001Hey America, let me know when you guys are ready to go. >> Sounds good. I'm actually remote as well, so uh ready when you are. >> Okay, perfect. Well, why don't we go ahead and get started? Apologies that I couldn't be in person today. I had some car issues, but it is 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 23rd, and if we could get started with introductions. My name is Dora Wilson. I am communications chair and an Anchorage School Board member. And I see member Lessons in the room. Can you start introductions? Member lessons, please. >> Uh, sure. Um, Kelly Lessons, board member, not a member of the communications committee. >> Uh, Deon Roberts, director of CTE. Cindy Shapoo, CCL director, Jeff, superintendent. >> Sean Prince, senior director of teaching and learning. MJ, chief of staff. >>
002I'm Bill Baxter. >> Christy Sits, Anchorage Education Association. >> Tim Rocky, Anchorage News. >> Oh, go ahead. I was just going to ask who's online. Thank you. >> No, no problem. President Jacobs is online as well as Mr. Anderson and this helps. >> Awesome. Thank you. So, let's go ahead and jump into the agenda. First item on the agenda is communications report. MJ, if you could go ahead and get us started, that'd be great. >> Yes, ma'am. Thanks. Uh, so a new thing for this committee and something that we're going to be working to do for uh future committee meetings. You got a breakdown where we are with our key messages and strategic focus. I want to give a shout out to Lisa Miller on my team um for putting this together for us. Uh
003lottery updates, it's aligning with our AR 516A. Uh the weight list uh will not roll over year to year. We've got this aligned with board uh guard rail to increase unrepresented student groups in lottery application and base programs. You'll see that we've got a principal toolkit. It's on the website. We push it out in the news internally and externally as well on social media. We're continuing to support the teacher apprentice program. Grow your own pathway for aspiring teachers. Again, it is aligning with the guard rail developed. Develop a qualified, diverse, and culturally diverse workforce. And you'll see that it's pumped out uh internally and externally. And then ready set kindergarten uh back to school stuff is already uh moving forward as well. Uh alignment again with our uh schoolboard goal reading proficiency. also alignment with
004the guard rail. Superintendent will not operate elementary schools without mental health services. Again, uh pushing it out internally and externally as well as uh posted uh at key locations as well. We've got registration and pre-enrollment uh kicking in. We just did another uh communications push with that. Uh again, that guard rail increase under reppresented student uh groups in lottery and application based programs uh internally and externally. You can see as well accelerator programs giving support with us. Uh you'll see the goal the goals of reading and math proficiency as well as the diverse workforce. Um and then our continued followup with FY27 budget and right sizing communications. Uh those communications started last week with the shift in tone and focus from the superintendent. Um and then as well as our bond and levy went out
005as well last week. Bond and Levy, we are moving forward with our postelection survey. Uh we will have those results at a future uh schoolboard meeting to share with you like we did uh in um February. Uh some upcoming events, we had our uh vaccine clinic yesterday. Uh we continue that next month on the 12th. Uh we've got our secondary transition expo um that is happening this Saturday. Uh middle school curriculum review is happening next week here at the ed center in the U. Uh ribbon cutting is set for May 7th. You'll uh school board will be receiving an official invite soon. Our graduation for 2026 kicks off here next month as well. We've um expanded our senior spotlight as well as our uh Facebook live coverage of the big graduations. Last year we tried
006uh we introduced the uh student co-host um and we're going to continue that again um this year. And we're also working to uh got a meeting uh actually here shortly with UAA. We're going to try and get our Facebook live um pumped out to the jumbotron for folks that are inside the UAA center. So in between uh the ceremonies, we can have a little fun and kind of see what's happening behind the scenes with our students um with Corey and our student uh co-host. And then we've got uh Denali awards uh that are going to wrap up uh towards the end of the month. Uh, and we got a couple things, um, a couple special things planned based on kind of what happened uh, this year with our outreach that, uh, the district is, uh,
007famous for doing when other communities outside Anchorage need our support. And that's your teaser. I'm not going to expand anymore, but in that area. Um, and that's it for uh, comps. Any questions? >> I have one. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, and maybe this is worth a followup elsewhere. So, one thing that I'm just hoping to have a better clarification on is um, with the future apprenticeship program, I know that there's a website um, to focus on developing a diverse qualified culturally diverse workforce. One of the things that I noticed in the work session presentation on roundabout slide four or five depending on how you number it is that the general fund dollars that were dedicated to supporting the teacher apprenticeship program have been reduced but it's still ongoing. So we we could talk of
008maybe a conversation >> funding sources for the program. >> Yeah. and and I think that there have been some strategic I don't know maybe alignment of grant funds to support it. I don't know maybe I'm just looking for more information >> in followup um to sort of connect one thing that says they're getting reduced and another thing that says that it's still here. >> Yeah, we'll clarify that. >> Thanks. >> Any other questions? So, thank you for for that update that there's a lot going on. So, appreciate all the all the work and effort. And I believe you uh have been assigned [laughter] >> assigned to talk about the community outreach as well or is that did you cover all all that already? >> Yeah, I am representing Tony Riley. >> Okay, awesome. Thank you.
