The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has officially handed over three former school buildings to the Kenai Peninsula Borough. School board members Monday voted to surplus the former Tustumena Elementary, Sterling Elementary and Seward Middle school facilities. The board closed those schools earlier this year to save money.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough owns all district buildings, and the district operates the buildings as schools. Because the buildings are no longer being used as schools, it’s up to the borough to decide what to do with the facilities.
The borough recently sold the former K-12 school building in the Russian Old Believer community of Nikolaevsk, for example, to a community nonprofit that’s helping fund a new charter school program opening next month. The board closed that school last year and gave it back to the borough.
But the borough says it doesn’t yet know what will happen to the other three buildings. Monday’s vote came on the heels of public meetings the borough held in Sterling, Seward and Kasilof to ask the communities what they want to see happen with the buildings. Some in Kasilof say they want to see the school building remain a place for community youth to gather.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough expects to spend $950,000 this year maintaining the four former school buildings. The school board also closed River City Academy this year, but that program was run inside Skyview Middle School, so doesn’t have an associated building closure.
Multiple school board members said Monday closing schools has brought heartache, both for them and the communities losing a school.
“Today is like pouring some salt in an old wound that I wasn't really ready for until I looked at the meeting and saw that these were on here and I'm like, ‘Well, this sucks, because it already sucked, and now we're just going to do it again,’” said Board President Jason Tauriainen.
The board heard multiple meetings worth of emotional and passionate testimony from school staff, students and families who pleaded to keep their schools open. Some from Sterling Elementary School even took to the streets.
State law disincentivizes school districts from reopening shuttered school buildings. A bill that passed during the most recent session of the Alaska Legislature tweaked state law to say districts can now reopen a building after four years, down from seven years.
But school board member Kelley Cizek, who called Monday’s vote “the last little bitter piece” of the school closure process, says the new four-year rule might still be too restrictive.
“I don't know if that helps us at all, because in four years, if you want to reopen something, the building no longer is there, and so I don't know what happens at this point,” she said.
The district could close more schools next year. Last year, it floated nine school sites it was thinking about shuttering. The conversation isn’t unique to the Kenai Peninsula and comes as districts around the state close buildings to save money. The district forecast a $17 million deficit heading into its most recent budget cycle.
On Monday, Homer resident Ahnie Litecky asked the board to start the conversation as soon as possible if members are thinking about closing more schools. She’s a parent of three students, including one who is about to start at West Homer Elementary. That’s one of the buildings the district thought about closing this year.
“The board really needs to start laying out the process now,” she said. “We need a public timeline, we need to know what data will be gathered, when it will be shared, what criteria is going to be used, and when the community is going to get to weigh in.”
The district is getting about $9.5 million extra dollars from the state this year. That’s after lawmakers approved $144 million in one-time funding for K-12 schools. School board members have not proposed using that money to try and reopen school buildings.
