001Good afternoon everyone. Today is Tuesday, September 2nd at 4 p.m. We'll call this work session of the Anchorage School Board to order. Present in the boardroom are members Higgins, Lessons, Donley, Jacobs, Hollowman, and Bellamy. not with us uh tonight in person and not joining us quite yet online is member Wilson. We'll announce when she is here with us. Uh we are going to jump right in now that we've called ourselves to order to our two items of discussion. The first of which is school-based health centers. Dr. Bryant, would you like to introduce? >> Thank you, Mr. President. I'll invite up our uh team of panelists. This will be a joint presentation from both the mental health and student services department along with our community partners in um school mental health um or uh sorry Anchorage
002schoolbased health centers members while we're pulling up the slide deck I'll just note that we're to save questions until the end of the presentation. Thank you. >> Okay, I think I'm on loud and clear. Um, firstly, thank you for having us today. Um, I'm Ally Ceell. I'm the director in mental health and student support over student supports. And I'm excited to talk today about our school-based health centers and how we support service students and healthc care services while also reducing barriers. And I'm excited today to be joined by the executive director of the Anchorage Schoolbased Health Centers, Heather Ireland. So today's presentation is really two parts. We're very excited to give an update about the partnership and the collaboration between uh the Anchorage School District and our Anchorage Schoolbased health centers. Give just an update
003about the collaboration, the services we provide. um as well as um kind of envision the future a time for discussion and questions that come up during the presentation and and thinking about what the future can really hold. So our session goal today again is to provide updates some data about the partnership and the services that the collaboration provides students and then we hope by the end of the session today that everyone feels confident about what the partnership is, what it looks like at our schools. the students that we're serving through the partnership and as well as have a preliminary discussion about the future and longevity. This is a partnership that this is year 15 of and so we're really excited to kind of share a little bit about the history as well as how far
004the partnership has grown over the past 15 years. So just to cover some basics of the Anchorage Schoolbased Health Centers and the overview. Um as you can see in the slide deck, the mission is to provide quality coordinated health services onsite to students to support their success at school and in life as a whole. So what do those services really look like? Those services are really leaning into the comprehensive wellness exams um that are really key for an overall wellness check for students as well as making them eligible to participate in sports and programs within our schools. Additionally, there are some limited urgent care visits that also occur on site. And just to be clear, all of these services are provided under parental consent. um as a community partner providing these supports on school. We're
005able to do that through the online registration process as well as some other traditional means which has really reduced a barrier for these students to get supports especially if they're not tending to get health care services off of site. Again, this increases sports participation if the students haven't been able to access their typical primary care physician um or get a sports physical. They really lean into a collaboration with the school nurse as well as leadership, which we'll discuss a little bit further. And then, uh most importantly, it provides an entry point for layered services with referrals to specialists if that comes up. um as well as a connection to school-based mental health. So that's kind of a basic overview of the main services that are provided at this point at our school-based health centers. just
006to kind of make that concrete connection to ASD and our schoolboard strategies and goals and in particular our portrait of a graduate when students receive health care services when they are healthy and well and when they're able to participate in sports because they have those abilities and they have that sports physical and the comprehensive wellness exam. They feel connected. They feel like they belong. They are more likely to be participating and attending and reaching their goals. So the mission of the school-based health centers goes handinhand with Anchorage School District goals and it really reduces a barrier again for students to feel connected and belonging and participate especially in our middle school and high school programs. Before I turn it over to Heather to do more of a deep dive into the data with the students
007that we're serving, um, how the services are funded, I just wanted to take a look back because this is year 15 of the, um, partnership which started back in 2010. Um, and this is a kickoff with a Clark Middle School location. Um we then then expanded into Begage Middle School with 2015 really saw the alignment with other school-based services and our community partners with school-based mental health. Then shifting into high school, two more sites in 2017 and 18 were added with Bartlett and Betty Davis. In 2019, this idea and implementation of popup sites occurred. So then instead of having just standalone locations, uh the Ingred School Day Health Centers came up with popup clinics where specific days and locations could be added so that they would pop up provide those services needed. And then um
