District counsel advises against joint task force on closed schools

Planning for Anchorage school buildings emptied by closures will stay under school board control, after the district's outside counsel advised against sharing that work with the Anchorage Assembly.

The advice came in a three-page memorandum dated Sept. 17 from Lee Baxter of Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt to Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt. It reviewed a proposal written two days earlier by school board member Paul McDonogh, who chairs the board's Ad Hoc Committee on Rightsizing, the district's term for matching capacity to enrollment.

The board voted Feb. 24 to close Fire Lake Elementary, Lake Otis Elementary and Campbell STEM Elementary. Under the district's rightsizing plan, the old Abbott Loop Elementary building and the Campbell STEM building will be marked as excess to district needs and returned to the Municipality of Anchorage. McDonogh's paper says plans for both buildings have yet to be fully developed.

McDonogh's 19-page proposal, titled "A Collaborative Framework for School Facility Transition," asked the two bodies to seat a joint task force in October. Three voting members would come from each body, with non-voting staff from district facilities and from municipal planning and property. The task force would handle inventory, capital assessment, reuse and disposition criteria, a first-look protocol and joint community engagement.

The proposal drew a line around closure decisions themselves. Only the school board would debate whether a school is viable and whether to close it. "Votes taken within the taskforce must be recommendations only, regardless of the outcome of the vote," McDonogh wrote.

He also described the problem he said the task force would solve. "Right now, nothing defines what happens to a building once it leaves classroom use; further, nothing brings the Municipality into that conversation before the property is already vacant," the paper says. Of the last eight closures, McDonogh wrote, six buildings went to charter schools.

Counsel's objections

Baxter raised four objections. The first rests on AS 14.12.020(b) and on Tunley v. Municipality of Anchorage School District. "Because ASD School Board members have exclusive, nondelegable authority over school closures, any joint taskforce's decision is a recommendation," the memo says.

The second turns on how each body is elected. School board members run at large across the municipality. Assembly members run in the district where they live. "Assembly members from districts that include any proposed school closure will have a natural interest in opposing closures in their districts because their constituents will oppose them," Baxter wrote. The memo adds that "what is in the narrower interests of the Anchorage public school system will often not align with broader interests of the municipal government."

Baxter also called the task force's purview vague and said comparisons to other cities do not hold, because districts in Seattle, Denver and California own their buildings. "In Anchorage, the Muni and only the Muni decides what to do with property once ASD relinquishes management by deeming the property in excess of school needs," the memo says. Its conclusion is that either arrangement fails: "In either case, members of the respective bodies will be weighing into decisions that they were not elected to decide."

The two documents do not argue from the same law. McDonogh built on AS 14.14.060 and AS 14.14.065 and on MacAuley v. Hildebrand. Baxter cited AS 14.12.020(b) and Tunley. Neither cites the other's case. The provision Baxter cites is one sentence: each borough or city school district "shall be operated on a district-wide basis under the management and control of a school board." The provision McDonogh cites points the other way: the borough assembly shall determine the location of school buildings, with due consideration to the school board's recommendations. A separate provision allowing the two bodies to share work by agreement reaches only building design, custodial services, maintenance and major construction.

What the board set up instead

The board has instead chartered the Anchorage School Board Rightsizing Advisory Committee, issued over board President Carl Jacobs's name. The committee is the full seven-member board, with McDonogh as chair. The Assembly receives one non-voting representative from each of the six Assembly districts, designated by Assembly Vice Chair Anna Brawley. The charter states the committee "is not charged with recommending specific school closures, consolidations, or program changes" and "does not have a dedicated budget." It is discharged when the board's three standing committees endorse its deliverables, or at the next reorganization of board leadership, expected in early May 2027.

The draft agenda for Friday's joint meeting of the school board and the Assembly listed rightsizing as an informational item under other matters of mutual concern, not as an action item. Minutes of that meeting are not yet published. The next joint meeting is scheduled for Dec. 4, ahead of the first-quarter 2027 report date McDonogh's proposal named.

Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt also defended the district in the Campbell STEM lawsuit, case 3AN-26-06081 CI, brought in Anchorage Superior Court by the Campbell STEM Preservation and Education Foundation. The parties stipulated to dismissal with prejudice on Aug. 17, and Judge Una S. Gandbhir ordered it Aug. 19, with each party bearing its own fees and costs. The record does not say why the foundation dropped the case.

The numbers behind the dispute

The enrollment figures behind the dispute come from McDonogh's paper. District enrollment fell from 48,863 in 2013 to 42,638 in 2024, a loss of 6,225 students, or about 13 percent. The paper projects enrollment could reach 40,000 by 2030, while noting in a footnote that 2026 demographic reports suggest the decline may be levelling out. A district survey summary updated Sept. 17 puts next year's projected shortfall at more than $40 million. Two school propositions on the April 7 ballot, $79.5 million in capital and $11.8 million in operating contribution, both failed narrowly.

Polling prepared with Alaska Survey Research and published with the joint meeting materials found 62 percent of respondents in April agreed they support the district using fewer schools to cut expenses, while 66 percent viewed the district's financial and budget management unfavorably. Disapproval of the three consolidations ran at 35 percent overall and 48 percent among households with students or alumni of those three schools.

The memorandum is the only document in the public record arguing against the joint task force. Bryantt, who received it, has not said publicly what he concluded. Brawley, named in the charter as the person who designates the Assembly's six representatives, has not said whether the Assembly will take the non-voting seats. No parent, teacher or community council from Fire Lake, Lake Otis, Abbott Loop or Campbell STEM appears in any of the documents.