001talking about Mount Spur. Um really starting in February, we started meeting with the MUN and the state talking about an expected um potentially serious fire danger season. And of course um we're always tracking other threats to our schools. So, I thought I'd take this opportunity um with Woody. His real name is Jared Woody. Um I don't know why it just goes by his last name, but he does, but he's got a he had a decade of experience at the state working emergency operations before he started working for us. Um a significant amount of experience in exercise design and and execution. And he really is um our expert for for the National Incident Management System. uh the incident command system. Um he's helping us revise the emergency operations procedure, our policies and procedures and uh really
002getting a handle on how do we prepare the district to be um really build our capacity so we're ready to respond to emergencies. And so I did want to give that introduction for those of you who haven't met him. Um we've had also this year we've had and we've done this um every year we've been building capacity by having emergency operations center training. Um the last time we stood it up for a real world event was um in 2018 for the earthquake and um that was quite an event um prior to Woody getting here. I think all of you are aware that was uh incredibly busy for for weeks for us. And then years later, we're still just now finishing the last earthquake repair at buildings. So, I'll go to the next slide and hand
003off to Woody. Oh, it didn't share. One second. I guess I'm not a good sharer. One second. It's it'll get there. It's slow. Okay. Awesome. Thanks, Jim. So, uh I wanted to start off uh with kind of a high level overview of some of the things we have in the district as our preparedness before we get into those specific components. So, this is a list of the emergency plans that we keep as a district along with their update cycles. So, the big ones that I think most folks are familiar with is our emergency operations plan or EOP and our emergency action plan or EAP. The EOP is our district-wide kind of umbrella plan that we keep and then the emergency action plans or EAPS are what our individual schools fill out. Um, these are updated
004annually by state statute. We're required to review and update um every year. So, the last revision was in July of last year ahead of the school year. Um, we've finalized the last draft on both of those plans. Um, they're being reviewed um, for any last minute edits and then they'll be ready for next school year. We also have the district closure plan that's updated annually based on changes in the district, changes in what we forecast um, in terms of winter weather, things like that, whether we're in an El Nino or LN NI year. Uh, and then we get into some of our more specialized plans. our mental health plan which is um presently is bianual. Our crisis communications plan which is every 5 years that's currently in uh update and our emergency operations center plan
005which governs how our EOC runs. Um we just finished up that update earlier this year. Uh typically uh the update cycle is determined by the maturity of the plan. So uh right now mental health is being assessed bianually because the 2023 edition there was the first version of this plan. So we want to go back and assess that um based on exercises or trainings changes that we identify as more people become familiar with the plan whereas crisis communications in the EOC are more mature. So we've moved them to a five-year cycle. U this is al this slide uh overviews the authorities that basically govern how we plan for emergencies. So on the left um this is a a slide we stole from FEMA a little bit. Uh so we have everything from presidential level policy
006that's PPD8 presidential policy directive 8. Working through state law we have a couple that live in different sections of the state. Um the department of military and veterans affairs where I used to work um has the Alaska Disaster Act. um which covers a lot of how the state does NIMS and ICS. Um then we have our specific laws, those three listed under the Department of Education. Um that first one there is why we have to assess our plans annually. And then we have two kind of broad board policies that have been approved. One of the things that we did note um as we've gone through this process over the last year, we are a little light on our ARs for board policy governing us specifically. So, we're working with risk management and the chiefs to
007start that process to develop new ARs that'll kind of add that granularity that we're looking for. Excellent. All right. And getting into some of those uh specific things that we've been hearing about over the last uh six months to a year. So, Mount Spur, we are doing ongoing monitoring and coordination um with a number of partners. As Jim mentioned, we're working with the municipality. We're working with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, uh, USGS, National Weather Service, um, basically getting those updates on a daily basis. One thing that, uh, we have seen a lot of requests about is the color-coded status, uh, with the volcano. We've heard a number of questions about what happens if it goes orange or what happens if it goes red and what that means. One of the things that our partners have
