001Good afternoon everyone. We'll call the 300 p.m. February 3rd work session of the ASD school board to order. Uh it is 3:05. Present in the boardroom are members Higgins, Lessons, Jacobs, Wilson, Hollowman, and Bellamy. Member Donley will join us in a few minutes and we'll note when he does. Um, we have called ourselves to order and conducted a roll call. Our only topic of discussion tonight under B1 is budget update. Dr. Brian, the floor is yours. >> Thank you, Mr. President. So, this afternoon will be our first public briefing of the FY27 budget proposal. As we know, we're grappling with the significant structural deficit that we've been forecasting for quite some time. And just as a general reminder to the public, though the BSA did increase by $700, ASD also made a one-time investment of
002the equivalent of a $700 BSA in fund balance. And that difference will need to be made up. So this is not the first deficit that we've weathered as a district. But what makes this situation particularly dire is that our unassigned fund balance was spent down uh to protect as many programs as possible for this current year. And the legislature has also not signaled that a significant increase for public schools is in the forecasts likely due to statewide fiscal constraints on priority and other priorities. So for this reason, you'll find that many of these proposed changes are structural in nature. They'll reduce our operating footprint significantly. And what I want the board to be particularly mindful of is that there is also projected FY28 deficit as well. So, our decisions this month will set the stage
003for this time next year and those decisions that will have to be made for the public's awareness. I also want to underscore that 95 cents on the dollar of ASD's funding in the general fund goes to classrooms, classroom support, and general building maintenance. So, when we began these budget reductions, we started as far away from the classroom as possible. But these cuts are effectively a $700 per student cut, meaning that it was not possible to avoid negative 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, some will be cut, others will be slowed, and some services will be completely reimagined so that they can be cost sustainable and we can weather it for not just this fiscal year,
004but fiscal years that are to come. So now that this budget's public, um, community feedback will also play an important role in helping prevent unintended impacts and consequences of this budget proposal. But there is not a financial path to operate at the status quo level of today. So, I'll hand it off to our chief financial officer, Andy Ratliff, and our leadership team to walk us through what I expect will be a two-hour briefing. Great. >> Thank you. Uh, for the record, Andy Rattle from the CFO for the district. Um, really, we present this budget to you on the backdrop of us facing this what's about a $90 million deficit due to flat funding. We are in about the third year of flat funding at this point because we got in 25 we had onetime funds
005or $680 BSA equivalent. got the permit increase this year and no planned increases for next year and that comes in the tales of seven years of flat funding before that. We've exhausted most of our fund balances Dr. Bryant mentioned and our costs continue to increase each year to provide the same level of service to for to keep the same operations. That's predominantly due to increases in wages and benefits, health benefits, liability insurance and utilities. So as those costs go up, but our revenue stays the same. Uh reductions must be made in order to get a balanced budget. As far as our timeline goes, we are here on February 3rd uh doing our introduced budget. We will have the slated for the approval on the February 17th and then it has to be to the city
006by the first Monday in March on the 3rd and then they'll approve on the 24th. As we're doing this, the state legislature is meeting. We haven't again haven't gotten a lot of signals out of Juno on what they may do with education, but know that we have to have this process wrapped up well before the legislature has their process wrapped up, meaning we may be back here doing this again here in a few months. That I'll turn it over to Katie Parrot. >> Katie Parrot, senior director for the Office of Management and Budget. For the record, uh before we get into the details of providing information related to our preliminary budget plan, we thought it was important to lay some context about our current year and what we experienced because the plan moving forward is
007uh also the foundation of that is cuts that we've already made. Um, so with flat funding, in order to balance the current year's budget, as you know, we were able to pull in um all almost all of our remaining unassigned fund balance to be able to get that done. And even with um the additional state funding and um those funds in reserve, we did end up having to reduce around 136 uh FTE. Um so we also uh were closing schools. Um and so the context of our current year's budget is a reduced budget from prior year's operations as well. Next slide. Uh the other part of the context that we need to understand because you won't see it in a yearby-year comparison of what's been reduced from the budget are those items that essentially have
008been deferred from the last couple of budget cycles because we just couldn't um uh find the room to add those things in. So this uh slide really reflects those items in the three main areas, technology, maintenance, and curriculum um that were left out of our current year's budget and this uh coming budget uh because they were high dollar uh ticket amounts and um they're items that potentially we could put off for another year. I think the important thing for the board to remember is eventually these are going to catch up with us. So they are um there's a cost to these in some ways, opportunity cost. And so it's just something to have in the back of our mind. >> Right. Then I wanted to kind of go through how what we knew about the
009deficit and when this has come up in conversation where I thought you had a $77 million deficit. Um that gets brought up. So in July and August, we were asked to produce what an estimated deficit might be. We used a 3% rough estimate on cost escalation without factoring in enroll en enrollment or unknown revenue forecast going forward. When we updated our proform in December, we incorporated our revenue changes, revised cost estimates and included transportation also to include revisions to the required local effort as that went up in November. Um and before we were projecting some millions to be coming back through the additional and now that actually went down. We'll get into that a little bit later. But then as we approved con or got tenative agreements on contracts uh with some of our larger
010labor unions, we revised that projection and ended up being about a $90 million deficit we had to close. So part of that, as I mentioned, we've had about seven years of flat funding from 2017 to 24 or 25 with the BSA. We've had some sporadic onetime funds included in there to include the use of ESSER money, uh, state one-time funds, and you can see the $700 in fund balance we used to balance FY26. But largely since FY25, we've been flatfunded and are projected to be flat funded through 27. So, as those costs continue to increase and that revenue stays flat, reductions are our only method to balance this budget. I did go ahead and update this slide. You've seen this one before. s the state budget growth since 2017. So it shows all the state
011departments and how much they've changed since then. This is based on the governor's proposed budget. You'll see the de deed K12 support for districts in that line has gone up by 6.6% since 2017. uh that is a combination of the BSA increased which increased by about 12% and then enrollment statewide has gone down some and the required local contributions that municipalities have to kick in to fund come out of this also. So in terms of real dollars over that decade it's been about a 6.6% uh increase in funding from the state. You can see the other departments have increased you know 30 40 50 60% um or some even higher. I mean, you'd expect to see a 30 40% increase. That's really kind of in line with what inflation is. Um, so when you see
012these increases throughout the state budgets, but not for K12 education, you kind of get the picture of where the priorities went and why we have these funding issues. Uh, to compound that, you can see we've uh dropped enrollment has declined from 2016 to 26 by about nearly 7,000 students. we have more prek students and a lot more intensive needs students and a growth in sped students or special education. So, as that's gone down, it's put additional pressure on our budget. Um, we've closed some schools and programs throughout the years, but it still makes it much more difficult to balance a budget in when you're contracting, >> right? So the vast majority of this presentation is going to be focused on the general fund which really is the budget that uh encompasses the core of our
013operations. But we budget across all of our funds and we make requests to the municipality based on the total revenue and expenditures across all of our funds which is shown in this slide. So toward the end of the presentation, we'll cover um an overview of transportation, food service, and debt service. But essentially that this just shows what we're projecting in the way of revenues and expenditures for our upper limit spending authority. Uh this slide is focused uh purely on our general fund revenue projections and you can see in the circled uh red boxes some of those major um changes from our current year to what we're projecting for FY27. So you'll see at the very top there's a pretty steep increase in property taxes. A lot of that is the result of the increase in
014the local required contribution which we'll talk a little bit about that in this uh slide. Uh you can also see underneath that there's a pretty steep reduction uh that reflects the amount of fund balance that we are not going to be able to use in the current year. Um but you'll see too that there is a little bit that's that's being pulled in um to be able to help uh close the gap. Uh there's a new line item at the bottom of that first section for local revenues that's related to transfers in from other funds. There are some available uh FEMA reimbursement funds for expenditures that were paid out of the general fund that we are planning on bringing in to help address the gap as well as uh the the gap some of which
015is is the result of that reduction in foundation funding um that you can see in that section below. Right. To dig into those revenue changes a little bit more on the fund balance, we are anticipating having about 8.1 million available by the end of the year. That keeps us at about a 5% uh unreserved fund balance as a percentage of our expenditures. Um this is available through hiring and spending freezes. We're planning not to do elementary summer school. And then we pulled back a lot of funds or some funds that we had allocated for things like curriculum updates, software updates. Uh there was some ADA contingencies in there that are being taken over by maintenance and then just some other other funds that we kind of scraped together to be able to generate that 8.1
016million by the end of the year. The FEMA funds, as you recall, at the end of last year, we transferred about 11 a little over 11 million into our capital projects fund from our general fund. uh and that was based on the amount of obligations we received from FEMA, not necessarily having the cash in hand. The 4.2 million represents the amount now that we have cash in hand that we could apply to uh from the capital projects fund back into the general fund as real uh revenue to help support the budget. We are going to change the way we do our ADM counts for dyenrolled students. So, as an instance, if you're at East High and taking a class at King King Tech, you know, if you're spending half your day there, um, right now
017we count those students as 100% at East High. But if we can bifrocate those into two different schools, then we can get generate a little bit more revenue estimated about 1.2 to 1.5 million when we do that. Um, predominantly affecting the King Tech students to get them over that 175 student threshold to make it count for an additional school in the foundation formula. and also with correspondent students is those students are taking classes at our our neighborhood schools as well. So once we split that out, we think we can generate some funding there to help offset some of this deficit. So going through the foundation formula real quick, we have you guys have heard this a lot, but for the public listening, you know, we start out with about 39,000 brickandmortar kids. We go through
018a dis a school size adjustment that takes every school, runs it through a formula to say, you know, it's really the smaller the school is, the more money you get per student, but it adjusts the ADM based on a formula. Uh, then there's a district cost factor. Anchorage is a 1.0 in the district cost factor. All the other districts receive some increase above that. Uh on top of that they add a 20% increase for uh English language learners, special education, gifted education, and vocational education. Then there's a 1 and a half% increase for CTE in step four. And then they add the intensive needs on after that. So that's a 13 times multiplier by the time number of intensive need students you have. And then correspondent students are counted at 90% of their ADM count.
