December 4, 2025, Seward Folly Staff

Faced with deep financial shortfalls after years of reduced state funding, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is grappling with hard choices about where to cut costs. On Monday, December 1, the Kenai Peninsula School Board met in Soldotna for an afternoon of work sessions followed by its regular meeting, where two topics set the tone: the possible closure of swimming pools and the prospect of shutting down or consolidating schools.

Seward Middle School is now one of nine schools under consideration for closure next year. Monday’s meeting marked the beginning of what will be a months-long process of discussion and debate before any final decisions are made this spring. Mica VanBuskirk, a longtime Seward education advocate and newly elected school board member, urged her colleagues to carefully weigh Seward’s unique needs.

During listening sessions at the Seward High School theater back in September, the board invited public comment, surfacing concerns about transportation, impacts on students’ social and academic experience, and the value of keeping local school identity alive. But after recent minor renovations at Seward High, some in the community grew worried that the board was already preparing to close the middle school. Several speakers from Seward described how course offerings and resources are already at a breaking point and warned that deeper cuts would push the system past it. VanBuskirk laid out the cost: closing the middle school would mean the loss of one teacher, half a principal, and most of a secretary’s job. And with fewer than 250 students, the high school would go without an athletic director.

“The kids that don’t have the resources, we want them to succeed,” said Ben Bohart during public testimony.

Lukas Scott, a junior at Seward High, told the board that he was recently offered credit to help with manual labor: “We took stuff down, put up a wall, did a lot more than just move books.” He and four other students spent about three and a half hours on those tasks.

Tara Swanson, a Seward Elementary teacher, said, “There needs to be a focus on communicating with the community.”

Katy Journey, who has two fourth-graders in Seward, told the board, “I heard that we might lose one of our schools. I get five notices when there’s a weather delay. Not one notice about the possibility of closing a school.” She added, “Formulas don’t apply to our size of community,” referring to the perceived lack of equity of resources at the smaller schools. 

VanBuskirk also highlighted that upperclassmen at Seward High sometimes have only two or three classes per day, and families are leaving Seward due to lack of resources, including staff and classes.

“Losing another teacher will harm our kids more,” she said.

She emphasized that despite projections of declining enrollment, Seward is growing, with development of a new ship terminal and the anticipated return of the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, nearly 30 percent of local students are homeschooled or in distance programs, a figure she called “unhealthy for the community” and attributed in part to inadequate support in local schools.

“What we’re offering students is unacceptable,” VanBuskirk said. “We need to figure out their needs, then decide how to move forward. One option is to change the staffing formula for smaller schools to increase staff and resources.”

Additional factors remain at play. Though projections show Seward’s enrollment falling, that trend could shift with new development. Deferred maintenance also weighs heavily on decisions: Nikiski Middle/Senior High, another school on the potential closure list, would require $32 million in overdue repairs to remain open, making it far more costly than Seward’s much newer middle school. Closing Nikiski would mean busing every 7th- through 12th-grader to Kenai.

Over and over, Seward residents called for open communication from the district, despite the recent meeting here in September. The lack of resources and programs, many said, has reached an unacceptable low. VanBuskirk’s presence on the board gave Seward a significant lift in terms of voice, and her insistence on revisiting the staffing formula to accommodate smaller schools’ unique situations stood out.