009>> Uh this is your community engagement uh committee update. Uh first uh item uh we've got our uh 2025 2026 advisory committee uh schedule. Uh the next meeting is uh for the multicultural education concerns advisory committee otherwise known as MEAC is set for next month on the 13th uh at 6 o'clock. Then the native advisory committee is set for uh May 28th in person here at the Ed Center blue room starting at 5:30. Uh and then next week we've got the uh AK Star Carnival uh for growth improvement for third and to fifth grade students. Uh next Thursday over at Mountain View Elementary School. Reading rendevous is set for uh Saturday, May 16th uh from 12 to 4 over at the Lusac Library on the South Lawn. And then a couple save the dates for
010you. Uh Junth ASD is going to have a booth on Saturday, June 20th out on the Denali Park strip. And then again, uh, back to school. I know it's, uh, uh, not what people want to hear, but we, uh, have back to school planning. Again, the, um, back to school, uh, supply drive in partnership with HUGs is set for July uh, 31st uh, from 11 to 7. It will be over at Vegas. And that concludes my report as Tony Riley. >> Awesome. Thank you. Does anybody have any additional questions or comments? Okay, let's go ahead and move right into ourmies of Anchorage update. Sure. >> Um, so Madam Chair, I'll get us started and then Sean's going to share some additional information. But I I wanted to report out to the board that we did
011have a really robust conversation with the AOA steering committee to essentially just debrief on what the board and I have been discussing for months, which is that our budget is extremely limited and we're really going to have to make sure that we stick to the basics for all initiatives because we'll be doing um a lot of great things but with way fewer resources. So I just want to outline what I shared with the steering committee and I don't think there'll be too many surprises to the board but one of the impetuses here was the fact that we have way fewer dollars earmarked for AOA particularly the general fund. So for example um we no longer have funding for student transportation for a number of guaranteed student experiences at the moment. We've discontinued our convenor um
012arrangement with United Way. Uh we also uh are no longer funding academy coaches at any high schools and probably the most significant change would be the large peopletoteer ratio increase that's systemwide but that affects academy specifically because it limits our ability to offer any sort of elective and of course CT pathways could be vulnerable to that and of course that's a more school level decision but with that said um as a steering committee We spent a lot of time discussing based off of this financial outlook, where do we want to realign our goals? What is this going to look like moving forward? And we even had a really deep discussion as to what what this should be called. So, before I get to how that conversation went, here's what I heard from the steering committee.
013Um, is that we have a lot of really great volunteers that want to provide support to our schools either through time, talent, or effort. And that's not going away. And we're very thankful for that because in the past school business partners and others said it was so difficult to um work with the schools for a number of reasons and we finally gotten to a really good place where we have synergy that I think that we should maintain and protect the volunteers that want to help our students. Um but we also narrowed down what is happening next year when it comes [clears throat] tomies. So I want to remind the public um and the board what what is happening formies. So, one um we want to preserve these guaranteed experiences as much as we reasonably can.
014What we can commit to right now is that we will have teachers who will implement the personal finance and college career life readiness course. That's key. That's our way to influence and inspire thousands of nth graders across all of our high schools. This is a best practice. It's implemented in high performing charter schools and suburban districts across the country. This is simply information that students need. In fact, it shouldn't be a surprise that many legislators often propose bills on financial literacy because even at the state level in Alaska, we understand that this is critical for our students. So, we want that to keep on happening that is funded that will happen in schools next year. The other piece that we'd like to maintain would be our staggered starts. Um, having dedicated time for our 9th
015graders to get acclimated to the high school experience. That's key and I believe that's one of the reasons why we've seen positive outcomes in our on track to graduate rates that we shared with the board on Tuesday. Of course, we want to maintain our volunteers and my commitment as superintendent is I want to try to preserve and protect as many of these high demand, highquality career pathways as possible. That's going to be heavily contingent on the number of CTE teachers that we have and the number of teacher positions we can afford. But with all of that said, here is uh some of the changes. Uh we're going to as a steering committee reorient our focus to keep this simple and sustainable. So we need to narrow our focus on what's possible given our financial constraints.
