Three Mat-Su school roofs are failing, and the money may take years

Replacing the roofs at three Mat-Su schools tops a $39 million maintenance list the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District board sent to the borough this month. Deputy Superintendent Katie Gardner told the board it "may take more than one budget cycle to set aside enough funding" for those three projects alone.

The roofs are one item on a much longer list. The district's backlog of repairs it has put off stands at $411 million, across 45 buildings worth about $1 billion that average nearly 35 years old.

The borough has paid for $4.4 million in projects the board prioritized since 2024, plus $6.1 million in unplanned work over roughly the same period for boilers, septic and water systems that failed.

Board member Ole Larson said the district has no school maintenance bond to draw on. "When something fails, we fix it," he said. Gardner said preventive maintenance happens on schedule, but systems already past their expected life under state guidelines leave the district catching up rather than getting ahead. The district's debt payments on past borrowing largely end in 2032.