001on the middle school seven period schedule because the board has a high impact opportunity to slow down what will be a major system change, which would be to transition to a six period day. And if we move down this path that we'll talk about later in this presentation, it's going to ensure that we have a stronger implementation in the long run, and we'd have more time to get better inputs from the community, from students, and from families. So again, so this isn't misconstrued, this would only be possible with one-time funding that we would reinvest or repurpose for this cause because it would impact thousands of students positively. So in closing, this is a difficult moment for ASD. There are many changes happening at once, and what I've heard from families as I've gone out to
002the community is that it's just hard to take it all in. So this is just one step forward in being as proactive and clear in our communications as possible so that we can work with our families to make do with what we have to deliver a good education for our students. So what that means is that while we can't control the amount of revenue that's coming into the district, here's what we can do. We can control how we respond. And my commitment as the leader is to respond with transparency, minimizing surprises to the community, prioritizing what matters most for students, and for making discipline system level decisions. That is the work in front of us. So thank you in advance for listening to quite a bit of information. I'm going to hand it off to
003our team and then we'll have a in-depth discussion with the full board after they're complete. Thank you. All right, good afternoon. So, as we go looking at the fiscal year 27 budget, um we wanted to kind of start us off by looking at where we're at because there is a lot to 90 million dollars that we have as budget cuts. And we wanted to kind of we're going to end up setting us up where where we started from this year and then where we're going and what we have on the budget cuts that have already been approved. Um just looking at this particular slide, looking at reductions and impact, uh that's kind of going to be the theme for all of us. We're going to go through all of our different departments, divisions, and kind
004of show you the different budget impacts. You're not going to get a big budget slideshow from OMB this time. This is going to be about what are we doing to take that budget and turn it into reality, um in in in the schools. Um looking at this particular slide, um what we're looking at is we have cut a lot of stuff both in schools and in the support mechanisms for these schools. And as we make the building say the building over here smaller and smaller, which we've done, we've cut a lot of resources out of this building that in this next this budget, as we make that these areas smaller, there's still requirements, there's still regulations, there's still board policy that we need to um focus on and that's just that work gets put down
005into school supports and then our building principals and teachers who are already stressed. So, we're just kind of explaining as we take away things from over here, there's going to be different stuff even in the schools. And we've taken a lot of stuff at schools as well. So, the stress level, the and you as you see the bottom um rectangles, they kind of have some cracks there and we're we're we're in the business of trying to figure out how to solve those cracks. And um working with our staffs at our schools, here in the district office until we can get those cracks um minimized. So, to start us off, Kristen's going to kind of set a tone for where we were before we did this 90 million dollar cut. All right, thank you, Sven. Um
006so, just to set the stage a little further and put a finer point on it, um before we even began the budget uh the budget situation and planning um this year, there had been a significant amount of cuts um in previous years. And so, just to set the stage, um in the previous years we've already cut um a number of assistant principals, we've increased PTR, we've consolidated some other programs, we've eliminated a number of um positions across technology, human resource, finance, maintenance. We've delayed curriculum adoptions. Um we have foreclosed five schools now. We've cut all of our travel and food budgets, um and supply budgets have been reduced significantly. And and so, we were already starting from that base before we even went into a 90 million dollar budget uh shortfall this year. Um and
007then when you look more specifically at our PTR increases, um we wanted to just give a picture of what the last 10 years have have looked like with our PTR and um relatively flat funding across that that same decade. And so, when you look just at the first line with kindergarten, um you see that PTR at just kindergarten level has gone up seven students um per teacher. So, we in 2015-16, we had an average of 20 students per kindergarten classroom. And looking into next year, we're looking at 27 kindergarteners um entering into a kindergarten classroom. And that's a significant increase in a short amount of time. And particularly with our younger grades, um they they have a lot of needs when they come into school often because some of them have never been in a
008school setting. So, that's just one um area that has really um created that stress at the school level, um particularly with our teachers. I think we hear that from our teachers regularly. Um and it it also adds on to that compression of the system that that's been um referenced in the first slide that um we had we have a stressed system and now we're entering into another phase of of a stressed system. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Marty to talk to us more specifically about his department. All right. Uh thank you, Kristen. Good afternoon, board members. Um so, I'm the first of multiple different departments that are going to come up here and present. And I think the format is we'll just go through and remind board members what the budget reductions
009were in this area and then kind of what highlight what some of the impacts are that we anticipate for next year. So, in terms of the human resources uh divi- division that I manage, um we eliminated three FTE um in the division for next year. Uh an administrative assistant position in talent management and two benefits generalists out of the benefits department. Um while three FTE may not seem like a large number compared to some of the other presentations you're going to hear tonight, that does represent about 10% of the footprint, the staffing footprint for the HR division. And as Kristen mentioned on a previous slide, um it follows a year where we already eliminated three other positions. So, we've reduced the size of the human resource department division by about 20% over the last two
010budget cycles. Um we've also, in order to not cut further into the folks that we need to to do the work of the HR division, um we eliminated in for FY27 the HR advertising budget. And then we pretty significantly reduced the amount of dollars that we were holding for uh recruitment retention efforts and for two other projects that we've been involved with, the teacher apprenticeship program launch and the accelerator project. And so, when I talk about the impact of those cuts for next year, um the position that we cut in talent management, that assistant uh administrative assistant, was really the last dedicated person for what historically we've referred to as the sub dispatch team. Um her job was to uh screen applications that were coming in for folks who want to substitute, to process those
