Preserving a Community’s Heart: The Fight to Save Tudor Elementary and Its Montessori Program

The community conversation for “rightsizing” the Anchorage School District on Saturday was just as expected. Questions remain, and answers that were given left families with more questions. It wasn’t difficult to find staff members to speak with as everyone was labeled as “ASD staff”, but it was a lot of polite smiles, and encouragement  to take the rightsizing survey for when they couldn’t answer the question being asked. It wasn’t difficult to have a conversation with a school board member, in fact they were incredibly friendly and genuinely wanted to hear from the community. What is difficult to accept is that one school seems to have been intentionally chosen for closure this year, skipping over many other lower-scoring schools that ranked further down the list. No, it’s not Lake Hood Elementary, and no, it is not Bear Valley Elementary, and not even Tudor Elementary itself - more likely to be a casualty of this targeted effort. Those are still up for debate until December 17th. What will be closing this year against all odds, is Tudor’s Montessori Program. Despite the best efforts of the full Tudor PTA and its many parent members-which, I might add, is comprised in its entirety of Montessori parents; the school district is against keeping the Tudor Montessori program open, and proposes the merger of one Montessori program to the downtown sister school of Denali Montessori. The school district is giving up on the program. And before I go any deeper, I want to clarify that virtually all the children who attend Tudor Elementary outside of the Montessori are considered neighborhood students - that’s 60% of the school living in the neighborhood. What is not at all accounted for in the the ASD’s rationale - by their own admission - is that a further 50% of the Montessori population also lives within this neighborhood community, and those Montessori families who don’t, have such a strong connection to the school and the community around it, that they, too, are important and valued pillars of our midtown hamlet. Thus the Tudor PTA is filled with neighborhood parents. 

Because the PTA is supported by so many of the neighborhood, the parents have become a well-oiled machine purpose-built to enrich and enhance the experiences and outcomes for all students that has created  amazing afterschool and in-school activities for the children while also raising funds to provide educational materials and other supplies the students need and want.  

Throughout the year, The PTA puts on family movie nights.  In September, the MPR was packed wall to wall with children dressed in their night wear, cuddled up with their favorite blankets and near-insurmountable amount of squishmallows, to watch Garfield the Movie. The movie concessions stand was bustling with children whose parents gave them $1 or $5 to pick out movie snacks, popcorn, pizza, or even the special treat of a late night soda. The night was a success. The fall carnival in October, that has been a successful perennial fundraising event where neighborhood children come to play carnival games, win prizes, socialize with their fellow community members, and  -to give just one example of the growth of this cohort - this year had face painting by a well known local face painter who is a staple of the Alaska State and Tanana Valley fairs, Ashana Flippo, owner of Color Me Fun. The outcome was full and didn’t disappoint - and never does. Just recently the PTA put on the Zombie fun run, a fundraiser during the spooky season of Halloween, and the turnout of community members was astonishing and record-breaking. Parents dressed up as zombies to “chase” the children around the school to raise money for the PTA to continue to treat the neighborhood kids with more community bonding activities. The bake sale held on November fifth absolutely shattered fundraising goals and records, nearly tripling the previous-best performance.  The Tudor PTA will, for the 5th year in a row, host their Tudor Craft fair on Saturday, November 23rd  from 12pm-4pm that will boast over 70 booths from local artisans and vendors. The Tudor PTA will be putting on a gift wrapping donation table where the time slots are filled with involved PTA members volunteering their time. The Montessori parent group will have their own table to share their crafts as well. This is indisputably a community on the rise, bolstered by an influx of families embarking on the journey of raising a new generation of Alaskans. regardless of the outcome of the Anchorage School Board decision on December 17th, after school and in-school activities will continue to be planned for as long as students attend this school. 

We have to remember that Tudor Elementary isn’t full of affluent families- it isn’t full of families with full-time stay-at-home parents who can prioritize involvement in these activities as a matter of course. It’s primarily comprised of dual income families or single parents, living right next door to the school, who still put on amazing programs for the children in this community in their scant spare time to continue to keep the community thriving. A dedicated group of parents and their children have developed and honed this unique community in a world where there is precious little of this collective spirit in which people across a multitude of cultures and beliefs are able to come together and celebrate one another and foster a sense of belonging. 

To remove this program is a blow to this community, and removing the school entirely would simply eradicate the painstakingly cultivated community that has been stewarded in this neighborhood for generations. It would ultimately disconnect families from their community at a time where civic engagement, shared communal experience, and unity are precious and faltering. The fact of the matter is that if these students are drawn to Lake Otis or Denali, this sense of community can’t be perpetuated and will not follow these students. It’s important to understand Lake Otis Elementary has no PTA, and is not a neighborhood school. It is a school the student body of which is comprised of a patchwork of pupils from disparate pockets of surrounding neighborhoods with absolutely no sense of cohesion in a wildly impractical location. Transplanting the students from Tudor will not, by some miracle, fix or create community and unity but instead will erase what has been so deliberately curated. 

Closing the Montessori program is an outcome this dedicated group of parents can weather, but closing the school entirely would constitute a fatal blow to this precious and rare experience that children in the neighborhood have enjoyed for decades. With the recent development that Tudor has been granted Title 1 status, all of the aforementioned efforts would only be enhanced and expanded and the school further enabled to meaningfully engage students and families. It must also be acknowledged that where we could and would willingly welcome students from the surrounding neighborhoods, we cannot simply graft this labor of love onto another school like an interchangeable component in the milieu of the district. It would, quite simply, cease to exist alongside the school itself. 

