The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Board of Education is knee-deep in a proposed consolidation plan that would shutter five neighborhood elementary schools, and at a Monday work session, community members had a chance to air their concerns and advocate for the schools they cherish.
District administration have recommended closing Pearl Creek, Hunter, Midnight Sun, Two Rivers and Salcha elementaries, framing the consolidation as a cost-saving measure that would reduce the budget deficit and as a way to "rightsize" after years of declining enrollment.
If passed, it would be the third year in a row that the district has closed at least one school.
The new closures and redistricting would shift around approximately 1,200 students and save $7 million, according to the district. But on Monday, dozens of parents and school staff turned out to emphasize that any changes will amount to more than dollars and cents.
“There are no pretty words for this, and unfortunately, you guys have all the data, and you’re looking at it as numbers instead of as people,” said Cora Hamilton, a classroom tutor at Salcha Elementary.
“We should not be having to sit here and pit our schools against each other, and to put our numbers against each other, and go, ‘Well our capacity is this, and our capacity is this, and our size is this.’ No, all our students matter. All of these neighborhood schools matter,” she said.
Rationale for keeping particular schools open varied. Those advocating for Two Rivers and Salcha often cited the schools’ distance from the rest of the district, saying their closure would unfairly target students and families in rural parts of the borough.
Others pointed to the positive student performance metrics at Pearl Creek elementary, while people pushing to save Hunter elementary highlighted the proportion of at-risk students the school serves.
More broadly, Allison Mogensen, a music teacher at Pearl Creek, said she thinks cutting any neighborhood schools would exacerbate enrollment decline and put the district on the wrong track in years to come.
“What our district needs to do is increase enrollment. How do we do this? Not by cutting neighborhood schools. This is only going to push more families to homeschool and private school,” she said.
Transportation changes are among the logistical challenges the closures could cause families and students, with longer bus rides and walking distances of chief concern.
And the board and district staff took up that topic Monday during a presentation that followed public hearing.
Some board members, including Brandy Harty, feared Hunter Elementary families would bear the brunt of lower walkability if those students were to attend other neighborhood schools.
“It is, as we heard testimony, really a lot to ask some of these families to go across town to Ladd [Elementary]. Sometimes they don’t have reliable transportation, they’re using public transit,” she said.
When it comes to busing, the proposed plan would cut two of the existing 60 routes and increase the time some students spend on the bus at each of the five schools proposed for closure.
Salcha Elementary students would experience the most significant change, per the consolidation plan. The average bus route time for Salcha would go from about 45 minutes to more than an hour, and the average time Salcha students spend on the bus would increase by 20 minutes, according to assistant superintendent Kate LaPlaunt.
“This is one of the areas where there’s not really a way to change geography. So, we do see that impacted here, but previously Salcha families did experience ride times similar to this for their middle and high school students, so this is something that has been experienced by this community,” she said.
Monday’s work session was the second of three in the leadup to the board’s final vote on the consolidation plan, which is scheduled for Feb. 4.