SSD School Board Meeting 10/6/21

001flagship and then blossom is going to read our new land acknowledgement for us thank you amy the sitka school board acknowledges that our schools are located on the ancestral homelands of the klinket people who have lived in chitta since time immemorial we express our deepest respect and gratitude for our indigenous neighbors the crinket for the enduring care and protection of clinkette ani and do a roll call awesome teal present eric fan size here paul ryu here andrew haynes here amy morrison here great and if we can get a motion to approve the proposed agenda i move to approve the consent agenda as presented second has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented is there any public comment to the motion i want to give a little insight onto no oh okay

002all right any board comment on the motion and we need to do a roll call vote on this once it does have financial awesome teal olsen yes eric van says yes paul ryu yes andrew haynes yes amy morrison yes moving on to item six special reports government to government do we have anyone tonight to report under this hi rebecca hemsworth with sitka assembly grateful as always to be in the room with you and i remember a commitment from both sides previously to spend more time before the budget season talking about where we're headed so i hope that's something that people are thinking about thanks moving on to item seven recognitions and paul has our first one for us stacy would you come up here please hi stacy [Music] so i'm sure that everyone knows but

003um stacy was the runner-up of the how do i say it the secondary science finalist for um the presidential uh award for mathematics and science of course stacy's discipline is science and that's uh an award that's put together for the national science foundation and very prestigious award and we're very lucky to have all of your commitment um you know i was trying to figure out what to say and uh i was googling stacey earlier stacy and i have known each other for a long time but you know you throw in you throw in stacy's name and you get to see a lot of cool articles like you do with a lot of the teachers in in this district but stacy's commitment to her students um i've got to see them go through at the middle

004school and now again high school so it's been pretty fantastic um congratulations stacy we're all so proud of you thanks for all your hard work [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so stacy says she doesn't want to say a couple words i'm going to kind of um maybe have a couple of prompts so stacy have you when do we hear the final word from the president if you're going to be uh um selected so when do we know when that's going to be coming out i know it's kind of any time of the fall right but you haven't heard any news so this is uh the most prestigious award as a science and math teacher you receive so we're really excited to have you here and be part of that and congratulations again you sure you don't want

005to say anything to your students to anyone else to recognize all the hard work science isn't good um it's not good um so i guess i would just have to say thank you to my colleagues and my students because i don't know that i could ever teach anywhere besides sitka we have the most amazing students i love my job i love going to work every day i love learning new things with my kids and i can only do that because i have amazing colleagues who help me every step of the way from when i very first started as a tutor at the high school and working first at canadian ed programs to oh we don't want to break that to where i am today um and i've gotten lucky enough to work in a lot

006of the schools in the district and um so i just truly enjoyed it and uh luckily i have gorilla glue so we'll fix that and we'll be all set congratulations you have another round of applause for stacy going [Applause] thank you mr meal thanks you guys my daughter chloe came home today at lunch because she forgot her boots for miss golden's class and she was talking about it and she's like she's so smart she knows so much stuff so that's coming from a student um all right andrea has our next presentation to give good evening i'd like to recognize the 2021 sitka high school girls track and field team and their division 2 state title if coaches jeremy strong shasta smith and diane chong and any students from the team would like to join me

007up up front please [Applause] we want to congratulate you on this uh tremendous accomplishment and i know nobody likes being put on the spot but um if a coach or a student would like to share a highlight from the season or anything from the from the event itself we would love to hear from you [Music] you're really wishing you weren't standing next to me now right you can pass you can pass but really we're all very proud of you and this this event took place in the summer yes yeah so can you tell us just a recap or anything about that tony did sure sure yeah it was technically the summer but the weather at the meet was actually terrible more like weather we've been having recently it was raining the entire time um and

008we had a little tent that everybody was hiding under but it ended up being really fun we ran anyways and everyone did really good so yeah and my name is addie polson and i'm a senior um i'm anna prussian i'm a junior and my probably favorite part of the meet was uh the 4x8 team uh because all the girls were just really like supportive and everything all right i'm tawny smith i'm a senior and my favorite was probably the 4x8 as well we went into the tournament like or i guess me seeded like seventh and then we won so that was pretty exciting my name is maitlyn young i'm a sophomore and my favorite event was probably the 4x4 it was at the end of the meet and everyone was cheering and it was pretty

009exciting my name is lindsay bartalaba and i just graduated and i'm gonna pass i'm kanan ali hard king and i'm a junior um i think it was just a lot of fun to be there i only went for a relay which i was not expecting at all at the beginning of the season so it was fun to just be a part of that i'm desiree chong and my favorite part was the 4x1 relay and it was my first year in track and winning was really cool i'm jeremy strong uh head the head coach and there were so many highlights that i could probably sit up here and bore you all with for 15 30 minutes um some of the things that i really enjoyed was just the versatility of the girls and how flexible they

010were in dealing with the weather and travel and just the year in general was such a difficult year for everybody and they really rose up and and just adapted to every situation and uh you know from the girls winning the four by 100 meter relay uh and the four by 800 meter relay and for the first time since i've coached i had a girl run in both of those on both of those teams and that was addy polson ran in the four by one in the four-way those are vastly different races um and then having you know student athletes like kanan step in who just had no clue what they're capable of and and you know they didn't say but the four by four took second and the four by two hundred meter relay also

011took second and just the the go get him attitude that the girls had and when we won the state championship i knew that happened but to my surprise not surprised but surprised to get the award they gave us the sportsmanship award as well and when the the uh person handed me the award they said your girls are just so happy all the time they're so smiley and it just made us all really pleased to give them this award so that was a big highlight for me well i don't have much to say after that um i do want to go back to the 48 by 8 again though because that was the first event of the whole meet and so so exciting that you guys won by 12 seconds a bit a fair amount and

012it was super super exciting and of course the rain was falling and it was dramatic and they ran with the flag and it was good times good times um so yeah i'm shasta smith and i coach the distance primarily well we're going to get a quick picture so if you guys will kind of get ready if we can get somebody maybe chris would you mind getting a picture i'm going to give this back to andrew so i can hand out your certificate right everyone big smile you're going to look at this is wrong and now we have 12 well i kind of mentioned later but 12 runners going to state this weekend two yeah 12 runners this weekend going to state in anchorage uh which one of you are going to be raise your hand

013if you're heading to anchorage this weekend very nice well we know you guys are going to represent us probably and we're excited and you're going to be having plenty of people here cheering you on in anchorage on the bartlett trail so thank you how about another round of applause for being two champions nice job everyone jeremy don't sit down quite yet jeremy mr strong you can come right on back up and we have one more recognition for you blossom's got that one it is my pleasure to present jeremy this award of recognition um for being the 2021 alaska girls track and field coach of the year um sponsored by the united states marine corps thank you for your dedication and all that you do with our young students and you know all of your hard

014work shows so thank you very much sure you have anything to say how long have you coached i've been coaching at uh track for ten years would be eleven but covid and i've been shasta's assistant for cross country for 10 years as well but this award has my name on it but really it goes to the the kids who listen and and give it their best and the assistant coaches that that helped make the program run strong so thank you well thank you congratulations again thank you again congratulations how about another round of applause for all of our recipients [Applause] all right thanks everybody um let's see moving on to item eight on the agenda persons to be heard persons to be excuse me persons to be heard is an opportunity for members of the

015public to speak to the board about a topic that is not on the agenda as these are not agenda items no board deliberation or action will occur in response questions for clarification may be posted by board members the board may choose to refer items to the superintendent or designate for further action the standard time limit for comments will be three minutes unless otherwise stated by the board president with consent of the board a sound will indicate when time expires all comments must be respectful and charges or complaints against specific employees are not permitted per alaska state statute members of the public are referred to board policy thirteen twelve thirteen twelve point one thirteen twelve point two thirteen twelve point three and associated administrative regulations as well as the board by law nine three two three

016for information on how to lodge complaints speakers are also asked to please state their full name for the record prior to speaking are there any persons to be hurt tonight looks like me yes go ahead um good evening my name is annette becker thank you for your time i'm the program manager at search raven's way program ravensway is a residential adolescent substance abuse treatment program providing services to at-risk youth here in sikka for the last 32 years i wanted to raise awareness and share my concerns with you about the city assembly voting in favor of moving the seaplane base to the north end of japonsky island the proposed location is directly next to one of the sika school district classrooms that provide academic instruction to approximately 40 to 55 at-risk youth each year search and

017the sikka school district have a long-standing mou ravensway has a school a full-time teacher and all of the students that are enrolled in the all this students that are enrolled are enrolled in the sita school district and earn school credit while receiving substance abuse treatment this program provides a safe environment where youth have the opportunity to practice and integrate healthy life skills in a supportive setting raven's way is a healing place for youth who are unable to control their use of illegal drugs many youth who are enrolled in the ravensway program are experiencing trauma have difficulty managing strong emotions are failing in school and have gotten into trouble with the law as you'll see here in the handout that i'll provide to you that the proposed sea plane base is adjacent to the raven's way

018program and the last building on seward avenue is the school and the therapy office this will have a significant negative impact on our ability to provide necessary effective and beneficial academic instruction and treatment services to youth and their families the seaplane base operation is estimated to rate of 21 one-way flights with up to one-way flights during the peak season per day this will have a significant increase in not only the seaplane noise but also foot and vehicle traffic related to the seaplane based operation as expected the current land the piece of land that is currently owned by the alaska department of education and early development we are encouraging you to email or call heidi tischener the school finance manager the alaska department of education and early development who is working on the land sale the