011quickly so we could get folks um supporting our school buildings and then being that available um single point of contact for schools as issues came up with subs throughout the day. Um that work will now uh obviously not go away, but it'll be dispersed amongst the the regional teams in HR and have to unfortunately compete with other um daily work that they do on a regular basis. Um the benefits department um has lost three folks um over two years. That's about 40% of that department. Um so, one of the things that they're having to do to protect their work and to make sure that they can be responsive is they're moving away from a walk-in um service to a by appointment only service for folks. They'll still do in-person appointments, uh but the bulk of
012what they manage in terms of communication comes in by phone and by email. And so, they wanted to make sure they were prioritizing um folks dedicated to where the greatest volume was. Um when we talked about eliminating the advertising budget, that really is um the money that we use for um advertising buys. So, every fall we do some media um buys here locally uh to recruit for our hourly positions, our paraprofessionals, our student nutrition folks, bus drivers, whatnot. And then we also do some targeted advertising out of state in communities that have characteristics similar to Anchorage, that have direct or near direct flights on Alaska Airlines because those have historically proven um some of the best recruiting grounds for certificated folks, teachers particularly. Um in terms of the retention task force, the teacher apprenticeship program,
013and our accelerator program schools, um we've really moved away from supporting those projects with general funds for next year and are actively looking for other funding streams, um mostly through grants to try to support that work going forward cuz we do believe it continues to be important. So, that's just highlights for HR. I'll hand it over to Jim now to talk about maintenance and operations. Okay. Good afternoon. [clears throat] Um not all of these will have a negative impact on us and I'll just cover um one of them specifically that that uh will probably make us more efficient. And that was converting the 20 full-time sub custodians to temps um instead of full-time because we we really struggled with ever having more than 10 of those 20 positions. But with a slightly higher salary, we're
014actually going to have a little bit more flexibility if we can fill up to 20 plus part-time custodial. Um really the big impacts on custodial maintenance, you know, if you go with the middle school custodians through the maintenance, it's just our ability to respond quickly to things like vandalism where things get painted um all over the all over our buildings and playgrounds. Or we were down to one refrigeration mechanic. Um and and uh that will shift over to contract. The the biggest on this page uh really for me was the two warehouse drivers because that's 20% of all our drivers. And we're about to have the busiest summer we've had in as long as anyone can remember in moving um five full schools and a awful lot of programs. Um However, uh you know, of
015everything on this list, I would not expect to ever go back to Dr. Bryant if one-time funding were to be available and say that these were the priorities um because he's made it very clear where his priorities are. And and I think the board um is comfortable with that. So, if you go to the next page, I'm sorry, on the first page that was $1.8 million in reductions, everything on that page. So, it was a a decent chunk out of out of the 90 just for custodial maintenance. And on the next slide for transportation and community rentals, everything here reflects $3.5 million in reductions. So, the biggest changes for a student, which is the most important, is access to King Tech's third session. We currently had buses we have for quite a while since Castle
016Rock Academy stood up. We've had buses from all comprehensive schools, high schools going to King Tech, reducing that to to no support for third session did save us over 1 and 1/2 million dollars. But there we typically have about 50 total students who have relied on those buses this school year all eight routes combined. The second one would be impact to students and families would be the three highly gifted buses that support Rogers Park. Those were reduced as well in order to get a total reduction of 10 bus routes. There will be an auditorium event reduction just cutting the the overtime, but we'll work with the schools, we'll work with the communities, and we'll work this out. We also did increase the amount we charge for non-ASD rentals, and that'll help offset that slightly as
017well. And I will be followed by Sven. Or Mike. Or Mike. Or Mike. Hi, good evening. My name is Mike Leckenstein, I'm the district chief information officer, and I've got about three slides to go through. The first one is really all people. And so, in this budget, we reduced about 21 FTE, and then of that 21, we converted four positions into different positions so that we could use them differently. So, overall that that impact is 17 instead of 21. I'm not going to go through every position in here and tell you exactly what they do, but just kind of talk about what the impacts would look like. And so, there are several of these like the administrative assistant, operations manager, those folks that do back-end IT work. And so, how that will change service to
018our customers will be really in speed more than it will be in anything else. So, things will take a little bit longer to get get done. The structure of schools for technology has always been sort of at the high school level where we have big schools, we've had a full-time tech that was stationed at those schools. At middle schools, we have typically had a half-time tech at those schools, and then at the time the tech is not there, they put in a ticket and somebody does that work remotely most of the time. And then at elementary school, there has been an addenda for teachers where we do some training at the beginning of the year, we kind of level set what the five biggest problems are with technology, give them the information about how to
019solve those five biggest problems that we see. So, that if there's a teacher at the school that is having an issue, and it's going to take us a little longer to get to it because it's not high on the priority from an urgency standpoint in our queue, then that teacher can assist them with that. In this budget, we're changing the way that we do that work. So, there'll no longer be techs stationed at schools. There will be pool a pool of techs that service all schools. And the tools that we have available to us today to do remote troubleshooting and fixing of machines are so much better than 10 or 12 years ago that we can accomplish about 95% of our work remotely. And so, not having the person stationed at the school actually allows
020us to get a little bit more efficient because they can continue to work tickets in priority order instead of just what that particular school needs at that time until the school is out of tickets that might even be lower priority tickets because they're there. They can service the the the greater good this way. So, you'll see that change and schools will feel that change because you know, when you have a person stationed at the school, they become a part of the school culture and they do more than just what their role is. And so, when you remove them from the school, then there are other things that that principals have those folks do beyond technology because there's a person in the school. So, that will be felt. And then we are also removing all of
021that addenda from this budget. And so, the folks that used to do some of that frontline troubleshooting will just move into the queue for us to do that work as opposed to paying that out. There's you'll see in here we cut one innovations teacher. This is one I want to talk about just a little bit. Over time, what an innovations person does is they look at the new technology that we're bringing in, and they help integrate that into the classroom. So, how do you use this technology specifically to with your curriculum, with your lesson plans to get the most out of that. Over time, at one point we had a whole department called EdTech that had 16 people in it, and that was their job. And then we combined that group with IT many years