008it really really leaned into increasing services and reach. And then this year, we're excited that West High School has shifted from a popup location to having dedicated space for an ongoing um clinic. Okay. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Heather to get into the data. You'll notice that we have some graphs that Heather will lean into as part of the slide deck and then also the annual report in more of a T-chart form that you were provided as well. And then I also wanted to recognize uh with me today Patty Clay, a physician in the community who serves as our advisory council chair and Dave Kyper who is our liaison with Christian Health Associates which is our parent organization. Um so as you can see from this if you you know
009kind of pull out the dip in 2021 it's almost a steady line of growth if you weren't accounting for COVID. Um, so it's been great that our program has been able to to serve more students. Um, yeah, you can do the next slide. So, the majority of our visits are comprehensive wellness exams. Um, we h do a lot of urgent care, mostly at East. That's why the numbers are so high there. We had a great nurse who referred a lot of students to us. We've seen a lot more um, ear infections more recently, even with the older kids. And if you take a guess of why, what are you sticking in your ears more now? AirPods. And so that's um something that that we've seen leading to infections and one kid even had like full
010hearing loss in his ear. Um that again was medically treated but uh just to give you some context of some of the urgent care visits that we're seeing. Um and then um you could see sorry from the last slide the popups are you know really a small number but really a meaningful um for for some of those students. And you can go to the next slide, but just to give some context um about a meaningful visit, like there was a student that we saw at one school whose father had cancer and was was in hospice dying of cancer and this kid wanted to play soccer, but uh they were not able to get a physical from their regular healthcare provider. So the the family was insured, but the single dad wasn't able to take them.
011And so that's kind of gives you a sense of even someone with insurance needs to access the care that we provide at the school sometimes. Um so currently about half of our students have Denali kidare. That might change. Um and we can talk more about that later, but last school year there were about 25% of our students were uninsured. Um an increase from 20% the year before. um triricare has gone up a little bit since co primarily because it's harder to access services on base I think um so so families take advantage of that there's also more uh like for example we're at central and then there's more of those families um that are military families at that school so that's part of that jump next um so currently um our um oh getting back
012to the last slide, sorry I missed this point, but about um we get about $100,000 of revenue from billing services in the calendar year 2024, but our budget is about $200,000. So where's the gap? Um we the primarily the the grant funding that we have is a grant from the municipality. Um that is the funding source is the alcohol tax. And so we've just that has been a three-year grant that ends in December. We reapplied for 2026 and we'll see what happens with that. Um but I would like to point out that the Anchorage School District is not a line item there. Um so we very much appreciate the space that the district donates to us but we do not take any ASD dollars to run this program. So um and we do take some
013donations uh like pick click give is an option and um some people just privately donate. So that gives you a sense of our overall budget um billing revenue and uh grant funding. Uh so yeah, next slide. Um at Begitch, which is one of the schools where I first started, um in the nursur's office, it says relationships matter most. And I would say that that is true um for this program and something I've tried to take into consideration in my work. um you know building relationships with those nurses and there's been changes uh over the years with that. Um just obviously with attrition um and then we've had an evolving role with the mental health clinicians. Um you can barely see but that little logo is the family medicine residency. Um the residents come one day
014a week primarily to East. uh they are excited to come because the this adolescent population is not something that they normally see in the clinic and it's good for them to get this experience working with that group. Um so yeah, and we used to we're just running or we're just at the end of our grant from the United Way, but we're still involved with that organization and collaborating with other um organizations in the community. And uh so we have recently done some strategic planning with the 4acre group. The circular logo is our values that was identified in the last uh strategic planning session that we had. And um obviously there's budget decisions both at the district level and state and nationally that are out of our control and I know um some are out of
