Mat-Su - EdTribune AK - Alaska Education Data

Alaska Graduates Just 80% of Students

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2025, roughly 1,999 Alaska students who started high school four years earlier did not walk at graduation. That is one in five.

The state's 4-year adjusted cohort graduation rate hit 79.9%, its best mark since 2019 and a 1.6 percentage-point jump from the prior year. By any internal measure, 2025 was a good year. By a national one, it was not. The most recent federal data pegs the U.S. average at 87%. Alaska has not come within 6.6 points of that line in any year on record.

The 2025 bounce followed a slow slide: 80.4% in 2019, then three consecutive years of decline to a trough of 77.8% in 2022. For six of the seven years in the dataset, Alaska's rate sat below 80%. A single good year does not reverse that pattern. It raises a question: is this the start of a climb, or another oscillation around a low baseline?

Nearly 2,000 students a year

The absolute numbers are remarkably stable. In 2022, the worst year on record, 2,082 students did not graduate on time from a cohort of 9,401. In 2025, the best year, 1,999 did not graduate from a cohort of 9,929. The cohort grew by 528 students. The number who failed to finish barely budged.

Alaska's 5-year rate, which captures students who take an extra year, reached 83.0% in 2025. That additional year recovers roughly 3.2 percentage points, meaning about 300 more students per cohort cross the finish line with one more year of schooling. But even the 5-year rate has never broken 85%.

Who is left behind

The statewide average conceals a series of compounding gaps. Students with disabilities graduate at 61.1%, a rate that has barely moved in seven years, oscillating between 56.9% and 61.4% with no clear trajectory. Homeless students fare slightly better at 63.4%, though their rate swung as low as 50.8% in 2021.

Alaska Native students, who make up roughly one in five of the state's graduation cohort, finished at 68.0%. The gap between white students (85.8%) and Alaska Native students measured 17.8 percentage points in 2025. That gap hit 19.3 points in 2024 and 19.2 in 2022. It has not shrunk in any sustained way across the seven-year window.

English learners graduated at 68.3%, down from 71.9% in 2019. Students from economically disadvantaged households posted 74.6%, nearly matching their 2019 rate of 74.7% after a dip to 69.8% in 2021.

The 18-point line between white and Alaska Native students

The white-Alaska Native graduation gap has persisted for the entire data window. It ranged from 17.1 points in 2019 to 19.3 points in 2024. Both groups improved in 2025, Alaska Native students by 3.4 points from 2022 and white students by 2.1 points, leaving the structural gap nearly unchanged.

That gap is not just a statistical abstraction. In districts where Alaska Native students are the majority of the cohort, the consequences are visible in the numbers. Lower Kuskokwim School District^↗, which graduated 66.3% of its cohort, serves 273 students almost entirely from Yup'ik communities along the Kuskokwim River. North Slope Borough^↗ graduated 66.4% of 134 students in Inupiat communities above the Arctic Circle. Northwest Arctic Borough^↗, centered on Kotzebue, managed 69.2%.

These are places where schools double as community centers, where teacher turnover runs high, and where the nearest road often doesn't exist. A WestEd report on increasing American Indian and Alaska Native graduation rates noted that culturally responsive curricula and community-based mentoring programs have shown promise in similar settings, but that chronic underfunding and staff instability remain the primary barriers.

Correspondence schools pull district rates down

Statewide, 18 of 35 districts with reportable data graduated fewer than 80% of their students. Ten graduated fewer than 70%. Three fell below 60%.

The lowest graduation rate among districts with at least 20 students in the cohort belongs to Yupiit School District^↗ at 46.0%, but the most consequential outlier is Nenana City School District^↗ at 49.1% with a cohort of 275. The brick-and-mortar Nenana City School graduated 86.7% of its 30 students. CyberLynx Correspondence Program, a statewide homeschool-support operation housed under Nenana's district umbrella, graduated 44.5% of 245 students.

This is not a small-school anomaly. CyberLynx serves students across the state who have left or been pushed out of traditional classrooms. Its 44.5% rate in 2025 was actually its highest mark in seven years; it posted 29.7% in 2019. The program is designed for students who were already struggling, so a low rate is partly structural. But the cohort is large enough to drag Nenana's composite rate below 50% and to depress the statewide number.

Galena City School District^↗, another correspondence-heavy district, graduated 78.1% of 652 students in 2025. Galena's IDEA correspondence program operates similarly to CyberLynx but with a larger cohort and a graduation rate 34 points higher, suggesting that program design matters even within the correspondence model.

Where the improvement came from

The 1.6 percentage-point jump in 2025 was the largest single-year gain in the seven-year dataset. It arrived broadly: Anchorage^↗ rose from 82.2% to 83.3%, Fairbanks North Star^↗ from 80.1% to 81.2%, and Kenai Peninsula^↗ posted the sharpest recovery, climbing from 78.8% to 85.0% after falling as low as 77.0% in 2022.

Kodiak Island^↗ hit 91.8%, its second-best mark in the dataset. Matanuska-Susitna^↗, the state's second-largest district by cohort size at 1,360 students, held steady at 84.3%.

The gains were uneven across student groups. Male students gained 3.6 points from the 2022 trough, closing the gender gap from 6.3 points to 3.1. Alaska Native students gained 3.4 points. Economically disadvantaged students gained 4.3 points.

Students with disabilities gained almost nothing: 61.1% in 2025 versus 61.5% in 2022. Their rate has been stuck in a narrow band between 56.9% and 61.5% for seven years, disconnected from the broader improvement.

A budget crisis threatens the gains

Alaska's school districts are not in a position to build on the 2025 improvement. The Anchorage School District, which educates roughly a third of the state's graduation cohort, faces a $90 million structural deficit that has already triggered the closure of three elementary schools, the elimination of 500 staff positions including over 300 teachers, and cuts to counselors and nurses.

"Even once this $90 million structural deficit is closed, the work begins to find $40 million on top of that, and $30 million on top of that." -- Alaska Public Media, Feb. 2026

The fiscal pressure is statewide. Nearly 80% of Alaska's school districts face deficits, according to Alaska Public Media, even after the legislature approved a $700 increase to the base student allocation last year. That increase amounted to only $20 per student in genuinely new money after a prior one-time allocation expired. Mat-Su is considering school closures. Kodiak needs $1 million in cuts. Galena, the correspondence district that serves 652 students in its graduation cohort, is weighing whether it can keep its doors open.

Counselors, interventionists, and support staff are typically the first positions cut. Those are also the positions most directly connected to keeping at-risk students on track to graduate.

What this rate does not capture

The 4-year cohort rate is a specific metric with specific blind spots. It tracks students who entered ninth grade four years earlier and checks whether they received a diploma. It does not count students who dropped out before ninth grade, students who left the state, or students who earned a GED instead. Alaska's transient military population (military-connected students graduate at 90.3%, the highest rate of any subgroup) inflates the statewide number. Remove that group, and the civilian rate would sit lower.

The rate also cannot distinguish between a district that graduates 80% because its programs work and one that graduates 80% because students who were going to drop out transferred to a correspondence program in another district first. The correspondence school question, explored in a separate article, complicates every district comparison in the state.