022ago, really when I took over this role was about that same time. And then since then we're down to where we have one person left that that does that. And so, that's that is also kind of a significant loss I think for for schools on that front. We have augmented that in ways with online trainings, with courses that we create and provide to teachers specifically. We work with teachers directly as well as T&L staff to come up with modules for folks to be able to get to train, to provide guidance, those sorts of things. And so, that's kind of become a joint function with instruction and the technical folks to make that happen now. And we can go to the next slide. Sorry. The next slide, this is really kind of stuff if you'll think
023about it in in the budget. This is a hardware for the most part. Over time, hardware has a lifespan. Most of the time, the thing that limits how long we can keep hardware is how long the company will provide updates for it. And so, the second that a device can no longer get updates, then it becomes a risk to our environment because then any security exploits that start to exist, those pile up, and eventually somebody gets in the network and causes a breach, which is highly expensive and disruptive for our entire organization. And so, we try to we create schedules of all of the hardware that is in the district, what the lifespan is. The manufacturers publish when they go end of life on all of those. Some of them will allow you to do
024extended support if you pay for it. So, we have all of that categorized, and then we start doing replacements over time. Much of this equipment we can take advantage of federal dollars as well. So, for instance, the E-rate program that that most people are familiar with, we get a discount when we buy some of this stuff as long as we follow the federal procurement rules. And so, that just takes longer. So, we make sure that we have these things out years so we understand when we're supposed to replace things so that we can get in that federal cycle to get those dollars. So, when we kick the can on our end our portion of those dollars, that compresses that timeline some and makes it harder for us to take advantage of those extra dollars that
025might come from the feds as opposed to our dollars over time. So, in this in this budget, we reduced a bunch of network equipment. That's So, every year we're doing a percentage of our network equipment that's that's going end of life, we're replacing those. We never are in a part point where we leave equipment that's unsafe in schools. And so, when we make these reductions, we just know we need to compress that timeline. It kind of creates a bubble in that cycle where we're going to need more money later to be able to solve the problem. Same with student Chromebooks, we have kicked that can for the past couple of years. And so, we're not replacing Chromebooks. What we have been able to do over time is I've been able to renegotiate some of our
026contracts and get better favorable rates, which provided some money for us to then we come back to the board and done some one-time funds to help shore up some of the some of the buy that we need for student Chromebooks. And so, we're we're still getting by on that front. And then we're stepping down from one-to-one in middle school, which will reduce the amount of Chromebooks that we need to buy. But in full transparency, we have about 24,000 Chromebooks that in two years all hit the end of life at the same time. Those are all the COVID Chromebooks. So, when we had that big buy that we had to do immediately to be able to allow kids to work to to learn from home, that's that 24,000 bubble. And so, they're coming to end of
027life soon, and we haven't made really any progress on those yet. The rest of this stuff is just pieces and parts, and we'll be able to survive by cannibalizing other old machines for the most part to to keep that stuff running. Next slide. Um this is the last slide and uh this is uh software licensing and um technical training. So, there's about 143k in software licensing. Most of this is stuff that we've found a free alternative to be able to implement. The last year we actually cut a lot more software from a curricular standpoint. This year um not as much. We're kind of down to what the core uh of the software people are using on that front. Um and so these represent things where we were able to find a free version that works
028just as well for us and we we were able to reduce that. And then of course training um and really the only risk there to staff is that they're not staying as current. A lot of this is available online and free and so we'll point people to that instead of um formal training. And that's what I have. Thank you. All right. Uh for the business management side of it, the only person position we reduced this year was a grants and development specialist. Um this is going to shift work on to mainly our accounting department at this point because someone's got to pick that up. It's going to be the you know, some of the clerical work but then the ability to research and look for grants that we all know are probably going to be
029more important as uh money just dries up in the state and local governments and potentially depending on the federal landscape, some of these grants are going to get quite a bit more competitive depending on what's put out there. Um over time with the grants and development, we've cut about six we've cut 67% of that department. Uh we've cut 33% of our management and budget department, 31% of our accountants or accounting department and about 40% of our purchasing department in addition to 50% of the staff like those directly under the CFO. Um so as we've increased our requirements for state reporting and increased complexity on our auditing standards, it's getting really difficult to make it work with more than, you know, four people in some of these departments. It's just the workload is just not there
030to make continued reductions as we have over the past 15 years so. Um that's really all I have for the business management side of it. So then when we we're looking at administrative positions in the district, um talked about a a couple of them in this in the but the other guys have done so far. The development and grants specialist, we're we're losing an executive assistant in communications, Medicaid technician, three senior director positions, five curriculum coordinators, nine assistant principals, four head principals, security positions around the district, um some a lot of clerical support at the high school levels. And then as I talked about during the budget, we have actually moved a lot of staff members from the district office into schools as well. Um some of the impacts around this uh administrative moves, uh
031it did decrease the support. Decreases support for schools and departments. Um many especially around the grants but in the schools themselves, the customer service um may get well, will um go down some just because of the lack of people in those schools as well as some of the safety and security concerns with uh eliminating assistant principals and um uh security positions. So now we're going to start talking about more of the academic side, the academic uh division and we'll start off with Shawn with teaching and learning. Good afternoon, board members, Dr. Brian. Uh I just wanted to say initially, you know, we've got five slides for teaching and learning. There is a lot of reductions. We have reduced about 30% of our operating budget, uh close to seven or eight million dollars. We've cut 50%
