The community of Voznesenka wants the Kenai Peninsula School District to lease an additional building for their overcrowded school, but the district says they have a very tight budget this year and they’re not sure if they can do it.
At the bottom of a steep road sitting near the head of Kachemak Bay, about a dozen students play tag rugby on a frozen play field beside Voznesenka School.
They holler in a mix of English and Russian. Principal Mike Wojciak has worked at the Voznesenka School for five years. He says the play field, which is actually owned by the borough, is used for sports, recess and more.
“Our (physical education) takes place outside. Our construction takes place outside. We don’t have much indoor space, so we do a lot of things outside,” said Wojciak.
Before coming to Voznesenka, Wojciak worked in bush communities in rural Alaska and he’s used to roughing it, but the school in Voz, as it’s referred to by locals, has fewer amenities than most bush schools.
“We’ve only got two places where there are restroom facilities. We don’t have any sort of multipurpose room or large gathering area. We don’t have things like a kitchen or a gym. A lot of those things that you might expect in a school, we just don’t have those,” said Wojciak.
The more than 100 students of Voznesenka School are part of the Russian Old Believer community — a group of Russian Orthodox people who came to the United States in the 60s seeking religious freedom. Old Believers from Nikolaevsk, north of Homer, broke away and moved to Voznesenka about 30 years ago.
There are three villages in the area: Voznesenka, Razdolna and Kachemak-Selo. Each has its own school. There was no school when the community started, so the locals built one and the district provided teachers. The community likes having local control of their school; for example, they have their own calendar to accommodate their religious holidays.
But the students are outgrowing the buildings and the district is balking at paying for the new space. Which bothers Nazary Basargin, president of a community nonprofit thst uses its own money to maintain the school.
“Initially, when we had the school going, we couldn’t afford to build anything bigger than that. But as time went along, we went and tried to get the school district to build us a school. But they wanted to build a school for all the three head-of-the-bay communities,” said Basargin.
That was about 15 years ago. Basargin says the communities couldn’t agree on where the new school should be, so it never got off the ground. All 10 of Basargin’s children attended the school and two of his grandchildren will soon start. Basargin says he’d prefer a new school.
“In an ideal world, I’d like to see the school district build us a school and for the three communities and have a full gym, etcetera,” said Basargin.
Assistant SuperintendentDave Jones says that’s unlikely with the state’s budget situation. As for the additional building the community wants the district to lease, Jones says the community did not clear the additional building with the district. The district never intended to build up the schools in the Russian villages, he added.
“Those were things that at the time were acknowledged wouldn’t be able to be out there,” said Jones.
Sunni Hilts recently retired from the Kenai Peninsula School Board. She represented the three Russian villages on the board. She says she knows the schools in those villages are insufficient.
“They are not adequate facilities and we know that. But it was their intent to keep their culture separate. This school district supported that. We’re the only ones in the state that do and it’s expensive and now we’re in a dilemma. We already know we are going to be going to deficit spending, taking our fund balance and leaving us with almost nothing for emergencies,” said Hilts.
The district has requested funding from the state to build a new school in the neighboring village of Kachemak-Selo and that money is in the governor’s proposed budget.
