What you need to know:

• The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District plans to reduce Glacier View’s full-time teaching staff from four to two for the 2025-26 school year, raising concerns about educational quality and the school’s long-term viability.
• The cuts are part of a broader $281.3 million district budget that eliminates about 80 positions across 48 schools. Deeper reductions are possible if state funding remains flat. Glacier View’s student population has declined from 53 in 2020 to 26 in 2024.
• Residents argue the school is essential to the fabric of the isolated community. They say the staffing cuts could trigger a cycle of declining enrollment and eventual closure, with impacts reaching beyond education. Some believe adding an alternative diploma option could help boost enrollment.

GLACIER VIEW – Dozens of Glacier View residents filled a school gym Wednesday to tell Mat-Su district officials that upcoming cuts, which will leave the school with just two teachers for all students, will harm the small community and threaten the school's long-term survival.

Tucked near the toe of the Matanuska Glacier and more than an hour’s drive up the Glenn Highway from Palmer, Glacier View School currently employs four full-time teachers to instruct 26 Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District students in kindergarten through high school. Principal Wendy Taylor, who has worked at the school for more than 30 years, also teaches, while several part-time staff members provide administrative or tutoring help, she said.  

But district plans for the 2025-26 school year will cut Glacier View's full-time teaching staff from four to two. It's a move that residents fear will trigger new enrollment declines and ultimately force the closure of a facility that some see as a linchpin for the community.

District funding

The teacher cuts are part of a $281.3 million district budget for the 2025-26 school year approved by the school board earlier this month. The plan reduces staffing by about 80 employees districtwide through retirements and regular attrition. Position cuts are planned for each of the district's 48 schools, and staff members who currently hold those soon-to-be-eliminated roles can apply for a transfer elsewhere in the district, officials said.

Those cuts will have an outsized impact on small schools in the Mat-Su's most rural areas, where skeletal teaching staffs hustle to meet state and district instructional requirements, community members and teachers told officials at a school board meeting held Wednesday at Glacier View School. 

In typical district schools with multiple teachers per grade, the extra workload created by cuts can be shared among staff, teachers said in interviews after the meeting. But at Glacier View, reducing staff to just two certified teachers means one teacher for grades kindergarten through five and another for middle and high school students while still providing the required teaching hours and services for everyone, Taylor said.

“With deep respect, I must ask: How can we maintain the integrity of our elementary, middle and high school programs with that kind of staffing?” she told the board. “At minimum, our request is to have a teacher at all three levels.”

Exactly how many staffing cuts will ultimately hit Mat-Su schools next year remains unclear, as state lawmakers continue to grapple with a decision on school funding.

The district's approved 2025-26 budget relies on a state school funding increase vetoed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Thursday. A final state budget decision could be months away and could require even deeper staffing cuts for many of the region's schools, Mat-Su Superintendent Randy Trani said at the meeting. 

If state funding ultimately remains flat, the district will likely have to eliminate as many as 220 positions, he said.

Enrollment challenges

The impending staff cuts at Glacier View come as the school also struggles to maintain enrollment. State rules require the school to have at least 10 students or lose funding entirely. The region is home to about 375 residents, according to U.S. census data.

Glacier View's student population has melted away over the past five years, dropping from 53 students in 2020 to 26 this year - the school's lowest enrollment in 30 years, Taylor said. 

She expects 25 students next year. An automated district system that estimates future enrollment recently predicted Glaceri View will drop to 16 students. Parents and staff at Wednesday’s meeting said that is inaccurate, and district officials agreed to recalculate.  

Many local students who could attend the school have recently instead switched to correspondence schools run by other districts with lower graduation requirements, Taylor said.

That's an issue seen districtwide and likely linked to a desire to avoid the Mat-Su's new 25.5-credit high school diploma requirement, which includes an Advanced Placement course mandate, district officials said earlier this year. About 3,000 Mat-Su students are enrolled in out-of-district correspondence programs, according to state data.

A proposed alternative Mat-Su diploma, available through Mat-Su Central and up for school board approval early next month, would remove the AP requirement and could lure students back into the district, officials said.

But at Glacier View – where every enrolled student moves the school a little further from worries of closure – the alternative diploma would only help if it were available to students in the school, Taylor said.

Mat-Su School board members Tom Bergey and Ted Swanson said they support finding a way to add the option to the district's most rural schools, including Glacier View and Su-Valley Junior/Senior High School in Talkeetna.

Enrolling more students at Glaicer View would also have a noticeable impact on the school's revenue for the district, Trani said.

The district currently receives about $447,000 in state and local funding for students enrolled at Glacier View, but spends about $917,000 to keep the school open, according to district data. Each enrolled student brings about $19,000 in funding, district officials said.

'The real threat'

Even if a few more students join or the predicted enrollment for next year stays at 25, the plan to reduce Glacier View's full-time teaching staff is unlikely to change due to the current budget crunch, Trani said in an interview after the meeting.

That's a move that will likely exacerbate ongoing enrollment problems and ultimately threaten an important part of the community, parents said at the meeting. The school isn't just a place where children learn to read and write, they said -- it often serves as the center of a region where structured activities outside of school are severely limited.

“The real threat to our school enrollment is not natural attrition. It’s decisions like this one that force families to leave because their kids cannot get the education they deserve,” said Glacier View resident Brian Wilbert, who has four children enrolled at the school. “Two teachers cannot fulfill the district’s own standards for instruction.”

Wibert said he plans to enroll his children next year and keep a close eye on how things go under the new staffing plan.

“It’s about kids that are going to live in this community,” he said. “It’s beyond any one family.”

Amber Allen, an administrative secretary at the school who also fills in as a lunch monitor and substitute teacher, said she fears the cuts will spell the end of the school.

“We’re in a really tough spot. I understand that they don’t have money, but we can’t do what they’re asking us to do,” she said. “The true issue is that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com

This story was updated April 18 to accurately reflect the funding generated by each enrolled student.