016So I, for example, would like to work with this group of volunteers to try to fund raise for some bust money so we can continue to offer a guaranteed experience to a career expo or UAA. And some of our partners on that steering committee are trying to help us. And that's a much smaller ask than something like a full-time position at a school. I think this is something that we can and should do, but of course, we'll try to seek grants and volunteer fundraising for it. I think it's possible and I really appreciate support in encouraging our community to invest in things like that. Um the second thing is and this shouldn't be a surprise to the vore at this point I'd like to suspend the conversations on wall-to-wall um implementation ofmies. So for those
017of us who've been following the conversation, the aspiration ofmies was far beyond CTE pathways. It really was academic transformation. And one of those features was a wall-to-wall aspiration, meaning that every single high school student will be enrolled in a pathway. Right now, I don't see that in the cards for ASD in the short-term future. So I want to suspend us investing any additional time and effort towards that. I'd like to protect what we have and not have our steering committee focus on how to implement more and more pathways for more and more students. It's simply um unattainable financially. The other piece is um and this is part that I I feel in retrospect was kind of lost in the sauce of the conversation ofmies. Part of what makesmies highly effective in other um parts of
018the country are really what affects amounts to a smaller learning community. that that's really what an academy is at the end of the day and that's something that we've seen implemented in various ways even beyond CTE ac in districts across the country. I think it's great but the fact of the matter is is that to have a smaller learning community in a high school means you need more resources. It means you need a dedicated ideally and a dedicated assistant principal, a dedicated counselor, a dedicated um extra resources. And that's what we should aspire. But given where our deficit is at, we've had to make very difficult reductions to counselors and teaching positions and some of the core supports at our high schools, this is not the right time to think and envision ways to add
019um in some ways the aspiration is to try to protect what we've recently lost through this budget. So that's why we're making that shift. And then um so the the smaller learning communities I think is a very powerful aspiration but we're going to spend focusing steering committee time and district time on this. So that brings us to probably one of the more profound conversations that we had as a steering committee which was just a very frank conversation that what I just described about what's changing what's staying should we even call thaties of Anchorage because that seems to a casual onlooker very different than what we were talking about you know four or five years ago and I was actually um pleasantly surprised that this um group of volunteers adamantly wants wants to keep the brand.
020And it's not so much that they're a fix to the termies, but we've put um so much work to convene so many parents and families around this idea of high demand, high wage pathways for kids. I think it would cause a lot more confusion than it's worth. And also, um, frankly, our steering committee, they want to be focused on fundraising for these school buses and helping us, um, you know, get volunteers in schools. So, I'd rather they focus on that than what do we call academy 2.0. What the rebranding is the the least of my worries at this point. It's really about protecting our students experiences that I know result in higher on track to graduation rates. So, at this point in time, I still anticipate calling this programmies of Anchorage, but I really want
021to be clear to the public and to the board, this is going to look very differently than it has in the past. And it's going to be at a much lower cost, too. And this doesn't mean that our students lose. Um, we're going to try the best that we can to preserve and protect what we know helped us get to where we are, which was rebounding our graduation rates back to where they were before the pandemic, showing increases in on track to graduate multiple years in a row, and having students that have repeatedly shown um an interest in what they're learning through these experiences, through student surveys and such. So there's a lot worth protecting and despite the fact that we're really scaling things back, we're still impacting thousands of nth grade students. And at
022[clears throat] the end of the day, I think that looks important. So the next steps for the steering committee would be um just circling back, looking at our goals and aspirations, redoing timelines and long range plans. That's going to be internal work to that group. and what of course were you our membership and some of the tactics whether it's a small grant we could apply for or a local contribution from a small business to try to slowly um provide these um school buses for these guaranteed experiences. That's the biggest thing that I that's my goal in the short term is to make sure that we can continue the career expo and the the field trip to UAA. I and I don't want to go too much longer on my TED talk, but this is important
023because as a former ninth grade teacher, I and a former counselor, I was always shocked um in my previous city where I live that so many kids never visited a college even if they lived a block away. And I was um not very surprised when I moved to Anchorage and I realized that many of our ninth graders are in that same situation. they live just a mile or two away from from UAA, but they've never visited or don't even know how to how to make that happen. And that's an aspiration piece that I know as a practitioner can result in choosing better courses, getting closer to graduating. So anyway, I I will pause the TED talk there, but we've done a lot of soulsearching and I think that this aligns with what we've been discussing
