In the last session, the Alaska Legislature passed HB 57, which greatly increased funding for public schools in the state. They did so because they were told that Alaska schools faced dire financial difficulties. However, to do this, they took a significant portion of the Permanent Fund Dividend check from every Alaskan to pay for it. Now, the construction of a brand-new elementary school in Anchorage calls this urgent need into question. Was there really a need for last year’s funding bill, or was the funding crisis actually the result of financial mismanagement on the part of the state and local governments?
This all revolves around the decision to build a new school in Anchorage. The long history of declining enrollment in the district has already forced the closure of 5 schools in the past 15 years, and they are considering additional school closures, yet they still decided to replace the Inlet View Elementary School building. Since the original facility was one of the oldest buildings in the ASD and had reached the end of its useful life, it would have made sense to include Inlet View Elementary in the list of schools they were planning to shut down, but this didn’t happen.
Even though there are ~8,300 fewer kids enrolled in Anchorage schools today than at the peak in 2002, the ASD instead decided to tear down the old Inlet View school building and build a new one in its place. Readers should note that the new Inlet View School only serves about 233 kids. Building this new school does not appear to be a pressing need to meet the requirements of the district, and perhaps something else motivated the construction plan.
The decision to build a new school was controversial, even by the standards of the liberal voters who live in Anchorage. In the 2022 election, they rejected approval of a construction bond to pay for the new school, which was estimated to cost 31 million dollars.
However, the creative financial geniuses in the ASD found a workaround. To pay for it, they used 26 million of a 100-million-dollar grant the legislature had given them in 2022. This grant was intended to reduce school bond debt. Using it for that purpose would have lowered the property tax burden on residents in Anchorage. Instead, ASD chose to use part of the grant to pay for replacing Inlet View Elementary. Then, in 2024, ASD told Anchorage voters that they still lacked funding to complete the school, because the construction cost for the new school had ballooned up to 50 million dollars, and another bond package would be required to pay for the remaining 19 million dollars.
Not only didn’t the residents in Anchorage get a reduction in their property taxes as intended by the state’s grant, but they got an increase in property taxes to pay for finishing the school.
The construction of the unneeded new Anchorage school was not a wise use of the public’s resources, and the Democrats, both in the Anchorage School District and in our legislature, are responsible for the waste.
Now I don’t care what Anchorage voters do. If they want to pay higher property taxes to build another unneeded school, that’s their business. However, when they start wasting state grant money, it impacts every Alaskan. The 26 million dollars of state money spent on this school could have been used for the benefit of everyone living in the state, not just a pampered few people living in Anchorage’s South Addition neighborhood.
The decision to build this new school appears to be an inappropriate use of state funds. While the individuals in the school district responsible for approving it will likely escape accountability, it is noteworthy that Democrat State House Representative Zack Fields represents District 17, and Inlet View Elementary is located in his district.
You might remember Rep Fields name. In the last session of the legislature, when the first school financing bill, HB69, was vetoed by the governor, the Democrats needed to pull a last-minute legislative Hail Mary to get a school funding bill passed. With little time left before the end of the session, they did this legislative sleight of hand by gutting an existing bill, HB57, a bill related to cell phone use, and changed it to include the school funding verbiage.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
HB 57 barely passed and survived a veto attempt by the governor. Interestingly, the original sponsor of HB57 was Rep. Zack Fields, the Representative who lives closest to the brand new Inlet View Elementary School. There are no coincidences in politics.
Increasing public school funding levels has cost every Alaskan a portion of their PFD. While the funding from HB57 was not used to build the new school in Anchorage, the school construction does illustrate financial mismanagement that is present in the public school system, making us question whether HB57 was necessary in the first place. The construction of the unneeded new Anchorage school was not a wise use of the public’s resources, and the Democrats, both in the Anchorage School District and in our legislature, are responsible for the waste.