032of our staff and at first glance, that could seem like it might suggest some kind of excess. But the reality is quite different. Many of those uh positions, like Mr. Gustafson said, were directly tied to supporting schools. And in moments like this, it's important to be clear that we're navigating this 90 million dollar deficit and that teaching and learning is just a part of a larger system responding to this reality. That we will uh go through these slides and I just want to keep us framed to know that we will recruit and reorganize and preor reprioritize and preserve as much of our instructional leadership as possible. It's just going to look different and that the operational reality that's coming in the the next academic year is going to feel very different. So to be clear,
033I'm not asking for anything to change. Not asking you to negotiate with conditions that we can't undo. Teaching and learning is not seeking to be held held harmless. It's just it's going to look like a lot with five slides with a lot of impact. I can summarize quickly that support in the arts will look different including the reductions and loss of an assistant director overseeing art. Coaching and instructional supports previously provided by PLTEs will no longer be available. Programs such as ignite and our gifted identification processes will operate in a different way than they have in the past. Curriculum support and alignment is going to shift to a more distributed uh distributive model across all of our schools. Our innovative team um that Mr. Fleckenstein referred to is going to be lost. So as we
034look at adopting things for AI and other technical supports, we're going to lose half of that team. Our ability to provide consistent system-wide professional development is also going to be limited. With cuts to curriculum licenses, we'll need to really examine all of the effective curriculum that rely on these supports to make sure that we manage any gaps that might be revealed. Overall curriculum support will take a different shape relying heavily on this new distributed model. And most of the progress that we've made with the Academies of Anchorage, we will continue to try to shape and evolve that so that we can preserve the key student experiences such as career expo and university visits, but the structure around them are going to change. So as we look at this first slide, you can see curriculum materials
035clerk, 10 reading interventionists. You can see the i-Ready Leadership Academy that supported the middle school uh push for a understanding of mathematics at a systems level. We have the loss of the AOA uh United Way Convening Liaison. We Okay. Um we have our we have our freshman guaranteed experiences, the transportation for that is going to have to be found somewhere else. We lost the ability to have advanced placement professional development where we're bringing college board representatives up to increase testing scores for our advanced and gifted classes. Okay. We already have lost our 17 ignite uh educators, two of the gifted team, a behavior strategist, 14 PLTEs, an elementary lead teaching expert, five curriculum coordinators, a world language teacher, professional teacher expert, and the administrative uh innovations teacher expert. That's a lot. And it's just as
036this pressure comes down as the slides have indicated, it's going to put a different look on the entire system. And we all just need to remember that we're going to navigate this together and we're going to succeed together, but we need to hold it together. All right. Okay. Good afternoon. Um I'm going to talk a little bit about elementary education. And so on my slide, I the largest impacts um that I think we're going to see at the elementary level is just the plus four PTR. And so um you can see there the numbers, but kindergarten 27, first grade 28, second grade 30, third 31, fourth 32, fifth grade 32, and then sixth through eighth 34. And I mentioned sixth through eighth cuz we do have um Girdwood and Northern Lights ABC that are in
037in elementary schools. And then we do have Denali and Chugach that still have a sixth grade. Um we have 142 fewer teachers. So that is why the class sizes have gone up. I just want to talk a little bit about the Alaska Reads Act. And so for kindergarten through third grade, we know that smaller class sizes are best for early childhood. Um but we also know that the teachers have an increase of responsibility with the Alaska Reads Act. And so um I've heard you guys talk about how lower class sizes in those grade levels are important and I know it's nobody's fault here, but we just want to highlight that at those specific grades um just with students learning how to be in school, across the district, we've seen an increase of kindergartners who need
038support with things like potty training. And so just that number of children in a class that's overwhelm it can be overwhelming. Um and um I also just want to point out the specialist model program changes. Um when we talk about efficiencies, um this might not be, you know, all negative with the the new model um and the efficiencies in the district um that potentially could be happening with this model. But we want to highlight there'll be no health teacher in schools. Um and so that model has shifted. Um, summer school is another piece that has changed. K through two students, um, will not have the support who are far below. And, uh, in the past we've had robust summer school programs to help with, um, catching them up and have targeted intervention. We still will
039have third grade supports, um, but that's virtual and that's a requirement of the Alaska Reads Act. On the next slide, um, I just want to talk a little bit about addendas have changed. And I know on spreadsheets you might not know exactly what type of addendas, so I'm just going to paint the picture for you. So, Battle of the Books addenda, um, is decreasing in all the schools. Um, activity funds, elementary ed was really proud to offer things like taking the students to the UAA, uh, experience, uh, fifth grade experience. All of those types of activities won't won't be able to happen, unfortunately. And then when we talk about school supply funds, um, that's kind of gone down over time. We're going to have another 5% uh, decrease. And so that's things like ordering paper
040and, um, which was already really tight for at elementary school. And so that's gone down more. Um, we also have a loss of a senior director. So, that just looks like, um, less time for senior directors to be coaching principals specifically at sites and response time potentially, um, to the public. So, I just want to highlight that those are some of the big impacts. The elementary education when when I was creating this slide and our when our team was a lot of the work like Shawn's department. I didn't mention PLTE because that was something specifically to his, uh, teaching and learning, but it does impact the elementary, the school level. Uh, so a lot of these slides, while it might not be listed on the on the elementary slide, the impact is, um, it really
041hits the school. And so I just want to share that. And thank you for your time. Thanks, Claire. Uh, good afternoon, everyone. Appreciate this opportunity to talk a bit about high school education. We have just, uh, two slides here. Um, and I would just begin by saying, you know, I'm here representing, certainly, the big eight. We're also supporting SAVE and Benny Benson, the other alternative sites, along with King Tech, um, schools that support about 12,000 students every day. A very big operation. Um, similar to what Claire had to say, you know, the the most significant budget reduction really, uh, has to do with PTR and adding, you know, plus four average to each class. In addition, we're losing four assistant principals, uh, five and a half counselors, our library assistants, five office administrators, security, um,