Alaska's 79.9% is the best number in seven years. It is still a state where one in five students does not finish high school on time, where the gap between white and Alaska Native students has not closed in any meaningful way, and where the budget conditions that might sustain improvement are deteriorating. The 2026 cohort entered high school during the pandemic's worst disruptions. Their results arrive next year.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

For Every 100 Seniors, Alaska Has Only 84 Kindergartners

Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 deficit and a kindergarten class that has shrunk by a fifth since 2020. Anchorage is not unique. Across Alaska, the bottom of the student pipeline is collapsing while the top keeps expanding, and the math points in one direction.

In 2025-26, Alaska enrolled 8,551 kindergartners and 10,153 seniors. That ratio, 84 kindergartners for every 100 12th graders, means the state's schools are graduating students far faster than they are replacing them. Six years ago, kindergarten outnumbered 12th grade by nearly 450 students. The lines have crossed, and the gap is widening.

The scissor pattern

The divergence is stark. Kindergarten enrollment fell from 10,054 in 2019-20 to 8,551 in 2025-26, a loss of 1,503 students, or 14.9%. Over the same period, 12th grade rose from 9,606 to 10,153, a gain of 547 students, or 5.7%, reaching its highest level in the seven-year dataset.

The crossover happened in 2024, when 12th grade first surpassed kindergarten. It has not reversed. The K-to-G12 ratio dropped from 104.7 in 2020 to 84.2 in 2026, a 20-point swing in six years.

Kindergarten is not the only grade shrinking. Every grade from pre-K through 8th lost enrollment over this period. The damage is heaviest at the entry points: kindergarten fell 14.9%, first grade fell 10.3%, and pre-K fell 9.9%. But the losses fade as you move up the grade ladder, and by 9th grade, the numbers flip to gains.

The result is a structural rebalancing. Elementary enrollment (PK through 5th grade) dropped 4,857 students, or 7.5%, from 64,470 to 59,613. High school enrollment (9th through 12th) grew by 1,880, or 4.9%, from 38,051 to 39,931. High school's share of total enrollment climbed from 29.6% to 31.9%.

Fewer babies, fewer kindergartners

The pipeline inversion has a straightforward demographic driver. Alaska's fertility rate has fallen from 2.3 children per woman in 2010 to 1.9 in 2024, below the 2.1 replacement threshold. The state recorded 8,950 births in 2024, down from 9,031 in 2023, extending a five-year streak of annual declines. Today's kindergartners were born in 2019 or 2020, years when Alaska births were already falling.

David Howell, the state demographer, has quantified the gap bluntly: there are roughly 1,000 more 17-year-olds than 4-year-olds in Alaska right now. That age structure means the kindergarten pipeline will not refill anytime soon. Birth rates have reached their lowest levels since the trans-Alaska pipeline was built, and demographers project the state's population will begin declining steadily by 2050.

Outmigration compounds the birth rate decline. Alaska is in its 13th consecutive year of negative net migration, with 1,740 more people leaving than arriving in 2025. The number of children from birth to age 17 fell 0.8% in a single year. The combination of fewer births and continued outmigration is shrinking the school-age population faster than the state as a whole.

Where the losses hit hardest

The three largest traditional districts illustrate the pattern at different scales.

Anchorage lost 757 kindergartners between 2020 and 2026, a 21.3% decline, from 3,559 to 2,802. Its 12th-grade class also shrank, by 168, but far less steeply. The district now enrolls 40,688 students total, down from 45,218 in 2020. Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt told the school board: "ASD faces a $90 million structural deficit going into next fiscal year." The board approved a plan to close three elementary schools and cut 389 positions, including 50 teachers, 9 counselors, and 10 principals.

"A strong public school system is the foundation of our economy." — Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, Feb. 2026

Fairbanks North Star Borough^↗ saw the sharpest kindergarten decline among large districts: 31.4%, from 1,093 to 750. The district lost 589 students in a single year in 2024-25 and has already closed three schools since 2025. A net 165 students transferred to correspondence programs outside the district that year alone.

Mat-Su Borough^↗, the only large traditional district still growing overall, is not immune to the kindergarten trend. Its K enrollment fell from 1,442 to 1,375, a 4.6% decline, even as the borough added more residents than any other in the state. The district still faces a $22.5 million shortfall and is considering three school closures of its own.

The funding squeeze inside the squeeze

Declining kindergarten enrollment is a slow-moving fiscal crisis for districts that fund staffing, transportation, and facilities based on headcount. Alaska's Base Student Allocation stands at $6,660 per student, and each lost kindergartner removes that amount from a district's formula. When Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani told the legislature that last year's $700 BSA increase amounted to "about $20" in actual new funding, because it replaced one-time allocations rather than adding to them, he was describing a system where flat funding and falling enrollment are compounding each other.

"We don't have any fat to cut." — Eric Morrison, Southeast Island School District superintendent, March 2026

Nearly 80% of Alaska's school districts are running deficits. Anchorage, Fairbanks, Kenai, Juneau, Kodiak, and Mat-Su all report multimillion-dollar shortfalls. Elementary schools, designed for cohort sizes that no longer exist, are the first buildings on the closure list. Districts across the state have closed or are considering closing schools, including Kodiak (North Star Elementary), Fairbanks (three elementary schools closed after a five-school proposal), and Anchorage (three approved for closure).

Kindergarten losses, year by year

The kindergarten decline has not been a smooth glide. After a steep COVID-era drop of 642 students in 2021, there was a brief bounce of 378 in 2022. Since then, the losses have resumed at a pace of 300 to 400 per year. The last three years alone have erased 1,099 kindergartners from the system.

Correspondence and homeschool programs may be absorbing some would-be kindergartners, though the data cannot distinguish between families who never enroll and those who enroll elsewhere. Fairbanks lost a net 165 students to outside correspondence programs in a single year. Statewide, nearly one-fifth of public school students now learn through correspondence programs, and over the past 25 years, 10,000 students have moved from neighborhood schools to correspondence.

Whether declining kindergarten reflects fewer 5-year-olds in Alaska or more families choosing alternatives to traditional schools, the effect on brick-and-mortar elementary buildings is the same: classrooms designed for 25 students serving 18.

What the next six years look like

The 12th-grade bulge is temporary. Today's large senior classes were born during Alaska's higher birth years. Once they graduate, they will be replaced by the smaller cohorts now moving through elementary school. The 8,551 kindergartners of 2026 will, roughly speaking, become the 12th-grade class of 2038. When that happens, both ends of the pipeline will be small.

The middle of the pipeline offers no relief. Middle school enrollment (6th through 8th) held roughly steady over this period, declining just 2.3%, from 30,056 to 29,366. But middle schoolers in 2026 were elementary students in 2020. The steep elementary losses of the past six years have not yet reached middle school in full force.

The question facing Alaska's education planners is not whether enrollment will continue falling, but how fast. The school-age population is shrinking, births are declining, and outmigration persists. Anchorage School Board member Andy Holleman acknowledged the bind: "There is no good solution here." For districts weighing whether to close an elementary school now or in three years, the kindergarten numbers offer an answer: the cohorts entering the building are not going to get larger.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alaska Never Actually Recovered

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 a decade.

Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt did not frame the closures as a choice.