008really wanted us to stress is that the color-coded threat status is a mixture of about six different variables that the scientists are looking at from gas emissions to ground deformity um to a number of factors that tell them what way the volcano is moving. One thing that they have also added is the color threshold is actually an FAA color system. It's established internationally for aviation. The key thing to look at is the word that comes behind the color. So whether it's a a watch, a warning, um anything like that, that terminology is more for the ground level effect, the ash fall that we may see is going to be included in that consideration, not necessarily in what the color code is. Um and we'll look a little bit at at that on one of these
009future slides that Jim's going to talk about, I believe. So, uh, other than that, you also see a list of the preparations that we have done. A couple that I just want to hit on. Um, the draft messages, we are prepared to, uh, issue messages should we need to. Those have been translated not only, uh, we not only have those ready in English, but in the top seven languages in the district other than English. Uh, and we are also doing more outreach to the community as well. We did an event at Clark Middle School over spring break where we talked to the community and provided more information on volcanoes, including a pamphlet on home preparedness. And we're going to be repeating that um on May 23rd at another outreach event that we have scheduled. And
010internally, we've we've done drills with uh transportation and the senior folks. So everybody knows from maintenance which has a team that can turn off all the external vents within 10 minutes from anywhere. Um they can do it from uh cell phone or or computer um with the exception of four. And we have a team going that knows which schools they go to. Um when it when they get alerted to turn off those external vents. Um we have the procedures for cleaning ash afterwards. um everything pretty much locked down and it's it's really a matter of um and we'll talk about this um in the next couple slides when we decide to implement actions and it and it really goes back to ashall when you look at the 1992 event it happened in uh August was
011the first eruption lasted for 3 to four hours same thing for the second and the third in September and June Um, I'm sorry, June and then August, September. Um, you can see that the ash fall on these, we really only had one, the one in August where ashfall actually hit Anchorage and it was about a quarter inch. And um, we've got a slide later that shows if you go to the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the AVIA website, every single day it has an ashfall projection um, from 5,000 ft all the way up to 60,000 ft. if the volcano were to erupt today. So if you go there to in this morning's um on their website it projected at 40 and 50,000 feet that Anchorage would get ashfall but on any given day it could easily go
012into the interior. It could go to the southern peninsula and really all of our decisions from the moment we hear eruption are going to be based off ashfall. If it's not going to go anywhere near Anchorage we wouldn't cancel school. We wouldn't we we would certainly be make sure we were more ready and prepared and increase that, but we wouldn't make decisions that involve um daily instruction. It's really all based off ashall. And these are pictures um actually from the 1992 volcano. So, you know, initially when when the news media picked it up because it's, you know, it can really be hyped up that that the volcano and some of you have seen on um a lot of news channels in the lower 48 that Anchorage is scared. We're terrified. Um you know, some people
013probably thought we were a lot like Pompei if this thing goes off. But, but this is what a quarter inch of ash actually looks like. Um and this is what actually happened in ' 92. um and not what we see on the news stories that are written in the lower 48. Um now it is true that when the ashfall is is coming in, you may not be able to see the front of your car if you're driving. And I think all of you know there's a lot of things you should I I hope you've already prepared like ordering extra air filters because you can only go about 50 miles before you replace them. Um there's a lot of things you can do to prepare your house and your vehicle and we talked about that at
014the Clark Middle School event. We also sent stuff out on on the radar for principles to talk to their communities and families. Um, but this is what actually happened um in ' 92. I wasn't here, but if you weren't, um, this may give you a clearer picture as to what they're expecting. And they're saying that it would be about equivalent. So, in ' 92, the ashfall that hit Anchorage was um, going over Anchorage at the 50 60,000 foot level. Now, of course, you know, from an Anchorage perspective, um there was ash on the ground and it did shut down Anchorage for 72 hours because the stuff had to be cleared up. Um a lot of the services weren't fully operational. Where it really impacted is air travel. Um and some of you, I know member
015Higgins is nodding, remember the air travel was shut for a while and they had to reroute a lot of things before um that was possible. And that's really one of our bigger impacts we're going to feel. So, as uh Jim mentioned, here are some of the products that are available on AVO's website. So, there are kind of two uh that are available. The first one that's kind of in the back there with the blue, yellow, and red coloring. This is something that uh USGS generates. it is kind of showing the area of expected ash thickness from a fall um based on the day. It is uh a little more variable. It doesn't always align perfectly. They they do want to stress this is not a weather prediction or uh a strong ashfall prediction that would