024as a board. We have to do more with less. we have to be realistic about what what what we can achieve, but I have to push us to not forget about our really important goal to boost graduation rates. So, I'll just pause there um and answer any questions before um Sean the presentation. >> Member Wilson, I have a question. I'm raising my hand. >> Yes, of course. >> Okay. Um thank you for that update. That's a lot to sort of come up to move forward with. I think one question that I have um about middle school, right? Knowing that early exposure to careers, to college opportunities um is really important in setting stage for that successful transition. And so especially if the board is able to through the creative administrative financial work, you know, continue
025the middle school model next year, maybe in coming years. Um to what extent will we be able to leverage the retention of CTE opportunities right in middle school? Um and I don't you know in in an academyy's 2.0 you know, what whatever that app whatever that's going to look like in the future. I guess it would be exciting to see the middle school experience um become more central to that. >> I appreciate [clears throat] form. >> Yeah. And I love that and and that kind of ties into why we're so limited in our resources and we made so many cuts, but the one that the administration wanted the board to relook at was middle school because I think that you in our community is in alignment that we have to make sure that we make
026sure those kids are all right. That's a really big transition from 8th to 9th grade. There's an opportunity to try to protect the elective offerings at that level, too. And those opportunities are going to be lost if we need to in the long term make a decision to stick to six periods versus seven periods. It's actually very analogous um to the conversation we had around high school electives with a sixth period to seven period day. They're very similar just different eth groups. And even though I I did share with the board on the record on Tuesday that I feel it's unlikely that we can uh afford a seven period day moving forward just given that we have a 40 plus million dollar deficit in FY28 on top of every cut that we're about to embrace
027right now. It gave me some inspiration that member lessons and others still want to continue that conversation and there's a path and I feel like if we can get a path to making that seventh period happen for our middle school kids for potentially even more years then that unlocks the possibilities to do just that. But if they don't have that class period, then we're going to encounter all of those issues that we saw coming that we urged the board to um seriously consider making the the proposal that we that you'll that will [clears throat] be before the board on Monday. These are very interconnected conversations. >> So, is there any other comments or questions? I'm sorry, I can't see. >> Member Wilson, Mr. Rocky has a question. >> Yes, please. um talked about the guaranteed
028experiences and looking for grant funding opportunities. Are those uh the expo and the college visit still on as of right now and hope to find buses later or are those canceled as of right now and they need to be revived later? >> They're on. >> Okay. Uh second question is how many pathways or CTE classes have been uh impacted by the PTR increase? Are there any of those that are going away next year because of the reduction of staff? >> Well, and that's pretty complex question. Um with a middle school going to a sixth period day, uh yes, we're estimating losing quite a bit of both CTE and art courses in particular, but it will also hit world language and music as well. So um depending on how the conversation goes uh that that's that's
029part of it. The overall increase to PTR has definite impact on high schools and as superintendent Brian mentioned we're doing everything we can to um to protect CTE program but inevitably we will see Louis losses in terms of some um CTE program. Um overall, um I can't tell you that we're losing any specific pathways, but the number of sections that we have and maybe in a few schools we might be losing pathways, but for the most part, um I think our pathways will remain in in intact. >> Doesn't King Tech lose at least one teacher in current budget? I mean, that's sort of the >> Yeah, for King for King Tech right now, they're they're they're looking at a reduction of of a teacher, which is definitely going to impact program. Most programs are built
030off of a teacher. It sort of depends on what program ends up being decided on. We currently have two uh staff members in the automotive program and so it might be a reduction of capacity in the automotive program without losing variety program. So I I just want to jump in and and say that I I'm such a huge advocate for our career technology education for um our academyy's concept for school business partnerships um just and my son said it best one he said mom I get it exposure leads to expansion and I I love that he phrased it as such because when our kids are exposed that expands their their opportunities that expands um the things that they think they can achieve. Um it also is important just as important to deselect for our students
