Opinion: Anchorage school choices, consequences and reimagination

Choice is a good thing. We all like to have choices allowing us to make the best decisions we can for our families. The Anchorage School District has truly excellent and valued choices for education, such as charter schools, optional programs, language immersion and highly gifted. But some choices come with consequences. Most of these programs are not available in Northeast Anchorage neighborhood schools. And one consequence is these choice programs are slowly but surely siphoning away the lifeblood of our public schools as families choose something other than their own neighborhoods’ schools. Now my neighborhood, Nunaka Valley, is living with those consequences as our neighborhood school is closing due to low enrollment.

My family was part of this problem. We chose other schools that we believed better suited our son. And now as I revisit that decision, I see another consequence: My son knows only one person his age from our neighborhood.

We’ve been told Northeast Anchorage has other neighborhood schools with low enrollment. Instead of closing them like we’ve closed Nunaka Valley Elementary, we can apply a little creativity to reverse the flow of energy currently leaving our neighborhoods and create stronger neighborhood schools. Through them we can strengthen inter-community connections and support property values in these neighborhoods.

We can do this by partnering with choice programs and co-locating them in neighborhood school buildings along with existing neighborhood schools and give neighborhood students priority enrollment. Adding pre-K and affordable child care accessible by neighborhood families is an additional powerful draw connecting young families with their neighborhood school, likely increasing future enrollment in that school. A reboot of the community school movement could bring in free or low-cost community classes that serve the entire neighborhood, not just student families. Even neighbors without kids will start to see all the benefits their neighborhood school is bringing them, such as increased property values, and pitch in to keep the school strong. After hours of impassioned testimony at recent school board meetings, I can see that students and parents adore their teachers and love their neighborhood schools. This strong sense of community can be extended throughout the entire neighborhood with the school as the focal point.

In this model, the neighborhood school becomes the heartbeat of a community by connecting families and neighbors, creating bonds that last a lifetime. It’s these connections that weave the fabric of a connected, strong and resilient community.

Let’s be creative: Charter schools located in non-ASD buildings spend about 20% of their budget on rent, and some of these schools are space-constrained in their current location. Smaller charter schools can share space in an existing school building with a neighborhood school, allowing the charter school to redirect rent money toward their academic programming. Larger charter schools that have difficulty finding one building that is both big enough and affordable could be divided and co-located with two different neighborhood schools.

Let’s also be flexible: Charter schools receive the same base student allocation as public schools, but have much more flexibility with their structure, for example, having the latitude to create much smaller class sizes, which allow their teachers to give their students much more individual attention. Public schools do not have this flexibility. We need to be careful to avoid the consequence of structural inequality by allowing charter schools to have unfair advantages over public schools. A little flexibility in bringing the advantages of charter schools into neighborhoods and giving neighborhood students enrollment preference could go a long way to supporting choice while also reducing consequences.

While I don’t know exactly what’s in the future for Nunaka Valley, I do know it involves a big change as we are losing our neighborhood school. Change can be hard, but through change we can enjoy our choices while also reducing the consequences. Through change, we can redirect the flow of energy back into our neighborhoods, improve our community connections and support neighborhood property values.

Let’s work together to re-imagine our schools and let’s put something back into Nunaka Valley that keeps the community whole and thriving.

Kristi Wood is a longtime Nunaka Valley resident and community volunteer.

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