019alaska department of education and early development is not aware that there is a school district school and substance abuse treatment located directly next to the site communicate the concerns about the negative impact the sikka school base will have on the essential academic instructions and substance abuse treatment services provided by rate by raven's way to heidi tishner and the city assembly members my goal is to raise awareness i will be following up with an email and i'm more than happy to answer any questions or provide a tour to any of you guys that would would like more information thank you for your time support and i look forward to ongoing communication and then there's just a handout on this so thank you excuse me are there any other persons to be heard tonight thanks annette um

020all right moving on to school highlights and let's start with how about jill do you want to start tonight hi there dyla crone principal fair enough good to see everyone so here's a picture of our kids in library where it may not seem so exciting to you guys our library has not had a certified teacher in that position for over a decade maybe longer we're not really sure but with some real creative work with our staff and just you know problem solving our kids for the first time you know in over a decade are actually having library and it's really exciting to see that kids are in there with books in their hands and some care is being given to the library you know i want to thank jeff hull and carrie sagel and the

021americorps and everybody who has pitched in to help clean it up and clean it out there's books that were in there that were written well way before i was born which is a long time ago and haven't been checked out since the 70s so it's really nice to see that it's actually you know being used now so that's really an exciting picture so some exciting things at baranov besides that which is just outstanding interventions have started at in our building which is really nice to see our kids getting extra support in reading and possibly math if they need it i know i had talked about having ed littlefield here earlier remember i talked about him well we had a school-wide concert when he finished up his program and in the past we would have him

022in the gym but because that's just not feasible we did it via teams in all of our classrooms and it was really amazing to see what we could do and so using that same platform we're going to go back and start doing our monthly assemblies with our students and i think it'll be great i just again want to say how exciting it is to work with such a creative group of teachers and staff that brainstorm problems you know we figure out how to solve these problems we had our first parent meeting this week and we did a hybrid model we were able to have so many people in the building so i had parents sign up for you know i had 20 slots available and they signed up and passed that they had to come

023on teams and it was definitely a learning experience because a hybrid model is a lot what you guys know a lot harder than you think and we had a great turnout in person and online although at one point somebody closed the laptop right we opened it back up but it was you know that learning experience but it was exciting to be able to to connect with our parents again and our families because they've we've lost that connection in a lot of ways so you know even though this year has been a different year because of covid it's exciting to see that we are figuring out ways to go back to some of the things we've done in the past having our monthly assemblies and our family meetings and things like that so it's been pretty

024i mean very busy month so far any questions no questions all right all right well thank you so much you guys don't mind can i go back to the person to be heard really quick because i know elias just came in and he wanted do you still want to say something yeah go ahead and come on up he wanted to just say something really quick in that section for the record um often like eric uh does finishing up work before he rushes to meetings time and time again in fact i even had a shirt i was planning on ironing which was the first time i was going to iron a shirt since christmas for you but i'm here for you eric because i just really felt like it was important to me to honor you

025in all the work that you've done when i think about your time on the board and just characteristics of who you are i just think integrity is a huge one and i i think you are someone who is willing to make sacrifices um and not ever expect anything in return and i would say when it comes to a publicly elected official those are two qualities that are highly desirable and very [Music] they're they're rare they're rare in people and it's just uh i think that my time that i shared with you all those hours of conversations not a minute was wasted and that's something that i just really look back on fondly and i just really wanted to recognize you and just honor you and and give credit where credit is due because i think

026that you've done a lot of really good work and even when we were intense disagreement there was just a sense of respect between us and and uh and you you always knew what was important and what to you know keep um in the main focus you raised great kids who i grew up with i played percussion with life obviously growing up in nerf guns when we were little and i'm looking forward to seeing what they do in the future too but eric you've done a great job in the board you've got a great family and i'm really thankful for the time that i got to serve with you yeah thank you elias and back at you too was good very good working we covered a lot of territory all right thanks sorry guys just wanted

027to give him the opportunity to speak um thanks elias um let's see we are on to casey good evening um i think the theme that i wanted to bring tonight was activities in this past month we've had some of our normal activities start up at kiku shaheen we don't have a ton of things at the elementary level but it's really nice to be able to offer some of those things to our students again band is in full swing for fifth graders girls on the run started today we we swap seasons i believe they're rewriting uh some of the boys curriculum and so girls on run is going this fall and boys on the run will begin in february fourth grade choir started yesterday i believe and uh we had about 25 students turn out initially

028for that and uh as jill mentioned two we got started with our interventions and so interventions for all four grade levels have have started up uh with fifth grade beginning this week and in the other grades uh previously and so we're getting into the swing there helping kids with reading that need that extra help and uh we have i just want to mention to our weekly uh testing program i think we have close to 70 students signed up with the weekly testing at keat and that's been you know a positive thing for us as well um and then last thing i want to mention is just uh i want to recognize the staff all the way from our custodial crew uh to through our teachers and paras everybody uh just all the effort that they're

029putting in with the kids each and every day and it's uh really neat to see the relationships and that they have going with the students and and just meeting them where they're at and and bringing them along academically and with all the social emotional stuff thank you um and ben is not here tonight laura were you when i give a report since ben's not here so we've had a really great september at blatchley cross country had a full season today was the last day of our season we had a great fun run on the course at totem after the high school race and coach prussian and coach parsley were proud of the 33 kids who participated throughout the whole season they had pizza and gatorade today so i got dinner before this meeting it was

030awesome chess club is going strong and meetings are large enough that we're going to move them from mr allison's classroom up to the commons to allow for more distancing in space ben is not here tonight because he's with the theme class they're pulling a skate they made traditional halibut hooks and they're using modern hooks that they put out on a skate ben had to use his boat to pull the skate because the kids are on an allen marine boat but a commercial boat can't pull a subsistence skate so he's pulling the skate and the kids are watching to see and he already took it down and they they made it together as far as attaching the hooks so he um i'm curious to see what they got he has not texted me to tell me

031how much fish they got because then he knows i would be asking for some they also did 3d printed designs of their own hooks the kids design their own hooks basketball begins next monday and that is something that's pretty exciting for our kids and mr larson has jazz band going again three mornings a week we have a newspaper class this year and mr val one of our new ela teachers is teaching that and the newspaper should be in print by monday the first we're just going to use a pretty simple format where we're doing just double-sided two pages but we're excited to potentially go online or look at a newsprint kind of version they've accomplished a lot in a short period of time student council elections are over and the kids are currently working on

032revising the dress code creating formal bylaws jamboree activities and jail mccarty and i are kind of doing the advising on that and we've opened a tutoring center in the library with our two americorps folks as well as diana fulton twaddle and we have national honor society kids coming down from sikka high school so that's been really successful we've had eight to ten kids every afternoon since we opened it last week so we're really excited about that and there's a conversation that diana has going with some coast guard volunteers so we're hoping to really make this a kind of community place where folks who are interested in working with kids can come and help them academically any questions thank you very much you're not even wearing one of these they're hot but i did share masks

033with you guys tonight so those are our school mats for this year and they do say the highlight scene and so i just wanted to share that so that you had that the students really liked them and so seeing those all over the school is is really nice i kind of feel like we hogged the meeting up front so not going to hog this time the recognitions are fantastic we have a lot of great staff and and students that are doing great things so thank you for the recognitions earlier that's really nice and the cross country team you know got weathered out this weekend never made it to catch can we ended up running on a beautiful monday afternoon here this week and it was absolutely incredible because the girls and boys ran together and

034the top nine finishers were sitka all seven boys and then two girls and it was amazing really hard working great group of kids i just wish them the best of luck this weekend when they go to compete i wanted to thank you all because our furniture came in and a huge shout out to mike watalaba and our maintenance crew they got it all together and it's already in our classrooms so very much needed and the building looks a lot better and we have the spacing thank you very much for that and then we have a huge day tomorrow we're having our college and career fair we are having it in person and we have different institutions that will be present we have a lot of mitigations in place we have everything covered but it's going

035to be nice to have that event in person and allow not only sick of high kids to be there in the morning but pacific high is going to come through and mount edcom's also going to come through the fair so it's really a good community event and gives the students the opportunity to see the variety of things that they have any questions tomorrow so the fair is going to be all day and so our students will go from when classes start at 8 45 until lunch and then there's a lunch break and then the other schools will come in the afternoon completely separate it's not open to the public this year that's one of our biggest mitigations and we are covet-testing all of the vendors so write the media by chance pardon me did you

036invite the media did you let them in by chance invite the media yeah sure i was wondering if you invited like raven radio or the sentinel or anything if they're if they have a chance to come in no but i'm going to take lots of pictures okay okay thank you very much and mandy's not here tonight so before you guys all scatter um october is national principles month so we wanted to just recognize our principles and our assistant principles in our school district because you guys are the leaders of our buildings and you guys do a fantastic job and always go above and beyond it's i mean it's just amazing what you guys do and i appreciate the fact that you guys just come to all of our school board meetings and give us reports

037um i think it was elias that originally came up with that idea if i'm not mistaken actually uh laura oh lord oh yeah well laura came up with that idea but it's fantastic and it's been it's always the highlight i know for me of our meetings um so thank you for everything you guys do thank you for making this um a commitment to being here and giving us your your updates um we have something for each of you so if you all can come up and we'll get a group picture too amy would you mind if i just said a couple things i just wanted to take a i just want to take a brief moment and just um give a shout out to all the administrators principals uh they really have done an amazing