015your control too. Um but we need to be prepared for how to adjust our services as as the landscape changes or may change. Um so those were some of the things we discussed in our strategic planning session. um what's going on with ASD sports, Medicaid funding, and then the status of municipal funding. And I would say uh getting back to the earlier slide where I said our current um funding with the municipality goes through this calendar year, we also have some reserves. So if hypothetically we don't continue to be funded, we we do have some reserve funding. So, um, we are set for this school year if necessary. Um, yeah, and then just kind of coming up with some sort of short-term goals and then some more long-term goals. Um, but just trying to be
016nimble and evolve to to meet the needs of the district in the changing landscape. And I think just kind of looking back, especially as this is year two, as as I'm getting to partner with Heather and her team, it's been really important this last year for me to be part of their advisory board and and Heather joins our school-based mental health monthly meeting so that we can really try to look at the needs of our district, see what services on site um our stakeholders are looking for. And that's part of our discussion today is really are we um still aligned to the services and supports and the mission of ASD number one. Um because the mission of the schoolbased health centers is definitely to support our students and our families to be successful in school
017and in life. Um and so we're really um excited about the services so far. Um Heather's already shared um for the start of this year, they're even ahead of where we were last year for providing the comprehensive wellness exams, which really demonstrates a need um that our students and families have and and also the importance of those um services uh to our students to be participating in all of the amazing things that ASD provides. So, kind of shifting um from where um Heather ended by taking a look strategically at um their mission and what's ahead, we did want to use the rest of our um aotted time just for a discussion and a vision now that we've set kind of a baseline for how our school-based health centers are currently operating. um to really get
018feedback um from this very important leadership group uh about the services provided, answer any questions, and then see if there were any um any ideas for extending the partnership, making adjustments or things that we should research. So maybe I'll open it up, >> member Jacobs, to questions. >> Yeah, thank you for the presentation. Um, board members, I know I asked you to hold your questions until now. Um, so I'll start and then other members can jump in. Um, so a two-part question. Uh, first, I see that the the number of students served jumped significantly year-over-year. Is there any correlation do we think between that number and the fact that sixth grade moved to middle school? Um, which at least was new for Clark, right? Um, >> so I I started with this program in 2014
019and Clark and Beg have had sixth grade since then. >> Got it. Now, the middle schools that were serving as popup locations, Romeig, Central, and Wendler, all added sixth grade last year. So, that could have been some of the jump. Um, but I just think in general it that growth can be attributed to sixth grade. It can be attributed to just in general serving more pop-up sites. And then also using the municipal grant, we increased our nurse practitioner time. We because we have paid nurse practitioners. So we had more availability to serve more students and then obviously need um you know as we were at those schools were identifying students that that need to be seen. >> Sure. And we're the board's grateful for that work. Um the other question I had related to billing
020um the district I think is still um building up its muscle in terms of medicaid billing and then medical billing in general. Is there a log jam of billable services that the clinics are providing that revenue isn't seized for? Is that a bottleneck or you folks billing for everything you can? Uh, so I think on our level we're billing for Medicaid for everything we can, but it's more like Medicaid pays for comprehensive wellness exams. Um, Medicaid pays for the urgent care visits that we're seeing generally. Um, so the the challenge is more do the families have Medicaid? Um, you know, one challenge is going to be now they're uh families are going to have to reenroll every six months versus every year. So, that's going to be um potentially a barrier or families are going
021to be losing that coverage. Um, but we're I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. I think the medical services that we provide are much different than what would be build from the Anchorage School District. So, it's not really the same. We're not having the same kind of barriers there. >> Sounds like we could borrow your billers then. Um, other me questions from the board, member lessons. >> Um, thank you and first I just wanted to extend my appreciation to President Jacobs for calendaring this work session and um to our schoolbased health center partners uh sitting and and speaking and also sitting in support. Um, you know, President Jacobs already remarked about the slide showing the sort of linear growth with the COVID dip and I think it's important to contextualize that