Fortunately, this is an election year, and the voters will be able to hold the Democrats in the legislature accountable for their profligate spending habits. They should start by voting Representative Zack Fields out of office. If he is looking for something to do, maybe he can get a job shoveling snow off the sidewalks at the new school near his house.
The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.
17 Comments
I agree with the author; Anchorage voters wisely declined the funding of Inlet View school.
Instead of honoring that directive, legislators “fixed” the Zak Fields conflict by making EVERY Alaskan pay for the balance due (cost overrun) on this 233 child boondoggle while ASD taxpayers eat the balance. Nice.
My recent quote in the Anchorage Daily News:
“I still don’t believe it was the wisest investment of $50 million by the school district,” school board member Dave Donley said. “The whole process was flawed from the beginning.”
While I supported a much less expensive Inlet View remodel, I consistently opposed building a new Inlet View school. I voted against it at least seven times and proposed repeated amendments against spending over $50 million for a new school. I even sponsored an amendment to require the 2024 bond (for final $19 million needed) to state and explain the full over $50 million cost of the project, but the Board voted that down. Not the finest day for the democratic bond approval process. I am glad the United States is a constitutional republic and not a democracy.
Dave Donley
Anchorage School Board Member and candidate for Anchorage Midtown Assembly to replace Felix Rivera
Speaking only for myself and not the ASD or School Board
The whole process was flawed from the beginning.
While I supported a much less expensive Inlet View remodel, I consistently opposed building a new Inlet View school. I voted against it at least seven times and proposed repeated amendments against spending over $50 million for a new school. I even sponsored an amendment to require the 2024 bond (for final $19 million needed) to state and explain the full over $50 million cost of the project, but the Board voted that down. Not the finest day for the democratic bond approval process. I am glad the United States is a constitutional republic and not a democracy.
Dave Donley
Anchorage School Board Member and candidate for Anchorage Midtown Assembly to replace Felix Rivera
Speaking only for myself and not the ASD or School Board
“I still don’t believe it was the wisest investment of $50 million by the school district,” school board member Dave Donley said. “The whole process was flawed from the beginning.”
While I supported a much less expensive Inlet View remodel, I consistently opposed building a new Inlet View school. I voted against it at least seven times and proposed repeated amendments against spending over $50 million for a new school. I even sponsored an amendment to require the 2024 bond (for final $19 million needed) to state and explain the full over $50 million cost of the project, but the Board voted that down. Not the finest day for the democratic bond approval process. I am glad the United States is a constitutional republic and not a democracy.
Dave Donley
Anchorage School Board Member and candidate for Anchorage Midtown Assembly to replace Felix Rivera
Speaking only for myself and not the ASD or School Board
Inlet View may have been old, but it still functioned fine. The money would have been better spent renovating, if at all. But of course, all the rich folks who live in Inlet View’s catchment area needed the finest and best, so they found a way to make it happen. Not a school in Spenard, or Mountain View, or anywhere else with plenty of kids to serve, but Inlet View, where nobody has more than two kids per family. The money spent is gone. How many more schools need to close to support it?
I drive through that neighborhood and past the school every Sunday. The thought did cross my mind, knowing the number of aging persons who can afford to live in Inlet View, where will the children come from to attend this school? Does Zack Fields have any children?
For the record, they did close the school in Spenard. That was Lake Hood Elementary. And you’re right: that neighborhood served MOSTLY ESL kids, kids who are learning English as a second language. They were overwhelmingly poor, immigrant, and non-voters. Their representative is that Slime Ball Matt Claman. Go figure.
Oh! I have to add this too: the other big part of the resident population is homeless and women in shelter. So with the Claire House and the homeless hotels in exactly the same zone as the now defunct Lake Hood Elementary, the population served by Lake Hood included most of the population of battered and sheltered homeless children under 12. They closed that school.
