2/3/2026: School Board Meeting

001Good evening everyone. We'll call the January February February 3rd meeting of the ASD school board to order. Uh it is 6:01 here in the boardroom. Present are members Jacobs, Bellamy, Donley, Higgins, Hollowman, Lessons, and Wilson along with student representative Madison. We have engaged in our call to order and roll call. Uh Madison, would you please lead us in the flag salute followed by the land acknowledgement. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of the Denina people of the upper Cook Inlet. For thousands of years, the Denina people have been and continue to be the stewards of this land. ASD is

002committed to diversity and inclusion and it is with honor and respect that we recognize all indigenous people who live and learn in our community. Thank you, Madison. We want to welcome you to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the Anchorage School District and this board. The board thanks students, parents, teachers, staff, school business partners, and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time, your talent, and your tax dollars. We have a proposed agenda in front of us. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as drafted? >> I move to approve the agenda as presented. >> Second. Motion was made by member Bellamy, second by member Hollowman. Is there any discussion or amendments to the agenda? Members, >> Mr. President, I have two amendments. Please

003get >> the first amendment, please. >> Yes. The first amendment. I move to table all items under section C goals and guardrails monitoring CCL pathway concentrators grade 12 guardrail 2 culturally diverse workforce and math proficiency student achievement grades 3 through eight map growth assessment. >> Okay. I'll second that. >> Oh, perfect. Member Bellamy seconded. Um, is there discussion? Member lessons. >> Um, I think that the attention of the board and the community is very much focused on our budget. I think there's an anticipation that we will receive um significant testimony this evening and postponing excuse me tableabling these items until a future date will allow the board to pick them up when we have additional bandwidth and time to really focus on uh the question of our goals and guard rails um our student progress

004and our workforce. >> Thank you. Well said. Um, I support the amendment for that reason. Is there any opposition to amending the agenda by uh tableabling uh C1, 2, and three? Seeing no opposition, we will do so. And the member lesson, you have a second amendment. >> I do. I I move to postpone memo number to the next meeting. It is for reference currently in uh item F consent agenda. So your motion is to postpone um ASD memorandum number 116 to a time certain of our next meeting on February 17th. >> Yes sir. >> Point of order question. >> Member Donley order. >> The motion to postpone. Does that mean it would appear on our consent agenda at the next meeting? U >> that technically is my perview. My uh intention is to um have

005that be an action item just because it was postponed. Does that answer your point of point of order? It's probably more of a point of information. >> So, we postpone it. Well, that doesn't seem appropriate at all. If you postpone it, then it's not on the agenda and then if anybody wanted to bring it up, they couldn't. That that doesn't make sense to me. >> Member Donnie, the item would be postponed until our February 17th agenda. >> So, it would appear on our February 17th agenda. may be on the consent agenda or as an action item, but either way will be on the agenda. >> Okay, >> great. Uh, so that motion was made by member lesson, seconded by member Bellamy. Are there any other additional comments? Member Higgins? >> Just one. Does the administration

006have any concerns about delaying that? Is there any activity they need to have approval at this point in time? And if not, then I would support it. Not no problems. I no objection. Thank you. >> Okay. For the record, administration said they had no concerns. Um is there any opposition to adopting this amendment to postpone um ASD memorandum number 116 to a time certain of our February 17th meeting? Seeing no opposition, that amendment passes. Are there any other amendments to our agenda tonight? Seeing none, um we need a uh Okay. Uh because we've amended our agenda, I think it's best to hold a voice vote to approve that. Miss Sullivan, the voice vote, please. >> Student Representative Madison. >> Member Bellamy. >> Yes. >> Member Lessons. >> Yes. >> Member Wilson. >> Yes. >> Member

007Hollow. >> Yes. >> Member Higgins. >> Yes. >> Member Donley. >> Yes. President Jacobs. >> Yes. Our agenda has been approved by a vote of 7 to zero. We'll move on to reports of B1 as our student representative report. Madison, the floor is yours. >> All right. Good evening to all. So, my first thing I want to mention is that student advisory board will be meeting um our next date on February 10th. At this meeting, there will be something very important happening. we will be having another presidential election for the person who will be shadowing over my position until I am graduated and out of the position um in near um April and May. So, it's a very exciting thing. Hopefully, we will be able to meet this person sometime by the end of February

008or early March. They will come to these schoolboard meetings as well and shadow with me, sit next to me and be able to learn how the position works. Um, next over I do want to mention that um, regarding student advisory board, my committee, the education committee will be meeting tomorrow and hopefully we will be able to get out a resource called a testimony template out by the February 17th meeting. This will be accessible on student advisory board's website and it will allow for students to be able to use this template to write testimonies to use at the schoolboard meeting so they are not intimidated of testifying as a whole. Um, next over I do want to mention that I've seen a lot of more increased activity in student voice. There was recently a walk out

009at West Enbridge High School. And then I do want to mention that I recently met with the Osaw Alaska Associations of Student Governments at our Windor Business meeting and we are preparing for our spring conference in Juno which will be April 23rd through 25th. Great reminder for any student government adviserss or students who are interested. Uh next over I also want to highlight that especially at this next student advisory board meeting I will be presiding over there will be a more general theme of helping students learn about legislative advocacy. One of the things we prepared for this next upcoming meeting is introducing students how to track a bill, how to find the representatives and senators. And I know on my part, I've been encouraging a lot of different students across ASD that I know to

010be able to repost things on social media spread by word of mouth on learning how to advocate for yourself, but doing it with your legislators. Other than that, that closes up my report. Thank you. >> Thank you, Madison. Other questions for our student representative? Seeing none, thank you for your reports. Uh, under B2, we have board conference and committee reports. Is there a board committee chair who wishes to make a report? Member lessons. >> Thank you. I wanted to just uh note that the finance committee, actually, I don't think any committees met in January. Um, but as mentioned some time ago, we adjusted the date for our February finance committee meeting to be between our regularly scheduled meetings rather than at the end of the month. So, our next meeting will be Thursday, February 12th

011at 12:30 p.m. here at the Ed Center in the room next door. Uh, it is open to the public to attend. It's published on publicized online. Um, and I would ask board and committee members um to bring questions about the budget as well as potential amendments they may have to the finance committee meeting. Emailing them to Miss Sullivan ahead of time is always helpful and appreciated. And just so folks know, I'm specifically interested in uh at the very least having the finance committee approve and bring forward uh an amendment that would address uh how our board would like to direct the 11.8 million levy that the assembly has recently approved. So there have been questions about how uh it will be spent. And my vision for the finance committee for the February meeting is to

012at least craft um language clarifying that that we could bring to the full board uh when we vote on the budget. >> Thank you. Member Higgins. I'll just mention with the National School Board Association. I did have a opportunity to talk with the National School Board uh Association president who's talked about coming here and come at least doing a presentation to the board in regards to practices within the board. Uh and then in April, uh there is the National School Board Association. I understand Marggo may be going to it. I am. We're not the expenses are not paid for that by the school district but they will be providing best practices in what other school districts are doing in a lot of areas but one of the big areas is in AI artificial intelligence what

013that's doing in administration cost savings and and productivity and then how is assisting the teachers not focused on students but focus on the teachers is what I understand they're going to be heavily focused on so it's um uh it will be out there in that time frame. And if there are questions you would like when the sup when the president does address to the board, I would recommend if you send that to me, we'll bundle it and I will forward that to her so that she will have an opportunity to know what issues she may have questions about, give her a chance to have advanced uh notice on that. So I it's a great opportunity and I just thought I'd share that with you. I'm also going to go to Juno uh Saturday for uh

014the flyin with the Alaska Association of School Board. Again, that is not uh school ASD is not paying for that. I'm paying my expenses uh to uh lobby and to effectively try to communicate and answer any questions with the legislature. Thank you. >> Thank you, Member Higgins. Um I just wanted to take this opportunity to discuss uh the operating budget and a potential amendment deadline. Um I think there's an opportunity in front of us to uh have amendments well thought out and give the public an opportunity to hear those. Um our next meeting is on the 17th and then uh the board has um tenatively uh reserved a date in the last week of the month to hold a special meeting and um adopt the budget. uh if amendments were to be posted on Saturday

015the 14th, that would allow uh p the public to have access to budget amendments and then along with our usual timeline of 3 days before um our next meeting, which would mean that amendments should be submitted by the 13th. Um so my hope is that the board can agree that this public process would be the most transparent way to review amendments and have the public provide feedback and testimony on amendments prior to our adoption of our operating budget. Is there a board member who um opposes an amendment deadline of operating budget uh for 213? What's the proposed date for the uh special meeting? >> Believe it's the 24th or the 27th. Okay. Seeing no opposition, my suggestion knowing that we have an amendment deadline of 213 is to ask board members to to bring those

016to the finance committee. I think that would be helpful uh for the finance committee meeting on the 12th uh to discuss and and bring those to the public there as well. And then board members, please note that we'll um get out that meeting date to you as soon as tomorrow. Seeing no other board conference and committee reports, we will move past section C, which is goals and guardrail monitoring, and move on to superintendent update section D. Dr. Bryant, the floor is yours. >> Thank you, Mr. President. So, I'd like to use my superintendent update today to brief the public on the ASD FY27 budget proposal. Uh, if you tuned in for our 3pm work session, this will be the same presentation. Uh for those of you that saw that presentation, it it was two hours

017of discussion, this budget is is very complex and there is a number of different moving pieces. So I'd like for the benefit of the public to go over that information. Just to recap, uh we're grappling in ASD with a significant structural deficit that we've been forecasting for quite some time. Though the base student allocation did increase by $700, we also made a onetime investment of fund balance equivalent to a BSA of $700. And that difference now needs to be made up for this upcoming fiscal year. So this is not the first deficit that ASD has weathered. But what makes this situation particularly dire is the fact that our unassigned fund balance has largely been spent down to protect our programs and services for this school year. And the other complexity is that the legislature has

018not signaled that a significant increase for public schools is on the horizon for a number of reasons. One of which is likely statewide fiscal constraints. So for that reason, many of these proposed changes are structural in nature in in nature because they're going to reduce our operating footprint significantly because what I want the board and the public to understand is that in addition to this structural deficit, we do forecast a deficit going into FY28 as well. So the decisions that we make this month are going to set the stage for that structural deficit in FY28. Just to zoom out on how ASD spends its money, 95 cents on the dollar for ASD's budget goes to classrooms, student support services, and building maintenance. And we began budget reductions from as far away of the classroom as

019possible. But these cuts are effectively a $700 per student reduction, meaning that it was not possible to avoid classroom and building level impacts. So the short of it is that this proposal entails significant changes to how ASD will operate. Some services will remain, others will be slowed, others potentially cut, and some services will need to be reimagined so that we can continue to offer them, but offer them in a more costeffective way that we can sustain in the years to come that could also be very dire financially. So now that the budget is public, this is the time to start gathering community feedback too. And it does play an important role because this can help prevent unintended impacts of these reductions from happening. But I have to be cleareyed when I state to the public

020that there is not a financial path to operate the status quo that we have today. So we'll go ahead and begin this briefing. I do anticipate it will be close to another two hours, but that's how complicated this budget reduction process has been and the public deserves to understand this level of detail. Uh Mr. Ratliff, our chief financial officer, will begin the presentation. Right. >> Thank you. Uh for the record, I'm Andy Rattliff. I'm the chief financial officer for the district and really just want to kind of give you the overview as the backdrop is this. You know, we are facing about a $90 million deficit that we had to close whenever in order to balance this budget. Flat funding has really been the major driver of why we're in this position. And we've had

021some one-time funds that have kind of stacked on top of that to prevent uh more serious cuts in previous years, but those are exhausted. Uh from FY27 to 25, we had basically flat funding. Um or until 24 and 25, we had some one-time funds in the amount of like $680 BSA equivalent. And then so it's been flat. This will be the third year in a row it's essentially flatfunded again. Most of our money is tied into uh salary and benefits into our people. So about 87% of all our general fund goes into people. So as we increase our wages, our health benefits or at least the cost of them um as that goes up, our utilities go up, our liability insurance, all these costs keep increasing year-over-year. And with flat revenue each year there's going

022to be some reductions that need to be made. Unfortunately, this year that's just built up into a quite the fiscal cliff. Just a quick review on the budget development dates. We are here on February 3rd. We'll have another meeting on the 17th and potentially one on the 24th or 27th uh to be able to get to the meeting in time for the to introduce it to the assembly by the first Monday in March. Um, I guess I'd take a personal note to advocate for the 24th is the meeting instead of the 27th to give me another couple days to get that book actually ready for the city. Uh, while we're developing our budget, uh, the state has started meeting with their legislative session to determine what potential education funding might be. Um, this is one

023of the pitfalls we have with having to get our budget done early is we don't know how much money we're going to have. So, we'll do a budget. If the but that revenue changes sometime we will do a budget again. Uh it just doesn't lend itself to you know the the narrative that the district's acquiring wolf this is the process the state set up is we have to have a balanced budget and then they determine the funding. >> All right. Uh for the record I'm Katie Parrot. I'm the senior director of the office of management and budget. Um before we get into the details of the FY27 budget plan, we felt it was important to lay some foundation for um our current budget and the pre previous couple years that have already uh experienced some

024reductions. So the FY27 budget isn't uh you know the same level of operations as uh three years ago. We also implemented some reductions in the current year's budget as well. Um this slide kind of in encompasses some of the major changes that we um did implement in balancing the budget for FY26. Um but you can see that in order to kind of maintain some continuity in programming, we brought in that 50 million in fund balance and that really is the area where this gap kind of comes from. we have the rising costs and we've been closing that with our what we have in reserves or savings and we just do not have that as a resource anymore. Um, additionally, uh, we did apply, uh, the state funding that we received to the classrooms, um, but

025we did still have to implement a reduction of approximately 136 FTEEs. Um, an additional piece of context is um something that you won't see in a year-to-year comparison from this current year's approved budget to what our proposed FY27 budget is. You won't see these items as a reduction because they were not included in our current year's budget as um items that we could easily fit without causing reductions in another area. So there are some items and needs across the district um that are not funded and have not been funded and will eventually catch up with us. So here you see some of those major line items being in technology uh maintenance and curriculum updates. So every year these uh expenditures are kind of postponed is another year that we get a little bit behind um

026as you know can happen with deferred maintenance for example that's been a hotter topic recently. So, these are some things we need um to keep in mind as we move forward. And just give a little bit of a recap on our on the $90 million deficit and how that changed over time. Uh in July and August, we were asked to produce a projected deficit. Um at that time, it was about $77 million for our general fund based on a 3% cost escalation rate. uh without enrollment or revenue forecast being really known at that time. In December, we produced our our proforma budget which projected about an $83 million deficit to include any revenue changes that we knew at the time, revised cost estimates, and included our transportation fund. Uh that also included revisions to our

027required local contribution that happened in uh in November that we'll talk about a little bit later as well. And then in January, we revised that to the $90 million estimate based on some tenative agreements with our some of our larger contracts. So really kind of how we got into this is the history of this is shown here. As you can see, the base student allocation from FY17 to FY25 was largely flat. We did get some sporadic onetime funds in there. And then we used fund balance in those brighter yellow bars to help offset the deficit. That's largely gone away, but we anticipate having a little bit, which we'll talk about in a minute, but certainly not enough to close this gap. But really, you see that line at the top, and that's what an inflation

028proofed BSA would have been had it been tied back to 2011. Had it just kept up with inflation, the base student allocation would be over $1,400 more than it is currently. to put that in perspective in the state's total budget. Uh here's an upgraded chart that shows the FY17 enacted budget from the state versus the FY27 proposed budget from the governor. Uh you can see over that time period there's been a 6.6% increase in education funding to K12 for support for all districts. Uh you can see other departments going up 30 40 50 60%. um 30 or 40% may be in line with inflation. Uh however, some of those departments exceeded that even. So while part of that is um some of that's enrollment related. So as enrollment declines, so goes the amount of support

029to districts, the BSA's increased by about 12% over that time. And then the required local contributions, it's the districts for the municipalities portions of the funding has gone up just steadily over that time. So that's kind of why it's 6.6% instead of the 12% BSA increase. It's because whenever we increase the increase the required local contribution, the state pays less. Uh same with enrollment going down. Uh to compound that, we've had enrollment decline over the last uh decade or so. Started out about 48,000 in FY16 and down to almost a little under 42,000 this current year. while we've had more prek students and uh enormous growth in the students with intensive needs as well as a slight growth in special education students. So, the needs are getting greater uh as a percentage of the students

030that we do have. We have closed some schools and programs along the way that [clears throat] help shrink our footprint, but um uh we still probably have a little bit of excess capacity there. >> Okay. So, the vast majority of this presentation is going to be focused on our general fund, which really is the uh core of our operations, but we do budget across all other funds, and we make our requests to the municipality based on the total revenues and expenditures um across kind of our entire book of business. Um toward the end of the presentation, we'll cover a couple of these funds. I'll give you an overview of transportation, food service, and debt service just to highlight some of the changes that we're expecting to see there. But essentially, this is a summary sheet

031of all of the um actuals, budgeted uh expenditures um in all of our funds. This slide is an overview and summary of our general fund revenue. And you can see that some of the major changes on this sheet are in those red sections. And I'll just go over each one. Um, so for our local revenue at the top there, you'll see a steep uh increase of about 9 and a half million 9.7 million in property taxes. Most of that is the increase to the local required contribution. That is a statutory obligation. Um and it also in later in the presentation will show how that relationship um works with the state revenue that we receive. Uh you'll also see below that um that uh steep reduction in fund balance that is being used um and a

032small increment of uh not sorry not increment but a small amount of 8 million um that has been able to be included um to balance and close the fiscal gap for this um next year. Um Andy will talk a little bit about how we got to that number. Um additionally, we're planning to transfer in approximately 4.2 million of uh FEMA reimbursement funds that is available to be able to uh utilize in our operating fund as a local revenue. Um you'll also see that there is a reduction in the foundation funding. Um, some of that is based on enrollment and then that shift uh from state funding to local revenue. And so for the fund balance, we expect to have about $ 8.1 million by the end of the year. Um, we put in hiring and

033spending freezes this year to include forgoing an elementary summer school program. Uh, we've had we pulled back as many funds as we can or planned projects for curriculum updates or software upgrades. We had some money for ADA contingencies for um that'd be building like ramps or stairs or automatic doors that our maintenance department has just been taken care of over the years. So, we'll give all this money back. It is going to reduce our flexibility, but um to the extent we can save just a few positions here, that's really what we're doing for the FEMA funds. At the end of uh fiscal year 25, we did transfer a little over 11 million into our capital projects fund from our general fund and that was based on the amount of obligations from FEMA. So that's saying

034they're going to pay us. It didn't say they had paid us. So that was just so we held that uh that obligation there in our our capital projects fund until we actually started getting the cash in uh to meet those obligations. So, this represents the amount of cash that we've got, uh, just kind of free and clear at this point from, uh, those FEMA funds. And then the last thing on the revenue, uh, we're going to change the way we do our ADM counts in the fall. For dually enrolled students, typically we've always had, if you're enrolled at your home school, that's where that 1.0 ADM would go. Um, now what we're going to do is if you're enrolled at East High School, but you're taking the AM or PM session at King Tech, we're

035going to bifrocate that ADM and say half of you goes to East, half goes to King Tech, and just to be able to kind of get that school size adjustment for King Tech. So, more of a technical thing there. Um, it'll also affect the way we count correspondent students. So, as a student at like Family Partnership or something that's taking a class at West High, we'll be able to bifrocate that ADM and uh potentially generate between about 1.2 and $ 1.5 million in additional revenue just by making these uh kind of coding adjustments within the Oasis count. >> Mr. Rift, uh I'm not sure if you did already, could you explain what ADM is for those who weren't familiar? >> Yes. So, that's the average daily membership. That's um the count taken the Oasis count

036is the state's uh count of students taken in the first 20 days in October. And that really creates the base funding model. So it's just the average of our uh enrollment over that period. So to kind of back up and see how the foundation formula works, next year we're expecting about 39,000 brickandmortar kids. That goes into the school size adjustment. So these kids are rolled through a formula that essentially says the smaller the school is, the bigger the more money you're going to get per student. So it's kind of this sliding scale where you get a higher ADM bump that eventually turns into money for the smaller schools. A little over a thousand students, I think, is where it becomes a 1.0. And then our big schools such as West or East that have more

037than a thousand kids start getting a less than a 1.0 0 on that school size adjustment. After that, it goes through a district cost factor which is Anchorage is set at the base is a one. Every other district has some increment above that. Um and from there we tack on 20% for a special needs factor to serve uh special education, gifted education, vocational and English language learners. There's another one and a half percent increase on our ADM count uh in step four for CTE for career technical education. And then in step five and six, five is the intensive needs multiplier takes our intensive needs student count and multiplies that by 13 and correspondence takes the in correspondence count and multiplies that by 90%. So you go from about, you know, 40,000 students up to about

038almost 71,000 in adjusted average daily membership as you roll through this funding formula to to have these kind of weighted these weighted amounts. So the district cost factors like I said eight uh Anchorage is the one just wanted to provide this as information to the board and the public. Uh this information hasn't been updated in about 25 years. That was when the initial study and placement was done. Um the next highest are Matsu and Fairbanks with about a 7% increment over Anchorage, but some of them get up over two, you know, 100 times anchorage or two times anchorage for a 2.116 in Yukon flats. I would say it's probably quite a bit more expensive to do business out there, but um these probably need to be reert because things have a lot has changed in

039the last 25 years. >> Mr. Could you identify where the district co cost factor comes from and who can change that? >> So this was set in uh statute by the state. The legislature ultimately puts that in. It was based on a study done by the institute of social and economic research uh is through the UAA I believe at the time. But that's generally they'll do the study they implement and the these district cost factors are actually set in statute. >> Mr. member lessons. >> And this is a question I know that the board probably knows the answer to, but there are lots of folks listening. What is our best estimate of a consequence of uh data that is older than our high school seniors by a long shot um being implemented? to to what

040extent are we losing money that could be reallocated to the Anchorage School District at no additional cost to the state? What's our best estimate of that? >> I mean, that's a hard question to answer because I don't know what the cost differentials would be in those other communities, but kind of as a you know, if we were even at that Matsu level of that 7% increase, I think it would generate about 25 million additional dollars for the district. Um, so another data point we have on here is I put together a statewide revenue per student. And this is really normalized because the intensive needs students and the correspondents are kind of outside of those the district cost factor and the school size adjustments and they're based on individual students. Um, I excluded that and this

041is just based on basic needs. So, it's not going to tie to any sort of uh actual revenue per student because it doesn't include the required local contributions coming out or federal impact aid deductions coming out. Um, but it really is just to show the cost differential or the revenue differential that other districts get due to the district cost factor and the uh school size adjustment. So as a lot of districts have smaller schools sizes on average uh than Anchorage that goes into this um and so does those kind of those base cost factors but it just gives you kind of an idea of the that that state funding as it's compared to Anchorage. So the rest of the foundation formula, take about the 71,000 or so district adjusted ADM average daily memberships and multiply

042that by the 6,660 base student allocation. Um so whenever that BSA changes, that's really how we think we get our money because none of those other components of the formula have changed in quite a while. That creates what they call basic need. Um the minimum amount the state says school districts should have to operate. And from that they say the city has to pay a portion. In this in our case it's about 1939 million. That's based on the property values little over 52 billion and at 2.65 mills. Again this is statutory requirement that the city has to pay. Uh and then they also deduct a portion of our federal impact aid which is really kind of a payment in lie of taxes for uh the we get most of it for our onbase students. So,

043this non-t taxable federal property, the federal government gives us additional money to help pay for that. Uh, the state says we have an equalized foundation formula, so they can take about half of it. And then on top of that, they give us about a little over a million dollars for a state quality schools grant, which is $16 per adjusted ADM. So then the districts can provide allow additional allowable contributions above the required local. Uh for this budget we have built in about 96.3 million. The state cap is actually 108.5 million. Um this will be the first year that we've done a budget that doesn't have a that isn't up to the state cap. Um mostly that's due to the first year we've been able to plan on a permanent based student allocation. So we didn't

044we knew that was the first year that we've had that amount increase at this time. So, we've always kind of budgeted at this time what the maximum is. That maximum may change along the way with one-time funding or BSA increments that we didn't plan for and we already have our tax request in, but due to the sizable increase of that required local effort, we are um not able to meet the state uh tax or state the state cap. So, the state cap is the greater of a 2 mill tax levy or 23% of basic need. uh that $470 million figure from the previous slide. Uh we use the 23% of basic need is the most advantageous to us. Again, 108.5 million. The municipal tax cap includes both the required local and the additional allowable contributions

045and it's based on a 5-year average of population inflation to see how much that'll actually grow. Um, so due to the increase in the required local contriution, the additional allowable contributions are capped at 90 96.3 million. And that's kind of the delta on that is really where you get into the city's discussion of creating a tax levy that the voter that the voters would have a choice to approve or not to help support up to that state cap. to put it in a [clears throat] in chart form. At the top you see the the municipal allowable tax cap of $9.7 million increase. When we have an 11.2 million required local increase, uh we have to take the the rest out of uh that additional local contribution. Um that 11.2 million required local is a result

046is the result of that state found or the state foundation revenue decline of a 14 million is partially a result of that 11.2 2 million increase to passing the cost off to the local governments. So that went down by 11.2 million overall just because of that municipal tax cap and the required local going up so much. It's about a million and a half dollar loss to the district. So why taxes go up? Um the actual revenue to the districts goes down and puts more pressure on us. Over the last 10 years, it's been about a $35 million cost shift. um um between those years for the required local uh and you can see the state foundation revenue going by down by about $4 million in terms of real dollars over that time period. >> Mr.

047Ra, could you put a point on that? The there's 35 $35 million cost shift between from who to who? >> So that is the municipality, the taxpayers in Anchorage pay more and the state pays less. You can really, it's really highlighted in that section above where you see that 11.2 million increase in the required local contribution. The state takes every penny of that away on their contributions. So that's why they go down by about over 14 million. 11.2 is due to that required local cost shifting and then about a little over three million is due to enrollment declines. >> Can I follow up real quick >> to to put another point on it perhaps? So, have Anchorage School District students received more money from the state as local taxes have gone up? >> Uh, >>

048or or or not a great way to phrase it, but >> I suppose I'd have to go back and see how many students we had at the time in each one to do the exact math. But, I mean, the per student amount has gone up with the base student allocation, of course, but you know, over our total dollars are going down over that 10-year period. So the state is paying less as Anchorage property taxpayers are paying more. >> Exactly. And that's kind of where that chart where we showed the state departments uh one of the reasons that the you know a 12% BSA increase only equates to about a six or 7% increase in the overall funding to K12 is because of that cost shift. So this chart we've used in the past really to

049kind of just at a really high level show where our money goes in four different buckets. About 58% of it for FY27 proposal is going to go to uh direct classroom instruction. That is regular instruction and special education instruction. The support students is about 23%. Our next largest bucket includes our counselors, nurses, librarians. Um, we lump student activities in there too as that's kind of directly related to our students, but it also includes our principles and our professional development staff here at the district as well as our instructional supervision. So, while some folks um that's kind of when you get the argument of like what's admin considered administration, uh these are based on the state chart of counts of course. Um so, just kind of want to make sure that everyone's aware of how we're

050calculating this. But then you see the administration of 5% that includes school board, superintendent, our business offices, uh risk management, IT, things like that. Um so that's really uh that's where we put our money in this FY27 budget. At the bottom, you can see a comparison to how we put that as a percent of the total in FY26. And then I'm going to before I hand it off to SP to go through a lot of the cuts, just want to keep in mind that while you're going to see a lot of numbers on these spreadsheets, there's people attached to all these numbers, right? So, don't lose sight of this is people's livelihoods. This is their lives. We really do need to I mean it it's not this isn't a good budget for anyone frankly. And

051just keep that in mind as we go through all the reductions we're going to talk about. >> Mr. Riff, before we switch slides, I just want to um ask a detailed question on the 5% district administrative costs. Um, in previous budget years, we were handed a slide that compared uh the percent of a district's operating budget that are utilized for district administration and our 5% which hasn't increased. Um, compared favorably to other districts, I want to say we're in the top five or so. Um, we don't have that information as part of this slide. Can you tell us where we stand at present? >> I can speak to that. So, in the prior year, we did an analysis based on the FY25 budget, I believe, and we were just north of 5% and tied for

052third lowest uh with another district. Um this uh current year it looks like we're tied for fourth with another district that uh sustained quite significant uh budget crisis and reductions in their administration fell into that um the the last few and so we're now tied for four. >> And Miss P, could you remind me there 54 school districts? >> 53. >> Thank you. >> All right. For the record, I'm Sven Gustoson. I'm the deputy superintendent of the district and I am going to be walking through the proposed um cuts to the budget. Not necessarily, we aren't recommending these because none of them are good. They all have people involved pretty much. Um, one of the things that we've heard numerous times through social media, through surveys, through uh, you know, word of mouth, through testimony

053sitting here from people is the amount of how big our district offices and the number of people in this district office and we need to decrease that footprint. Well, in academic services, which is what I'm going to be going over for the most part, I'll tell you when I'm not on academic services throughout this next hour. Um but in academ in academic services um there's a total of 219 people in this district assigned to this district office of which most are grant funded and so when I looked at reducing the footprint of this district office we needed to look at both general fund which is part of this budget you're wrestling with as well as I wanted to show the public that we are cutting some grant funded positions which the grant will be reworked

054to be able to utilize um services where we don't have to have a teacher based out of this building. So out of the 219 positions um this budget's going to reduce 48 of those positions for 22%. 30 of those positions are general funded and 18 positions are grant funded. Now like I said we will be rewriting reworking the grants. We do that yearly for most grants as budget changes, personnel changes, um goals change. So, we'll be reworking some of those. Those are not competitive grants that we're looking at there. Those are more title grants. So, kind of now moving on into academic service um cuts. You'll see some of these things in two places. I'll post pretty much mark them remark where they're in both places. Kirsten will be taking some of these also. But

055um just to kind of go down this list, I think it's important to highlight each of these. Um we're looking at three um senior directors, two in special education and one in elementary education. We're looking at cutting an academic director position, one FTE. What that's doing is it's taking the work of two directors. One that works on our beh positive behavior intervention supports and one that works with discipline and um activities and taking that and putting it into one position. We also are looking at reducing two academic assistant directors. Uh one of these is an assistant director of fine arts, the arts person. um that's going to go down to one person for an as assistant director of fine arts and then another one is in um special education. So secondary principles, we're looking at

056eight FTE and secondary principles. All middle school sports have been recommended um for reduction. Most of the high school sports and some of the activities we will be going over a slide on the high school sports. Kirsten will be here in a little bit. looking at elementary special education teachers just taking 10 FTE out of the elementary sped ranks and 10.5 out of the secondary spread ranks. You know, one thing that we do talk about is special education is about 120 125 million of the general fund and another 25 million of a grant fund. And so that's a big portion of our budget. So we do need to take some hits in the special education realm. And these are the ones that are we're looking at the least amount of harm as po as possible.

057Um looking at high school admin office admin whenever there's a high school AP there's usually an admin with so reducing some of those APs reduces the admin. IT techs. Currently, the we have IT techs that are based at high schools that can go right down the hall, work with a teacher, work with a group of teachers, work with students, and what have you. The work that those people are doing, we're pulling those positions, the work that they do back into the help desk realm. A lot of our um work that we do in that realm can be done um remotely. So that's a cut that services inside of that and we'll talk more about the IT cuts later. There's two positions with the metrics that we use that reduce security. One is um Chugek High

058School and one is at Polaris Polaris K12 which is actually that person's retiring. Um we are looking at uh reducing our curriculum coordinators. our coordinators um are part of that footprint here in the district office. They're teachers that um have come over to work just with curriculum, work on professional development, work on curriculum adoptions, um that kind of stuff. Um we this current school year we did we had a re resignation right before the year began and we started uh this model that we're going to where we provide a denda for both a middle and high school um teacher in the area. So this year it was in science and we found some great success with that model. So we are looking to reduce the coordinators and go to an addenda model. We have some

059special education specialists at 26FT. That's just like all of them put together. Medicaid billing technician. We have two people in that office. This position was uh increased the second one a couple years ago when we anticipated a higher amount of Medicaid reimbursements going through the state. The state has not set up their reimbursements to a level that we can actually utilize and get more funding. In fact, that office um was a we actually spent more money in that office last year than we were able to get reimbursed. So, it was quite a quite a big thing. So, we're thinking we could reduce that person until the state gets their systems in line so we can um get more reimbursed. Part of uh the the the next thing on the next column is a reading specialist.

060There's 10ft. That was a those positions were their grant fund or not grant their general funded positions that we recommended last year um that you brought back. We were able to get two people into those positions and then we ended up needing them to teach classes this year. So those positions were not used this year. We were recommending that they be cut. Elementary summer school, Andy talked about that. Um we are before the pandemic, we did not have elementary summer school. Um it's a $1 million amount now. Right out of the pandemic, it was $2 million. Um, we are not seeing the results for the number of students that we would hope for and we are not going to even be having the summer school this upcoming summer at elementary. We will still have the

061funding for the Reeds Act, the requirements around the Reads Act for the third grade students. Um, we did have some results. They're online. It's an online program. We did have some pretty good results with that online program this year and but it is a statutory requirement so we will continue that but the regular summer school um will be cut. The paras on this list are actually kindergarten paras kindergarten paras anytime there's a kindergarten classroom you have a parah this one is just a cut due to enrollment. We anticipate less kindergarten classrooms due to enrollment over the um and and the ft the ptr increase. So that would just be in with that library aids. Um all the high school library aids other than the one at Rome West. Um that position is actually one librarian

062for both schools. So there is a library aid that will stay there. Um so it's all the high school ones plus a few at the elementary level that um we're still in ex in existence. counselors. Those those positions are going to come out of the secondary level, mostly high school, um some at the middle school, um and I think maybe an alternative school. However, um none of the elementary counselors are on this proposed list. Psychologists, we have a few opening, quite a few openings, and we've decided to go ahead. We could take three of those openings. custodians. Um it's five FTE. There's a few at a certain like three different schools that had been added in maybe 15 years ago. We're taking them back down to the metric of the rest of the schools. Um

063there's some added agenda that we'll go over later for elementary um uh and secondary. There's three um FTE and behavior coaches with technicians um that are general funded that we're looking to reduce. We're doing we're proposing a 15% supply and equipment um reduction in this proposed budget. Um what most people don't realize is that our English language learners are general funded. The ELLL program is general funded for the most part. There's about $400,000 that comes to us via title funding, but so we do need to reduce some of the ELLL. You'll see this one uh is the is the M culture leaison. We have a number of paras who will fit that bill to be able to help with some of that work. And then we've had so many new principles over the years. We've

064had a principal boot camp where um we're just going to reduce cut that for this next summer. All right. Looking at other district uh things. Not >> I'm sorry. Um I did have a question on the previous slide and um thank you for going over all of that. One question I have and you might not be prepared to answer it at this time is uh I'm aware that a large portion of the secondary added duty agenda h was dedicated to supporting our PLC's and are you able to speak to what that means? >> We'll we'll talk about that. Can I talk about that when we go to high school because it is one of the list on the list. Um, member Dunley, you have a question question. >> Yeah. Currently, in this year's budget, how

065many FTE are there for psychologists? So, that was senior director Beltran. She knows we have 11 unfilled. We contract out a lot of the psychology um work and she thinks 26. Do you have do you know we can look that up for you? >> Thank you. >> All right, moving on to non-academic for a bit. Again, we were trying to start out by looking at things outside of the the school buildings. That last list of course had a bunch inside of it, but uh looking other things that are outside of academics. There's three HR positions um being reduced. One is a specialist for benefits, one's a um an AA, and I believe another one is a generalist. There's the 16.6 FT and IT, the 10 from that were moved out of the high school ranks.

066Um but then there's some others uh that he's that that it is cutting, including some in the project management. uh section of his budget. Communications is decreasing by one and by the way some of these departments are very small and decreasing by one is like 25% maybe of their whole department. So communications is one development grants actually there's only two people in that department but one of those FTE um does most of the writing actually all the writing of the grants and the other one is more the support of the grants. Um, so we're recommending one. Um, community rentals is reducing one. That's going to make it a little harder, a little longer for outside organizations to get um, rentals booked. Maintenance is cutting three. I know two of those are in the paint shop.

067Um, I can't remember the third one. I think it might have something to do with um, what's that? refrigeration maybe. Yeah. Two warehouse drivers. Our surplus and movement of stuff is going to go a lot slower. We're doing a custodian uh reorganization around our subcustodians. We have permanent subcustodians. We're going away from those permanent subcustodians to providing more um part-time custodians. That will save us a bunch of money. We also that those part-time custodians will make more money because there won't be uh benefits attached to them. So we think that we'll be able to um get more filled but also pick up 10 FTE in that reorg. Last year you um you budgeted $2 million for recruitment and retention of our staff. We've um we would like to keep 300,000 of that into our accelerator

068model that we accelerator program that we uh briefed you on a few a couple months ago where we're trying to shore up the stability of some schools to show if we have stability in staffing um and in program programming at a school we can make a difference in student outcomes. But we're we're in this budget gets rid of 1.7 of that recruitment retention money. Um there's $425,000 in IT equipment addenda and software that um the IT department is uh proposed to cut. And then the equipment replacement fund of $1.2 million. Every um general fund budget that we have puts a little money into this equipment replacement fund. That's where we go to purchase huge things like a road grader, a dump truck, a school bus, a a huge switches or data center equipment that cost

069uh tens of thousands of dollars. This proposed budget takes out all of that money and we would not have any money to purchase any of those things until we built that money back up. So that's the other district uh things that it's looking at about 38 FTE in that other district and $ 8.3 million outside of the academic realm. >> And uh sorry uh I just wanted to make sure we circled back around member Donnelly through the chair. Um the answer to your question related to psychologists is for the past uh several years the uh psychologists have been um staffed at a 46.7 FTE and the pre preliminary 27 budget would be 43.7 FTE and those three FTE are vacant to my knowledge. >> Yeah, I was going to provide the same clarification. So thank

070you. >> All right, should we move on? All right. There are some programmatic changes that we are re proposing in this in this program because when we did look at all of our cuts, we were looking at some efficiencies as well. One of the first one on the list is tutor monasuri program. The students that are in the monasuri program at tutor if they want to continue monasuri they would go to denali elementary which is a full school monasuri program. the tutor uh campus then would become strictly a neighborhood school. One of the things that we're hearing is people asking questions, some misinformation out there that if you're in the monastery program and you don't want to go and continue the monastery at Denali, um you can it is you can stay at tutor in

071the neighborhood program. that that move um allows us from some efficiencies around staffing, around training, around being able to hire um staff that are actually trained in the monastery program. Um it saves some money around when we do holdbacks and and in that realm. Uh the next one is kind of the same thing but just kind of back different. Um, Inlet View Elementary has a bunch of space in its new school. We have a need at Government Hill to move the neighborhood program from Government Hill to Inlet View. Government Hills neighborhood program has 55 students in that program, 45 of which actually live in the Government Hill neighborhood. Um at Government Hill, the neighborhood program only has three teachers in it, a K1, a 2, three, and a 45. And that is not an efficient

072model for students. Once we do a a PTR increase of the extent we are, that really becomes difficult to fund. So Inlet View Elementary has the space. Um, so we're proposing to increase the inlet view elementary boundaries to include what's now right now the government hill boundaries. Another move that we're looking at to provide some efficiencies is um outreach program which is housed at why moving them to Benny Benson and save that will pick up a counseling position so we'll save some FTE there. Um, Benny Benson and SAVE have more resources that can work with these students. These students are ones that have had some behavioral difficulties at traditional schools and have to go to a different school for a time being. And uh, Benny Benson and Save uh, have continuation. they have experience um

073working with this group of students and it just has not been a successful thing at whe ability of the way whe administration to increase their duty his duties or her duties whoever's in that job to include being picking up the special schools. Special schools has an individual um principal right now, a head principal. Our we are picking up a principal position by moving special schools under WH. Um why currently has an assistant director working as an AP assistant principal and we are going to be changing that to an assistant principal position and that will save us some money as well. Um we'll be talking about Kirsten will be talking about the nursing models changing to a regional program. Um increasing a model changing a model for elementary specialists to increase efficiencies in FTE. She'll be

074talking about that. Uh moving to the next slide, we have a building sub model that we have now that we instituted right after the pandemic when we came back into the buildings where buildings had a certain number of sub positions that they could have people that they could hire every single day whether they had an opening or not in their school. We are um getting rid of that model and putting up some guard rails um on the use of sub monies um at schools and that will that will get some efficiencies in our sub accounts because we normally go over our sub budget by millions of dollars. Um we talked about elementary summer school. Another summer school is our ELLL summer school. Last last year at this time we proposed cutting ELLL summer school during

075one of the budget iterations later you instituted that back in our ELLL department has proposed that again as another cut. Um many of the students that are in our ELLL summer schools do qualify for migrant ed Indian ed summer schools and so we would uh we we would recommend cutting that again. It will be going on this summer um but next summer we would be cutting that again. Some of the things I talked about the the footprint of this building includes the professional learning teacher expert positions. Those that model was going to go away. We'll have another model that we utilize um not including teachers being pulled out of their of this teaching position to be running that. Our ignite program which is the is going to be moving into the win program which model

076which is a called what I need at elementary level. Um that that will That's 20 positions, 18 of which are teachers to our testers. We're keeping two testers along with another skeletal crew um in gifted to be able to help with the wind model as well as the highly gifted programs. And then a big one is the middle school model going away with that extra um collaboration time and the middle schools going to six period day that picks up 28 FTE at the middle school level. So those are kind of our programmatic changes. Um looking at special education and kind of the gifted parts specifically. Um last year we we had some rec some proposals for some cuts at the Alaska School of Deaf. Um that program we've actually moved the heart of hearing program

077into Russian Jack. It's working quite well. Um now some a lot of positive results. One of the things that last year people came out and forced to talk about the intervention coach. That individual left the district and that position hasn't been filled. So, they believe we could cut that position. A gifted intervention coach is a is a a gentleman that works specifically with our underachieving, mostly highly gifted students. Um, in a $90 million budget shortfall, we had to look at things. That's one of them. Um we did talk about the special service teachers that across the the the levels why reorganizations looking at 1.5 FTE why has just around 50 55 students depending upon um what's there um so we're doing a little work at that speech pathologist their paras and their technicians um we're

078planning to reduce uh two sets of those um psychology we talked about counselors. We talked about um ACT clerical and paras is our uh adult uh program for special needs. They'll um so they'll be reducing 1.6 and our ELLL liaison position as well as a couple paras in the ELLL department. So looking at school-based specific um oh by the way that's 9.4 4 million in special services representing 71 FTE. Um looking at just schoolbased reductions. Um we'll talk about the nurse model coming up. That's the nurse model going to regional model would pick up 25 FTE. teachers due to enrollment and we'll talk about these in the next slide but teachers due to enrollment drop is about almost 50 teachers and we're proposing a plus4 ptr and that's 168 uh FTE the specialist model which

079Kristen will go over in a little bit will pick up 25.4 for FTE out of the budget, but out of we used a lot of our holdbacks for specialists this year. So really there was about 47 FTE that was utilized used for um specialist talked about the collaboration time hold back teachers. Last year you um budgeted 40 86.4. What a holdback is is a is a way in which we can provide teaching support teaching FTE to schools when we have huge bumps in enrollment such as you have a second grade class with 40 you anticipated 25 where you need to have somebody else in there. Um you at the middle and high school level we're looking at you know you have you need to pick up an extra English section or something of the sort.

080we can add that in or sometimes it's immersion numbers come in a little bigger. So we are asking to keep 40 of those holdback teachers. Traditionally when we're in most years it's 31. Last year we had 86. It does allow us to be able to put teachers where they specifically need to go. JOTC instructors the next column um that's an instructor diamond. They don't have the numbers for three JOTC positions. So, one's going away. We're looking at 9.5 FTE, eight at high school, 1.5 at alternative schools. Counselors is a total of 8.5 FTE. We talked about the library assistance, the clerical, the kinds. There's two BPOS outside of what we normally do. And that was because when we moved to moved sixth grade to middle school, uh, Romig and Mirs have huge like a lot

081of kids in relocatables and they had well over they have thousand kids or more and so we needed some extra support during the day for all of that with snow removal with um getting those extra spaces covered. So we're cutting those now. And then security we had a couple outside of the the metric. One was at Chugek, the other is at Polaris. I think I talked about that already. Moving into just looking at where do these cuts for enrollment come from? Elementary just because a lower enrollment is 29 FTE and middle and higher 10.4 each. And then we're we're proposing a plus4 PTR. That's the last thing we look at is the PTR. We're proposing a 90 a plus4 which is 90.4 FTE at elementary, 29.4 4 at middle and 40.8 at high school with

082alternative atgative minus 7.7. When you pull this up as to what is ptr at different levels of a plus4 ptr that bottom chart there will show you kindergarten is 27. That's on average. First grade is 28. Second grade is 30. Third grade is 31. Fourth is 32. And six fourth and fifth is 32. and 6th through 12th is 36.25. >> Mr. Gus, yes. Um, >> want to take this point to ask a question about the levy um that's going to be in front of voters in April. Uh it's roughly $1 million and we've publicly committed to putting all every dollar of that straight to classroom instruction, reducing class sizes. Could you without using the term PTR um talk about what that would look like for teachers and students in a class? >> You want? >>

083Yeah. So, I'll take that. Um we believe with the 11.8 million that's proposed through the tax levy, we could buy down our class size essentially by about two kids per class. Uh that would generate about 80 FTE. Um there would be a small increase in the kindergarten pair of professionals as those would go up as the number of classrooms we have for kindergarten would go up and then about 600 or 700,000 of that would be directed towards charter schools as they're required to get their uh full portion of the allowable extra allowable local contribution and that's about roughly 11.8 million in total >> and I I would just add that that's an average because it isn't going to be the same over all of the different schools. We can't just say every classroom is going

084to have minus two more kids. >> It just doesn't work that way. >> Right, Kristen? >> All right. I wanted to dive a little bit into what it looks like more specifically at the elementary level um based on some of the changes that Sven had mentioned. Um so um of course elementary is included in that PTR increase of plus4 students uh per teacher. Um additionally we would extend the 15% reduced supply funds to elementary schools as well. Um, we mentioned that Ignite moves to win model and I'll explain that a little bit in my next slide along with what the specialist changes look like at the elementary level um in more detail. At the elementary level, Battle of the Books is um a a well-loved activity in many of our schools. There are currently two

085agendas um assigned per elementary school to that activity. we would reduce that to one agenda per elementary school uh for some budget savings. Um also in addenda there are typically um in this year's budget 10 agenda allocated to each elementary school. We would reduce it by three so that elementary schools would receive seven extra duty uh agendas and those pay for a variety of activities from um building test coordinator to after school activities um to other things that are needed within the building. Uh we would also eliminate summer school um which was mentioned before but we would maintain a footprint to meet the Alaska Reads Act um for third graders um to make sure that we are following state law and then nurses would get moved to a regional model which I'll explain in detail

086um in the upcoming slides as well. So when we look particularly at the specialist model at elementary school um our goal when we were reimagining how this instruction was delivered um to to reduce budget at the same time we really wanted to look at the efficiency of the FTE assigned to these teaching positions. In the current model a number of teachers spend an exorbitant amount of their their day or week um traveling from one location to another. So we we are required to pay teachers for that travel time. Um so with the current model, there are five specialist categories of PE, health, art, music, and library. Um and they're all taught by five different people within the schools. And so typically, um when you look at health, art, um library, and some music and PE,

087there are a lot of partial uh FTEEs assigned to schools. So some of our specialists um can have three different schools um on you know on a regular basis to travel to to provide that instruction to students. That's a lot of travel time um for teachers when they could be in front of students teaching. So our goal was to in to create a model that um allowed for students to still have the specialist experience um in an elementary school be because we think that exploration is really important for them. um and that exposure while still um reducing FTE and being more efficient with our budget. And so we are proposing a three specialist model which would essentially be consist of PE and health um together, fine arts which would include art and music together and

088library. So we would maintain full-time librarians at every school. Um however students would see their librarian um with more minutes. Um PE and fine arts would also be seen. Um PE we have to um meet a certain amount of minutes per week for elementary students by state statute. Um there are no restrictions on fine arts or library in terms of minutes but we do have contractual planning time that we have to meet for our teachers um our classroom teachers. So, in the three specialist category model, um what it does is create more full-time positions within our elementary school so that um a teacher is teaching um fine arts together, both art and music. At library, they would be seen in an increased amount so that not only would you do traditional library activities, but we

089would add potentially some windtime and ignite teaching to that librarian schedule. We also um would want to add some STEM and technology um um like teaching commitments to their schedule as well. So librarians will have more face-to-face instruction um in this new model. And then PE would incorporate some of the requirements that we have around health um into their schedule as well. >> Thank you. I'm just going to briefly to remind the audience that there are physical copies of the presentation at the table under the entrance and then I see member lessons has a question. Um, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but um, can you illuminate and maybe it's a follow-up question. What's the order of magnitude for the itinerant elementary specialists? Like what on a scale of oh, we have, you

090know, a dozen or oh, we have, you know, three dozen itinerant specialists. Can you help us understand? >> It varies by subject. So, um, we have less itinerant with PE, uh, because of the minutes that are required by the state. So students have more PE in their weekly schedule than other um categories of specialists. Um health and art rotate schedules um between every two weeks. So where if I am an art teacher, I alternate with a a health teacher and then we usually flip-flop schools. Um and then with our music and um our music teachers um are are it just really varies school to school. Some are part-time and shared, some are full-time, but the minutes are less than PE currently. And um librarians are a full-time librarian at every elementary school >> except for

091one. I >> I guess I'm interested in understanding. My personal experience is when the art teacher is at my kids school, they're there for like two weeks, so they're not driving around. And that may not be true at every single school, >> right? Um, but I guess what is what's the scale of the problem of teachers literally driving from school to school during the course of a day? Because that seems like a different >> problem than a two weeks on, two weeks off. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's an accurate statement. So, where the driving comes in is we have PE teachers um so we have some schools that are larger that require additional minutes than a full-time teacher. So, we have um some PE teachers that spend um a different uh they are at a different

092school almost every day or they split days to cover that additional PE time. By converting it to a three specialist model, we're able to balance the minutes so that um we can have PE more often through the week. Um we can have more full-time staff and less shared positions. Um and because some of there is the there's differences between what we have to meet for minutes with contract planning time and what we have to actually meet with um the state requirement. So there are two different um kind of categories of minutes that we have to meet. So we've actually spent time with um our elementary senior directors, some of our elementary principles and really vetted this model. Um, and I think what is probably lost in translation is that there are some of these categories

093of specialists in the current model that you only go for 30 minutes a week or um, and we would convert to the three specialist model where we would be looking at 50 to 60 minutes per week per specialist. And so by condensing it, you don't have all these split positions all over the place that are really difficult to navigate from a budgetary standpoint. We we've actually had some positions where there was more of the FTE traveling than there was in front of kids. >> Yeah. >> So, we're taking out that inefficiency as much as we possibly can. That's why the reduction of FTE is allowed is is happens with this. >> Yeah. The other the other FTE challenge with specialists is there are schools that in a particular category may need a 0.8 FTE. So,

094if we're looking at that individual position, if we were going to move them to another school to teach that 0.2 um that's left in their their schedule, um essentially it wouldn't do us any good because we have to pay that 0.2 for travel time. So, there are schools that have a full-time teacher but actually really only need8 FTE. And by converting to this model, we save all those bits and pieces of FTE and we're able to distribute them more efficiently. if we were to receive funding through levy, through legislative action to revert back to our current pupil teacher ratio or perhaps a better model um moving forward, is this something that you would continue to recommend or would you revert to the model we presently have if people teacher ratios were lowered more teachers were

095in the building. >> So, my my opinion is that the system that we currently have um with the number of students and classrooms that we have is is an antiquated system in terms of how we're efficiently using our dollars to pay for teachers. Um, I think that there's a lot of not a lot of downtime in some particular spots across the district that we're not able to utilize effectively um for that full-time position that we're paying somebody for. So, I would still continue to recommend a change at the specialist model. Um, having um a scheduling background um as a principal um I've been an elementary teacher, I was a special education teacher, so I've done scheduling on that level, too. um the schedule with the amount of teachers we have, the budget constraints that we

096have is really inefficient. So, I would still recommend some sort of change. It may be a little bit different if we had additional resources, but I would still recommend some sort of change to be more efficient and and fiscally responsible. All right. If there's no other questions on specialists, I'll turn it back over to >> ready. All right. I did have one, Mr. Chair. Sorry. Member Bellinger. >> So on still on the elementary specialist changes. Um I get the PE health combination. I mean really one person could do that. >> Um I'm I'm struggling with the art and the music. I mean because you're not you might not have artist that's also a musician, >> right? Mhm. >> Um, so how do we So that might be two different people in the new model but

097at different times. >> It could be. That's one option that we would look at. Um, so there are art and music standards. Um, and we would look at those. We would plan a model that would incorporate those standards obviously um, so that our kids are getting what they need for for their grade level. Um there would also likely be PD involved if we did require one person to teach both. Um we would work on that. Um but one of the the potential scenarios is to look at alternating um a full-time music teacher for one semester and a full-time art teacher for another semester at a school and then switching them if they had a partner school. >> Okay, that makes a little more sense to me. I'm not quite sure. And then the STEM technology

098piece would be could be the li is that a the librarian that will step into that pretty much. >> That's and that's actually something that we've moved um just philosophically as a district um to more STEM technology types of activities within that library realm. Um that's where we'd like our librarians to move. So, what we would be asking librarians is to still continue those those duties that they do um currently, but then also add a section where we focus more on that topic area. >> Okay. And then you may not have the answer right now, but will this require policy changes? >> It it likely would. Um there is a wellness policy that we would need to look at. Um but it's not just for elementary. Um when we get into middle school, there would

099likely be implications as well. >> Okay. and I'll hold the nurse, the regional nurse thing. I'll hold off until get there. >> So, looking at middle school specifically, there's quite a bit. Middle school's being hit pretty hard in this proposed budget with the middle school model, the collaboration time going, um the, you know, enrollment decreasing. Um and then we also have a number of other cuts that we're we're proposing. Um proposing five FTE in uh assistant principles. Handsh mirrors and Golden View would lose a 1.0 FTE in assistant principles. And then Central and Wendler would lose a.5 each. So they would have a total of head principal and one half-time AP. Clark and Beg currently have two APS. Um and we would we're proposing moving them down of half each as well. In counselor the

100metric greening and mirrors would lose a counselor. The nurses go to that model and then rog and mirrors um we talked about their their BO uh getting moved. Middle school would then um we'd also have a plus4 ptr like everybody else. uh all middle school sports and some activity money would be reduced. Middle schools would go to a sixth period day. When the middle schools go to a sixth period day, this is where we would need to be looking at policy and ARS to look and make sure what we would need. They would they the middle school kids would lose an an elective offering during that in that um collaboration time. the agenda for usually one person is kind of leading that work, keeping it moving forward. Um that's being eliminated and then the PLC

101agenda for the leads at middle school is also going away. I wanted to circle back and um kind of answer what member lessons I think might have been asking is with that agenda does that mean PLC's go away? No, that doesn't mean that PLC's go away. when middle school and high school implemented PLC's um we had an agenda we have agenda for the leads of those PLC's um we did not have that with elementary and so this is just bringing middle and high school into alignment with the elementary PLC's um with pretty much administration taking a more active role in that leadership of those PLC's at middle and high school. So, if I may, for the community's purpose, that does not mean that there's going to be a change recommended to the late start Mondays.

102>> No, there's not. >> Thank you for the clarification. >> Y >> Sven, before you move to high school, I just wanted to circle back on um your question member lessons about who's shared and who's not around elementary specialists. And I got some more specific numbers for you. So our art and health teachers are all shared amongst teachers uh schools or >> schools sorry not teachers it's a it's been a long long presentation anyway um so art and health teachers are all shared among schools um 27 of our music teachers are shared up to two to three schools each um PE there are 29 teachers shared and some of them have up to four schools so just for some specifics about how how broken up those schedules are um and how inefficient the scheduling is.

103>> All right, are we good to go to high school now? All right, in high schools >> um looking at the bottom chart on this of the differences, you see a lot of negatives in high school um the proposed is to have four assistant principles be reduced. One each at Diamond East, Service and West, those are the four that we were talking about clerical earlier. Um, and in addition, Bartlett ended up being outside of that um, metric, so they would lose a clerical. Also, counselors, uh, Diamond East, West, and Eagle River would all lose a 1.0 counselor, and Chooak um, service and South would each lose a half-time counselor. And then Chooak again is that, um, security. Looking at a little further deeper, people teacher ratio is a plus4. We talked about principles, counselors, we've

104talked about assistant, library assistants, the nurses, office admin, security, um eliminating the IT personnel, and then some all some sports, which Kristen will talk about next, and some of the activities, money, additionally the PLC agenda that we were talking about with member lessons. So, moving into sports, Kristen, you want to take that? >> Sure. So, I want to preface um our sports discussion um and proposal with just some general comments that none of the proposals um in front of you around sports and activities are things that we want to do. Um we're unfortunately in a budget um constraint that doesn't allow us a lot of options and I know that sports and activities have a lot of benefits to our students and to our school cultures. Um and we recognize all of that. I also

105just want to preface this that with that none of the sports that are on the elimination list um it it's not a value statement around those particular activities. Um the the the decision point for high school sports and activities was that we wanted to try to uh maintain some sort of sport or activity that both boys and girls could participate at any season during the year. So, we wanted to have a fullear um menu, if you will, for students to still participate in while still being fiscally responsible with a $90 million budget deficit. And so, when you look at the list of sports continuing, you will see that each sport um has a season. So, we have fall, winter, and spring sports present. We have equal opportunities for boys and girls. Um we we really

106looked at our facilities as well and some of the um facility contracts that cost us a lot of money and how we could offer sports without those contracts. And so um so this really was just simply a financial decision while still trying to maintain some sort of footprint for our students um to participate. Um I want to note that we will um still continue outsourced agreements with bowling, girls hockey, baseball, and softball. Those are current agreements that we have that are a costneutral for the district and we would continue those as well. Um when you look at the elimination list, um we actively would like to pursue conversations with our community about how we can make this work and still provide opportunities for our kids. Um, we recognize that many of the sports on that

107list, um, have high participation rates, have really strong community programs, and we want to engage with those community programs to say, how can we do this differently? Um, and so we are seeking conversations from our community. We will actively be um, seeking those out if this budget is approved. Um and and just this morning I met with our activities assistant principles from the high school level and we had some discussions about that. They're the folks that have the relationships with folks that can make this happen. And so we're already looking down that road. Um we want to have good solid experiences that keep our kids connected um you know through GPA requirements and things that come with activities. So, um, with all of that said, it's it's a sad time for us to have this

108on the list. Um, and we know it's important to a lot of people, but, um, we can't have a $90 million deficit without including some sort of cut to sports and activities. So, >> um, so just to discuss, >> you have a quick question. >> Quick question. Um, we did receive one email pointing out that um, track and field seasons begin in a snowy time of year, sometimes icy, and that the contract with the dome is an important piece of track and field continuing. >> So, what is that? How do how do we reconcile track and field being continued, but the dome contract >> prior to the dome >> being discontinued? >> Prior to prior to the dome, we had track and field, >> you know. Yep. and we had kids were using the gym

109and no there's not going to be anything else in those schools during that same time being utilizing the gym and the hallways and everything like that. Right. So, prior to the dome, we had we ran track and field. >> Yep. Um I did want to segue to Katie Parrot. um she's going to give you a rundown of what the costs per student and also per program so you have an idea of what each individual activity um costs us. >> So in >> thank you just remind me again what's the savings by eliminating our lease are in all agreement with the dome >> the dome cost contract is currently 220,000. >> Thank you. All right. So, in taking a look at setting allocations for the remaining sports, we did a deep dive into our last year

110of full program costs and revenues so that we ensure that we were kind of taking a look at everything across each individual sport, including participation. So, uh, for FY25, we pulled in, um, all of the facilities, transportation, addenda, all of the costs for each individual sport. And then we reduced, um, those amounts by the amount of, uh, sports and activities fees that are brought in by those sports to come up with a net program cost as well as a net cost per participant. So, you could see that uh, the public could see that and we could look at that. Um, additionally, in setting the allocations for the FY27 budget, um, what we're projecting, um, is, uh, changed in a couple of ways. We're assuming that with the reduction of certain activities that are offered, there's

111going to be some transition of those students who would normally participate in one activity into one of the existing or remaining activities. So, we did build in a little bit of wiggle room to ensure that there was some resource there. Um, assuming that there was kind of a transfer um into those other sports. Um, we also uh need to account for the increase to the um contracted agenda costs. So that's also built into the FY27 model as well as some remaining um kind of activities funds for all the other things that happen um through a school's student activities through a high school student activities um accounts. Uh so we really tried to kind of do a laser focus on what we would need to provide to make sure that we could incorporate some uh additional

112engagement in the remaining programs. >> All right. If there's no other questions about sports and activities. >> Okay. >> If I might. >> Thank you. Um so the chart that you just this chart some of these uh like basketball generates revenue right is that included in this cost? >> Yes, this this accounts for the revenue that's generated. So the FY27 preliminary budget um does include a reduction of revenue uh for the the lower amount of student activity fees that we would expect to receive. And then the costs here take into account those fees as well. So this is really showing the net cost after those revenues have been applied to >> sense. So then when we outsource like the bowling, girls hockey, baseball, softball, do they fall under? >> They do. Um that's part of

113the outsourcing agreement. Um we have a we actually have an agreement that we use with all of our outsourced activities. um that that [clears throat] is essentially a boilerplate and then we we will add particular things depending on the the activity or sport. Um but they do part of the outsourcing agreement is that students still have to follow all the OSA requirements. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. >> All right. If there's no other questions, I'll move us to uh taking a look at the effects at the alternative schools. Um so again um the PTR increase would impact alternative schools just like it would our other schools. Um there w is a net decrease of 1.5 FTE with principles. Um there is there are two positions that were not filled this year. A

114half-time position at um AK Choice and a full-time position at uh family partnership for assistant principles. Um rather than continuing those in the budget, we're using that as a a budget savings um because they were not filled this year. Um there is a uh nurse effect here um to move to that regional model. So our alternative schools would lose 5 FTE and nurses and we u mentioned the one FTE loss to Polaris K12 earlier in the presentation. Um move before we move to the next slide just a slight note on our charter schools. Um, regarding nursing, the the charter schools um because they set their own budget would have a choice to make um regarding nursing, they would either have to opt into the regional program or they would need to contract for their own

115full-time nurse outside of the regional program and that would come at their cost within their budget. So, moving to the regional nurse model. Um, so we can dive into this topic a little deeper. Um essentially the regional nurse model operates on a student need um system. So the regarding medical needs of students um so this isn't just um a student going to get an ice pack or a band-aid. This is documented medical needs such as tube feeding or diabetic care or medication distribution. Those types of needs that require um one of our nurses. So the the proposal is to essentially break our district into six regions that would have um 9 to 11 nurses per region depending on the need within those regions. And each region would serve roughly 12 to 14 schools. And so

116that equates to a 29% reduction um or 25 FTE um in our school nurses. Um and essentially what um will happen is this is a model that is followed in other districts and and has been modeled after just for awareness. Um it it's also um very very common in the medical field to have this type of model to cover needs of patients. And so um I just wanted to note that as a part of this proposal. So essentially if there is a high needs student that needs medical care from one of our nurses on a regular basis, we would have more nursing in that school than at a school that did not have those needs. So as an example, if you have a life skills um program and many of those students have regular nursing

117needs, you may have more nursing than a school that doesn't have a life skills program or a student or students with those needs. Um and there would be a team leader in each region that would deploy the nurses as needed for the day. Um and that includes um covering things like absences and illness that nurses have. So if a nurse is absent for the day, um instead of trying to cover down on a sub nurse, which is um really hard and often not we're not able to cover um we're able to adjust the staffing on the on the fly to respond to those needs. um in real time. So lessons >> to what extent, if any, is the Anchorage School District able to ask the state of Alaska with its millions and millions of dollars

118in new funding that has to be expended by the end of this year on health to step in and fill a gap to help our students. Mhm. >> Are we are we working with them aggressively to articulate the scale of our need and maybe talk about more than 1100 students with intensive needs and our many life skills programs. >> I believe what you're talking about is the rural health initiative. So that 272 million that um is is being allocated to the state. Um my understanding is that school districts are eligible for that. My understanding is that our grants and development department is taking a look at that and taking a look at not just nursing but other um identified needs. I think one of the caveats of that is that it can't be um a

119billable service. Um so that's another um kind of component has to be essentially um an expansion or or supplement of other funding streams. So, I do think that staff is looking at that and we could potentially bring some more details about that to the uh to the board. >> Yep. The Yeah, there's a whole team of people looking at it with the grants department. >> All right. If there's no other questions about nursing and the regional model, I'll turn it back over to Andy. >> All right. And just kind of wrap up our conversation regarding general fund. I just want to show you some data points here regarding what it would cost to bring our class size reduction down to either the state standards that are in HB57 or the standards that were set in

120the Pasaden study for their recommended class sizes. Um HB57 provided for or didn't provide for it just said you get district should have a target class size of 23 at grades grades through six and 30 at grades uh 7 through 12. If you look down at the chart at the bottom, you can see um you know the difference between what our proposed our preliminary PTR is for 27 and what the target is. You look at sixth grade is particularly telling where it's about 13 ptr higher in our preliminary budget than it is um what they say the target should be. Uh to be able to reach those targets is about 341 FTE we would need and about $46 million. The Picassadan study was 15 uh students at grades K through three and 25 at grades

121four through 12, which would need about $72 FTE and $95 million. Uh so really, you know, if it's if we really want to buy our class size down, um the state really does need to step in and provide the funding to to do this if we want to meet their targets. Um lastly, I'm not going to go through the next three slides in any detail just to provide the this is the actual accounting we use from budget to budget. You'll saw a lot of the slides earlier had some you know we talked about things in duplicate you saw nurses over and over counselors over and over uh psychologist a bunch of different ones that but this is really the budgettobudget accounting that is going to be in our budget book. in the budget book. There's

122also appendix C in the back that breaks this down even further. So, uh quite a bit more detail there. And then if you got a copy of the budget handout or the handbook and along with the presentation, the these charts are in that as well. And it's probably a little bit easier to read than what's on the slide here. So, we have it for administration and department changes, um all our special service changes, and then uh just the schoolbased changes in aggregate. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Katie for the transportation. >> Uh so there are a few uh things that I wanted to point out for what we are projecting uh for funding and budgets for transportation, student nutrition, and debt service. Uh beginning with transportation, you'll see that we are

123projecting um a decrease of the state transportation revenue in the amount of approximately 500,000. Uh, as you might remember, there was an increase to the per student amount that was allocated um for people transportation um at in this last legislative session. Uh that uh did provide essentially flat funding because it replaced the $2 million of supplemental funding from the the uh the year prior. Um but you'll see that there's a reduction primarily because that amount is um on the non-correspondence ADM. So we are projecting an a decline a small decline um in that. So that's translated there. Um the projection for expenditures was expect to go up to uh meet a contract uh for salaries and wages. Um some of that is related to the implementation of ballot measure one that bumps up the required

124uh minimum wage and there's a correlation between that and uh bus driver pay. Um and that's a statutory uh obligation. Um so we will have to look at a reduction in current service of around 10 to 15 routes depending on how things kind of pencil out to be able to balance to this revenue number. Um so the transportation department is looking at that and we'll have more details about that um probably closer to when we are planning for the school year um and know what what service and routes are needed uh for student nutrition. Um the there's been some big changes in the um student nutrition uh program. Um you may have heard that uh some of the schools have been brought on for breakfast and lunch program that didn't prior have a service. Um

125they also have transitioned some of the programs from a bagged lunch model to traditional hot lunch um service which is exciting. Additionally, uh for the current year, approximately 13 uh schools were transitioned to the community eligibility provision, the C program, which essentially um is a program that provides free meals to the student body as a whole uh based on um uh economic uh eligibility. So, um, what that means though is that there is a federal reimbursement that's available for those meals that are provided. Um, and the rates fluctuate a little bit. So, with all of those changes, um, we're being a little bit, um, you know, conservative in the FY27 preliminary budget based on, um, you know, just kind of waiting to see how things pencil out for all of the changes that have taken

126place for FY26. Uh we know based on uh research and evidences and things that we're already seeing in schools that some of these changes do increase uh engagement and participation in those programs which then sometimes translates to an increase in the uh federal reimbursements. So we want to see how that pencils out um uh coming into or moving into um FY27. And then last but not least, uh this is uh for debt service fund. Um and you'll see that for the current budget year, there was an amount of 3.5 million that was brought in to balance uh the fund in fund balance. Uh one of the things that we need to note for FY27 is that for the current year, the state of Alaska underfunded the school bond debt reimbursement program for districts across the

127state. So with that, Anchorage um is shorted about 4.4 million. Um the district does have some limited fund balance remaining to be able to absorb some of that shortfall. Um but that will uh leave about $2 million, a little bit north of 2 million projected um that we will need to request to make up the difference um in our 27 tax request. Um so we want to make sure that uh the board is aware of that. And then so lastly, you know, the the real takeaway from this is we're going to have this this budget really isn't going to be positive for anyone. We're going to have higher class sizes, decrease student supports, and decrease admin support just all around. Uh we'll we will decrease the district office footprint, but again, I mean, that's also

128goes to the level of support that we can provide. Uh so with that, I think we'll open it up to any sort of questions or comments the board might have. board members, I know we had a chance earlier to address questions. Is there anything else we haven't covered yet? Member Higgins, >> thank you. Um, awful lot of material and I appreciate it and it's it's alarming to me in a number of different ways. I mean, a lot of our kids are connected with school because of art, music, and sports and all that and we we lose them. The Ignite program, the top 20% of our kids in school, the highest performers, they grow the least amount according to national studies, they about 80% of a year because they're not challenged. So like the Ignite program

129is going to uh be a serious deficit to make up. I guess my focus though right now is just on safety. Um you know, the the the issue about middle school is important. We put six kid kids sixth graders in middle school. We know that there's problems that it can drop at graduation rates and academic scores and now we're moving from a middle school model which was adopted in the 90s because of graduation rates being higher taking that away and with sixth graders being in there and the studies show with the department of education US department of education and Stanford studies that academic I mean graduation rates can drop 1 to 2% and academic scores for low performing go down but from the safety standoint point that one that really jumps out with me after

130we had an incident in with in a high school and this was uh probably 12 13 years ago I know when you remember it but I'm not going to give the full details but we had an expert come up and did a presentation in regards to school safety and what they said was that the school safety focus is not on having safety people there to respond to a crisis but the importance of counselors and identifying kids at risk and we've seen that a national level out there uh presented in recent past. And so I'm just concerned about how we're going to make up for we got classes that are larger. You got teachers. It's hard to be more engaged with the individual students and we take the counselors out of the picture. We've got less

131medical staff as well, the the nurses. I'm just concerned about it from that standpoint. I just don't know what if anything we can do to address the potential risk associated with the reductions in counselors and the and the risk factors associated with that because the the the expert analysis on that was very clear and it's a national issue. But the identifying kids at risk is more important than reacting to them after they've lost control. And I just I'm just really concerned about if there's something we can do to offset some of the losses with the counselors and having larger classrooms and less activities and less relief. It's just something to look at. I know that we might potentially get more money from the state. We might get the money locally. It might be something and

132we can look at a little bit of this. But uh overall the the news from a standpoint for me for the for the success of the kids being important, Ignite is good example, but all the other issues being cut and class sizes are directly related to outcomes. Um and just for clarification, we the study shows that K through three is should be 1 to 15 and we're over 30. Uh and for those saying, well, we'll wait till you improve before we let the classroom size go down. That's that's kind of counterproductive. I hope it's not a ASD graduate um or something a little different than that. But it's just it's it's serious, you know, direction. I just I just want to make sure that the safety aspect at least can be addressed in some way.

133We need to look ahead if we get some additional funding what we might be able to do with that because that's very very concerning to me. Thank you. >> Thank you, Member Higgins. We'll go to Member Hollowman. Um, and I realize member Higgins is asking the administration, so I don't mean to answer for them, but I'm going to say there's not anything. And the I'll say somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago when there was pretty substantial cuts proposed for middle school, um, some administrators made it clear that we were still going to do everything we were doing. We were just going to have fewer people and it was going to be okay. we were going to adjust this or adjust that. And and I think that's very insulting to staff. Um as well as

134being misleading to the public. I mean, these cuts are being made because of lack of funds, not because we've identified programs that we think we can do away with and and not have a negative effect. These are bad. I mean, these are really bad cuts and it will be less service and and a less of a quality education for students in Anchorage. I don't want to phrase it any other way and and we're only doing it because we don't see another choice in it at all. Um I I think you know there's an old saying that only the mediocre are always at their best on any given day. We've got people that are doing their very best and some people that are falling short of that. It varies. But by and large, I think our

135educators and our support staff work really hard and they try to figure out how to do the best they can with what they've got day after day. And when you take those resources away, if you're already trying as hard as you can, you just can't make up for that. Um, to me it's like saying you're going to put less gas in your car, but you're still going to go as far. You're just going to find a way. And we all know that's silly. Um, ultimately people get worn down and they can't do more. So I I I do think we have to acknowledge these are cuts that will make our schools less safe, less clean, less attractive to students, less engaging to students. Um, but we're going to try to do the best we can

136with the funds we have and at a point where the state returns the resources to us. Um, I'm I'm hoping Anchorage sees its way to chip in to try to mitigate this as much as they're allowed to, which is what's being asked for in the levy. Um, I know that our workforce is going out going to go out and do the very best they can on it, but there's no way they can equal what we've been doing with the resources we've had in the past. So, I I do hope we don't try to softell this or suggest there's some magic way. You when we reorganized junior high in the middle school, that took money, but it also, I think, brought more than the sum of the increase. It was a different model that needed more

137support but delivered even greater impact and we're we're walking back from that. So we may be cutting a couple of dozen people out or three dozen people out but the impact of that is going to be greater because we're falling back to a system that just doesn't connect with kids as strongly as the model does. And so unfortunately I think the impact is worse than the sum of the parts. You know, some of these sports don't have a whole lot of kids participating in them, but for the ones that do connect with that sport, that's the world to them. And you can't make that up to them by saying, "Well, we still have these other sports over here." They're going to be students we just don't connect with anymore because we're not offering whatever that

138thing is that worked for them. Um, and we we still have to try to do the best we can with what we've got. I think we will. But this in all, as someone that's been with the district for about 30 years in some capacity or another, this appears devastating to me. This this will not be the same district it ever was. >> Thank you, Member Hullman. Um, and thank you to Dr. Bryant and staff for presenting this data. I hope it was insightful to the public. Um, and a reminder to the board, we'll have another meeting and a work session to discuss as well as a special meeting potentially on the 24th uh to adopt a budget. Uh, we will transition to item E, public comments. I want to welcome the public to our first

139opportunity for testimony. We've set aside a 1-hour time slot. Um, and we will be able to accommodate all testifiers tonight. During public comment, the board will not answer questions or engage in discussion. and it is our time to listen and your time to speak. Uh we welcome you to engage in our meetings. However, the conversation must be structured and civil. We utilize Robert's rules, which is a set of rules that have been used since the late 1800s. And uh have a few stipulations, including do not attack a member speaker's motives. Please no profanity or foul language. Uh please refrain from disturbing the meeting, no cheering, applause, outbursts, or waving of signs or posters. If you do have handouts that you wish to share with the board, please send them to Miss Sullivan, who is seated

140to my left. Additional details can be found on the at the handout uh that's located near the entrance to our boardroom tonight. Our first speaker tonight is our first two speakers tonight are Adam and Yell Kaufman. If you could please come forward. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> All right. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Adam Kaufman and I'm a sophomore at West High School. As soon as I learned that the tennis program was on the chopping block, sorry. As soon as I learned tennis was on the chopping block, knowing how much it meant to me and so many of the people around me, I knew something had to be done. I started a petition on Saturday and just about 24 hours

141later, on Sunday, we had almost 500 signatures. And now, just about 72 hours later, we have almost 800. in that petition which was you know about saving tennis. We also got a lot of great comments from the community some of which I wanted to share. Sarah said tennis is one of the only sports where students of all skill levels can participate and truly feel like they belong. Ben said, "In addition to tennis, I've competed in high school soccer for all four years. I love soccer and would hate for it to be cut, but the wide network of club and comp teams would allow my teammates to continue playing. For tennis, these external opportunities don't exist. If tennis is cut, the community it holds simply disappears. Amy said, "Tennis may not be the flashiest sport ASD

142has, but it's open to everybody who wants to play, giving students of all abilities a chance to be active, social, and have fun outside of school." Isaac said, "The sport's welcoming community helped me immensely with my own self-confidence, stay in shape, and gave me a great, really fun hobby that'll stay with me for life." Without the school district's programs, tennis would have never been so available to me and other students, and I'd not have been able to meet so many great players and friends. And lastly, Ken said, "It's among the lowest cost sport activities available to students. Tennis is what kept me in school." And one last thing in the nail when I was listening to the land acknowledgement earlier I remember hearing that the ASC is committed to the diversity and inclusivity tennis is

143really the manifestation of >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome Miss Kaufman. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Okay. Um my name is Yael Kaufman and I want to acknowledge what a challenging s uh situation you are in having to make such difficult choices. I thank you for doing your best and I certainly don't envy you. My ask is that you pick cuts that minimize student impact per dollar saved. This past season with 329 um players, boys and girls, tennis came in eighth for over for um total participants in all high school sports and activities and was the second least expensive one with under 35,000 in total cost to the district only to second only to esports. It's also the lowest cost for it on a per student basis with at

144just $106 per participant. Players bring their own rackets. They mostly play on outdoor courts and busing was effectively eliminated. Think about the impact caused to save 35k. Unlike other high school sports, if you cut the tennis program, kids have no alternatives. There are no club or comp teams up here. Um which also makes outsourcing um not an easy option. Um, and this would be especially unfortunate because it's one of the very few lifelong sports. Also, there's a saying, play tennis, live longer, 10 years longer. A Mayo Clinic study showed that playing tennis adds more years to life than any other sport. You could learn more about benefits of tennis in a handout that Coach Fo will be distributing. And when money is tight, it makes sense to keep the programs that help the most students