022that growth has taken place even as enrollment has dropped which also indicates that it it's a greater proportion of our students uh utilizing the service. So I, you know, I don't know what that chart would look like, but I can tell you at a very basic level that that's more kids um at any given year. Um my own I just had a couple of thoughts since this was sort of you open it up for discussion. Um you know, is the current partnership and services provided in alignment with the goals and priorities? You know, we're going to have a data conversation about students being on track for graduation. and we'll get the technical report later today and we'll think about it for a couple of weeks and talk about it more in depth. You these are
023student athletes predominantly. I think it would be interesting if there was a chance for sort of cross uh you know collaboration and and trying to to more granularly understand you know how is the access to a team and to that extracurricular opportunity you know encouraging a student to to stay on track for graduation. I don't know what that data would look like, but my sense is that there might be something there. Uh because you could look at those specific, you know, 680 kids or so. Um whatever that number is. Um I was struck by there was a new report from the state of Alaska that came out maybe like last weekish um about sort of health in Alaska broadly. And I didn't read all 70some pages, but I kind of skimmed through it. And you
024know, my general sense is that we have a growing incidence of, you know, childhood diseases that can partially be mitigated through act physical activity. Um, and so I don't know, there might be some state level data that indicates that this partnership is still valuable in promoting the health and well-being of our students. This is just throwing some ideas, some spaghetti on the wall. And then, you know, to the bullet point of how can our schoolbased health centers continue to grow services? Uh, I am not a dentist or an optometrist. I do go to those specialists, but you know, I'm I'm struck that um elementary students get vision screening. I don't know to what extent middle or high school students do. There was an article in the paper about school nurses, you know, really stepping, this
025was like a year and a half ago, filling in the void, recognizing that a student had a visual problem. It just seems like it's a really common sense good place to fill in the gap as a child's eye grows and changes. Maybe they're fine in third grade, but by the time they're a 10th grader, you know, their pupils or their whatever has changed. I think it is a state mandate, but they're they're screened at I think it's seventh and tth grade by the school nurses. Okay. Yeah. Who knew? And then and then referred to specialists. And that's sort of a >> um so so our model, we look to other programs in the lower 48 that they um some some school-based health centers bring in vision providers to make sure that kids have glasses. >>
026Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. Well, I mean I I sort of started circling everything under your bullet point. I think that paying attention to all of those is important because it fundamentally empowers a student to understand, you know, their body and how it works and what they need to be a healthy, functional person as they navigate adulthood. So, I see a lot of value in the services you provide in um helping ensure all of our students are ready um for whatever is next after graduation. So, thank you. No questions really. Just >> Well, and just a few notes on that. Um to Heather's point, we um did look certainly at other sitebased models and depending on the equipment available, the other staffing and other things um what what would be offered on different sites and um
027to member Jacobs, President Jacobs, um our school nurses um cannot do comprehensive wellness exams. So, and just thinking about billable um services and things like that, that's where the partnership comes in that their expertise is layered on um our school nurses and and provides a different level of of health care. >> Thank you for that point. Member lessons, quick followup, then we'll go to members. >> I re I realize that I had one question. And that might be a technical question, but given that you receive grant funding from the municipality, I wonder in service of our students, although not through the district, I wonder if that has any effect on, you know, we're talking about the role of the local contribution and what might be at stake. you know, if >> $100,000 from the municipality
028is going to support, you know, our school-based health centers, does that put our district potentially on the hook for a loss of a commeasurate amount in local contribution? >> Yeah. U member lessons, I think that's a great question. Um the what my understanding about that particular local contribution cap would be it's so broad to where most districts have no idea what would or wouldn't count towards the cap. So that's informing our advocacy to really um essentially um encourage the commissioner to abandon the current plans because we worry it could be very destructive in this specific instance that you bring up. >> Thank you member lessons for the question. We'll go to member Higgins. >> Thank you. Um um I appreciate this presentation. I was on the board when it was adopted to to 2010 and