038job um coming in to the superintendent it has been fantastic working with them um we've been able to have some great conversations the dedication commitment uh for some of our coping mitigations and making sure that we have all the pieces in place phone calls home when we've had situations come up with covet or contacting parents or just everything i just i've really appreciated the work and the collaborative approach that we've as administrative team developed over the last couple of months since i've been here and i just want to take that moment to thank them for everything so you guys are amazing team i'm really enjoying working with you and happy national principal this month right thank you moving on to our reports and presentations and carrie i think you have that's correct thanks you guys

039hi um my name is kerry sagel i'm here representing the pathways coalition which i take part in as part of my steps work the pathway coalition is a group of like-minded organizations in town that have similar missions and some similar clientele you'll recognize them the tribe the school district save youth advocates we have work groups one of the work groups is the family engagement work group which i co-chair with lisa hodges we saw that the city of sitka identified three priorities for early childhood under a steps process and one of those was increasing free and fun family activities which we agreed to take on as a gold and take it away from their early childhood coalition and then covet hit and activity stopped so a year went about only there weren't a lot of activities

040and we decided using a collective impact approach that our work group would design an outdoor family challenge in the spring we would encourage agencies and organizations to provide free and fun family activities we'd run it april through june we would use the sitka kids.com website and the sickkid kids facebook page to publicize and track events we'd posted events calendar and prize registration on sitka kids we would host flyer posting publicity and picture posting on the sitka kids facebook page and provide gift cards for random drawings we had several organizations that provided those gift cards youth advocates sick kids against family violence sitka school district and search other participants included sitka public library 4-h salty spoke herring protectors sitcason science center sitka tribal alaska and i'm probably forgetting of you we hosted 24 events during the

041course of the spring and not all of those events can we like take credit for um but this is the impact that we feel like we had we encouraged organizations to return to providing activities we provided new activities like the 103 challenge we boosted numbers of participants for some of those groups like babies in books reported that they saw at least two families they'd never seen before and then they could see through facebook that those families were participating in the other challenges 4-h reported that they had new families show up at 4-h events who then chose to join 4-h we organizations like 4-h that are private sort of private organizations that's membership based open some of their activities to the public at the very least for some activities we provided advertising like searches outdoor sort

042of active challenge we can't tell what impact we had on that but we boosted their advertising and then we we included a number of unsponsored unsupervised activities i did not bring the numbers but in the end we had to decide what kind of impact did we have that we could in the steps grant report on and it was well into the hundreds and hundreds of children and hundreds and hundreds of adults who participated in at least one activity anecdotally this is what we saw we saw 80 to 100 postings and comments on facebook and for example one of those comments would be something like that the one family chose the 10 free 10 tree challenge spent an entire afternoon investigating trees and then turned that into a girl scout badge for one of their children

043so it had impact beyond just the activity itself we could see that we developed a clientele we certainly had families that were returning to event after event we somewhat sort of failed in our registration our intent was to have a registration so we would know everybody who participated and we could survey them on which activities they had participated in it was too much to keep up with we could see that people were alerting one another calling texting messaging with questions keeping each other alerted and one thing that came very apparent to me is when the challenge ended and we went into summer there were plenty of organized activities but i keep the sick kids facebook page going and what i do is kind of troll around and i'm looking for things i can post there

044were no activities no free and fun activities for families kind of the zero to five to seven rage during the summer there were plenty of activities but they were fee activities and organized sports and i think uh chris farron's gonna help me here it's always nice to see see what it is we're talking about so this is a piece of artwork that is kind of steps related encouraging people to go outdoors and here is a video of the challenge [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] one more minute [Music] it ends very abruptly um we're in the process of deciding whether to continue this in the spring or some other time period we need to do better counting of participants including those that are target populations which are native

045american indian and pers and households of more than one ethnicity and then uh people of a lower income and then we're we also want to include more organizations should we do it again maybe organizations that don't typically put on activities for kids any questions thank you yeah thank you very much yeah go ahead thank you for fun seeing all the pictures of those kids and like how is the weather nice all the time it did not look like sitka scary um all right so we are on to board member reports um and we'll start down there with you andrew and eric i'm gonna save you for a last just because just because uh happy october everybody um all i have to report is i made contact with my liaison school pacific high school and i

046was able to go spend a friday afternoon or midday a few hours at pacific high on a day that i wasn't working i got to spend some time in the kitchen helped to prepare the lunch and learn more about that program and about some of the challenges and needs that they have um so look forward to learning more and hoping to advocate for that position uh and the importance of the work that's done there then it was uh friday which is their life skills day so i got to sit in on a gardening class and they had done some harvesting so really i was just sitting with some students and we were slicing up apples that needed to be stored and it's just really great to get to interact with the students and talk to

047them a little bit get to know them a little and and their experiences at pacific high and then also seeing the gardening area out back um then the whole new i don't believe the new greenhouse is put together yet but um it's uh they still have maine uh mandy has a full gardening program back there which is really really cool to see and just getting all the students and faculty involved in that um and i mean that's truly a that's a really important skill that i know nothing about so um it was really really neat to see the work uh firsthand uh first from my perspective i just get to spend some time with them i missed their potato harvest i know they went back and harvested the quincy potatoes that they had planted in

048the spring which i was there for the planting but i had a rehearsal during the harvesting so i wasn't able to go to the harvest but looking forward to spending more time at pacific high school so that's really all extra i did as a board member this past month but do you want to acknowledge our colleague eric who this is your last official full meeting we'll have our special meeting next week right i think coming up and are you there for that or is it no that's just swearing in new members so i'd okay then i guess this is this is that so um you know we only got to work together for a year plus which i really really enjoyed and you have absolutely played the obi-wan kenobi role amongst us as far as

049just being a mentor figure and your calm collected presence ability to really think through the issues i know you think you talk too much sometimes but we're all listening when you do and we hear you i just appreciate the conversations we've had at the board table and then sometimes after the board meeting just in the parking lot for a few minutes and then other times that we talked i will really miss your calm and collected presents and your experience and i know you you should feel very proud of the the six years that you gave to the sickest school board um and i i appreciate the chance to learn from you and uh get to work with you a little bit um and i'm and i'm really happy for you that you get to move

050on to other things now at this point whatever you know whatever you want to reclaim this time you deserve it and you've earned it so thank you eric for the time you've given to the secret school board my report's going to be short and sweet um i i did have the opportunity to be a part of the alaska heritage institute they gave a grant to bletchley school for steam classes and so i was invited to sit in on that and to brainstorm how that program would look like i'm very appreciative of caitlyn woolsey and mark 6b and their whole team [Music] on how they're going about integrating cultural and traditional knowledge um and marrying that with science math engineering and the arts um and um it's just amazing to see um that progress and i

051can't wait to see more of that um i i was very thankful to hear about the report and the concern of the seaplane outfit going on i think that's a growing concern of the community of the placement and i think that we really need to look in on how we can support better research as to how best the seaplane port could serve our community while also you know keeping in mind of the students that to attend our schools and who are among our main target audience of the achievement gap and raising you know students that are [Music] social and emotional emotionally connected so very thankful for annette on her presentation tonight and then just to close up eric you know i i've had the privilege of working with you within the community before you know

052i was roped into running for the school board and you know you have always been an active member within the community thank you so much for your time i know that we sat in on a few meetings for the activities fund for the high school those last couple years and they were just strange hours and you always found a way to come in and do your part and contribute and we've definitely profited from your dedication and your care um [Music] and sick is a better place for that so thank you for your time and and your thoughts and um you know for the record you you don't really speak that long um words when they have um meaning are meaningful and they need to be said so sometimes that's you know could be enough so

053never too much so thank you so much eric it's been a pleasure we're gonna miss you but we're very happy that you're moving along and to reclaim that time so i hope you i hope you enjoy that time with your family um let's see as a board member as a parent i would like to say that you know i've it's definitely been wonderful to see i got three kids in three different schools and um you know things are really uh really seem to be going well this year um everybody seems to be happy with the way things are going with students and and that's really fantastic to see and then you know i just have to give props to mr houser and to you know all of the staff that pretty much universally everyone who

054stops me on the street is like everyone's just so happy with the way things are going so um you know it's it's just uh something to be proud of it's a lot of hard work so thank you all as far as eric goes um yeah i'm gonna miss eric a lot eric and i have have gotten to work together and some different stuff in the community and i actually i have a hard time thinking of somebody who i respect more than eric he uh you know is when it comes to a model citizen you know eric's pretty much it uh he's always set aside part of his time whether it's coaching or you know some other youth uh sports stuff and then you know his is what six years now two terms on the school

055board and and i nobody is more diligent than eric you know eric you have extensive notes on going back and you know you you take your commitment incredibly seriously and i think you've represented all students and all staff of the district really well we missed hopefully once this all blows over we can get back to having early morning coffee from time to time but i'd also like to express our thanks to the van sice family behind every uh committed chairperson committee person whatever there's a family that is uh missing a member of the dinner table from time to time and things like that so you know thank you to mrs van sice and the rest of the family over there for for their sacrifice and they can have their eric back now so thanks bud

