Superintendent George Troxel asked the borough assembly this past week to consider rejuvenating the school site selection committee. He had a list of needs.
“Iditarod (Elementary School) is in dire need of replacement,” he said.
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• Soon the borough is going to have to start looking at putting a high school and a middle school in the Knik-Fairview area.
• Existing charter schools in the borough would like permanent facilities. And there are two more charter schools applying to open up next year.
• The Mat-Su Day School is housed entirely in portable classrooms, as is Valley Pathways. It would be worth looking at whether both of those schools could benefit from permanent buildings.
He said enrollment this year is up 183 students over last year. The district only predicted a 100-student bump. This year’s increase is less than past years, he said, but it doesn’t take too many years of triple-digit growth to need a new school. Elementary schools have target enrollments of 350 students.
“You can see how the need for new schools can stack up,” he said.
Sarah Welton, a veteran school board member who was recently chosen to serve as the board’s vice president, said the need for schools isn’t new. The idea of putting middle and high schools in Knik-Fairview has been on the horizon for years.
A few years back, she said, transportation people at the district looked at the numbers and saw 800 students in the area that were set to move into high school that year. Since then the area has continued to grow, consistently at or near the top of the list of fastest growing areas in the borough. And that’s not taking into account the prison the borough is building farther down the road at Point MacKenzie.
“The fact is that eventually more and more growth is going to happen down there,” she said. “We aren’t sure what the prison is going to do.”
She said the need for new secondary schools in the area was identified, but the district chose to hold off.
“There is still room in some of our high schools,” she said, summarizing the decision at the time.
While Houston High School isn’t as full as the district would like, Welton said, Wasilla High School has moved some students into portable classrooms and is at least a little overcrowded.
As for the other items on Troxel’s list, Welton said maintenance costs are inching up at Iditarod. The building is old and it wasn’t designed well in the first place.
“Those classrooms are peculiar. They are difficult to work in,” she said.
As for charter schools, Welton said that’s a question the site selection committee could be a great help in answering. The problem, she said, is that the schools can’t acquire land and buildings, just lease them. The borough could buy them, but should the charter schools be taken care of when there are new traditional schools to build?
“So how are we going to pay for these things and is it still viable to do these things?” she said of the needs of the charter schools.
She said some of the Pathways students have told her they like the portable classrooms. But is that the right way to do it?
As for the day school: “If they were to build a school for the day school kids, the ones that are a little more cantankerous and disruptive in the classroom, it’s going to be expensive because you’re going to have to put in a lot more safety stuff than you would in a regular school.”
She said she thinks the committee should start meeting again. Her understanding, she said, is that it’s not the type of committee that just gets activated now and again when needed, but rather a committee that meets regularly to address ongoing growth issues.
As far as she can tell, meetings have been sporadic, if they’ve happened at all, since the committee selected the site for the recently constructed Machetanz Elementary.
Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.
Comments
20 comment(s)offsoapstone wrote on Nov 5, 2009 4:34 PM:
High Tech can be too weird wrote on Nov 3, 2009 12:12 AM:
Valley Teacher wrote on Nov 2, 2009 6:16 PM:
Lets do it! :) "
DJ wrote on Nov 2, 2009 2:00 PM:
Oh please wrote on Nov 1, 2009 6:55 AM:
Save Millions wrote on Oct 31, 2009 8:24 AM:
valleytaxpayer wrote on Oct 30, 2009 8:45 AM:
Bev wrote on Oct 29, 2009 5:32 PM:
Wasillian wrote on Oct 26, 2009 7:21 PM:
Perhaps a 7:00 am - 1:00 pm shift, and then a 2:00 am to 8:00 pm shift. I suppose though that this would cause busing nightmare. "
offsoapstone wrote on Oct 26, 2009 1:27 PM:
Oops wrote on Oct 26, 2009 12:42 PM:
2 shifts wrote on Oct 26, 2009 11:31 AM:
Emily wrote on Oct 26, 2009 10:16 AM:
Sarah in Palmer wrote on Oct 26, 2009 9:12 AM:
allisaw wrote on Oct 26, 2009 8:44 AM:
Look cheaper options wrote on Oct 26, 2009 8:32 AM:
To Jill wrote on Oct 26, 2009 7:47 AM:
Ly wrote on Oct 25, 2009 9:53 PM:
fairview knik resident wrote on Oct 25, 2009 12:02 AM:
Jill H wrote on Oct 24, 2009 10:46 PM: