001Good afternoon. We'll call the 4 pm work session of the ASD school board to order. It is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026. Present in the boardroom are members Jacobs, Bellamy, Donley, Hollowman, Lessons. Um, member Wilson won't be joining us today and member Higgins just walked in as well. We've called ourselves to order, conducted our roll call. We'll move on to item B1 for discussion. CCL pathway concentrators grade 12. Uh for board members, we're moving these items um goal monitoring to a work session in an effort to catch up. You'll may you may remember that we've uh tabled goal monitoring during our uh challenging budget and bond conversations as well as school consolidation. So, we're attempting to catch up during work sessions at this point uh when we have less business items to contend with. Uh Dr.
002Brian, any opening remarks on our first discussion item? >> Thank you for that context, Mr. President. So, um, we're happy to begin this conversation on our goal monitoring. So, this conversation is specifically on the, um, CTE concentrator status, um, which is part of the board goal to increase graduation rates to 90% in June 2028. So during our technical report that happened quite a whiles ago, um we walked the board through some slides that you've likely reviewed recently that walk through what exactly is a CT concentrator. And the bottom line is that the reason why we're tracking this is because what we see is that students that successfully complete those concentrators have a higher rate of graduation. So it's directly linked to our broader goal of increasing graduation rates. And of course, this is just one
003of several ways that we can monitor goal implementation, but I'm joined by our team of content experts and leaders on this work. So, I'm happy to, um, begin Q&A. >> Perfect. We'll start with questions from the board, member lessons. >> Um, thank you, uh, President Jacobs. Good afternoon. I guess I was hoping hoping that um you could just begin by talking about the eligible pool of 12th graders who could become CTE concentrators. We have 12th graders in charter schools. We have 12th graders in home schools. We have 12th graders at King Tech and brick and mortar and AMCS. So, can you just tell us who the pool of students tell us about the pool of students that we're talking about who are eligible to become a concentrator? >> Sure. Uh Devon Roberts, director of CTE.
004Um happy to to give that a go as far as answering your question. So in the report that you received the for the reporting purposes the in um represents students enrolled at the eight comprehensive high schools in King High School and that's as captured in the fall oasis and reflected in our data dashboard. Um students enrolled in other settings are not included in the denominator because they do not have direct access to the comprehensive CT pathway uh structure that's used to define concentrator status. Um the dashboard reflects each student's primary school of enrollment, ensuring greater consistency and clarity in how the eligible population is defined across reporting years. Um however um nearly 74% of students who reach concentrator status attend one of the comprehensive high schools. Um most students at King Tech Alaska Middle College
005uh save and Benny Benson are often able to participate in CTE programs um prior to um headed into those programs at one of the big eight um schools. So, additionally, we are making some inroads in terms of CT program at Stellar and Polaris. There are a couple pathways that have been started at both of those schools. >> I have a follow-up member lessons. >> Yes, please. Thank you for for that. Um, I think a follow-up question would be um with that sort of thinking about the 74% of the students are at the big eight. I guess that would mean about 26% are at King Tech, if I'm reducing that correctly. >> Uh, no, there there's about 2% of our our 12th grade concentrators uh at King Tech. Um, so there would be 72% but well,
006it depends on which day data you're looking at in terms of what year, but um but our our concentrators are 12th grade concentrators are are all over the district. >> Okay. I guess I'm trying to understand um where where are they concentrated? Um are they at We have students who are enrolled at KTE full-time. There were like 67 graduates last year. I assume that all 67 of them were >> 66 of 67 is is reached concentrator status. Um, so it's possible that a student who went to King full-time wasn't there for all four years, or perhaps they engaged in a CT program of study, like taking um, culinary arts one semester and automotive another semester, and you do need a total of two credits in the same career cluster to reach concentrator status. >> I
007think so. The gist of my question is, and I I phrased these a couple of months ago, and I was looking at them again today, so now I'm rehashing them. Um, I guess could you help me understand King? You can enroll full-time or you can go to King Tech for like the third session or you can be a part-time student at King Tech. And if you're a part-time student for two semesters or more, I you can earn one and a half credits for one King Tech class per semester. So, I'm I'm trying to understand how students become concentrators. I get that you can become a concentrator at your home school. It also seems like you can become a concentrator by choosing to take classes at King. And I'm just I'm trying to understand where the
008bulk of that concentrator work is being done. >> The bulk is done at the eight comprehensive high schools. We have about 400 students total at King Tech. Um and some of those do not necessarily take two full semesters with same within the same career cluster. And then we have a small we have about 100 to 120 students. I'd have to go look to see what the numbers are as far as full-time King Tech students. Um, the part-time students are juniors and seniors, and many of those that do reach concentrator status have taken the ACT concentrator course at their home school prior to enrolling in King that junior and senior year. And because of the ecosystem, if they took pro, you know, project lead the way principles of biomedical science at their home school and then
009took their EMT or ET course at King, that would then get them to to 2.5 credits of CTE, which is.5 more than necessary to reach concentrator status. Is that helpful? >> It's helpful. It feels like a lot of spaghetti just thrown at me, but that's okay. I threw a lot of spaghetti out, too. We we do have and we're prepared I think to share in board docs for you a document that shows all programs concentrators in 23 24 25. >> Great. >> You could reference that. >> Yeah, just it's helpful to understand the lay of the land um where we're at and essentially the trajectory that it intended. I think broadly speaking to be as succinct as I can, it's really the ecosystem of the CT program at the comprehensive high schools with King that
010create the vast majority of our concentrators. But if you if you took King out of the equation, we would still have quite a number of probably more concentrators than we do that are specifically located at King if that's helpful. So the bulk getting back to your your statement just to sharing sharing back what I feel like I've heard the bulk of our students who become concentrators do so by maintaining full-time enrollment at their high school not by part-time enrollment at King or full-time enrollment at King Tech. >> Yes, there is quite a healthy number that do you know engage in both their comprehensive high school and at King. But if you were to look at it, we have more students across our eight comprehensive high schools that are CT concentrators by attending program there. >>
011Okay. Thank you, >> member Bellamy. >> Thank you. So I I think I sent questions in. I found some. So if I if I if I don't phrase them correctly or if I didn't get them give them to you, I'm sorry. Uh so I just want to talk about um a little bit about the uh uh the groups that are not are we leaving any groups behind um like our special ed kids? I mean do they have the same what are we doing to make sure that they are um uh achieving the concentrator status. I think all of our students have access Yes, because we do have CT program at the eight comprehensive high schools as well as King Techch and a couple of our alternative programs. They do have access um and uh the
012and we can certainly furnish you with data that shows how each of the subgroups are doing in terms of attaining concentrators data specifically and some of that is in the report I believe but um most of [clears throat] our introductory CT courses do not have any prerequisites required. Uh the vast majority of them are very hands-on. they uh they incorporate modeling, they incorporate visuals. So they um we largely feel like they're very accessible um um especially at that introductory level if and if they're interested in it, they they they of course can move move on, which is the goal as they're exploring a career. Um we we do see increases in our uh participation in both um our sped population and our ELLL population in particular. Um we definitely have work to do. Um we
013know that um there is less program at some of our title one schools um and that our concentrator numbers are lower at uh in fact the three schools um east, Bartlett and West I think right now and in the report that we shared with you but have um you know 10 to 15% concentrators whereas some of the other schools um that are comprehensive high schools are closer to 20 or 30%. >> Have we identified what those barriers are? Some of the barriers um for students if they are in a credit recovery mode they may have to take academ meet their academic requirements uh if they require a support course a sped uh support course or an ELLL support course for instance um that creates a a structural barrier for them to access CTE because they
014are you know they want to they want to meet their graduation requirements and um and those those kinds of situations um or those supports um diminish the number of electives that they can explore. Okay, >> I'm going to jump in and um ask a question. Um >> we we've discussed barriers and I'm anticipating that our FY27 adopted budget is going to present additional barriers. Um could you talk about the changes we're looking to make headed into next academic year and how that might impact this goal? Yeah. So um so the with the with the budget and the reduction the increase in PTR which results in a you know smaller amounts of FTE we are anticipating that um it is going to be difficult to provide the same um opportunities and access to CTE programs across
