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The Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP School District (ASD) is initiating the Rightsizing ASD initiative due to pressing needs and changing community dynamics.
ASD’s infrastructure is aging; many buildings are over 30 years old and in need of critical upgrades and maintenance. As our buildings age, our population is decreasing. Demographic shifts in Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP include a decrease in working-age adults and fewer students enrolled in ASD over the past decade.
However, more families are opting for different modalities of learning, resulting in enrollment in ASD choice programs having grown over time. Most of ASD’s charter schools are housed in leased buildings with high rent payments or in buildings that are unsuitable in size or design to fully accommodate their growing enrollment.
Our underutilized campuses present a major barrier that could be sustainably addressed with an intentional school consolidation plan. ASD is seeking community input to thoughtfully reimagine, redesign, and rightsize ASD to offer a world-class education tailored to future realities, conditions, and resources.
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ASD’s students require more specialized services, beyond the education classroom, than in the past.
Schools with low enrollment are challenged with providing the same level of service that can be supported at larger schools. Small schools see the following impacts across a district as large as Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP.
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Specialty teachers (art, music, PE, and special education) and Specialists (speech, counseling, literacy coaches, occupational & physical therapists, speech language pathologists, etc.) spend significant amounts of time traveling to multiple schools, lowering the amount of time they can spend with students.
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Combination classes in elementary schools have become more common. For instance, there may be only one 1st grade class and one 2nd grade class that are both small, so they are merged in order to make up a whole class. These combined classes make it more difficult for teachers to spend individual time with each student.
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At middle and high schools, small enrollments end up reducing course offerings, the amount of times desired classes can be taught in a single day, and access to sports and extracurricular activities.
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Schools with 3 or more sections per grade (3 first grade classes, 3 second grade classes, etc.) generally have more resources for students.
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Schools with less than 2 sections per grade will routinely see many or most of the challenges discussed in the preceding bullets.
In addition, correspondence school enrollment has more than doubled in the last decade.
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The Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP working-age population has declined more than 17,000 residents (8.5% decline) in the last decade, and ASD student enrollment has declined approximately 6,450 students (13% decline). Birth rates among Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP residents since 2018 have continued to decrease among child-bearing adults and we have seen that this trend is common across the nation.The outward migration of residents in the Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥APP community is consistent in many boroughs across Alaska. According to the State, Alaska has lost more movers than it has gained every year since 2013. Twenty-one of Alaska’s 30 boroughs and census areas lost population over the year. Complete estimates for the state, boroughs/census areas, cities and census-designated places are available .