145for the least cost. If the goal is to protect students while fixing the budget, the while fixing the budget, tennis seems like the kind of program you keep as a small but important investment in our students and their futures. Thank you all so much. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are Emerson Sims and Santiago Menendez. You could both please come forward. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Hi, good evening. My name is Emerson Sims and I am a senior at Chugyak High School. And looking back, joining the tennis team my sophomore year was one of the best decisions I've made. It opened up an entire world that I didn't even know existed. Largely because tennis was not a popular sport in my family. But being

146in introduced to tennis gave me a game that I can play for the rest of my life. tennis allows students to connect across genders and ages in ways few other sports um doesn't do. Speaking for myself, one of my favorite hitting partners is my former German teacher, Fracendon. Um that kind of connection is something that's truly special to me and usually is rare in high school sports. I am fortunate enough that I was able to finish out my senior year of high school tennis. However, the thought of future students losing the opportunity to grow through the sport of all the hard work and potential being taken away honestly breaks my heart. For the other sports being considered for cuts, many of those athletes have club programs to fall back on. For tennis, that is simply

147not the case. I'm lucky enough to have a membership at one of the indoor courts in Anchorage. But for many students here, high school tennis is the only access they will ever have to this sport. By keeping tennis in the Anchorage School District, we are helping build tennis culture in Alaska. Tennis is a sport that introduces students to meaningful friendships, compatibility with diverse peers, and a supportive community built on respect, discipline, and personal growth. Without high school tennis, there is no pathway for the sport to grow in Alaska. and we risk losing a sport that stays with students long after high school ends. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> My name is Santiago Menendez. I'm a junior at Service

148High School. I have played soccer my entire high school career. And next year is supposed to be my last year at service. My last year representing my school. My last year wearing my service jersey. To me, soccer is more than just a game. It is where I learned to push through my failures. It's where I learned how to trust other people, my teammates. And when things got hard, I always kept going. On days when school felt overwhelming, soccer was a reason why I stayed focused. I kept showing up. It gave me structure. It gave me purpose. And it gave me a place where I belonged. If soccer is cut, uh it's not just a season that has lost, it's years of effort suddenly don't matter. For juniors now, seniors next year, it means never getting

149closer, never finishing what you started. And for the underassmen, it means that years of building towards something disappears right before you go to the finish line. I understand that budgets are complicated and I understand that these are choices that are difficult, but I ask you to consider what you're taking away from students who rely on programs like this. Not just soccer, but in sports in general. It's not just a competition, but it's for mental health, motivation, and connection to the school community. Soccer keeps students engaged and keeps us out of trouble. It gives us something to be proud of and gives us something um and a reason we believe in ourselves at all. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our last student testifier tonight is Lucas Stark. Not seeing Lucas, we'll move on to community

150speakers. Our first two are Lissa Wright and William Baxter. You both could please come forward. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. Our ability to meet the college career and life readiness goal of graduating students who are ready to be good citizens, communicators, and decision makers rests on a specific ecosystem of instructional leadership. Specifically, the roles of curriculum coordinators and academy coaches provide the infrastructure that allow our high schools to function and support all students, not just those in special programs. Curriculum coordinators are the architects of our promises to all students. They are the essential infrastructure for instruction, providing teachers with effective pedigogy, vetted resources, and rigorous standards. They manage curriculum development, compliance, and data-driven accountability. Their work, though unseen, is critical. When a coordinator leaves, the potential for adequate classroom

151support disappears, creating a vacuum that stalls educational progress. Academy coaches are the heartbeat of Anchorage School Board's CCL goal within the high schools. They are the primary source for collecting and reporting essential metrics that are critical for measuring and demonstrating progress. Without them, we have another unfunded and unsupported initiative that ultimately fails our students and disenfranchises business partners. If we are serious about every student graduating with a competitive advantage and about the future prosperity of our community, we must protect the people who build those advantages. Investing in these positions is not a cost. It is a direct investment in the success of our students and the vibrancy of our local workforce. The cost of maintaining these roles is far less than the long-term economic and social cost to our community of graduating students who are

152unprepared for college, career, and life. And yes, this letter will also go to the governor. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. My name is William Baxter and uh we need more uh uh sticker cowboys like me in Alaska for FFA and 4H and agriculture because I uh I do I do a lot of things like today I was at Alaska forum today and it was a a conference or it's like environment environmental and conference and uh I was there and it's a fiveday I've been there Friday and I I've been to the mystical league conference where there uh uh for five days for uh like mayors and uh slimming members and and so and I've been to a lot of other I go to the

153conferences. I go like when I leave here, I'll go over to the to the assembly and and uh and speak over there and and and that and I go to uh I do a lot of other things, but I'm I'm pretty busy and I keep on finding more to do. Like tomorrow, I'll go out to uh to uh Palmer, go to the their uh their uh school district meeting and I'll speak at at their school district meeting for FFA. and I do a lot of things and I I I think that that uh what I do is very effective and uh and very effective. I I mean uh at the meeting I saw uh uh one of one of the uh uh Lisa Mowsky's uh uh people and uh I and this weekend I was

154out the the agriculture thing and the uh uh Don uh Don what was the senator's name? No. Anyway, but I can't think of his name right now, but anyway, and also uh uh there was another person that's running for uh governor, uh Shelley Hughes was there. So, I I know a lot of I know everybody uh Lisa Macowski and all uh uh Danel is it? I don't know. Anyway, but anyway, but I even uh Nick Begish knows me and uh that Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are Gloria Ruxel and Chelsea Ambrose. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Good evening. [clears throat] My name is Lori Rexashel. I've served in the Anchorage School District for 26 years, including the last 16 as an

155administrator. I'm in my seventh year as an elementary school principal, a parent of a junior in ASD, and a taxpayer. I care deeply both professionally and personally about the future of our schools. Anchorage has been discussing school consolidation for years. Staff and community members have invested countless hours in drafting plans and participating in meetings. The longer we delay continued structural changes, the more we deepen our financial crisis. I want to recognize Dr. Bryant's steady leadership through the right sizing efforts. He and his team have shown professionalism and courage in bringing forward difficult necessary proposals. While I have not experienced the threat of my own school closing, I understand why communities fight to keep theirs open. That is their role. But strong school systems require leadership that sees the whole picture and makes decisions for long-term

156stability. We cannot keep spreading limited resources across buildings not at capacity. Thriving schools need multiple classes per grade level, full-time specialist, a functioning intervention team, school nurses, mental health, and staffing to provide consistent support. Thanks to ASD staff that work to develop this devastating budget and present it tonight. It's not an easy task. Our students deserve more. Please reconsider and consolidate schools now. Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Hello, my name is Chelsea Ambrose and I teach art at Glattiswood and Conincaid Elementary Schools. I'm testifying on the proposed cuts to elementary art music. Firstly, it is imperative that ASD formulates a clear plan that outlines the changes to art and music teachings. Um, currently there are multiple vastly different music and art

157plans being proposed. Uh and if restructuring is indeed required, I recommend that ASD admin consults experts in the field. Uh to my knowledge, no music or art teachers or the fine arts department has been consulted on these proposed uh cuts. Um so we can formulate a plan that best serves our students within the confines of this budget proposal and these cuts that seem to be necessary. Secondly, I stress the importance of art teachers teaching art and music teachers teaching music. We've spent years of education, training, and practice cultivating our expertise in our respective fields. ASD Elementary Art has spent the past three years building and training on a new national art standardsbased curriculum that's grounded and diverse in Alaskan art and 21st century skills. Music and art teachers are qualified to teach completely different subjects.

158If we indeed want to improve student outcomes, improve climate and connectedness and behavior and the academic outcomes that follow, educators must teach their specified subject matter. Board admin, I invite you to visit my classroom and witness the profound differences between a music and art classroom firsthand. I'll follow up with an email. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next question, >> I have a little bit more. >> Oh, please go ahead. Um, I also want to address one other point. Um, so no art teachers travel during the day. So there's no money saved between itinerary positions in that regard and very few music teachers do. I know a lot of PE teachers do. Um, but I just wanted to address that point. Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are

159Erica Arnold and Amanda Bar. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Hi, good evening. I'm Erica Arnold and I've known many of you on this board for years. I've talked to you, I've listened to you, and I've voted for you. I am your canary in the coal mine and I'm here to tell you that there is danger ahead. If you don't begin listening to the people in the classrooms today, in our schools today, teaching the kids today, disaster is certain. When the board and the district choose the few over the many, the most will suffer. That is what you're doing when you choose not to consolidate schools presented and present cuts that are made to anger, not fix. Close and consolidate schools as directed by the teams who created the rubric.

160use data and fact, not emotion, to clo to choose which co schools must close and that is what the majority of this community wants. It is what our district needs. We must consolidate our limited resources to benefit our kids. Please ask yourself, what is a school? What is public education? Is it assessment scores? Is it new initiative? Is it a building? Your answer to all of those should be no. The public a public school is the opportunity for fair and equitable should be fair and equitable for all students to learn and thrive in all the while feeling safe and connected. Public school is the place for fun, fine arts, sports, engagement, and enrichment. Large class sizes and combo classes do not provide an environment for our Alaskan children to thrive in. So go ahead, revote.

161Make a motion to reook at that data. close and co consolidate schools. It's okay to admit a mistake. I tell my students all the time, mistakes are wonderful opportunities to learn. Mistakes are proof that you're trying. Please show us you're trying. Thank you for listening. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> My name is Amanda Bar. I'm here to testify about the elimination of the curriculum coordinators in the proposed budget. Curriculum coordinators provide a lifeline support for K12 teachers and principles. My understanding of the current proposal is that coordinators are being eliminated and will be replaced by classroom teacher agenda. This model is based on what's currently happening in science where four teachers support secondary department chairs and curriculum design for two courses. These teachers

162are doing phenomenal work. But this project would not be possible without the three years of focus, time, and leadership of the former science coordinator. The budget for this model is significantly higher than the one outlined in the proposal. In fact, if all five coordinators are replaced in this way and a supervisor as proposed is hired to oversee the work, the amount required equates to five FTE positions, five content coordinators. This is not saving any money. It is only adding work to already exhausted teachers. Additionally, this proposal only focuses on secondary. What is the plan for supporting the K12 continuum of learning? We currently have limited interest in agenda opportunities available for curriculum work. Teachers are burnt out. What guarantee is there that these positions will be filled. Will these roles turn over year to year?

163Our teachers are rock stars and are amazing at supporting one another. Where is the time? This proposal also effectively eliminates the math department for our school district. What is the plan for supporting students, principals, teachers, families, and math? How will this impact progress towards our math board goal? National comparable districts have four to five people supporting math at their district offices. Is eliminating the math department the best solution for our students? On behalf of our students and teachers, I urge the board to request that leadership propose an alternative to cutting all five curriculum coordinator positions. I look forward to speaking with you soon regarding our progress towards our math board goal. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are Elizabeth Hup and Heather Hulken. I'm sorry, Miss Fo. Uh, welcome. You have

164two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Good evening, board members. My name is Elizabeth Foit and as you can tell by my um uniform, I am an art teacher. I have served 11 years as the elementary art teacher at TACU. I also work as a curriculum support specialist for elementary art across the district. As a parent of two Inlet View students, I'm speaking as both an educator and as a member of our community on the plan to restructure fine arts. First, expertise matters. Art and music are distinct disciplines, each with its own pedigogy standards and practice certification. Our new elementary art curriculum aligns with the national standards and emphasizes local artists. Our learning objectives emphasize 21st century skills like creativity, adaptability, problem solving, and collaboration. Only teachers who are trained in these specific standards

165can deliver that curriculum effectively. The same is true for music. Combining the two subjects under a single fine arts class dilutes the specialized instruction our students deserve. Second, every student benefits from consistent art exposure. Every elementary student in our district receives quality art instruction. For students in our economically and culturally diverse community, those hours are vital for developing communication, social, and emotional skills. But art is only universal at the elementary level and elementary students only have art 18 hours a year. That means some ASD students only have 108 total hours of art before they graduate high school. Reducing those hours at all is um a disservice to all learners. Finally, transparency and inclusion are essential. Decisions that reshape curriculum must involve the very professionals who implement them daily. We need a clear, written plan that

166outlines how and when art and music will be taught. And we need a seat at the table as stakeholders throughout this process. Teachers have navigated unconventional schedules for years, and we know what works and what doesn't. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Good evening. My name is Heather Helguson. I am an Ignite teacher at three elementary schools. I'm here to speak for my students that I serve in Ignite. Last week, I had a one-on-one conversation with a student who shared that Ignite is too easy sometimes and too sometimes too hard. I told him that it isn't intentional. My job is to push him to failure and then teach them how to persist through it. Learning how to fail, reflect, and grow is a vital

167skill, especially for gifted students who often go through school without being truly challenged. This moment reminded me why Ignite matters. It provides experiences students simply do not receive elsewhere in the school day. However, I'm increasingly concerned about the erosion of enrichment opportunities for our gifted kids. Last year, during my planning time, I observed my Ignite students in their win groups. Too often, 20 or more students were completing worksheet worksheets rather than receiving meaningful enrichment. With the reduction in specialists, our gifted students may no longer be challenged during win time, and that worksheet time may increase. Districtwide, the Ignite program serves over 2,000 students with only 18 teachers. Personally, I work with over a 100 identified Ignite students in addition to 25 students who receive enrichment services from me. This is a heavy workload, but it

168also reflects the enormous demand for and the value of this program. For 16 years, the Ignite program finds itself has found itself on the chopping block. Even though it serves as some of our most academically vulnerable students, gifted students are often overlooked because they appear to be doing fine. But without appropriate challenge, they disengage. They underachieve and lose their love of learning. Each year, I work with students who set a goal to earn a place in Ignite because they want to be part of something meaningful. The program builds long-term relationships, fosters resilience, and provides intellectual challenge for students who desperately need it. I urge the board to recognize that Ignite is not an extra. It is an essential service. If we truly value equity, growth, and meeting the needs of all learners, then we must

169protect this program. Thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are Kelly Ramy and Greta Wade. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin. >> Good evening. My name is Kelly Remy, a former ASD elementary principal and now I serve our district as an Ignite teacher. I'm here to testify today to fund Ignite programs at the elementary neighborhood school. Ignite stands for including gifted needs in today's education. The mission of Ignite is to enrich, inspire, nurture, and the academic and social emotional needs of gifted students, preparing them for college, career, and life. This mission encompasses the school board goals. The current proposal of serving our elementary gifted students through a 30 to 45 a minute win what I need model does not truly prepare these 2,000 kids for college career and life. the quality

170of the instruction that gifted teachers possess along with the hands-on units of growth mindset, problem solving, the 16 habits of mind, and so many other things, especially to the gifted students in our title one schools is what they deserve. And the solution of the win model is not going to do that. Each day I teach Ignite, I see firsthand the different ways they think, navigate, draw solutions. It's beyond their years. Ignite provides them the challenge they need. I honestly did not see this as a principal. It took me going back into the classroom to see the value of Ignite. Please look at and relook at how to fund Ignite teachers so we can prepare our gifted students in our neighborhood schools, our title one schools, especially in our title one schools so they can have

171the educational journey through high school and their college and careers. Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Hi, my name is Greta Wade. I'm the school nurse at Diamond High School and I actually graduated from Diamond High School also which is pretty cool. But um I just I had a lot prepared but I realize all of you are in such a hard position and everyone wants to fund the Ignite program. Everyone wants to fund the tennis program. Everyone you all want we're all on the same team here. We all want this but there's no money. nursing. I have to say when you're looking at the Maslo hierarchy of needs, it's the bottom tier. It's health. Basic health is the first tier. The second