015the system. Um are you are you is part of your question what what are we going to try to do to remove barriers? I I don't I I wonder if we're going to be able to remove any barriers given the realities of our budget, but if if there are things we plan on doing that would be helpful. I I think I'm also asking what new barriers do we think um our adopted budget is going to present for us accomplishing this goal. >> Yeah, I would definitely say that the the the decrease in FTE is going to inevitably um have a negative impact on what is available. Um there are we're working with site administrators and leaders in the district in order to preserve and protect as many CT programs as we can. Um we just
016shared a tool with um leadership uh that show specific vertical alignments. In other words, if at a middle school you can take medical detectives and then you're going on to a high school that offers health science uh CTE program, we want to make sure that we can protect as many of those in particular as possible um due to the nature of that vertical alignment. Um but largely the um the increase in the number of students in sections, the decrease in the number of sections is is likely going to to result in us having less uh program. Um there are some things that we're attempting to to do to expand access and awareness. There are other barriers. Um for instance, our students are currently engaged at the nth grade level with the college career exploration with
017personal finance class, which um um is going to help combat that awareness barrier. they're going to have a much deeper understanding of what programs are available both at King Tech as well as at their comprehensive high school that they can engage with. Um, and we're working with um, you know, counselors and administrators in order to make sure that uh, that that we're working on on getting that awareness piece out. Um, there's definitely going to be some um, situations in which scheduling is going to be difficult. If you have fewer sections, it's it's oftenimes more difficult for a student to work that into their into their schedule. >> And just to supplement what Mr. Robert shared. So, in addition to the PTR, really limiting our ability to offer as many courses as we'd like, even beyond
018CTE, any non-core electives could potentially be affected by the PTR. Um, we also had to make a number of difficult decisions during the budget process. So, there were support roles, for example, at high schools that will no longer be at those schools. So, one of them would be academy coaches um who are really phenomenal former educators that were in the high schools every day supporting students navigating potential coursework. Um and then of course we have very limited resources for the guaranteed experiences. And as someone um personally who taught in nth grade and has spent a lot of time in this work, I would say that that is a key lever to increasing access is to make sure we have things like guaranteed experiences as many um pathways as we can as we can reasonably offer
019to give students a pathway that fulfills their post-secary ambitions. Um but with that said, even though we did have to make some difficult um adjustments and reductions with this budget, uh I agree with Mr. Roberts that we need to look into our 9th grade college career exploration course with personal finance. That's one practical way that we can reach every student to make them informed about the opportunities that they can use to inform their courses. Um but looking ahead, um I just want to make sure that we can prioritize as many resources as possible to really protect the integrity of the course offerings that we have in our high schools to ensure that we can protect um support roles such as our counselors and figure out ways that we can provide that extra layer of support.
020Um something that I'm well aware of as a former college counselor is that the national counseling uh admin association rather um they recommend a ratio of 250 students to one counselor and high schools across the nation including ASD have ratios that are much higher and um as we can imagine at this DAS a num a huge reason is because of limited resources. So protecting those opportunities for students to get support and guidance is going to be a key priority to affect as many students as possible. And that goes even beyond the CTE. That's ensuring access to AP courses that might be in those high schools as well as other electives and even sports that could change their trajectory in a positive way. >> Thank you. Uh member lessons. >> Um thanks. One of my questions
021and I'll just maybe jump to it since we were talking about FY27. Um if you look at oops that slide with the chart the slide yep that one uh the target for next year the adjusted target is that 68% of students will uh achieve concentrator status and what I'm wondering is do do we actually have a calculation of you know if we know the the class size of a CTE class which I assume is smaller than what you could put in a PE classroom or what you could put in an orchestra or band, right? So, you have a small class size. You want to reach 68%. You want 68 student percent of the students to attain concentrator status. How many CTE courses would ASD need to have next year essentially to be able to be
