Fairbanks
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 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...
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 ...
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.
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...