056i'll go and then i'll give you all the time you want eric should we put a three-minute timer on eric he's not even really blushing though so quick report for me i was able to go to keith kushagin a couple of weeks ago as the liaison which was really nice nice being back in the buildings um and mr principal denmark gave me a tour and i got to go see how like the music classes work and the gym class and you know just see how how things are working with all the mitigations we've put into place and for the most part it just you know felt very normal and kids are being kids that was really fun for me just to get in the building again um then eric i yeah everybody said such great

057things um i and i agree with what everybody has said it's been an honor to serve with you these last three years and uh we all know what kind of time and dedication it takes and the fact that you've done this for six years is incredible and um and eric is so passionate about what he does and i can't even tell you how many hours and hours and hours and hours we've spent on the phone together because every issue you take very seriously and you know very intentional about it and it's very thoughtful about everything and um and it's just it's been great to have you to bounce ideas off of and and paul said i know your wife is going to be grateful to have you home you work harder than anybody i've ever

058known and so i i hope you feel a little bit of rest and relaxation from getting this one off your plate now but you're welcome to come to school board meetings whenever you want then join us yeah just thank you thank you for being a leader to all of us and really showing all of us how to go about this well thank you thank you to board members and uh actually i wrote stuff down so i wouldn't get too wind baggy and then pretty soon to be done with this old gas bag we'll be we'll be done but uh oh anyways uh it it's been a good run and before i launch into this or um i'd like to recognize dan and your your co-partner alice for all the years that was uh that's one

059of the big pluses of being on the board as i got got to know you and uh it's really phenomenal uh um i cannot think of a another community and i'd like to somebody could certainly let me know where the the archives that the eu and alice have obtained over the probably decades and it's historical it's a historical record from assembly meetings to school board to community events entire generations are on your film and they're priceless and just that that's been great and thank you for your time i know that uh uh the hours are late oftentimes and the weather is bad but you or alice are always here and you're recording history and it's it's really really appreciated for that so um going back to when i came on the board you were talking

060about you know my board members talked about longevity but really when i came on the board six years ago um there were three jen mcnichol and i came in at the same time we had three obviously other board members and tim fulton was i believe when i came in on his eighth year uh third term uh tom conley pediatrician was i want to say probably 11 years at that point on the school board and then we had cass pook who i want to say was at 14 years you know so there was some huge longevity that uh in history and background that helped both jen and i you know get our feet and stuff like that so i'm really kind of a newbie really compared to those folks and there were others before them that

061uh really you know set the bar for me uh and i've never had a chance to talk to her in person about it but it was molly capler who was on a school board and i i remember when our kids were young and just how she engaged and and different things so i was she doesn't know a strong mentor for that um but just some going back a little bit in history some of the hot topics when i came on the board i think if i do if i do my math right which i'm terrible at was november of october 2014 or something but uh our district was um one of the big things that was controversial or out there was the integrated math program that was something that actually we're not you know really

062supposed to come in with an agenda as a board member but it was definitely on my radar not as an agenda but um it was an area that we were struggling with extremely with one of our family members and the other one was uh shira law if i pronounced that we were we were a district that was you know invoking shira law or something it was there was a big hoopla going on and by just a few people but it was like we were some kind of dark force that was doing something bad and so that's kind of what i walked into and it was interesting but the the sheer law we were able to kind of get that moved on very quickly but the integrated math took some time um and i'll jump back

063to that just quickly some other things that were came along those six years were some substantial budget cuts oil revenues started to really plummet and that really affected us then we had the kind of the slash and burned from the state government that was just devastating with some of what we're trying to figure out what to do budget-wise and i know every district across the state was dealing with that um declining enrollment uh we had significant delays um you know frank you can i mean you're in the thick of it as well where we didn't know what our budget was going to be until like the end of summer you know just it was it was a train wreck for students and staff and everybody and uh but those were things we we went through

064uh in leading into that were some of the when i think back of the six years um the where we packed the house basically three years in a row was regarding the performing arts center we had anywhere from my records 80 to 110 people show up in the library and we'd have sometimes 30 or 30 plus people speaking to the performing arts center and the the gist of it was that was in the same funding pool as staff and it really invoked some passion and uh and i i've gotten flamed enough that my skin's pretty leathery but i was the one that made the reference that basically what we were paying for the performing arts center was equivalent to two teachers and that settled with some people and didn't settle with some people but that

065you know that's what the funding and it wasn't that i was wanting to see it close but it was just um you know our mission to treat and take care of all kids and so it did generate three years it was interesting that for three years in a row that was during our budget hearings which would maybe be 19 million dollars 20 million dollars um that was a price tag of like 375 thousand dollars but that was the only thing that was talked about on those those meetings you know and it was kind of interesting i'll just leave it at that but the good news is it generated discussions and uh true to form the fine arts camp with roger schmidt's leadership they were the solutions were able to come around and so we still

066enjoy that building and we've had some relief as far as the funding for that so but it was it was very interesting another area that was with the budget you know we it's natural to have turf wars and things like that and pacific high school once again fell into the crosshairs for consolidation maybe moving to the high school sick high school shutting it down altogether and elias erickson and i along with much help with cassie olin did a deep dive into all of the covenants and things like that and uh um i'd have to look back on all the notes but it basically illustrated that it was a a very important asset in our our district and uh i am hopeful that that discussion is permanently put to bed for for that school um but

067it was it was a it was an interesting period of time and on that note we've got we have five schools and i hope that we can maintain five schools uh if you can think of those as five pillars you know support pillars you remove one of those pillars and not everything would fall down but it's a significant impact and if anybody's still out there listening i know that the principles have headed home laura thank you for being here here and but really all five schools just looking at each other and as they are now as interdependent and supporting each other because it is a really truly a great district um and uh just that collaboration i think it's pivotal also for like the middle school uh looking you know helping parents and they're doing

068this now what are the options for for a student you know we have sikka high school we have pacific high school let's let's work and find a good fit for your for your child and those are great discussions that are going on [Music] we also during my time we had there were there were some there were some challenges going on with administration and staff not all administration and not all staff but uh there were there was there were some challenges that occurred and we felt it as a board and uh they're they're we're guided by policy and uh bylaws and things and uh i would strongly recommend that we do our very best to stay within those there are very very rare cases and it was in my case and other board members that we

069for various reasons had to step outside some of that stuff to be able to ascertained really what was going on and what we needed to be doing to try and get things cohesive again i don't recommend it that we go through that necessarily again but all i can say it was a i don't regret what i had to do it was necessary um but in the end we uh i look where we're at today with uh john holst coming in and helping us and the superintendent uh interim search and then our search for a superintendent uh and we had wonderful candidates and uh uh we're we're in good shoes we're we're in good good hands i meant to say and thank you for that looking through here today some of the things that we're working

070through and i'm you know i appreciate in my time on the board and this has been a lot driven by staff and admin is even when uh sandra and laura when she was at the high school um when i started on the board it was always called the college fair you know it was having a college fair and i it wasn't just necessarily me but it was others said well what about career and um so it's now a college and career fair and i really appreciate the fact that we have a district that takes value in vocational education and i'm going to call it vocational education i'm not going to call it cte i'm going to call it vocab just that's just me but we have the finest facilities of a public high school in

071the state of alaska and uh we have supportive staff and people like that it is an incredible gem that we have up there at that high school i work in heavy industry and i can guarantee you that this is not gender-based uh any young uh woman young man there are countless uh career opportunities and they can get their foot in the door right here at our high school and uh there's a dire need for skilled labor and skilled trades and uh so anyways i'll leave it at that i would just honestly hope that we can all as a board as you guys really promote that um i'm not dissing college but we've lost our workforce and there's good jobs there oh and on that note and this this may again get me torched um we

072we have five branches of the military and i know that sitka doesn't always well i'm only with that we have five branches of military and i want to say that in the time maybe one maybe two students a year of our graduates you know that that's maybe go into that option and i think sometimes people think that you know their their child's going to be in danger but i was i was in the military uh our family goes deep and uh there's a lot of career and a lot of opportunities in the different branches of the military for students that are not involved with blowing things up or hurting people and maybe we can promote more of that for for kids as an option after school covet that this to think of how we've navigated

073through the covet as a community and as a district is is quite remarkable um it's it's incredible how hard people are working and i'm hoping that we can continue in a civilized fashion uh i was deeply saddened and alarmed but not surprised at some of the same the assembly meeting and i think blossom you i guess you were there because i know that you spoke and i i'm really hopeful that we don't have that in our board meetings and it may it may happen but uh we need to as a board need to stick to that uh preamble that's red you know as far as uh decorum and how people uh behave our children are given a great standard for courage and respect and i basically hold adults at a higher standard you know than

074that so hopefully that's not a storm that you guys have to weather but uh you know stand firm and holding people accountable to be mature adults when they have differences of opinion uh some things looming on the horizon that they're going to continue to that that we need to continue to work through that are going to be coming along we we have historic drama that we're addressing and we need to keep addressing we need to make sure that as things come along if critical race theory hopefully they'll change that to just calling it factual history you know that if you know making sure that students aren't being held punitive for things that happened in the past but at the same time that they know the good the bad and the ugly that happened in our

075past so that we can learn from it and be able to have discussions about it um there's a lot of i'm 60 now and i would have never thought some of the things that i'm seeing happening in our country i will i mean i was old enough to watch what's happening in the 60s but not old enough to participate but you know it had a profound impact on all the upheaval but i look at what's going on today and it's very concerning with the civil rights uh that are declining in some areas uh voter rights uh that are being you know the most sacred thing that we have in our country is your right to vote and the things that are going on to undermine that uh and just people you know and even women's