022on track, right, to serve the percent of students that is your target. I guess I'm assuming like two steps down the road, there's a cost, right? We know that Senate Bill 113 uh failed to be overridden. That was like going to direct additional money to CTE. I'm just I'm trying to identify the delta between ASD's aspirations and our fiscal reality. So, how many classes do we need? >> So, yeah, I I um that makes sense. So, it's difficult to calculate that. We have class sizes that range in CT from 15 to well over 30. It really varies depending on what the program is and and um enrollment building master schedules and those sorts of things. Um so um so it's very difficult even if we were to estimate a set size um one of the
023things uh that would like you you might expect that if we have a 24.14% concentrator rate if we doubled our courses we would be able to reach 48. But actually it doesn't exactly work like that because of the schedule efficiencies projected PTR like there might be more students per class. But even if you set it at a certain level, um concentrators because they require two credits of technical CT coursework within the same path. Um for instance, you could have students we have an opt-in program. So you opt in like if you want to check out culinary and explore that or then maybe the following year engineering you you could you could speculate on how many classes you would need to offer to try and reach a percentage but because students are opting in um or
024because of schedule restrictions or things along those lines. It would be very difficult to try and calculate what the necessary amount of courses would be in order to produce a certain amount of concentrators. Not seeing a followup. I had a one in the same vein which is um regarding the e the adjusted goal which um would nearly require that we double um our current level of of concentrator um students who have reached concentrator status. when we began um our goal monitoring process through the council of great city schools, we were encouraged to discuss smart goals [snorts] and one of the one of the the items in in smart is achievable. I'm wondering if given our current status as well as our FY27 reality, has administration asked the question whether our current goal for next year
025is a smart goal? I think that's a great question, President Jacobs, and it's one of those chicken and the egg situations where I wouldn't want to undermine the board's ambitious goal to achieve a 90% graduation rate by too preemptively adjusting the interim metric because what we've seen in the ASD data is for those that do complete a concentrator, they're much more likely to graduate. So right now our graduation rates for four years about at 81%, we're aspiring for 90. So when we know that these types of courses can result in graduation rates over 94%, I think that there's a huge incentive for us to consider ways to increase access to these types of courses. So of course um it would be within our our purview to lower that bar for the percent of CT concentrators,
026but it almost evokes this larger philosophical conversation for all of our goals and interim goals. So I didn't want to preempt that before any future conversations on making adjustments to our goal or our board goals and guard rails that typically happen at least every couple years. I was pausing for that. >> Okay. I'm just yeah flagging that I'm interested in having maybe a broader conversation maybe at a retreat or another opportunity where we can discuss um if our goals have are potentially beyond ambitious. Um, I appreciate ambitious goals and I think we should have them. Um, yeah, I did. We'll we'll see, I guess, what that conversation looks like when the time comes after as to if they're actually smart goals. U member Bellamy, >> I just kind of want to go back, thank you,
027back to what the superintendent was just talking about. So, I mean, I get we we look at our goals and guard rails every um every summer. We might not ch haven't changed them in a while. Do you anticipate or and I know I it might be a little too soon. Uh I'm just concern this is important work and I for one do not want to see it go away. I think it is an important measure. I think all of our students need to have access to it and I think um but I know we are in a situation where it is uh our resources are not what they need to be. So I I guess I just want to know from the team what what what do you see the future of CTE at least
028as concentrator status in our schools? I mean I think is it doable in in a declining uh resource environment? Um, member Bellamy, I definitely think it is doable. >> I think that we're facing all kinds of constraints, but we're not giving up on trying to teach math, >> right? >> We're not giving up on trying to teach social studies or science or English and that given the constraints, we're just going to try to continue to adapt. I mean, what I saw the board making very difficult decisions on how we have funding for this program or that program or what we're doing, I never heard a clear definitive, we're stopping this work. >> You know, we've deferred curriculum adoptions for years, but we never said, hey, we're just not teaching civics anymore. >> Um, so I
