Mayor Suzanne LaFrance recently encouraged voters to support this year’s municipal propositions as a means to “invest in our neighborhoods, maintain the infrastructure we have and build the community we want to live in.” I couldn’t agree more, and would suggest that the Anchorage School District’s 2026 bond package — Proposition 1 – deserves a “yes” for the same core reasons. But because it invests in, maintains and builds community by funding public schools’ capital needs, Proposition 1 offers additional returns on taxpayers’ investment: the safety and efficacy of students’ learning conditions. Every year, ASD’s annual Facility Condition Assessment Program identifies and prioritizes the district’s most “unfunded, emergent” facility needs. Last November, the Anchorage School Board unanimously placed the prioritized needs of more than 20 district facilities on ASD’s 2026 school bond. Since then, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. and community leaders have pledged their support for what has become Proposition 1. Here’s what Proposition 1 will accomplish for students and our community as a whole: Installing “building access controls” for Airport Heights, Aurora, Bayshore, Girdwood, Gladys Wood, Huffman, Mountain View, North Star, Rabbit Creek, Russian Jack, Turnagain, Tyson, Williwaw and Willow Crest elementary schools, as well as for StrEaM Academy Charter School, will ensure that staff members are able to secure these schools’ front entries for thousands of students, educators, families and volunteers every single day. By upgrading the student nutrition facility, voters will help ASD transition away from heat-and-eat, plastic-wrapped meals, and toward freshly prepared breakfasts and lunches made with whole foods. These upgrades will improve the taste and quality of school meals, decrease plastic and food waste, better align the capacity to serve meals with students’ growing demands, and help ensure that every student is ready to learn. At Klatt Elementary School, a project will address the 43-year-old building’s structural deficiencies. For students enrolled at the 59-year-old Tudor Elementary School, Proposition 1 will fund a secure front entry vestibule, replace the roof and remediate structural issues with the school’s trusses. At 66-year-old Bettye Davis East High School, a project to replace the aging electrical service and upgrade a standby generator will keep the lights, heat and safety systems functioning — and students learning — when the power goes out. And at Ursa Major — the 74-year-old ASD elementary school on JBER which had to be closed when significant seismic damage was discovered shortly before the start of the 2021-22 school year — taxpayers’ support for building demolition and material removal will enable the Anchorage School District to leverage an 80% federal match to rebuild the facility. At the 63-year-old Romig Middle School, Proposition 1 will translate into a safer, more accessible, drier, better insulated and more effective learning environment for students. Romig’s projects will create ASD’s first secure middle school front entrance, replace its leaking roof, and improve its snow load capacity and insulation value, replace the building’s sprinkler, boiler, fire alarm, and plumbing distribution systems, improve building accessibility for students utilizing wheelchairs or other mobility devices, and remediate hazardous materials. Finally, the building upgrades proposed for the 71-year-old Lake Otis elementary school building will ensure that ASD students can safely utilize that facility for decades. This project will replace the school’s roof and improve its insulation, add continuous exterior insulation and replace the exterior finishes, replace the exterior doors and windows, and repair water intrusion and seismic-related damage. It will also remediate the building’s ADA deficiencies, support HVAC and kitchen upgrades, and replace the school’s floor, wall, ceiling, door, plumbing, and operable partition components. Some have suggested that keeping the Lake Otis building upgrades on ASD’s bond would be incongruent with the board’s Feb. 24 decision to close the school as a “neighborhood” facility and allow Rilke Schule (one of ASD’s public charter schools) to utilize it after the end of the current school year. That’s why a few reflections may be in order. First, the board’s vote to close three schools for next year and more highly utilize all receiving schools will allow the district to better align its overall footprint with declining student enrollment levels and more efficiently manage its limited operational resources. Second, because all of Alaska’s charter school students are public school students, any charter school students who would reoccupy the Lake Otis building after repairs are safely completed will be local, publicly enrolled ASD students. It may also be helpful for voters to understand that the Lake Otis building’s needs predated the board’s recent “rightsizing” decision by the better part of a decade. They first appeared on the district’s annual six-year Capital Improvement Plan for the 2026 bond back in November 2020. At that time, multiple systems were described as “beyond the expected life.” The following October, Dr. Deena Bishop’s administration brought the project forward for consideration as a district priority on 2022’s bond. That November, in response to the scale, cost, and immediacy of the building’s needs, all seven members of the current ASD Board approved placing a $12.9 million “building life extension” project for Lake Otis on the final, two-year bond package for April 2022. But because that bond package narrowly failed, the Lake Otis work has never taken place. Since then, the cost to address the Lake Otis building’s needs has grown to $19.5 million. By approving Proposition 1 this spring, voters will ensure that long-deferred repairs in this centrally located facility can be addressed before they require an even larger scale of investment. Furthermore, and as with the ASD facilities which Aquarian, StrEaM and Alaska Native Cultural charter schools already occupy, voters can ensure that a more highly utilized Lake Otis building will be able to safely serve hundreds of ASD students each year for the foreseeable future. Although safe trusses, secure front entries, dry roofs, wheelchair access, generators, and modern HVAC, plumbing, electrical and fire suppression systems should all be non-negotiable components within any school building a parent sends their child into, the reality is that bonding for our schools’ facility needs is our community’s primary tool to ensure the safety, quality, and efficacy of student learning environments. That’s why I’m hopeful that a majority of voters will assert that safe, functional student learning conditions are central to the kind of community we want to live in and vote “yes” on Proposition 1. Kelly Lessens is a parent of two Anchorage School District students and a member of the Anchorage School Board. Her views here do not necessarily reflect those of the board or district. The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.
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