By SUZANNE DOWNING
March 25, 2026 – Anchorage taxpayers are being told the school district is facing a $90 million shortfall for next year. The message is always the same: Without more funding, cuts are coming. Larger class sizes, fewer programs, and staffing reductions are all on the table. Even with a drop of 6,000 students over the past 10 years (the equivalent of 14-16 elementary schools), the district hasn’t found the will to close campuses.
Students and families have fled the district due to its poor performance. More and more families are signing up for correspondence, homeschooling, and the Mat-Su Valley schools.
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Is more money really the answer? The Anchorage School District is already spending more than $20,000 per student.
That level of spending places Anchorage well above what most families pay for private education in the city.
Across Alaska, private school tuition averages about $7,019 per year. Private elementary education averages roughly $7,400, and private high schools average around $7,300.
In Anchorage, tuition tends to run somewhat higher, generally around $9,300 to $9,700 for elementary grades and about $8,800 to $8,900 for high school.
Even at the higher end, most private school tuition in Anchorage remains far below what the public system spends per student:
- Grace Christian School lists tuition ranging from $10,425 for kindergarten to $12,525 for grades 7 through 12, with financial aid available.
- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School charges about $7,500 per year for K–6, with discounts for families with multiple children.
- Anchor Lutheran School falls roughly between $9,550 and $11,350 depending on grade level. Lumen Christi Catholic High School lists tuition around $10,500 and notes that families typically pay about 75% of the actual cost, with the remainder subsidized.
- Mountain City Christian Academy lists tuition around $7,000 for upper grades. Anchorage Junior Academy is approximately $5,400 per year.
- Anchorage Waldorf School operates on a sliding scale that ranges from roughly $5,575 to $16,725 depending on program and family income.
Many of these schools operate with smaller administrative structures, fewer layers of overhead, and have great community support and fundraising. They educate students at a fraction of the cost.
At the same time, Anchorage School District enrollment has declined over the past several years while overall spending per student has increased. Academic performance remains sub-par. For example, reading proficiency in elementary schools in Anchorage is still 35% and math proficiency is 37%; it’s the same in Anchorage middle schools. By high school, reading improves by one point to 38%, but math drops to 25% proficiency.
Despite the lousy outcomes, the district’s financial requests never stop.
For taxpayers, the comparison is unavoidable. Families in Anchorage can access private education for roughly $5,000 to $12,000 per year in many cases. The public system spends more than $20,000 per student and still requires additional funding to maintain operations. It’s no wonder so many families are fleeing government schools. We need the money to follow the student, because government schools are failing us.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan and graduate of Alaska public schools … when they were at the top nationwide.
10 thoughts on “Suzanne Downing: Anchorage schools spend over $20,000 per student, while private schools deliver better results for half the cost”
Teachers unions are a Marxist scourge on our country. There aim is to devolve public education down to basic brainwashing camps where children change their birth sexual identity and become Democrats. This evil intent on our children is much worse than the brainwashing of young German children through Nazi indoctrination prior to WW2.
Teachers unions and their leaders are disgusting pieces of trash.
If the money followed the students, and allowed them to pick their own schools (Charter, Private, Homeschool) you’d see the ASD numbers crater.
I proudly send my kids to Mountain City Christian Academy in Anchorage and plan to continue to do so. Hopefully we get fair school choice sometime in the future. The corpse of government schools can only limp on for so long.
Your decision to step up and pay for alternative quality education as I have done for my grandchildren is the only way we will win this battle.
Boycott the madness until it can no longer stand on its own.
Meanwhile the children left behind due to parents inability to pony up the extra cost will be ASD’s victims.
What Anchorage Families still don’t realize especially the low income, they still may be able to afford Online/Private School Homeschool options that is significantly lower than in-person private school education
I think Working low income families can afford a lot more than they realize to sacrifice for their family’s next generation to learn what they’d miss in a public school.
Liberty University Online Academy is 2300-3000 per academic year
Ignite Christian Academy is the same tuition
They have monthly payments. If the state legislature doesn’t take the PFD, parents can use their child’s PFD to pay half off the tuition. When the parents file their taxes then the child tax credit can pay off whatever balance is still owed.