031to have that exposure and and have the opportunity to say hey this is something I really actually do want to do or or never want to do again. Um and and it saves lots of time, lots of financial contributions for school. It saves it's just and it allows our students to dial into to what they want to do, what they love. Um and the visits to UAA, I I would agree with Dr. Bryant that although UAA is I mean walking distance from some of our schools, a lot of our students have never had the opportunity to go there for any reason. And so um and we UA's been such an amazing partner to ASD. So I really really appreciate that exposure um and those opportunities for our students as well as the career expo. We've
032had so many uh businesses, community organizations that have participated in that career expo that prior to that had not really interacted with ASD on a um on a level of visiting with kids and understanding how they can partner with our schools. And so for that to continue would be amazing. We've we've had so many partners that have stepped up and done um so much work with with our students and just the connections to try to keep our students connected to our community and their opportunities here is it's just it's huge. Um and then of course I'll give a shout out to King because I I'm a huge fan of King and the work they do. I've had many many students go through King. I've I've had King Tech put students in my home as a
033foster parent, so I I know how well they know their kids. Um, and how how just personal they take the the success of their students. So, um, just want to continue advocating for for that great work as well. So, thank you again for for that presentation. and I look forward to continued partnerships with our community um businesses, our community organizations, and and hope to um continue to support their efforts as well as as well as they support ours. Is there any other questions or comments in the room or online? >> We member member Wilson, we do have an entire presentation. Oh, awesome. I will stop so you can start. >> All right. Um, we're just trying to make sure because we have a video that we really want to show. So, we want to make
034sure the audio at the at the end of the presentation works. So, appreciate your patience. Um again when we think about all the things that we've worked over the last five years to kind of create that portrait of a graduate is really the portrait of a graduate equals that college career life readiness where we have students that have all the durable skills that we want out of our graduates. We have communication skills. We have fully engaged learners. We have career and life skills. And then we also have a positive sense of self and purpose and what we have seen over the last few years especially when we started this work withmies is how that starts to show up. So as we go through the next few slides I want you to always keep in mind
035that this end state the portrait of a graduate really is what we're going for and that we face financial constraints that member lessons and Dr. Bryant talked about just now we're all know well aware of but the end state is still the same. We still want to have graduates that can communicate well, that lean in and are really engaged learners. They have skills that are going to transfer for when they go to college or and then when they get a career, and that they have a positive sense of self and purpose so that that drives their education while they're with us and then into the future. So right here we have our health academy students participating in the HOSA state conference. So any school that has students that are taking medical academy or health classes
036can compete if they're a member of the HOSA and they meet up with other students from around the state and they compete in this annual competition and it is awesome. Um when we when we think about how we're going to be able to uh have a culminating event, we have a lot of students that are learning these medical pathways. they're taking classes and these host of competitions where they actually engage in uh practical application of all of those skills and it really drives them forward so that they can say like I had a conversation with a science teacher the other day and they said we do science and then we learn about it. And what what I really find powerful about that statement is when we look at a HOSA state competition, we have students
037that have been doing health occupational work and now they get to show what they learned through that state competition. >> I think what it t 360 students this year participating ASD students at at HOSO, >> right? So that >> from five five different comprehensive high schools. Yeah, that frame to the left is capturing as many as we had all dressed up and nice for that competition. Then we have all of our medal recip not all of them but some of our medal recipients there showcased and we usually do really well. >> The other thing that's a component of career and technical student organizations is the leadership. So many of these students get elected by their peers to be officers and they have a whole you know professional development leadership really leadership development um aspect to
038it and so they represent their their chapters and they form policy and debate and those kinds of things. It's it's it's pretty amazing. >> Yeah, it's it takes them places. So I can speak personally about this because one of those leadership roles was the president of the state HOSA organization was one of my uh former students who was our valadictorian and she is just entering I think her last year at Dartmouth Medical School where she's going to be a cardiovascular surgeon. Uh the next thing we have is our Air National Guard externship. And again what I what I want to highlight when we go through this thinking again the portrait of graduate these are things that happen in our schools and in our community in partnership with industry and employers around the state. So this
