementary resource staff member Sandy Buchwald, who works with special needs students, said the geography of their current school acts as a protective factor for her students.

“They’ll run. They’re elopers,” she said. At least now, she said, their school is secluded at the end of a rural road, rather than beside the Glenn Highway or the Old Glenn Highway, where the proposed alternative schools are located.

Districtwide, there are 11 schools that host structured learning classrooms, according to district spokesperson Corey Allen Young. Three of them are on the list for proposed closure: Baxter Elementary, which hosts the largest SLC program in the district, is projected to have 36 structured learning classroom students next year; Fire Lake Elementary expects to have 18 students; and Lake Hood five students, according to Senior Director of Special Education Pam Momany. The district is also recommending relocating the 29 structured learning classroom students at Wonder Park Elementary to Mountain View or Chester Valley Elementary for a more appropriate layout.

“It is safe to say that students on the spectrum are being disproportionately impacted, versus students accessing regular education, by the recommended school closures,” Gage said.

Parents and staff also expressed concerns about Fire Lake students transitioning to a different curriculum at what they called a more academically rigorous school, and adding to the already outsized daily traffic congestion at Eagle River Elementary School.

“This isn’t just students who will be impacted by morning traffic, sitting in buses and car traffic,” Fire Lake administrative assistant and parent Erin Day testified. “This will be a community affected by an administration who did not see the whole picture.”

Parents and staff from the other three schools slated for potential closure, and also from schools set to receive the students, voiced concerns ranging from insufficient notification time from the district, to inappropriate placement of certain special needs programs, to an appearance of inequity in an overrepresentation of low-income schools on the list.

According to the district’s current proposal, 113 students from Lake Hood Elementary, at least 20 of whom require special supports for disabilities, would move to Turnagain Elementary.

Several Turnagain Elementary parents and staff told the board that their school lacks the space to absorb those students, and that its inappropriate classroom layout that would put students with disabilities “front and center when they are in an emotional crisis.” Instead, they recommended the board consider moving those students to a building still under construction that could be preemptively built up to support student needs, at Inlet View Elementary.

While most parents and faculty agree that school consolidation needs to happen — the district has lost more than 6,000 students since 2010 in a steady decline — some say that targeting low-income schools will create further economic disparities. Currently, three of the four proposed schools are Title 1 schools that receive federal funding to help students from low-income families.

“That the district has readily shown its willingness to pursue a rezoning agenda that will overcrowd the city’s lower-income neighborhood school while simultaneously catering to the desires of Anchorage’s higher-income families has also been truly eye-opening,” Nunaka Valley parent Dorothy McCauley testified.

Parents from Baxter Elementary — a school that was slated for closure in 2028 under the district’s initial proposal, but would close at the end of this school year under ASD’s updated plan — on Tuesday asked school board members for more time to inform and galvanize their community.

Katie Gibson, a PTA member and parent of a Baxter Elementary student, said she was scrambling to organize parents and school staff following the district’s updated proposal, announced on the eve of Thanksgiving. At least three parents didn’t even know of the revised plan, she said.

“It just seemed like we didn’t have enough time to organize and coordinate ourselves to even come up with a response to the board with any sort of knowledge,” she said. “So, I’d like to ask for more time just to be able to talk to our community.”

Community members from Lake Hood Elementary School echoed the same wish. “The district took six months to make this decision, but they have given us only six weeks to process the news, come up with testimonies, write emails to explain why we believe we should stay open, or simply accept our fate” one parent said.

At the three schools that were spared from closure — Bear Valley, Tudor and Wonder Park elementary schools — parents are relieved. Those who “put life on hold for a month” to cull data, organize information campaigns and show up to school board meetings and community engagement sessions can finally take a breath, said Bear Valley PTA president Katie Rohrs.

“But there’s mixed feelings,” she said. “Like OK, we’re safe, but there’s still four other schools that are not. We’re hoping that the school board looks closely at those other schools and really decides if that’s their fate.”

The Anchorage School Board will hold a special meeting on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon to discuss school closures. School board members will vote on Dec. 17.