016be it would be updated if an eruption were to occur. The other one um that's more at the front there with kind of the gray map that is uh the ash 3D or ashed model that AVO publishes. They publish this for the current day as well as two days in the future based on the forecasts and it shows basically the likelihood of a disruptive ash fall within that area. Um so the darker the red the more likely that you're um going to have a disruptive level of event and anything in the dashed line is classified as possible. It's greater than a 5% likelihood. Uh so we are watching these and using that to say on a daily basis what is the kind of risk if it were to go off today. Uh most of the
017time what we have seen so far is the winds are blowing northward away from the city. sometimes they're heading out south into the Gulf about I would say a quarter of the time or so right now we're actually seeing it come over the city and again we're still at a yellow status uh so we're not anticipating that uh anytime soon but these are very uh good tools so if you have folks that are concerned um they that just want to know more on like hey I'm worried about this where can I go to find out if we're at risk today uh AVO's website's a really great resource for them with that. Um I do also want to say um if this were to occur over a weekend or at night, we are tied in with
018the AVO duty officer. Um it is a 247 scientist that is on call. They have our cell numbers, we have their cellular phone numbers. Um so if this were to kick off at 2 in the morning on Saturday, we're going to get a call or we're going to be able to call them and get information very very quickly. We're not waiting for, you know, business hours Monday through Friday. And we have had uh more than one event with the Jbear leadership talking through from the 673rd weather squadron and not just the projection of ashall and the and how much but how quickly it would arrive. And really that's how you decide if it's 10:00 in the morning and you know the ash flow is going to go to the Kenai Peninsula and completely miss us,
019we're not going to close school just because a volcano erupts. Um, but Jay Bear of course has my phone number and and uh it's usually snow related, but but we can also talk about volcanoes in the middle of the night. Um and we've been in contact with the city manager and their leadership and since January February time frame we've consistently updated each other and and have a pretty good plan um from the resources at AVO and and uh USGS through Jbear has a lot of technical capacity um and of course the city. So we are as ready as anyone could be in the school district um if it if it does blow. Um, I will tell you though when it goes from yellow to orange, there will be a natural elevation in the amount of
020angst in the community. Just so you know, there are comm community there are volcanoes that have been orange for four years and never went red. So orange just means now the ground is really deformed. There's more there's more gases coming out. lava is closer to the surface, but you know, four years later, so um you know, we won't make immediate decisions just because it goes from yellow to orange. Um unless it's really eminent and they can see stuff already really deforming rapidly. Um it's really based off ashall. So at community council meetings, um that's the best we can really tell them. All right. So, we'll move on to uh the wildland fire risk as we get into uh summer season. So, uh we have heard of course that uh we don't didn't have a lot
021of snow this year as that we all saw and the wildland fire risk is elevated this year. Um these are some photos of some of the historic fires that we have had in and around Anchorage over about the last 10 years. Um we have had five uh urban interface fires in the south central region. Um Sakai, Card Street, McKinley fire, Swan Lake and the uh the Mchugh fire. All five of those um were either in Matsu Kenai or the municipality and they've all occurred in the last 10 years and in many cases they did uh burn homes, businesses, things like that. um does not include all of the other ones that we have out there. So, so far this year um we do monitor the Alaska inter agency coordination center, the state's kind of wildland
022fire clearing house. It's put on by division of forestry, the US forest service and others. Um they have reported 72 wildland fires as of this morning. Uh two of those have been in Anchorage. The vast majority of them have been out in Matsu or the rural areas of the Kenai with a few up in Fairbanks. The next slide. So when you look at the pictures, the one on the lower right is actually from a couple weeks ago and it was over uh by the Costco off. And and I only wanted to put that in as a talking point. If you read the community wildfire protection plan, you'll see that well over 98% of all fires in the Anchorage Bowl in the last 10 to 15 years have been human-caused. Um, and I think all of
023us have seen in the past several years um campers who accidentally hopefully started fires in the Anchorage Bowl and that's really our biggest risk. We don't get the numbers of thunderstorms that they get in the interior, but um you know when you look at where's our fire danger, it's it's it's hum if it's human caused, it could be anywhere in the Anchorage Bowl and not just the hillside. Although obviously I've spent a lot of time talking to the well the whole community on the CWPP um on a southside evacuation and what that might look like. Um but it it could be downtown. There was one behind Andy Ratliff's house a couple years ago and it was pretty big. They contained it, but there's a lot of places where the camps are in places that aren't
