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The Most Unique District in America Part II: Outlying Road-System Schools

Heather Lindquist, an instructional aide at Moose Pass School, leads students through a rehearsal of the school’s Christmas play. Moose Pass is about 30 miles north of Seward.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Heather Lindquist, an instructional aide at Moose Pass School, leads students through a rehearsal of the school’s Christmas play. Moose Pass is about 30 miles north of Seward.
Sandra Barron, the sole teacher at Moose Pass School, instructs a class of students.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Sandra Barron, the sole teacher at Moose Pass School, instructs a class of students.

On an early morning in December, 22 students gather on a makeshift stage in a school gym, rehearsing for a holiday performance of “Twas One Crazy Night Before Christmas.” The show is an ’80s comedic twist on a classic Christmas play, and every student at the Moose Pass School is in the show.

Three of the Kenai Peninsula’s smallest schools, including Moose Pass, are connected to the road system, but serve small towns where they become a community hub. Small populations mean individualized education, multigrade extracurriculars and an entirely distinct social environment.

Teacher Sandra Barron pulls a rope connected to a bell above Moose Pass School to signal the end of lunch break.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Teacher Sandra Barron pulls a rope connected to a bell above Moose Pass School to signal the end of lunch break.

In a grade school as small as this, activities like theater, skiing or robotics are for everyone, and there are just two multigrade classes: a K through third group called the Wolves, and the grades four and five Sea Otters.

Sandra Barron is the school’s only teacher. She designs a schedule for multigrade classrooms that allows for students in one room to learn all required district curricula. Sometimes, that looks like a lesson delivered to everyone, followed by individualized work based on academic level.

“So there’s a lesson with me, and then students would go back to their desk to continue working on, say, the assignment, and then others would be on the computer doing an interactive activity for learning that does change based upon that individual child,” she said.

Barron is assisted by two aides, a secretary and a part-time food service staff member. But with such a small staff, everyone ends up chipping in in lots of ways. In the last hour of the day, Susanna Litwiniak reads a book to the kids. She’s Moose Pass’s secretary, but also the de facto nurse and librarian.

Moose Pass has just one bus and one stop, at a halfway point to nearby Cooper Landing.

Cooper Landing School

The nearby community of Cooper Landing has its own K-12 school with 20 students.

The one-room Cooper Landing School is divided into two spaces, one for older grades and one for younger. A gym was added to the building later.

Sherry Dillon teaches kindergarten through third grade at the school. She said it’s complicated to organize the curriculum for her K-third class, but the students gain a lot of independence they might not have otherwise.

Susanna Litwiniak, Moose Pass School’s secretary, reads to a group of young students. Staff at smaller schools in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District are called on to provide many roles during the school day.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Susanna Litwiniak, Moose Pass School’s secretary, reads to a group of young students. Staff at smaller schools in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District are called on to provide many roles during the school day.
Ruby Boyle uses a laptop computer to complete a fifth-grade lesson at Moose Pass School. Technology helps to equalize learning opportunities for students in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.
M.Scott Moon
Ruby Boyle uses a laptop computer to complete a fifth-grade lesson at Moose Pass School. Technology helps to equalize learning opportunities for students in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.

“One of the biggest things is really, kindergarten is so much play. And we only have one kindergartener. And she doesn't have that benefit of other kindergarteners,” Dillon said. “But on the other hand, she has an individual education plan, as we like to say, so she can go as fast as she wants.”

Hope School

Dani Koschak passes a hot lunch to a student at Moose Pass School.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Dani Koschak passes a hot lunch to a student at Moose Pass School.

An hour away, at the end of its own highway, Hope is a former gold rush town that was home to thousands at the height of prospecting. Today, the town has one small convenience store, no gas station and a K-12 school with 17 students.

Hope isn’t the one-room schoolhouse of Cooper Landing; the large facility offers ceramics, a woodshop, welding, a science lab, a fitness room, climbing wall and indoor archery range.

Christen Peck went to the Hope School when she was in high school, sent her own kids to the school, then became a teacher here herself seven years ago.

“It’s like coming home. Every day,” she said.

Peck said the relationship she forms with the middle and high school students as their only teacher is both a difficulty and a draw.

“Whatever lesson plan I have this year, I cannot do next year, because I’ll have all the same kids. So they’ll be bored,” she said. “So there’s constant mental gymnastics, and I think that part is very appealing. It is impossible to get into a rut.”

Peck and the Hope School’s elementary teacher, Jeremy McKibben, agree that there are positives and negatives to the multigrade classes. Until two years ago, McKibben worked at a traditional middle school in Kenai.

A school bus takes students home from Moose Pass School. Students in the tiny school live along the Seward Highway.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
A school bus takes students home from Moose Pass School. Students in the tiny school live along the Seward Highway.
Students at Moose Pass School play in the snow on the school’s playground.
M.Scott Moon
Students at Moose Pass School play in the snow on the school’s playground.

“Before, I was only having to deal with the fifth-grade curriculum. Now I have to deal with the kindergarten curriculum for math and reading, language arts, and I have to deal with the first-grade, second-grade, third-grade, fourth-grade and fifth-grade curriculum,” McKibben said. “So on the backend, preparing for work is a lot more. And then the tradeoff being that, in class, it’s probably less work that I’m doing, because there’s fewer students.”

On the last day before winter break, students participate in a schoolwide gift exchange. They’ve been paired across grades and the only rule is the gift has to be homemade.

Dawn breaks at Moose Pass School.
M.Scott Moon
/
KDLL
Dawn breaks at Moose Pass School.

Peck said activities like these are emblematic of something she’s observed in her own children and the students she’s taught — there’s very little teasing or bullying. Students tend to be kind and supportive of each other, and well-behaved.

“There isn’t an exclusion,” she said. “They’re very close knit, and that’s kind of cool, that they’re able to be themselves and not try to be something else to be cool.”

She said the one downside is kids may not have peers of their own age. That’s something they may experience for the first time after graduation.

All three schools pride themselves on being the heartbeat of their communities. Parents filter into the gym at the Hope School to watch as their children unwrap secret Santa gifts, while Moose Pass is expecting communitywide turnout at its Christmas play.

This was the second in our five-part series about the Kenai Peninsula’s school district. Next, we’ll visit Russian Old Believer schools on the southern peninsula.

This reporting project is supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism’s Alaska Impact Reporting Initiative grant.

Riley Board is a Report For America participant and senior reporter at KDLL covering rural communities on the central Kenai Peninsula.