ASD officials ‘cautiously optimistic’ capital improvement bonds will pass

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Anchorage School District officials are keeping a close eye as votes continue to trickle in from Tuesday’s municipal election.

Unofficial results Tuesday showed Proposition 1, a $62 million bond for school repairs, supported by 52% of votes counted.

“We are very encouraged by the preliminary results from the election,” ASD Communications Director MJ Thim said. “And we are cautiously optimistic as we wait for more votes to be counted.”

Thim said the district is keeping in mind lessons learned from a 2022 bond proposal that failed to pass by a slim margin. The $111 million bond included a controversial component: $31 million to rebuild Inlet View Elementary School.

Joelle Hall, chair of " School Bonds Yes!”, a group formed to support school bonds, said the current bond is different in several ways, which is why voters seem more inclined to support it.

“This is a significantly smaller bond,” Hall said. “And so we heard loud and clear that people were uncomfortable with the size of the bond — the composition inside of the bond might also have been a concern — but I think it’s a little bit of sticker shock.”

The current bond package includes money to rebuild Inlet View but at a much smaller amount of $19 million. More than $40 million is slated for maintenance and repairs and security enhancements, all things the district says voters want.

Thim said it’s too soon to celebrate but the district is hopeful.

“We don’t want to jinx anything just given what happened two years ago,” he said. “We are really mindful of the feedback that we got from the community. And again, it’s so close this year that that’s still good information for us, that we need to lean in more to our community and listen to what their expectations are of us as we move forward with additional funding needs.”

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