'Leave no child behind': Providing a good education for shrinking schools poses difficult problems for growing borough

In Trapper Creek last year, after funding for the elementary school's music teacher had been cut, the three teachers and teaching principal Alberta Nordberg -- all of whom Nordberg joked were lucky if they had enough musical skill to tune in a radio -- were at a loss as to how to give students a chance to participate in a Christmas program. They didn't have to. Nordberg presented the problem, and parents stepped up, taking charge of organizing rehearsal times, making sure costumes were ready and helping each student learn their part.

"The parents put it on," Nordberg said.

And like Christmas bazaars or other gatherings that happen at the school, it was an event attended by many community members who had no students at the school -- a community-wide event that highlights the interaction of small schools within small communities.

"When I say 'community,' I'm talking school -- but the school is the community," Nordberg said. "You really can't separate the two -- you just can't."

The blend between community and school is much of what has spurred more than a hundred Trapper Creek residents to get involved in discussions about how to keep the school open and maintain the current level of services. How to maintain the community's support while delivering a balanced budget is a battle the Mat-Su Borough School District is presently facing.

Picking up the slack

In areas with small schools, it literally takes a village to give students a good education. Talk to most any teacher or administrator in a small school and they can cite time and again events that have been successful only because the community got involved.

Some community residents take time to teach Trapper Creek students to ski, sometimes never even submitting the paperwork to receive a small stipend meant to reimburse them for their time. Others, such as former principal Kay Faerber, have stepped in to help the students prepare for their yearly Battle of the Books competition when the librarian position was scaled back. Ultimately, although involvement varies from year to year, the community has left its mark.

"The parents and community, we make a concerted effort to make up this deficit," Nordberg said, speaking of the gap between what's offered at basic-need schools such as Trapper Creek and what's offered at larger schools throughout the Valley. "They've made up the slack because they've had to. They made the effort where in other schools they sometimes don't because they don't have to."

It's true, Trapper Creek no longer has a music education program. And it doesn't have some of the programs available through larger schools. Like 10 other schools throughout the Valley, it's considered a basic need school.

Just the basics

According to information from the school district, schools that are historically below 250 students are considered basic need schools.

"Without the benefit of additional funding, small schools could not support fixed costs and the infrastructure necessary to create positive learning environments," a district report entitled "The needs of small schools," states, "Unlike the larger 'enrollment driven' schools, staffing at 'basic need' schools doesn't fluctuate based upon student enrollment."

Although funding of basic need schools varies widely based on numerous factors, their spending per student is generally higher than schools with more than 250 students. Palmer High School, for example, spent about $5,270 per student in the 2002 fiscal year, while Su Valley Junior/Senior High School spent about $9,333 per student. At Trapper Creek, the per-student funding penciled out to be $20,715 per student. It's that spending ratio that acting District Superintendent Bob Doyle is seeking to bring under control.

"If we generate one dollar, we're spending two here," Doyle told parents and community members who gathered on Jan. 23 to try to come up with ways to keep their school open.

It's not as though that money is being frittered away on frivolous items, Nordberg said. She runs a tight ship and she's worried about the prospects of it getting tighter. About 90 percent of the cost of running Trapper Creek Elementary is related to the salaries of the nine people employed full or part-time at the school.

Currently, 26 students in kindergarten through sixth grade attend school at Trapper Creek. They learn reading, writing and arithmetic and other basic courses in three school rooms and a gymnasium, with two full-time teachers.

One teacher instructs grades K-2, another teaches grades 3 and 4, and Nordberg acts as the primary teacher of grades 5 and 6. A fourth teacher is on staff to provide roughly one-third of her time as a supplemental teacher for Nordberg, stepping in when principal duties demand her time elsewhere. The remaining two-thirds of that teacher's time, Nordberg said, is divided among special education instruction, Title 1 instruction and the Extended Learning Program. A librarian visits the school for one-half day a week, as does a school nurse.

One proposal to keep Trapper Creek Elementary open and decrease the funding disparity is to expand the program on both ends. By reaching out to pre-school students and keeping existing sixth-graders in school until they reach seventh or eighth grade, the school can increase enrollment numbers, potentially by as many as 11 students. Although Nordberg agrees it is one way to bring the budget closer to a balancing point, she has concerns about putting pre-school through eighth-graders into three classrooms together.

"The educational opportunities for children will be going down if that happens," Nordberg speculated, "with the state testing and the need to keep the scores high."

Local problem not so local

While Trapper Creek is the only Valley school where closure was discussed this year, other Valley schools are also facing declining enrollment levels in a time in which the Valley is going through a prolonged growth spurt.

Schools outside the core area -- Houston Jr/Sr High, Willow, Sutton and Glacierview -- are not growing at the same rate as schools within the core area, such as Cottonwood Creek, Snowshoe and Tanaina Elementary schools. While the core area is growing so fast the numbers show a new elementary school should be built at least every year and a half, if not every year, some schools outside the core area are shrinking.

Faerber and Nordberg said after living in the Trapper Creek area for several years, they have seen the school's enrollment fluctuate, and they have an idea what it's related to.

"It really has raced up and down and is seemingly very tightly tied to the state's economic conditions," Faerber said.

"There were some people that … move down to Wasilla for job opportunities when the economy is good -- which it has been for the last three years -- then people move out when it gets bad," Nordberg said. "It's cheaper to live out here than in Anchorage or Wasilla.

When the economy turns, Nordberg said, some Trapper Creek residents move back to the cabins and out-of-pocket homes built in the remote area, chopping wood for fuel and operating a generator for electricity.

