School Board: Listening, But Not Hearing the Public [UPDATE 1]

 The Anchorage School Board met last night and in the public hearing time, there were parents there from two schools - Campbell STEM and Hanshew Middle School. 

Campbell Stem parents were complaining one more time about how their school - the only nationally accredited STEM school in Alaska - is scheduled for closure next fall because of budget shortfalls.  But parents raised issues that the numbers weren't really accurate.  They didn't count the five or six preschool classes Campbell has.  And the loss of sixth graders was a problem the Board caused when they moved sixth graders to middle school.  Parents (and one board member) questioned why they had almost no notice about the closure.  It was only announced on Friday of a three day weekend and the meeting was Tuesday.  That is the technical three day notice, but looks more like trying to sneak it past the public.  And there was no time to pass it by the Community Council.  I'm not sure that the Superintendent, who is relatively young and fairly new to Anchorage even understands the importance of Community Councils.  They are in the Anchorage Charter and are intended to keep politicians from doing things behind the local community's back.  

The Hanshew parents were complaining about a school administration that they characterized as secretive, uncooperative, vindictive.  One student (and his mother) complained that the son was suspended as retribution against the mother speaking out against the administration.  Another said the principal thwarted the PTA's efforts to organize parents, raise money for the school, and to help the school in general.  

So we had one school that really likes the school and teachers and program and another that really does not like their school and administration.  Neither felt heard by this board.  

Many years ago, for a TV production class, I made a movie about the closing of the Grandview Gardens Library.  The first half is about how the administration gathered a bunch of numbers which clearly showed it made sense to close the library.  It was too close to Mt. View Library and a new library was opening on Muldoon and the Loussac was opening.  So Grandview clearly should be closed.  

The second half was interviews with the public who used the library and they told with lots of emotion what the library meant to them and how they gathered signatures for a petition and took it to the Assembly after 4th of July weekend and the Assembly agreed to keep it open.  

I used this film as a case study in my graduate public administration classes.  After the first half, I asked students if closing the library was a good decision.  Most students agreed it was.  But then I asked the students the same question at the end of the second half, and many of them changed their minds.  

But there was a sort of appendix in which the head librarian said that after the fact, it turned out that the new Muldoon library attendance numbers were good, Mt. View library numbers were good, and that Grandview Garden library numbers even increased.  So everyone was happy and the planners' predictions didn't pan out.  

I tell this story because I think this is what happened with the School Board.  They got bad news from the State - their budget would continue to get cut.  They tried to figure out how to manage the cuts, and closing three schools was their answer.  It would allow the continuation of some sports.  Two of the closed schools would be taken over by Charter Schools.  

I volunteer in one of the schools that will be taken over by a charter school - Lake Otis.  Lake Otis is a Title 1 school.  It's very diverse and most of the kids get free lunch and breakfast because they come from low income families.  I'm guessing the parents were not at the school board last night because the parents aren't as politically savvy, and because many of them could be targets of ICE if they showed up in protest.  And if ICE isn't paying attention that closely in Anchorage, it's still a reasonable fear.  

I also suspect that members of the School Board had private meetings with the Charter Schools that will take over Lake Otis and Fire Lake.  How else could they know that the parents of those charter schools would want to move to the closed schools?  Why didn't that happen in public.  It's been publicly stated that the Rilke Schule, the German immersion school, had previously been paying about $600,000 in rent for the building they used to be in.  These are NOT parents with serious financial problems.  And they are not diverse.  Who negotiated and why was that not public?  Or at least publicly disclosed after the fact?

There are a lot of unhappy parents.  Both Lake Otis and Campbell Stem had been named in bond packages recently.  Voters approved the bonds because they wanted the improvements to those schools (and others.)  But now the Board is going to divert those funds to other projects than what people voted for.  

I'm rushing this post, because I want to post it before the Anchorage election results tonight.  I believe that the Board has grossly not listened to the public, to its students and their parents.  They've made decisions based on purely 'rational' number crunching (and probably on some side dealing with the two charter schools) and ignored the heart and spirit of the community.  

And I suspect that Bond proposal #! - for school bonds - is going to fail, in part because of the behavior of the Board in closing these schools.  There's a second bond for funding teachers.  It's a one time payment.  Will that go down too?  I don't know.  

School Board - Carl Jacobs in particular.  If the bonds fail, it's on you.  You shoved these closures through.  Your numbers - many of which the public has heard about in general, but not specifically, seem packaged to get what you decided was best for the public. And, I understand, how you could reason yourselves into this.  But a bizarre side effect of our seriously disturbed president's war on Iran, is that Alaska's income this year is going to go up, because of the increase in the price of oil.  And there will probably be money to keep Lake Otis and Campbell Stem and Fire Lake going for one more year.  And after that we will have a new governor.  

And there are sources of money other than the State that School Board members could have pursued.  We didn't hear about those efforts.  Extraordinary times call for extraordinary imagination and effort, not tired number crunching.  

OK,  I'm done before the first of tonight's  election numbers are in.  

UPDATE 8:40pm - I was wrong.  The first vote count was already in when I posted this.  With 17% of the vote counted and posted at 8:12, the school bonds were both losing.  It's close.  

Bond Prop 1 is yes 49.17% to no 49.49% (yes - 20,708; no 20,831).  

Bond Prop 9 is yes 48.94% to no 49.84% (yes - 20,600; no 20,978)

All the other bonds are passing, with only one - the special police area Bond - even close.  49.79% yes and 47.76% no. 

I'd note that 17% of thte vote, this early in the evening, is a pretty high turnout.  We've had many Municipal elections where the turnout wasn't much higher.  But turnout has been up significantly since the Municipality went to (mostly) mail in elections.  Last year (2025) the final turnout was only 25%.  Mostly because the regular polling places are not open, just a few places, lie City Hall, Loussac Library, and one in Eagle River.  There are drop boxes throughout the Municipality.  And I suspect the early reporting is due to early voting.  

I'd also note that that most of the more liberal candidates are leading, so the school bonds, in normal times, should be ahead.  One exception is in my district.  At this point relatively conservative Dave Donley is slightly ahead of more liberal  Janice Park (47.03% to 45.72% - 3,196 votes to 3,017 votes).  Donley has signs up all over while I have yet to see a sign for Park.  And Donley was one of two School Board members (he's termed out  this year) who voted against the school closures.  

But that doesn't mean these early numbers will hold.  We'll see.