By Jake Dye

Homer Independent Press

Facing a roughly $8.5 million deficit for the coming year, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education on Monday considered proposals for school closures and cuts to staff and programming to meet declining revenues. Among the proposals being considered is closure of Paul Banks Elementary School, moving the pre-K-2 grade  students from the school to West Homer Elementary, which currently serves students in grades 3-6. 

The district, Superintendent Clayton Holland said Monday, “continues to face” severe pressures from declining enrollment, rising costs and challenges with long-term sustainability. Despite a significant increase in per-student funding secured by the Alaska Legislature this year, the district is still looking at less revenue in the coming year than the current one. 

“Consolidation is not about short term savings alone,” he said. “It’s about making careful, student focused decisions that protect educational opportunities while minimizing disruption to students, families and communities.”

In developing a strategy for school closures, Holland said the district prioritized choices that wouldn’t require new bus routes or require students to travel to other communities. He also said that they looked at where combined student populations would create new opportunities — Holland and the board said repeatedly during last year’s closure conversations that schools filled with students would be rewarded by the per-student funding formula with more teachers and programs. 

The schools that meet the criteria and should be considered for closure, Holland said, include Seward Middle School, Paul Banks Elementary School, Sterling Elementary School and Tustumena Elementary School. 

The proposed closure of Paul Banks Elementary School is challenging, he said, because Fireweed Academy holds a lease with the district for space in West Homer Elementary School that is good through the next school year. 

Contingent on the ongoing budget discussions, which Holland said will dictate just how much cost cutting is necessary to achieve a balanced budget, the district suggests a phased plan that includes closing Seward Middle this year, then looking at closures of Paul Banks and the Soldotna area schools as soon as next year.

The school district holds a budget meeting from 6-7:30 p.m. Feb. 10 in the Homer High School Library. People can attend by Zoom. For Zoom links and more information, visit https://kpbsd.org/event/kpbsd-homer-area-budget-meeting/

Some people, the superintendent said, have suggested McNeil Canyon Elementary School for closure rather than Paul Banks. The driver in selecting Paul Banks over McNeil Canyon was the amount of ongoing maintenance issues and the age of the building. 

No action was taken on Monday during the board’s meeting. The board has previously said, and Holland repeated this week that no school will be closed without formal action and a process that involves the affected community. 

Members of the board said Monday that they would support approving a phased plan like the district proposal that would be implemented over years — giving students and staff time to adjust and understand what is coming. President Jason Tauriainen said he wanted the board to take a vote to implement a plan — and that it would take another vote of the board later to make any changes if the district’s fiscal picture changes over those years. The group agreed to bring forward a phased plan for school closures as an action item at the board’s next meeting in March. 

“We can’t keep kicking this can down the road,” Kelley Cizek, who represents Sterling/Funny River, said. “It will end up in the exact same place we were last year, where we’re being yelled at because no one has time to pack a box before they leave for summer and parents have no clue what they’re doing. I think it’s only fair, if we’re going to do something, we have to pull the trigger and do it now versus later.”

Sarah Douthit, who represents Kenai, said she supported the proposal. Closing Seward Middle, she said, is the only “smart decision” currently available, and signposting that Paul banks could close next year will signpost that change and allow people to prepare. 

During Monday’s work session, the board also heard about the potential impacts of increasing the staffing formula — called the pupil-to-teacher ratio — that uses the number of enrolled students to determine how many faculty members are in a school. One proposal presented to the board this week would eliminate 52 full-time positions from the district by increasing ratios across all grades. The KPBSD has lower ratios — more teachers per student — than any of the other large school districts in the state. 

Any eliminations, closures or consolidations would come after the board last year already made deep cuts to classrooms, activities, programs and the district office when facing a $17 million deficit.

Mica Van Buskirk, who represents the eastern peninsula on the board, said she sees staffing ratio changes or school closures as the only major levers remaining to meet the kind of deficits the district has been encountering each year. She chafed at Seward Middle School being the only school being considered for closure as soon as this year, when she sees her community growing. 

Per projections from the district’s finance director, closing Seward Middle would save the district around $400,000 annually this year and next year, but those savings decay because of state policy until the closure will be losing the district roughly $40,000 annually within five years. 

Holland said Seward isn’t being singled out, pointing to multiple closures on the central peninsula including the closure of Sears Elementary in Kenai nearly 20 years ago, which made Mountain View Elementary’s population larger than what West Homer Elementary School’s population might be if Paul Banks is closed and the younger students from Paul Banks move to West Homer. 