"Half my kids are not on the electrical grid system," Nordberg agreed. "It's cheaper for them to live out here."

There are other factors affecting the fluctuating school enrollment data, Faerber said. Census data shows Trapper Creek's median age is 44 years old, older than it was a few years ago.

An aging population is part of what's behind the two proposed school closures in the Kenai Peninsula. The Hope K-12 school, if it goes below eight students, is proposed for closure, and the Kenai Peninsula School District is looking at closing Nikiski Elementary by 2004, according to information from that school district.

"Our decisions have been driven more by declining enrollment," said Kenai's assistant superintendent of instruction, Gary Whiteley.

That district, he said, has been facing about a two-percent drop in enrollment each year for the past five years, although the borough has actually seen a rise in population.

"There's a lot of people in Kenai past their childbearing years," Whiteley said. "Even though we have an increase in population, there has been a decrease in school-age children."

Today in Hope, Whiteley said, a $4.6-million school is being used by just 13 students. The district will hold a work session soon to discuss the fate of the school with the community, but Whiteley said the reality of impending closures has made the district take a hard look at its alternatives.

"Our communities, at least like Nikiski, have kind of seen it coming," Whiteley said.

In December 2002, Kenai's Superintendent, Dr. Donna Peterson, released a "Preliminary long range plan for consolidating schools." The document sets out a few parameters: all schools are subject to review; that a 12-month communication process with the community should take place prior to any final decision on closure; and that the emphasis should be on creating something better under the current circumstances, among other things.

The plan incorporates school closures, consolidations and providing distance learning during the next two years. They're not easy decisions, but letting the community in on the plan of action early on may provide some help.

"Making budget decisions based on revenue is very difficult for the central office," Whiteley said.

Learning and working together

Doyle said he's looking over Kenai's long-range plan and he plans to recommend to board members that a similar plan be created locally. But with new federal regulations coming down the pike, school closures and potential consolidations are just one of many worries school districts across the state and across the nation are facing.

The "No Child Left Behind" program, signed into law last January by U.S. President George W. Bush, requires that, by 2006, all instructional paraprofessionals, or teachers' aides, have a minimum of two years of college, an associate's degree, or passing scores on "a rigorous formal state and local assessment."

It also requires that, by 2006, all teachers considered "highly qualified" have full state certification or licensure and have earned a bachelor's degree. Elementary teachers must also go through tests in the areas of basic elementary curriculum while middle and secondary teachers must go through state subject tests or obtain an academic major, graduate degree or advance certification in each subject area taught.

If these criteria are not met, districts across the nation must, by the start of the school year, notify parents of their right to know about their child's teachers' qualifications. After school has been taught for four weeks, students in classes taught by a teacher not considered under the NCLB standards to be highly qualified will be sent a letter informing the parents that the teacher is not considered highly qualified. Parents can, at that time, be given a voucher to attend another school where the teacher is considered highly qualified.

Schools such as Trapper Creek and Glacierview will be harder areas to implement the requirements of NCLB, Doyle said, as teachers are often asked to teach in more than one field of expertise. By these standards, the teacher who will instruct the seventh-grade class at Trapper Creek, if the school expands, will be asked to have advanced certifications, a major in or a graduate degree in math, English, science, history and any other field taught at the school.

"Can you have an expert in all fields?" Doyle asked. "Can any one person provide all of those individual areas?"

Doyle said his administrative staff and the school board will, in the near future, be taking a look at how those various requirements can be met in all 34 of the district's schools.

"We'll plan for the core requirements," Doyle said. "I think the small schools have their challenges."

He said one option the district has used in the past and may bring up again is providing distance learning through television access. That plan, Doyle said, worked for several years, but never passed out of the pilot program phase because of cost constraints. Televisions and cameras were set up, for example, in Wasilla, Palmer and Houston schools. Teachers in Wasilla and Palmer were able to provide instruction in smaller schools in subjects in which local teachers were not as skilled.

There are options, Doyle said, and there will be challenges. But at the Jan. 23 community meeting and in an interview Thursday, he said he's willing to meet those challenges and find ways to continue providing education in Valley schools -- small and large.

"I think small schools are good schools," Doyle said. "We just have to get to the point where we can support them."

School rooted in community

Trapper Creek Elementary School, similar to other amenities in the area, got a humble start.

In 1959, a group of people came to the Trapper Creek area to homestead. A few years later, the need for a school became evident, so residents began to hold school in a classroom in the Porterfield family's log cabin in 1966.

When the 1967 school year began, classes were held in a white house on the Kula homestead, located at Mile 1 Petersville Road. For two years, a handful of Trapper Creek residents sent their children to the Kula homestead, until the Mat-Su Borough, in 1969, acquired land at mile 114 of the Parks Highway.

A portable was moved onto the land for the '69-'70 school year, and school continued on the property for seven years. By the time the school was relocated to Mile 3 Petersville Road in 1978, the facilities had expanded to include five portables. In April 1983, with the help of a state appropriation, the existing school and gymnasium were constructed at the Scotty Lake site at mile 3.

A pictorial history of the school's many phases now warms the home of Kay Faerber, who taught and served as principal at the school from 1975 to 1999. The history is depicted on a large quilt that, through a little trading, Faerber acquired. The quilt was raffled off a few years ago and, despite her best efforts to win it, a Su-Valley teacher took it home. Faerber said her husband, knowing how much she wanted the quilt, arranged to trade the quilt for a gun -- which the teacher was more interested in anyway -- and Faerber got the quilt.