039is teachers, coaches, and principles visiting Jbear and seeing all the different careers that are offered in our uh partnership with the Air National Guard. Then we have a construction career day. All right, Devin, you want to talk a little bit about this one? >> Sure. Yeah, this event is uh been going on for a few years. It's an annual event. Uh it's put on by the Alaska Department of Transportation and it bring together partners that we work really closely with as well as others around the state that we don't get some exposure to and uh every comprehensive high school and and other some of the other programs, alternative programs, you know, hitched on and sends students um uh to the to the construction day. It's an amazing day of of hands-on. It's it's held out
040at the um fairgrounds in Palmer. So, we we get our students out there. Um, and uh it's it's, you know, it's just it's it's hands-on from when they get off the bus until when they get back on the bus. The uh the students have a phenomenal time. They learn a lot about um various careers and uh while while they're there and within the construction, you know, within the construction field, obviously, but it's been a great event and uh um we hope to be able to continue to getting getting students there. The next one is again we're going to revisit some of the work that we have with our biomed programs. If you just take a moment and look at the slide here, you can see some different things that students were able to do. Uh,
041I think one of the most impressive situations that we have is that we had students that were actually involved in the gross anatomy lab where they were actually able to hold human hearts. Wow. Human brains, lungs, and spinal cords as kind of a like you're going to be a doctor someday. this is what it's going to feel like to have someone's literal heart in your hand and feel that responsibility kind of wash over you and know like this is when I have to start taking school really seriously because this is the physical representation of something that you may have to care for in the very near future. We have some success that South wanted to share with us. They have their uh ACE club and renewable energy show showcasing some of their work there. Also,
042they have approximately 400 visitors in an eighth grade preview day, right? So, [clears throat] that's just kind of like their main place in in their school with students and parents coming through to kind of preview what it's like to be a South Wolverine. They also wanted to highlight they had 97 students that were recognized having no tardies, which is pretty dig if you think about all the little nuances of having a lot of different classes throughout an entire year and you didn't have one party. Here's another slide showing how we're kind of bridging the gap with real world learning with Diamond High School. They've got a bunch of different events that they're showcasing here. So, just take a second to look at those. Can >> I highlight one thing, Sean? >> Absolutely. >> So, one
043of the things that we've been able to do this year is we've really we've been really working hard on increasing our our participation and our our variety in our career and student technical organizations, which are co-curricular organizations. Think like cross between a sport and a club and there's some curriculum that also happens in the class. the competition um Sean spoke about earlier, the host is just one of those. One of the things that's been exciting is over the last few years uh we've been able to um um charter at four schools FFA, which we've we it's been years since we've had an FFA um career and technical student organization. And so we've got currently four up and running. I think Diamond, uh Bartlett, uh Eagle River, and uh East, thank you. I knew I was
044missing one. So four four schools. Um and in addition to that, we've been able to increase our CTSO presence in u we have a new BPA chapter, Business Professionals of America, uh at East that's just sort of percolating and germinating right now. Um and uh we've seen um a lot of growth in our Skills USA and some of our other CTSOs. So um so some of that gets highlighted in some of these these slides. Here's some work at Bartlett where they're talking about the tsunami bowl sewer competition. Again, this is like a science class that travels to a state competition where they talk about all things kind of uh marine biology based. Uh juniors and seniors attending the King hiring event. Um, if you look down, they had a visit to Avtec and tours in
045Seward, Alaska studies, trips to the Anchorage Museum, work-based learning activities that were done at Eagle River. All right. You see some Eagle River students participating in a mock surgery lab at the US UAA college health um college which is again hands-on learning for careers that are set to be in high demand in the future. Service High School highlighting a lot of their their different biomedical classes and activities. Their host Jbear hospitals. So this is again connecting to our Jbear uh joint Elmondorf base Richardson right um all that we have to offer there this is a really nice partnership and being able to look at a at a base hospital knowing that that happens is actually one of our four hospitals here in Anchorage which is pretty impressive >> and the you want to go back
046real quick that girls in gear is a grant um we got a state grant for girls in gear which is a program to help students students um help girls and nontraditional occupations get some exposure to transportation, construction, and STEM. And so, as part of that work, you see part of it here at service, but it's happened at um uh four or five of our our comprehensive schools and kind of going back to middle school. We we had uh some service students come down or in the construction program and talk to students during lunch and we fed them and they and they did some hands-on stuff with some students at Hansu. So, we're making those connections between middle school and high school. But it's been a u we've had a couple of workshops um that have