019So the visual on the district cost factors you can see here um Anchorage is the one everyone else goes up above this. This data is nearly or about 25 years old now. So the cost differential between communities has undoubtedly changed and advocate advocation for a new study continues to go on. Uh the other slide we put together was this is representative state foundation funding or at least the basic need number if you exclude intensive students and correspondent students. So you really get to this kind of base amount for the location differential or the district cost factor and then school size adjusted or school size adjustment. So these districts have much smaller schools or fewer students in them and that district cost factor. This is the increment that they would get above Anchorage per non-intensive uh
020non-correspondent student, not necessarily the amount of money we get per student from the state because this is also going to be reduced by the required local amount and anything related to federal impact aid that comes out of the state funding. >> I had a quick question on that. Um does that amount the amount the state funds or is that the am the calculation from the base student allocation um inclusive of what the local government's required to contribute. >> So this would be of this 9131 for Anchorage the local government is required to pay a portion of this. And again, it's probably not going to match up to like the total numbers because it doesn't include special education and it doesn't include or doesn't include intensive needs and it doesn't include correspondence. It kind of strips
021those out of the formula and to say here's how much basic need everyone gets, which is your um that adjusted ADM times the base student allocation, >> but really to highlight the amount of money that other districts get above Anchorage. For our record, I want to know member Donley joined us at 3:19 p.m. And then, um, Mr. Ratliff, well, since we took a break for questions, um, I noted that Fairbanks was discussing their budget recently and they announced that they had a a $2 million surplus um, for the first time in recent memory. Is it as simple as um, indicating based on this chart that Fairbanks receives 14% more funding per student than Anchorage or is it a bit more complex? It would be more complex because depending on the number of intensive needs students
022they have and correspondence and like impact aid would factor into it as well and even whatever their local contributions is like if their community supports up to the cap or not. I mean there's a lot of factors that go into that but just kind of that base level. Yeah, they get quite a bit more money than us per student. Member Higgins, >> just one quick followup. I'm a little confused. Matt Sue gets 7% more than we do. Is that 7% more than the minimum that the that the local government has to provide or is that based upon the maximum? I mean, you got it compared to other districts where they don't contribute anything at all. And I'm just wondering if if you know that off, Pam. >> And the 7% is just related to state
023funding. So it wouldn't really affect be affected by the that required local contribution. That's kind of after the fact after this stuff's all calculated. As far as the rest of the foundation goes, we calculate that adjusted average daily membership. It's about 71,000. Multiply that by the 6660 base student allocation to get a basic need of a little about about 471 million. From there, the state says the city has to pay some. That's the required local effort and it's based on 2.65 mills of our property values. It comes out to about 139 million and then there's a reduction for federal impact aid. So since the districts gets federal impact aid, the state has it written in their formula that they can reduce a percentage of that um so long as they stay equitable between districts. for
024Anchorage is about six and a half million and then on top so they reduce that get to about 325 million and then they add in a $16 per adjusted ADM for the quality schools grant. So all that to say we get about 326 million from the state. Um and then we have uh the additional local contribution which is in addition to that 139 million required amount of about 96.3 million. And I'll show this on some other slides too to show kind of how that's calculated. But that's below the 108 million or so projected state maximum that went up with that permanent BSA increase. really up until, you know, every time we did a budget up through 26, um, we took the maximum we could up to the state cap and then that state cap changes
025later on. If they put in onetime fundings or change the base student allocation. So, if you look back in history, we're we weren't always up to the cap, but at the time we budgeted in February and put in our tax request, we were funded to the state cap. So the state of Alaska is we are beholden to the lesser of the state cap or the municipal tax cap. The state cap is the greater of a 2 mill tax levy or 23% of basic need which is about 108.5 million for FY27. We always use the 23% of basic need. That's the most advantageous for Anchorage. Um and then the municipal tax cap that'll increases with a 5-year averages of population inflation and and for us it includes both the required local and the additional local contribution.
026So this year when that required local contribution went up so much it limited the amount of the additional local we could c carry over with the city. Um so kind of in in slide for a spreadsheet form here. You can see that at the top the municipal tax cap maximum is 9.7 million. Uh the required local contribution is or 9.7 is the amount that it could increase over FY26. The required local contribution went up by about a million and a half more than that. So you can see that going up by the 11.2 million and then the reduction in that additional local contribution because we are at that city tax cap. see the state foundation revenue going down by a little over 14 million a combination of enrollment declines of 3.1 and that dollar fordollar
027reduction in state funding based on the increase in the required local contribution. So as the Anchorage taxpayers have to kick in 11.2 million more the state takes that out of their funding and that kind of goes back to that chart that showed all the state departments and why that reduction in the K12 line item for deed is in there. And then at the bottom you can kind of see over time how that's changed. It's about $35 million increase since 2017 as well. Uh additional local contribution has gone down uh predominantly as a measure of enrollment changes. And then the state's foundation revenue over the same period has gone down by about 4 million um in terms of real dollars. These aren't inflation adjusted or anything. So to get started, you know, this is we'll start
028now talking about how we allocated the money that we did get for FY27. We went through how we generated the money. This is a same chart you should be used to. It shows the FY27 allocations of direct instruction about 58% or 351 million. Uh student supports which is nurses, counselors, librarians, security. It encompasses a whole lot of things. some special education support, but it also includes like principles, assistant principles, uh clerical staff at students we've included in here. And then professional development that is in that may be housed in this building or instructional supervision in like elementary or secondary education. So that's all included in these student supports. And then when we talk about administration, that's about 5% of our total budget, including the school board, superintendent, uh the folks up here, payroll, budget, accounting,
029HR, these kind of back-end business functions that just make make it possible to do business. Uh there's a comparison from FY26 to FY27 are the percentages of the total at the bottom. Um relatively unchanged. You can see operations and maintenance going up. While we did re reduce operations and maintenance staff, the increase to utilities kind of outpaced the savings from that. So you see that go up a little bit. And then student supports, you know, that went well, it did go down as a percentage. It went up a fraction. All right. I'm Sven Gustoson, the deputy superintendent. I'm going to start walking us through some of the uh proposed budget cuts. And the first thing I wanted to talk to you about is when we started these cuts, we really looked at how the community
030has responded and where they want us to be looking. And through multiple surveys um with staff and community, they they really want us to be looking at the district office, this ed education center, and how many people are in this center. And so when we went to start looking at budgets, we're really looking as far away from the schools as possible. And so we when we started we started looking at in this building and in this building there's 219 um employees that work under the academic services. Let me make sure I really point that out. It's academic services. It's the stuff under me. We also have operating services and and stuff. But under the academic services which is the biggest fund that we use. It's schools. It's teachers. It's it's professional development. all those things
031that we're going to be talking about here for the most part. Um it that's the department I'm looking at and what I'll be pretty much talking about here this evening. So in this I didn't we we wanted to cut budgets but we also wanted to look at number of people. So much of this district office is grant-f funded personnel. So we wanted to look at both. So we included the grant funded personnel in this particular slide. If you look at this, we had we're reducing 30 FTE from the general fund out of this building and 18 FTE out of grant funding out of this building. And those people, they're under academic services for the most part if they will go back into schools and positions that are open in the schools. So, at the district
032office, it's 48 FTE, which is a cut of about 22% of the actual people that are in this building that are associated with academic services. Uh, looking at the next slide, I'm going to walk through each one of these because each one, even though it's just one bullet, is a huge difference in our district. Um we are proposing to cut three senior directors, one in special two in special education and one in um elementary education. We're also looking at cutting one director position and combining the work that that director those it's really two directors combining them into one position. That's um really working with the discipline and the behavior part will continue as we go through this presentation. You'll see some of the sports being cut and that's part of what that director coordinates with
033is uh the sports. We also are reducing academic assistant directors um in this one was assistant director for fine arts and that's the arts person. We'll end up having just one assistant director now doing all of the different arts. We also had one assistant director in special education that we're uh reducing. In this proposal, we're reducing eight secondary principles um mostly assistant principles. We also have I'll show you an example of one that we're cutting actually a head principal. All middle school sports is in this proposal. and some of the agenda for the other activities. Um we've in this proposal we're cutting not only sports but there is some money that's used for other activities that we are proposing to cut. And then most high school sports we're actually going to have a slide on
034the high school sports separate from everything else and we'll go over deep in deep detail on that. Overall in elementary um just for general cuts we are looking at cutting 10 FTE um in sped teachers in secondary that's middle and high 10.5. We're proposing to cut five administrative office positions at the high school level. Those kind of go in tandem with the assistant principles that we are recommending to cut at that level. There are 10 IT technology FTE that we're moving out of high schools. Um those are people that help all the teachers and the administrators in those high schools. Um pretty much work on their equipment, work on software, help them out when there's problems. We're we're proposing to pull those back into the pool and reduce by 10. Um and so almost all
035of it will be going towards um all all problems will go towards the help desk because we found that most of our issues can be solved at the help desk level because they're you know wireless um secondary security we are um due to the metrics were the two security ones at Polaris and ones at Chooak High School um those would be reduced curriculum coordinators These are coordinators um that are based here in the district. They're part of that 48 and the coordinators are the ones that um currently we have language arts, math, social studies, and PE. We actually went to our new model in science because we had the coordinator retire or resign right before the end the beginning of this school year. So, we went to a new model and it's become very well
036received at all the high schools and middle schools. So that's what we're looking at doing. It's a model where we um provide a some addendum money to sitting teachers in both middle and high school to actually do that coordination of professional development and um curriculum reviews and that kind of thing. So that's a total of uh six curriculum coordinators, special [clears throat] education specialists. Um, we're looking at 26 FTE there. And then we have a medical billing Medicaid billing technician. We increased that position that that department by one couple years ago thinking that the state was going to expand Medicaid, which they are supposed to be doing, but they have not caught up yet. And the Medicaid office actually cost us money last year. And so until the state's ready to provide those resources and
037that mechanism for us to get reimbursed for our Medicaid, we feel we can reduce it back to the one person until they're ready. Um last school year we really looked at $89,000 is all we got reimbursed. Um which is a lot less than we have been. Um hopefully they'll get that system set up and running in a more efficient manner soon. Going to the next uh column, we have reading specialists. Uh those these positions actually were red reduced um proposed last year. You brought them back. When it was all said and done, we ended up with two of them, but those two ended up needing to be actually teachers in elementary schools. So, we did not have anybody doing that work. We feel like and the people in our teaching and learning office feel like
038that that work is being covered through our general curriculum, our CLA curriculum and we'll um be working towards making sure all those uh supports are in place for that work. We are looking at cutting all of elementary summer school. Summer school did not at the elementary level did not happen before the pandemic. So this $1 million is actually down from $2 million a few years ago. Um we have looked at the data around it that how many kids are actually coming and being a part of it and it really has reduced so far that we don't believe it's worth the million dollars that's being spent. Well, so in addition to cutting it out of next year's budget, we are actually not going to do summer school this summer for elementary um with this budget. Now,
039we are going to continue and we will make sure we are continuing to provide those resources that we need to provide for the reads act requirements around third grade reading. And that's and we have a um that that work is all online and the program we use um actually has some pretty good success with when the kids actually do it. And that's that's actually kind of we even have we had more success with that than we did summer school last year. So that was kind of a deal we've looked at in this uh the kindergarten paras just because of enrollment plus4 ptr and all that um reduces quite a few positions that's because only because we're going to have less kindergarten positions library aids at the high school level other than the rog west one
040which covers because there's only a halftime or 1.0 no librarian at both total between Rome and West. Um so that one will stay. There are three elementary uh library assistance still in the budget that are coming out as well. Counselors, these 12.5 counselors are coming out of everywhere except for elementary. We've left all of the elementary counselors in place. Um that's one of our guard rails. So we wanted to make sure that we were focused on that. Many of these counselors are coming out of the secondary level, middle and high school um levels. Psychologists, we're um going to cut our budget by three psychologists. We don't I don't think we have hired a full force of psychologists in a number of years. Um these were empty positions. Um so the we're cutting those. We found
041other ways to provide those services. Um there's five custodian position FTE. We found some uh things that happened over the years that have been in place that um really we can reduce and it's extras that were put into the budget. You know, one thing I do want to mention because I didn't mention it before, we we literally went line by line on this budget and that's how we found some inefficiencies and that's how we found like these custodial positions. There's some elementary added duty agenda. Kristen's going to talk about that in a little bit as well as secondary out of duty. There's some behav general funded behavior coaches and technicians. Um, three of those. And then we are proposing a 15% supply and equipment um reduction across the board. Um, most people don't realize that
042our ELLL English learners um program is mostly predominantly general funded. There's only about $400,000 this grant funded out of the ELLL department, which is a pretty big department. We do need to cut some things. One of those is an open position and we believe with the pairs that we have on staff that um speak m we'll be able to get those resources taken care of through that. We also usually have a new principal boot camp that's going to be cut as well. The new principal boot camp we have a lot of brand new principles over the last four years. We've we've hired over 60 brand new principles. So that money will be will will be reduced. Um, moving on to the next slide, kind of looking at other district level uh positions. These are outside
043of academic services. These are in the other departments um where we look there kind of not in my realm, but I'm going to go over those as much as I can. Um, in in human resources, uh, we're reducing three, um, FTE, one in benefits and an AA and a generalist. Um the IT positions, it wasn't only those 10, but there's a number of IT positions, including a couple positions in our uh project management office uh that are being reduced. Um it is taking a pretty big hit across the board um in this budget between positions and um money. Communications is reducing one of their FTE development grants um is reducing their second person which is not the one that writes the grants per se but does a lot of the back-end work. Community rentals is
044reducing one. It'll just make community rentals move a little slower probably. Um any of these most of these that we're going over right now are pretty small departments and so taking one and two three hits in any given one of these makes things slow down. Maintenance uh 3FT I believe that's two of the painters and and one of the other maintenance people that I I can't remember off top of my head two warehouse drivers. Um they're doing a custodial reorganization around the uh permanent the the sub custodians. We have like 20 positions. We've only have been able to hire 11 of those. Um we're looking at taking those positions and actually removing them and putting in some part-time positions with a higher amount. It saves money. Um and so that we'll pick up 10 FTE
045there. Last year you put in $2 million into the budget for recruitment retention. Um we are asking to keep 300,000 of that in the budget to utilize for our um accelerator program that we briefed you on earlier this year. Um we would like to continue the work around that due to um really wanting to make sure we shore up those schools and show what a shored up school that's very stable can do even if for student outcomes um IT equipment addenda and software removing deleting 425,000 out of that and then the equipment replacement fund um every year we put a little money out of the general fund into equipment replacement fund. This is where we buy graders and trucks and school buses and and data, big huge pieces of uh IT equipment, those things that
046cost a lot of money. We're pretty much uh in this budget taking out all of that money that we have built up and putting that towards this budget. So, um that fund won't have uh any money in it to be able to utilize for future until we build that back up again. All right, the next slide. Uh, Mr. Ger, someone jump in. Member Le has a question. >> Sorry. >> Thank you. Um, it's hard to find a pausing spot. I understand. Um, I had a technical question a few slides back about grant cutting grant funded positions. And I guess if we're talking about the general fund, can you explain? >> This is the deal. Instead of just doing these changes at different times and confusing people and really frustrating the staff and when we're doing
047it, it's better to do all this at once and to show that you know in this building we're mostly grant funded to re reduce grant funded positions which are teaching positions or people that can be teachers in schools where we don't have teachers filling jobs. We have long-term subs and non-certifi certificated people. We've heard it loud and clear that our schools, our community wants less people in this building and more people out. And that's why I included the grant funded in here because at the end of the day, you know, we're looking at an overall group of people and most times the public doesn't understand that this building is a lot in the academic services grant funded. And so yeah, we need to reduce our footprint and it footprint over here means grant-f funed positions
048also. And that those are not competitive grant-f funed positions. Those are more of the title grant funded positions and we're just going to be um looking at how to provide those services in a different way without pulling teachers out of the schools. That makes sense. >> Okay. And if I can ask a follow, we're not rejecting the grant that have been received. We're saying >> we're rewriting >> putting these talented educators back into schools by cutting these grantf funed positions at the ed center. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. And then the other clarifying question I had was about candyas paras um excuse me. Uh so if and when FTE is restored would it be the administration's recommendation that those um handful you know whatever the number was of the pair of professionals would be
049restored along with >> whenever we would add aart classrooms >> kindergarten classroom the parah dollars would need to be part of that >> so that's just something to keep in mind these two things should be tied together. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Y member Belly you have a question? >> I do. going back to uh the academic staff in this building. So those 18 positions are grant funded positions. Those people are currently in this building doing the the whatever the grant requires >> obviously some curriculum work. >> Okay. Yeah. >> So instead of them working here, they're going to be working in schools. >> That's the idea. Yes. and the work they will be doing in schools. >> They'll be teacher and a regular teacher classroom. We'll we'll we'll figure out different ways.
050>> Haven't figured that part out yet. >> And some of them we have like coordinators. We're going to do that by addenda with >> teachers that are in schools. We did that with science this year and it became a very popular way of doing it. Very successful way. Okay. So, those coordinators, that work is going to be addenda work where we aren't pulling a teacher out of the out of a building to have them do it over here as a full-time job. >> Okay. Um, as long as it doesn't uh mess with the grant. I mean, >> we we we rewrite those kind of grants all the time. >> All right. So, Okay. Yeah, there's a process of grant revisions that we can work through um with our our state contacts um that operate and
051distribute those grants to the school district. So um once a a budget is approved here, the next level of work for our staff is to work on those grant um title funds and um work with the state to make sure that we're allocating those funds appropriately. But we'll look at just alternative ways to use the funds. I and I >> So these aren't positions we're cutting. We're just moving them into the classroom into the schools. >> These these these positions are being cut. >> You're cutting people, but the posi >> the positions are being cut. The people >> are going >> go back to the schools now. And you know, we're >> cutting a lot. >> I know. >> You know, we're cutting a lot. >> I get it. It It's It's just a little
052confusing for me to have grant grant funded positions as a budget item cut. So it's really >> let let me put it to you this way. You're not approving these budget cuts in the grants. It doesn't show up anywhere. But in the budget it during this budget season as people are you know you look at you know look at what people are saying cut this building cut this building. This building's a lot of grant funded people. We're we are trying to listen to them and move those back in. And I agree except really sometimes people don't understand what has to happen so teachers can teach and kids can learn. >> Yes, >> Mr. Gus, one one question jumping in really quick. Um, regarding district administration, I think during my briefing, >> it was mentioned and
053please correct me if I'm wrong, that the we're we're cutting effectively 20% of district administration positions within the the EDC center FTE. >> 20 20 FTE. Okay, got it. Um, if we if the board was interested in cutting more district administration, how would we go about that and are there inherent risks to the district for us doing so? >> I can get us started. Uh, Mr. President, of course, the board has the review to further review administrative reductions. I would caution you to consider that every additional cut introduces more risk to the organization. So, I'm looking at a document that I shared with the board um I think yesterday or the day before on departments um and their status over the past 15 years. And over those 15 years, it looks like we've reduced 135
054plus positions from various departments over time. When I look at the only ones that have been held harmless in some sort of way over 15 years, their essential functions like payroll has consistently been at nine individuals since 2012. One of the reasons why is if there's not enough payroll individuals that could introduce risk in making sure people receive their payments on time. Another one um that has been held harmless over the past couple cycles would be important roles such as mental health. Another one that has seen growth um somewhat would be our emergency preparedness department because we have seen instances that merit more personnel dedicated to the emergency preparedness of our school. So these are the types of situations and trade-offs that the board would have to evaluate if you cut any further than what's
055proposed in this proposal. Is it possible? Yes. Will increased risk? Absolutely. >> And then a quick followup if I might. Um we were presented a chart um last fiscal year, I think, which um presented data on the percent of a school district's operating budget that was allocated toward district administration. and uh our total of 5% was second or third lowest in Alaska that fiscal year. Do we have any reason to believe that that data has changed dramatically? >> I can speak to that. So, uh we did BA that was based on a budgetary analysis of all the districts. Um that information is is publicly available on DED's website. Um we just did an updated analysis and our percent went down um again as a percentage of our ex planned expenditures for a budget. Uh there
056was another district that got brought in as a a pretty substantial reduction um as well. So they're really I think we were the fourth district fourth uh for the lowest percentage in the state. Um the other thing to qualify that is I believe a couple of districts do have some shared administrative services uh which would further bring the cost down but um we are still amongst the lowest in the entire state. >> Thank you. >> All right. Going into some instructional models and program changes. Not only were we looking at specific like positions to reduce, we were looking at efficiencies across the district that have been that have caused us to spend a little more money and how can we solve some of the actual inefficiencies. One um and a few of them are actually
057programmatic changes. One the first one I'd like to highlight is the tutor monastery program. Um we're looking at having that program move into Denali Elementary with the full school Denali uh monastery program. So in essence tutor becomes strictly a neighborhood school. I do want to say um here because I know that it's going around um those students that are at the monastery in the monastery program at Tutor if they want to stay in the neighborhood program they can stay in the neighborhood program. We have gotten some questions regarding that and yes, if they decide not to go on to Denali, they can stay at tutor in the neighborhood program. Another program that we're looking um to change up is the government hill um school neighborhood side has a total of 55 kids in it. Um
058there's three combo classes, a K1, a 2, three, and a four. As we've as we've briefed many many many times here, combo classes are very difficult for providing great student outcomes. Out of those 55, 10 of those students live out of the zone. So there's only 45 students that live within the government hill zone in the neighborhood program. So we are um proposing to move those boundaries to be included into the inlet view boundaries. There's very there's well enough space at Inlet View to to house um that extra bump and actually will make Inlet View a little more dynamic as well. Um, so Government Hill will turn into just pime just a Spanish immersion school and that will give us some the ability to um not have so many holdbacks for for those programs that
059we're talking about and being able to provide professional development and more um succinct way and actually staff the the programs because we do have some some uh problems in those kind of programs to staff them all the time. Another program that um you may not know about is an outreach program that we have currently at why school. We are proposing to move that program to Benny Benson and save and have them attend those schools by where they live closer to. This will allow us to provide more resources for the kids that are in that outreach program. That outreach program is students that u may have had some disciplinary issues and could cannot return to their school for a while. um we need to provide them some resources and outreach at why just wasn't working. Um
060and [clears throat] it's actually allowing us to save some staff um because Benny Benson and SAVE have the staff that these kids need. We also will be this is an example of where we're reducing a principal. We're taking the special schools um administration administrator position which is a principal and moving the special schools program under way because outreach moves gives some space at whe currently has an assistant director of special education instead of an assistant principal. We're changing that position to being an assistant principal. It saves us a little money there as well. And uh so that principal at WH will be running both of those programs way and special schools. We are looking we've been studying and looking at a nursing model that is a regional model. Um we're looking at reducing 25 nurses.
061Um Kirsten's going to go over that a little more in a little more detail here in a few minutes. We also are look we've been studying the elementary specialist model for a few months and really going through and determining how we can make the specialist model um more efficient at the elementary level. We have been giving up lots of FTE over the years in travel time and we needed to look at how can we save that travel time FTE and get it into our elementary schools. So Kristen will be going over that as well here in a little bit. Um we have um building subs after the during the during and after right after the pandemic. We've allowed buildings to have subs that are assigned to their buildings where the sub goes there every single
062day um whether or not they have a job to do there or not. Um it allowed a little more continuity. It kept um some support for each of the schools depending how big the school depended on how many subs you were you allocated for that model. We're going away from that. We're also going to be putting some guardrails up to look and make sure that we're utilizing our sub accounts in a little more efficient manner and and uh put some rules around those needed to happen. I was guilty of not using the rules as a principal. So, I'm sure we can make that happen. Uh we talked about elementary summer school going away. We also um one of the things that we proposed last year is to re to eliminate the ELLL summer school. Um
063after the during one of the revisions of the budget, you all voted to bring the ELLL summer school back. Um the ELLL department has said this um this is one that's we should be cutting as well. um they have other most of the kids that are in the LL department program end up in can be in other programs that we have still that will be like migrant ed and Indian ed and so on and so forth. So that's a um that summer school will happen this summer because you brought it back but our recommendation our proposal none of this is recommended our proposal is that it would go away next year. um the PLTE support that's part of that grant funded um the professional learning teacher support. Another thing we're looking at and we're doing
064is moving Ignite program into the what I need the win program at the schools. Um that will save us about 20ft FT18 and teachers and two testers. We'll continue to have two testers and a little more skeletal crew um over here providing gifted services. And the big one is moving away from the middle school model. That's getting rid of the middle school collaboration time and uh reducing their school day to six periods. I know those were a lot. I just wanted to see if there's any questions before I moved on to the next thing. All right. So looking at I'm going to now we break it up into different parts. the special services um is a lot of the different things but one thing I would do want to talk about is in special education
065we have a huge chunk of our budget is special education it's like 12 plus million dollars out of the general fund another 25 million out of the special ed grant so it's a big footprint in our district and so when we look at budget cuts we really need to look at those programs as well and how we provide the the services for the kids. So, as we go through these, these are ones that special education came up. It's about a 5% 6% somewhere between five and 6% cut um in that. Now, Ignite is not part of special education. ELLL is not part of special education, but it's all kind of part of special services. So, we talked about Ignite um last year when we were talking about AKSD, the Alaska uh School of the Deaf.
066We we had a huge outpouring to in support of the instructional coach. That person has since moved and we didn't have the position this year. Um it wasn't replaced. Um according to our administrators, that isn't one that we need to have replaced. gifted intervention coach is a is a position that um pretty much works with our highly gifted uh students um that are struggling at a $90 million cut. That's a position we're proposing. Um total special services teachers um about 31 FTE. Those have been included in some of the other stuff that I've talked about. Why reorganization why is down to about 50 kids now so we have some re reorganization that's 1.5 FTE couple speech pathologist and their paras and their technicians that work with them um we think we can do without psychologists
067of course uh counselors we talked about that ACT program which is our adult learning program um in special ed we're looking at changing that um how that works is about 1 um.6 FT and then ELLL leazison. A lot of this FT is just catching up on our budget from this year. Looking at school-based now we talked about the nurses Kristen will talk about that in a little bit. Teachers due to enrollment at the at the um school level is 48 49.8 FTE. That's something I haven't talked about yet. And we are proposing a four plus 4 ptr which is 168.3 FTE. We'll be seeing it a little more on that. We talked about elementary specialists, middle school collaboration time. We are asking you to give to cut some of the holdback teachers. We this 46.4
068holdback teachers. Last year you added holdbacks and we were able to utilize those to really knock down some of the huge bubbles that our scheduling um with the cuts that we had to do last year created. This year with this huge cut we are asking for you to keep 40 FTE and hold backs. Um that's what remains if you if we cut these 46.4. Historically on years when we don't have huge cuts we usually have 31. So, we're asking for 40 at this time. JROTC instructor is one at Diamond. They're they're um they've been budgeted for three. Their numbers um don't numbers of students in their program don't um match the three. So, that's one FTE. In all this, we've talked about 9.5 principal FTE, 8.5 counselor FTE, the library assistance, the clerical, the paras,
069the two BPOS, and to security. So when you look when we get to the next slide, enrollmentbased cut down or broken out is elementary for enrollment based would be minus 29 FTE and minus 10.4 at the middle and high school levels for just enrollment decreasing. And then the ptr um elementary is minus 90.4, middle is 29.4, high is 40.8 and alternative um schools is 7.7 FTE to give you an idea of exactly where those come to. Now looking at our >> gonna pause there for just a second and um bring up the levy that was proposed for the placement on the ballot in the April election by the assembly that would provide us 11 million or so in additional funding that we've um pledged as a district to allocate to teachers and that would give
070us about 80 FTE without referencing PTR um an acronym that doesn't mean a ton outside of this building to so many of Anchorage residents. Could we talk about what that would look like in our schools? How would how would that levy passing positively impact families and students in Anchorage? >> Yeah, great question. So, I started doing the math on that today. Um, I think we could get our class sizes down by two. So, that's about 80 teachers to get those down by two. Um, that would include the pair of professionals. I think we'd add three or three or four pair of professionals to that. the Kenny TA or KY Paris to to support those increased kindergarten positions and then I believe there was six or 700,000 in additional funds that would go through charter schools
071as this would be considered an additional local contribution and through statute they're required to get a percentage of it. Um and that all added up to about 11.7 million so bringing the PTR down or the class size down by two adding the pairs and then uh the charter school money. >> Mr. Could I clarify? Did you indicate that our charter and optional programs would also benefit from the levy passing as well? >> Uh the charter the optional programs are all included in our PTR metrics, but the charter schools are outside of that. They create their own budgets, but we are required to pass that funding on to them. So, they would yes definitely benefit from any sort of levy we passed. >> Mr. President, >> member lessons, >> thank you. I just I wanted to
072clarify a little bit more on that important question and your helpful answer, but when you when you say bring our class sizes down by two, it's really we're talking about increasing and we would be decreasing the increase. >> Right. So, we're not truly decreasing class sizes. We're making the increase half as bad. >> Exactly. Yeah. So you've got a proposed four uh plus4 increase for PTR. Uh you'd end up with a plus two. >> And if I may add, this is one of the reasons why I think it's important that we dedicate as many holdback positions as we are in this budget. So as Mr. Gustoson shared, while we do need to reduce the holdbacks that we added with the um small amount of dollars we got from the BSA passing this summer, we need
073at least 40 teachers because that effectively is a one ptr. will be using those positions differently because they'll be directed to these acute classroom bubbles. But we already know that our classroom is the heart of our educational program and we've built into this budget ways to address what we already foresee which are going to be large class sizes. So through the levy and through these holdback positions, we can weather this storm. >> Member Bellamy. >> Thank you. Uh I'm still up here on the um schoolbased reductions. So we are cutting I mean the recommendation uh or proposal is to cut middle school collaboration. We're cutting counselors. We're cutting nurses and we're cutting principles or assistant principles. So specifically in the in middle school, the way middle school functioned helped with a lot of behavior management,
074uh student um engagement, family engagement, are we creating a safety uh what what conver kinds of conversations did you guys have around uh what is it going to look like in middle school? I mean, I think at least one or two schools are going to lose APs. >> At least we're going to go over all that. >> Oh, you are? Okay, I can wait then. >> Yeah, we still have We're going to break this thing up into elementary cuts, middle and high school cuts. >> I I will wait. >> And we share with you the concern about middle school. We're worried about middle school. This the principles have been thinking about it a lot. >> Um uh but yes, we're going to talk about that in a little bit here. Okay, I can wait. Thank
075you, >> member. >> Thank you. I was going to jump on middle school as well because when we come put sixth grade into into middle school, one of the questions was all, you know, Department of Education, Stanford studies, all say ac you know, graduation rates may drop 1 to 2%, academic scores go down because that bottom one-third has a tough time with the adjustment with the seventh, eighth graders. And so the administration was asked, "What did you do to help protect that?" And it was middle school. So I I don't know how we're going to handle that, but I appreciate that question being raised. Um um the um um I didn't get the number. How many nurses are we talking about? Or is that something >> 25? But we're going to talk about it again.
076>> Oh, okay. I'm sorry. >> We're going to go more deeper. Well, we're going to go deeper into that topic. >> Okay. And I have some others, but I'm gonna wait for that presentation. Thank you, member lessons. >> I appreciate member Bellami's expression of concern over the circumstances at middle school. And what I wanted to underscore is that next year we're going to have an interesting division between our elementary and our secondary students. Every secondary student from sixth grade onward will have been in an ASD school during some part of our COVID related shutdowns. So next year sixth graders were in kindergarten in the fall of 2020. Next year's seventh graders were in first grade. Next year's eighth graders were in second grade. We know that those students have struggled to regain the learning that
077was lost during that traumatic time. We know that students experienced trauma. And one of the reasons that the proposed cut to the middle school model uh surprised and troubled me. I mean at $90 million, there's a lot of surprise and trouble. Um, but I really am thinking specifically about that cohort of students and their developmental needs. Um, and I'd like us to all keep this keep that in mind as we move forward. >> I think you're going to be surprised when we pull up a slide here in a little while that Andy's going to talk about in regards to what the state um, House Bill, I believe 57 had as a recommendation for sixth grade and what our proposal is going to be. If we can change to Can I go ahead and move forward?
078Um, looking at classroom size snapshot, if you look at the bottom, um, that is what this proposed PTR looks like. Kindergarten 27, first grade 28, second grade 30, third grade 31, fourth and fifth grade 32, sixth grade on up 36.25. So, it's pretty dramatic. So, now we're going to go into the elementary. Kirsten's going to start us up with that. >> Yeah, for the record, Kirsten Johnson, deputy chief of schools. Um, so I want to dive into some of the details around the elementary uh proposals. So, as we just talked about, we are proposing a PTR increase across all grade levels of a plus four. Uh we also are reducing supply funds across the division of elementary schools by 15% um much like we're doing across other departments in the district. Uh we are proposing
079to move Ignite to um a a what I need or win model. Um and I'll I'll talk about that a little bit and how we will be able to do that um when I get to specialists here in a moment. Um, we're also talking about a different delivery model for our specialists that reduces the amount of travel that teachers do around the district. Uh, there are two Battle of the Books agendas that are in our current budget. We're proposing to cut that second agenda for Battle of the Books, but keep the first agenda so that we can continue that program. It will just look um like a smaller um footprint for students um and participation. Currently, uh, elementary schools have 10, um, extra duty agenda for teachers to accomplish, um, a variety of tasks. We're
080redu we're proposing to reduce that by three so that they would have seven total agenda to allocate within their building. Uh, we are also um eliminating we'd like to propose to eliminate elementary summer school, which Sven mentioned earlier. again still meeting the the third grade uh Alaska Reads Acts requirements. And then we are proposing that nurses move to a regional model. And so if we go to the next slide, um I want to dive into the elementary specialist uh changes that we're proposing. Currently um our elementary schools have five separate specialists. They have uh physical education, they have health, art, music, and library. those positions are five separate people that are um allocated to that building. Um often those positions um can be part-time and shared between schools and it becomes a very complex scheduling
081feat to accomplish and it also requires us to pay them um to drive from school to school rather than be in front of children teaching. And so, uh, I've worked with the elementary division teaching and learning, um, a a handful of principles to really evaluate that model and come up with a new system that would, uh, combine physical education and health into one specialist and to combine music and art into one specialist. And and we would rebrand that as fine arts. What that does is it increases the time that they would go to a physical education or a fine arts specialist or a library specialist. Um and those folks would teach um a combined um you know curriculum for those subjects. So um as an example right now elementary students usually go to library um
082once for six once a week for 60 minutes or twice a week for 30 minutes. we would propose that those minutes increase per grade level to accommodate the planning time for teachers. So we have run lots of different scenarios in in different school settings to make sure that this model would work and and save us FTE. So this model of going from five specialists to three reduces our FTE. It increases the efficiency of the special specialists, but it also maintains a level of service for our students in those subjects. So um it also creates some um like ancillary benefits for the elementary school as we're reducing support services. This model would would increase the amount of full-time staff that we would be able to have at an elementary school through our specialist teachers. Um I
083think we all can agree that if you're full-time in a building, you're probably more well connected as a staff member than if you're part-time. um you have the ability to invest in that community um more readily as a teacher. Um and so I think that there are some ancillary benefits that we can anticipate from that shift in a model. Um the other thing that this does with full-time people um in front of students and available for teaching as opposed to driving school to school is it creates more um teachers that we can insert into our win model. And this is where the ignite shift comes where we can you utilize our librarians and other specialists to help us um deliver that ignite um teaching experience for our highly gifted or for our gifted students. So