029it's nice to see the progression and what's taking place. Um a couple of questions. I remember a presentation by Volunteers of America, Providence and ASD in regards to what they were doing with parent families with issues with kids and how they were reaching out and but they had some schools they had greater support in other than other schools and getting the names of the issues. Is that kind of a a communication kind of gap that we have in some schools or not? or those things that the board needs to look at are things that we could address or try to support because I know that you got the mandatory reporters, you got the confidentiality, you got all the other issues and it gets to be probably pretty complex with the HIPPO, you name it uh
030type issues. Yeah, thank you um member Higgins for bringing that up. And I'm not sure if you're referencing last year's work session that that we had with our community partners. And similarly, we've really reduced barriers for students getting services by really partnering with risk management to have the online registration consent process because some of the barriers were uh parents um really leaning into those uh consents and ensuring that um some barriers especially since the services were giving on site were reduced. And so we've really problem solved um some of that, not all of that obviously, but it really has increased students ability to give services when we've provided uh easy ways for parents to um be acknowledge and and know that those services are are available on site. That's also where some of the collaboration
031has grown with our school principles, especially at popup sites to coordinate great days to have the students available so that they can get the wellness exams. And I I would just say so when I came on in 2014 and that was the first year that we really started with the behavioral health stuff at Begage and we were sort of building the plane as we flew and now there's it's that whole process of the mental health um services being offered is much more um cohesive or just um like there's really like a good blueprint for bringing it into new schools and there's a a lot more sort of consistency and um an approach that that makes things go a lot more smoothly than when we were doing it 10 years ago. >> Thank you. >> Go
032ahead. >> You have a followup. Member >> H follow. The other question has to do with just communications out to the community as a whole. Uh because I know I've talked to number of people here in the last couple years. uh and and they have kids that are entering um kindergarten that could have been available for special ed for other needs, but they, you know, we're looking for referrals from pediatricians. We're looking for this. We have to have parents even informed of what they could do or how we can do better screening to get them earlier when they have, you know, when they're eligible for it. Is there a I'm just curious about the communications both to the pediatricians, general practitioners, as well as getting more information out with the communities to to make sure
033those kids get what they have a right to receive. >> Yeah. And currently we're not providing any services at the elementary level. Um, but when we do provide services to middle and high school students, if the family has a regular provider, we give them the option, do you want us to send information to your your regular doctor? Um, and and also in the past couple years, we've met with pediatricians to let them know, hey, here's what we're doing. We're not trying to take business from them. we are um you know here to supplement for the families that aren't getting able or aren't able to get to your offices and and kind of building that collaboration that way. But in there from a communications perspective, even some of the schools that we've been serving for a
034long time, some families are like, I didn't know this was here. This is a great option. And um yeah, just letting them know that it's available should they need it. >> Thank you, Member Higgins. We'll go to Member Bellamy. Just real quick, um, thank you guys for doing this because it healthc care really is a barrier. Um, I'm I'm really uh concerned that uh well, I'm not concerned. I just hope our part of our future gets into elementary because I think um I know our middle and high school kids, they're kind of able to say what's wrong with them or, you know, what's uh what might be bothering them, but the younger ones cannot. So, um, anyway, I just, uh, I I'm I'm intrigued by the popups. Uh, there's some great opportunity there. Do they
035do we have a popup in an elementary school ever? >> We haven't yet. Um, partially our um, our approval from the school district was just for middle and high school students. At this time, um, >> like you said, the elementary kids, it's harder for them to verbalize. And so for middle and high school and we we get a health history from the parents but um at the elementary level that's it's a lot more challenging to work with those smaller kids without their parents present even even with written permission and stuff but >> okay and then in terms of uh extending or growing our part expanding our partnerships >> uh I don't know if we thought anything about working with the university because they have a a nursing maybe we could build a bigger pool of
