two anchorage schools made the list

and only about two hundred twenty schools in the whole country did.

Bear Valley Elementary and Kincaid Elementary just picked up the twenty twenty-six National Gold Star Schools award. Out of every school in America, roughly two hundred twenty earned it this year. That's a shorter list than it sounds like.

The award looks at the stuff that doesn't show up on a test score. Positive school culture. Real support systems. Staff, students, and families actually engaged with each other. In other words, the daily work teachers put in when nobody's grading them.

Both schools were honored at a national conference down in Orlando. Two neighborhood schools from Anchorage, standing in a room with the best in the country. For the families in those hallways, that's a bragging right that travels.

The timing lands just right, because the new school year is around the corner. If your kid walks into Bear Valley or Kincaid this fall, they're walking into a building the rest of the country just pointed at.

We spend a lot of time talking about what's hard in Alaska schools. Budgets, closures, all of it. Days like this one are worth saying out loud too. Tell a Bear Valley or Kincaid teacher congratulations this month. They earned it.