084um in this proposal that it's a big shift for elementary um but given our budget we wanted to maintain some level of service for both of those groups specialists and Ignite um and and still try to find some some silver linings through a new model. One of the things I do want to mention is that although in the budget it shows it's 25 FTE, we utilized about 20 FTE out of our holdbacks last year for specialists because we needed those. That's how broken this model has been as well as far as efficiency goes. So at the end of the day, it's 25 million, right? I mean 25 FTE out of the budget, but it really is about 45 FTE total that we're saving. >> I'm going to interference. >> I feel Thank you. Um I'm
085sure that this deserves a lot of conversation in the weeds. >> At a high level, I think about a child's experience. You go to um you know, one specialist one day under the current model, another specialist another day. If I am, let's say, a music teacher, um, do I now need to prep both music and art lessons each week? >> No. >> Or or if I'm a PE teacher, am I prepping a conversation about, I don't know, the cardiovascular system >> and making sure that we align with statutory obligations to deliver, right, a certain amount of physical activity to our students? >> Yeah. So we're in the beginning stages of looking at what that does to the curriculum per se and how that would affect the teacher's experience. So we're not so far down the
086road to say that um you know a music teacher is going to teach art and health both. Now um we are looking at a model where if you're an art teacher you may be at one school for one semester and another school for another semester so that we have people teaching in their expertise area. But there is also a thought process of combining the standards and then training our teachers on what that new scope and sequence would look like in a fine arts model. So before we um go too far down the road, we wanted to propose this as a budgetary savings. We have some preliminary ideas around how this would look in the classroom experience and from the teaching experience. And if it is approved um by the board, there will be a robust
087process that we do with our teachers and our curriculum experts to develop what that looks like, considering all of our state standards, all of our board policies, all of those things that we need to look at. Um we've done a very um high level look at that already to make sure it's viable, but we haven't dove down into those weeds quite yet. All righty. looking at um middle school um in the middle school model the in the middle schools kind of getting to what member Bellamy said we are talking about the middle school model but we are also talking there's five principal positions um uh and you can see on this chart under principles the different schools that are losing specific principles or half principles um central Clark Wendler and Begitch would be losing half
088of an assistant principal. They have more. Begitch and Clark have two assistant principles. Wler and Central, this would go down to where they would only have one half of assistant principal and a regular principal. So, they would need we'd have to figure out that with them, Mirrors, and Golden View would all lose their second assistant principal. So, they would go down to only one assistant principal. through the U metrics. U two counselors are um cut at middle school, one at Mirs and one at Greening. Um the two BPOS's um at the at Mirs and Romig they those were when we moved them to move the sixth grade to middle school those two schools ended up with a bunch of reloads with a plus4 PTR no middle school um collaboration time and with and then with
089the enrollment reductions we they probably won't need the reloads anymore so we'd be reducing that >> Mr. So, I'm going to interrupt briefly. Um, the figures you had in the previous slide uh for Wler, do those include the students currently enrolled that relocated from Western Alaska? >> No, those are the students that are anticipated to be here next year, right? >> Yeah. >> And we don't anticipate those students to remain. >> We don't know how many are going to remain or not. I mean, that the work out there is just continuing all through the winter. So, we don't know specifically. I'm sure some was some are going to stay, but as they figure out their village situations at Quig and Kipnuk, I'm sure that some will go back. >> Thank you. >> Um, looking at
090the middle school changes, then with the plus4 PTR, we also have a recommendation to cut all middle school sports and some of the activities. Collaboration time goes away, of course. Um, we'd be going to six period day. Um and then um there's some agenda around collaboration time and PLC agendas um that we are also recommending to have cut at middle school. Um I I will say that middle school principles have a lot of work sessions that they're working on. They are coming together. They they actually have been trying to think of different things over the course of this entire year, knowing that something's probably going to be changing at their in their level. Um, and they'll be eager to answer any questions that come up around middle schools. High school staffing, we have quite a
091number of uh cuts. And if you look at the bottom part of this chart, you'll see a lot of negatives. Um but really looking at the list of them it comes down to PTR increase four APS one at diamond one at east one at service and one at west um some counselors um reductions of 0.5 at Chooak service and south and then one full counselor at Diamond East West and Eagle River as well as I don't know if it's on it's [clears throat] probably on The other slide we also one of the counselors at King Tech would be going away. Um looking at this library assistance we talked about that cut the nurses are moved to the regional model. Anytime we move the number of ad office admin is in correlation on the metric to
092the number of assistant principles and principles. So, four of these would be due to the the metric, but then Bartlett is also on the list because they they're outside of the metric on that one. Um, one security officer, the metric that would be at Cheyak High School. It just dropped off because of the metric. They they didn't have as many students. We talked about the dedicated IT personnel. Eliminate some sports and activities and eliminate the PLC agenda. And now we're going to have Kirsten kind and Katie go into sports and activities. >> So before I start into sports and activities, um I just wanted to recognize that this is a huge impact on our community and our students. Um and it's this is not anything that we would like to recommend. It's just a unfortunate
093reality that we're we're living in and and the need to reduce um our spending around this. Um I know there's a lot of concern out there around this particular recommendation or proposal. So um we are um looking at sports and activities a little bit differently in this budget. Um we know that sports and activities have a lot of research and tie to um increasing academics. So rather than do a cart blanch cut of all activities and sports, what we looked at in this particular budget is a way to keep kids engaged in a fiscally responsible way during every season of the year and and provide equal opportunities for both boys and girls. And so when you look at the list of continuing sports, um you'll you'll notice that there are fall, winter, and spring sports
094that would still be offered. Um we also have done an analysis of um different costs associated with sports and for the majority of the sports that you see continuing are some of our lowerc cost athletic opportunities or activity opportunities for students. The eliminations um are not a value judgment on any particular activity or um based on participation because I know that there are high participation sports um listed on that list. they are rather a budgetary decision that we unfortunately have to to make. Um many of the sports um listed in the eliminations are also more expensive to operate um either by transportation or special contracts that we have to secure facilities or or improvements to trails um such as ski and Nordic treat um Nordic ski trail maintenance. Um the dome contract also covers a
095lot of our sports. Um pools is an expensive contract and so is ice time for for hockey. So um we do have a number of sports that we have outsourced agreements with bowling, girls hockey, baseball and softball. Those sports would continue as is. Um, and when we look at the elimination list of of sports and activities, we are really hoping to engage in a community conversation around engaging in additional outsource opportunities so that those sports could continue for students. It likely would look a little bit different in an outsourced agreement, but we would be very interested in having that community conversation around how we can stand up those agreements with our external community partners. So, all of this to say um that there are costs associated with these opportunities even though we know they're extremely
096important and um Katie is going to dive into what those costs look like a little bit. >> All right. Thank you. So, this slide um kind of demonstrates the analysis that we did. The last full year of cost and revenues that we were able to um uh take a look at was FY25. And so that's what um is in this chart. We took a look at the cost for each individual sport as well as the revenues um through sports and activities fees that are brought in uh during that year and to kind of get an idea for um how we could set up this year's budget. We have accounted for the reduction of revenue um as well as trying to provide a a set allocation for each of the remaining sports that provides a little
097bit of wiggle room for participation that may move. So we know if um the proposal to cut a certain number of sports uh from the list would mean that those participants might go looking for another opportunity um during the different seasons. And so we use this information to take a look at the cost of those individual sports with all of the factors including the rentals and leases that go into those different programs allocating a cost per participant and then building in a number to the proposed preliminary or excuse me the preliminary budget that kind of accounts for what the projected cost of the remaining sports would be with um a little bit more participation. So that's kind of how we got to that number. Yeah, and I'll just close um the the sports and activities
098comments um with we really do hope to do a lot of community engagement with this process um if this proposal is approved. Um we did set some groundwork for those outsource agreements in some of our sports such as swimming and diving um hockey and gymnastics last year when we went through a budget process and those sports were proposed to be eliminated. Um, so we we do have um a lot of partnerships that we can lean on and some groundwork already done in some areas. Um, and and I just met with activities uh assistant principles this morning and said that I would like to start that process. They are in contact with coaches and organizations on a regular basis and um so they will do their work to make contact with folks and we can continue
099that conversation. Are there any questions before I move to alternative school staff member lessons if you have a quick question? >> Um I think it's worth a little bit more followup. I think one of the things that strikes me I appreciate the high school sports and activities chart is that there are definite differences in the participation rates between boys and girls in sports. I mean you have predominantly boys on the football team for example. Um I don't know what the you know how many girls are doing swimming and diving versus in or tennis girls volleyball is a huge area where female participation picks up. So I I have some concerns that even though the sport you know maybe there are fall winter spring sports being offered you know it looks like in boys and girls
100basketball there's you know a third more boys are participating than girls. So, I guess I want to make sure at the end of the day that we're holding enough spots for girls in the sports that we're offering. And I can't. >> So, you're speaking to Title N. >> It is a title question. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think we could follow up on the details of that. Um, that's something that Tony Riley and I track really closely. Um, and so we could bring more information back to the board on that for sure. >> I would appreciate that. Thank you. any all right so moving to alternative school uh staff allocations um again they they will feel the effect of the plus4 ptr um there is a loss of a principal and a half essentially one um
1011.0 O FTE of um in that category of principles is associated with family partnership. Um this year they were allocated an assistant principal. They chose not to hire that position. Um it remains open and so in this next budget cycle um we're looking to eliminate that. Um you'll also um see a halfime um I can't even read my own chart because my it's so little. >> ASD virtual. >> Yes. ASD virtual. Um so um there's a halftime um assistant principal position there that that we are proposing that they don't continue with. So um so those are the large changes. Um a big move would be to the nursing regional model which I'll explain here shortly. Um and there is a loss of a security position at Polaris K12 school. Um and that person is retiring
102from that position um this school year. Um, one note about charters and nurses. Um, our charter schools uh will have a choice in this new regional model to either opt into the regional model as a part of the plan or to um if they would like to retain a full-time nurse at their charter since they control their own budget, they'd be able to contract um for a full-time nurse at their charter school as a part of their budget. So shifting to the regional nurse model. Um we started down this road a little bit last year with um looking at a model based on student um health need essentially. We know we have intensive needs students with a lot of health issues. We know we have students with all sorts of different things that require care.
