001All right, good evening everyone. We'll call the school board meeting of the Anchor School District to order at 6:03 p.m. Today is Tuesday, April 22nd here in the boardroom. Present physically, our members lessons Wilson Jacobs, Donley, Higgins online, our members Bellamy and Hollowman. We have our student representatives with us today. Welcome. Dr. Bryant and staff. We've conducted our call to order and roll call. We'll now um perform our flag salute. Um Mr. Pac, if you could lead us and then read the land acknowledgement as well. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. We acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of Dina people of the Upper Cook Inlet. For thousands
002of years, the Dina people have been and continue to be the stewards of this land. ASD is committed to diversity and inclusion and is with honor and respect that we recognize all indigenous people who live and learn in our community. Thank you, Mr. Pac. Uh we want to welcome everyone to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the Anchorage School District and this board. The board thanks students, parents, teachers, staff, and school business partners. The entire community for your investment in our district with your time, your talent, and your tax dollars. Now performed our welcome, called to order, roll call flag salute. We now have our agenda in front of us under A3. Um is there a motion to approve the agenda as written? to approve the agenda as written.
003Motion by member Wilson to approve the agenda as written. Seconded by member Higgins. Um any objection to opposing the agenda as written? Hearing and seeing none, we have an agenda. Thank you everyone. We'll move on to reports under B1 or student representative report. Mr. pack. The floor is yours, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, um it's with uh a bittersweet sentiment that I say that I have chaired my last SAB or student advisory board meeting last week. It was a once again another wonderful meeting. Um, and to kind of reflect the I guess the summer or wrapping up the school year, we asked schools and their delegates what were their most proud moments from the school year. And they all gave things that they were proud of. But for today, I'm going to share a
004couple of their responses. Um, Bartlett was most proud of putting on a basketball game for their Makea-Wish student. Diamond was most proud of their football team being undefeated and winning state for the first time in 23 years. Henshu was proud of bringing their math scores up. Wendler was proud of their diversity assembly. West was proud of their soldout performances of Hades Town. And King Techch was proud of celebrating 50 years of their school and just their dances. And so that just kind of tells me there's great things happening throughout our district and that students despite I guess tumultuous times are proud of being in their buildings and being with their peers. Um and then we had member lessons speak to us. I want to thank member lessons for attending nearly every SAB meeting this year
005and I believe even last year and she has been a wonderful point of contact and she keeps students informed about issues that are relevant to us in a way that is digestible and we really thank you for that. Um and then this week is actually National Student Leadership Week. um it's from the 21st to 25th and so we just want to recognize all our student leaders in our district and then especially our national councils of excellence winners which again is Diamond Student Government and Eagle River student government which coincidentally are have the adviserss who are the advisers of our SAB. Um we also had a democratic election of voting the best school spotlight highlight reel. So throughout this year, we had students um film videos of them going through what their school means to them
006and kind of introducing their school to others. And we've had some pretty hilarious content if I could be honest. Um and Diamond High School won this video and I hope that some of the district can see it if Mr. Thim is interested. Um and then we have our spring Alaska Association of Student Governments um conference in Sika. It'll be from this Thursday to this uh Saturday will be my last OSA conference and I'm thrilled to um be on the board and help facilitate that. And finally, our next SAB meeting where I won't be attending. It will be somewhere around September 9th um from 10:00 a.m. to 10 12:00 p.m. And in that meeting, I passed the gavl over to our next president. And I think it's fitting that she can cover the last part of
007this report which is covering the one of the resolutions that were brought forth to the the school board actually or to this district from SAB. All right. So, back in fall 2024 at Alaska's OSG Alaska Association of Student Governments conference, Eagle River High School brought forward a resolution about um allowing students to have credit by choice within the fine arts. So, students would basically be able to use outside clubs or programs as an option to get these elective credits towards graduation. Now, this did obviously pass by OOG and from now in recent times, our adviser has followed up with implementing this resolution into the actual handbook for students to be able to follow. So, here is an update on that. So, it is followed up and approved and we also worked with the chief academic
008officer of ASD, Mr. Gustfen and we want to give a big thank you to him because we know that we worked really hard to bring this resolution but as well as our staff that works with ASD. They work really hard as well to make sure that student voices are heard. And we are super thankful that a resolution written by students is able to become into actual policy for our hardworking and talented students who do things outside of the classroom like whether it's a school musical, a school play, whether they do music or dance or singing, anything like that that they are recognized for their hard work and they are able to aim credit for it. But there are also some exemptions made for this resolution being implemented and some additional things such as when students
009get their credit by choice, they will additionally need approval for it by an assistant director of the fine arts. And additionally, private music lessons will also be exempted from this credit. And lastly, the credit by choice um fine arts being implemented will also mean that an ASA approved course for solo and ensemble will not be considered. But despite that, this still will be implemented and is still resolved. And we are just happy to be able to recognize these hardworking students around our district and allow them to earn what they deserve, which is that credit that they work hard for outside of school. Thank you to both of our student representatives for the report. Do we have questions from the board? Not hearing or seeing any. Thank you so much. And uh Mr. Pek, congratulations on
010sharing your last SAB meeting. All right, we'll move forward in our agenda to our representative report. And I understand Mr. Dell Daniels is presenting tonight. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Adele Daniels, J Bear School Liaison. Colonel Hansen is unable to be here this evening, so I will be reading his uh comments on his behalf. Superintendent Bryant and ASD school board members tonight. I would like to highlight April being month of the military child and say thank you for the school district's strong support of our military connected students. Last week, I was honored to participate in the Alaska Purple Star designation ceremony, celebrating Greening Middle School, Chugiak, and Eager River High Schools and their culmination of hard work to be designated as an Alaska Purple Star School. Team Jar's children are in good hands because
011of your commitment to academic excellence and agility to meet every student's unique situation. Speaking of unique situations, I was blessed to spend two years at an C. Stevens Elementary School on Naval Air Station ADAC, Alaska. There I learned the term of endearment, military brat. We were proud of that label because it set us apart and pulled us together. As I reflect on that, I've concluded that BRATZ is an acronym that reflects the unique life of a military child. B is for brave. It takes a lot of courage to walk up to a new school into a sea of unfamiliar faces. Bravery is not the absence of fear, but moving forward despite your fears. Are resilient. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable from the upheaval of every couple of years and learning to grow within. Aware, empathizing
012with every other new kid who arrives at school and bringing in and taking out new perspectives from different regions, countries, and cultures. T for transient. Military orders are like the wind blowing across dandelions, picking up the seeds and transporting them to who knows where. And s sea to shining sea, like seeds blooming wherever they land, thanks to especially schools like our Alaska Purple Star Schools. As a token of JBR's appreciation, I would like to give you our official month of the military child patch. We also have a few extras for anyone in attendance that would like one. You invest in our military brats day in and day out, pushing them to grow and thrive in the Alaskan frontier. You enable our military warf fighters to deter our adversaries each day. And if deterrence fails, we
013are ready. ready to protect combat forces and protect our homeland. Ready airmen and soldiers, ready base, ready community. Thank you for their time this evening. Um I have asked Miss Sullivan and Mr. Brown for help with um sharing the patches if if anybody would like some. So yes, my coworker to design them. I think she did a great job. Thank you very much for the report. Thank you. And thank you very much for the patches. Um all right. We'll move on to our agenda when other military reports conducted to the special education advisory committee or SEAK report. We have Miss Julie Fogy pres presenting and welcome and the floor is yours. Thanks. Yes, my name is Julie Fogy and I've had the privilege of serving as the chair for the SEAK, the special education advisory
014council or committee for the district this year. Um, we have seen tremendous growth in our SEAK membership this year and I'm really proud to say as a parent that we've had a lot more parent involvement. We've also seen new membership from more teachers and um some of the therapists too that work with our kids in the schools. And I think that the the enriching value of so many voices coming together has sort of fueled our collaboration efforts. And I think that as I said in the report, and I'll skip over some of it because the mission is right there and in line with ASD's mission, but really it's about sharing ideas, identifying concerns, raising community awareness, advocating, and advising the district on how we can best support our children with special needs. So to that
