The Anchorage School District voted to keep two elementary schools open Tuesday night, rejecting the district’s recommendation to address declining enrollment. Fire Lake Elementary and Lake Otis Elementary School will remain open. The board’s decision came after dozens of school staff, parents and students provided public testimony for and against the closures.
Letticia Cragen is an English Language Learner teacher at Lake Otis Elementary, a Title I school. She expressed concerns over moving Title I students to other schools that don’t currently have those programs.
“For most of our Title I students, our school is one of the few stable places in their world,” Cragen said. “Closing Title I schools places the heaviest burden on the families least able to absorb it and least likely to speak up.”
Since 2010, the district has closed five schools. Both Fire Lake and Lake Otis Elementary Schools currently sit at less than 55% capacity.
School district officials say the closures were necessary to address both a decline in state funding as well as a lower birth rate in Anchorage. Anchorage School Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said the district is having to maintain many buildings with less funding, and he said that will negatively impact education in the city in the long term.
“It means over time, you'll begin to lose services,” Bryantt said. “You may not notice it year to year, but over two years, over five years, over 10 years, it will become noticeable.”
Board member Andy Holleman voted against both school closures, but he admitted that he didn’t have an alternative plan to address the district’s funding crunch.
“On one hand, I like knowing that people in the community are happy about that,” Holleman said, referring to his vote. “But also, I have to admit, there's a little bit of a cop out on my part as a board member, because I don't have the right suggestion to put in place, and I can't give you a good path.”
The vote was a disappointment for students and staff at two charter schools that would have moved into the vacated school buildings, Eagle Academy and Rilke Schule German Immersion Charter School.
Eagle Academy special education teacher Emily D’Amico told board members that the current building the charter school uses, which is in a strip mall, isn’t adequate.
“The constraint of our current building, the overcrowding, the noise and the lack of the appropriate intervention space are now limiting our potential and compromising our ability to serve every student optimally,” D’Amico said.
The board voted 4 to 3 to keep Fire Lake open and 6 to 1 to keep Lake Otis open.