The community conversation for “rightsizing” the Anchorage School District on Saturday was just as expected. Questions remain, and answers that were given left families with more questions. It wasn’t difficult to find staff members to speak with as everyone was labeled as “ASD staff”, but it was a lot of polite smiles, and encouragement  to take the rightsizing survey for when they couldn’t answer the question being asked. It wasn’t difficult to have a conversation with a school board member, in fact they were incredibly friendly and genuinely wanted to hear from the community. What is difficult is accepting that one school seems to have been intentionally chosen for closure this year, skipping over many other lower-scoring schools that ranked further down the list. No, it’s not Lake Hood Elementary, and no, it is not Bear Valley Elementary, and not even Tudor Elementary itself - more likely to be a casualty of this targeted effort. Those are still up for debate until December 17th. What will be closing this year against all odds, is Tudor’s Montessori Program. Despite the best efforts of the full Tudor PTA and its many parent members-which, I might add, is comprised in its entirety of Montessori parents; the school district is against keeping the Tudor Montessori program open, and proposes the merger of one Montessori program to the downtown sister school of Denali Montessori. The school district is giving up on the program. And before I go any deeper, I want to clarify that virtually all the children who attend Tudor Elementary outside of the Montessori are considered neighborhood students - that’s 60% of the school living in the neighborhood. What is not at all accounted for in the the ASD’s rationale - by their own admission - is that a further 50% of the Montessori population also lives within this neighborhood community, and those Montessori families who don’t, have such a strong connection to the school and the community around it, that they, too, are important and valued pillars of our midtown hamlet. Thus the Tudor PTA is filled with neighborhood parents. 

Because the PTA is supported by so many of the neighborhood, the parents have become a well-oiled machine purpose-built to enrich and enhance the experiences and outcomes for all students that has created  amazing afterschool and in-school activities for the children while also raising funds to provide educational materials and other supplies the students need and want.  

Throughout the year, The PTA puts on family movie nights.  In September, the MPR was packed wall to wall with children dressed in their night wear, cuddled up with their favorite blankets and near-insurmountable amount of squishmallows, to watch Garfield the Movie. The movie concessions stand was bustling with children whose parents gave them $1 or $5 to pick out movie snacks, popcorn, pizza, or even the special treat of a late night soda. The night was a success. The fall carnival in October, that has been a successful perennial fundraising event where neighborhood children come to play carnival games, win prizes, socialize with their fellow community members, and  -to give just one example of the growth of this cohort - this year had face painting by a well known local face painter who is a staple of the Alaska State and Tanana Valley fairs, Ashana Flippo, owner of Color Me Fun. The outcome was full and didn’t disappoint - and never does. Just recently the PTA put on the Zombie fun run, a fundraiser during the spooky season of Halloween, and the turnout of community members was astonishing and record-breaking. Parents dressed up as zombies to “chase” the children around the school to raise money for the PTA to continue to treat the neighborhood kids with more community bonding activities. The bake sale held on November fifth absolutely shattered fundraising goals and records, nearly tripling the previous-best performance.  The Tudor PTA will, for the 5th year in a row, host their Tudor Craft fair on Saturday, November 23rd  from 12pm-4pm that will boast over 40 booths from local artisans and vendors. The Tudor PTA will be putting on a gift wrapping donation table where the time slots are filled with involved PTA members volunteering their time. The Montessori parent group will have their own table to share their crafts as well. This is indisputably a community on the rise, bolstered by an influx of families embarking on the journey of raising a new generation of Alaskans. regardless of the outcome of the Anchorage School Board decision on December 17th, after school and in-school activities will continue to be planned for as long as students attend this school. 

 We have to remember that Tudor Elementary isn’t full of affluent families- it isn’t full of families with single incomes and full-time stay-at-home parents who can prioritize involvement in these activities as a matter of course. It’s primarily comprised of dual income families, living right next door to the school, who still put on amazing programs for the children in this community in their scant spare time to continue to keep the community thriving. A dedicated group of parents and their children have developed and honed this unique community in a world where there is precious little of this collective spirit in which people across a multitude of cultures and beliefs are able to come together and celebrate one another and foster a sense of belonging. 

To remove this program is a blow to this community, and removing the school entirely would simply eradicate the painstakingly cultivated community that has been stewarded in this neighborhood for generations. It would ultimately disconnect families from their community at a time where civic engagement, shared communal experience, and unity are precious and faltering. The fact of the matter is that if these students are drawn to Lake Otis or Denali, this sense of community can’t be perpetuated and will not follow these students. It’s important to understand Lake Otis Elementary has no PTA, and is not a neighborhood school. It is a school the student body of which is comprised of a patchwork of pupils from disparate pockets of surrounding neighborhoods with absolutely no sense of cohesion in a wildly impractical location. Transplanting the students from Tudor will not, by some miracle, fix or create community and unity but instead will erase what has been so deliberately curated. 

Closing the Montessori program is an outcome this dedicated group of parents can weather, but closing the school entirely would constitute a fatal blow to this precious and rare experience that children in the neighborhood have enjoyed for decades. With the recent development that Tudor has been granted Title 1 status, all of the aforementioned efforts would only be enhanced and expanded and the school further enabled to meaningfully engage students and families. It must also be acknowledged that where we could and would willingly welcome students from the surrounding neighborhoods, we cannot simply graft this labor of love onto another school like an interchangeable component in the milieu of the district. It would, quite simply, cease to exist alongside the school itself.