Students, parents and teachers at elementary schools that the Anchorage School District has recommended closing say closing their schools and relocating 590 students, some of whom have special needs, would have a disproportionate impact on the district’s most vulnerable population .

On Tuesday, the Anchorage school board heard nearly three hours of testimony from community members likely to be affected by the district’s revised proposal to close four elementary schools in May.

If approved by the school board, these closures would impact Baxter, Lake Hood and Nunaka Valley elementary schools in Anchorage, as well as Fire Lake Elementary in Eagle River. The district plans to repurpose each of these buildings for existing charter schools.

Fire Lake parents and teachers testified Tuesday that relocating four of the district’s 11 “structured learning classroom” programs, which provide additional support for children with special needs, would displace 88 students with disabilities and, at best, would be disruptive and impractical would be dangerous in the worst case.

The 23 Structured Learning students at Fire Lake Elementary School include children who are blind, hearing impaired, have Down syndrome or are on the spectrum, staff said. A Fire Lake employee who works in the program said the majority of her students are autistic, making them the “least resistant people” to moving.

“Children in the SLC program will experience more severe negative impacts from changing schools than those not on the spectrum,” said Rachael Gage, a Fire Lake employee and parent of a child in the program. “People on the spectrum don’t experience their world the way we do. Structure is important. Environment is important. Familiarity is important.”

Sandy Buchwald, a resource officer at Fire Lake Elementary who works with students with special needs, said her current school’s geography acts as a protective factor for her students.

“They will run. They are breakouts,” she said. At least now, she said, her school is isolated at the end of a country road and not next to the Glenn Highway or Old Glenn Highway, where the proposed alternative schools are located.

There are 11 schools across the district that offer structured learning classes, according to district spokesman Corey Allen Young. Three of them are on the list of planned closures: Baxter Elementary, which hosts the largest SLC program in the district, is expected to have 36 students in structured instruction next year; Fire Lake Elementary expects to have 18 students; and Lake Hood, five students, according to the senior director of special education Pam Momany. The district also recommends moving Wonder Park Elementary’s 29 structured instruction students to Mountain View or Chester Valley Elementary to allow for more appropriate placement.

“It is safe to say that students on this spectrum will be disproportionately impacted by the recommended school closures compared to students who have access to mainstream education,” Gage said.

Parents and staff also expressed concerns that Fire Lake students could move to a different curriculum at what they say is a more academically rigorous school, exacerbating the already excessive daily traffic load at Eagle River Elementary School.

“It’s not just students who will be affected by morning traffic, sitting on buses and car traffic,” said Erin Day, Fire Lake administrative assistant and parent. “This will be a community impacted by a government that hasn’t seen the whole picture.”

Parents and staff at the other three schools scheduled to close, as well as the schools slated to accept the students, expressed concerns ranging from insufficient notice from the district to the inappropriate placement of certain support programs to the appearance of inequality in an overrepresentation of low-income schools on the list.

Under the district’s current proposal, 113 students at Lake Hood Elementary, at least 20 of whom require special supports for disabilities, would move to Turnagain Elementary.

Several parents and staff at Turnagain Elementary told the board that their school lacks the space to accommodate these students and that the inappropriate classroom layout puts students with disabilities “at the center of attention when they are in emotional crisis.” Instead, they recommended the board consider moving those students to a building still under construction at Inlet View Elementary that could be built preemptively to meet the students’ needs.

While most parents and teachers agree that school consolidation needs to happen — the district has lost more than 6,000 students in a steady decline since 2010 — some say targeting low-income schools will lead to further economic inequities . Currently, three of the four proposed schools are Title 1 schools, which receive federal funding to serve students from low-income families.

“That the district has shown a willingness to pursue a rezoning agenda that will overcrowd the city’s lower-income neighborhood school while also responding to the desires of higher-income families in Anchorage has also been truly eye-opening,” said Dorothy McCauley, mother from Nunaka Valley.

Parents at Baxter Elementary — a school that was scheduled to close in 2028 under the district’s original proposal but would close at the end of this school year under ASD’s updated plan — asked school board members Tuesday for more time to inform their community and to motivate.

Katie Gibson, a PTA member and mother of a Baxter Elementary student, said she is trying to organize parents and school staff to follow the district’s updated proposal, which was announced on the eve of Thanksgiving. At least three parents didn’t even know about the revised plan, she said.

“It just seemed like we didn’t have enough time to organize and coordinate to even come up with a response to the board with any kind of knowledge,” she said. “So I would like to ask for more time just to be able to talk to our community.”

Community members at Lake Hood Elementary School expressed the same wish. “It took the district six months to make this decision, but they only gave us six weeks to process the news, write witness statements, write emails explaining why we believe that we “We should stay open, or just accept our fate,” said one parent.

At the three schools that were spared from the closure – Bear Valley, Tudor and Wonder Park elementary schools – parents are relieved. Those who “put life on hold for a month” to collect data, organize information campaigns and show up to school board meetings and community engagement sessions can finally breathe, Bear Valley PTA President Katie Rohrs said.

“But there are mixed feelings,” she said. “Okay, we’re safe, but there are four other schools that aren’t. We hope the school board takes a close look at these other schools and really decides if this is their fate.”

The Anchorage School Board will hold a special meeting Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon to discuss school closures. School board members will vote on Dec. 17.

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