Wendler Middle School

Wendler Middle School operates as a large junior high in Anchorage, Alaska, overseen by Anchorage School District. Current enrollment sits at 602 students spanning grades 6 through 8. Enrollment runs roughly 51% bigger than the state mean of about 399.

Anchorage School District comprises 92 schools with combined enrollment of 40,587 students; Wendler Middle School is among them.

On the student-mix side, Wendler Middle School lists that 21% of students identify as multiracial, with the remaining enrollment distributed across several groups. Other groups include 19% Native American, 17% White, 14% Hispanic, 13% Asian.

Looking at school resources, The school lists 29 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 21.0:1. The state averages around 17.5:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. An estimated 73% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Anchorage Municipality runs at roughly 49%, so the school's eligibility rate is higher than the surrounding baseline.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Wendler Middle School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 28.3%, the actual is 20.1%, a residual of -8.2 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Anchorage Municipality indicate median household earnings sit near $103,284, roughly 39% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 5% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Wendler Middle School is one of 99 public schools in Anchorage Municipality (combined enrollment of about 41,241 students).

Martin Luther King Jr. Technical High School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.1 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Wendler Middle School.

The school occupies a city-core site.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count climbed 34%: 449 students in 2018 compared to 602 in 2025. The Black share of enrollment edged down from 9% to 5% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio grew from 14.8:1 in 2018 to 21.0:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, members of the Wendler Middle School community share and discuss classroom updates, athletics, and weather closures. Members of the school community can share what they know.