Anchorage parents, staff and students brace for Tuesday’s School Board vote on closures

Anchorage parents, staff, and students are holding their breath in anticipation of the school board’s Tuesday vote on whether or not four elementary schools will close this May.

The school board will vote during their regular meeting, held from 6-11 p.m. Tuesday at the Anchorage School District Education Center on Northern Lights Boulevard. It will also be livestreamed on the district’s YouTube channel.

The schools slated for potential closure this May are Baxter, Lake Hood and Nunaka Valley elementary schools in Anchorage, and Fire Lake Elementary in Eagle River. If closed, about 590 pupils would be sent to another school, and vacant buildings would be repurposed to house existing charter schools, according to the school district.

The district’s so-called “rightsizing” plan to close under-utilized elementary schools and consolidate students comes from a nearly 6,500 student enrollment decline since 2010, district leaders have said.

[Earlier coverage: Parents, teachers say Anchorage school closure plan disproportionately impacts ‘least resilient’ students]

Over the same time period, a large student population switched to correspondence schools, or district-supported home schooling options, further reducing the number of kids in classrooms, according to a memo from Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt. Enrollment in correspondence schools has gone up by 118% since 2010, he wrote.

Initially, the district proposed a list of seven schools it recommended for closure over a three-year period. But after community input, it removed three schools from its recommendations for closure list — Bear Valley, Tudor, and Wonder Park elementary schools — and shortened the timeline from a staggered three years to one year.

Heading into tomorrow’s vote, affected parents and teachers say they’re still hopeful the school board might hear their concerns and heed their suggestions to save their schools.

Baxter Elementary’s Parent Teacher Association plans to suggest an alternative to closing their school, said PTA member Katie Gibson.

“The premise is, if we can become a receiving school, we could stay open,” she said.

Given Baxter’s size, it could absorb students from the nearby Nunaka Valley, or from an incoming charter school, so at least one of the East side neighborhood schools could stay open, she said. “Let’s keep our two communities whole by combining them,” Gibson said.

Additionally, Gibson said they plan to argue that keeping Baxter’s student population in place could benefit its Structured Learning Classroom — the largest in the district — a program that provides additional support for special needs kids. In the last five years, the program has moved four times, Gibson said.

Other affected parents and staff said they didn’t have proposed solutions, just concern for their community.

Carla Jenner, a kindergarten teacher at Nunaka Valley for the last 25 years, said she’ll be there for the vote.

“We are all holding our breath in hopes that we do not get closed,” Jenner said.

For Nunaka Valley, Jenner said she worries about the fate of a neighborhood that’s congregated around the longtime existence of its elementary school.

“My concern is the neighborhood,” she said. “If you take the school out of the neighborhood, I think the neighborhood dies.”

Lake Hood Elementary PTA president and local child care provider Danielle Coleman shared a similar sentiment about the importance of a neighborhood hub.

Lake Hood Elementary is an after-school site for the YMCA, a busing site for Boys and Girls Club, and a busing site for Faith Daycare and Learning Center, “each of which are essential resources bridging the gaps between school hours and work hours for families trying to make ends meet,” Coleman testified at the Dec. 3 school board meeting.

“My request, unfortunately, does not come with a better solution … but it does come with a heart for the children and working families who would be most impacted by this decision.”

School board president Andy Holleman said that the board is still hearing from community members about the unique needs each school meets.

“Every one of them has people that stand up and go ‘If it wasn’t for the school, my kid wouldn’t be doing as good as they’re doing right now,’ ” Holleman said.

While closing schools certainly doesn’t solve all of the district’s problems, Holleman said it may continue to be a solution to provide adequate staffing and levels of service to all schools.

“I do think that as long as we stay on this trend in Anchorage, this is something we may be looking at every year, or almost every year, for the foreseeable future,” Holleman said.