Alaska owns dozens of crumbling schools. It wants underfunded districts to take them on

For more than a decade, the Kuspuk School District asked Alaska's education department for the money to fix a rotting elementary school. The school, in the small and predominantly Indigenous community of Aniak in western Alaska, was in deep need of repairs. The nearby Kuskokwim River had flooded the 88-year-old building several times. The walls were moldy. Sewage was leaking into a space below the school's kitchen.

In 2018, the department finally approved the school district's $18.6 million funding request to build a new elementary school wing onto Aniak's middle and high school building, which was owned by the state.

But on Page 4 of the funding contract for the project, Alaska's education department included a catch.

"The State would only build the new school if the local school board