OPINION: Despite missteps, there’s still time to build a great Inlet View school

As owners of homes adjacent to Inlet View Elementary School, we and our multi-generational Anchorage families all support a rebuilt Inlet View school. We believe a well-designed new school would benefit the neighborhood for the next 50 years. Unfortunately, the Anchorage School District chose a problematic site for the new school, primarily to ensure that current students would not have to be moved for one or two academic years during school construction.

ASD inexplicably kept its troubling decision to rebuild Inlet View School, a $30-plus million project, on the unsuitable south side of the property hidden from the school’s neighbors, the community council, and the Anchorage Traffic Department for five months. Since last September, however, many in the community have raised substantive concerns that were presented but not examined carefully by the Anchorage School Board. Our concerns have been acknowledged but dismissed by ASD and its architect Nvision.

Along with other neighbors, we have spoken with our elected representatives, Anchorage planners, traffic staff, and a city stormwater permitter to express our concerns. These concerns -- new traffic problems, a shadowed playground, a high quantity of water moving across the site, excessive onsite parking, loss of greenspace, elevated cost -- have been taken seriously by Municipality staff. For example, the proposed traffic plan is highly problematic, changing from multiple dispersed pickup locations to a single school exit onto a highly used one-way neighborhood street with an icy hill exit at L Street, a major commuter thoroughfare.

The proposed two story school would be on the south side of the property, which means it would cast shadows over the playground during much of the year. Unlike the existing north side school location and other comparable schools, there would be no road separating the school from nearby residents.

Several neighbors formed Friends of Inlet View Elementary School (FIVES) during the fall. FIVES submitted a letter with 107 signers obtained in just over a week to the Anchorage School Board. To educate others about its concerns, FIVES created a website, www.friendsofives.org, which contains a timeline for the school rebuild process that shows the opportunities ASD missed to involve its closest neighbors to address their concerns.

All is not lost, however, because ASD has one more hurdle to jump before it begins school construction and it’s a doozy -- the Urban Design Commission (UDC). The UDC is set up specifically to address substantive site and building design concerns such as those FIVES has been raising. The UDC is tasked with reviewing public projects to make sure they reflect the goals of Anchorage’s Comprehensive Plan. The UDC listens to community concerns and assists in resolving issues involving winter city design, protecting the character of neighborhoods, ensuring municipal facilities are well designed for public use and valuing open space.

FIVES urges the UDC to require a north side design for the new school. There were eight school designs initially proposed, including one on the northeast portion of the property that would not result in temporarily moving students or permanent damage to local residents. North site designs should cause little to no impact on overall construction cost, even taking into account relocatable classroom needs during construction, and would likely be lower in cost, as the proposed south side location would have higher foundation preparation, extensive water management, and utility connection costs.

The public hearing before the UDC will be on March 9 at Loussac Library. The UDC currently is accepting comments online for project number 2022-0024, the Inlet View school rebuild. Comments in document form can be sent to elizabeth.appleby@anchorageak.gov.

As neighbors, we support the 2022 school bond and the new school. We sincerely hope ASD will begin applying the concerns they’ve heard and construct a great Inlet View school on the north side of the property, one which the entire neighborhood will cherish for generations.

Amanda Compton owns a home adjacent to Inlet View, and grew up three blocks from the school.

Deborah Hansen has lived next to Inlet View school for 40 years. Before retiring, she worked in tourism. She and her husband have raised two sons and have spent many hours in the Inlet View schoolyard playing, exercising dogs and coaching soccer.

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