029I feel like CTE concentrators, to Dr. Bryant's point is a is a good strong indicator of graduation and and meeting the goal the mission statement of Anchorage School District, you know, in educating all students for success in life. And I and I don't think we're going to stray from that. I think we're just going to try to get more effective at using the resources we have. We've talked at length um with the board about how some classes can count for graduation requirements and a CTE concentrator. So I think that sometimes when you think about the chaos of what we're involved in right now, you also have to see that there's opportunity. >> Yeah, I appreciate that because that is very important to remember. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Member Hon, >> um I say I was
030fortunate enough to be a CTE teacher during the age of Carl Perkins and this really doesn't go to your presentation so much, but is there dedicated money like that coming from the federal government still that focuses on CTE that that enhances what we offer? We still have Carl Perkins money >> at the same rates historically. I I mean I know every teacher actually used to get an allocation for classroom supplies and >> so things but it seems like that's passed. >> Oh yeah that's gone. >> We well we we use a combination of general funds and Perkins fund to fund the CTE program. Um the Perkins fund is not designed in order to supply FTE. Um it's supply it's the Perkins specifically is uh designed in order to do what we can to increase access
031and make sure that the experiences you know are good and that all students are are able to access CTE but we use a combined um budget of both general funds and Perkins to support program. Um in terms of the supply budget specifically um we do still supply um because of the nature of CT courses they require they require supplies and we do have um we still we still have course specific supply budgets that that CTE programs utilize. >> If I can follow up, do we do we have statistics on what we've offered in the past in terms of the number of CTE sections at our comprehensive schools and at King compared to currently? if if it's I mean I know from the 1990s to the 2000s it went up pretty dramatically and I'm wondering if
032we've maintained or if that's dropped off you know we I mean we've cut staff I feel like it kind of has to have dropped >> um it will likely drop next year but no we've actually withmies of anchorage work we've increased the number of students and CT programs um in the district CT programs also span I know it's outside of the concentrator specific it's not directly related to it, but we actually support CT program at the 10 middle schools as well as the the high schools. I know you know that Ember Hollowment. Um but um so so and there are some schools where efficiencies and master schedule we might actually see a site or two that might manage to actually increase their CTE offerings. But just this last year for instance, we um rolled out
033a a new education course, a new health science course, a new construction course, and um forgetting something, digital art and design. I might be missing some others, but um so certainly within the last few years that we've been doing this work, we have expanded the number of seats and the number of options for students across the district. >> Member Higgins. >> Yeah. 15 years ago, I remember when they passed a bond with career technology. One of the goals there was to be able to use that additional expansion for the benefits of the uni for the community and have engagements there with working with the state and others for um uh helping out recent graduates for one, but but others as well. uh and and there was some financial benefits, but there was a lot of
034benefits to the community as a whole that could be used as a training session for other people because we like West High School that knew that area that they did was good for the slope and and a lot of other areas. Has anything at all like that been looked at or considered the financial benefits of it or the benefits to the community? I mean, the superintendent has talked about right sizing and I agree with that concept. We haven't done anything with daycare yet, but that was out there. This one hits to me as in the same category that we can actually somehow impact the cost or do some other things and expansion and working within the community rather than as a solo separate entity. Has anything like that been discussed or not? I didn't want
035to give you an easy question. I just want to let you know that >> in terms of in terms of funding, we're definitely exploring options. uh we definitely are looking at uh grant funding and other things to continue to support and expand um opportunities for for students. Um so that's happening. There are some conversations I think that are going on about potentially um restating CTE block grants at the state level. Um, I know that the district uh development and grants department has recently um put together a variety of different things into the what's called CDS, a congressionally directed spending. That that's not going to happen for a while if it does happen. Those don't always get funded, but um but we're definitely exploring those kinds of things. And then in addition, we're we're doing some