047been hosted by one of our partners works partnership that have been fantastic. >> This is to highlight what's going on at Chooak. We have spirit of tomorrow student government working with the Chooak Life Skills Program. Uh really tying the whole school together and making sure we have access uh for all of our students working in some of these career technical education pathways. the Alaska Construction Career Day. We've talked about this um I think a couple times now, but again, this is a participating group from Cheyak West Eagles. This is some um things that they've been doing. We have again the career uh the King Tech hiring event which drew a lot of students from across the district to kind of look at those hiring opportunities for our our young students and then talking about their
048US District Courthouse field trip that they have coming up and then the Alaska Airlines aviation day. This is that large group of the FFA state conference we were talking about. >> Yeah. >> Figured you'd be excited about that. >> Yeah. one of them girls that got are going to be the leaders. She's from East >> and I know a lot of people in FA. I'm sticker belt. >> We got you guys. [clears throat] >> We didn't even fire it up right there. >> Um and so when we thought about all those things and we we saw the different ways that we talked about the portrait of the graduate, what I want to show is this full circle video that came back to us. from one of our community partners because it's very inspirational and this
049is exactly where we see in-class work meeting with our community in a in a super exciting way. So, hope this all works because it's a great video. >> Yes. >> Oh, jinx. >> Yeah. [music] >> Geometry pulls the soul toward truth. Play-Doh. Strong words, but in the [music] sheet metal trade, they show up every day. That's why we were excited [music] to welcome a geometry class from Diamond High School into the AMMA training facility. After a short [music] presentation on how math comes to life in our trade, students stepped into the shop to build a twisted fitting. The patterns [music] were ready, but the craftsmanship was all theirs. They bent the metal, shaped each piece, and used a [music] spot welder to bring it all together. And when they left, they didn't just walk away
050with a project. They left with a new perspective. Because here's the truth. In 15 years of teaching sheet metal, I've heard it over and over. I wish [music] I had paid more attention in math class. If you're someone who likes to build, create, and work with your hands. Math matters. [music] And when you understand it, you can build just about anything. Do you want to talk a little bit about this video? >> Right. Um, so this is a a relationship that has been um building over the last couple years. Uh, Bruce is um a member of the trades union and he has been at every career expo. You'll see him there. um he has reached out and made connections between Diamond as well as another high school who was also connected to Alaska Works Partnership
051and together conversation started to brew and this is what developed in the end is this great opportunity for some of our geometry students at uh Diamond High School to go to the Trey Center and actually um participate in this event. um pretty telling that it had a significant impact on students and um this video was not made by ASD. This is a video that was made by Bruce and his team um and knowing the importance of math. So, it's just such a great connection of what they're doing in high school and how that matters in their future. So, thanks to Bruce. >> It was really nice to see that bounce back to us. And then the the last thing we wanted to talk about is again like Dr. Brian had mentioned we had some pretty
052robust conversation with our uh AOA steering committee and they they wanted some questions to be answered. number one like what the board is committed in regard to themies of Anchorage model being all the situations we know. How can we make holding our progress important and then perhaps more importantly when we think about the portrait of a graduate they want to know from them and these are not questions to be answered now or today but in the near future when we have our our board set up what does success look like when you think of community investment in themy's model. So they want to hear from the board what your opinion of success and how they can contribute to this academyy's model because we just showed a whole bunch of slides of how they've been involved
053right now and we want to make sure that we're in alignment with what you think success looks like. So we just kind of want to finish there uh pretty strong. Really appreciate your time and attention and open the floor for some of those questions. I'd like to say something about Habitat Habitat Humanity. When I did Habitat Humanity and I volunteered to help with it and I've been I've been in construction, I've been I've helped build and uh I've been in construction where you use nail guns. You got all these things. But in Habitat and Humanity, you use the old stuff, the hammer, the old things. You use you go back. It's fine. All right. >> Thank you. Does anyone else have any comments, questions in the room or online? As always, that was an amazing
054presentation and I love to see all of the great hands-on work that our students are doing and our community partners are helping with. So, that was very cool. Thank you. >> Thank you, Meos. >> I think we are at the end of our agenda. Unless anyone has anything they need to add, any comments, questions, then I say we adjourn. Thank you so