042as Mike Fleckenstein mentioned earlier, on-site IT personnel, PLC teacher leadership addenda, and then as we're all aware, um, reduced access to our elective programs, including arts and language. Uh, and for me to summarize the impact, I've I've created four bullet points and the first one really emphasizes the collective impact of those cuts to the classroom. Um, assistant principals, of course, are key to the daily operation of a building in terms of instructional leadership, in terms of support for student behavior and activities. And without them in some of our larger comprehensive schools, we really run the risk of, um, reduced support for classroom, um, classroom stability, if you will, and also student wellness. Um, everyone is, I think, aware of the importance of our school counselors, uh, and our office staff as well. So, when we
043talk about the classroom, it's really important to remember all of the professional educators who support teachers in the classroom to do their best work. Um, I've noted our board goals and our interim goals, which I think are central to the work. Um, over the last three years since adopting them, we have made progress with our graduation rate, supported by really significant progress in our on-track to graduation rate, really focusing on those freshman transition from eighth to ninth grade. Uh, we're focused on our CTE concentrators. We have a board report conversation coming up later tonight about our GPA metric. We've also expanded enrollment, uh, in advanced placement. And so we're going to have to adapt to make sure that we can maintain, um, our targeted focus on these really important goals that provide student opportunities when
044they graduate from high school. Uh, and we're committed to that work. I think it's really important to mention reduced access to the arts, um, and to music and to world language. For many of of our students, these are, um, subjects that have profound importance to them, uh, their identities as students. In many cases, these are anchor subjects that gets students to school and give them passion for learning. Um, that's important. And then the last, and Claire touched on it, but our our PLC teacher leadership addenda, which you may or may not be aware of, but at the high schools, you know, each high school has, say, six to 10 PLCs working every Monday morning. They're led by teacher leaders who are supported with addenda. Um, in our PLCs, as you're aware, um, teachers are focused
045on curriculum, learning new curriculum, scope and sequence. They're focused on best instructional practices and they're focused on timely student interventions. Um, and so there is some significant risk here to not, um, supporting our teacher leads who are taking on that really important work Monday mornings. And the next slide focuses on sports and activities, um, and as you may recall, a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, when we first started this conversation, we were looking at some very, very significant cuts across the board for activities. And just a shout-out to to all the assistant principals, to Holly Ambro and others who really took a hard look and found some creative solutions, uh, so that we could bring most of our sports and activities back. Unfortunately, we do have some significant reductions, but for the
046most part we've been able to restore sports and activities. So, I've led with some of the, uh, key eliminations, gymnastics, which we're working to outsource. Um, that agreement hasn't quite been finalized. We're working toward that end. Uh, e-sports and rifle team. Uh, the dome is out for next year. Um, we've eliminated, unfortunately, junior varsity hockey. And then a few of our C-level teams in flag football, uh, football, basketball, and volleyball. Um, some other adjustments which you may be aware of, we've increased student participation fees for athletics, for sports. We're going to have more limited transportation and travel. Uh, most specifically travel outside of Anchorage. And then we've had some practice time restrictions for swimming hockey. And, you know, the impact is just decreased participation of students, um, who want to participate. Um, it's important to
047mention JV and C-level elimination. You know, these are students who may not be our best athletes, but really, really thrive, um, and, um, have a sense of belonging and inclusion for their involvement in sports and activities. So, that's that's a loss for us. Um, sports get kids to school. Let's be honest about that. Um, reduced practice and training time, decreased opportunities to compete outside of Anchorage. For a lot of students, their first travel outside of the city is probably with high school sports. That's real as well. And then, um, unfortunately, we're going to see increased financial burden on our families who are paying larger fees to participate. Thank you. All right. Good evening. Jason Hlasny, I'm the director of special education instruction. So, we've, uh, we've have several reductions as well within our special ed
048department related services. Um, I've highlighted a few on the screen. For example, 10 FTE teachers in elementary, five in middle school, five in high school, three teachers from our Whaley separate day school program, two teachers from our adult community transitions program. That's 18 to 22-year-old students who access the community, uh, and have those work-based learning opportunities. Four teachers, uh, from our Alaska State School for the deaf and hard of hearing, hard of hearing program, and BVI, which is our blind visually impaired program. So, four teachers total. Two of our SBBS counselors who support elementary schools, as well as a principal in our special schools. So, this does, certainly, impact the quality of services and supports we can provide students with disabilities. It does expose us to some kind of, I I think, over time more
049more compliance, uh, issues as well. We've been focused for the last several years on giving students with disabilities more more access to high-quality core instruction through co-teaching and and other push-in supports. that's becoming incredibly more challenging to do that. For example, with the the reductions in elementary, five, I believe five elementary schools will go from two teachers to one special ed teacher. And that's a practical challenge. It's going to impact students, it's going to impact the teachers and the and the families around services, responsiveness, and support training, etc. Less supports for students with behavioral challenges. We're seeing more and more students who have complex, high intensive needs. We're seeing more and more of that, and we're correspondingly having fewer staff members. And we're seeing more of our staff being funded to our grant, which does
050have a limit as well, which it does does have a long-term impact. So, those are some of the immediate impacts on the quality and the types of services that we provide, but we will continue to do everything we can to support kids. And representing mental health and student support, I want to note the reductions in the counselors as well as the reductions noted on the slide, and the critical areas of impact that I would like to share the comprehensive supports that our nurses provide, our school psychs provide, and our um mental health um professionals provide, as well as the academic guidance from our counselors, the behavior coaching from our behavior technicians and and analysts, and uh the specialized student interventions that are provided as well as language support. Thank you. Thanks, Diana. Um Joe Zawadzki
051Middle School senior director, uh the [clears throat] next few slides that we have for you tonight really focus on um some of those constraints and challenges that um that we started to um identify as we were working through creating a six-period schedule for middle school based on the new budget. Um many of these we've we've discussed in previous meetings, um but we just wanted to highlight some of um first those high-level constraints, and then really dig in a little deeper on some of those. So, um based on some of the budget reductions um from the FY27 budget, an increase in in to 34 in the PTR, which which I know was um granted to us by the board um through a budget action, and we appreciate that. Um of course, having 34 students in a