036things um in terms of working with our partners. We have a huge amount of support that we've built over the last few years in the community. Uh for instance, one of our experiences is to provide the opportunity for a good number of our students across the district that are high school to go to aviation day and that's entirely sponsored by one of our partners, Alaska Airlines, and they pay for both the transportation as well as they put on the event. Um and so we we have those kinds of things. Just recently um we were approached by one of our partners uh HAP which is Holland America Princess the company that that owns those with a potential offer of transportation to and from the career expo. However, we we might have to engage in a process
037of auditing their entire system to allow them to transport students. And so we're hashing through that right now to see if there's um you know if there's a potential for us to be able to leverage that and use that support. We might have to I to speak frankly we might have to kind of get out of our own way in order to be able to allow that to happen. So are those the kinds of things member Higgins that you're >> Yeah. Well beyond that there we had employers out there. Of course we're doing good with the apprenticeship program. I'm real proud with that. We're not but there's resources there that might be beneficial for both parties. everybody involved with it to to do things like that. And so I was looking at it. They were
038looking at, like I said, a variety of businesses that needed to be able to provide some type of training opportunities that would be supportive. We had that information coming from the state of the of the need that we are so short of so many skills service positions that if there were employers out there that would benefit from this, the community benefits, the former students benefit. uh not all of them were former students, but let's just say there a lot of them more uh without that and that's what we were looking at then recognizing that we had we were adding career technology that didn't exist before when we added it. So I'm just like I said it's just an opportunity that benefits the community and could benefit us if it was exploited. That's what I was
039looking at. I I would I would say we have numerous um partners that are working with us that are expanding work-based learning opportunities for students like Alaska Resource Education has eight of our students currently engaged in externships. Uh we partner with the National Security Agency and and we have students um that are linguists and signal analysts that go and work there for part of the day and receive part of their education. Um we've recently developed a number of partnerships with um construction firms. We've had AGC as a partner for a long time and uh the Alaska Homebuilders Association who are taking on internships. Um so we're able to expand some of those opportunities, but it is we only have so many coordinators who support those positions, the gifted mentorship and the CT internship program. Um
040and in order to expand those, we unfortunately we're we're kind of we're limited in terms of our resources, but um but we will continue working with partners on workforce development for sure. >> Thank you, Member Higgins. I'll jump in with a question and we'll go to member lessons. Um, do we track how many students are halfway to concentrator status and would it be useful to compare that data year-over-year for the next fiscal year if we're going to be potentially reducing the number of options for students? Um, and I'm channeling member Wilson who isn't here with us today who often talks about deselection with career pathways. Would it be helpful for us to also start monitoring the number of students that have completed one course within two different pathways, especially if we're eliminating pathways at campuses
041due to PTR increases? >> Um well, we I I'm not sure about tracking students that have dipped into multiple career um clusters. um they're the the data and the research we have shows that it's the concentrator status in CTE that that leads to the 94 to 98% graduation rate for our last few years, last three years in the ASD. Um but we do have um a dashboard, an internal dashboard that does track um concentrator status um 9 through 12. And it it it it also allows us to see um some of the questions that we were sent involve like, well, what are the most, you know, what are students mostly participating in? What are the top five career cluster program CT programs that fall within career clusters? Um so we do have some of that
042data and we had planned on sharing that with you through schoolboard docs. so that you could take a look at it. But um we we can look we can't always we would do it would take a lot of resources in order to do a deep dive into looking at well just how where are they getting concentrator status but overall tracking 9 through 12 concentrator status we are we are currently doing that. >> Um I think I'm I think I'm tracking your response. I um are you so it's the administration's position. It sounds like the data indicates that a student who takes one course related to two clusters or two different trades or two different industries doesn't see the same academic benefits from a student who takes two courses in one cluster. Is there any benefit?
