Next month, Anchorage voters will decide on two ballot initiatives that would support the Anchorage School District.
The first is a $79,460,000 bond that would pay for a number of capital projects.
In a presentation to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Jim Anderson, the school district’s chief operations officer, said the bond supports schools across the district that require maintenance.
“Our average age of our schools is now 40 years old, so still much younger than me,” Anderson said. “But they're not getting younger, and actually 42% of them are over 50 years old.”
The projects include:
- Security access control upgrades for 15 schools: $2,000,000
- Romig Middle School building upgrades: $27,350,000
- Rilke Schule German Immersion School (formerly Lake Otis Elementary School) building improvements: $19,585,000
- Klatt Elementary School structural upgrades: $2,800,000
- Tudor Elementary School security upgrades and roof repair: $8,550,000
- Upgrade for Student Nutrition building and systems: $8,500,000
- Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School electrical service and standby generator system replacement and upgrades: $1,750,000
- Ursa Major Elementary School demolition and hazardous waste disposal: $5,400,000
- Planning and design for 2027-2028 projects: $3,525,000
For the first time since 2015, the state is resuming a program that helped reimburse school bond debt incurred by municipalities across the state.
For Anchorage, Anderson said, that means about $40 million of the bond will be covered by the state, making this school bond the cheapest proposed to voters in over a decade.
“It certainly makes a huge difference in how we start looking at our facilities over the next several years,” Anderson said.
Last year’s school bond passed by a margin of roughly 1,600 votes.
The other school-related item on Anchorage ballots this year is a one-time tax levy to support the school district, totalling $11.8 million. If approved, taxpayers can expect to pay no more than an additional $27,40 per $100,000 of assessed taxable property value.
The Anchorage School Board recently passed a budget that addressed a $90 million deficit by cutting hundreds of staff positions, including more than 300 teachers, and increasing class sizes by an average of four students.
Anchorage School District Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said the district is committed to putting all of the tax levy toward hiring about 80 teachers.
“You might have heard this term ‘pupil-to-teacher ratio’ thrown around in the media or in comments at the school board meetings,” Bryantt said. “It's very significant, in that we could reduce our pupil-to-teacher ratio by two districtwide, if this levy were to pass.”
District Chief of Staff MJ Thim said a recent district survey of more than 1,000 people shows respondents oppose the bond by a large margin. But they were evenly split on the one-time tax, he said.
The district also asked those who didn’t support the tax if they would be more supportive if the district cut down on costs by consolidating schools, Thim said.
“There were 30% that said, ‘Yeah, I might consider changing my vote if the school board moves forward and closes schools,’ so to speak,” he said.
As part of its budget vote, the School Board did vote to consolidate programs, including closing three elementary schools. Thim said he’s hopeful that will be enough to sway some voters to support the one-time tax hike.
Anchorage’s municipal election is set for April 1.