"These difficult reductions do not reflect our aspiration as ASD. This budget purely reflects the real-world impacts of declining enrollment, rising costs and funding uncertainty." — Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 25, 2026

The closures are part of a story Alaska told itself for two years and then stopped believing. After COVID knocked 1,379 students out of the system in 2021, enrollment ticked back up: 299 students in 2022, 579 more in 2023. It looked like recovery. It was not.

Even at the 2023 peak, the state was still 501 students short of its pre-pandemic count. Then the floor opened: a loss of 157 in 2024, 1,647 in 2025, and 967 more in 2025-26. Alaska is now 3,272 students below its pre-COVID enrollment, a 2.5% decline. The recovery rate is negative 137.3%, meaning the state has lost more ground since the initial COVID drop than the pandemic itself took.

The numbers behind the illusion

The year-over-year pattern tells the story cleanly. Two modest green bars followed by three red ones, two of which individually exceed the entire two-year rebound.

The 2021 COVID loss of 1,379 students looked recoverable. The 878-student rebound over the next two years suggested Alaska was on the path back. But the 2025 loss alone, 1,647 students, exceeded the entire COVID drop. The cumulative gap has widened every year since 2023.

What makes Alaska's trajectory distinct from other post-COVID states is the timing. Most states experienced their sharpest losses during the pandemic year itself. Alaska's worst single year was 2025, four years after COVID. The pandemic did not cause this decline so much as interrupt a trend that resumed with force.

A tale told in two school systems

Underneath the statewide numbers, two separate systems are moving in opposite directions. Traditional brick-and-mortar districts have lost 9,152 students since 2020, a 7.6% decline. Correspondence districts, led by Galena^↗ (home to IDEA, the state's largest school), Yukon-Koyukuk (Raven), and Nenana (CyberLynx), grew by 5,880 students, a 69.2% increase.

The divergence means the statewide number understates the traditional sector's crisis. Traditional district enrollment is down to 110,938 from 120,090 in 2020. Correspondence districts, which enrolled 6.6% of Alaska students before the pandemic, now account for 11.5%.

Galena City School District, population roughly 500, enrolls 8,279 students through IDEA. Nearly all of them live elsewhere. Yukon-Koyukuk doubled from 1,933 to 3,869 over the same period, almost entirely through its Raven correspondence program. These are not schools in the physical sense. They are funding conduits that allow families to direct a $2,700 annual allotment toward homeschool materials, lessons, and activities.

The legislature is actively debating whether correspondence students should receive the same per-pupil funding as brick-and-mortar students. The question carries billions of dollars in implications, but for the enrollment story, the key point is simpler: without correspondence growth, Alaska's net loss since 2020 would be 9,152, not 3,272.

Where the students disappeared

Anchorage alone accounts for 4,530 of the state's losses, more than the statewide net decline. Fairbanks North Star^↗ lost another 2,017, a 15.4% drop that prompted the district to close Midnight Sun, Pearl Creek, and Two Rivers Elementary in 2025. Together, Alaska's two largest urban districts lost 6,547 students. Correspondence growth in Galena, Yukon-Koyukuk, and Nenana offset 5,880 of that.

The losses are not confined to the cities. Lower Kuskokwim, the largest rural district in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, lost 381 students (9.4%). Valdez lost 159 (23.2%). Kuspuk, a district of small villages along the Kuskokwim River, went from 368 to 272, a 26.1% decline.

Only 12 of 34 districts with comparable data from 2020 and 2026 have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. Every one of the districts that gained, besides the three correspondence programs, is small: Delta/Greely (+226), Chugach (+155), Cordova (+33). Mat-Su^↗, the state's second-largest traditional district and the one sitting in Alaska's fastest-growing borough, shows 19,903 in DEED's school-level data — a total that includes the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a new virtual program with 1,114 students. Superintendent Randy Trani's district-level count is 18,912. Mat-Su dipped as low as 17,935 during COVID and has rebounded, though the DEED total and the district's own count tell different stories about how far.

Why the bleeding has not stopped

Alaska is in its 13th consecutive year of net outmigration, the longest such streak since 1945. In the most recent year, 1,740 more people left the state than moved in. The population still grew slightly, to 738,737, because births exceeded deaths by 3,389. But even that cushion is thinning: the state recorded its fewest births since the trans-Alaska pipeline was built, and the number of children under 17 fell 0.8% in a single year. There are now roughly 1,000 more 17-year-olds in Alaska than 4-year-olds.

The state Department of Labor projects the population will start declining steadily by 2050. For schools, the decline is already here.

The fiscal squeeze compounds the enrollment pressure. Last year's $700-per-student increase to the Base Student Allocation made headlines, but Mat-Su superintendent Randy Trani pointed out the math: it represented only a $20 actual boost over the prior year's one-time funding of $680 per student. Nearly 80% of Alaska school districts face deficits going into next year. Anchorage's $90 million gap led to the elimination of nearly 50 middle school teaching positions, the gifted education program, and bus transportation for athletes. An additional $42 million deficit is projected for 2027-28.

"The desperation is real. We cannot meet all of our students' needs at this point in time with the budget that we have been given." — Board Member Kelly Lessens, Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 25, 2026

What Anchorage's vote means for Alaska

Anchorage enrolled 35.2% of Alaska's students in 2020. It now enrolls 32.5%. The district's 10.0% decline since the pandemic is more than a local problem. It functions as a leading indicator for a state where the school-age population is shrinking, outmigration shows no sign of reversing, and the primary growth sector, correspondence programs, does not require school buildings, bus routes, or cafeteria staff.

State officials project Alaska schools will lose another 1,500 students next year. If that materializes, enrollment will fall below 124,000 for the first time in recorded state data. The question facing districts is not whether the decline will continue but how many more buildings will be too large for the students who remain, and at what point the fixed costs of heating, maintaining, and staffing rural schools in a subarctic climate exceed what a shrinking student body can justify.

Anchorage voters will decide on Proposition 9 in April, an $11.8 million funding measure that would rehire 80 teachers and cut the class-size increase in half. It is a temporary fix for a structural problem. The recovery that everyone watched for in 2022 and 2023 turned out to be a pause on the way down.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Virtual Districts Are the Only Ones Growing in Alaska

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 fourth-largest school district in Alaska. Only one of those students lives in Galena.

The rest are scattered across the state, enrolled in the Interior Distance Education of Alaska, known as IDEA. It is, by enrollment, the single largest school in Alaska. And it is not alone. Three correspondence districts, Galena, Yukon-Koyukuk^↗ (home to the Raven Homeschool program), and Nenana^↗ (CyberLynx), have collectively added 5,880 students since 2020. Their combined enrollment reached 14,379 in 2026, up from 8,499. But these three are just the largest programs. The state reports more than 24,000 correspondence students across 30-plus programs statewide.

In the same period, traditional brick-and-mortar districts across Alaska lost thousands. The state's total enrollment fell to 125,317, an all-time low in the seven-year dataset. The state lost 3,272 students overall, but the three largest correspondence districts alone gained 5,880, meaning the rest of the system shed more than 9,100 students, a contraction masked by virtual growth flowing into remote village district budgets.