052middle school classroom is a challenge, um but uh it it certainly was a benefit to us. Um really what we saw with the seven-period day um was that one one less class per day really inhibits a student's um ability to access some of those experiences um and programs that we want for our middle school students. Um you know, in a in a five-period um core program that we have in middle school, it really only provides one period of elective for students, and so we were challenged with um continuing some of those. Um we're seeing fewer curricular supports for our students in that decreased um academic offering, and so students with special education services and ELL supports, we're starting to see um conflicts between what they can um adequately access every day. Um we had to
053eliminate, like everyone else, electives and choice classes, and we have families having to prioritize between immersion, fine arts, and and and CTE during those 3 years of middle school. Um as was mentioned before, we've lost five assistant principals, which is um creating some gaps in safety and security that we're identifying. Um we're through the loss of collaboration time, and this was one of the initial constraints we knew about. It's just less time for teachers and staff to have eyes on kids and provide that um really in-depth mental health support for students um in a time when there's a lot of need. Um the last piece I would highlight is just and and Sean brought this up earlier, but the loss of the the loss of the iReady Principal Academy is inhibiting um to some degree
054our ability to support mathematics and make sure we're we're marching forward towards meeting board goals. Um So, on the next slide, really just wanted to highlight some of those constraints that came from um the budget restrictions previously highlighted. Um we're removing electives from all students, that's across the board, um and we know in some instances we can provide a little bit of zero-hour support, um and we can make some allowances from here to there, but um most of our students will not be able to access that that seventh period. Um we're reducing access to our programs and classes, as I mentioned, that choice between immersion and other programs is going to be something that as we move forward into a six-period day, we're going to um probably have more exposure to that and be able
055to better identify um what that challenge actually is for our our families. Um we're really not going to have access to fine arts for our sixth-grade students, just given um the five core classes and um some some state statutes around PE and health, and so we're kind of limiting what we had always been able to guarantee for these families, and um that's one of our concerns as well. Um and finally, just being able to do some cross-curricular collaboration between teachers, some of the hallmark um pieces that we have in middle schools is that collaboration between teachers, and so um those constraints have really um helped transition us to looking for more creative solutions to what we can offer students for next year. So, um kind of piggybacking onto what Joe just talked about, uh as
056we look at all of these structural changes that we've had to have that we've had to do because of the $90 million, it takes a lot of planning. It takes a lot of coordination, it takes a lot of really deep dive look at what are we offering and what can we offer. And as we do this, we start finding breaks in some of the decisions that we've made earlier into the the year when we're cutting budgets, and and one of the biggest areas, we we brought up some concerns about middle school earlier on, but as we've gone further and further in getting to look at a six-period day and the limits of that, um and the amount of time and the amount of work we need to do to actually um turn this into a
057a doable thing, um going to six periods, uh we started looking for creative ways in which we might be able to postpone this at least for 1 year, and we came up with a solution because our special education department is very concerned about the access for their kids to electives because many of them, a thousand students of the special education students, would not access an elective because of the six-period day and the needs that they have. Also, we have our ELL population who access classes outside of the um core classes to be able to work on their their language development. As you know, we got rid of the newcomers program a number of years ago, and that's gone into our schools. Well, those particular students in a six-period day don't have any electives as well.
058So, we have a proposal. Dr. Bryant kind of talked about a little bit ago, and I'm going to go into it a little further. Um we are proposing that we go and we continue with the five-to-seven period schedule for um next school year, a 1-year um change, retain the 34 pupil-to-teacher ratio, and we're approving where the purpose is is so that we can be able to take a year to look at all of the different things that we have to do at middle school if we're going to go to a six-period day. Um we need to improve systems to identify special education and ELL support supports at middle school. We need to start We need to be able to develop some curriculums and put them into the core curriculum at middle school to be able
059to help our special ed and ELL kids without pull-outs. We need time to work on looking at IEPs and being able to move the IEP minutes and hours to so that we can fit them within a shorter day or less periods in a day. Um we need to determine methods to provide access. That's a big thing is our equity to access for the electives right now. Just in a six-period day does not occur because of some of the varied dressings of our most needy students, the ones that benefit from PE and CTE courses and home ec and world languages and music courses and art courses. And we need to uh identify creative solutions for core academic needs. And then we want to gather stakeholder um information and feedback about the changes, and that's going to
060take some time. Mr. Goetzinger, I'm going to interrupt just briefly to note that um it's 4:57 p.m. I would propose uh to the board, we've got four slides left, that we extend uh into our executive session by 15 minutes. If there's no objection, that's what we'll do. Okay. All right. So, moving to the next slide, a 1-year schedule benefits also um it provides schools and departments time to identify the constraints of a six-period day, and then work on those constraints, impacts to the core classes, conflicts with special education and ELL needs, program and pathway eliminations, really dive into that. Um, it gives families advanced notice of lost electives and determine program prioritization, awareness for administration and school board about potential needed AR and policy revisions. We have two on the board on the memo or
061on the agenda for the main meeting tonight. I know that we're going to be talking about those at some point this evening. We have a So, we can get a clear understanding of how this sixth-period day would move into high school, what the kids would have being ready to move in, and then really developing, I talked about developing some of the stuff into the core academic areas, really determining if we can put some solutions into core academic core classes that can support the special education and ELL kiddos specifically. So, the funding mechanism, we don't have more money, we don't have new money. Um, what we're looking at is our special education department is so concerned that they went back and we looked at how can we utilize some of the special education funding to be