015end, I would love to get right to kind of the meat and potatoes of what we have covered as a community this year and just open it up for any kind of questions or discussion that you want to have. Um, our top goals and priorities really have been inclusion, training, and addressing staffing issues. So starting with inclusion, that's such a hot button word and it can mean so many things, but I think that there is a huge push, especially among parents, to have a more inclusive environment for our students. And I know that that's something that the district has committed to as well. Um, but we would love to see data collection to look at the numbers and the percentages of inclusion per school, as well as the numbers and percentages of teachers trained in
016inclusion within general education. And I just I think we're also curious on how we're equipping, tracking, and incentivizing schools to really increase inclusion in meaningful ways. Um, that brings us straight into training because training is really asking for there to be a mandated training for all of our general education teachers because it's not really fair to expect them to include students who have special needs if they don't have the tools to do that. So, how can we come alongside and equip them to really do that meaningfully? Right now that training exists in the summer, so teachers have to come in sort of in their vacation. They get paid for it obviously, but it would be really incredible if that could be part of the time leading up to when students arrive because really it's going
017to be fresh on their minds and they'll be able to meet the needs of those students as they come in and out of the classroom. um addressing burnout and staffing shortages, especially as they pertain to special education, which as we know is so impacted and also so hard to get subs for because if you're in a life skills classroom, for instance, you deal with a lot of things that most substitutes might not feel equipped to handle. So really making sure that we're retaining the staff that we have is just so important. And I've had the privilege of speaking to many of those teachers, many of those paras, and I think that there is real room for growth and opportunity to to hear from them more candidly. Um, I wonder if there would be opportunities for
018very simple surveys to be sent out to the staff so that we can learn from them exactly what they need and what they're they feel like they're getting right and what they could use more of. I know that many of the teachers in the special education department that I've spoken to talk about the trainings that they're mandated to attend that aren't really relevant to what they're doing. So if you think about the PLC days, if you think about a lot of the things where they're pushing out curriculum, it might not line up with what their needs are and they're having to kind of squish their time in other ways. So that's just one example, but I think really hearing from the teachers what's working, what do you need, what do you crave, um would be
019great. and if they could do it in a way that feels really safe and anonymous, even better. Um, I think that's something that I've heard sort of across the board. Um, the next question was just asking how we are partnering as a committee with parents and other community partners and stakeholders. As I said, we have really expanded our membership this year to include many more parents. What we have heard from a lot of people with and sort of outside of the district is that they just don't know that SEAK exists. it's not on the district calendar. I would love to see it added and included there. It would be great if it went out in the newsletter to special education teachers and staff members so that they know about it. Um, and to that end,
020I think the way that the district has the opportunity to communicate not only with its staff but also with its families just leaves so much that we can still change. I think that it's a very hard time for education right now. I mean today was a hard day for education right now. I don't think anyone is everyone understands that. I think as a parent of a child with special needs, we feel really scared. We feel very vulnerable and we have incredible people in this district. But I think that there's a gap in parents understanding where to turn for that. And I think that it would be incredible to have the district website include a lot of resources, a lot of opportunities to just come alongside these parents and say, "We're on your team. We're in
021it with you." I think there's a lot of going to your corners that sometimes exist between families and schools. And I think that there are real tangible ways that we can sort of bridge that gap by just offering things like quarterly or semiannual or even annual meetings where we talk about, hey, you're going from elementary school to middle school. This is what to expect. This is what it looks like. Or you're going to your first IEP meeting. Like that is so intimidating. There's a million different acronyms. Like how can we help you break this down? How can we again link arms and come alongside parents? And I think that that would just go so far because everyone at the table is in it for the right reasons. Everyone wants to do the right thing for
022kids. But I think that there's just so much room for figuring out how we can do that better. So again, to that end, this year we started um parent meetings. We started a subcommittee within SEAK so that parents could go if they didn't feel like coming to such a formal event with administrators, they could just meet privately. And we did that at rotating locations each month. And the person who sort of co-chared that would come and report to SEAK on what she was hearing, what she was learning. And it made it really efficient and really kind of broadened our audience there. Um I as I said, how can the school board support the work of this committee? I think we would love to see more devoted time and mandated training. I think that we would