076women's health rights and things like that and you wonder well you know these are adult things we're a school district but this is what our students are walking into and this is what maybe is going on in their homes so it's we have a lot of work and there's a lot of things on the horizon but just do what you guys do uh you know look at it objectively leave your politics leave your your faith i don't mean that in a bad way but leave it out in the parking lot and come in here and and seek neutral ground and compromise and do your best because right now unlike any time that i can recall in our country we have extreme very very extreme polarization going on and when you have extreme polarization you have

077parallelization and we are rapidly we have become paralyzed in some of our movement across our country so um this is where our educators and and you know helping our youth and children understand what's right what's wrong and because they're they're walking into this stuff so anyways it's probably bedtime now isn't it the curfew hours hit sorry um but in the future just make sure as a board follow facts not fiction have mutual respect which we've always had i'm proud of that you can agree to disagree but just do so respectfully and it's okay if it's a three to two vote or four to one vote it doesn't always have to be five to zero and and feel good about what you what you what you believe in um and uh also i i brought a

078yearbook with me her oldest son tristan would probably uh not be appreciative but uh this is his yearbook 2015. the reason i have it because our younger son was a freshman and i spent seven years at the high school teaching elective i did about 10 years community schools coaching and then six years high school coaching and so there's about a span of about 10 years of students that i really kind of knew who they are but now now i've gotten old enough that i don't the reason i brought this annual in in this yearbook is that if anybody is still out there listening you might have one of these laying around and i encourage you don't read what's written in it because you'll you'll you'll have a heart attack but disregard what's written in there

079but look at the pictures and even with the time that i spent in this town working and doing things i can thumb through this one yearbook and there are countless students or pictures that i don't know who they are i mean i i see the picture it's like i don't remember that that that girl or that boy and or i vaguely remember and part of my point is is that in our country and across the country and it's not a bad thing we celebrate the successes you know those that shine a good light on our school and those are great things i support that but every every child's got something that they're good at and you know you think about these kids that go through our district and you know they they had hopes and

080dreams and aspirations but you know where are they today and we can't always shine the light on everybody but i would really like to see as we move forward the press ourselves you know it's good to celebrate the the academics the athletics and the activities but there's a lot of other things that we can celebrate for for kids and um but it really struck me when i looked through this after all of the involvement how many that i just don't know you know and uh where they are today and uh so anyways and uh anyways uh and in closing uh i'm gonna borrow something from my colleague uh jen mcnichol when when she finished up her time on the board she's a good friend we go way back and basically our job as a board

081is governments you know and uh it's the action of or manner of governing and that's really what our job is and uh we do a good job of keeping the drama out of it and uh i know that all of you and um you know your future board is is gonna be it's just gonna be just fine you know you guys will do just fine without me you won't have to sit here for a half hour listening to me um and uh just remember that you know just do the best you can and i'll leave this tonight with a quote from a writer that i follow his name is jim wright wri ght and one of the things he says is if you want a better country you need to be a better citizen so

082anyways thank you for the time uh i don't regret it at all it's already backfilled i hate to say you know we're just going to keep on going but it's okay but you guys do awesome work and we have a district that truly truly is unique and and i can say that because i i grew up in an environment that uh i hated school and i hated it for certain reasons and it wasn't until i moved to sitka in 94 that i finally got my mind wrapped around that there is good schools out there and so if there is any staff out there still listening parents staff present thank you for that because this is pretty darn special here so thank you eric um different without you here for sure um hey i just wanted

083to take a second you're itana right am i saying that correctly itana yeah she's our new student representative so um itamaglutz and i don't know if you want to sit up here tonight and give a report if you'd like mr hauser saying yes i thought come on up you're involved with nutcracker right so yeah so she's going to be attending late a lot of times but yeah have a seat over there and if you don't mind just taking a second to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you that'd be great i am a senior at sikka high school and i'm 18 years old um i am heavily involved in dance i'm very involved with theater and a lot of the art in general um i i have three younger brothers and all

084is the music teacher at mount edgecomb and my dad is the senior pastor at i've lived in sitka for about 10 years now and i've gotten we are a student representative thank you and welcome you sing ryan it's you that sings the national anthem yes and she has a beautiful voice i was pretty sure that was you so yeah well thank you and welcome um all right so we are on item where are we item 12 on our el paso all right thank you very much i've got a few things we'll start with the budget report although you've got the budget uh in the packet um just kind of moving through the one thing i wanted to highlight is on the last month's board meeting we were preparing for the audit we about two weeks

085ago maybe a little over two weeks ago started the auditing process which usually takes a week a little bit over a week just for the whole process to go through and so my business office is still working the process and the hope obviously is that in november that audit will be delivered to the board uh for review um so we're working through that and the business office has been working really hard to get all the materials and everything in place for the audit so that's kind of an update where from the budget perspective and so hopefully like i said uh early in november at the aasb meeting is when we're hoping and planning on having that audit report to all the board members any questions on the budget no well i moving on to the

086enrollment report and this is one that's exciting and so we've talked about the enrollment right now and last time we went and talked uh before the fy 22 budget we built and projected an enrollment for 1133 students at this time we have 1 138 students enrolled so we are above our projections which is a good thing of course the open enrollment and the student account for oasis goes through october 22nd and so we still have through october 22nd to hopefully pick up some more students and so if you're watching the school board meeting and you are considering moving to sitka uh as you've heard this is an amazing school district it's a mating community and i would encourage you because my wife and i are new to sitka ourselves please come it's a great place

087so but we're going to be continuing to have those um you know accounts taking place through october 22nd and then we'll be submitting our final count uh to the uh state uh in november so that's an enrollment report and then i'm going to go ahead and jump into my superintendent's report i have a powerpoint for you imagine that so uh we'll go ahead and jump in and mr ron is uh kind enough to kind of uh run the uh powerpoint for me so we're gonna do our traditional i look at him and i nod three or four times and he goes ahead and he moves forward so um this week i'm going to start off today by showing kind of a little bit what's going on around our schools and today i want to take

088a moment to take a little bit closer look at baranoff elementary school and so i have a little video i was kind of looking through facebook and happened to notice just a really cute video that principal lacrone had put on facebook and i just wanted to thank her for putting on there and i just wanted to share that video in case you had not had a chance to see it [Music] the volume is a little bit quieter [Music] and so i wanted to show a little bit of that video because one of the things i really appreciated was you know even our in our classes in looking at our students even though we have all these mitigations in place we really are moving forward with full day in-person um you know schooling and students are

089having a great time they're learning they're engaging during recess you saw students out socially distance having fun playing and doing all the things that we really want our students to be able to engage in and participate in when they come to school when they're in their classes and so i wanted to kind of share that bit um in addition our student athletes continue to make headlines too uh i'd like to thank garland kennedy of the city sentinel for spotlighting our sitka high school student athletes this month um one thing we hear from our student athletes again and again is their joy of being able to return to competition this year one sitka high school swimmer said quote it was so weird to be back to normal after not being normal for so long but it

090was so much fun i had fun and that was the most important part and i think that is something that i think we all appreciate is our students being able to go and have fun and engage in some of these activities that over the last year and some they haven't always been able to participate in i also had a few updates from our activities director mr cooper from simkin high school as you heard swimming had to meet last saturday winning both friday and saturday meets wrestling has started volleyball did excellent in ketchikan two weeks ago and i believe some of the team will be heading to juno next week and our ddf is heading to skagway to start defending its five consecutive state championships and regional championships titles so that's a pretty impressive feat there

091last couple of updates i've i've asked for volunteers for our strategic planning action plan teams now the action plan teams comprised of parents staff community members and students are meeting and the next phase of the process is underway we have over 40 total parent staff community members participating in action plan teams that align with the six strategies identified in our action plan process last april i'm excited to see the plans these teams develop to support our ssd staff and students and we are meetings meeting on mondays and thursdays and i think in the last email update i can send everybody there's times on there as well if you'd like to stop by and participate we do have some representatives on the board on those meet teams so thank you very much um so i know

092i'm looking forward to the day when i don't have to do a covet 19 update um but unfortunately we're not there yet but we are getting there i have some encouraging data about our mitigation plan today and we also have some potential game changing news on the horizon so on october 26 fda independent vaccine advisor committee will discuss pfizer's request to the fda to authorize its coven 19 vaccine for those ages 5 to 11. the vaccine for children would be about a third of the dose as that for adults and given 21 days apart vaccines might be available in a matter of weeks in the halloween to thanksgiving time frame according to some reports um so i bring this up really because i think it might be a good time for parents that might be

093interested to start talking to pediatricians or medical providers about that and then also uh in case you hadn't heard just a few days ago we also learned that merck will soon seek approval for an anti-viral pill that reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people currently infected with the coronavirus this treatment would be significant because it would be in a pill form and wouldn't require an iv so that's another thing that potentially on the horizon is going to be positive for us in case you didn't know but i'm sure you probably did our current alert level in sitka is still high we had a spike after the labor day weekend that knocked us off course for a bit but look at this cases have begun to decrease and we are heading in the right direction