062able to support this move back to five to seven for one more year. And we were able to look at the Title 6B grant and be able to move 14 positions that are in our special education general funded positions into that grant. We have gotten we've really met with the right people, we've talked to the right people, we've had legal look over it, making sure we're not supplanting or or making sure we're supplementing and we all come down to maintenance of effort and we are very clean on this. And we have a plan for being able to monitor that throughout the whole school year. So, those 14 positions um, utilizing nine of the holdbacks that we still have in our holdback um, FTE and then repurposing the 3.6 FTE that you all had approved for
063zero hour um, PE courses and stuff at at the last time we did a board amendment. If we took all of those, we could offer a five of seven for one more year. So, we can get the work done that we need to get done to make sure we're providing what we need to provide for every single one of these kids. This is a we're talking about structural different changes. This This affects 7,500 students. Whereas we hear from individual smaller things, what we're looking at in the district at at as administration, what are those things that can really affect and really support and really move the needle for kids at a hot li- higher level. How many we can actually help. So, what would this return? This would return number of teachers. It It's 26.6
064FTE. And it would move it would take teachers off of the layoff list. It would take teachers off of the displaced list. Um, moving to next steps, what would this mean? We would bring a memo, which we have ready, um, to you for the May 5th, asking to have it on action so we can get moving on moving the um, the displaced and laid off teachers. We didn't have it ready early enough to be able to do that for this evening's vote. Um, our main staffing event is on May April 29th on May April 29th. So, this will be after that. So, we will have to go back and we'll have to work with HR and and AEA to determine the best possible way to um, get the teachers back into positions at the middle
065schools. And then our plan is over the course of the next few days, um, sending out some information to families to see what their um, so that they understand that we are recommending this to y'all. So, it it it's a big ask. Um, we think we have a uh, creative way to make this work. Um, some people have asked, "Well, what, you know, if you can find these 14 out of the grant?" What we have is um, in our Title 6B grant, we have rollover money. And that rollover money, we had quite a bit after the pandemic and it's just gone down over the years. We have enough for 1 year. So, this is really a 1-year option to be able to utilize these types of funds for that. Yes, it lowers the amount of
066um, FTE we have for holdbacks. Um, our thought is that we it's nine holdbacks. We probably would be looking at nine holdbacks for the middle school level if we didn't do this. Um, so we're looking at pretty much a out of the general funded it it really isn't a any difference other than moving the 3.6 um, FTE from zero hour, which we were having a hard time figuring out. We weren't having the big middle school teachers work so late as it is and having that at the beginning and having more students and stuff was just going to be a little too much, I think. So, those are those would be the next steps. And then just um, the last slide is really just the the first slide again. It's it's a lot. $90 million is
067a lot and it's putting a strain on our structures. We have to change our structures. We have to change how we do things. You know, there's we've changed the nursing model. We really didn't talk about that. We know that the nursing model can work. We've lowered we've reduced the number of specialists at elementary schools. We know the model that we're going to be using is sustainable. We have $40 million cut next year. So, we have developed a way to change these structures, but it takes time. And middle school is just another one of those examples. It takes time. We We need some We need to be able to look at this over a course of a year. So, that's all of the presentation we have. I know we you extended for a few minutes. I
068we'd be willing to take questions. Sure. And we've got about 10 minutes for questions um, from board members. Let's start with member lessons. Um, thank you. I wanted to say thank you sincerely for this comprehensive presentation. But the chance to talk about the impacts of the cuts, I think is incredibly relevant as we are just starting to hear from community members about programmatic cuts that are hitting families and students right now. Um, so this is deeply appreciated. Um, and and the last few slides are also deeply appreciated. I think that there were some heroics over the past few days and um, I really do look forward to the May 5th meeting for the opportunity to vote on that action memorandum. Um, so thank you. I did want to ask two quick questions. One, um, if
069the administration is able to speak to it was a reduction that has already happened that was not mentioned, but a lot of community members have talked about the education center lease. And it struck me that two to three years ago, uh, there was a successful lease renegotiation and I I was just hoping the administration could perhaps remind us of the cost savings. And if you don't have that handy right now, that's okay. Right. I can I can talk to that. When we redid the Ed Center lease, um, we saved several million dollars total and about 700,000 um, approximately per year. And I can pull that lease back up and put it in BoardConnect for the actual numbers. It was It was a significant savings. That's what I recall, but I didn't remember the the figures.
070But thank you for that reminder. The second question, um, struck me during the budget conversations in February when I was looking at the hundred or two thousand dollars that we have allocated to cover bad debt, right? Students' meals that um, exist that we are backfilling with general fund dollars. And it I was wondering then, but now in the wake of the levy failure, can ASD potentially create a GoFundMe, a DonorsChoose, pick pick click give, if if you will, um, to work towards PTR reduction for FY27. I don't know how that would work. But if you were a member of the community, if you're one of the 32,691 voters who voted in support of Prop 9 and you were willing to take $27.40 on every $100,000 of assessed property value, could people, you know, send a
071$100 check to ASD in some capacity? That might be a conversation for the future, but I would really love if that's possible to give people direction for how they could do that and maybe we can talk about what those dollars could be used for. Yeah, I don't think there's anything that would expressly prohibit that. Um, and we are working towards setting up um, a more robust kind of uh, portal where people can donate to the district for for various things, but you know, that work is going slow as we are going to be down to one person in our development grants office. So, that's just kind of one of the side effects of these ongoing budget reductions. We just don't have the capacity to work on a lot of these things that may have a
072lot of value. Jump in the queue quickly for a follow-up question um, regarding um, the funding proposal change to maintain the um, seven period uh, five of seven period option for middle school next year. Is this something that the board should allow to wait until May 5th? We We have the option to call a a meeting for one particular agenda item if it would be better to um, offer a better chance of filling those positions should it should the board approve the proposal? Are you asking if it'd be better to do this this evening instead of May 5th? >> I I don't think that we would be able to do it this evening, but I do think that we could have a special meeting to address this proposal before the hiring event on the 29th.