043Does the data show that there's any benefit? >> I I have not accessed or read any data that's that that lines up one way or the other. I mean as I am biased as the director of CTE so I feel like our programs are amazing and that students will benefit from them but I don't have that data. The data that we that we have is typically on concentrators and that by definition they have to attain two credits within the same um career um cluster. Um so it would be you know two credits in in engineering or two credits in advanced manufacturing or so forth. >> Sure. I'm just wondering what that might look like in a if one of the big eight high schools has to reduce a section of some u a cluster that
044no longer exists potentially. So, >> and going back to an earlier point because I think this might address uh your your question more directly is that that vertical alignment piece the our our site administers and our administrators and senior leadership are tracking on which programs articulate from middle school to high school and which ones are more students are taking. and we're definitely going to do all we can in order to protect that progress and like I said there may be a few edge cases where we actually see some some growth. >> Thank you. Member lessons. >> Um thanks. I think I think it's number one it's really commendable that students who are achieving concentrator status are graduating as at at such a high rate right that's wonderful. Um I guess what I what I I
045guess what I'm seeing or maybe I'm hypothesizing is a couple of things. Number one, they're really engaged, right? They care about the subject. They're attending. They are they're they're all in, right? And they're going to do what needs to be done to get across that graduation finish line. But I guess I'm also wondering um you know, earlier Dr. Bryant mentioned that one of the barriers to concentrator status is, you know, if you're a student in a credit recovery mode, right? I'm I'm paraphrasing a little bit here. So students who are in credit recovery mode are not going to have the space in their schedule perhaps to dig into the concentrator status. So I guess what I'm thinking and I I I spent some time on the King Tech website which is one group of those
046concentrators but not all of them. Um you have to have uh a C average as a junior I think at King to come back as a 12th grader. Is that correct? I think there are exceptions to that, but in general they want to make sure that students are in good standing as juniors before they come back as a as a for that second semester as a senior. >> So if we I mean I guess my point is that if we know students who are in credit recovery mode are less likely to be eligible to become a concentrator. And if we know there are perhaps GPA barriers to enrolling in King, um, you know, if you don't have a C average or better, it seems like we're measuring, we're focused on concentrators who are already demonstrating
047mastery of proficiency in the core courses that are enable, you know, they don't need to repeat classes. They're maintaining the GPA that they need. Therefore, they are a pool of students that are maybe more um they're not fully representative of the district as a whole. I'm trying to um I'm trying to understand I I guess >> I think I see where you're going. 66 of our 570 concentrators uh were King students full full-time. Our other students may have dipped in or out of King. It's difficult for us. the vast majority of our our concentrators. I won't say the vast majority, but the healthy majority of our our concentrators are attending their the comprehensive high schools and they there are not prerequisites or grade requirements for them to progress from principles of biomedical science to human
048body systems or to go from, you know, 3D animation and modeling to game design. Um there there there are not those. Um so um I'm not sure certainly if King has those requirements for those specific students who are able to get there for two or more semesters and take program you know in the same uh career cluster in terms of alignment um because of that minimum that might skew the I can see how that might skew it a little bit. >> Yeah. I mean I think I still I haven't you know I've thought about this for a couple months and I haven't figured out exactly how to phrase this. So here I am thinking about how to phrase it on the fly. But um I mean if you were to look at students who have
049a C average in the Anchorage School District, like I imagine they have a higher graduation rate than the district does as a whole, right? Like there's like a there's some kind of a bar there. If you maintain a certain GPA, you're maybe more likely to graduate. And uh >> I'm not trying to pull anything away from CTE concentrator status as being important, but I'm trying it strikes me that if you um take two or more classes in, you know, if you choose to use electives in in math, or if you choose to take two or more classes in f, you know, one in fine arts, I want to do photography one, I want to do photography two, I want to do band, beginning band, and I want to do advanced band. Or if I want
050to do, you know, if you're a student who who takes multiple courses of their own valition in a foreign language, like are we seeing similar high rates of graduation or is this truly something different and special about CTE concentrators graduation rate >> member lessons? If I may, I think that's a very apt observation. I appreciate trying to discern the correlation from the causation. And certainly CT concentrators is one that's highly correlated to graduation. But I'd like to zoom out a minute and I think uh Mr. Gustoson also has a point to make too. If we can go to the second to last slide, I think that's a great transition to the more macro view of what we're doing as a team. Um the next slide please. The priority action steps I think are important for
051the the board to review for a moment because CT concentrators is one piece of a broader picture of a plan for how to improve success for graduation rates. So to your point, member lessons, I agree that we need to really look at our students who are in credit recovery mode or need extra support and that's one of the reasons why we're implementing a GPA dashboard where we're monitoring to make sure that we work with our school teams to give the students the support that they need. Uh I will remind the board that's one of the reasons why I was advocating for consideration of a schedule change because I also know that our students have very limited time in their schedule and by adding that extra flexibility our students could have had an opportunity to again
052take a course in uh credit recovery mode but then also engage in electives that could include CTE. So I know our resources are very limited. At the time, the ask for that initiative was around 40 teachers, but it's something to put in her back pocket as a concrete way that's not attached to CTE, but could make a huge impact on graduation rates. You'll see that the second priority action step is on an early warning system. Again, to your point, that we recognize that students exist on an academic spectrum. And then for students that need support, we monitor that because in addition to the CT concentrators, we need to make sure we have strong systems in place to support students to be successful in their GPA in reading, math or core in addition to the CTE.