A village economy built on distant students

Galena's IDEA program grew from 5,155 students in 2020 to 8,279 in 2026, a 60.6% increase. The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged enrollment: the program surged by 3,875 students in a single year (2020 to 2021), nearly doubling. Enrollment then pulled back, losing 2,097 students over the next two years, before climbing steadily again from 2023 onward.

Yukon-Koyukuk's Raven Homeschool program followed a similar arc. It doubled from 1,933 to 3,869 students (+100.2%), with an even sharper COVID spike of 2,227 students in 2021 that partially reversed before resuming growth. Nenana's CyberLynx added 820 students (+58.1%), growing from 1,411 to 2,231.

The funding model explains part of the appeal. Each correspondence student receives an annual allotment typically around $2,700, though amounts vary by program and grade level, that families can spend on curriculum, supplies, technology, and extracurricular activities. The state spent $47.2 million on correspondence allotments in fiscal year 2024 alone, with $26 million going to supplies and materials and another $14 million to professional services.

A lawsuit now working through Alaska courts alleges that some families have used their allotments to pay private school tuition, an arrangement the plaintiffs argue violates the state constitution. Galena, Anchorage, Mat-Su, and Denali borough school districts are named as defendants. An Anchorage Superior Court initially ruled the practice unconstitutional, but the Alaska Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

The $47 million question in Juneau

Senate Bill 277, introduced in the current legislative session, would restructure how correspondence money flows. Under the bill, correspondence students would be counted by the district where they live, not the district running the program. That would redirect tens of millions of dollars from programs like IDEA and Raven to students' home districts, which would retain a percentage for administrative costs and local services like sports and in-person classes.

Galena Superintendent Jason Johnson told the Anchorage Daily News the bill would be devastating:

"Most Alaskan statewide correspondence programs will sink."

Sen. Loki Tobin, chair of the Senate Education Committee and the bill's sponsor, framed it differently:

"The hope for this is to continue to support our brick-and-mortar schools and then also recognize that they are also providing services."

The stakes are structural. Of the roughly 24,000 students enrolled in correspondence programs statewide, nearly 16,000 attend programs outside their home district. That means the revenue from those students flows to Galena, Yukon-Koyukuk, and Nenana rather than to the districts where the students actually live, attend local activities, and might use district facilities. The bill would reverse that flow.

Mat-Su: a closer look at the numbers

Matanuska-Susitna Borough^↗, Alaska's third-largest district, shows 19,903 students in DEED's school-level data for 2025-26, up from 19,114 in 2020. At first glance, it looks like the only traditional system posting sustained growth. But there is an important distinction between DEED's school-level aggregate and what the district itself counts.

Superintendent Randy Trani puts Mat-Su's enrollment at 18,912, a decline of 155 from the prior year. The difference is largely one program: the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a new virtual program that launched in 2025-26 with 1,114 students under Mat-Su's district ID. Mat-Su Central School, a long-running correspondence program, has also grown steadily, from 1,820 students in 2020 to 3,034 in 2026. Combined, these two non-traditional programs account for 4,148 students, or 20.8% of Mat-Su's DEED total.

The Mat-Su Borough is genuinely growing — it added 1,696 residents from 2024 to 2025, the largest gain of any borough in the state. But the same pattern playing out statewide is playing out here too: virtual and correspondence enrollment is growing while traditional classroom enrollment holds flat or declines.

The contrast with Anchorage^↗, 40 miles to the south, remains stark. Anchorage lost 4,530 students over the same period, a 10.0% decline, from 45,218 to 40,688. The state's largest district is closing schools and cutting hundreds of positions amid a $90 million budget deficit.

Small districts that grew are genuinely small

Beyond Mat-Su, eight other traditional districts posted enrollment gains. None of them are large. Delta/Greely^↗, near Fort Greely, added 226 students (+28.9%) to reach 1,007, its all-time high, likely reflecting military installation activity. Chugach gained 155 (+32.4%), and the remaining six grew by fewer than 100 students combined: Yupiit (+60), Cordova (+33), Southeast Island (+21), Kake (+11), Kashunamiut (+5), and Chatham (+1).

Together, these eight districts added 512 students. The three correspondence districts added 5,880. The ratio tells the story: for every student gained in a traditional Alaska classroom, 11 were gained behind a screen.

The budget math that worries superintendents

Nearly 80% of Alaska's school districts face budget deficits, according to Alaska Public Media. Last year's $700 Base Student Allocation increase amounted to only $20 more per student than the prior year's one-time funding. Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani characterized it plainly:

"Flat funding is a cut."

The correspondence growth intensifies this pressure. When students enroll in IDEA or Raven from Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau, the BSA funding follows them to Galena or Yukon-Koyukuk. The home district loses the revenue but still operates the buildings, buses, and programs those families may occasionally use. SB 277 is an attempt to address that mismatch.

What the data cannot separate

The central question is whether correspondence growth represents families choosing a better option or families fleeing a deteriorating one. The data shows both trends happening simultaneously: correspondence enrollment surged during COVID and never fully retreated, while traditional enrollment has declined every year since 2023.

It is also worth noting what this analysis measures and what it does not. The three largest correspondence districts, Galena, Yukon-Koyukuk, and Nenana, serve as proxies for the correspondence sector. Alaska DEED reports more than 30 correspondence programs enrolling over 24,000 students. Some of those programs are embedded within traditional districts and would not appear in this district-level comparison.

The 11.5% share captured by these three districts is a floor, not a ceiling, for Alaska's total correspondence enrollment.

A system at a crossroads

SB 277 will not resolve the underlying demographic forces pushing Alaska's enrollment downward. The state is in its 13th consecutive year of net outmigration, the longest streak since 1945, and its total population is projected to decline through 2050. Fewer children in the state means fewer students in every type of school.

But the bill will determine where the money lands while enrollment contracts. If correspondence funding shifts to home districts, programs like IDEA would need to compete for students without the financial infrastructure they have built over decades. If the bill fails, traditional districts will continue watching revenue flow to village districts hundreds of miles away while they close schools and cut teachers.

The legislature is halfway through its session. Whatever it decides, the enrollment data has already delivered its verdict: Alaska's traditional school system is shrinking everywhere — and even Mat-Su's DEED growth includes a new virtual program with 1,114 students. The only sector posting consistent growth exists almost entirely online.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Fairbanks Closed Three Schools. It Was Not Enough.

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction (July 23, 2026): An earlier version said Mat-Su had grown 3.3% since its first full year in the dataset. The correct figure is 4.1%.

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 to close Pearl Creek along with Midnight Sun Elementary and Two Rivers Elementary. Fik told a local reporter her kids "feel like they are the last puffins, like they're going extinct."

The closures were supposed to help close a $16 million budget deficit. They did. And the district is still shrinking.

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, Alaska's second largest, enrolled 11,122 students in 2025-26. That is 2,017 fewer than the 13,139 it enrolled in 2019-20, a 15.4% decline in seven years, six times the statewide rate. It is the lowest enrollment in the dataset. And the 2025-26 drop of 585 students was the district's second-largest annual loss, trailing only the 1,940-student COVID crash in 2020-21.

The Recovery That Wasn't

The raw trend line is not a straight descent. Fairbanks lost nearly 15% of its enrollment in a single year during COVID, then clawed back 1,000 students in 2021-22 and another 369 in 2022-23, reaching 12,568. For two years, it looked like the district might stabilize.