103And when we did our staffing last year, we started to look at what we call an acuity model of service with nurses where we're meeting the need versus every school just gets a full-time position. So, this takes this as a step further. Essentially, rather than looking at a a school population and um allocating it in that way, what we're proposing is to uh break the district into regions. um those regions that you can see there, there would be uh six different regions would be staffed by 9 to 11 nurses per region. Um so they essentially would serve in each region 12 to 14 schools and what that group of nurses would do um would be to look at the student needs um and be able to staff appropriately what those needs are. So if I
104if I that each region would have a nursing lead that would deploy their staff essentially as needed. So if a student needs to be tubefed at one school at a certain time, there would be a person assigned to that. If there's medication needs at a school, a person would be assigned to that. There may be some buildings that require a full-time nurse still as a part of that regional model based on the student needs that are present. So if there is a life skills program at a school, it is more than likely that that particular program would have a lot more nursing than than a school that doesn't have a life skills program as an example. So um what this does is allows us to reduce the 25 positions that have been discussed previously and
105it would be a 29% reduction um of our nursing staff. Um, one of the things that is is advantageous to this model is um, addressing the needs of sub nurses. Um, right now sometimes there are shortages for subs in nursing positions. So if a nurse is out sick, there may be a day where a school goes without a nurse unless there's somebody that needs um, to go to that school for a need. And so what this regional model does is allows us to be more nimble with our staffing. So if there is a need at a particular school and someone is out sick, there are many other people to cover that position. So um it is a very different model than what we're used to in ASD though. So it will take some adjustment. So
106I can pause there if there are questions about nursing. >> Uh member Wilson, >> I I have a question regarding specifically King Tech. I know that there's a a smaller number of full-time students at that program, but do we know approximately how many students go through because so many of them are half day through that school in one day? >> Yeah, there's roughly around 700 students um that go through during the school day um give or take that you split that give or take between AM and PM. So that's in addition to their full-time. >> So in 700 in addition to their full-time and how many full-time students? So they have >> 120. >> Yep. >> 120. So about 820 students. >> Not at any one time though. >> Not at any one time. >>
107They they typically have at what time about 400 to 500 students at a time between AM and PM. >> And are are there any additional concerns above and beyond um because of the type of school it is? Obviously the technical aspect with all of the machinery and everything else. >> Yeah, absolutely. That's a good question. Thank you for that. Um, so part of the acuity model is looking at those risks. Um, and so obviously at King Tech, we have students working with power tools and other machinery. So that's part of the acuity model that we would um, look at. In terms of the the nurse staffing, >> having been a shop teacher for my career before I went into administration, um, if you get hurt in those areas, a big big portion would probably be
108where you're going to go get more help somewhere else. and first aid is what almost every one of those teachers have already in those classes. But we're going to definitely that I mean some of these schools have 1,800 kids and with life skills and that all gets looked at in a regional model for sure. >> Thank you, Mr. Gelson. Um we're going to go to member Bellamy then I'm going to ask we hold on questions to ensure we get through the entire presentation. Thank you. >> Sure. Back to the regional. Okay. I'm old school. I still can't figure out what that looks like. I I I just can't I can't if I if a kid And then what does the nurses think about this? Uh what were your conversations like with the nurses? >> So
109I wasn't in the nurse meeting that happened on Monday. Um is Diana here? >> Yes, she is. >> Diana Beltran can come up and help you um with that perspective. Hi, good evening. >> For the record, Diana Beltran, senior director of uh mental health and student support. So, your question is how did the nurses feel? >> I'm just trying to wrap my head around this regional nursing model, what it looks like, um the benefits of it, the I mean, I see it as a cost savings because we're get we're laying off or get not hiring 25 people. But but I come back to the student safety piece. And so for the professionals who do the work, I was wondering what that conversation was like regarding moving toward >> Well, to be quite honest, it's it's
110difficult across the board with all the cuts um that we're showing today. So um just like the other positions, there's concern for their jobs. But um meanwhile um Kathy Bell has been researching regional bottles in the lower 48 and what that looks like. >> They all they exist somewhere. >> They do exist. Um they're based on student student acuity and needs at the schools. And so in making it a regional model, the nurses will be in the area of the regions but maybe not necessarily at a particular school all day long. And so we do have some schools that might have to diabetics and tube feedings and um other needs like that cathization where that uh nurse will be uh assigned more hours or more time to meet the needs of the students. Um, but
111when it comes to simple things, I for lack of a better word, simpler things like uh a band-aid or um not feeling well, then we'll rely on uh support from the front office staff or a staff assigned at the school to um put that band-aid on or make a call to the parents where typically the nurse was doing that as well. Um so we will definitely be looking at um those um high needs areas and making sure that we deploy the nurses correctly and spend that a certain amount of time um at each school. And then we still will have to follow up with um um vision screenings, different screenings. So that will still occur at all the different schools from a nurse. And we would still, like we do now, call 911 if there
112was a major emergency. >> You know, currently in our current model, like West High School, 1,800 kids has one nurse and some of our really small elementary schools that have less than 200 kids have one nurse. So, I mean, there's >> we have to look at all that >> I just need to understand practice. >> Yeah. >> What does that structure look like? And how do we help parents understand it? Because if I've got a chronically ill kid, I want to know that this model will serve them. >> Yes. >> In the way that they need to be served. And I I I'm just trying to understand that. >> Yeah. >> So, definitely student focus based on student acuity and then it could shift year to year depending if a student moves to a different
113school, then that nurse will be deployed to that school to spend the majority of their time there. >> Yeah. What what's interesting about this model is that um we actually looked at this in the last uh budget cycle as well and said we're not quite ready to go there. Um because people rightly so are concerned about health safety at the school and so are parents as you indicated. Um, what's interesting about this regional model is you would think naturally that the larger elementary school probably needs more nursing staff than a smaller elementary school. And that's actually not always how it works out. >> Um, when you do a student acuity model, it really does look exactly like what you're concerned about as what does that kid need in that setting. Um, so you may have
114a very small elementary school that in fact needs a full-time nurse. Um, and that's the the flexibility of that regional model. um rather than just saying, you know, you only have 200 students, so you only get a half-time nurse, even though you have all these needs, we're able to give you more. And it also goes the other direction, too. You need less. >> You don't need Yeah. Right. Okay. >> I That's helpful. >> I can tell you as well that the nurses do input um the types of visits they see, so that will help with that. And when we met with the nurses, um, uh, Kathy Bell did tell them that she will coordinate a, uh, workforce team so that their input is taken as well when we, um, put these models to these regions
115together. >> Thank you. Thank you guys. >> So, we'll get through the rest of these slides fairly quickly. um wanted to provide a little bit of information on what it would cost if we were to meet the state standards through HB57 or the target class sizes that were in the Pyaden study for recommended class sizes. There at the bottom there's a chart that shows the HP57 target class size going 23 23 students at K through six and 30 at 7 through 12. uh particularly at sixth grade, you can see that 13 more students per class in sixth grade is quite a bit larger than what the state standard is. [clears throat] Um and if we want to meet those standards based on our current budget, that's about 341 more FTE we would need or nearly
116$47 million. Uh and that doesn't include the Paris. So if we we wouldn't also need to add those in too. Uh the Pasaden study was 15 at grades K through three and 25 at grades 4 through 12 which would cost about 702 FTE or $95 million or so. >> Um so I'm not going to go through the rest of these slides in much detail. This is provided in the budget book in the summary and then in the back on appendix C there is a more detailed summary of this. But as the accountant in me needs to show uh the budgetto budget change um because we did go through these slides a lot of them were you saw things duplicated like principles or how when we were talking about how things were going to change at
117schools uh counselor psychologist but this is really the detailed budgettobudget change for administration or administration or codes uh special services and schoolbased changes. So that's all the FTE and the dollars how that adds up in our budget book. Um over 500 FTE or over 10% of our workforce is being reduced through this budget. >> Okay. And then moving on to an overview of the other funds. There were just a couple of updates um to the budgets for transportation, food service, and debt service that we wanted to make you aware of. Uh here you can see the transportation um fund. we are balancing to the projected revenue uh which did see a modest decrease as a result of enrollment decline. Um you'll note that the uh per student amount did go up uh for the current
118year which is continuing but then you have a net reduction of that 536,000. uh the way that we are going to balance to that number uh based on a couple of increases to our expenditures. We have the increase of the implementation of ballot measure one and of a contract uh for the staff as well as some increases to our projections for the contracted uh transportation services. Uh that's going to result in an increase above what the revenue is being projected to be. So, we are going to have to make some alignments that could potentially be a reduction of about 10, 12, maybe 15 routes depending. Um, and that will kind of be a work in progress as we get more information about um, you know, the enrollment at the different schools and what the needs
