Anchorage School District: Deficit, Closures, Layoffs, and Silence
BY CARLOS MATÍAS
The Anchorage School District is facing a $90 million deficit, leading to the elimination of nearly 500 jobs and the closure of Fire Lake, Lake Otis, and Campbell STEM elementary schools. These are the most severe cuts in history. What does the School Board say?
Faced with the worst budgetary difficulties in the history of the Anchorage School District, Sol de Medianoche has been sending written questions to the members of the School Board on several occasions over the past few months without a reply.
The occasion before last was in January. At that time, Margo Bellamy replied: “Our bylaws state that the president, Carl Jacobs, speaks on behalf of the School Board. If he is unavailable, he will designate someone else to speak.” But Jacobs neither responded nor delegated to anyone else.
The last time Jacobs responded to Sol de Medianoche was in June 2025, when he called the budget cuts ”unprecedented, intentional, and relentless attacks on public education by Governor Dunleavy.”
Now, the School Board has agreed to close Fire Lake Elementary School and offer the building to Eagle Academy Charter School; close Lake Otis Elementary School and offer the building to Rilke Schule German Immersion School; close Campbell STEM Elementary School and, following the relocation of Rilke Schule, declare the former Abbott Loop Elementary School building and the Campbell STEM building “surplus to the District’s needs” and return them to the Municipality of Anchorage.
The closures will eliminate 500 jobs (mostly teaching staff, but also health workers, school principals, and counselors), saving less than $60 million in salaries.
Sol de Medianoche has addressed this latest issue to Corey Allen Young, assistant director of communications, publications, and external affairs for the school district. Allen Young refers to the letter from Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt detailing the cuts and the video of the February 24 School Board meeting, where they were discussed and voted. How did we get to this point? In the absence of direct explanations from the School Board, we echo the local media, which points to two problems: First, a decade of stagnant funding. The $700 increase in the basic student allocation (BSA, the state’s per-student funding formula) was not enough to offset rising health care costs and inflation. Purchasing power of $1,800 per student had been lost. After the BSA increase, the deficit was $1,400 per student.
Anchorage is now below the purchasing power of the School District in 2011. Fifteen years of impoverishment. Second: there are no longer any external funds or savings to fall back on. Federal COVID-19 pandemic aid has been exhausted, as have the Legislature’s one-time funding and savings (nearly $50 million), leaving reserves at the minimum allowed by law.
