Alaska owns dozens of crumbling schools. It wants underfunded districts to take them on

toggle caption Gabby Hiestand Salgado/KYUK

For more than a decade, the Kuspuk School District asked Alaska's education department for the money to fix a rotting elementary school. The school, in the small and predominantly Indigenous community of Aniak in western Alaska, was in deep need of repairs. The nearby Kuskokwim River had flooded the 88-year-old building several times. The walls were moldy. Sewage was leaking into a space below the school's kitchen.

In 2018, the department finally approved the school district's $18.6 million funding request to build a new elementary school wing onto Aniak's middle and high school building, which was owned by the state.

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But on Page 4 of the funding contract for the project, Alaska's education department included a catch.

"The State would only build the new school if the local school board agreed to own it when completed," former superintendent James Anderson said in an email to KYUK Public Media, NPR and ProPublica.

In the end, Anderson agreed. He worried that if he didn't, it would jeopardize kids' health and safety. But he said he also worried about the financial and legal implications of the agreement for the school district, where nearly 30% of families live in poverty . If the state owned the building, it would be responsible for repairs and liability. Anderson worried that if the district took ownership of the school, it might be on the hook.

According to a review of deeds and project funding agreements, Alaska's education department has transferred ownership of 54 buildings to rural public school districts since 2003. That's nearly four times as many compared with the two decades prior. That same year, a new clause appeared in the funding agreements that districts sign with the state: In return for the money to make repairs to run-down schools or to build new ones, school districts would have to agree to own the buildings.

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