It did not. Enrollment dropped 203 in 2023-24, then 658 in 2024-25, then 585 in 2025-26. The three-year slide erased the entire post-COVID recovery and pushed enrollment 1,446 below its pre-recovery peak.

The pattern matters because it reframes the district's fiscal planning. School administrators who budgeted around a stabilizing enrollment of 12,000-plus are now operating a district of 11,122 with infrastructure built for 13,000. The October 2025 head count came in 189 students below the district's own September projection, costing an estimated $2.72 million in anticipated state funding.

One District, 62% of Alaska's Enrollment Loss

Fairbanks accounts for 61.6% of Alaska's total enrollment decline since 2019-20, despite enrolling less than 9% of the state's students. The state lost 3,272 students over that span. Fairbanks alone lost 2,017.

Among Alaska's five largest traditional districts, Fairbanks has fallen the furthest in percentage terms. Anchorage^↗ is down 10.0%. Juneau^↗ dropped 16.5%, a steeper rate but on a much smaller base of 4,562 students. Kenai Peninsula^↗ has held relatively steady, losing 4.8%. Mat-Su^↗, the only large traditional district to grow, is up 4.1% since its first full year in the dataset.

Fairbanks's share of state enrollment slipped from 10.2% in 2019-20 to 8.9% in 2025-26. That 1.3-percentage-point drop translates to a significant revenue loss. At the current Base Student Allocation of $6,660 per student, 2,017 fewer students represents roughly $13.4 million in forgone annual formula funding before district cost factors and other adjustments.

Who Is Leaving

The decline reaches across every racial and ethnic group except Pacific Islanders, who gained 22 students. White students account for the largest absolute loss: 1,468 fewer since 2019-20, a 19.5% drop. Black enrollment fell 38.5%, the steepest rate of any group, though on a small base of 538 to 331 students. Multiracial students declined 9.8%, Native American students 6.4%, Hispanic students 3.1%, and Asian students 10.7%.

The breadth of the decline across demographic groups suggests a structural driver, not a shift within the population. Families are not choosing different schools within Fairbanks. They are leaving.

The district's own analysis confirms this. Senior Research Analyst Ellis M. Ott found that more than half of the students who left in 2025-26 did so because their families moved out of Alaska entirely. In grades K-8, 77% of departing students had families who left the borough, and the majority of those left the state. Another 165 students transferred to correspondence programs outside the district, part of a statewide shift toward virtual and home-based instruction. Statewide, correspondence programs now enroll more than 16,000 Alaska students, and districts like Galena^↗, home to the IDEA correspondence program, have grown 60.6% in seven years while traditional districts shrink.

The Military Variable

Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base anchor the borough's economy and demographics. Military families cycle through on deployment rotations, making enrollment inherently volatile. The arrival of F-35 fighter jets at Eielson brought approximately 3,500 active-duty airmen and dependents to the area in the late 2010s, a demographic boost that state demographer David Howell noted has since been outweighed by broader outmigration patterns.

The military connection creates a structural instability that civilian communities do not face. A single redeployment order can move hundreds of families. But the current decline is not solely a military story. The borough's civilian population is also shrinking. Alaska's Department of Labor projects the Fairbanks North Star Borough will fall from about 96,000 residents to 88,800 by 2050, a 7.5% decline, driven by net outmigration that has exceeded natural growth for over a decade.

"Losses due to net migration have outweighed their growth from natural increase." — State Demographer David Howell, KTVF, July 2024

One competing explanation: a housing shortage. The borough needs an estimated 4,000 additional housing units. Families who might otherwise stay cannot find housing they can afford, creating a paradox where a shrinking population coexists with unmet housing demand. The school district loses students either way.

The Pipeline Under the Pipeline

Kindergarten enrollment tells the longer story. Fairbanks enrolled 1,093 kindergartners in 2019-20. In 2025-26, it enrolled 750, a 31.4% drop. That is not a COVID artifact. The number peaked at 1,057 in 2022-23 during the partial recovery, then fell every year since.

The grade-level data shows losses across the board. First grade lost 244 students (22.5%). Sixth grade lost 201 (18.4%). Every grade from PK through 11th declined. The only grade that grew was 12th, which added 44 students, likely reflecting retained or returning students rather than new arrivals.

At the school level, the losses are concentrated in the two traditional high schools. West Valley High lost 229 students (23.2%) and Lathrop High lost 216 (22.7%). Meanwhile, Fairbanks B.E.S.T., an alternative education program, grew from 274 to 891 students, a 225% increase that suggests families are seeking nontraditional options within the district even as they leave it.

A Lawsuit and a Budget

In January 2026, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and Kuspuk^↗ School District filed an adequacy lawsuit against the state, arguing that Alaska "funds education based on what they can afford, not what it actually costs." The districts are seeking a court-ordered study to determine what it actually costs to educate an Alaska student, plus an annual inflation adjustment.

The lawsuit cites more than $400 million in deferred maintenance across the Fairbanks district and argues the state has funded schools at levels "woefully inadequate and have no reasonable or logical connection to the actual cost" of education. The three schools closed in 2025 were projected to save roughly $10 million combined with outsourced custodial services, against a $16 million gap. Even after absorbing those cuts, Chief Operations Officer Andy DeGraw told KUAC the district could face up to a $5 million deficit for 2026-27.

"If things line up in our favor, we could have a very small to no deficit. If things don't fall in our favor, it could be as high as $5 million." — Andy DeGraw, Chief Operations Officer, KUAC, Oct. 2025

The district has now closed seven schools in five years and eliminated 300 staff positions. At some point, consolidation runs out of buildings to close. The question is whether the enrollment line flattens before the options do.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Half of Alaska's Districts Hit Record Lows

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 District had been requesting roof repairs since 2005. The estimated cost rose from $411,000 to $1.6 million over 17 years of waiting. Half the building is now closed.

Kuspuk is one of 29 Alaska school districts currently at their lowest enrollment ever recorded. The district enrolled 272 students in 2025-26, down 26.1% from its peak of 368. It is not alone. Half of Alaska's districts are now at record lows, and the list includes the state's largest: Anchorage^↗ at 40,688, Fairbanks North Star^↗ at 11,122, Juneau^↗ at 3,809, and Lower Kuskokwim^↗ at 3,666.

The districts at their smallest enrollment hold 82,810 students, 66.1% of Alaska's total. Two-thirds of the state's public school students attend a district that has never been smaller.

Ten districts fell to new lows in 2025-26

The 2026 count did not just confirm existing declines. It created new ones. Ten districts dropped to all-time lows for the first time in 2025-26, including Anchorage and Fairbanks, the state's two largest traditional districts.

Anchorage fell to 40,688 students, 10.0% below its seven-year peak of 45,218. That decline, 4,530 students, exceeds the entire state's net loss of 3,272 over the same period. Fairbanks dropped to 11,122, down 15.4% from its 2020 level of 13,139. In February 2025, the Fairbanks school board voted to close three elementary schools: Midnight Sun, Pearl Creek, and Two Rivers. Students in Two Rivers now bus over 30 miles into Fairbanks.

