The state board of education on Wednesday granted final approval on an application to start a new charter school in Fairbanks. The move aligns with the state education commissioner, but it overturns a decision made by the local school board, which unanimously voted down the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School application in November.
It’s the latest development in the controversial effort to found the charter school in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, and could be subject to an appeal in Alaska Superior Court. But for now, backers of the school are celebrating – and plan to get things up and running by the start of next school year.
The state board’s 15-page decision says members reviewed and independently judged the application for the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School, and it concludes that the components are compliant with legal requirements.
But that misses the point, according to Bobby Burgess, the president of the FNSBSD Board of Education. He said the decision doesn’t sufficiently address gaps and uncertainties in the application that were identified by the local board in a 52-page written decision it issued after voting down the application, which concluded that the school “could fail entirely.”
“Basically, my read of the state’s decision is that, if the application is filled out in full, the contents don’t really matter, even if the plan described is impossible to execute,” Burgess said. “It kind of seems like a lower standard than we hold students to on homework assignments.”
The state board’s final approval comes after a couple other recent decisions in the controversial effort to start up the charter school. First was the local board’s denial, followed by a 28-page approval in January from Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop after the proposed school's academic policy committee appealed under a process established in state law in 2014. But Alaska Board of Education members still had the final say. That vote had been set for their March meeting, when they convened in executive session, then chose to postpone the matter and issue the written decision at a later date.
Burgess said the process seemed to lack transparency. He also said it’s frustrating that the state board, which has members appointed by the governor, can override the locally elected board when it comes to opening charter schools in the district.
“If this decision is allowed to stand, then school boards around the state are basically here for ceremony, at this point,” he said.
But Heidi Wood, who chairs Pearl Creek’s academic policy committee, said the state board got it right – and that control is still in local hands.
“When parents are putting a school together for their children, that is the most local form of control possible,” she said.
And she said the demand is there. The committee is planning for 352 students, which would make it the largest charter school in the district. Wood said applications to enroll in the school began pouring in right after they announced the approval.
“That, to me, tells us that Fairbanks is ready. Fairbanks is ready for something unique and different and focused on our children getting the education that they deserve,” she said.
The Pearl Creek committee wants to lease from the Fairbanks North Star Borough the former building of a neighborhood elementary school, which was also called Pearl Creek. That’ll have to be authorized by the FNSB Assembly; an ordinance doing so has yet to be introduced.
The Fairbanks school board closed Pearl Creek Elementary last year to save money amid declining enrollment and a multi-million dollar projected budget deficit. Reopening Pearl Creek as a charter school will cost about $2.8 million, according to district estimates, mainly coming from state per-student funding the district would have to allocate to the charter school.
“So, the children who will be at Pearl Creek, those dollars will follow them, and that’s their education funding,” Wood said.
But Burgess, the school board president, said using that money to open Pearl Creek could mean the board will reduce spending in other areas of its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. And that’s not something longtime Pearl Creek Elementary parent Sarah Lewis wants to see.
“From the big picture, I see that as the state defunding neighborhood schools in order to fund charter schools,” she said.
One of Lewis’ kids was rezoned to a different district school after Pearl Creek Elementary closed last year. She’d had children attending the school between 2015 and 2025, she said.
Lewis said, after years of cuts in local schools, she’s looking forward to reinvestments the local school board is planning for next school year, like reducing class sizes, adding more counseling positions and restoring music programs.
“Those were all really great things that everyone was excited about, that would benefit everybody in the district, and they’re at risk now,” she said.
The district is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the state and state officials for what FNSBSD and the Kuspuk School District say has been a failure to adequately fund public schools. The lawsuit says the Fairbanks district has terminated 300 staff members since 2019, closed seven schools in five years, and that many high school classes in the district have more than 40 enrolled students.
This budget cycle, the district isn’t projecting a deficit – the opposite, in fact. The district’s proposed budget included $6.75 million-worth of restorations and reinvestments; after tweaking some of those proposals, the school board’s recommended budget totaled adding back 33.6 full-time classroom teachers, as well as more music teachers and support staff. But that’s subject to change, and the final budget isn’t due to the state until July.
The district also recently returned $11.4 million to the borough after an audit showed the district had retained fund balance over a threshold in borough code, something that's caused friction between the two local entities.
The district could appeal the approval of the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School application in state superior court. In a statement, district spokesperson Joshua DuVall said the administration believes that “decisions about schools in our district should be made by leaders who are directly accountable to the families and taxpayers they serve.”
The statement said the district will be reviewing the state board’s decision and evaluating all available options moving forward.
For now, Pearl Creek Elementary joins Two Rivers Elementary as another recently closed district neighborhood school that’s on track to become a charter school. The FNSBSD School Board voted to close Two Rivers the same year as Pearl Creek. Earlier this month, the local board approved an application to open a roughly 100-student charter school in Fall 2027 at the Two Rivers Elementary building.
This story has been updated to include additional details about the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District budget.