Anchorage School District sues state retirement division and demands a jury trial

The Anchorage School District sued the State of Alaska Division of Retirement and Benefits on Wednesday, Oct. 14, in Anchorage Superior Court and demanded a jury trial.

The court's daily cases-filed report lists the complaint only as "other," without specific claims or dollar amounts, and the CourtView docket does not include the complaint's text. The docket lists attorney David K. Gross for the district and assigns the case to Judge Ian Wheeles. No attorney is listed for the division.

The filings do not say whether the suit involves a system outage that delayed retirement contributions in 2024 and 2025.

That outage struck the division's reporting system in November 2024 and delayed Teachers' and Public Employees' Retirement System (TRS and PERS) contributions statewide, including the district's, for about three months, according to a division notice. The Alaska Legislature appropriated $2,679,460 to cover district employees' lost earnings, paid in two installments on July 14 and July 21, 2025. That money covered only contributions recorded by July 11, 2025.

In a July 22, 2025, letter, the division told the district it had missed an extended July 2 deadline to clear its biweekly PERS backlog and that employers may be financially responsible for make-whole payments the appropriation cannot cover.