023love to see teachers having the opportunity within the department um to use time that maybe isn't relevant in some of those trainings for something different. Um I think sending like I said regular simple and potentially anonymous surveys or sounding boards to allow parents and teachers to safely voice concerns or offer ideas or give praise for something or someone who's getting it so right. And then increasing partnership with parents by hosting things like those parent nights where we're really breaking down things that can be confusing and improving online resources on the district's website and including that SEAK piece. So that's a lot but that's it in a nutshell. If you have any questions, thank you so much for the opportunity to come present. Thank you, Miss Fogi. All right, we'll open for questions. Member Higgins. Yeah,
024we got a got a half a dozen. But um the the part of getting teachers more engaged in training into it. I remember uh about 10 or 12 years ago Arkansas put a lot more resources into the schools to be able to help them and it had less kids falling into the special education because they were being addressed within the classroom. So I it just something that stood out there. It was a dramatic reduction by engaging more the parent and the teachers into it. So, I appreciate that recommendation a great deal, but the reporting and re and resources is a big issue. That's been an issue in the past where you got kids that ADHD, you got to do something to accommodate, but you got 30 kids in the classroom and you don't get any
025additional resources to help and so teachers are reluctant to to raise it and principles are not encouraging it or things like that. Is that an ongoing issue right now that we're not getting a full gambit or has that been discussed as a concern? It it has been discussed and I think it it's interesting because it seems sort of school specific. I think that some schools have a much more um robust inclusion training and sort of mentality. And so it can be teacher to teacher or school to school. But I think there again, it's it's going in and equipping because as a teacher, if you're not sure how to deal with a student who has differentiated learning needs or whatever, how much better would it be if we give the teacher those tools? And it can
026be sort of like just like we do in teaching, right? I do, we do, you do, and they take on more and more of that. But I think it starts with finding out what teachers are confused about and what they'd like help with and then how can we give them those tools. Do we know what percentage right now of kids are falling in? I know we have the intensive special needs and we have the regular special eds programs otherwise but do we know what percentage of kids are falling into special ed accommodations? I don't know. I'm also really curious about of those that we have identified, what is the percentage look like for how how much time they spend in the general education setting. I know when we were closing schools, it was an issue
027raised about the accommodations dealing with special ed separating and the impact it had. Was that part of the discussion within the group as well? It was when and I think that we should revisit that now that schools that's that's happening. But I think um anytime there's a big change, it affects our kids, right? Anytime there's a big change for someone with special needs, it can be especially difficult. And as I said before, the resources that we have, the teachers and the staff, the paras, they care so deeply for these students. But um when they're separated from them because of changing with, you know, a lot of teachers are getting moved around or schools are closing. And so how we can think about scaffolding that, you know, um I think would be really important for the
028kids and the staff. I've been accused in the past that I think every student needs an IEP and in some degree I do believe that. But communications to parents on the rights of with the special ed and things of that is that a concern as well? Is it adequate or is it inadequate? I think that as a parent who's been at many IEP meetings, you definitely are provided the procedural handbook, your rights, it they they offer to hand it to you or give it to you. That, if you've ever seen it, is a very thick, not user friendly sort of thing. And acronyms are everywhere in special education. So, if you're stepping into your very first IEP meeting, it can be really overwhelming. And I think we can break it down and give a more
029Cliff's notes version of it. Um, I think that would go so far again in just creating a culture that really supports it being a team effort and not an us versus them. And just the last comment is I hope I get it on the calendar. I I don't have it on my calendar. I was going to MAC. I sent you some information back and forthusing to you, but I hope I can get the information so it can be on my calendar in the future. Thank you. Oh, great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, member Higgins. It was one of my notes to write down that we should um add the committees to our board calendar um so that all board members have it on their advance card. Um are there other questions? I'm not seeing any.
