Message from our Superintendent, Steve Atwater

Welcome to the Lake and Peninsula School District.  I trust that our websites will allow you to become acquainted with our students, staff and region.  The Lake and Peninsula District’s schools serve 375 students at 14 remote, village sites.  Each of these schools is a K-12 building.  As you can imagine, our schools are small and our teachers are generalists that are asked to do it all for their students.   

The Lake and Peninsula School District follows the Quality Schools Model, a standards-based system that is markedly different from traditional schooling models.  Foremost of these differences is that students’ progress is not tied to time.  That is, the students are not grouped by age in a grade and do not change placement at the end of a semester or school year.  Student advancement can only occur when the students have demonstrated proficiency for the studied standards.  It is not unusual for us to hold a graduation ceremony in the middle of the school year.  A second main difference of our SBS is that we address the needs of the whole child by requiring our students to show proficiency in non-academic areas such as employability, cultural awareness and technology.  Since adopting the model in 2001, we have seen increased student achievement and more importantly, an honest system that does not allow social promotion.

The Lake and Peninsula School District is located on the beautiful Alaska Peninsula, an area teeming with fish and wildlife.  90% of our students trace their heritage to three Alaska Native groups (Athabascan, Alutiiq and Yup’ik Eskimo) and many households still depend on subsistence foods.  Because we are in the southern part of the state, our winters and the amount of daylight are not as extreme as what you find further north.

Again, welcome to our website, I hope that its information will be useful.  Take a look at our video and please feel free to send us any questions that you may have about our unique school district.