024easily reachable by road and that's really our our biggest threats in the city of Anchorage. So, um, as Jim mentioned, it's typically human-caused here in the city. The top two causes of wildfire in the state are lightning strikes and human-caused actions. Um, of the five fires I listed, I think four were attributed to humans and the last one was indeterminant because there was no lightning in the area, but nobody's quite sure why it kicked off. Um, so what we are doing to prepare for this um is we're doing community outreach. Uh, as I mentioned before, we have an event on May 23rd. We're working with um the migrant ed department um to do that outreach. We've got some materials from the state division of forestry that we're going to be passing out. Uh we have
025invited um some of our partners from the uh Alaska the state emergency management organization, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, um and others to join us there to kind of help get the word out. um AFD I believe is also going to attend and they'll be able to talk more um about how to you know prepare what not to do. One of the biggest things that we have seen um if you are out in community councils is uh the state is working this year to open the uh the brush uh brush drop offs. I don't remember what they're called. Um where you take uh wood and the wood lots. um those are going to be free this summer because the state does not want people burning in place due to the wildfire risk. So folks are
026welcome to load that up in their vehicles, haul it over there, they can dump it for free um in order to to minimize that risk. Um as Jim mentioned, we are working uh on the community wildfire protection plan update. This is led by the municipality. This plan is updated every five to 10 years um and is basically the document that guides wildfire u preparedness for the entire municipality. Uh there are many partner agencies that are on there. Um we are uh an active member and participant in that process. They've had I believe two uh possibly three meetings so far um that we have attended working with them on it. Well, we're going to take just a second to note that for our record, member Bellamy joined us at 4:11 p.m. And then I see member
027Hullman had a question. I do and I we'll ask this for each scenario. Um, for example, in we do have an ash fall event and it's say dangerous to drive. As a general rule of thumb, can we say to the public, don't worry about your kids. They're fine. Don't don't rush to the school. And I realize there may be circumstances where it varies building by building, but or are there certain schools where we would say uh if this happens, be prepared to come get your kid? I built a slide just for that question near the end of the brief because I know that that question has come up from the community. And I will explain why there are no pre-desated sites for communities because you could actually put them at higher risk. Yeah. if they
028thought there was a pre-desated site and then of course there was nothing there when they got there and they didn't listen to the evacuation routes because subconsciously people under stress are going to go with what they think they're supposed to do and not listen and it might very well be that the actual place they should go is completely different. Um there's also that the city got about a half million dollars in federal grants if you go out by Campbell Airrip Road out by Mike's house which is fire danger high. Sorry, Mike. Um they're they're clearing um a large amount of uh vegetation on both sides of the road and they have two other places in Anchorage. So that'll be going on for the next six weeks as they they try to build some firereaks in
029areas um that you know potentially could be u problematic. Yeah. U we have one more question from member Higgins and then we'll let you continue on with the presentation. Oh. Um, yeah, a couple of comments. You made reference to the ash. First of all, I'll say this. Unlike Mount St. Helens, this was rounded ash, which was better. But I got to tell you, when you think about a quarter inch of ash, you don't think about much. But this stuff was like lead the weight. I had a little medicine thing and it was full of and it was very heavy. So, it's just it it was problems with one of our groups. I know East High School, I think, because when puts it in one location, it causes a problem. On the fire protection issue, are
030we looking at some of the issues like black spruce, any black spruce in the area? Because that's one of the things I'm with the fire group. I'm my wife and I are both working somewhat with the with community council too and they've come out with their list and and black food is one of the issues. It's just timber out there ready to blow up uh in case of a fire. Are we looking around our schools to see what we might want to do to reduce the risk to the school? Absolutely. That's why I built this slide so we could talk through that. Oh, sorry about that. Um, ASD a couple years ago got certified as Firewise. So, we have been going out now for um, several years and going out to every school building and