172tier is safety. I ask you, please look at the data about what nurses do. It's not about tube feedings. Yes, I do tube feedings. It's the easiest thing I do in my day. I know this person's coming twice a day. I adore this person and I get to do two feedings and bond with them. That's easy. Yes, it does require being a registered nurse. But what also requires me what also the other things I do are just so much more difficult, more challenging. I've been a nurse for 26 years. I did my training in New York City. That's where I went to school. I'm from Anchorage, but I did go to to school there. And I can just tell you that working as a high school nurse is one of the hardest jobs I've ever

173had and I've only been doing it for one year. I see between 30 and 50 kids a day. Nurses in school save lives. It's about health and safety. Please look at the numbers. It is not normal or common to have a regional model. It's cutting 25 nurses to do a very important job. It means no nurse is attached to a school. She failed to mention that. That's a huge part of the model. Diamond High School will not have a nurse. I don't care if it's not me, but Diamond High School deserves a nurse. >> And thank you for your testimony. Our next two speakers are Nancy Bale and Christy Sitz. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Good evening. My name is Nancy Bale and I've got a lot of scrawly

174notes here and I hope it doesn't take too long. I've been a school nurse at WH School since 2005 and added the ACT program in 2010. The entire time the district had me, they deployed the one nurse, one school model. It's been there ever since I worked here in the days of Carol Como. The district considered this model vital and central to the well-being of our children. These budget changes would remove that as central guidance and instead would go to a regional model. To be clear, nurses will be absent from buildings. Sure, I've heard the arguments about money. Here's my question. Is it actually going to be cost effective to cut nurse staffing? Here are some thoughts to consider as you debate this. First, going to a regional model will make nurses less effective. We're

175going to be distracted looking for ways to cover schools. We'll be spending more time in our day training, advising, and driving and less time providing the direct care we are so good at. Second, our most acutely affected students, the ones with unstable diabetes, allergies, etc., etc., will instantly be more vulnerable. Nurses are called upon to take care of their needs any time during the school day. Perhaps we need to hire contract nurses. This is going to cut into cost savings. Third, delegation of nursing care, which will have to happen under this model, is controversial, and many duties cannot be delegated. School staff to whom so-called routine nurse duties can be delegated are not abundant. They don't really like that job. They need an addendum and they deserve it. Would this cut into cost savings and

176risk? Consider the legal implications of this action. Why not two lawsuits over careful? >> Thank you for your testimony. Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Hi, my name is Christy Sitz and I'm the president of the Anchorage Education Association. I want to say thank you to both the ASD and the AEA bargaining teams for their work in reaching an agreement. I hope that later on this evening you guys ratify the contact the contract that's being brought to you because it's time for us to focus on our primary goal providing quality education for our students. With a budget deficit, as a lack of state funding, and educator shortages, we face a long list of challenges. However, our students must remain the priority as we work together to address these issues. Educators

177are leaving because their voices are often missing from the conversations that impact their classrooms. As we move forward, we must prioritize educator retention. I look forward to working together to develop a concrete plan that includes all stakeholders in the decision-making process. Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker tonight is Evan Sheldon. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Please begin when you're ready. >> Uh, I got an idea. You guys trying to do budget cuts? Cut teachers that want to project their LGBTQ ideology on our straight kids? I don't try to offend them. Why do they try to offend my family? Um, do you all believe people can biologically change genders? Cuz that's what brought me here today. I'm not bringing up names, but I do have concerns about what is being

178taught to my kids. I was reporting about a man that dresses like a woman at my kids school. I tell my daughter that that is a man and don't let anyone confuse you. I called the school district to talk about it and I was told that that's my opinion when I said nobody can biolog biologically change genders. Is science wrong? Is that what this district stands behind? Is my daughter being groomed? This liberal lie about changing genders must stop. If an employee of the school want to show a sexual preference, they should do that on their own personal time. Don't try to groom our kids with those ideas. This isn't Epstein Island. And I and whoever thinks they can change genders should shouldn't be working at school district. The person at the school district that

179I argued would probably fail biology. And here's why. Pushing that lie. Why? When I tell them about my teaching about my kids things, why do you all look away to please the LGBTQ community? Why does this have to go this for? I don't want my people teach I I don't want people teaching my kids those things. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Sheldon. Thank you for your testimony. That completes public testimony for this evening. A point of information for the public's edification. Uh the topic of consolidations did come up at our work session and um there were board members who supported consolidation and the administration stated that if additional board members were to consider consolidation, they could revisit that topic. So please feel free to email the school board, schoolboard.org um if you so choose.

180With that said, we'll move on to our consent agenda. Item F. Is there a board member who wishes to pull an additional item from the amended consent agenda reminding board members that 116 was already moved to our next meeting? >> Okay. Not seeing any board member who wishes to pull an item from the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve? >> I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. Second. >> A motion to approve what's remaining of the consent agenda was made by member Bellamy and seconded by member Hollowman. Uh seeing no debate, um Miss Sullivan, a voice vote to approve the consent agenda, please. >> Student Representative Madison, >> yes. >> Member Lessons, >> yes. Member Donley, >> yes. >> Member Higgins, >> yes. >> Member Bellamy, >> yes. >> Member Wilson,

181>> yes. >> Member Hollowman, >> yes. >> President Jacobs, >> yes. >> The consent consent agenda was adopted by a vote of 7 to zero. That brings us to action items. Our first item is G1, student hearings. Member Bell, you have a motion? >> I I do. I move to approve the expulsion of the student associated with ASD incident uh number 1441624 as discussed in executive session. >> Second. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion made by member Bellamy, seconded by member Hollowman. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we can move to a voice vote. Miss SVO, when you're ready. Member Bellamy, >> yes. >> Member Higgins, >> yes. >> Member Donley, >> yes. >> Member Hollowman, >> yes. >> Member Wilson, >> yes. >> Member Lessons, >> yes. >> President Jacobs, >>

182yes. >> The student hearing uh motion is adopted by a vote of 7 to zero. That brings us to ASD memorandum number 085, approval of charter school application Oceans Academy. Member Bell, you have a motion? >> I do. I move to approve memorandum number 085, approval of charter school application for Oceans Academy uh to begin operations for the 2627 school year pending subsequent approval by the state of Alaska Board of Education and the execution of a charter contract between the Anchorage School District and the school's academic policy committee. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion made by member Bellamy, second by member Hollowman. Uh, moving to discussion and amendments. Member lessons. >> Um, Mr. President, I appreciate the uh original motion, but at this point in time, I would like to offer an amendment.

183If that is in order. >> It is. Please proceed. I move to and Miss Sullivan already has the language. I move to approve Oceanceans Academy Charter School starting in the 27 202728 school year pending subsequent approval by the Alaska State Board of Education and the execution of a charter contract between the Anchorage School District and the school's academic policy committee APC. The change in start date will allow the school to form an APC, determine curriculum requirements, and go full full go through a full lottery in school year 2026 27. This will set the school up for optimal success upon initiating their first year. >> Second, the motion. The amendment to the main motion was made by member Lessons, seconded by member Hollowman. Member Lessons, any additional comments on the amendment? Um, on the amendment specifically,

184I think it is a direct acknowledgement of the incredible work that the applicants have put forward um to getting to this point. They've been here multiple times answering um all of the questions the board has asked engaging with the administration and to that point the administration has done a remarkable job supporting the applicants. So, thank you for all of that work. Um we one of the things that I am certainly aware of is the need to launch success is that the need to launch success is that successful launching of a new charter school requires an enormous um amount of time, energy, effort, preparation. This would allow the charter school uh leadership to form that APC to initiate the process in a way that will be significantly less rushed than it would at this point in

185time for the start of the 20627 school year. Um, I will also acknowledge that we have enormous financial concerns and this um this shows that the board would give approving this amendment shows that the board would be um highly supportive of the new charter school being created and moving forward, but that it would not redirect resources away from the rest of the district at this point in time. and I'd be interested in hearing other board members comments at this point. >> Thank you, Member Holland. Um, yes, I appreciate member lessons making this amendment. I had contemplated moving to table the motion uh primarily because unfortunately we have sat through hours of cuts and there is a cost associated to the district in the process of the school being set up. It's not huge. Um, and

186I think it offers a marvelous option for students that that it appeals to and and I think the range of options we offer is a strength, but we are cutting things um meaningful to at least as many students that cost us less and and that's difficult. I do like the idea of moving the approval of showing our firm support for it. as you say, the people working on this have worked very hard. Um, it's just a bad moment in time and uh, yes, I want to support what they're doing, but I also want us to hold on to the funds while the next board finds a way forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'll jump in the queue just to state that I appreciate the amendment. I think it's eminently reasonable um especially given the

187information that the board was presented with earlier today. Um and also I think it's considerate to the the future um academic policy committee of oceans. Um I am going to be a big fan of this program once it's fully established and up and running. And so um even contemplating tableabling or denying the application for me wasn't an option. But this strikes a nice balance of allowing for additional time to prepare uh while also allowing this board to focus on the significant challenges that are going to be in front of us this month. Uh member Bellamy, >> thank you. Uh question for the administration. Is there anything in the statutes that would prevent us from doing a doing this? like can we is there anything that we need to know before we vote relative to um

188whether or not we can do it? >> No, I'm not aware of any statutory um regulations that would prevent this from happening the way that it's proposed the delay. >> Okay. So, I thanks member lessons. Um I I am a fan of Oceanceans Academy charter. I've struggled with um I mean the devastating cuts. Uh, but I I really want them to know that it's somebody used the term perfect storm with me today. Um, and this is kind of it. Like we we want I want to vote for Oceans Academy charter. Uh, but we can't afford it. We can't afford it. But um and delaying it is not going to work. I mean delaying the start date of it. If that is a statutoily u doable, I would like to do that. I think that's a

189nice compromise. Um it gives them more time. It gives us more time uh to help build that program um and just have it set up for success. So thank you. >> Thank you, Member Higgins. Yeah, I I will I support the motion as well. I I like the uh oceans what they're trying to do. Stream continuation I think is going to be great for kids. Uh and I like the commitment that we're saying that the following year they can rely upon having the support. Uh but this year every time you add something that's the funds you have to say that funds could go towards counselors, it can go towards Ignite, it can go towards tennis, it can go there were so many options out there that um if we had additional funds that would be

190used for and so uh adding to that deficit at this point in time is something just can't afford to do. And I am sorry that we can't afford it at this point in time because it is a great program. But I I like the idea that we're committing to it that next year um they will be with us and we'll make the adjustments for it. Thank you. >> Thank you. See no other comments. We'll move to a voice vote on ASD memorandum number 085. >> Question. >> The amendment. >> Member Donley question on the amendment. >> U pertains to the amendment and the main motion in the backup materials. It indicates that the projected allocation to create this charter school is $1,35,000. So that would is that accurate? I'm asking the administration. Okay. So my

191observation would be that's it's more money than the proposed reduction to hockey, volleyball, wrestling, crosscountry skiing, and the dome. and we've already cut those. >> Okay. Um, seeing no other discussion on the amendment, u, Miss Sullivan, voice vote on the amendment, please. >> Student Representative Madison, >> yes. >> Member Henkins, >> yes. >> Member Wilson, >> yes. >> Member Hollerman, >> yes. >> Member Donley, >> no. >> Member Lessons, >> yes. Member Bellamy. >> Yes. >> President Jacobs. >> Yes. The amendment to ASD memorandum number 085 is adopted by a vote of 6 to1 underneath the main a main motion as amended. Is there any additional discussion? Seeing none, Miss Sullivan, can we have a voice vote on ASD memorandum number 085? Approval of chart uh charter application Oceans Academy as amended. Student Representative Medicine,

192member lessons, member Donnelly, member Holman, member Higgins, member Bellamy, member Wilson, President Jacobs. >> Yes. ASD memorandum number 085 approval of charter school application Oceans Academy is approved by a vote of 6 to1. Congratulations to the applicants and thank you for your work. We'll move on to ASD memorandum number 129 approval of tenative agreement Anchorage Education Association. Is there a motion member Belly? >> Yes. I move to approve memorandum number 129 uh approval of the tentative agreement for the Anchorage Education Association between the district and the Anchorage Education Association which will establish terms and conditions of employment for individuals in this unit during the period July 1st 2026 through June 30th 2029. >> Second motion made by member Bellamy seconded by member Hollerman. Is there discussion hearing and seeing number for many years I've been

193advocating that we need more instructional hours in our schools statewide and I'm really excited that this contract contains an additional three instructional days to our school year. I think that's a tremendous step forward. um we're desperately short on instructional days and instructional hours compared to other states around the nation and I think that's just a really positive aspect of the proposed agreement uh before us tonight. >> Thank you. Seeing no other discussion, Miss Sullivan, a voice vote on ASD memorandum number 129. >> Student Representative Madison, >> yes. Member Donley, >> yes. >> Member Bellamy, >> yes. >> Member Higgins, >> yes. >> Member Wilson, >> yes. >> Member Hollowman, >> yes. >> Member Lessons, >> yes. >> President Jacobs, >> yes. >> ASD Memorandum number 129, approval of tenative agreement, Anchorage Education Association, is adopted

194by a vote of 7 to zero. Brings us to our last action item tonight. AD Memorandum number 130, approval of tenative agreement, Anchorage Principal Association. Member Bellamy, is there a motion? Yes. I move to approve memorandum number 130 and adopt the tentative agreement between the district and the Anchorage Principles Association which will establish terms and conditions of employment for individuals in this unit during the period between July 1st 2026 and June 30th 2029. Second >> motion made by member Bellamy, second by member Hollowman. Is there discussion >> hearing? And seeing none, Miss Sullivan, a voice vote on ASD memorandum number 130. >> Student Representative Madison, >> yes. >> Member Lessons, >> yes. >> Member Donley, >> yes. Member Higgins. >> Yes. >> Member Hollivan. >> Yes. >> Member Bellamy. >> Yes. >> Member Wilson. >>

195President Jacobs. Just confirming I can vote on this. >> U. Member Wilson, if you believe you have a conflict of interest. Um, you could disclose that and I'll ask if any board member feels that you has a concern and at which point I will make a ruling if you'd like. My my husband is a principal, >> so I just wanted to make sure it's acceptable for me to vote on it. >> So, it's my ruling that you don't have a conflict of interest and can't vote on this contract as um there's a host of members who have nothing to do with any family relationship you may have. Does any board member have a concern with member Wilson voting on this item? Okay. Hearing and seeing that, Miss Sullivan, the voice vote, please. >> Student Representative

196Madison. >> Yes. Member Lessons, >> yes. >> Member Donley, >> yes. >> Member Higgins, >> yes. >> Member Bellamy, >> yes. >> Member Hollerman, >> yes. >> Member Wilson, >> yes. >> President Jacobs, >> yes. >> EST Memorandum number 130, adoption of tenative agreement. Anchor Anchorage Principles Association uh is adopted by a vote of 7 to Z. That completes our action item calendar tonight. We'll move on to non-action items. Is there a board member who wishes to discuss any of the non-action items before they come back in front of us at our next meeting? Seeing none, we are completed. We have completed public comment for tonight. We'll move on to school board and administration comments. We'll start at my left. Member Higgins. The floor is yours. >> I guess I you know it been a

197long night. We we we've gone through the presentation on the budget twice. So, you give us, you know, a little notice. Uh, this is a one of the toughest nights I've ever had on school board, and I've been on school board a long time, looking and knowing we're going to hurt kids, knowing that we're not providing the support that staff needs and they should expect. And um, that makes it uh, very difficult for me. I'm worried about safety. I don't want to wake up one day and find out that we've had a safety problem because of the cuts we've had to make. But we don't have much choice and fairness to this whole situation. I um I sincerely hope that the public, you know, is our boss. Okay. So, you telling us what you want