Seems like they could use the shuttered school as a vagrant shelter. I thought Inlet View was on the chopping block until it was decided to build a new school in the same location as the one we didn’t need. Will the too old to use un-needed Inlet school be used to winter house the area’s homeless? Sure seems like it could be.
Glad someone is honestly writing about the schools in Alaska. I and many of my colleagues are sick from working in water-damaged buildings. The state and districts will not take accountability for that instead, they waste taxpayer money doing old science air testing and hiring outside medical providers to Zoom for an hour with an employee and review their files to write fake IMEs saying they have sleep apnea, going against their Alaska physician-based diagnosis. The IME diagnosis is made without any formal sleep tests, etc. I wonder how much these out-of-state medical providers charge taxpayers for their fake reports. At last count, I know of at least 20 of us with CIRS-5 from my classroom alone. Diagnosis for this isn’t cheap or easy. It includes blood work, urine, brain imaging, nasal swab, VCS screening, etc. Right now America has a D+ rating for school infrastructure. https://www.k12dive.com/news/schools-earn-d-grade-infrastructure-2025-asce-report/743506/. That is not a passing grade. KPBSD has admitted that 40 of their 42 buildings are in the red critical zone, and they aren’t even trying to get them in the green, but to the yellow zone. https://www.homernews.com/news/repair-costs-rise-as-school-facilities-deteriorate/ If the staff are sick then students are sick as well. Our district’s solution to its deferred maintenance is to tear down the buildings that are making people sick and stick taxpayers with outrageous bonds. The priority of maintaining buildings has been put on the back burner for years. It has been more important to switch out the curriculum every four years, versus on a 12 year plan, to save money to put into the buildings. Parents and community members should be aware and demand that this technology be used in schools to ensure the occupants are safe. https://www.getawair.com/solutions/school. Technological advances have advanced to a point where there is no excuse for poor indoor air quality in schools. Just look at the tech. Budget from the schools for smartboards, laptops, etc., if you value technology, then this should be a welcome solution to keep staff and students safe.
Water damaged buildings… Isn’t that what the 10 cent a gallon gas tax is for..? To fix school roofs..? How many school roofs have been replaced…? Where did that 20 million in gas tax money go..?
Public education is a scam. Shut it all down. Cancel property taxes. Full PFD. Fathers go to work . Mothers stay home teaching kids.
AUDIT! AUDIT! AUDIT! State and local school districts. Most importantly vote differently!
Anchorage School District literally makes children watch episodes of ALF to fill time in class. No wonder tests scores are so low.
because the super high dropout rate we have will be all better with a new school.
stop with the participation trophies and get to work on science , math, civics, and history.
Arguably, the biggest subsidy that comes from the taxpayers is for education, and yet nationwide our children are ranking lowest on the international scale.
Where do our children in Alaska rank? Embarrassingly low, especially considering how many dollars are spent per child to have such failures. What happens?
Many issues to consider both nationally and locally:
The teacher’s union is infested with socialists and communists; The Democrat Socialist of America (DSA) party has many teachers within their ranks.
Other issues:
H1B visas – America has a situation where school districts are importing teachers from foreign countries. In Dallas they recruited over 1200 foreign teachers. Why? Illegal immigration – English is a second language.
In our country – many good teachers are up and leaving the profession because they cannot discipline students and are forced to include activism issues in their daily subject matter. Examples from children: America is built on stolen land, America is a systemically a racist country, in America white people have privilege, white people have unconscious bias that negatively effects nonwhite people, gender identity is a choice regardless of biological birth.
And a big dollar education money issue:
The schools are overburdened with administration positions across the board – elementary, middle, high school and college.
More money is being spent on school administrators’ salaries than teachers’ salaries.
So now, you tell me. What do we do?
Oh just ask the libs on the Fairbanks Assembly – it is much more fun to build than to maintain. Maintenance is so booring! Holding them accountable is tough tho because they have those rich elitists backing them. Takes a crowd.
How Embarrassing…