New space for Valley home-schoolers

WASILLA — On Friday afternoon, as the principal discusses all the new features of his brand new school, a student walked into Mat-Su Central School.

He said he’d fallen behind and dropped out of Wasilla High School after he was diagnosed with diabetes. Now he’s working full-time and needs a school that can work around his schedule.

Upstairs, a tech academy teacher bragged about his student, a home-schooler who knows enough about computers to teach other home-school kids how to use them.

That, in a nutshell, encompasses Mat-Su Central School’s mission. It facilitates home schooling, filling in gaps in parents’ abilities. But the school is also often a student’s last chance to keep from dropping out.

“What you’re seeing is a national trend in education toward blended learning,” principal John Brown said.

That’s blended as in a mix of home schooling and traditional school. Mat-Su Central, Brown said, is able to do that, and do it on the student’s schedule.

“Time is no longer the constant. Learning is the constant. Time is a variable,” he said.

It’s a mission that Mat-Su Central is better able to meet thanks to a major expansion and upgrade of its school that tripled the floor-space and is now complete and ready for an open house this week.

“In the state of Alaska there’s no home-school program that looks anything like this. There’s nobody trying to do anything like this,” Brown said.

That’s a statement that comes close to what the late Mat-Su schools superintendent Dr. Ken Burnely said was his vision for Mat-Su Central, which he believed could be a leader in home schooling nationally.

On a tour Friday, the architect who designed the new building, Jason Collins with Wolf Architecture, pointed out all the new features of the building — recycled materials, smart ventilation, high-efficiency windows. He said energy use is 15 percent more efficient than a traditional building.

That’s in the new second floor, but the old first floor also benefited.

“We’ve actually improved the efficiency of the old building by 5 percent,” Collins said.

In a lot of ways, the new building resembles more an office building than a schoolhouse. Teachers occupy small rooms with an antechamber, what a dentist would call a waiting room, but what Mat-Su Central calls a family room.

“It’s kind of a modified classroom concept,” Collins said.

The new space has allowed the school to have tons of things it didn’t have before. There’s a projects room for state testing that used to have to go on in churches and elsewhere. The school will still use off-site facilities sometimes, but not as often.

There’s also a library, an auditorium and a dedicated family room with a full kitchen, a popcorn machine and books for kids waiting for their siblings to finish up their lessons.

“This district made quite a commitment to these families,” Brown said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.