Anchorage School District officials on Friday announced seven elementary schools that they’re proposing to close over the next three years as the number of students in the district continues to decline.
The district will soon start taking public feedback on its proposal, and the Anchorage School Board is scheduled to ultimately decide on the closures at a meeting in December.
These are the neighborhood schools the district is recommending be shuttered.
In year one, the 2025-26 school year:
- Bear Valley Elementary
- Lake Hood Elementary
- Tudor Elementary
In year two:
- Fire Lake Elementary
- Nunaka Valley Elementary
- Wonder Park Elementary
In year three:
- Baxter Elementary
In an interview on Friday, ASD Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt emphasized that his focus right now is listening to families.
“We'll be listening to what our community has to say through school board meetings and other forums and, ultimately, it will be up to the school board to accept, reject or modify the list,” he said.
Under the district’s proposal, Bear Valley and Wonder Park would be permanently closed, while the rest of the school buildings would be repurposed.
There are nearly 1,400 students attending the seven schools, and most of the buildings are well under their full capacity, according to the district. Lake Hood Elementary only has 39% of the students it was designed for, and Fire Lake has just 47%.
District officials had announced this spring that they planned to close more schools due to a steadily declining student population, decreasing birth rates and continued outmigration. They described the effort as “right-sizing” and emphasized that the closures are not intended as a cost-cutting measure, although the district is facing a budget shortfall of between $64 million and $84 million for the upcoming fiscal year.
Closing seven schools represents shuttering roughly 12% of the district’s total number of neighborhood elementary schools.
ASD Chief Operating Officer Jim Anderson said during a work session last month that district officials would determine which schools to close using an evaluation tool that assigns values to the condition of the school building itself, how well-utilized the school is and other community impacts including the feasibility of bussing students to a different school.
Anchorage School Board President Andy Holleman said that while the administration released the proposed closures list Friday, the school board will make the final decision.
“The choices are being made more by math,” he said. “It's not just somebody's feeling or somebody looking at it, they really have looked carefully at what will do the least disruption to kids and then trying to keep going forward from there, to give them the best education they can.”
Since 2010, the district’s student population has dropped by roughly 6,000 students, or about 12%, and it has closed three elementary schools. In 2022, the district released a plan to close six elementary schools due to budget constraints, but only closed one after objections from families. The student population has continued to decline since then, and Bryantt said more families are also opting to homeschool their children through correspondence programs instead of sending them to their neighborhood schools.
“Since the pandemic, more families are opting for correspondence,” he said. “So even though our enrollment numbers may be stable from year to year, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have the same number of students in brick and mortar buildings.”
Meanwhile, Bryantt said in a letter to families Friday, the demand for student support services is increasing. Students in low-enrollment schools are having to share specialty teachers, including those for art, gym and special education, limiting the one-on-one time those teachers can spend with students. He said it’s also becoming more common to combine classes in elementary schools.
The district’s proposal does include a plan to lease three of the seven buildings to charter schools. It says another two could house other special programs such as child care facilities. Anchorage is strapped for child care, with many facilities having long wait lists and high prices.
“If I can work with the private sector or nonprofit child care providers to go into our buildings, we'll be able to work with that organization to subsidize the cost of child care, which would be a huge win for our employees and potentially other public employees, and it offers a service that may have not been as pressing 40 years ago, but it certainly is right now in this moment,” Bryantt said. “So there is some other benefits to this plan aside from elevating academic levels of service.”
District officials will discuss the proposed closures during a school board work session on Monday from 3 to 5 p.m. They will then hold community conversations during the week of Nov. 11 to gather additional community feedback.
Here’s the schedule:
- Nov. 12, 6-8 p.m. at Chugiak High School
- Nov. 14, 6-8 p.m. at Dimond High School
- Nov. 16, 12-2 p.m. at Bartlett High School
- Nov. 18, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. by Zoom
- Nov. 18, 6-8 p.m. by Zoom
The board is scheduled to vote on the closures on Dec. 17.
Editor’s note: Anchorage, we want to hear from you. As we continue to cover this proposal, we’re interested to hear from families, teachers and staff about their thoughts on the closure list. Reach education reporter Tim Rockey at trockey@alaskapublic.org .