036caregivers through that program. I don't know. >> Yeah. Uh so we have one of our newer advisory council members is one of the instructors on in the nurse practitioner program and we've talked about that and sometimes we've hosted nurse practitioner students in the past. >> Great. And my final question just has to do with um any tribal health organizations. Have we partnered with in that way yet? So, we serve, and it's varied, let's say 18% Alaskan Native students. Um, we've, uh, one of the physicians at, uh, South Central Foundation has is very familiar with our program and has advocated to possibly bring their providers into into the schools. Um, currently the dis or sorry, currently South Central Foundation prefers to have people served on their campus or there's some maybe funding regulations around that, but
037yeah, it's been discussed and it might be worth revisiting. I know for example that um I think they're um at Alaskan Native Charter School there might they might start having >> yeah we just had a new partnership with uh South Central Foundation doing mental health services on site at Alaskan Native Cultural Charter School which is new this week. So we're really excited about that. So it it really and these are the types of discussions that open up ideas or possibilities or or coming together as we look to grow within the capacity that our partnership has um while still looking at looking forward to serving more students like elementary like some of the middle schools that we haven't yet done popup sites at um based on the capacity of our providers. >> Thank you. Member Bellamy
038um brings the portion of our work session that we dedicated to this topic to a close. I want to reiterate our appreciation for the presentation and um the work you folks do on behalf of our students. I'll also add that um I think that we can be of assistance as we um prepare for the municipality of Anchorage budget cycle. Um, we'll be meeting with the assembly before the end of the year and I personally see how your work dovetales with Mayor Leference's priorities of good government and reducing homelessness and um, I'm sure the mayor feels that way too and so hopefully we can offload that expense into the MOA operating budget and away from the alcohol tax where um, volatility exists. So um, thank you. Any closing comments before we wrap up? >> No, we
039really appreciate the time and the thoughtfulness. Thank you. >> Thanks. If I could real quick, I was liaison to this committee a while back. It really does mean that a certain number of kids get care that wouldn't otherwise. And there are kids that get to go out for sports because they can get the sports exam without having to convince a parent to take them to a doctor. I I wish we could fund this. I'm grateful that we don't um because we'd have to cut it. But um it it really does bring an awesome benefit to where students are at and and make them healthier and make them more engaged with the school. So, thank you very much for everything your group does. Thank you, Member Holland. All right, we'll um pivot topics to our second
040item, which is school start times. While we're um switching out our panels, I'll note that member Wilson joined us at 4:05 p.m. Welcome. So, Mr. President, our second topic will be school start time. So, just to recap, last year was our first year of implementation and we committed to the board regular progress updates just to show how things are going. Um we did not schedule this because there's any intent or request to make changes. really this is a part of annual ongoing oversight of how the the initiative is going. Uh with that said, uh Mr. Gustosson. >> All right. Thank you. So, all right. There we go. All right. So, thanks for uh allowing me to come and talk to you this this afternoon in regards to the start times. Um, I wanted to try
041to kind of give us a little history about how we ended up where we're at right now, having new start times for last year and then starting out this year. In January of 23, um, you directed us to research available options, engage in information, gathering, and provide a recommendation to you. So between February and March of that year, um we actually contracted with Shannon Bingham and Western Demographics um to go out and actually uh get out into the community. We held 14 focus groups, conducted interviews with numerous uh uh doctors, medical professionals, hosted three community town hall events, and collected 99,900 survey responses from the broader ASD community on the topic. In April, we presented the findings of that of the recommendation. And then in May, you voted to approve new school start times effect