Tim Daugharty, who represents Homer on the board, said during the work session that he’d like to see a “big conversation” about just which schools go into each phase in a final plan next month, but that he thought school closures would be less disruptive and cause fewer students to leave the district than significant increases in PTR that lead to larger classrooms and fewer teachers.

During a full meeting of the board Monday evening, a delegation of Seward students called for increased support for their school and railed against the cuts they’ve experienced in staff and programming, also voicing opposition to the possible closure of Seward Middle. One junior from Seward High said they and other students don’t have a class during the last period of the day — “purely due to the fact that we do not offer enough classes at our school in the first place.”

Another student said he is on student council, in National Honor Society, participates in the National Ocean Science Bowl and takes what advanced placement classes are available, but still feels he can’t compete with more average students at better resourced schools when it comes to college applications because they have access to more opportunities. 

Other students said that they’d seen friends and peers leave the district for better opportunities elsewhere. One student said that she knew three disabled students who had left Seward High because the school’s elevator has been out of order for a year and they can’t navigate the school. Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche said Tuesday during a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly that the elevator has indeed been out of order for around nine months because a contractor hasn’t been able to get in and do the work. He said he’d warned the contractor to complete the work within two weeks, and that he’d pursue more strident efforts to see the work done immediately if they were still unable.

Borough offers bond update

Also during work sessions, the board heard an update from Micciche and Borough Purchasing and Contracting Director John Hedges on the current state of the long developing projects authorized by borough voters in a 2022 bond package worth more than $65 million. 

Renovations to Chapman Elementary School’s student drop off, Homer High School’s front entrance and Hope School’s roof have been completed, Micciche said, as well as replacement of Seward High School’s track and field and construction of a new restroom, concession and storage facility at Kenai Central High School.

Still to come, the mayor said, is completion of the repairs to Soldotna High School’s front facade, estimated to cost $3.5 million; renovation of Kenai Middle School’s office and entry way, estimated to cost $2.5 million; replacement of the roofs at Nikiski North Star Elementary and Mountain View Elementary, totalling $10 million; and renovation of Soldotna Prep School to house multiple Soldotna elementary schools, estimated to cost $35 million. There is also more than $5 million tentatively budgeted for student drop off improvements at Homer Middle School, Kenai Middle School and Mountain View Elementary School. 

Many of those outstanding projects, he said, are expected to see construction or advancement in the coming months. Hedges said “major construction” on the Soldotna Prep renovation could begin this summer.

Two projects included in the original bond proposal are unlikely to move forward without additional funding, Micciche said. Those are the replacement of Nikiski Middle/High School’s Track and Field, as well as the construction of a new maintenance shop. 

Micciche and Hedges have both said repeatedly in recent years that inflation stymied the original bond proposals — leading to various compromises like reducing the scope of some repairs and abandoning plans to construct a new Soldotna Elementary School.

Pools set for closure

The final item discussed during work sessions of the board on Monday was the state of the district’s pools. A draft of the current year’s budget once called for closing all pools at the start of the current year by eliminating their funding, but the board decided to provide funding for one final year in the hopes that individual communities or the borough as a whole would step up to provide funding or take over management of the facilities. 

Members of the board on Monday asked whether action was necessary to close the pools this year.

“I do sort of feel like we already made this decision last year,” Douthit said. 

Holland said he would work to see whether eliminating the pool staff would require a vote of the board or not, but Tauriainen said he would favor taking a vote to reflect the “finality” of the move. Voting might also send a message to communities that they need to take on the responsibility if they want the pools to stick around. 

Daugharty said making a vote and making the status of the pools clear — especially after so many years of threatening to cut pool funding before ultimately restoring it — is important.

“Make the vote, make it clear, so people can start planning,” he said. “They won’t go back and read our minutes that happened a year ago, I promise you that.”

Board OKs charter high school

In addition to testimony from the Seward students, the board’s full meeting on Monday evening was dominated by advocacy from Aurora Borealis Charter School parents and students in favor of a proposed amendment to their charter to add 9th and 10th grade. After some fiery testimony, in keeping with previous contentious board meetings when the school’s charter was renewed in 2024 and when the school previously attempted to add 9th through 12th grade in 2025, the proposal was approved on a 7-2 vote of the board, with Ash-Lee Waddell and Penny Vadla opposed.

The board on Monday also voted unanimously to extend contracts to many of the district’s tenured teachers for the 2026-2027 school year.

A full recording of Monday’s meeting and work sessions will be made available on the KPBSD BoardDocs website.