Setting sites on new schools

April 3, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - More students are continuing to enroll in Mat-Su Borough Schools, adding to their already ballooning population. By next year, the district expects to have more than 800 more students than they do this year.

With not even a single new school opening in the fall and only one Wasilla area elementary school opening in 2006, local officials are scrambling to secure more land and funding for new schools before overcrowding reaches a critical point.

On Tuesday, members of the School Site Selection Committee met to discuss possible building sites for three new elementary schools in the core area. The district hopes to have bonds for these schools on the October ballot and hope to open them for business by 2009.

Already, many Mat-Su schools are over capacity with an increasing number of portable classrooms housing overflow students. Larson Elementary is the most crowded of all, with several hundred students more than their building's capacity.

Sitting around a large wooden conference table Tuesday morning, school district and borough officials studied large area maps of the borough, trying to pinpoint possible properties, affordable and suitable for school construction sites. Borough land on the map was shaded a pale yellow color. The problem is that the pale yellow sections comprised only a small fraction of the map. The overwhelming amount of land on the maps was private property or land owned by the University of Alaska. With skyrocketing property values and rapidly developing subdivisions, finding suitable school sites has been challenging.

"Borough land is dwindling fast," said committee member and Valley Realtor, Helga Larson, as she surveyed the maps along with borough assembly members, school board members and borough

officials.

Borough Assembly Member Jim Colver said funding sources for school sites and buildings is a major concern.

"We are cognizant of the cost to taxpayers," he said in an interview Wednesday, "and we are faced with the tax cap movement. So we have to be wise with public funds. But it's important that we get land now before it costs more later."

The school district's highest priorities are to select three land parcels. One spot would be for a schools near south Trunk Road, close to Mat-Su College and the new hospital. A second spot is being sought in the Palmer Springer Loop area. A third school would be out on Knik Goose-Bay Road where multiple subdivisions are under construction. The district also wants to see a site selected for a new high school in the Wasilla area to relieve pressure on Wasilla High School.

The borough standard for elementary school sites is between 30 and 40 acres. Middle schools take between 55 and 85 acres and high schools require between 85 and 135 acres. The state standard suggests considerably less land, 10 acres for elementary schools, 20 for middle schools and 30 for high schools.

During the Tuesday meeting, school officials raised the possibility of constructing future schools on sites smaller than the borough standards. Iditarod Elementary School was mentioned as an example of a school built on a 10-acre parcel.

For the Knik-Fairview area school, committee members agreed to look into a 640-acre plot, roughly four miles south-west of Goose-Bay Elementary School, one of the more crowded schools in the district. Before their next meeting, borough officials plan to walk the land to determine if it contains a suitable building site.

For the south Trunk Road- area school, the committee decided to try and contact land management officials at the University of Alaska to determine if there is any land that might be available for an elementary school.

"I think that's an ideal location for a school because we have access," Assembly Member Jim Colver said.

With many properties accessed by poor quality dirt roads or none at all, the cost to build roads and extend utilities is another challenge the site selection committee faces.

School Information Specialist Kim Floyd said the district has met several times recently with local developers to try to coordinate school sites with the construction of large subdivisions. Floyd said some developers were open to the idea of land swaps with the borough. A land swap would enable the borough to strategically locate schools near large subdivisions while giving developers borough land located in more remote areas.

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.