The smaller districts on the newly-at-low list paint a geography of retreat. Craig^↗ on Prince of Wales Island: 550 students, down 37.1% from 874. Valdez: 527, down 23.2%. Hoonah: 104, down 17.5%. Hydaburg^↗, a Haida village of 300 people on the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island, enrolled 62 students, down 63.3% from 169.

The other half

A handful of districts are at all-time highs, but the composition tells its own story.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough^↗, Alaska's second-largest district, shows 19,903 students in DEED's school-level data. That total includes the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a new virtual program that launched in 2025-26 with 1,114 students. Superintendent Randy Trani's district-level count is 18,912, a slight decline from the prior year — an important distinction between what DEED's school-level files capture and what the district counts as its traditional enrollment. Mat-Su Borough surpassed 100,000 residents in 2024, growing at 3.4% annually while the state grew at 1.2%. But Trani told Alaska Public Media that the district faces a $22.5 million budget shortfall, and is planning three school closures.

"$700,000 in a budget of more than a quarter of a billion is essentially flat funding, and flat funding is a cut." — Randy Trani, Mat-Su Superintendent, Alaska Public Media, March 2026

Nenana City School District, home to the CyberLynx correspondence program, hit a record 2,231 students, up 58.1% since 2020. Several small traditional districts, including Delta/Greely (1,007), Petersburg (473), and Kake (112), also reached highs. These are genuine bright spots, though all three combined hold fewer students than Anchorage lost in a single year.

What is driving this

The most direct driver is demographic. Alaska is in its 13th consecutive year of negative net migration, the longest such streak since 1945. Between 2024 and 2025, 1,740 more people left the state than arrived. The school-age population is shrinking while the over-65 population grew 3.2% in a single year. The child population (birth to 17) shrank 0.8% in a single year.

The strain is concentrated in Southeast Alaska, where population is projected to drop 17% by 2050, a loss equal to the populations of Sitka and Wrangell combined. Housing costs are the primary barrier. "The price of a home and the cost of being here is just too much of a challenge" for young families, Southeast Conference economic development leader Brian Holst told KTOO. In Juneau, the over-60 population now outnumbers those under 20.

A second factor is student migration within the state. Approximately 10,000 students have shifted from neighborhood schools to correspondence programs, funding that follows them out of traditional districts. This transfer does not reduce statewide enrollment, but it hollows out the brick-and-mortar system: Fairbanks board member Brandy Harty told Alaska Public Media that "the problem isn't at our school board, it's in Juneau, with funding."

Record lows in every size category

The pattern is not confined to small rural districts or large urban ones. Record lows appear across every size category. Nine of 14 mid-sized districts (1,000 to 4,999 students) are at their lowest ever, a 64.3% rate higher than any other size bucket. The list includes Ketchikan Gateway^↗ (1,871, down 14.9%), North Slope Borough^↗ (1,610, down 17.2%), and Northwest Arctic Borough (1,756, down 10.0%).

Thirty-two of Alaska's districts enroll fewer than 500 students. Eight enroll fewer than 100. These micro-districts face an arithmetic that larger systems do not: losing 15 students can mean losing a teacher, a program, or a building. Kuspuk illustrates the bind. The district relies entirely on state funding as a Regional Education Attendance Area with no local tax base. Its superintendent, Madeline Aguillard, told NPR the district spent over $200,000 since 2021 just strengthening capital funding applications, plus tens of thousands more on a lobbyist, to compete for repairs that never came.

"These bright young children show up every morning to go to school in a building that's not fit for even anything but being ready to be demolished." — House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, NPR, March 2025

The lawsuit and the ledger

In January 2026, Fairbanks North Star and Kuspuk filed suit against the state, alleging that Alaska has failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide adequate public education funding. The Base Student Allocation, Alaska's primary per-pupil funding mechanism, has increased just 2.2% since 2015 while inflation rose 37% over the same period. Last year's celebrated $700 increase actually netted only $20 more per student than the one-time funding districts received the year before.

Nearly 80% of Alaska school districts are facing deficits, according to an Alaska Council of School Administrators survey. Anchorage is cutting 389 positions to close a $90 million gap. Fairbanks has closed seven schools in five years. Kodiak needs $1 million in cuts. Mat-Su is planning three closures despite its DEED total showing growth — a total that includes a new virtual program with 1,114 students.

Enrollment decline and underfunding are separate problems, but they compound. A district losing students loses per-pupil revenue, but fixed costs for heating, maintenance, and transportation do not shrink proportionally. In rural Alaska, where buildings serve as community centers, storm shelters, and the only indoor gathering space for miles, closing a school has consequences the funding formula does not measure.

Alaska's state enrollment stands at 125,317, down 2.5% from its 2020 peak of 128,589. The state DEED projects another 1,500-student decline next year. The question is how many of the districts still above their record lows will join the other half.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Anchorage Lost More Students Than All of Alaska

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 District could not afford to keep its doors open.

The district has lost 4,530 students since 2020, a 10.0% decline that dropped enrollment from 45,218 to 40,688. That loss is larger than the entire state's enrollment decline over the same period. Alaska lost 3,272 students statewide. The rest of the state, outside Anchorage, actually gained 1,258.

Anchorage is not just shrinking. It is shrinking faster than everything around it, and it is running out of ways to absorb the fiscal consequences.

A $90 Million Hole in a $700 Million Budget

In February 2026, the Anchorage School Board voted 5-2 to close three elementary schools: Campbell STEM, Fire Lake, and Lake Otis. The closures bring the total to eight schools shuttered in 10 years. They are projected to save roughly $900,000 each, less than 3% of the $90 million structural deficit.

The real savings come from people. The budget eliminates nearly 300 teaching positions, eight school nurses, 25 elementary specialists, and nine principals. Class sizes will increase by four students per grade level. At some high schools, that means 36 students per classroom. The district's IGNITE program for gifted students is gone. Art and music will merge into a single "fine arts" class.

"This budget purely reflects [the] difficult reality of declining enrollment, rising costs, and funding uncertainty." — Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt, Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 2026

The district is staring at a $42 million projected deficit for 2027-28 even after these cuts take effect.

An Unstable Trajectory

Anchorage's enrollment pattern is not a clean decline. It is a series of lurches.

The district lost 4,015 students in a single year during COVID (2020-2021), an 8.9% drop. It then recovered 1,498 students in 2022 and another 624 in 2023, briefly suggesting the worst had passed. But the recovery stalled. Since 2024, the district has lost students in three consecutive years: 894, then 833, then 910.

The recovery was never more than partial. Even at its post-COVID peak of 43,325 in 2023, Anchorage was still 1,893 students below its 2020 level. The 2022-2023 gains only recovered about half of the COVID loss before the decline resumed.

At its current pace of roughly 900 students per year, Anchorage will drop below 40,000 students during the 2026-27 school year. Each lost student carries approximately $6,660 in state base student allocation (BSA) funding, meaning the 4,530-student decline translates to roughly $30 million in annual funding that followed those students out of the district.

The Rest of Alaska Gained Students

Anchorage's decline is not a reflection of a statewide collapse. It is specific to Anchorage and, to a lesser extent, to other traditional brick-and-mortar districts.

