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Closure conversation

Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education members participate in a board work session on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.
Ashlyn O'Hara
/
KDLL
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education members participate in a board work session on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.

KPBSD considers consolidations to plug budget gap.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is facing a roughly $17 million budget deficit for the next fiscal year. That’s raised the prospect of potentially closing schools to save money.

School board members weren’t scheduled to start talking about school closures until Tuesday morning. But community members, especially from Nikiski, turned out at Monday’s school board meeting to voice their opposition after the district published a list of schools it’s thinking about closing.

“Nikiski often gets pushed aside due to the fact that it’s a rural, small school,” said student Milly Hornung. “But that’s exactly what makes Nikiski so great. While Nikiski may be small, the bond between it and its community is incredibly strong.”

Hornung’s school was one of nine that appeared on the list, which was published on Monday. The district hasn’t decided to close any schools yet. And board members emphasized Tuesday that they’re only looking to start a conversation.

Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent Clayton Holland participates in a school board work session on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.
Ashlyn O'Hara
/
KDLL
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent Clayton Holland participates in a school board work session on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.

But Superintendent Clayton Holland says those conversations have already started, for some.

“I called 20 principals to let them know the possibility of not having a job next year, based on all the different scenarios that we're looking at with school closures and consolidations, with the caveat, for a lot of them, that, be patient, don't go running from us yet,” he said.

The district is working to balance a roughly $17 million deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1. So far, the board has considered closing school pools and theaters, eliminating the district's middle college program and ending funding for school activities.

School Board President and Finance Committee Chair Zen Kelly says it’s hard to know exactly how much money the district could save by closing or consolidating schools. But rough numbers suggest returns will diminish over time.

At large schools, the state spends less money per student as compared to small schools. For that reason, state law tries to prevent a sudden drop-off in state funding when districts close and consolidate schools, which can sharply increase a school’s size. Those savings start tapering off in the third, fourth and fifth years after a school is closed.

“When we see these school closures, people are overall really shooting for immediate relief to their budgets overall the next couple of years,” Holland said. “And the way the funding formula is set up by the end, we’re actually, in many cases, it’s a reduction in revenue at that point by year five.”

The district is far from the first in Alaska to mull school closures as a way to save money. The Anchorage and Kodiak school districts are planning to close at least one school later this year. And school board members in Fairbanks on Tuesday will decide the fate of five schools.

But peninsula board members face unique challenges when considering which of its 42 schools could close – primarily, the district’s size. The nine schools on the list are spread out across the Kenai Peninsula Borough, which encompasses about as much land as West Virginia. There are four on the southern peninsula, three on the central peninsula and two on the eastern peninsula.

Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education President Zen Kelly attends a board work session on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.
Ashlyn O'Hara
/
KDLL
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education President Zen Kelly attends a board work session on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025 in Soldotna, Alaska.

Holland frequently dubs it the most unique district in America, on account of its diversity and scale. There are small schools, traditional schools, schools that can only be accessed by boat or plane and schools in Russian Old Believer communities.

Holland says that means the district duplicates services to meet students where they’re at.

“We are so spread out that we don’t have that ability – like Anchorage and Fairbanks often does – to combine services,” he said. “So you will find in some of these larger districts where buildings are closer that you have programs in certain schools. We duplicate our problems everywhere because of the distance we have.”

Beyond that, board member Virginia Morgan says schools have an outsized role in small communities.

“When we talk about closing schools in our district, the vast area that we cover, we're closing communities,” she said. “Our communities don't survive when the schools close. And it's not like we can just put these kids on a bus to go to the neighboring school five or 10 miles away.”

Kelly, the board president, says he’s also keeping scope in mind.

“One of the ways that I approach this is looking at the affected population and how big it is in a ratio of the amount of savings,” he said. “And so – none of these choices are easy. But if we look at impacting 200 kids versus the impact on 19 kids, and how we're going to structure that, it’s just another way to view these types of scenarios.”

Holland suggested the district compile a more comprehensive package of information for each closure scenario for board members ahead of their March meeting.

Monday’s school board meeting and Tuesday’s work sessions will be available to stream on the school district’s BoardDocs website.

Prior to joining KDLL's news team in May 2024, O'Hara spent nearly four years reporting for the Peninsula Clarion in Kenai. Before that, she was a freelance reporter for The New York Times, a statehouse reporter for the Columbia Missourian and a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. You can reach her at aohara@kdll.org