119are there for transportation routes. Uh, we'll definitely keep you um, apprised of that. Next slide is the Yes, >> member Dunley, I'm going to hold questions until the end if we could just get through the next couple slides. Thank you. >> Uh next slide for student nutrition. Um you can see we're projecting about the same with a very slight decrease uh for uh federal reimbursements. Um one of the thing there's a lot going on in food service in terms of our um providing of that program and the changes and expansions of that program. we're bringing in um with for the current year there's been several schools that were added to the breakfast program to the lunch program um and more planned for FY27 as well as about 13 schools that were converted to community eligibility
120provision schools which is a short CP C you might have heard that acronym and essentially those are the schools that meet income eligibility for providing free meals to the full student body. Um some of these changes including a change of several of the schools to traditional service from the bagged lunch model. Um it there's a lot of moving parts happening right now in student nutrition. Um a lot of those changes have been shown um in our actual data but then in um you know evidence uh from other schools making these changes that there's an increase in participation um as there is an increase in some of the expenditures. There's also an increase in some of the rates of reimbursement. So the meals that are uh eligible for federal reimbursement, there's a lot of moving parts
121right now. Uh for the current year, we projected quite a steep increase. And so um but there's also a lag in some of that information coming forward to see what the actual participation is for the year, what the actual revenues that we're receiving are. So, we're being pretty modest in how we're projecting out for FY27, but overall, we're looking at some positive changes that are going to mean um recouping some revenue um and providing for that. And so, that this is a balanced budget that incorporates um the projections for revenue and expenditures. And then last but not least, um this is uh for debt service fund. And there's a couple of things to note here for debt service um that's kind of unique to the current year and to the next fiscal year. Uh so
122you'll see that there was an amount of fund balance that was built into the projected budget for FY26. Um and that's not there for the preliminary budget. However, one of the things, one of the changes that happened for FY26 is that the state of Alaska underfunded the school bond debt reimbursement program uh for all districts. Uh and Anchorage was shorted about 4.4 million as a result of that. So, the district does have a limited fund balance um moving into FY27 to be able to absorb uh that shortfall. And so we will need to request approximately 2 million um from the taxpayers to shore up that difference. Um but that uh is information that um needs to be reflected uh moving forward. So to close, you know, the real takeaways are for this with this budget,
123we're going to have higher class sizes, decreased student supports, and decreased administrative support. Um, our office foot our footprint out of this office will be decreased significantly. Uh, it's going to take longer to get things done, whether it be maintenance, moving stuff around through our warehouse, um, and get things clean through our custodians. It's just this budget is not ideal. No, nobody wants to make these reductions, but when we have a $90 million deficit, this is where we end up at. >> I think we're moving to questions. Member Donnie, I want to go back to your question. >> Thank you. on the uh transportation fund slide. Um how do the numbers on this slide relate to the actual costs to the district of transportation in the next year? >> So this number reflects to the
124uh obviously the revenue the expenditures are planned for balancing to that number. So the expenditures for the coming year and I think that the difference in incorporating the full cost of everything that was projected so the the increments to contracted services I think this is what you're asking uh member Donnelly is I think that the difference was about $3 million. >> So you're going to have to you'll be seeking $3 million in reductions or in savings from this current year to next year in the transportation overall expenditures. Yes. >> Thank you. >> I'm going to jump in with two quick questions. The the first um this board narrowly rejected looking at build building consolidation which was primarily aimed to impact positively the level of service that our students see in schools but also had a
125budgetary impact. If there were board members who didn't support that initiative at that time, but who wish to revisit the topic now in light of this information, is there anything that could be done? Mr. President, I can kick off the conversation. I do think that this is an important matter to be discussed by this board. I would not be surprised if there are going to be many individuals that are going to ask the board to revisit that conversation for two reasons. One, when buildings are consolidated, there are long-term savings, but more importantly, because so many of our buildings are underenrolled, there's an opportunity to help weather some of these large PTR increases that we forecast. That's why our team has dedicated hundreds of hours towards that effort over the past four years. Um, though one
126of the schools was narrowly rejected, there was another school where it was very decisive that the board did not want to close the school. So my initial response to this question is I want to respect the will of the board. But if there is a change of heart to be completely transparent, I need to see a commitment from the board in writing through a resolution through some sort of formal process to give us the confidence that if we were to invest at that work that it will ultimately result in cost savings and academic benefits for these children. >> Thank you. Um, the other question I have uh there in light of the presentation today, it's um not ideal, Mr. Ratliff. Well, I understand why you would say it um doesn't seem to to cover it.
127This is a a catastrophic budget and um it shouldn't be acceptable to the municipality, to residents, to students, to educators. uh two school districts have joined litigation that's suing the state regarding education funding and um I'm curious if district administration here in Anchorage have considered joining that litigation. >> I would be open to that conversation but that initiative is being led by the coalition for education equity and they were tasked with selecting the plaintiffs and I want to be clear that we were not invited to be a plaintiff in that litigation. If there's an opportunity to have that conversation, I would certainly welcome it regardless of whether or not ASD does join that litigation. We can certainly benefit from the aims of that litigation, which is to direct the legislature to conduct an adequacy study
128that will give us a a better grasp as to how poorly are our schools funded because it is my professional opinion and perspective that our schools are being inadequately funded. So whether that's done through litigation that doesn't include ASD or through ASD, we're very supportive of that effort. It's critical to our future. >> Thank you, Dr. Brian. We'll go to member lessons. >> Um thank you. I had a maybe a high level technical question um about the enrollment projections that are used to create this entire budget. I assume that folks were using demographers um in some way, shape or form. One of the things that I noticed is that the high school enrollment um next year appears to be increasing by about 4% based on my tally from where we are currently. And I know
129we've talked about grade level bubbles, but um I guess it surprised me to see high school enrollment projections increasing when it looks like we were there was some variance between what we projected for this year and what we've actually seen for this year has gone down. So could we talk about why we think next year's high school enrollment is increasing and that's a foundation for some of these estimates? Yeah, I may have to get back with you on specifics, but they are decreasing from and when you see budget to budget, I guess you'll see that uh there was about 10 FTE that were taken out due to enrollment at the high schools. Um and that's we are probably high on our budget in 26. Um but we do, you know, if you have that bubble
130in eighth grade coming into those ninth grade classes, if that those eighth graders are more and you're exiting off fewer uh 12th graders, that's kind of how it happens. But we can get you a little more detail on that later on because I don't have the numbers in front of me. >> Member Bellamy. >> Um, I can hold mine until later because we're about out of time. >> Member Hullman, I saw your mic illuminated briefly. Did you have a question you would like to ask? Um, just because it does go to our fund balance, has the district been reimbursed for the expenses incurred in uh response to the the weather in western Alaska? >> Uh, yeah. So, we were awarded the project serve grant which is going to cover a lot of the transportation and
131some of those added duties that we had uh right at the response. So, while we did incur some of those costs, those are going to be actually coded to a grant. you may not see them in the general fund ever. >> And then in a a different area, um if there were local groups that wanted to fund a specific sport or activity on an ongoing basis, is that workable? And I realize that to my knowledge, it's not something we do. I know we've got some organizations that have taken over and operate. Yeah. you you're just specifically asking funding, not like >> if if they looked at the the expense item on the chart and said, "Yeah, we'll we'll come up with 150 grand a year if you continue this activity or sport." Is is that
132doable from an administrative standpoint? I know it's not as simple as money. That's why I ask. >> Um well, on the financing side, it would be allowable depending on the organization. Um, like if it's the city and it would be above the local cap, then maybe not. But if it's a nonprofit or something that just wants to make a donation to the district for us to pay the coaches out of there, then uh technically that would be, you know, financially feasible. >> Yeah. From an operational standpoint, um we we could work through those details, but um really money is more of our issue right now around activities and sports than it is the operation of because we do we do still have activity principles and and things of that nature. Um we'd also have to
133talk about do they have any say in hiring coaches? Um that could be a sticky issue as well. That's when we would want to enter into an outsourcing agreement. Um, but if they don't have any interest in those details and they just want to donate money, it would be much simpler and and easier to operate. >> Seeing no other questions, I would entertain a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of uncontested student hearings, legal updates, negotiations, and contracts. >> So moved. >> Second. I >> made by Hollowman, seconded by Bellamy. Seeing no opposition, we're adjourned to executive session um and effective at 5:00 PM. Thank you.