198us to do and that's appropriate. We have to do the same thing on the legislature. What you want the legislature to do, you need to tell them. I remember back in I think it was and it was a time I know um um um member Hollerman made reference to the the time where middle school was actually being threatened and we talked about seven classes in high school and uh great Alaska schools got all involved. The public let the legislature know what they wanted. They did so with a lot of communications and emails and and phone calls and presence in Juno was very high and that's the year we got a BSA increase and they responded to it. Um they complained about the number of people that contacted them and they thought we encouraged it and

199I said well we encourage civics and that's what this is about. So, I urge people to realize what's at stake. If you have a view, opinions, and you think you got a direction you want the legislature to go or or any elected official, you should let them know uh because this is an opportunity where it will make a difference and that's an important issue. And in regards to both of the contracts that we've had, um, I really appreciate what it takes sitting at negotiation tables. Some I have done that in my life and it's never easy, but when you come across and you got both sides walking away um, in a supportive way wanting to do something positive, uh, it's a really good feeling. So my appreciation to both negotiation teams and congratulations to the

200employees be for the representation because I think it's a great outcome for all of them. Thank you >> member lessons. Thank you very much to uh staff for preparing the budget on time, getting it published, um reaching out to the community to alert them about the gravity of our situation and going over an extensive um presentation not once but twice uh today uh in case folks weren't able to make the 3:00 work session. Um, I've known February was going to be a difficult month since the legislature gave out last spring. Um, I will share that I was at Bartlett High School one day, a beautiful fall day. Um, I don't know round about September or October walking around on the fields and it was a sort of fall day where you hear the environment and

201it's alive. Yes, there are birds, but you heard kids on the football field. You heard kids running um through the woods because cross country was there. You JOTC was like on, I don't know, some sort of an expedition. Kids were just out doing all of the things that they're supposed to be doing and it was vibrant. It's the sort of thing that you think about with schools and fall. And the thought occurred to me that in fall of 2026, those woods will be silent. And that was a really awful thought. So, um, I will be advocating. I will be looking at our budget very closely. Frankly, we've had lots of folks say that yes, they support school closures. Um, it's something that I see value in, but as I've shared before, I think we need

202to look more closely at schools that um really struggle with uh offering dual programs. I think that there is additional FTE that's being used and I would really like to ask the administration and see if we can partner and look more closely at improving levels of service um in relation to clusters of schools um where we can decrease costs and maintain programs and improve levels of service. I think those things are all possible. Um, so you know, one thing I've learned on the board is that when smart, dedicated people work really hard, all sorts of interesting things are in fact possible. And so I'm going to choose to be hopeful over the next uh few weeks and um look forward to brilliant suggestions coming forward from the community, from board members, from the administration as

203we think about our situation. I do want to pivot to and maybe I want to end with something hopeful. If you were to have looked at the information only report in our non-action item on it's memorandum 124, the second quarter report of funded discretionary grants and donations received. And you look at the array of people who have donated their time and dollars to the Anchorage School District, you would see that people are attached to ASD schools and students and community at a local, state, and global level. Our schools have received grants from Germany in way words that I cannot read from the Onida Nation, from the US Chamber of Commerce, from Delta Airlines, from multinational corporations, the Alaska Railroad, the Alaska State Council for the Arts, individual donors who fund classroom snacks, local companies. There

204are so many people who care about our kids and if you're looking to find a moment of gratitude, go read the report attached to memorandum 124. That's >> Thank you, Member Donley. >> Yes, I've talked about it quite a few times and referenced it earlier when we voted on the contract. Um, the last time I researched over something like 36 states require 1,080 hours of instruction per year to count as a school year for public schools. Alaska is something about well, there's two different standards, but it's it's about 940 hours each year. There's also um factors of the number of school days. So if you think about that, if you spread that over a K through 12 education, our students are getting something like more than a year less total instruction than students in all

205those other states. That's really significant. If you want to see something that's fundamentally broken with education in Alaska, I think that just screams out that's wrong. we need to adjust that requirement and increase the number of instructional hours required in a school year um for our students sake. Um the 3 days a year may not sound like much, but if you spread that over a K through K through 12 education, you're talking about well over a month of additional instruction those graduates are going to re receive during their K through2 education. That's significant. That's meaningful. So that's a very positive step forward tonight for students in the Anchorage School District. >> Thank you, Senator Representative Madison. Any closing comments? >> Um, yes. A few things I do want to add is obviously like I mentioned

206in my report, I've noticed a lot of different ways that students have become recently more active in their voice and civics, civics engagement. And it's something that I want to say that of course as me I'm really proud of. But I do want to leave people especially different students of my age or maybe even younger to know that one of the most important things that you can do to affect these type of situations things like a budget crisis is to vote. I really want students especially if you were 18 right now or you are going to become 18 to consider voting in your next election. No matter what your beliefs are. I strongly do think that issues like our budget crisis, as much as we are as an administration, there's only so much we can

207do when there's only so much we can work with with our legislature. And so I do really want to remind students that there are ways that you can look up online to track bills to find your representatives and senators. And voting is something that's really important and it's going to stick with you for life because it is something that can provide you much power over finding solutions to these issues and negotiating with the people who really most impact the policies that are directly relating to you. But other than that, I just express my appreciation for the work that the board's doing and the community for reaching out so much, especially the students who came tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you, Madison. Member Wilson. >> That was so very well said. Thank you, Madison. Um, I'd

208like to use my time to talk about something positive um, regarding the district because I I know we had to hear a lot of heavy tonight. Um, ASD is proud to celebrate outstanding recognition at the Alaska Statewide Special Education Conference. ASD received two incredible awards from the Governor's Council on Disabilities and Special Education. The ACT program was honored with the inclusive practices team award, excuse [clears throat] me, for the 2025-26 school year. Birwood ABC principal Tammy Hirschman received the inclusive practices individual award for her unwavering commitment to ensuring students with special needs can participate fully in the same activities as well as students at her as well as all students at her school. We are proud to share that the ASD special education administrative team was a nominee for the team award, an honor that

209reflects their dedication and leadership. And thank you to all who work every day to support inclusion, access, and opportunities for Alaska's children with special needs. Your impact truly matters. You can read more about all of that information on our um ASD Facebook page. And as the superintendent said in his letter to the community, these reductions are not a reflection of the commitment, talent, and effort of our staff. Our educators and employees continue to serve students with dedication and care. The challenges we are facing are driven by long-term funding misalignment at the state level, not due to the lack of effort or care in our schools. Also wanted to um point out that the online lottery is open and closes on March 19th. wanted to share that February is Black History Month and honors the triumph,

210struggles, and foundational contributions of black Americans. And our school student, excuse me, school of business partnership nominations are due on February 23rd for our education of tomorrow leaders, our business of tomorrow leadership awards, and our student of tomorrow leadership awards. So please continue or please consider nominating a an amazing business partner, educator or student for one of those awards. Thank you. >> Thank you, member Hullman. >> Well, thank you. Um I am kind of looking at things from a certain perspective, the the one that you start to look at things when you get really old and it's transferring a little bit to the Anchorage School District. I I started about 30 years ago and have been involved daily in some fashion or another ever since. And I'm three months away from that ending. And I

211I won't be eligible to substitute teach anywhere because all of the schools start way before I get up in the morning. So that's just not possible. I might might be able to do an afternoon playground duty at an elementary school, but that those hours are kind of long for me also. So, um it is I've I have also attended schoolboard meetings almost every school board meeting for the past 16 years. um president of AEA and I was going to them before that and and there were any number of ones that I appeared to speak or to harass people that sat behind these benches prior to that. So there there's some perspective there over time and certainly there have been cuts proposed over and over in different policies and whatnot. This is absolutely the most sweeping

212negative change at once I've ever seen in all that time. And um I I think there has been a long concerted effort by certain people to keep a lid on education funding. There's been an absolute concerted effort over the last seven or eight years to divert funds out of public schools into private schools. We don't really have the numbers on how successful that's been, but it's certainly been significant. Uh there are a number of Anchorage School District doesn't do it because we consider it against the state constitution, but other districts have made a revenue stream out of signing up Anchorage students through a correspondence program and simply sending a check to a private religious school in Anchorage and taking a little haircut off the top of that. Um, all these things have come together to

213really squeeze things to a point where the cuts are breaking things. When you actually can't scale back a sport, but you have to cut it, things have broken. When you can't support a middle school model anymore, it's not merely a cut. You have broken something and made it less than it used to be. and people that were around when they rolled out middle school and and I'll admit there aren't a lot of them because there aren't as many people as old as me any longer. Um it was a huge effort. It was a huge effort by the board to make it happen to put it in the budget and then years of training and effort to implement it and make it work. And when it goes away it it won't come back more easily next

214time. I think it'll be just as difficult, perhaps more so in that there won't be the trust that we can necessarily sustain it even if we put it in place. And and I the other thing I do want to interject real quickly because I do spend a fair amount of time talking to people about our budget issues that that aren't that aren't sympathetic to them. Uh and we're accused of mismanagement. We're accused of not understanding what to do. This isn't about this budget. In all my time with the Anri School District, they've never missed a payroll. They've never come up short and had to turn the heat off or turn the lights off in a school. There has been consistency and stability and and we try to budget for that, which means sometimes we overshoot.

215Um, but to my knowledge, we've never undersshot on something that was critical. um because that's really damaging I think. So I do hope people understand this is about planning for next year and making a budget that we know we can execute and it's brutal. We could be more optimistic and not cut these things and run into some of the issues that we've seen in other districts where they literally ran out of money during the school year. To me, that's even more catastrophic and we won't do something like that. But it is going to take the case that that we have to communicate as a group about the success we do have. The one bright spot I see in all this uh again dropping back to the 90s before the internet before web browsers before Netscape.

216That's that's how old I am. Before Netscape, I was using the internet before Netscape. We tended to look at what we were doing in Anchorage that worked and we spread that from one building to another and we had to get in a car and drive there. That's how barbaric it all was back in that time. And we transitioned into a time where you can do a lot of things off the internet. You can see what's happening in other places. You can fly to conferences and and get some really great ideas. But I think it led to a point where a lot of times we went there and we brought back packages and we just knew that if we implemented them with fidelity and I'm using that as specifically because I'm trying to trigger people and

217give them a little PTSD. We haven't heard that word so often lately but it's still working there. Um and and I just always understood and believed that our schools in Anchorage, they're not just individually diverse. They're diverse from each other. And things that work beautifully at one school don't necessarily work very well at all at another school in this district. But people that live in this town have a much better chance of coming up with workable plans that do work across town. The one bright spot I see is I'm hoping we turn back to our workforce and the people that are succeeding in Anchorage and we try to spread their successes to other places in Anchorage because I think we can do that kind of cheaply. I think we can do it kind of effectively.

218Um I think we can do it without fidelity to where we let people mold things to their students. more more decisions made by people that know the students by name and less by people like us that are away from a classroom. Um I think we're going to have to do it because we lack funds, but I do think that can be a positive outcome. I I do think it is going to be a huge adjustment for administration in that you will have to look more locally and look at spreading our successes because we do have great success. Anybody that's taught in this district has seen kids turn around. They've seen kids come alive and awake and excel. The problem is we're not doing with with enough students. So, we need to take the success we're

219having and learn how to move that to the kid next to them, to the classroom next to them, to the school across town. And I think we can do that without necessarily buying a package, without necessarily buying another curriculum, but modifying what we have and spreading what we have in Anchorage. So sadly, I think this budget crunch is going to force us to do a little bit, but I think if we embrace that there's something to be gained there. Um, and I think when funding comes back, it will get even better yet. So, I'm optimistic even though I won't have to struggle with it because I just have about 91 days. Um, but I wish you all the best. >> Thank you, Member Bell. >> Thank you. Uh, first of all, I want to thank

220um the negoti negotiating teams for A.E.A. and APA. A month ago, it looked real bleak. Um, but I was hopeful, but it kept me up at night. So, it just goes to show that, you know, our heart is where it needs to be. Our community values education. Our staff values the work that they do for kids every single day. I often ask my grandson how especially when he gets angry at Nana, so how are you feeling? And he kind of looks at me and he thinks, so I'm asking myself that tonight, Marggo, how are you feeling? And I'm at a level of uh devastation. exhaustion, a little bit of fear, and I'm really trying not to be angry, but I am hopeful that the cuts that we have been looking at tonight. Larger class sizes,

221fewer supports, fewer opportunities for kids, kids that are already facing barriers. I am hopeful that this community, this this district, this staff, this state will at some point come around and do right by kids. We can't do it without We can't We can't give the kids our kids the world that they deserve, the education they deserve without it being a priority for our state. So, I am hopeful because I'm going to keep fighting. I am hopeful because this community is invested. And while everybody has their own little little thing that's important to them, I get it. I get it. But we have got we can't give up. We got to go forward because our our our kids should not be asked to endure what we have what we know is coming to them. So um

222yeah, I I guess I'll stop there. Um, and and again, ASD team, thank you. We've asked you guys to do some amazing things, and apparently we're still asking you to do stuff. So, uh, it does not go unnoticed, but it is very difficult. Very difficult. I've heard more tonight about consolidating and closing schools than I've heard in two freaking years. And this board has not had the the uh did not want to do that. Now whether we whether we come back to it in the next two weeks, which is a little crazy to me because we are running out of time or whether we uh put that on the agenda for one more round of discussions about right sizing. I don't care what you're calling it, but we cannot continue to spread our our resources,

223our opportunities so thin that nobody that that that we're we're just spinning our wheels. So anyway, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Member Bilme. Um I'll close with um trying not to repeat any of the comments that were well said. Um grateful for the public for coming out and testifying. I'm looking forward to more testimony at our next meeting. Um, our budget situation is different this year and that we've gotten a couple emails indicating that this is going to to play out the same way as it has in previous years where the legislature is able to swoop in, provide onetime funding, allow us to save off some of the harshest cuts. um they've kicked the can so far down the road in Juno that I I don't see a road where that's possible. Um and

224I'm I'm trying to remain optimistic because there are things that can be done. There are heroes in Juno that are fighting for adequate funding for education. Um but the harsh reality is without a sustainable long-term fiscal plan which even if adopted next week would take a year or more uh to bring new revenues online um the funding that we would need to support our footprint here in Anchorage just isn't there. Um the state budget deficit I think has a $ 1.5 billion deficit. um they're going to have to draw from savings to make the status quo possible. And there is far from consensus between the legislative branch and the governor on how to pay for government without the roller coaster and volatility of oil prices and drawing from a a permanent fund that um doesn't

225support our current level of spending. So advocacy looks a little bit different this year. Um increasing the BSA is a great thing to ask for. Uh but I think constituents need to tell legislators how to do that. That looks like asking them to diversify revenue. It looks like asking them to pass a fiscal plan. Um it looks like asking them to have the courage necessary to say some really unpopular words like tax. And um there are legislators in Juno who don't have that courage and won't. And we'll elect folks hopefully who do. Um but I think it's it's important to have a sense of realism and to ask for those who can be courage to do so and to elect folks who can't and seats that that won't. Speaking of courage, um, this board has

226failed to adopt numerous recommendations regarding right sizing and building consolidation. Um, I'm hoping the public will talk to us and tell us to have the courage to look to spend less on buildings and more on classrooms and students. That isn't easy. Um, but the cuts we heard about tonight in a vacuum are, in my opinion, even worse. Um, I'll be working with administration and any board member who wants to to talk about ways to potentially use the building consolidation process to restore programs like sports and Ignite. um it isn't a permanent solution and um it isn't sustainable long term. But we also know that there are benefits to reducing our footprint to raising the level of service at our buildings and that we likely do have too many um buildings that we are trying to

227spread re resources to too thinly given the state's funding reality. Um so looking forward to f further discussions. appreciate the robust conversation tonight and kudos to administration for pulling off a really robust u conversation and illuminating I think for the public exactly what we're up against. With that said, would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> Second made by Bellamy, second by Hollowman. Seeing no opposition, we are adjourned at 9:23 p.m. Thank you.