094um remember that we want to get out of the red that field of red right there which is quite a significant field of red to look at but i did hear also that numbers have dropped even since this morning when i updated this slide so that's even more good news we also have some encouraging news related to our mitigations in ssd as of today we have five active coveted cases connected to our ssd buildings that number represents approximately 0.4 of our total student and staff population so less than half a percent obviously that's a very small percentage our mitigations are insured ensured that previous active cases declined it did not escalate a district with no masking had about the same number of active cases associated with an elementary school as we did at keat earlier

095in the month within a week case counts in that other district school without masking quadrupled and the entire school shut down for two weeks the superintendent of that district said that the active cases in the school without mass doubled every two days quote if we left the school open for another week he said we would have probably had everybody in the whole school who possibly could have been infected he said the district didn't act fast enough to require masks our layered mitigations and ssd including masking and testing helped us identify and isolate our positive cases keep them from escalating keep our schools open and bring students back to in-person learning safely and without lengthy or necessarily quarantines the information on the active cases connected to ssd buildings is right on our front website and will

096continue to be updated daily monday through friday and also just a reminder this is a list of people in our schools who happen to have kovid as we all know people can track covet from many situations and locations including travel from family members and friends or out in the community in several of these cases in ssd students then came to school with covet-like symptoms so i really would just like to remind parents again to keep students home if they or anyone among their your family or close contact has coveted or coveted like symptoms so we're talking about encouraging news today and that's really important but we also need to be uh cautious and careful because we cannot let up our mitigations too soon while we still have high levels of covet in our community one

097of the many remarkable things about this time period is the amount of real-time data we have on covered mitigations in schools so we can see right now that will happen you see right now what will happen if we let up our mitigations too soon while we're still at these high levels and so what we have here is the state data on sitka and another region of the state sitka is on the left and the region on the right and the other region is on the right now remember that the state is using a seven day per 100 000 calculation of covocations for all regions so we can make these comparisons of the level of covet in various communities this is the covet case rate for august 23rd our first day of school you can see

098that sitka on the left had a higher case rate than this other region we had 586 covet cases per 100 000 in sitka on our first day of school while this other region had 397 on that day so we and sitka had a higher covet case rate in our community on that day than this other region of the state the schools in these two districts had many of the same covenant mitigations in place except we and sitka also had masks remember that masks are especially important in schools this year because with new cdc guidance students who are masked in distance are not considered close contacts in the classroom setting and do not need to isolate so again on our first day of school sitka had a higher covet case rate than this other region on

099the same day but three weeks later the district that started without masking reported 10 times more coveted cases in school than ssd they have had multiple school closures because of outbreaks and multiple school closures because of covert related staff shortages half of the schools in this district have switched to masking this is really important data for us at this point because we can see exactly where we will be if we let up our mitigations before covet cases come down from these high levels in our community this other district started with 397 cases per 100 000 cases coveted cases in seven days and we were just there a few days ago but the good news is that our cases are coming down in sitka we're heading in the right direction and we have a good plan

100we just stay the course for a little bit while longer in addition i heard it said recently that quote the sitka school district was so far as i heard it quote said the sitka school district has so far escaped some of the worst outcomes experienced by schools in other parts of the country during the pandemic and while i appreciate the recognition of the progress of our school years in ssd so far i did want to kind of push back a little on the idea that somehow we've just been lucky and quote escaped these worst outcomes end quote i'm here to tell you that that's there's nothing lucky about it we started with covet in our community then we we started with more coveted in our community than other regions but we've had significantly less covet

101and covert related disruptions in our schools and that's not an accident that's because of our mitigations but most importantly it's because we've all been working together the school board ssd staff and administration the community parents and guardians and students we have all been working together to implement these mitigations that are keeping school students in school and keeping our schools open i just like to take a moment to bring everybody back to august for a second this is a slide i shared at the board meeting then i was talking about the importance of in-person learning and the big steps forward we were taking this year with bringing students back to full-time in-person learning i asked everyone to look back at last fall and compare where we were now i'd like everyone to compare where we were

102in august to where we are now we brought all of our students back to full-time in-person learning this year and we have already provided our students a quarter of nearly seamless in-person instruction during what has been called quote the worst point in the pandemic end quote we don't know what will happen tomorrow but that's something to be proud of today what can i say john hulse you all recognize john hulse so i just thought i'd share this picture with you really fast um this is me and of course mr holst this is right when my wife and i drove off the ferry in sitka and i think amy you might have taken this picture if i'm not mistaken so it does quality work good lighting in the background so mr hulse was there to welcome

103us and hand me the keys to the district i was it was a beautiful sunny day in june coveted cases in citgo were extremely low and i didn't have a mask on and there wasn't a mask in sight and i really do want everybody to know i want to get back there too but what i want more is to keep our kids safely in school and here's the good news the plan that is going to get us back there the fastest is the same plan that's going to keep our kids in school we know our protocols are working we know where we should be without them where we would be without them based on data from districts in alaska and all around the country we see district after districts switching to mitigations that ssd already

104has in place we simply need to stay the course for a little while longer until our cases and sid could come down from those high levels and as i've said before schools don't drive community transmission but what happens in the community does affect our schools and in the meantime this is the best news of all all of our schools are open to full-time in-person learning we are miles ahead of where we were last year and no one should forget that our students haven't a sitka high school student uh spoke at a recent assembly meeting about how grateful her word it was her word every was everyone was to be back and fully to fully in person with normal school day even if that school day includes mass just for the time being we don't know

105what's going to happen tomorrow our numbers or active cases in our schools may change but we have our mitigations in place and keeping them in place means that we have the best chances of keeping our students in school and we keep moving steadily forward without you tunes or starts and stops or disruptions until we again reach the bright days that are just ahead uh and now let us return to our regularly scheduled programming the actual business of education and talk about the results of peak testing as i reported at the last board meeting we were getting ready to distribute our peaks testing we did receive those from the state and i wanted to talk and spend a little bit of time to just uh go over some of our peaks testing results and i thought

106i'd include this little piece of information i just happened to see this 20 years ago feature in the sitka sentinel when i was starting to work on this presentation i thought it was interesting that 20 years ago the sitka school board was talking about standardized testing and we just happened to be talking about it stay tuned so i'd like to make a couple of just general comments about standardized testing first and this is personal for me because as i've said before i'm sitting here as a superintendent not because school was always easy for me but really because it wasn't i struggled in school especially with reading i never took the peaks test but in my day it was the california aptitude test the cat but i'm confident that if i had taken the peaks test

107as a seventh grader in palmer junior high school where i went to junior high yes we called it junior high back then i would not have been found proficient and yet largely because i found a little success in a high school sport here i am i'd like everyone to keep in mind what standardized testing shows us and what it doesn't it shows us a moment in time it does not show us the full extent of students potential assessments are tools that help us support students and inform instruction they're one data point of our students and schools other data points include assessments like measured students growth like map testing graduation rate acceptances at colleges and universities scholarships apprenticeships jobs and certifications i just ran into the mom of one of my former students her son graduated

108a couple years ago he was never interested in going to college and started welding in school in our school cte program i actually think i referenced him during my job interview as well so i just happened to run to the mom again uh and upon graduation he was accepted into an apprenticeship program his mom just told me that he is thrilled because he was just offered a lucrative welding job in antarctica so he is getting ready to go to antarctica for six months and this is a couple of years after he has graduated from high school and he's looking at buying his first home he just bought a new four-wheeler and he's got a new truck and so he is doing very well for himself and doing something that he loves and i think that's

109so important success comes to our students in many different ways and with many different measures and so i just wanted to preface that as we kind of look at talking about standardized testing so let's talk specifically about the 2021 peaks assessment this ela or english language arts and mathematics assessments were administered in the spring of 2021 to students in grades three through nine the assessments measured a student's understanding of alaska's standards and remember that standards and assessments differ from state to state this is the letter that went out from the alaska department of education in early development or deed about peaks it talks about some specific limitations to the 2021 assessment due to coven it says quote participation rates varied significantly from district to district and among demographic categories given the low overall participation rate

110and high variability in participation among student groups deed cautions against comparing 2021 peaks data to previous years at the statewide level end quote so another limitation of peak's data which i already alluded to relates to its measurement of student growth i have seen students show grade levels worth of growth in other assessments specifically map testing but that growth isn't always reflected in peaks because students may not yet have reached that proficient level that gets reported so in other words a student may have made huge advantages and advances in the semester's work but peaks doesn't capture all those advances until students reach a certain level of proficiency when it's reported as proficient this letter from deed kind of well it addresses that and reads quote beginning this school year deed is moving toward a new approach

111to statewide assessment that will provide results for teachers that can immediately inform instruction will better display student growth and needs and align with interim assessments administered independently by most of alaska school districts so the state is now moving away from peaks so peaks won't be administered again this is the last peaks data we are going to have the new assessment is based on map testing i just talked about so we already administered that in ssd and i'll talk a little bit more about the new assessment shortly but first let's take a moment and look at the results from our peaks data for the ssd from 2017 to 2021. i'd also like to take a moment to thank laura rogers who is still here thank you laura she is staying through this and she as our

112testing coordinator in addition to assistant principal at blatchley i want to thank her for putting this in the next couple of slides together for us and for providing some analysis of historical trends so keep in mind that cohorts in sitka are small so there can be some significant fluctuation in scores from year to year on the left we have our english language art scores percent proficient and on the right math we see that scores are considered higher and more stable in ela than in math this may reflect the emphasis on reading at the elementary level with programs like walked reading and so forth however math scores before covid were steadily climbing in grades 6 8 and 9. i thought that was something that was important to look at so again this is our percent proficient

