The Ben Eielson Junior Senior High School basketball court sports the school’s mascot on April 22, 2024. The school will close at the end of the year due to budget constraints.
High school Junior Kaitlyn Manning reaches into her locker at Ben Eielson Junior Senior High School on April 22, 2024. “Nobody wanted to close any of the schools. And the hardest part is, we’re not telling our community that more aren’t going to close,” she said. Over the summer, the board will have to fix a funding gap that, depending on the results of a local special election and whether lawmakers in Juneau add funding to schools, could be up to $10 million this year.
Math teacher Steve Mosley sits in his classroom at Ben Eielson Junior Senior High School on April 22, 2024. He has mostly packed his materials in anticipation of moving to North Pole High School next year. “Very sad to see the school close. It had a really important impact in the community and especially on base kids. They come in and out of here every three years for the most part, so it was a good place for them to gather with their peers the smaller school environment,” he said.
Immediately after the board voted to close the school, she said her family was less likely to stay in Alaska, where she grew up and planned to retire. “I didn’t think it was going to be this emotional,” she said as her voice broke. “While we love Alaska and it’s home to me, the failing education system is keeping us from planting deeper roots here, as of right now.” She said several friends extended their enlistments so their kids could stay at the same high school.
Townsend met with district leaders to communicate the importance of the school and held community meetings to talk about the change, but was unable to stave off the closure. An Air Force JROTC student folds a flag in a Ben Eielson Junior Senior High School classroom on April 22, 2024. But he acknowledged that the cost of operating the small school is high, and that it’s been harder to offer the same amount of courses as some other schools. When two teachers retired last year, the school lost four Advanced Placement courses. The district will save more than $2 million by closing Ben Eielson. For the district it was a trade-off that means class sizes everywhere else don’t have to go up.