Kodiak district asks school board to weigh closing East Elementary in 2027

Two of the three reorganization options the Kodiak Island Borough School District will put to its Board of Education on Tuesday would close East Elementary School in summer 2027. Five weeks earlier, the same board received a draft capital plan asking the state to fund $5.75 million of work on that same building.

The board takes up the options at a work session at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the District Services Conference Room. No vote is scheduled. Community comment is taken at the start of the session and is limited to three minutes per person.

Strategy A would fold East Elementary into Main Elementary School and Kodiak Middle School. Main would become a K-3 school with an estimated average daily membership, the attendance-based count the state funds schools on, of 211. The high school would shift to grades 8 through 12 with an estimated 652 students, and the middle school would take grades 4 through 7 at 503. Peterson Elementary would drop to 107 students as a K-3 school. Strategy B closes East on the same date but sends its students to Main and Peterson instead, turning Peterson into a K-7 school of about 230 students. Under that plan, Kodiak Middle School would take grades 4 through 7 with an estimated 380 students, well below Strategy A's 503. Both promise to recognize the district's current waiver process for school choice at K-3.

Strategy C is the district's description of not reorganizing. It reads: "Postpone reorganization in anticipation of improvements in political landscape at state level. Hope additional funding is provided through state and local funding bodies. Remain under current organizational structure while reviewing and reducing personnel and programs to close reoccurring budget deficits throughout KIBSD." If reorganization does move forward, the district says it would consider adding high-interest career modules starting in FY29, including marine sciences, robotics and military sciences.

In 2016 the district ran 15 school sites with an average daily membership of 2,420. In 2026 it runs 10 sites with 1,871, a drop of 549 students, or 23 percent. On the same trend the presentation, which the district calls Kodiak 2036, projects 1,441 students by 2036. Every school is under capacity, a point the deck states in a heading: "Current Facility Use = 100% Under Capacity." Peterson is at 40 percent. East Elementary is at 59. It enrolled 289 students in October 2024, the most recent count the state publishes.

The presentation does not say what closing the school would save. Under fiscal health it says, in full, "Financial Information is forthcoming." It lists what underused buildings cost, from heating unused space to nurses, counselors, psychologists and music programs, and attaches no figure to any of it.

The board received a capital plan on Aug. 3. Drafted July 29 for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, it lists 31 projects worth $19,608,824. Seven are at East Elementary and total $5,750,000: HVAC controls in FY2029, lighting in FY2030, and in FY2032 an exterior wall system, flooring, specialties, plumbing piping and fire suppression. All fall after the proposed closure date. East's projects account for $4.35 million of the plan's $5.6 million in FY2032 spending, the plan's single largest year. Together the East projects are 29.3 percent of the six-year request.

This would be the district's second elementary closure in three years. The board voted on Jan. 22, 2025, to consolidate North Star Elementary into East and Main, establishing K-3 at East and grades 4 and 5 at Main. Borough figures show Kodiak lost about 650 residents in five years, and a draft comprehensive plan projects roughly 1,200 more by 2045.

The Association of Alaska School Boards, in its 2026 "Where We Stand" positions, opposes mandated consolidation and says "no evidence has been provided to support the proposition that significant savings or improved student learning would result from the indiscriminate combining of school districts or schools."

The district says it will share the options with the community budget advisory council on Wednesday, the day after the board sees them, for feedback and concerns. A board action or determination sits last on its next-steps list, with no date attached.