073It seems to me that if a decision was going to be made to support the proposal, it would be better to have that knowledge before the hiring event than after. >> That would be very much appreciated if it could happen. Um Okay. And member Higgins. Yeah, first of all, thank you. I know that I can't imagine the stresses at all levels at this particular point in time given where we are. And I have talked to half a dozen legislators during the last 5 days and got some view where we are financially and what they think will come to pass and it's kind of interesting. So, some might but it the issue is one time versus renewal is a big issue, but it's still money, okay? So, that's the issue. What is the money come from
074for the I'm big supporter of keeping the middle school, don't get me wrong. But given the budget with that and adding that back in, is that all contingent upon what more money from the state or we we you think you got it covered? None of that is None of this is contingent upon the state. This is utilizing the title 6B rollover, changing those sped positions so that special education kids can have access, using the 3.6 FTE that you all uh put in for zero out, trying to fix earlier on member lessons had knew this was going to be some kind of issue, I think, and really pushed for that and then utilizing some of the holdbacks that we already have in the budget. Okay. >> That would would fund the 507. Okay. I'm looking at
075variety of points of this. I look at like special ed. I'm think of compliance and safety when we cut back positions here. How do we even I mean, are we at risk of both of those? I mean, it's some of these kids are high risk. Some of these programs are demand the the IEPs and you're like, I'm just wondering how you can do it. >> So, we're not For this, we are not proposing any reduction in special ed. We're we're proposing moving the funding for these 14 positions into the title 6B grant rollover. So, there's We're still have the same teachers. Now, what Jason was talking about for the special education cuts, that's like that's like across a lot of different areas. That isn't a specific and many of those areas haven't had teachers in
076them. Some of the hard of hearing and and AKSD those and I and I believe he misspoke when he said those were all teachers. I believe that couple of them were aides also. >> What? But I don't know specifics right that I don't have the whole budget in front of me. But yeah, we aren't talking doing this and cutting any special ed positions. What this does is take and special ed is like helping us figure out how to get some access for these kids have electives and receive their support while we work to transition these into a program that could possibly be used on a sixth period day. We don't have the time right now. If we to go to do all that, it's called administrative convenience when we go to change IEPs and that's
077illegal. Let me ask about the elephant in the room. Is the funding the primary reason where Bowman we're getting a lot of feedback. Part of that is confusing saying, you know, the board needs to approve that you can have more than two middle kindergarten. I don't know why they said that and it doesn't matter. What's important is is this if we get additional funding from the state, is that going to impact the Bowman? We've kind of cut it short cuz we're going through the lottery system that makes it difficult. We got some parents concerned about their kids being able, you know, other kids, younger ones being in the program. Um what what is the what is the rationale why that was done? >> So, So, member Higgins, what I would what I would say is
078that we have any of the any of the schools that have special programs are pretty much in the same situation. Because we we have a system of how do we it's like a metric that Mr. Atleff uses to provide FTE to the different schools. And with Bowman's, they what they're what has happened the last couple years, um we were they were able to use their staffing and then I provided a holdback to be able to offer a little more to be able to grow the programs. Right now, we have we have very few holdbacks left after we do all this and we haven't even touched high school yet. We've done a lot at elementary. And so, if we got money back, I think that's going to be a conversation you all are going to have
079to have as to what we're going to do because we have we have so many schools with choice programs in their neighborhood. You're just hearing from this group because they've gotten organized. But we you're you're probably going to hear from immersion group during the meeting tonight. And we have other groups talking about German immersion. I mean, we have all sorts of needs and that's why one of the reasons why we're here tonight is to show you this is huge. It isn't one little thing here or the when I say little, it's a teacher, it's not that little, but it's important to these communities. But we just don't have the all of the stuff. I mean, we we would probably recommend, you know, we we haven't even looked at class sizes once we get back at
080plus four PTR. Well >> I mean, and so it is it more important to decrease a class size of say 42-43 in a in a survey of algebra class at high school or is it more important to increase and try to increase and build an optional program? That's going to be something we have to wrestle with if we get money back. Member Higgins, I'm going to ask that we have time for one last question with the time that we've got left and we have member Bellamy with her hand up. So, let's go to member Bellamy and then we can move to adjourn for executive session. Yeah, thank you. Uh you've already answered one of my questions about the middle school option and whether or not we can get to it earlier than May 5th. So,
081I'm So, I'm good with that. Um to clarify the King Tech will continue to have that third session, but there won't be bussing. Is that correct? That's correct. >> Okay, so we're not taking away that section. I mean, that um that session. >> There's a total of about 50 kids that have utilized that service over the It's an average of about 50 kids total. And that utilizes the transportation piece. Okay. And that is also the session the sex session that we share with we partner with um What is the school district? L Y L K Lower Yukon. Yes. >> Yeah, Lower Yukon. That is. They They do third session. All right. All right, that's it for me. I can wait on the others I can wait till finance committee meets later this week. Thank you.
082Or next week, whenever we meet. That brings us to the end of our extended time. We'd entertain a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of uncontested student hearing, legal updates, negotiations and contracts. I move to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of uncontested student hearings, legal update, negotiations and contracts. Second. Motion made by member Bellamy, seconded by member Holloman. Seeing no objection, our work session is adjourned and we enter into executive session at 5:15 p.m.