042of the 2425 school year, giving us a year to prepare people. Um, with that, uh, kind of the main rationale, and I just kind of want to go back over these, um, later start times match natural sleep cycles, especially for the the um, older kids. rearch research shows students are more alert, focused, and able to remember um what they learn. Attendance improves and absences decrease when a students get enough rest. And this supports students well-being through the MTSS by reducing stress, improving mood, and strengthening readiness to learn. Those are kind of the main things you heard from doctors actually that presented to you all. And uh um Shannon Bingham also went over some of those as well. So the school start times kind of looking looking at the schoolboard goals. This would fit under the
043percent of students ready for graduate college career and life readiness is measured in the four-year graduation rates will increase from 81% in 23 to 90% in June of 28. Um, so we ended up uh changing our school start times as you know for elementary starts at 8 o'clock now. Uh, high school starts at 8:45 now and middle school starts at 9:30. We have a bunch a number of different um data points to share with you, but I I I caution um as we go over these that there's been many changes. We have sixth graders in middle school, all of our middle schools now. We have our start times. We have PLC's. We have a number of different things that we have changed over the last couple years. And when we're looking at data, we like
044to look at a longitudinal study of two to three years. So this this these metrics that I'm going to share with you now are just from one year one year difference from the year before to last year. And these are taken off of the data dashboard where we get the data from these. So looking at overall absenteeism rates, um overall there isn't a lot of change. There isn't a lot of change at all. Um in fact, August, September, and November actually went up a little bit, but it's negligible. It's like um less than 1%. and all the others went down a little bit but it's very very small to be able to say that this is exactly why this is happening would would not be a a valid uh statement. So if you can look
045at these um overall absentee rates kind of breaking them down by elementary um our elementaryaries actually the um absenteeism rates in elementary actually went up like points of a percentage from almost all of the months um over the course of the school year. In middle school, we probably had the the greatest uh most profound effect here in that the only two months where the absenteeism rate went up was August and November. I will note that November every level had a higher absentee rate this year than any of the other months. So, we're kind of wondering what we need to go back and look at what was going on in November. Um, but middle school uh probably had the the most profound um change. Some of them were up to 1% change and 1% is not
046a lot, right? It's still negligible. Then high school absentee rate. Um the three months where it went up were October or September, November and um uh March but and then the other months were very small uh decreases less than a 1% for the most part. Looking at chronic absentis absenteeism and reminder that chronic absenteeism are those are those students who miss 10% of this of of school days and that includes both unexcused and excused absences. looking at middle school, elementary, and high school. Elementary um went down about 610 of 1%. Middle school went down um almost 4% in chronic absenteeism and high school went down about a half of a percent. So, um middle school was the one that um we had some movement almost 4% is kind of becoming a little more significant, but
047we also had sixth graders last year. So more kids to look at that we put in a lot more supports at the middle schools this last year. So we can't just say that it's about start times that did that. Um looking at period 1 F rates. This is a data uh point that we were looking at thinking of period one as the period that really in in the history of our our kids tend to have a little more uh difficulty passing. looking at middle school that uh the F rate um went down about 2/10en of a percent and high school went down a little over 1%. Now to say that this is about start times I I would have to um we'll have to take a pause because our high schools are now currently finding
048ways to be able to change or hit the credit recovery button earlier. Some of our high schools actually have if a a student fails a first semester course, they are actually taking that course again second semester already. So, we're doing some pretty unique things in our high schools um in regards to credit recovery. So, that this there's a lot of different I guess the main thing I'm just saying is there's a lot of different um things that can affect what the these results looking at. Um, tardies, tardies, um, that those results are not as good. Um, elementary had a 4% uh, increase in tardies. Middle school had a decrease in tardies and high school just they had a 2% increase. So, middle school again had less tardies. They are the one that's starting last in
049the in the list as well. So kind of looking at the summary highlights uh some chronic absenteeism um has gone down especially at the middle school level. Um F rates comparison middle school um decreased almost two ten but high school decreased one and a quarter%. Um just kind of looking at some considerations. uh these these can be literally this data can show normal year-to-year fluctuations. In other words, we could have this even without any kind of changes the these particular results. Um and really when we're looking and Chris Opitz says this a lot is when we're looking at big changes like this, we really need to be doing longitudinal studies. in longitudinal studies are two to three years at the minimum of looking at something. So that's the the data that we have. Last last
