One of state's tiniest schools faces closure
ANCHORAGE - The number of students at the Hope school isn't enough to field a soccer team. The entire student body could sit at a single dining room table, or fit into a minivan.
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As one of the state's smallest public schools, the students don't get specialized science or art classes. They don't have school dances. And they don't know what it's like to shuffle through crowded halls bumping shoulders with different social cliques.
But parents like Angie Motoyama think this is just fine and are fighting to keep the doors to the public school open in the face of a threat to close it because the number of students has dropped below the state's minimum 10-student requirement for funding.
"This is a good school and I don't want to lose it," said the 40-year-old mother whose three kids attend the school.
Ever since a 1999 state law that cuts off funding for schools with fewer than 10 students, keeping the one-teacher Hope school operating has been a struggle. The whole town has only 130 residents. This year, after a family moved with their three children, the studentpopulation dropped to eight, then to seven when a student graduated. Shortly thereafter the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District sent a letter to the four Hope families with kids in the school: It was being placed on the official list of potential school closures next year.
Shutting it down means parents will either have to home school or simply move away from the quiet, picturesque town.
The effect could be devastating. Without a school, a town can't offer residents an education for their children. Towns can dry up. In the decade since the Alaska law passed, more than a dozen villages have lost their schools, some with damaging ripples.
"It killed our village," said Rampart Village Corporation president Linda Evans.
Rampart, an old mining town on the Yukon River about 100 miles northwest of Fairbanks, went from 45 people to 20 when its school closed in 2000. More important, Evans said, the village lost its future by losing its next generation. Those left are mostly elders.
Hope residents fear the same.
"The school is kind of the heart of the community," said Scott Sherritt, a 12-year resident. "This place is families. And if families end up having to move out, to go someplace where they can attend school, it's going to impact us."
He doesn't want to see the popular summer destination 20 miles off the Seward Highway turn into a community of weekend cabins.
The problem is attracting permanent residents. The town is surrounded by stunning views of the Chugach Mountains and the Chugach National Forest and sits on the ocean, but it offers little employment and rarely has homes or land for sale.
It is so far away from other towns that the Kenai school district says it is not feasible to bus the kids to another school. The nearest high school would be in Soldotna, more than an hour away.
Residents like Motoyama and Sherritt think they should be given more time to save their town. They've asked the Kenai Peninsula Borough, which owns much of the land around Hope, to open it up for sale and development. They've also thought about setting up a foster home for children. And, they are trying to recruit North Slope employees, who can work shifts on the oil fields then commute back to Hope where they could have their families.
This year, because its student enrollment fell below the minimum level, the school will not get the $250,000 it expected from the state. Everywhere in Alaska, including Anchorage, the state pays most of the costs of education. When the school abruptly lost this funding, the Kenai district had to find the money to keep it going until the end of the school year.
Superintendent Donna Peterson worries that the town's plans for a mini revival just aren't sustainable. They've been talking about bringing in families for years but it hasn't happened, she said.
Just to pay the $60,000 heating bill on the building, which is meant for 100 students, is expensive, she says. The student population has never reached half of what the building was originally built for.
False Pass, a town of 55 people in the Aleutian Islands, is in a similar situation. This year, its school has just five students.
"We don't know what will happen," said Carl Warner, of the Aleutians East Borough School District.
For a second year, the borough has kicked in the quarter million dollars that normally the state would pay for the school.