Indexed to 2020, the rest of Alaska's enrollment has been essentially flat, hovering near 101% of its baseline for most of the period before dipping slightly to 101.5% by 2026. Anchorage, meanwhile, has fallen to 90.0%.

The biggest gainer by far is Galena City School District^↗, home to the IDEA (Interior Distance Education of Alaska) correspondence program. Galena grew from 5,155 students in 2020 to 8,279 in 2026, a 60.6% increase of 3,124 students. Yukon-Koyukuk School District^↗ doubled its enrollment from 1,933 to 3,869 over the same period. Both are correspondence/virtual programs that serve families across the state, including many in Anchorage.

Among the eight districts with 500 or more students in 2020 that lost enrollment, Fairbanks North Star Borough^↗ lost 2,017 students (-15.4%), and Juneau^↗ lost 753 (-16.5%). But neither approaches Anchorage's absolute scale of loss.

Fewer Kindergartners, Same Number of Seniors

The enrollment pipeline tells the second part of the story. Anchorage enrolled 3,559 kindergartners in 2020 and 2,802 in 2026, a 21.3% drop. Grade 12, by contrast, has been flat: 3,498 in 2020 and 3,330 in 2026, a 4.8% decline.

That gap has a mechanical consequence. Every year, Anchorage graduates roughly 3,300 seniors but enrolls only about 2,800 kindergartners. The district is losing approximately 500 students annually to pipeline shrinkage alone, before any net outmigration is factored in.

Elementary enrollment (PK through grade 5) fell from 22,325 in 2020 to 19,358 in 2026, a loss of 2,967 students. Secondary enrollment (grades 6-12) fell from 23,859 to 22,313, a loss of 1,546. Elementary is losing students at nearly twice the rate of secondary, which is why all three schools approved for closure are elementaries.

What Is Driving Families Out

The most direct explanation is that Alaska's population engine is stalling. The state completed its 13th consecutive year of net outmigration in 2024, the longest streak since World War II. In 2024 alone, 1,740 more people left Alaska than moved in. Alaska's overall population still grew slightly (0.2%) because births exceeded deaths, but that margin is narrowing. Annual births have fallen from over 12,000 in the mid-1980s to approximately 9,000 in recent years.

But outmigration alone does not explain why Anchorage is losing students while virtual and correspondence programs are growing. The growth of IDEA (Galena) and Yukon-Koyukuk's correspondence program suggests that some families are staying in Anchorage physically but enrolling their children elsewhere. This is consistent with a national post-COVID pattern in which parents who tried homeschooling or virtual learning during the pandemic stuck with it.

A competing explanation is Alaska's flat education funding. The base student allocation was frozen for a decade before lawmakers approved a $700 increase in 2025. But as Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani pointed out, only $20 of that increase was permanent. The rest was one-time funding. Anchorage's superintendent estimated the district lost roughly $1,400 in per-student purchasing power compared to 2011 levels.

The result is a feedback loop: declining enrollment reduces revenue, which forces service cuts, which gives families another reason to leave. Nearly 80% of Alaska's school districts now face budget deficits. Mat-Su^↗ is planning its own three school closures amid a $22.5 million shortfall.

Who Remains

Anchorage's demographic composition has shifted as enrollment dropped. White enrollment fell from 18,925 in 2020 to 15,955 in 2026, a loss of 2,970 students (-15.7%). That single group accounts for 65.6% of the district's total enrollment loss. Asian enrollment dropped 17.4% (-836 students), and Black enrollment fell 18.2% (-397).

Two groups bucked the trend. Native American enrollment grew 6.3% (from 4,113 to 4,373), and Pacific Islander enrollment grew 2.3% (from 3,097 to 3,169). Hispanic enrollment declined 3.8% (-197), a quarter of the rate of white enrollment loss.

White students' share of enrollment fell from 41.9% to 39.2% between 2020 and 2026. Native American share rose from 9.1% to 10.7%, and Pacific Islander share rose from 6.8% to 7.8%.

Campbell STEM and the Politics of Closure

The Campbell STEM closure drew the sharpest community response of the three, in part because the school had a waitlist and in part because the notification timeline was compressed.

"You can't tell parents on a Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend, that your only chance to come and publicly testify in person is Tuesday." — Sarah Anderson, Taku-Campbell Community Council President, Alaska Public Media, March 2026

Fire Lake and Lake Otis had weeks of community conversation before the vote. Campbell STEM had roughly 11 days. The school board has since acknowledged that additional state funding is the only path to keeping Campbell STEM open.

An $11.8 million tax levy on the April ballot (Proposition 9) would have reinstated 80 teachers and cut the class size increase in half, but it would not have reversed any of the closures. ASD said on April 16, 2026, that voters did not approve Proposition 9, forcing the district to move forward with fewer classroom teacher positions.

What to Watch

Anchorage's kindergarten class of 2,802 is the smallest on record in this data. If the incoming 2027 kindergarten cohort is smaller still, the pipeline gap between entering and exiting students will widen, and the district will face another round of building utilization decisions before the current closures are fully absorbed.

The April vote on Proposition 9 did not halve the class size increase. The broader question is whether the Alaska Legislature will make the BSA increase permanent. Legislators proposed raising the BSA by $630, from $6,660 to $7,290, while House Bill 261 later advanced to the Senate Finance Committee. If a durable increase passes, Anchorage would gain roughly $25.6 million in annual revenue. If it does not, the 2027-28 budget cycle begins with a $42 million hole and no one-time funds left to fill it.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alaska Enrollment Hits Seven-Year Low

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 a handful of fast-growing correspondence programs absorbed enough newcomers to partially offset the bleeding.

The net result: 125,317 students enrolled in Alaska public schools in 2025-26, the lowest total in the seven-year dataset. The state has lost 3,272 students, or 2.5%, from its 2020 peak of 128,589.

A recovery that did not hold

The trajectory is not a clean downward line. Alaska lost 1,379 students in 2020-21, likely a COVID artifact, then clawed back 878 over the next two years. By 2022-23, enrollment stood at 128,088, within 500 of the 2020 peak.

Then it reversed. The state lost 157 students in 2023-24, 1,647 in 2024-25, and 967 in 2025-26. The three-year slide totals 2,771 students and has erased the entire post-COVID recovery plus an additional 1,893.

At the compound annual growth rate of the past six years (-0.43%), Alaska would fall below 120,000 students by the early 2030s. State budget documents presented to lawmakers in February 2026 project a further loss of 1,500 students next year, roughly 1% of enrollment.

Anchorage's loss exceeds the state's

The statewide number understates what is happening in Alaska's urban core. Anchorage, which enrolls 32.5% of the state's students, lost 4,530 students since 2020, a 10.0% decline. That loss alone is 138% of the state's total decline, meaning the rest of Alaska, on net, grew.

But that growth is misleading. It comes almost entirely from correspondence programs. Galena City School District, home to IDEA (Interior Distance Education of Alaska), grew from 5,155 to 8,279 students (+60.6%). Yukon-Koyukuk, which houses the Raven correspondence program, doubled from 1,933 to 3,869 (+100.2%). Together, those two districts added 5,060 students. Strip out correspondence growth, and the traditional system lost roughly 8,300 students statewide.