031looking at standoff space um, and and I've got some pictures I can I can explain it a little bit better. So there may be in a given area um moderate or or even you know high risk category but it doesn't mean that our schools are one unlike a house they're not built of wood. Um two when you see some of these aerial photos you'll see that that we have standoff space. Our buildings are made of concrete. There's always some risk that something could get on a tar roof or a rubber roof and and catch fire. But um we have been certified as Firewise for the efforts that we put into it. We look at it every two years. We rotate through um because we didn't have a lot of snow this winter. Rob's teams were
032out looking around as soon as we we knew it was going to be um potentially a threat this year and looking for um dead black spruce and other vegetation. Um, so UAA, ISER, I think everyone here knows ISER, um, worked with the city and the state and they put together a threat matrix all across the Anchorage Bowl. And you can see at the bottom of this slide that that really the vast majority of our schools because of either standoff, the type of vegetation, or how quickly water runs off. Like if you go to Service High School, because it's so high up, the water leaves the ground pretty quickly and it's going to dry out much quicker than somewhere like Golden View, which is really a a almost a swamp for for quite a while um
033during the early part of fire season. Um but we really only have 10 schools in the moderate category currently and that is a combination of water retention in the ground or likely water retention. Um it's the amount of vegetation, how close and and how much of it is dead. And um you know, there's no way you can make anything fireproof. Um other than maybe steel buildings, but um let me show you real quick because I know it's been brought up and it was actually brought up by one board member heard that Golden View was was at high risk um of fire danger. But if you look at the area around Golden View, um we have standoff between where the trees would burn and the impact on our actual building. Where people are concerned is how
034close all of the neighborhood houses are and all the trees around the houses and they just don't have that standoff. Um the most they have is whether the fire will or won't cross a road once it gets in the neighborhood. It it's really pretty densely populated. So, so Golden View actually we we have a a consultant now trying to figure out uh we have a lot of water being held in the Golden View ground and and it's because they built a housing development above Golden View years ago and we're doing a drainage assessment. Um but but the real reality of Golden View is it it pours water off of Golden View for the first couple months of of spring and summer every year and the people below Golden View are not happy about it. Um,
035so we know that Golden View has a lot of water. It is it is a lowrisk school. Um, and I know that that you know other people have talked about Golden View is is high, but it's there's so many reasons why that's not the case. And then you look at service and trail side um moderate and it's not it's which is higher than Golden View. Um, you can see it's got huge standoffs. Um, and really the buildings are are not at risk very much, but the grass is going to be drier at service and any shrubbery is going to be drier at service than it is at Golden View because the water just flows through that area and keeps going downhill. And um, I know there's at least one board member lives in that area.
036Um, you know, it doesn't hold water. Um so in fact trailside and service are moderate um by ISERS and the fire department study but again as you shift to the left side of the map and you start looking at the housing developments that's really why we're firewise sites um and it's just that standoff that we have um between where the fire is and the likelihood that it would catch a building one of our buildings on fire other than a woodshed which I think we wouldn't be concerned concerned about if there was a huge fire and I'll let this it thank you. We'll go to member I'll amend the member against I just wondering if we do have staff at the buildings. Do we have the ability to water the roofs? It does seem like the
037only part of the building is likely to catch fire. That I don't know. Um well I don't know the extent I I know that we can I don't know the extent and for every facility but that's a good question. Thank you member Hullman. We'll go to member Higgins. Yeah I just uh real quick comment. First of all just from a public standpoint I think the municipality is engaged more with fire protection activities than we've ever seen. I don't think there's ever been any. And I feel pretty good about that. And following that, my my question would be our response to the community in case of an earthquake, things that because I know our food service, water supply, being able to do all that was part of that factor at one point or part of a
038plan that we would be helping out the community. Is that an issue now? At one time it was a problem because the water supply system, the big tank wasn't working or the equipment wasn't reliable. We upgraded all that about 10 or 15 years ago, but are we at this particular point in time? Is there any issues there? We just got that tank operational again in the past month and a half. Um, and it is it is known that it it would likely um or possibly be used to provide fresh water to the community um in a FEMA type event if it was required. What we don't have is the bottling plants. So, it would be water trucks. Um, but it's certainly potable water, but we've been working for two years to get it back online.
