A protracted dispute over an embattled charter school in Fairbanks is bound for Alaska Superior Court. The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District said Wednesday it will appeal state approval of Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School, at the direction of FNSBSD School Board members.
The move follows a 15-page written decision on April 29 from the governor-appointed Alaska Board of Education, which overturned the local board members’ unanimous denial of the charter application.
In a letter to families Wednesday, District Superintendent Luke Meinert said appealing to the state court is about more than one school. He wrote that a central question is about “whether locally elected school boards have the authority to make decisions for the communities they were elected to serve.”
Meinert said opening and operating schools in the district directly affects local students, families, staff, taxpayers, budgets, facilities and educational programming.
The letter came a day after the board met in executive session and directed the district to appeal. School Board President Bobby Burgess said other school district officials in Alaska have urged them to challenge the state’s approval of Pearl Creek.
“This is really a precedent that could potentially be set here, and it’s a precedent that we really can’t afford to have in Alaska,” he said in a brief phone interview Wednesday.
After lengthy work sessions last year, the local board voted down the application and issued a 52-page written decision in November saying a number of elements in the school’s plans were deficient or infeasible.
Burgess said the state board failed to substantively address any of those concerns.
“In short, the state’s position appeared to be that if an application is filled out and complete, that’s sufficient to operate a charter school, regardless of the contents or flaws within the application,” he said.
The academic policy committee for the charter school appealed the local denial in November to Alaska Department of Education Commissioner Deena Bishop. Bishop approved the application in January, leaving the state board to give it the final go-ahead or turn it down.
Both the commissioner and state board’s decisions concluded that the application satisfied legal requirements, and, therefore, should move forward.
“We followed the law, and the charter appeal process is in state statute for checks and balances on our democratic system here,” said Jennifer Redmond, treasurer for the APC. “And there’s nothing more local than a school built by local parents and educators.”
Founding parent and Pearl Creek appeal committee member April Monroe said she believes the court’s review will notch another win for the school. But she said she’s disappointed to see the dispute reach this point.
“I think these resources would be much better expended – both the time and the money – on collaborating to build a school that our community clearly wants than spent on litigating against parents,” she said.
The APC plans to open the school this fall at a former neighborhood elementary school, also called Pearl Creek. The local board closed that school last year amid a projected budget deficit and declining enrollment, and administrators estimate reopening it as a charter school would cost the district about $2.8 million.
Supporters, like Monroe and Redmond, say that’s a good use of money and that the school will attract students into the district. They also said the level of interest the school has received so far shows the demand is there. APC records shared with KUAC Wednesday indicate that the committee had gotten 320 applications as of Monday.
Meinert, the superintendent, wrote in the letter to families that “opening a new school would create significant financial and staffing pressures at a time when the district is already working hard to stabilize operations and support students.”
Spending that money on Pearl Creek, he wrote, could also mean scaling back districtwide investments currently budgeted for next school year, like lowering class sizes, restoring elementary music programs and bringing back Extended Learning Program teaching positions.
His letter also said it’s uncertain whether the charter school will open in the fall due to the court action and other operational questions. But Monroe said, right now, they’re proceeding as planned.
“While we recognize that this represents another hurdle, in a lot of ways, it also represents the final hurdle,” Monroe said. “And we’ve dealt with that quite a few times.”
As of Wednesday evening, the district’s appeal did not yet appear in online court records.
Bryan Zadalis, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Education, provided an emailed statement Wednesday attributed to Bishop, the commissioner, that said the department is aware of the local board’s decision to appeal to the court.
The statement said the approval was based on governing legal requirements and the administrative record, and it said the department is “charged with following the laws set forth by the Legislature and will abide accordingly to any requirement of participation in due process if and when presented with such.”
If Pearl Creek opens, its projected 352 students would make it the biggest charter school in the district. The Pearl Creek Elementary building would also join Two Rivers Elementary as a recently closed neighborhood school set to become a charter school.
The local board voted to close Two Rivers the same year as Pearl Creek. Last month, the Fairbanks school board members approved an application for HomeSTEAD Charter School, with plans for a roughly 100-student charter school in fall of 2027 at the Two Rivers Elementary building.