030I'll just ask just briefly um does the committee have vacancies at present? So if someone wanted to get more involved, can they join? Yes, absolutely. In fact, we voted to allow anyone to come for a one-time meeting just to see if they wanted to go the through the process of applying and attending. So, absolutely, there is always room. We also started meeting in person this year. It had previously just been online. So, now there's a hybrid version. You can attend right here in the building or you can join virtually. And then, do you happen to know the date and time of your next meeting by chance? Yes, it is on Thursday. Is it May 8th? Is that a Thursday? And it is at four o'clock. It goes from 4:00 to 5:30. Okay. I know it's
031a Thursday. I don't know if it's the 8th. Okay. Great. Okay. And that will be our last session of the school year. Thank you very much. I imagine you'll see some familiar faces there. Yes. All right. Seeing no other questions, Miss Fogy. Oh, member lessons. Um, yeah, it's hard over here on the right hand side. Got to got to look left and look right. Um I guess maybe this is a question. So, one of the things that, you know, what I'm hearing is that there is um interest and and likely need for improvement in teacher training, which I think raises questions about, you know, what is special education training look like when teachers are going through their, you know, formal training and then of course there's there but what I think I hear is district
032specific or school specific training and everything it seems like has a cost. when we implemented um the new CKLA curriculum, we invested two or three million, I think, in training specific to this new reading curriculum. Um there wasn't a whole lot of funding from Juno to to do that, but it was important. I mean, there was a slight uptick in in um the BSA for the Alaska Reads Act, like a $30. What I'm getting to is since training costs time and money, are there any bills in play at the legislative level that would help essentially districts pay for additional training sort of supports and opportunities that um would benefit districts across the state, but also a lot um Anchorage, we have on our data dashboard 6,800 students with disabilities these um that's a lot of
033kiddos out of a you know population of just over 42,000. Um and I you know I sense that some students come to Anchorage from places that may not be able to serve their needs. Maybe that's wrong but is there are there bills at play uh at this point in time in Juno that would help ASD pay for additional training? And I don't know the answer to that, but I will say my understanding is that the training is already a part of what we have at our fingertips. It is offered. It's just that it's offered outside of the training times. And in one case, I had a teacher who's a special education teacher who said she couldn't attend it because she had to go to a different mandated training at the same time. So, I think
034it's more than needing to invest financially. It's needing to invest with time with like calling it a priority because there is such a high number and because if you speak candidly with our special education teachers they are exhausted. They are so they're running a million different things at once and it's it's a beautiful and also a tough population to work with at times. So the more we can learn from what they already have to teach us even within the schools. Some schools get it so right when it comes to what this looks like in our district. So how could we learn from them and then use that to model and mentor other schools? I think it would be a really interesting thing to look into. Thank you. Member lessons. Member Bellamy question. Yes. Thank you
035Mr. Chair. I I'd just like to chime in on the training. There there are lots of trainings that are available uh uh to fit almost any schedule, but they're only available through the state. But there al there should be some trainings. Uh I'd like the administration to maybe provide us in board connect uh what is available out there to educators because I don't think I don't think we need to worry about paying for it right now because it's already available. So uh our presenter is absolutely correct. the trainings are out there. So I I guess I want to know what trainings are available um at the state level, what trainings are available within ASD and um you know how h you know just a little bit more information on how it uh uh they can
036the training can be accessed because I think it's all virtual. Uh we don't have to pull people out of class um or or or have or do it on a specific inservice day. Um, but somehow I don't even know if we're monitoring that kind of training anymore. But, uh, I know it's available. Um, maybe we can just start there and try to figure out where, you know, what's available and how to access it and get that information out to principles and and staff. So, uh, if I could put that request in maybe for um a a a board connect before the end of the year, that would be great. Thank you. Sounds like Dr. Bryant is in agreement with accomplishing that request, member Bellamy. So, thank you. Are there other questions before we move on?