039The pumps were were gone. Um, the tank was covered in mold. Um, it was it was completely unusable as as you're aware. Um, and it took us two years to get it back in operation. Just a question on um the volcano eruption since that was the natural disaster we've navigated most recently at least potentially um after we confirm all students are safe and the the impact is minimal um as from a building standpoint. Do we anticipate much maintenance to bring everything back online the way it was? Is that something that FEMA may declare a disaster for and provide funding for? Um what what does that look like from a a dollars and capital investment standpoint? It's going to be expensive. Um for Whoops. Other than roofs where we might have to make an exception because
040the last thing you want is for the ash to be even heavier. Um you're supposed to water it down before you sweep it up. like all the parking lots, all the sidewalks, everything else. You wet the ash before you do it, which makes it even heavier. Um, and it's going to be timeconuming. It's going to take a while to get all that ash picked up. We have um is it 12 or 13 turf fields and astroturf when ash gets in on it, it it goes down to the bottom and when it gets wet, it it becomes incredibly hard. So every year when we open our turf fields um after the snow is cleared, we actually have to go out and test it for um how much bounce it has. And if the ash comes up
041um then you've got to clean that turf out. In Seattle, it was so bad after Mount St. Helens that all of their astroturf fields, they just covered on top of it. Um and we're looking at getting um large vacuums which have their own problems. Um, but over a period of time, we could vacuum the the ash out. Um, you know, would we have to cancel sports for a while? Yes, we would. Um, but when you vacuum up the ash, there's these little rubber balls that are really small and they spread them all over the turf field and then they rake it out and make it all level. Um, it picks those up, too. So, if if it covers our turf fields, they're not going to be used for a while. But, you know, really the
042cost is going to be the manpower cost for that. The roofs, um, the parking lots, it's going to be expensive. And depending on the estimated dollar amount, that's what would kick in the governor to declare an emergency at the state level and then ask the federal government to also declare it an emergency. And if that happened, then FEMA funds, assuming they they have a large enough organization to support, would kick in. Just a quick followup regarding um so going back to buildings for a second and thinking like our our HVAC systems, will there be negative long-term impacts there? What I think I remember is we made significant capital investments during the COVID era to those systems. Is that going to impact anything? Now once we close the external external vents, the heating will still work.
043What it'll keep doing is recycle the air. So the first thing we do at district centralized level is to shut off all external vents and then have maintenance go check the the couple buildings where they need to double check um a few that might need to be um manual. The second one and while that's happening if you're in class in school is having people close every window so you don't bring ash into the building because once it gets in it's just going to start rotating out. And we know that um as parents come to pick up their students um we'll have a a procedure where the parents come up, stay outside the building, the doors open while the students come out after they've made um confirmation that that is the approved guardian and then the
044door closes to try to minimize ash going into the building. And if you do all of those um our HVACs are going to be okay. We do we did already um I don't know January, February. Um they all came in by the beginning or middle of March. We have two sets of vehicle filters for every vehicle in the district that's a white fleet. And we have two sets of um filters for every single building. So we're good. Thank you. Um any other questions from the board on this agenda item? hearing and seeing none. Anything else from the team? Yep. So, we have a couple more slides for you. Um, before I move on to these uh slides, I did want to add uh two notes to questions uh that were asked. Um, so to your
045question about FEMA dollars, I did run back um for any FEMA declarations relating to volcanoes in the state of Alaska back into the 1970s. There has never been a federally declared disaster in Alaska for a volcano. So just as an awareness um despite the readout eruptions, previous spur eruptions, it's never risen to that federal threshold under the Stafford Act. So from a budget perspective, that may be a factor. Can I ask a while we're on the topic, I guess, is does that mean I mean should we be bonding for equipment related to this expense if the federal government isn't going to pay for it? I mean, I no other Well, I don't I wonder how many other school districts in the lower 48 have to legitimately invest in capital dollars for this. I imagine it's
