Voices echo around the Dena’ina School library as most of the village's roughly 30 residents gather in the old school building.
Everyone’s here to celebrate the Village Council's purchase of the school building from the Lake and Peninsula Borough.
The classroom’s been vacant for over a decade, but the cubbies are still filled with school supplies, textbooks remain pristine, and the whiteboard still displays a chart of the Earth's orbit pattern around the sun.
In 2011, the school's enrollment dropped to nine students. The state requires at least 10 children per school to qualify for state funding. It was forced to close.
Today, there is just one school-aged child in Pedro Bay. Village Council President Keith Jensen says the community suffered.
“It really was hard when the school closed because we got really close to the magic number that they wanted to keep the school open and once you dip below that, they all leave,” said Jensen. “When the school closed then the pastor and his wife left and so the church closed. It's a snowballing effect and it was really hard on the community.”
Carla Jensen, Pedro Bay Village Council member and sister of Keith Jensen, had two children in the school when it closed. She says the closure also disrupted community life.
“We had used it for so many different community potlucks, community get-togethers, Christmas, every holiday we all got together here,” said Carla Jensen. “It brought people together because it was a large space. So once we lost that, it took that away from us. That sense of getting together at every chance we could. Yeah. It just took it away from us.”
Keith Jensen says that the discussion to buy the school started in 2016, but the official sale from the Lake and Peninsula Borough to the Village Council took place earlier this year. For $618,000 in Village Council funds, the village got the school building and a teacher housing triplex, which is now being used as housing for the health clinic staff.
Both buildings have been boarded up and vacant, but they stayed intact.
“We felt like instead of seeing such a nice building go to waste, we really wanted to open it up to be able to utilize it,” said Keith Jensen.
For now, the council plans to move the community's current library into the former school and use the gym as a community recreation center.
“Long term we would like to see some means of income be generated out of the building,” said Keith Jensen.
Keith Jensen says that in the last few years, the council has started several projects in Pedro Bay including the construction of a new road, the expansion of the health clinic, and the pursuit of a hydro project. He says there are efforts to bring the village population back up.
“We've been working hard to try to take on more programs and create more jobs for people, more infrastructure,” said Keith Jensen.
Nathan Hill, manager for the Lake and Peninsula Borough, says that Pedro Bay is one of four schools that have been closed due to a lack of students. Hill says that populations in rural villages of the Lake and Peninsula Borough declined as the cost of living has gone up and jobs and commerce have been centralized in cities.
“This is not a regional problem, I feel like this is a global problem. You read about other countries and the gravitation towards city centers is there in just about every country that you look at,” said Hill.
The Lake and Peninsula School District’s enrollment peaked at 549 students in 1999. Enrollment has fallen more than 40% since then.
Hill says that the hope in Pedro Bay is that the population will one day become large enough to reopen the school. If that happens, he says the borough would lease the school building from the Village Council and provide the curriculum and support to run the school.
“Education a lot of times in these small communities feels a little bit siloed where the community and the school district aren't necessarily working together to accomplish the same mission,” said Hill. “I feel like ownership and buy-in from a community with their own education system and with their own population strengthens the bond.”
Glen Alsworth, mayor of the Lake and Peninsula Borough, says the driving force of the borough's creation 35 years ago was to preserve the school system in the region. He says this sale is in line with that mission.
“The big buzzword back then was ‘We need our schools to represent our communities, we need community schools that represent our values.’ So I think it's really appropriate that today this is really going to be a community school that belongs to you,” said Alsworth.
For Carla Jensen, the sale is a step in the right direction for the community.
“This is really good. It's really good to bring people together and show them that this is our building. It's our building. Now we can start forward,” said Carla Jensen.
Carla Jensen says the sale celebration is the first of many community events that will be held in the building now that it is open to the public.