Fairbanks North Star Borough lost 2,017 students (-15.4%). Juneau lost 753 (-16.5%). Kenai Peninsula lost 410 (-4.8%). Every one of Alaska's five largest traditional districts is at an all-time low.

Half the state at record lows

Twenty-nine of Alaska's 53 districts are at their lowest enrollment on record. The list spans geography and scale: from Anchorage (40,688 students) to Hydaburg (62 students), from the North Slope Borough to the Aleutians East.

Thirteen districts are at all-time highs. The largest gains come from correspondence providers: Nenana^↗ (CyberLynx, 2,231 students), Delta/Greely^↗ (1,007), Yupiit^↗ (523). A few small traditional districts also reached highs, including Petersburg^↗ (473 students), Kake (112), and Unalaska (351).

Matanuska-Susitna Borough^↗, Alaska's second-largest district, shows 19,903 students in DEED's school-level data — but there is an important distinction between school-level and district-level counts. DEED's figure includes the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a new virtual program that launched in 2025-26 with 1,114 students. Superintendent Randy Trani's district-level count is 18,912, a decline from the prior year. The Mat-Su Borough led Alaska in population growth with 1,696 new residents in 2024-25, but the borough's population growth has not translated into traditional classroom gains. Mat-Su faces a $22.5 million budget shortfall and is considering school closures.

Why fewer students

The most direct driver is demographic. Alaska is in its 13th consecutive year of net outmigration, the longest such streak since 1945. Between 2024 and 2025, 1,740 more people left the state than arrived. The state's population has stayed roughly flat only because births still outnumber deaths, but that margin is narrowing. State demographer Eric Sandberg warned in March 2026 that Alaska's population could begin declining outright: "As the gap continues to close and if we continue our outmigration, we would wind up with a population loss."

Birth numbers have fallen to their lowest level since the trans-Alaska pipeline era. Alaska's fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman remains the third-highest nationally, but it sits below the 2.1 replacement rate. The kindergarten data makes this visible in schools: Alaska enrolled 10,054 kindergartners in 2020 and 8,551 in 2026, a 14.9% decline. Grade 12, meanwhile, grew from 9,606 to 10,153, a 5.7% increase. The kindergarten-to-twelfth-grade ratio has fallen from 104.7 to 84.2, meaning for every 100 seniors graduating, only 84 kindergartners are entering the pipeline.

A second factor is cost of living. Brian Holst of the Juneau Economic Development Council told KTOO that "people are choosing to live elsewhere...because for too many families the price of a home and the cost of being here is just too much." Southeast Alaska, where Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan are all at enrollment lows, is projected to lose 17% of its population by 2050.

A competing explanation is that some families are not leaving Alaska but leaving public schools. DEED Deputy Commissioner Karen Morrison noted that families are transitioning to "independent homeschooling, private schools, out-of-state virtual academies, or relocating from Alaska entirely." The state does not publish homeschool enrollment data, so this channel remains unquantified.

What this means for school buildings

The fiscal consequences are already arriving. Anchorage's school board voted 4-3 in February to close three elementary schools, Fire Lake, Lake Otis, and Campbell STEM, and to eliminate 389 full-time positions.

"Our current footprint and programming no longer aligns with our enrollment and available revenues." — Anchorage Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt, Alaska's News Source, Feb. 2026

Anchorage is not alone. Nearly 80% of Alaska school districts face deficits, according to the Alaska Council of School Administrators. Fairbanks closed three schools in 2025. Kodiak is cutting $1 million. Statewide, 51 schools have closed over the past decade while only 32 have opened, a net loss of 19 buildings.

The legislature raised the Base Student Allocation by $700 per student last year, bringing it to $6,660. But Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani clarified that the effective increase was far smaller: "The actual boost to the BSA was about $20" because the prior year had included $680 in one-time funding that did not repeat. A new bill proposes an additional $630 increase, but even if it passes, districts that are losing students will continue to lose per-pupil revenue with it.

The pipeline question

The kindergarten decline is the number to watch. Every grade from kindergarten through fifth lost enrollment between 2020 and 2026. First grade fell 10.3%. Second grade fell 8.5%. These smaller cohorts will ripple upward through middle and high school over the next decade, meaning the current enrollment floor is not the floor.

Meanwhile, state demographer David Howell noted that "there's about 1,000 more 17-year-olds than there are 4-year-olds" in Alaska. The generation entering schools is structurally smaller than the one leaving. For a state where per-pupil funding follows students and fixed costs do not shrink with enrollment, the math gets harder every year.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Alaska Publishes 2025-26 Enrollment Data

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

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 COVID dip. Budget planners in Juneau talked about stabilization.

There is no floor. DEED's 2025-26 enrollment count came in at 125,317, down another 967 students and a new seven-year low. The state has now lost 3,272 students since its 2020 peak of 128,589, and the trajectory is accelerating: a 157-student loss in 2023-24 became 1,647 in 2024-25 and 967 in 2025-26.

Whatever people thought they saw in 2022-23 was not a bottom. It was a pause.

What the numbers open up

Anchorage^↗ is losing students faster than the state. The district shed 4,530 students in seven years — more than the entire statewide decline. It is closing three elementary schools, cutting nearly 300 teaching positions, and staring at a $90 million structural deficit on a $700 million budget. The rest of Alaska, on net, grew — but only because of correspondence programs.

Alaska's correspondence system is now the state's largest school. One in eight Alaska students learns through a mail-based or virtual program. Galena City^↗ School District, a village of 500 people in the interior, enrolls 8,279 students through its IDEA correspondence program — making it the single largest school operation in the state. Strip out correspondence growth, and the traditional system lost roughly 8,300 students.

Half the state is at record lows. Twenty-nine of Alaska's 53 districts hit their lowest enrollment on record in 2025-26. The list runs from Anchorage (40,688) to Hydaburg (62). Thirteen districts are at all-time highs in DEED's school-level data, though Mat-Su's 19,903 includes a new 1,114-student virtual program.

By the numbers: 125,317 students statewide in 2025-26 — down 967 from the prior year, a 0.8% decline and a new seven-year low. Alaska has lost 3,272 students since 2020.

The threads we are following

Native enrollment is falling faster than any other group. Alaska Native and American Indian students make up 21% of the state's enrollment but have declined at nearly twice the statewide rate. The state lost 1,353 Native students since 2020, a 4.9% drop, while federal funding for Alaska Native education programs was cut in September 2025.

Mat-Su^↗'s DEED total masks a more complicated picture. Alaska's second-largest district shows 19,903 students in DEED's school-level data, but 1,114 are enrolled in the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a new virtual program that launched in 2025-26. Superintendent Randy Trani's district-level count is 18,912, a slight decline from the prior year. The Mat-Su Borough led the state in population growth, adding 1,696 residents in 2024-25, but that population growth has not yet translated into traditional classroom gains. Mat-Su faces a $22.5 million budget shortfall.

The kindergarten pipeline is collapsing. For every 100 seniors graduating, Alaska has only 84 kindergartners entering. The state's K-to-G12 ratio has inverted, signaling that enrollment losses will deepen for at least a decade as smaller cohorts move through the system.

What comes next

This is the first in a weekly series examining what Alaska's 2025-26 enrollment data reveals about the state's schools. New articles publish Mondays through late May.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.