113students by grade level these are ssd's ela scores as compared to state scores ssd is blue so you can see that our ela scores are consistently above the state average at every grade level and if you look down at the bottom right hand side you will see again orange is the state blue is ssd that is the results from the peaks test for 2021 last spring test results and again you can see all of those blue lines our students scored higher proficient than the state's report these are our math scores again as compared with state scores ssd in general has a higher percent proficient as compared to the state in 2018 every grade level exceeded the state's scores in 2019 and 21 the only grades whose proficiency levels were below the state average are the

114same cohort grade 7 in 2019 grade 9 two years later in 2021 although peaks had some limitations we are losing it as a data point in the future just as we're beginning to get enough years of information to use it for decision making but we will have a new statewide assessment that is replacing peaks and the new statewide assessment will better reflect learning throughout the school year the new assessment as i said will be delivered similarly to the map test a test that measures student growth and has been used in ssd for for years in grades 2 through 11. this new assessment system will also include a summative test the federal every student succeeds act essa for short requires states to administer a statewide summative assessment in mathematics language arts and science the assessment must

115align with state academic standards provide information and attainment of standards and indicate performance at grade level so this is the new post peaks assessment timeline this school year is year one districts will administer map growth interim assessments for grades three through nine in reading language arts language uses usage math in the fall winter and spring and a new summative assessment in the spring for english language arts and mathematics and you can see under year one there will continue to be the three map assessments and a new summative assessment that will take place in the spring of this year this new summative assessment will help provide benchmark information for future tests to the state next year year two the district will administer map growth interim assessments for grade three through nine in fall and winter and

116a summative assessment in the spring once fully implemented the new assessment system will reduce the number of standardized tests for most students in ssd and will provide teachers immediate results from interim math tests students in grade in 5th grade 8th grade and 10th grade will continue to take the science assessment and just anecdotally i've seen more students enthusiasm about map testing than peaks testing in some of the interactions i've had with students as an educator i appreciate that map testing leads to conversations included including with parents about areas of positive student growth and not only to conversations about areas where students may not yet be proficient so that's the end of my update and now just a couple of announcements and uh i do have one more student video i'd like to um show uh

117it was earlier mentioned by uh sandra that sipka high school will be hosting a college and career fair tomorrow thursday october 7th with over 40 colleges at university and career opportunities represented and there are covert mitigations that will be followed very closely i mentioned it earlier today but i also just wanted to remind everyone we do have 12 cross country runners who will be representing ssd at state this weekend and we are still going strong and putting some of our school videos on our new youtube site so check out that if you want to see our school board meetings but also some videos and if anyone has any questions about vaccines or the information that's there as well and so with that i'd like to end with a couple of our sitka high school students

118who recently did this video to walk students through the new rapid covet testing process at ssd our new rapid testing program is helping us identify positive cases and bringing students back to in-person learning without lengthy or unnecessary coin teams our student athletes are students who participate in extracurricular activities other students are all testing already so please join them and test at your school weekly permission forms are available online or in your front office or your school and our building test schedule is as follows mondays high school tuesdays blatchley middle school wednesdays at baranov elementary school thursday's teague and friday is pacific high school and now here are tawny smith and steven harmon showing us how to test properly i'm the editor today you're going to be watching a video on how to do the cover

11919 rapid test brought to you by your favorite upperclassman stephen harmon and tony smith now without further ado please enjoy [Music] before starting wash or sanitize your hands make sure they're dry before starting remove test card from pouch and lay flat on table the card must stay flat on the table for the entire test make sure the blue control line is present in the result window remove dropper bottle cap hold dropper bottle straight over top hole not at an angle drop six drops into top hole do not touch card with tip keep fingers away from the swab end open swab package at stick and take swap out using medium pressure rub the swab against all of the inside walls of your nostril make at least five big circles each nostril must be swapped for about

12015 seconds using the same swab repeat step 5 in your other nostril insert swab tip into bottom hole firmly push the swab tip from the bottom hole until it is visible in the top hole do not remove the swab from the card turn swab to the right three times to mix the swab with the drops do not skip this step leave the swab in the card for the remainder of the test false negative results can occur if swab is not turned wait 15 minutes read the results at 15 minutes do not read the results before 15 minutes or after 30 minutes testing for cova 19 keeps us in school and keeps us in sports thank you for keeping sika high safe by following these key steps and that will conclude my report thank you very

121much and go wolves that was very informative i had no idea how those rapid tests were done so that's kind of cool all right well thank you did anyone have any questions no questions but could we possibly get the the powerpoint sent to us thank you all right do you guys mind if we take like a five minute recess real quick and then we'll resume okay five minute break sorry all right we are resuming the meeting at 8 00 pm and we are on to um item 13 a new business and this is just review of board policy zero five two zero school accountability and school improvement i'll pass it over to superintendent hauser yeah so one of the things this is just um there were some changes to the uh notes section so um

122this doesn't have to have uh board approval to go in but it is going to be one of the things we're going to try to do is as we review policies as well is notate when those policies are reviewed and updated uh whether it's through an official action by the board with new policies or if it's just to review a policy just so we can make note of at least the policy review committee or the board had a chance to look at it and so while this does not need to have board approval because it is just the explanatory notes section that is being modified because what has happened is the some of the laws that required some of the college readiness assessments including sat act and work keys all sunseted and so those are

123no longer required and so they changed some of those explanatory notes in there and so what we wanted to do is just um put in front of the board just so you could see it review have a quick conversation and that way when we do post the updated um release not updated policy it's the same policy but the updated document that has the changes to the explanatory notes we put down that you know it was reviewed on this date just for reference in the future and am i correct that the the link to the one on our agenda online is the correct note the one i printed out tonight was not the correct yeah i actually uh let me go through i don't but i think there was the one on uh line is mostly

124correct i looked back at it and it is not the correct one because uh it needs to say the superintendent or does a knee and so that actually the one that is online is um is is not correct so the one that you printed out here is correct uh it's the one that is accurate except it does not have the notes it still has the notes section in there so it'll be the exact policy that you see in front of you that was copied off the hard copy except the note section will be different anyone have any questions about that all right so we can move on to the next one which is um 13b review of um ar 1312 public complaints concerning school personnel you'll speak to that one as well yeah so i'm

125just going through and you know every year we go through as a member and working with aasb they go through and review you know policies and administrative regulations and this is just a way to go through and just update some of the language that we have regarding public complaints concerning school personnel a couple of key differences that you will see in this updated ar 1312 really speaks to you know in the old ar there were some if you know example um under number three written complaints should be submitted no later than 30 calendar days following the dates um and while you know it does it should be it should it could also be passed and so uh in some of the new references you will see that there's um you know we just want to

126make sure that we're receptive to any concerns or complaints when they come through uh there might be some situations where uh there are timelines that might not fall into that and we want to be respectful of that and have a policy and procedure in place through our ars that address some of those issues or concerns that come through we also the new ar speaks to you know kind of going through and having that formal process which is very similar to what that formal process is going through one of the other things that is outlined though in the new ar and this at the end of the first page speaks to if a complaint remains unresolved um after review by the principal of the immediate supervisor the principal shall refer the written complaint together with the

127report in analysis of the situation to the superintendent or does he need complaints should consider the except accept consider and accept the superintendent or does he needs decision as final and so any complaints concerning school personnel would go through the process try to be resolved through conversations with uh the sometimes it's a teacher sometimes it's teacher and principal sometimes it's the principal and it does have a procedure to come through and come across my desk through the written complaint process um and on page two you'll see that except when a complaint is directed against the superintendent or designee no party to a complaint may address the school board school board members shall make every effort to not prejudice themselves by listening to or discussing the matter of the complaint with any other school board member

128or staff students or public prior to receiving the superintendent's report and formal meeting as a board on the issue and so much of the language is the same those are the key highlight changes to the ar from what the old version was to what the new version is so um in times past we we had talked about this and uh one of the goals that we had was to have a clear sort of flow chart or something on uh on the district's website yeah you know and that was that was partially selfish i think on the boards point because you know we do get our ears bent on on stuff and we have to explain you know that we that we have to follow policy and it was you know i mean it was definitely

129to empower the complainees and and make it clear for everyone as well but um i can't remember if we i was looking for it and i haven't been able to find it we do uh we actually have if you look at board policy um 1312 concerns and complaint guide e so it's one of our examples that we have on there and i don't know if chris you can pull it up i was able to pull it up on my computer it is mostly up to date and follows through the one change of course that is there is it still references uh follow a written and signed complaint to the district with superintendent john holst and so we're in the process of updating uh that as well um to go through there are um you know

130a couple of just want to make sure that we are updating that but that flow chart is mostly up to date just like i said there's a couple of uh small changes and that again is um under our board policies 1312 concerns and complaint guide e so that's the tab that you find it under your under school board uh yep go under school board and go down to board policies and then select the 1000 community relations policies and then about midway down you'll see 13 12 concerns and complaints complaint guide e that's under administrative regulations on the right hand side okay super good to know thank you so much no no worries thank you for the question and like i said we were actually working on getting that uh put up with just the name