A whole lot better than looking at a 7000-12,000 price tag
Anchorage parents need to recognize sacrifice a little of their spending today like bingo families to enroll their child in a better education system is better than waiting until the child is 18 to struggle big time with them that they don’t even know how to work and you are taking care of your adult child or worse you shove them out and find them in and out of jail, or raped, or in and out of court and treatment facilities, or a casket before their 40th birthday.
Choice is your’s GebAlpha and GenBeta parents? You want to continue sending your child to a failing school district or you desire a happier more successful adult who can take care of you when you are older and need your child the most in your 60’s,70’s,80’s,90’s an adult child who can take care of you because you sacrificed a little bit because one it was your duty and two so he is equipped by a better education to later give you help he chooses to return the care, duty, and love back to you.
Where the money in actually educating kids??? Its not in the classrooms, its in the envelopes handed to politicians by the teachers unions
This school year is almost over and I hope we hear that over the summer 1000 more Anchorage families feel the Spirit of God move into their minds and hearts and ASD “lost” 1000 more kids not returned for fall/winter 2027-spring-summer2027
Because their parents found something better. Children deserve to have a better type of education that will teach them the work skills needed for maintaining jobs.
Parents: Anchorage parents ASD will never change until they lose over 75% of its present enrollment when employees are looking for new work places because ASD hasn’t any work nor can pay them.
***To which in-personprivate schools need to be smarter whom it hires while public school districts are losing students. You know it’s not unheard of unconverted teachers and school staff not believing in the same God as we do. Biola University is finding that out if you are following the news. While generations are pulling back from the system that ASD represents, there are more people towards Christian institutions and that’s bringing money to which the unconverted they still have bills and needs too.
I have long maintained that ASD is a jobs program for unions.
Read the current candidates for school board reasons for wanting to serve. It is blather and word salads for the most part. You hear “loving kids and supporting public education” a lot and with few exceptions they all bemoan the lack of funding from the state. You also get scary stuff like “caring for our collective kids”.
Reading between the lines you see conflicts of interest as their personal bottom lines are directly linked to the decisions the board makes. Most do not give any concrete ideas or plans to remedy the current state of affairs. Sadly giving our kids a better education in basics as the sole focus ranks a distant third, after talk of getting “resources” or “maintaining/implementing services(clearly other than teaching)” or “being inclusive”. You are lucky, if improved educational outcomes are mentioned at all.
This is were it starts, with a board that doesn’t give a hoot about student educational outcomes or demands educational excellence and results, but cares only about employing more people to provide more “services”.
So, the ballots are in your hands people. Find those candidates focused on the three R’s and vote for them. If you can’t figure it out directly, there are a few conservative sources around who will happily share their opinions; they may even bring receipts to prove their case.
It’s what they insist on teaching the kids..(if they’re teaching at all.).so called theories and etc and etc “doesn’t cut the mustard”.
They spend more time on teaching stuff according to their theories and mis-consumptions, rather then the truth.
Years ago, I visited a public school classroom in Anchorage with a homeschool group as we were considering options for our children. Instead of phonics, the teacher was using the whole language method by reading and showing “L” words to the kids without explanations of how to read. The atmosphere was chaotic as loud talking could be heard from other classes.
I was dismayed when I heard about a small boy who was raped in public school here. The ASD Superintendent, Carol Comeau gave a defense by saying it didn’t happen very often. It sounded to me like she was representing the NEA, not the children in her response.
Many years later I was at a school board meeting where dozens of teachers were asking for changes in administration so they could do a better job of teaching but it wasn’t well received.
My own teachers in public school here in Anchorage ranged from excellent to terrible. My decision to not put my children into the same system was confirmed when I read Child Abuse in the Classroom by Phyllis Schlafly and S. Blumenfeld’s book NEA Trojan Horse in American Education.
It was well worth the sacrifice to teach homeschool and eke out enough to send them to private school as often as possible. They were reading simple sentences in Kindergarten and reading novels within one to three years, well before the public schools stated goal for reading. All four worked hard and graduated with honors at Grace Christian School where they loved their teachers and the opportunities for extracurricular activities.