037Thank you again so much for the presentation, your work. Thank you so much. Yes. Okay, we'll move on to B4, which is board conference and committee reports. Is there a committee chair wishes to make a report on behalf of their committee? I think I'll flag that our meetings are coming up this Thursday, right? And so we'll look forward to more discussion then. With that said, we'll move on to item C1, uh, goal monitoring for our college, career, and life ready goal related to cumulative GPA grades 9 through 12. And correct. Okay, great. So, we're moving past the technical report tonight, actually um engaging in discussion. So, I'll read our our standard script, which is we are now going to have our goal monitoring conversation on the technical report that was given to us at our
038last meeting. Tonight, our conversation will focus on college, career, and life ready or CCL goal 3 and interim goal 3.3. Uh the goal is the percent of students graduating college, career, and life ready as measured by four-year graduation rates will increase from 81% in June of 23 to 90% in June of 28. And interim goal 3.3 is cumulative GPA, which is the percentage of students in grades 9 through 12 with a cumulative GPA of 2.7 or higher will increase from 55.94% in June of 23 to 70% in June of 2028. I want to confirm that all four components of the monitoring report are present. The report clearly shows the following that what is being monitored uh and is focused is on a specific goal and interim goal that data from previous reporting periods including the
039current reporting period and targeted reporting periods are present and the superintendent's evaluation of performance is also present. With that said, we can start moving towards questions and I'll just start on my right. U member lessons, do you want to start us off with a question? Uh I do have a question but actually this is a comment. This is uh just at a high level. The past week has felt like a lot of whack-a-ole with inaccurate information coming out by legislators. And one of the comments that really surprised me was that there's a lack of transparency in ASD. And I thought, wait a second, we're going to be doing data monitoring again, which we do at a lot of our meetings. We talk about how well our students are doing and we often talk about the
040resources that our students need to do better and how we align those resources. So, thank you for having an excellent opportunity to have transparency in ASD yet again. Um, so I appreciate this uh chance to have a conversation about how we're doing with our adopted goals, monitoring progress. Um, okay, done done with that beating the dead horse. Um I guess the first question I had uh reflects something that caught my eye in one of the internal on the radar presentations recently um communications which maybe it was given to the principles uh to my memory and it sounded like the administration was really digging into some of the wise behind student grades and what caught my attention was that um I think you guys were looking into sort of chronic absenteeism and and grades and that
041wasn't necessarily in this report, but it seemed really interesting. So, could you talk about that a little bit? Thank you, board member lessons. What a great question and observation on your part. Um, I have the data set here. I think this is the one you're referring to. And I'll just provide a little bit of context um to begin the presentation. First of all, um you know, a reminder to the to the board and everyone present that, uh the district just this last year committed to three interim goals to support the overarching goal of raising the graduation rate to 90%. Um so we did a lot of research over the last two years and landed on three goals. Uh one of them of course is focused on the ontrack status toward graduation. Uh the other one
042is the CTE concentrator status. Those students who take two or more classes in an industry pathway career technical education. And then the third, of course, we're focused on tonight, students who have a GPA of 2.7 or above. Uh in the mix there, of course, is attendance. And we had floated the idea of adopting an attendance goal. We didn't ultimately do that. Um but we continue to monitor it. And uh to to address your question, board member lessons, we see a very strong correlation with attendance and GPA attendance and all the other important metrics we're we're discussing specifically uh and we see this on the supplementary report that was provided to the board this last week. Uh for our ninth graders who finish the year with a attendance rate of 90% or above, their graduation rate
043is 92%. And we did a cohort study of three graduation years. Uh 21 22 22 23 23 24 and the same is true for all of them. Freshmen who finish with that 90% attendance or above graduate at a rate of 92%. Um, specific to this presentation in GPA, it's really exciting to report to the board that when a freshman finishes that 9th grade year with a GPA of 2.7, they graduate at a rate of 95%. And again, that was part of a three-year cohort study here in ASD. It mirrors national research, but what a great thing to be able to show that in ASD, the national research is also true. Uh, and it allows us as, you know, district leaders, supporting principles and teachers to say to our teachers and our schools, our board members
