Anchorage
Alaska's Diversity Is Everywhere, and It Isn't Moving
At East Anchorage High School, students speak roughly 50 native languages. Across the district, 112 languages show up on home-language surveys. Anchorage is, by several measures, one of the most racia...
Alaska Native Graduation Rate Stuck at 68%
In 2022, 64.5% of Alaska Native students graduated from high school on time. It was the lowest point in seven years of data. Three years later, the rate has clawed back to 68.0%. That recovery, such a...
Alaska Graduates Just 80% of Students
In 2025, roughly 1,999 Alaska students who started high school four years earlier did not walk at graduation. That is one in five.
For Every 100 Seniors, Alaska Has Only 84 Kindergartners
Fire Lake Elementary, Lake Otis Elementary, Campbell STEM Elementary. Three Anchorage schools that will lock their doors after this school year, casualties of a district staring down a $90 million def...
Every Year, Alaska Gains Seniors It Never Lost
In most states, the transition from 11th to 12th grade is where the pipeline leaks. Nationally, cohorts lose 3% to 5% of their students between junior and senior year to dropouts, transfers, and early...
Six Alaska Districts Have Fewer Than 100 Students
The school in Pelican enrolls 16 students. The entire district is one building, on an island in the Gulf of Alaska accessible only by floatplane or state ferry. There is no road to Pelican. There is n...
Alaska Never Actually Recovered
In February, the Anchorage School Board voted 5-2 to close three more elementary schools. Fire Lake and Lake Otis were running at roughly 50% capacity. The district has now shuttered eight schools in ...
Virtual Districts Are the Only Ones Growing in Alaska
Galena City School District is a village of roughly 500 people on the Yukon River, 270 air miles west of Fairbanks. It has one road in and no road out. It also enrolls 8,279 students, making it the fo...
Alaska's Black Student Population Shrinks Nearly 20% in Six Years
In 2020, 3,317 Black students were enrolled in Alaska's public schools. By 2026, that number had fallen to 2,669. The decline of 648 students, 19.5%, makes Black students the fastest-shrinking racial ...
Fairbanks Closed Three Schools. It Was Not Enough.
Christine Fik's children attended Pearl Creek Elementary, a school their family considered a community, not just a building. In February 2025, the Fairbanks North Star Borough school board voted 5-2 t...
Half of Alaska's Districts Hit Record Lows
In Sleetmute, a village of 80 people on the Kuskokwim River, an architect declared the school building unsafe for occupancy in 2021. The foundation had deteriorated to rubble. The Kuspuk School Distri...
One in Nine Alaska Students Now Learns by Mail
Galena is a village of roughly 500 people on the Yukon River, 270 air miles west of Fairbanks. It has no road access. Its school district enrolls 8,279 students.
Alaska Loses One in 20 Native Students in Seven Years
The Lower Kuskokwim School District stretches across 22 Yup'ik villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a roadless expanse of tundra the size of West Virginia. Seven years before the 2025-26 count, 4,04...
Anchorage Lost More Students Than All of Alaska
Campbell STEM Elementary is Alaska's only STEM-certified elementary school. It has a waitlist. And it was approved for closure at the end of the 2025-26 school year because the Anchorage School Distri...
Alaska Enrollment Hits Seven-Year Low
Anchorage lost 4,530 students in seven years. Fairbanks lost 2,017. Juneau lost 753. Together, Alaska's three largest traditional school districts shed more students than the entire state did, because...
Alaska Publishes 2025-26 Enrollment Data
Last year, Alaska's public school enrollment dropped to 126,284 students. It looked like the state might be finding a floor — the previous two years had shown modest growth that nearly erased the COVI...