Alaska’s acting attorney general filed an emergency petition with the Alaska Supreme Court to compel the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District to open a charter school whose application the district previously denied.
The petition comes one day after a Fairbanks judge denied a preliminary injunction filed by the local charter group that sought to force the district to open Pearl Creek STEAM charter school.
“Without a speedy decision, the school will be unable to open this year,” wrote Acting Attorney General Cori Mills.
Mills urged the court to reverse the state judge’s decision and instruct the district to move forward in approving the charter school to open in the fall. “That means the District must take all necessary steps to ensure the Pearl Creek STEAM charter school opens in August 2026,” she wrote.
It’s the latest development in a months-long saga and court dispute between the Fairbanks district and the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM – a proposed charter school focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics – that is seeking to open its doors to students from Kindergarten through sixth grade this fall.
Members of the Fairbanks school board unanimously denied the charter last year, citing a variety of problems with the proposal for the school and millions in costs to open a new school in the building of a school that was closed last year due to severe budget cuts.
The group behind Pearl Creek STEAM objected to the districts’ evaluation, saying it had a sound proposal and community support to open the school. The group appealed to the Alaska State Board of Education, which reviewed and granted the application in April, overruling the district. The district appealed the decision in state court, which was being heard in a separate case.
In the meantime, the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM filed a civil lawsuit with the state superior court and asked for a preliminary injunction to compel the district to sign the charter and work on opening the school.
The Pearl Creek charter group argued that the court should force the district to open the school because of the state approval, while the district argued the court should maintain the status quo by allowing the school to remain closed.
On Wednesday, a state judge agreed with the district and denied the preliminary injunction to compel the opening of the school, saying the Pearl Creek group does not face irreparable harm because no school exists yet.
“This is not a matter of no education as opposed to education,” Judge Kirk Schwalm wrote. “It is a matter of less preferred education to preferred education.”
The judge also wrote that opening the school would cost an estimated $2 million, which “would impair FNSBD’s ability to maintain an orderly opening of existing schools for the 2026-2027 school year including impacts to existing schools’ capacity, classroom size, and staffing.”
The two cases — the district appeal of the state board decision, and the charter group’s lawsuit — were combined in court and are being heard by Schwalm. A decision in the district’s appeal case is expected in October.
Officials with the attorney general’s office and Alaska Department of Law did not respond to emailed questions on Thursday about the reason for requesting the Alaska Supreme Court review and overturn the state court’s decision, or why the state chose to get involved on behalf of the charter group.
The attorney general also asked the court for an expedited timeline for a response from the district by 10 a.m. on Friday. That issue is pending before the court.
Fairbanks school district plans to take the state to court over charter school dispute
Bobby Burgess, president of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board, said Thursday that the district respects the rule of law and will continue in the legal process to appeal and oppose the state board’s decision granting the charter. He called the attorney general’s move “frustrating.”
He said the district is concerned not only with the budget and expense of reopening the school but it also remains concerned with the charter group’s proposal.
“I don’t think it’s possible to open the school in August at this point. I don’t really think it was possible to open it successfully even on April 30,” he said, referring to when the state board approved the school.
“I think the logistical complications between the hiring process that we need to follow, the contracts with our labor unions and the budget adjustments, frankly, all of that would have been, you know, maybe not impossible to do, but next to impossible,” he said. “It would have been a huge challenge to make any of that work without disrupting the lives of our staff and students.”
But the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM sees it differently. Jennifer Redmond, a parent and treasurer of the Pearl Creek STEAM group said the state has approved the charter and the group has a plan to successfully open the school.
“The question now is not whether Pearl Creek exists, the question is whether it will be treated the same as other approved public charter schools,” she said.
“We aren’t asking for special treatment,” she added. “We’re asking for equal treatment under the law, and for the district to fulfill the same obligations it has fulfilled for every other public charter school it operates.”
Redmond said she’s concerned the district’s continued opposition erodes public trust. She said she thinks the district has a budget for opening the school. She said the school has over 379 applicants interested in attending, plans for hiring teachers and staff, and a proposal coming before the Fairbanks borough assembly to lease the school building.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be prepared to operate in August with just a little bit of cooperation from the district,” she said.
State education commissioner threatens to withhold funding over charter dispute
The ruling comes a week after the state Commissioner of Education Deena Bishop penned a letter threatening to withhold state funding from the Fairbanks district if they did not move forward with opening the charter school.
“Alaska law mandates in the clearest possible terms that after the State Board’s approval, the local school board ‘shall operate the charter school,’” Bishop wrote.
Bishop said under the law, state funds may not be paid to districts that fail to comply with state laws or regulations. She argued the district filing an appeal of the state board’s decision does not stop their legal responsibility to open the school.
“Failure to do so will put the state’s funding at risk,” Bishop wrote. “Time is of the essence.”
Officials with Bishop’s office and the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development did not respond to emailed questions about the reasoning behind the letter over the past week.
The Fairbanks district responded to Bishop in a letter on Thursday that rejected the commissioner’s legal arguments and defended its due process rights to appeal.
“We are pursuing a judicial review of a state approval process, because we believe that process was flawed. We’re going through the appropriate legal steps here. We are not flouting the law,” said Burgess, the district’s board president.
In an interview on Thursday, Burgess said it seemed “completely unconscionable for the state to threaten to withhold funding from an entire school district and potentially prevent 11,000 students in our case from receiving an education next year because of a small group of people who want to basically reopen a school that was closed for, for you know, important reasons.”
Redmond, with the Pearl Creek STEAM group, said the threat to withhold state funding does not change the group’s position advocating for the school. She said it’s the responsibility of elected officials and the district to follow the law.
Burgess called the state’s involvement with the charter approval and the education commissioner’s threat an overreach of local control.
“This is an egregious case of overreach, and it becomes more egregious with every threatening letter that the commissioner signs,” Burgess said.
“If the state can just force us to operate a school with a price tag of $2 million on it, what are we here for? What is the school board’s function if we can’t even control our own budget and make decisions in the interest of our own communities?”