050spring or last winter or spring I tal we sat I sat here and talked about a fall semester and we had some data around late buses that we shared. Well, I never realized this, but it took the bus garage hours upon hours upon hours to be able to do that particular data drop for that one little small group. And it's just not conducive in our data set to be able to to look at that. Now, we also have when we're looking at buses, if we have a snowmageddon, we're going to have late buses all over the place. If we have icy roads on the go on up on the hillside and not in the bowl, those things affect not necessarily start times. What I can say is that anecdotally when you talk to principles and
051you look at kind of what where we're at, we used to have really on time high school buses and our elementarymentaries are pretty late. High school was first, elementary was last. once we shifted our elementary buses are primarily what I'm hearing we hear from schools they're primarily on time our middle school buses are not on time and those are last. So it's just that staggered approach to busing um that uh we're looking at probably affecting those. So we did not include anything in here because we did not we we it the manh hours to be able to provide that and then it we don't believe the data would have been anything that would be valid anyways. So that's that is all we have on this. If there was any questions. >> Yeah. Um thank you
052board members again for holding questions. I'll jump in first and ask um the elementary absenteeism rates by month. It was just interesting how October through February there seems to be a um a bell curve upward. And I'm I'm wondering if that tracks with a the previous years that we typically see higher absenteeism rates. >> If you look at the third row down, >> that's the year before. >> Okay. >> Um so it does have that begins lower, gets higher in the middle of the year and kind of stays steady pretty much. >> Thank you for that. And so yeah, I appreciate Mr. Opit's um desire to to look at longitudinal data as we have this conversation. I think to the extent that we I mean comparing apples to apples isn't possible in this scenario until
053we have another year under our belts. But um folks our families and students just have trouble navigating a bit more trouble have have trouble navigating um winters in Alaska which is understandable. Um, other board members, member Hullman, >> um, wanted to ask if we have kind of a standard definition that we're making all teachers aware of for what constitutes a tardy if if the data's um, based on the same ideas across the board or would there be variation? knowing as a principal, >> a former principal, >> I know you never had any absences, but >> you know, there there as far as tardies go, um, especially for that first period tardy, there are times when schools, you know, some schools are pretty stickler with that, but other schools, if you have six late buses, you
054just say go to class. >> Y >> and we don't count the tardies, right? So where we would want the data to be really really clean to actually make decisions off of that data around tardies is probably we would need to do a a better job of really looking at seeing what we constitute a tardy. We we've done a good job talking about what's an unexcused absence, what's a an excused absence over the years and um but we probably at each level at each grade at each school there's teams usually around discipline that work on tardies. Um every school has a different policy and how they do tardies and their discipline around the tardies depending upon what the issue is in the school. How many schools have quarter of a mile from one room to
055the other? And how many schools can go just up a set of stairs? So I my quick answer would be we probably don't have a really good handle on exactly what the tardy thing is. I bet you it's in the handbook and everybody has the handbook, but in practice it's probably a little different. >> Yeah. Now I want to ask are these first period tardies or are these for the whole day? >> Because it seems like with start times >> they're okay. So for elementary for elementary you take we take um attendance twice >> once in the morning once in the afternoon. So that's AM or PM >> because they're in the same classroom. >> At middle at middle and high we are doing period one tardies. >> Okay. >> Thank you member Hollowman. Are
056there other questions from the board? Okay. Um hearing seeing none, that completes our work session agenda for today. I would entertain a motion to adjourn to executive session at 5:00 p.m. for the purpose of legal updates, negotiations, and contracts. >> Mr. Chair, I move to um move into executive session for the purposes that you stated. >> There a second. >> Second, somebody >> second. >> Okay. made by member Bellamy, seconded by member Lessons. Um, if there's no objection, we will consider ourselves adjourned to executive session effective 5:00 pm. Thank you everyone.