What's next for Mat-Su's three shuttered school buildings
Laron and Meadow Lakes elementary schools and Glacier View School closed this month as part of a series of district budget cuts.
PALMER – The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District plans to continue using two of the buildings that, until recently, housed now-shuttered schools, while a third facility will be converted into a community center, officials said at a school board work session Wednesday.
Meadow Lakes and Larson elementary schools and Glacier View School were permanently closed earlier this month as part of more than $20 million in budget cuts.
About 600 Meadow Lakes and Larson elementary students will be enrolled in other nearby schools next year as part of the shift. About a dozen students expected to attend Glacier View in the fall will instead be bused more than 40 miles to Sutton or down into Palmer.
The school closures were expected to save the district $3.8 million next year, district officials told the School Board earlier this year.
The buildings, located near Wasilla and in Glacier View, belong to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough but are used and managed by the school district under long-term agreements. When vacant, they can be returned to borough oversight or retained by the district for other uses, district administrators said during the meeting.
An update presented during the meeting included a new plan for two of those buildings and a proposal for the third building.
Larson Elementary School
Larson Elementary’s vacant building will be repurposed for Birchtree Charter School by Aug. 1 as part of a plan to move the school out of its leased facility and into a permanent space, district officials said during the board session Wednesday.
Birchtree was originally slated to move into a new $27 million custom building funded by voter-approved bonds, with construction scheduled to start this year.
But when the district announced plans to close schools earlier this year, borough officials halted the bond sale needed to fund the work. That decision delayed any new construction for at least a year while they waited to learn whether Birchtree could instead move into a newly vacant building, they said.
When the schools officially closed, the plan to relocate Birchtree rather than start a new construction project moved forward, district officials said Wednesday.
While the shift means Birchtree will not receive a new building customized for its Waldorf teaching program, it will likely bring significant cost savings because state rules prohibit the district from charging rent in a borough-owned facility, District Superintendent Randy Trani said during the meeting.
Birchtree will pay its own utilities and snow removal, estimated at about $150,000 per year, plus janitorial services, he said. But it will no longer pay the approximately $586,000 it spends annually on its current lease, he said.
“That’s why it’s attractive to them — that’s why it’s better for kids, because they have more resources to put in,” he said. “But we aren’t going to charge a fee on top of those things because we can’t.”
Glacier View School
Matanuska-Susitna Borough officials will convert the 20,000-square-foot Glacier View School building into a community center for the rural community’s approximately 300 residents, they said earlier this month.
The update was included in the borough’s fiscal year 2027 operating budget, approved by the Mat-Su Assembly on May 7. Once open, it will be the borough’s only taxpayer-funded community facility in the area.
Running the facility will cost the borough about $140,000 a year in utilities, maintenance, and oversight, officials said. They plan to charge rental fees similar to those used at other borough-operated community centers, such as the Big Lake Lions Recreation Center, they said.
Meadow Lakes Elementary School
District officials said they hope to use the now-vacant Meadow Lakes facility as rental space or overflow space for other educational programs in the district, including charter schools and the district’s Mat-Su Central homeschool program.
A proposal for that use must be approved by the school board and will be presented during a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, officials said during the work session. Whether the plan is ultimately feasible will depend on whether an additional $18 million in state legislature-approved funding comes to the district next year or Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoes some or all of it, Trani said.
Among the possible uses are allowing Twindly Bridge Charter School or Mat-Su Central, which do not have gym spaces of their own, to use the building’s recreation and cafeteria areas; renting rooms to other homeschool programs; or setting up the school as a host facility for rural districts that may want to send students to Mat-Su for career and technical courses, Trani told the school board.
The school could also become the home of a new Meadow Lakes-area charter school, said Alan Leonard, a Meadow Lakes resident who is helping with the effort. Leonard’s son attended the now-shuttered elementary school, and he is working with a group of residents to organize a charter school application, he said Wednesday.
Such a proposal would need approval from both the Mat-Su School Board and the state education department, according to state law.
-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com
This story was updated June 1 to correct the spelling of Birchtree.