Anchorage School Board adopts class size policy under state mandate

The Anchorage School Board voted unanimously Saturday to adopt a class size policy required under a state law passed during the same 2025 fight that raised Alaska's school funding — and used the new mandate to put the funding gap on the public record.

The board approved the move in a 7-0 vote, setting maximum class sizes of 23 students for pre-kindergarten through grade 6 and 30 for grades 7 through 12, the ceilings written into Alaska Statute. That statute requires every district to establish and publish a target average class size policy for each grade level, allows the policy to exclude mixed-grade classes and courses such as art, library, music, computer science, vocational-technical, and physical education, and must include procedures to reduce class sizes when the district finds a reduction appropriate.

The board went a step further, adopting a second tier of evidence-based targets — 15 students for kindergarten through grade 3 and 25 for grades 4 through 12 — that the district says it cannot currently afford. "We cannot have smaller class sizes because we cannot afford to have that," a board member said.

That second tier is less a plan than an exhibit. The policy directs the superintendent to produce a cost analysis of both targets within one week of the board's annual budget passage — an annual, official accounting of the distance between what the Legislature funds and what the research the district cites says students need.