131change and what i will do is make sure that at the next board meeting i'll have that we can take a look at that just for final review and make sure i send that out as well before we make that final change you know for the ars just so you get a chance to review that as well any other questions on that one then great i did not know that that flowchart was on there so that's really great to know alrighty um so moving on to item 13c discussion of graduation regalia and i will all right um so i i wanted to um take a moment uh we've had some conversations uh as a board and with some board members uh regarding um regalia at graduation a couple things i just want to talk about

132it's my understanding that ssd has had a long-standing practice of graduates wearing traditional tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance at graduation ceremonies i'd also like to recognize that practice which sets ssd apart from other districts and i also believe it's important to have that practice included in official board policies um myself i mean i came from a district that um you know had uh established a graduation regalia policy um yeah so i have some experience working with students with graduation regalia and uh with community members and putting together uh some and talking about the graduation policies a couple things that i fully support a graduation regalia policy and ssd that provides for students wearing traditional tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance at graduation ceremonies i do not believe that students should be required

133to wear a cap if it's incompatible with regalia or significant object i also do not support any type of approval process like some other districts have through the regalia process for me graduation day is a day to celebrate our students and honor their achievements and being able to have students wearing traditional tribal regalia or object cultural significance also i think celebrates and recognizes them as well and so i think this is something that i wanted to kind of bring up and have with the board discussing around kind of next steps for looking at putting maybe a group or committee together to talk about uh graduation regalia and a formal board policy along the lines i myself am i would like to say how excited to hear that we are on this subject [Music] it has

134been brought up within the community questioning where the district stands on regalia and traditional and cultural objects that being presented and worn during graduation um i had a discussion when mr holtz was our superintendent and it was at a time where there was a transition between himself and you so again i'm really excited to be talking about this um from my understanding the policy that we do have in place it is very vague from my understanding we do have one i've i've had it i've searched myself i haven't really found it i believe john found it once but i agree that we need to have something in writing to support our practices and i do want to acknowledge that it's been my understanding that zika high school as well as pacific high school have been

135very welcoming and supportive during the graduation ceremonies but again i agree what we uphold and what we follow through on should be in writing and i agree with you about the to have it supportive and less restrictive your recommendation probably is to create a like form a committee right to put together a policy and then the board look at that yeah i think that would be i think students administration community members represented from secretary of alaska board member i think that would be being able to step back look at i have done and worked and done a lot of research on graduation regalia but i think this really is a community um you know school uh school board um you know kind of process that needs to go through to um you know discuss uh

136the graduation regalia and you know come forward with maybe a recommendation to the board to look at you know moving forward for graduation anyone else have any thoughts or ideas or suggestions or i guess i wonder are there certain other current committees that could take this on of course i'm thinking of the policy committee which boston and i are on and we haven't met very frequently but if it's um the policy committee is mostly i mean it's not for drafting new policies is it or is it i mean we could take that form a subcommittee on it not to invite more work for us but um or if the group thinks that just a general new committee it's a temporary uh thing just to get this off the ground that's a better way to go

137that was my first thought definitely we we do have the policy committee committee in place and whenever policies come up that refer to cultural and traditional knowledge and significance when it comes to the school district and our students we do invite the tribe tristan gabon and lacrisha johnson but i am all ears if if um you want to form a subcommittee i suggest getting in touch with the cultural committee at sikka tribe and go from there so as i think about this um i'm definitely in favor of of coming up with a policy i'm definitely in favor of regalia and you know objects of significance um i think that perhaps we should even widen the scope and in the idea that we have uh other cultures that uh may want to be represented we may

138we may end up falling into a situation of you know where did we just can i put this you know rather than coming up with the list of things that are allowed sort of focusing on you know what would be what would be dissuaded you know anything that might be offensive or so i mean i would be i think either one of those takes um and i guess i would also encourage that we do talk to sika tribe of alaska but i think even the alaska native brotherhood we have a lot of other cultures alaska native cultures that are represented in siska too that may not be feel regionally represented there so i guess those are a couple of thoughts that i had thanks no i absolutely think that um you know discussion around the

139policy um absolutely um tribal regalia traditional tribal regalia um and or objects of cultural significance are you know really that represent um the diverse cultures that we have represented uh in sitka and i think being able to have those in place uh and having representatives have those conversations what that looks uh what that's gonna look like in board policy to go to your point about um you know defining what that looks like and making sure that um you know there's nothing offensive in that i think is the tournament used and i think that that's where thoughtful and dialogue discussion and creating good policy hopefully we'll will avoid some of those those you know bumps in the road let's say those uh areas that could come back and not necessarily be what we want them to

140you know that poor policy and i think that's where having good input from community members from you know our our partners uh and also like i said having having school representatives on there i think having um you know representatives from the policy committee and of course depending on how we'd like to you know the board would like to assign that out i mean i think that that would be a good place to start a sub-committee of the policy committee um that comprises some you know students staff um representatives from the community from different um you know uh cultural organizations um to sit down and start having a conversation on what what that policy might look like and like i said i've done a lot of research and working with some of my students at my

141previous school to testify and to advocate for graduation regalia policy and so i think that's a great place to start is to bring people together have a conversation start looking at some policies that are out there what's what seems to work what seems to not work how they define um define you know that policy uh to uh include um uh traditional uh regalia or items of cultural significance and i think that's just that's the start and of course starting that dialogue in that discussion yeah this is that's uh it's encouraging to i was glad to see this on the agenda i think it was last last spring during graduation i don't remember where it was in the united states but there was more than one story of a students there wasn't a policy or whatever

142but they did wear some form of a traditional i don't know if it was uh you know native american or another culture but uh they were actually uh denied their their diploma you know and i just thought my gosh um i mean obviously you don't want somebody uh showing up to graduation with something that could be offensive or you know it's like you know is it really a cultural you know type but uh this was clearly a student that was proud in their their heritage and you know it wasn't in just because there was no policy that decisions were made right at the the night of i mean as the graduation as they're forming and getting lined up and that's just tragic you know and for us to be forward thinking on this and you

143know being able to have dialogues be it uh and i'd like i mean maybe it was by design or by accident that it did it discussion of graduation regalia it doesn't exactly specifically identify on what type of regalia or what ethnicity or you know which i think is is good and quite frankly sitka has such a rich diverse culture i mean we a lot a lot of alaska has that and personally i think it would be pretty uh great to be at at graduation and to look out at the graduating class and see representation of that you know of those cultures if a student chose be it filipino hispanic native american or whatever african american it does it doesn't matter if it's scandinavian you know something that you see a traditional person who's proud of

144graduating and but proud of their heritage i think that would be great and i'm glad that this is on the agenda and i won't have a hand in it other than maybe speaking to it at a meeting or something but it's encouraging to see just another part of our district that's thinking ahead instead of reactionary you know and that's that pays forward so much we're seeing that time and time again so thanks for that well i guess my recommendation would be next week on the 15th we will be forming our you know our committees and everything and doing all of our board assignments so um is that next week yeah okay next week is the 15th um so what do you guys think about when we do that and we come up with our policy

145committee then we kind of put it in the hands of the policy committee to come up with a subcommittee and really spearhead this like i'm like plan okay um so then whoever whoever chairs the policy committee you'll be taking this on but i know you've done so much research and really have a deep knowledge of this area so you'll serve on the committee too right i would love to and i want to very much so hopefully the subgroup i will be invited to be part of the subgroup yeah all right so i'm making a note of that so that when we do that um we can remember and then i would think we'd need something by january or february to go to the policy committee so that we have time to make sure we have

146two readings of it before may graduation so um yeah all right so then we don't have any correspondence and information future and upcoming events we have got our special school board meeting so note it is five o'clock on the 15th so earlier time and it's in the school district boardroom that's a friday so next friday five o'clock eric you're dismissed from this um and then just um reminder too we do our goal setting retreat on the i think we usually start around five or six on friday the 29th and then most of the day on saturday the 30th um and timmy tolis will be here for that and again in the district office boardroom for that our next regular school board meeting is a monday because that's the week that um the asb conference starts

147so we move our meeting to monday on the 1st here at 6 p.m and then the aasb annual conference november 4th through 7th i did announce at our last meeting that aasb has said that you know they were requiring proof of vaccination for um the conference and they did change that i don't know if you guys got or if it even matters but they did send out something that they did change that and there's did you see this um oh really um just so you guys know when we do the registration i don't know how it all works but you either have to provide proof of vaccination or like a negative cova test i want to say within three days prior to the event there's a few different things there just um i also want

148to let you guys know i'm actually not going to be attending the conference this year because it's the same dates as the volleyball regional tournament and i have two seniors playing volleyball and it's my last time to see them so so unfortunately i'm choosing my family over school board this time so i know i'm sorry i've missed it for the last three years i was like this year i just couldn't do it this year sorry but i will try and attend things remotely for you know anything that i can or whatever but yeah um so yeah we've got a lot coming up in the next month eric you will be missed well you guys will have for those who are going to the conference up there um that's a regret i i only made it

149to two of them and uh they are they're very very good it's uh and i know i i talked to todd a little bit about that last week and uh yeah it's it's encouraging whatever they can do to be able to get people together and um just incredible diversity of the different boards and from the interior and everywhere the southwest and here and uh yeah i'm really glad you guys are for those who are able to to go there it's it's i've said it time and time again it's not a boondoggle it's really really a very worthy worthy thing so i'll be uh cheering you on from from here okay well with that um i think our meeting is adjourned at 8 26 pm