046a fraction. I think we've done a lot of preparation by digitizing and automating our buildings over the last decade. And that's why we're able to um I mean every major renovation if it wasn't if it if we didn't have systems in it to be able to automate it and control air flow with you know the Diggo DA VAV I think it was during COVID when we used all that money. Um we've made a lot of improvements to our buildings. Um really a lot of it was co we weren't thinking about a volcano at the time. Um but that automated ability to turn and turn turn on and turn off um really the vast majority of our systems and the air control and and exchangers that we upgraded it it ends up made us more prepared
047for a volcano as well. Okay. And to uh member Hollowman's uh question about uh ash fall and driving, uh one of the things that we do have incorporated into the emergency action plan for schools is if it is unsafe to release students um onto a bus during that uh during an active ashfall, they would enact their shelter in place procedure um just like they would if there was a fuel spill outside the school that was generating fumes or anything like that. that would cover them long enough for the ashfall to hopefully stop and then be able to move as opposed to more of a congregate sheltering thing which I know Jim will address here shortly. Um moving on to the uh the slide in front of us. Um so one of the things that we
048are working on um that we wanted to highlight is we are working on a new initiative called preparedness days. This is something that um we actually borrowed from the Orange County Public Schools um event that they do every year and this is looking at some of our emergency preparedness. This will be going on in June from June 10th through 12. Uh we will be activating our EOC and working with a lot of our partner agencies to explore how we communicate um EOCC to EOC, our emergency operations centers um as well as coordinating our public messaging, things like that. Um this is just kind of a a sample of those partners that we are looking at uh or that are involved. Uh this event will not focus on a natural disaster. Um but many of the
049lessons um and the processes that we're going to practice are going to be the exact same whether it's a natural or man-made hazard or a anything like that. Um and if you want to give me the next slide and just kind of give you an overview of the timeline that we've been working on this for. So, we attended an Orange County Public Schools uh preparedness days back in July of last year. Um we came back um talked with Jim and a few folks about what uh what we had seen, how valuable it was. Um and then we started building this this new initiative. Um it's really been engagement with our partners since October of last year. Um starting with how this was going to look and what it is. Uh and now we're uh we
050actually just held an in progress review meeting, our second to last one earlier today. Uh we have one more and then we have the exercise. So u we are inviting out principles who want to observe that. Um of course any board member that would like to come and observe is invited as well. Um, but we're really looking forward to to getting that uh better integration with our partners at the the state, federal, nonprofit, and other local entities. This one is um focused around a uh human threat within our schools. Orange County had um a a tragic incident several years ago. They invested a lot of money and resources into um they now have fullcale exercise to include students being evacuated for reunification. Um and they've put a lot of effort into it. So when he
051went to Orange County, it was very we deliberately picked that school for that reason. Um, so if you Google their uh reunification drills, their response drills, um, you'll see that their news channels picked it up. We are not, if you do that, we're not there yet. Um, this will be the first time that uh, really since George Vicas had my job a couple decades ago, um, that there has been a full-blown exercise with every agency in town. We have hospitals here. We had the hospital and the valley. We've got every major player for this exercise in June and we're only going to amp it up um next year in order to make sure that as a community we're prepared. Now, whether it was an active um shooter or a hillside fire, evacuation is evacuation. Reunification
052is reunification. Um but we wanted to get as many players as we could for this. Um and it's been a it's really been an amazing opportunity over the last four or five months to see um the the everybody pull together. Um and then for the community wildfire, a lot of the same players and and I will tell you as a city since last July, um there has been a lot more emphasis on preparing for um threats, emergencies than I've seen in the 10 years I've been in the district. And it's really quite nice to see every player show up um for these events. So, a lot of work, but but um yeah, it's definitely worth it. So, I wanted to talk about shelter sites. I I know that board members go to community council meetings
053and people are thinking, well, I I want to know, do I go to Golden View if there's a fire? Um, there's we do have 22 shelter sites and this slide shows what's in them. They have enough supplies to temporarily support about a thousand people. We use the Red Cross standardized list plus some additions because we're a school district. Um and and we operate it as a district. Our school staff um has an SOP and they'll operate their shelter site. If it's for students and staff, it's if it's for a long-term shelter site, that's the Red Cross's job. The MUN and the Red Cross would come to our school. They would do an inventory of the container and the building and then they would operate it really with no little or no involvement from us. Um
