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The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has a lenient policy on allowing pupils to go to schools outside their attendance area, but now some buildings are bursting at the seams with students while others abound with space, according to administrators.

Dave Jones, assistant superintendent for the district, summarized the situation, saying, "We're ending up with the rural schools with fewer students and a lot of empty classrooms and more urban schools with a whole bunch of students and jammed classrooms."

Jones used the terms "rural" and "urban" relative to the Kenai Peninsula, explaining that schools in Soldotna and Homer, particularly at the elementary level, have in recent years been picking up more students from outside their attendance areas, while enrollment at rural schools such as Chapman School in Anchor Point, Tustumena Elementary School in Kasilof and Sterling Elementary, has declined.

District policy allows students who live in one school's attendance area to attend another, so long as parents can provide transportation, and the school they wish to move to is operating below 90 percent capacity.

The policy is one that's based on choice, said Jones, but not one that's necessarily always being used for educational purposes.

"It's good to be a district of choice if we're talking about an educational choice, for example, if I want my student to go to a school because it's a different type of education. The problem we're running into is we have a lot of movement from one traditional neighborhood elementary school to another traditional neighborhood elementary school that does not have any instructional difference," he said.

It boils down to a matter of convenience for many parents, he said.

Carolyn Cannava, principal at Soldotna Elementary, agreed.

"Parents who work in Soldotna like to have their children near to them, and that's one of the things that draws children to the school that aren't from this attendance area," she said.

Space is not infinite

Soldotna Elementary is a unique case as it has three different interests vying for space within the same building.

Along with both regular education and special education programs, the Soldotna Montessori Charter School is also located within Soldotna Elementary.

As a result, Cannava said the facility is under a lot of pressure and it's noticeable right from the get-go of the day.

"The parking lot is over-utilized and it's downright scary," Cannava said of drop-off and pick-up time.

During the day she said space is at a premium. Whether it's getting library time, space in the computer lab or just an area to work with small groups, Cannava said her staff must coordinate well in advance.

Soldotna Elementary and Soldotna Montessori combine to put the building at 91.28 percent capacity.

The other two Soldotna schools, Redoubt Elementary and Kalifornsky Beach Elementary, are functioning at 93.5 percent and 108.75 percent capacity, respectively, based on enrollment data compiled Sept. 9.

Jones noted that these figures aren't necessarily reflective of the actual space issues at these schools either.

He explained the special education programs often need more space to operate.

"I don't think (capacity figures) are reflective of the total demand on the building, but they're the only constant we have," he said.

He also said one of the district's concerns with having packed schools was the pupil-teacher ratios, saying, "One of the problems is the pupil-teacher ratios in those urban schools increases and that directly impacts instruction. One of the district's goals is to maintain low PTRs."

LaDawn Druce, president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association agreed.

She said of the teachers who oversee pack classrooms, "It's very difficult to do your job because you're probably just doing management too much of the time."

If educators are burdened with more students than they can handle, she worried they'd be challenged to provide meaningful assignments while keeping their workloads reasonable.

She related an experience of her own where she had to grade 150 papers, noting that in such a situation teachers have to somehow make sure they provide their students with valuable feedback, yet do most of this outside of regular workday hours.

Declines in rural areas

While the three Soldotna elementary schools are getting pushed, it's quite a different story in the rural schools.

Christine Ermold, principal at Sterling Elementary, said that in the last five years she's seen enrollment go from 205 to 145.

Noting the trend, she said the school launched a survey of parents who'd withdrawn their students in the past seven years to try to understand what was happening.

Ermold said the results of the survey showed that the majority of the families physically moved outside the attendance area to live closer to their source of employment.

For those who only moved their children to a school outside the Sterling attendance area, the survey showed that most did so because they couldn't find adequate day care providers in Sterling.

"Because we don't have extensive care programs like the Boys and Girls Club, families that work in town have trouble getting home in time for the busses," she said.

Ermold remains positive about the declining number of students in her school, though, saying, "It wouldn't be bad with more kids, but I know every one of my kids by name, all of our kids are known by all our teachers, what's not to love? It's really a remarkable place."

While concern has been raised within the administration that declining school populations could result in fewer extracurricular programs being offered at some schools, Ermold said that hasn't been the case for Sterling.

She said the school continues to offer art, music and physical education.

For Ermold, working at a small school has been a particularly rewarding personal experience.

"Because our school is the size it is, I'm able to take on some teaching responsibilities, which is an incredible gift," she said, explaining that she teaches art classes along with her regular duties as the school principal.

She said the building is still being used to it's maximum potential and two empty classrooms are used as music and art rooms.

She said she thinks this is better use of space than having a teacher travel around the school going from classroom to classroom with a cart.

Space has also been made available within the building to community organizations.

"We don't have a single room in the building that's not being used," she said.

A smaller student population has steered the school toward multi-grade classrooms.

"Because we're a small school there's a different staffing formula that applies," she said.

While some might find the multi-grade approach to be less than ideal, Ermold said that combining the different aged students and keeping them with the same teacher for more than one year has been shown to have positive educational influences.

A double-edged sword

Druce called the overcrowding situation double-edged, noting that while the free roaming policy has caused some schools to fill up while others have thinned, it also offers parents freedom and peace of mind.

While Jones said he doubts any of the rural schools are in danger of falling off the map, the trend points toward more and more students going to a centralized location.

So long as the district continues to support a boundary-free policy, it will likely continue into the future.

He said the district is only in the preliminary stages of addressing this problem.

The solution might point toward new construction, but Jones said that was likely unnecessary.

"We have enough room in all our schools to handle all our students," he said.

Construction could also be costly to taxpayers, and that's something he said he'd rather avoid.

"The people of the Kenai Peninsula have always been supportive of the schools and we're trying to be as efficient as we can with what we have," he said.

A more likely solution would be the redistribution of students.

He noted as an example, that with further investigation it might be possible to expand Soldotna Middle School by a grade level to take pressure off the elementary schools.

While that may or may not be the solution in Soldotna, he said, "Basically what we've done is possibly created a solution without increasing costs."

This is the direction he hopes to see the district move to as it address the issue in coming months.

Dante Petri can be reached at dante.petri@peninsulaclarion.com.