Bill Burr resigns as schools superintendent after 4 years on the job

Bill Burr has submitted his resignation as Wrangell schools superintendent, effective June 30.

The school board was scheduled to accept his resignation at its monthly meeting Monday, April 14, and then move into executive session to discuss its options for the job.

Burr started with the Wrangell schools in the summer of 2021, coming to work from the Delta/Greely School District in Alaska’s Interior, where he had been assistant superintendent since 2014. He had also served as director of technology and as a fill-in principal in the district.

This is his 28th year working at Alaska public schools.

Burr declined comment last week on his pending departure.

“I thought he has done an excellent job for the district,” School Board President Dave Wilson said last week. “We’re sorely going to miss him.”

Burr moved to Alaska in 1997. His first full-time teaching job was in Mountain Village, in the Lower Yukon School District in Western Alaska. He later worked for the Aleutians East Borough School District as tech director before moving to the Delta/Greely District in 2014.

Wilson, who is in his ninth year on the school board, said Burr has been the best of the three superintendents he has worked with.

The agenda for Monday’s school board meeting included an executive session, which Wilson said would focus on “how to go about filling” the position of superintendent.

The board will consider all options, he said, including hiring a new superintendent, contracting out the work or sharing the duties with another administrator in the district.

“We have to do something,” Wilson said.

State law allows elected officials to discuss personnel issues in executive session — a closed-door meeting — but any votes and decisions must be disclosed in a public session.

The school board and district administrators are immersed in writing their budget for the 2025-2026 school year, facing a deficit of several hundred thousand dollars to match revenues with spending. Wrangell schools have been draining their reserves for several years amid flat state funding and lower enrollment numbers than before the pandemic.

State funding, which covers more than half of the school district budget, is based on enrollment.

Even with a significant boost in state and/or municipal funding, the district will have to cut spending for the next school year to avoid completely draining its reserve fund.