After years of struggling to convince the Kenai School District to let them operate their own unique public charter school, residents of Nikolaevsk broke into tears of joy after the school board approved the school along a narrow 5-3 vote earlier this month.
Located roughly 20 miles outside of Homer on the Kenai Peninsula, Nikolaevsk is a quiet community established in 1968 by Russian Old Believers. Since then, it has grown to over 300 residents, most of whom share a common desire to live a quieter life, connected to faith, family and traditional work such as farming, fishing, the trades and craft making.
Over the past four years, parents and community members have submitted multiple applications to found their own specialized charter school to serve village students. Despite immense struggles, including denials of approval, missed deadlines and lengthy public hearings in which school organizers were riddled with questions about finances, building maintenance, enrollment numbers and curriculum choices, the school board finally gave the green light for the school to open in the fall of 2026.
The plan is to serve roughly 90 students, emphasizing community values associated with farming and homesteading skills, along with traditional academics.
This past May the school board voted unanimously to shutter the school in order to save money for the cash-strapped district, which was facing a $17 million deficit. At the time Nikolaevsk only had 21 students enrolled in a school that has a capacity for 175.
Still, the decision to shut the facility was roundly criticized by Nikolaevsk residents who were told they would need to send their kids on lengthy hour-and-a-half bus rides to attend schools in Homer. Many simply left the district for statewide homeschool programs.
According to state law, once a school closes it cannot reopen for seven years. Nikolaevsk parents, however, went to work and began planning for a new charter school that would operate in the same building as the shuttered school.
The Nov. 17 approval marked a celebratory culmination of all their work.
The district, though, was adamantly opposed to the school opening, and unsuccessfully urged the school board to deny the charter application due to concerns about finances, enrollment projections, staffing, facility agreements and curriculum choices.
Despite the district administration’s opposition, the majority of board members were willing to give Nikolaevsky residents a shot at making the school work.
School board members Dianne MacRae, Kelley Cizek, Patti Truesdell, Mica VanBuskirk and Ash-Lee Waddell voted to approve the charter, while members Tim Daugharty, Sarah Douthit and Penny Vadla voted against the school.
According to the charter application, the operational cost for the school facility will be roughly $215,000 annually, and they project that over 90 students will enroll, including several dozen who chose to homeschool this year when the old school was shut down.
The Alaska Board of Education must grant final approval of the charter. That decision is not expected until the board’s spring meeting in March.
If all goes according to plan, the community will add another chapter to its already storied history.
The town was first established by Russian Orthodox Old Believers as a largely ethnic Russian community, which has been featured in National Geographic, The Atlantic magazine and other national outlets.
Nikolaevsk was originally founded by five families of Russian Orthodox Old Believers who travelled from Siberia following the Russian Revolution. After living near Harbin, China, and São Paulo, Brazil, this community moved to Oregon and then to Alaska in the late 1960s.
6 Comments
The Cult grows larger.
I’d rather send my children to school where morals and values are taught and respected, where kids are learning trades that bring forth a real job and real income. Old believers and their families fare far better than the liberal leaning left who’ve over-taken public schools, who are taking over girls bathrooms with boys, who are erasing women, who are teaching kids you can be anything you want (even a man who can become pregnant) among many other disgusting lies and morally bankrupt statements. Our kids don’t need kitty litter in the classroom for the kids who believe they are “furries”- they need normalcy, traditional schooling, teachers with a backbone, not teachers who cross dress or how to be a transgendered lie. You can continue your own lie with your cult comment because these wonderful folks are a force to be reckoned with- they have God behind them. Call it a cult, the rest of us with brains in our heads will call it what it is: a victorious blessing!
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That’s great! I hope the Ak Board of Education will approve it.
I grew up in Homer and remember when it was just Russians in that community.
Hopefully, traditional crafts and trades will find their place in modern society thanks to schools like this.