054there's always the possibility as member Higgins brought up that um water might might be an issue whether it's at that site or or any other site. Um and and there's always the possibility that our central kitchen um could be used as a FEMA site. But by and large um the actual shelter site would be operated by the community and and uh for those who've spent their lives in operation center the bulk of my adult life has been an operation center somewhere in the world um there's so many reasons you would never tell someone ahead of time hey if anything happens go here because they really might go to an actually worse place. Um the city has a lot of sites that are potentials. They include schools, they include community centers. Um you know, the big
055public arenas that are also potential sites. Um we would never want anyone in the community to think they should automatically go to a specific school. There might be absolutely no one there. If it's a fire, it might now cross the road and they're blocked in and can't go anywhere. Um shelter sites are only designated by the city and there's a lot of players in that. Um we know the procedures between the MUN and ASD if they ask us to um make one available. We know that we could potentially open it while we're waiting on Red Cross to get enough people. Um, but these shelter sites, they're they're not just for students, but um there's no community permanent relationship and and we wouldn't want them to go to the wrong place in the event of a
056real catastrophe. And one thing I'll add um to what Jim was saying about the pre-desated sites, this was observed real world um in the tragedy at Lahina um where some folks evacuated along established evacuation routes that actually led into more danger um and as a result they were either injured or or killed as a result. So that's why we are very cautious about pre-establishing these things as opposed to communicating them in the moment uh in dynamic events. So barring any other questions, I did want to make sure there was time for budget discussion with Andy. Um if if the board so chooses, he's been eager all day waiting for an opportunity. hard to turn down that opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Um, so seeing no other questions from the board, thank you so much for
057the presentation. Appreciate your work. Mr. Ratliff, welcome. I don't have an actual presentation or anything. I think we're just going to open it up for discussion about the current events of that could affect our budget. I'm shocked to hear you don't have a full PowerPoint presentation on the developments from the last few hours. Um, understood. Are there questions or items of conversation from the board? And while we're getting started, I guess I will ask um if we are tracking what I am that there there's a bill I think was SP 184 regarding school bond debt reimbursement that I I think is still sitting in Senate rules. And so I I'm curious if the fact that the legislature adjourned today means that functionally speaking, school bond debt reimbursement, the moratorium has ended. uh it appears to
058be still in the rules committee. So that one hasn't passed, right? And so again, from a functional standpoint, the fact that the legislature failed to extend the moratorum. De facto means the moratorium has ended. Although the dollars to pay for any bond debt reimbursement wouldn't be appropriated until next fiscal year. Um I guess they could still I mean it's still in the the amounts to repay any bond debt reimbursement prior to 2015 is in the current budget. That could be vetoed or it might have been reduced a little bit. Um but yeah, any future bond debt could also be reduced even if it was approved through the even it was allowable through the statutes. Okay. Thank you. Um are there other questions from the board regarding budget scenarios or Dr. Brian, did you have comments
059on the uh legislaturator's wrap up at this point? Uh, President Jacobs, essentially, uh, the the main thing we've been tracking today would be the most obvious news, which is the fact that the legislature did override the governor's veto from yesterday of House Bill 57. So, that represents some positive things for education, including a $700 BSA increase, which would be permanent in the formula, along with a number of policy reforms that were negotiated across party lines and vetted by educators. So, we are proud of that progress, but really the only uh thing I want to share with the board is really just the the caution that I feel in my heart because um the governor did call superintendents to a meeting last week and did expressly indicate he's considering a veto of the appropriation for education
060funding. Um he reiterated that sentiment yesterday during a press conference. It remains to be seen if that will happen and if it does what the amount will be, but that's certainly one of the most relevant issues that faces our board as we plan for next year's budget. Understood and agreed. Um, member lessons. Thank you. Um, I guess I'm just hoping for a highle process assessment of where we go from