Voznesenka School will remain open next school year, with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and Voznesenka Community Council, Inc. settling the terms of a lease agreement Monday.
The school district has leased buildings to operate a school in the Russian Old Believer community east of Homer since the community formed in the mid-1980s, but the lease agreement stalled on terms when it came up for renewal earlier this year.
If an agreement wasn’t reached Monday, the issue was set to go before the school board at its meeting Monday night, with district administration recommending closing the school. Arrangements would then be made to transport the 100 or so students to neighboring schools, or provide families with homeschool services.
Dave Jones, KPBSD assistant superintendent of instructional support, said he’s relieved it didn’t come to that.
“We’re glad we were able to conclude the negotiations and continue to serve those students in Voznesenka,” said Jones.
Lindsay Wolter, an attorney representing the community council, said she thinks her clients are pleased, as well.
“Based on, historically, how this has been going I think everybody has been looking forward to having an agreement in place and doing the best they could for the community and the kids. So I think there’s sort of a sense of relief that the school will exist next year, it will be in session, and they are happy with the result,” said Wolter.
The new agreement is for five years, with the option to renew for two additional, five-year periods. The district will pay $1.05 per square foot for the four buildings that house the school with a 2 percent escalator added each year.
The last sticking point was water. The school district had been paying about $2,800 a year to provide bottled water, because local water had been deemed unpotable. But the local water utility now provides potable water to the school, so the district agreed to stop purchasing bottled water and instead pay that $2,800 for use of local water.
There’s also language saying that the district aggress to lease a building currently under construction for use as a gym and multipurpose space if the community council gets certification that the building meets state specifications for education. That would add 2,880 square feet to the 6,680 square feet currently being used by the school.
“It’s just an indoor facility that would allow the school to meet in one location, because right now they’ve just got sort of compartmentalized classrooms, and so there’s not a place for everyone to meet unless they’re outside. … Fall, winter and sometimes spring, the kids are playing out in like the slushy, nasty areas. It’d be nice to have them have an indoor area that’s warm and dry,” said Wolter.
Jones said it’s a unique situation for a school district to rent facilities, as it does in Voz, Razdolna and Kachemak Selo, rather than having state-built facilities.
“I don’t believe I’m aware of other places in the state where districts lease buildings in a community to provide education to those students,” said Jones.
Kachemak Selo is desperately in need of a new facility, and currently tops the state priority list for school construction projects. The district’s application for state grant funding to help build a new school is only good for two years, expiring this year. It doesn’t look like the Legislature will fund the project this session, however, so the district needs to decide whether to resubmit the application and update the supporting research and documentation. Jones said that the school board decided in a work session Monday to postpone the decision until its June meeting to discuss the matter with the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly first.