053So all of these things work in tandem to help us achieve the broader goal of increasing graduation rates. So I just wanted to remind us that um our work is so much bigger than the academyy's program or framework or CTE. It really is comprehensive and I applaud the team for putting together that set of priority action steps that I think speak to some of member lessons observations. Mr. Gustoson, >> I was just going to say that part of the things when that we're doing in the ontrack status work is really looking at those freshmen and putting a lot of resources, a lot of time looking at freshman, making sure they are still on track so that when they get into those upper grades, they don't have to be in credit recovery. And that's part of
054like having the freshman day and having them go and look at explorations and doing those things with freshmen and looking at and making sure our freshmen are on track. Many of our high schools have changed up how they do these at the end of the semester to extended school years and then also our high school um summer school options is a completely different model now and highly successful last year. So l literally, you know, when we're looking at those students that are in credit recovery, we're trying to build so that we don't have as many kids in credit recovery. And I think that we're really starting to see some of that. And that's just I just want to remind we have not only the concentrator status, but we have the ontrack status that we talk
055about, too. So it's kind of both, not either or. Member Bellamy, >> are we going to try to do the other one today or because I could send my I can just send the question in later if you want to >> Once we're done with plan to transition to the guard. >> So So real quick, what what are we doing to let families know um about the concentrator piece and how to understand it and how it benefits their their kids and how they can participate. Well, in terms of program and what program is available, I think that college and career exploration course that we talked about is going to be very helpful for them. Um, and that we can make that a component as well. Um, in terms of we're monitoring changes and we'll we
056know staffing is through April and we'll probably have a better sense of what programs are on the other side. We'll definitely be working to keep everything updated in terms of the um CTE web page, of Anchorage, the various web pages on the Anchorage School District. Um and then um we know that there are site administrators that open up that they do open house and as part of that open house at those schools and they do a great job of of promoting those those um programs for them. But I believe we probably could do more in explaining what a concentrator is or what the benefit is and we do have some messaging about it. It is um very much about preparing them for whatever comes next career or college. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you Mr.
057Chair. member lessons. >> Uh, this may be an unanswerable question right now, but since we were talking briefly about the CCPF course, college and career exploration and personal finance course, um, I know that it was reconfigured this year to be a so to be aligned with social studies standards. What does that mean for students who failed the class this year? There's like a little over 12% when I peaked at it a while ago. like will they need to repeat that class to earn their requisite social studies credit? Will they pivot to another social studies credit recovery opportunity? I mean, do you get a doover with this class in any way? >> Member lessons, it's a social studies elective credit. So, they'll just have to take another social studies elective credit to get their graduation. And
058the the fail when we did I believe you had a question for us a long time ago. We looked at the failure rates for the CCE with personal finance class and then we compared it to other classes like algebra 1 and other core classes. It's still below those averages of failure rate but you know definitely within tolerance of like let's try it again. >> I guess the point but thank you. The question was yeah just narrowly focused to what do we do for the kids who didn't pass the class this fall and they will just take another social studies elective at some point. Correct. >> In credit recovery mode to Okay. >> Yep. >> Don't see any other board questions. Given the amount of time we have left in our work session, um I'm going
059to um utilize member Bellamy's thoughtful idea that um board members can uh review the guardrail report and then um send those questions in and if we can address those later, we certainly will. Um otherwise, we'll um consider the guardrail reported. With that said, is there a motion to adjourn to executive session? This specific motion would be for the purpose of student hearings, legal updates, negotiations, and contracts. >> Mr. Chair, I'd move that we move into executive session for the purpose of discussing uh let's see, we have a student hearing and we have personel >> legal updates, negotiations, and contracts. >> Legal negotiations and contracts. Thank you. Second >> made by Bellamy, second by Hollowman. Seeing no objection, we are adjourned to executive session at 4:48