Assembly members seek equal vote on joint school rightsizing panel

Three Anchorage Assembly members want a real vote on how the city's schools get consolidated — not the single non-voting seat the School Board has offered them.

Assembly Members Sydney Scout, Jared Goecker and Yarrow Silvers are pushing a resolution asking the school district for a joint committee on "rightsizing" — the district's term for shrinking its building stock to match falling enrollment — with equal representation and equal voting power for both bodies. They're not seeking final Assembly authority over which schools close, just an equal seat at the table where those decisions get shaped. It's up before the Assembly on Sept. 15.

The fight follows a round of closures that hit families hard. In February, the School Board voted 4-3 to close Campbell STEM, Fire Lake and Lake Otis elementary schools at the end of this past school year, sending students into reassignment, changed bus routes and relocated special-education classrooms. The district blamed a $90 million budget shortfall and the loss of nearly 7,500 students since 2015, and says more closures may be necessary.

The two bodies actually agreed, at first, on how to handle what comes next. At a joint session in June, the Assembly and the board unanimously asked their chairs to design a joint rightsizing committee with equal representation. But in July, the board instead created its own advisory committee — with a single, non-voting Assembly seat. That's the gap the new resolution is trying to close.

Some board members want to keep the Assembly out of closure decisions entirely. "I do not support assembly members voting on whether or not to close schools," board member Margo Bellamy said in August. At that same meeting, the board voted to pledge no school closures in the coming year unless an emergency forces one.

The Assembly hasn't voted on the resolution yet. The board's advisory committee is set to expire at the end of 2026.