Redrawing the lines?

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough School District board shot down a move Wednesday to carve a piece off of Wasilla Middle School’s district and attach it to Teeland Middle School.

The area in question is a rectangular chunk of land the district dubbed the Crestwood neighborhood. It sits between Seldon Road and Spruce Avenue west of Lucille Street.

“I object most strenuously as the wife of the mayor and a Wasilla resident to be cutting up the city that way,” said Bernadette Rupright, wife of Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright.

Her husband submitted a four-page letter detailing his opposition.

“Doing the right thing does not mean do that which is most convenient for the administrators. This is about neighborhoods, cohesion within the city, the children’s development and stability,” the mayor wrote.

But school district administrators pointed out that Wasilla Middle School is overcrowded. There are six portable classrooms there already. There would need to be four more if the students the district hoped to send to Teeland instead attend Wasilla.

Deena Paramo, assistant superintendent, said most of the students in question were moved from Iditarod Elementary School to Tanaina Elementary School last year. Tanaina feeds Teeland.

“We just don’t think that that is the best learning environment we can offer children when we have other schools,” Paramo said of the portable classrooms. “The schools would be balanced a little bit and, again, we would keep those kids that already moved to Tanaina moving on with their peers.”

Without this change, Wasilla Middle would be pushing 900 students, administrators said. With it, they said, both middle schools would be around 800.

One of the main topics of conversation had to do not with either of those schools, but with Houston Middle School, which the district says is under capacity. Why couldn’t the district pull a piece off of Wasilla Middle’s north-western edge and give it to Houston?

The problem is that there aren’t a whole lot of connector roads between the Knik-Goose Bay Road area and the Houston/Big Lake area.

That also points to an issue the district has been facing for some time. It wants a new secondary school in Knik, the fastest growing area of the borough. Were a school there today, it would have 900 students.

And there are a number of students in the Houston area with boundary exemptions that let them go to Wasilla.

Paramo said a lot of that has to do with electives and athletics. Wasilla offers more of just about every type of elective.

“The kids that go to Houston, they love Houston, it’s not a problem with Houston,” Paramo said.

The measure eventually failed, with only two school board members — Sarah Welton and Susan Pougher — voting to make the change.

Board member Ole Larson said he didn’t feel the city was included sufficiently in the process.

“We have failed to take in the concerns of a mayor of a city and the letter that was written has some very important points,” Larson said.

Board member Erick Cordero said he didn’t feel he’d been presented with a permanent solution.

“This is a Band-Aid that is not actually going to solve the problem,” he said. “We’re going to be looking at this next year, I have a feeling.”

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