044with confidence that we're focused on the right goal if our objective, our overarching goal is to improve graduation rate. Followup, member lessons. Thanks. And I um I'm going to take this a different direction. Um, can you help me understand what a 2.7 GPA is? What does that mean? I get a 4.0 equals A's. A 3.0 equals B's. Tell me about what a 2.7 I mean somewhere in we're in the C's. Yeah. So, a little little less than a B average. Um, and it's a researchbased metric. Um, which comes out of the Chicago Symposium on school research. Uh it's also referenced um in the [Music] um national superintendent national association of superintendent research uh and I think John Hopkins was the other research um that we looked at 2.7 or 2.8 8, we landed on 2.7,
045slightly below a B average. And that would be the lowest GPA threshold, which is a metric that's highly predictive not only of graduation success in four years, but perhaps more importantly to our CCL goal. Um, it's a metric that is predictive of access and success in post-secary institutions. uh and GPA is regarded as perhaps the most predictable of all the metrics we can look at in school. uh and folks appreciate that a GPA particularly over the tenure of one's four years in high school is the culmination of multiple classes with different teachers, different sub subjects, um students accessing different knowledge, demonstrating different skills, um working with teachers who have different grading philosophies, and it all comes out in in the wash of course, but what we have at the end is a highly predictive metric
046that shows a student's readiness for life and school after high school. Followup member listen. Yeah, I mean this is sort of seging into another of the questions that I shared ahead of time. um not a surprise considering other concerns that I've raised or similar concerns that I've raised in other data monitoring cycles. But um you know if we're talking you know at at our core of students who are having less demonstrating or producing less than a B average um we are looking at um our highest sort of risk categories are English language learners are students who are in special education and our economically disadvantaged students. They're earning less than a lower grade than we would like them to. More of them are earning lower grades than we would like them to. Um I mean I
047guess I have a suspicion um from a general sense that there's some struggles with literacy and numeracy. I can keep talking. I'm trying to serve you up and opening to say something profound. Um I don't know about profound. I'll give it my best shot. Um, and others, you know, who have joined me tonight certainly will have things to say as well. It's a big question and perhaps the most important question. You know, this particular page of the data set tells a really important story about what's happening in ASD in terms of stu students who are doing really well uh and students who are struggling. Uh and to your point, we have certain, you know, subgroups of students who are really struggling. Um the one that you referenced, I think primarily in your question to us
048beforehand was really about economically disadvantaged students that that seems to be the common link because there's a lot of them. It it's a lot of students. So yes, there's a percent, but when you apply the percent to the sheer, you know, sheer number, um you get a lot of economically disadvantaged students. Yeah. And so I think it's very important that the the board and the district is committed to our early childhood literacy board goal. That is critical and actually directly related to GPA in high school as you point out. Equally, I think it's important that we have focused on uh numeracy and mathematics, which we're assessing, of course, in eighth grade, but it takes elementary school success and focus on on mathematics in those early grades to to achieve that eighth grade benchmark. Um there's
049a lot of other things happening in the district right now to try to support students who aren't meeting the 2.7 GPA. Um my colleague toward the back row uh senior director Zawadney who uh leads the middle school division. He and I are working very closely to try to identify best practices in bridge building between 8th and 9th grade uh to ensure that students entering high school have the best start. And I think it's most important that we identify those students who we can predict will struggle in the ninth grade and get ahead of that so that our high school counselors and teachers know who they are, make sure they're in the right classrooms, um reflective of their academic skill set and prior success. um so they don't have a false start in ninth grade and
050that that ninth grade um support system we're working to build uh is really there for them and quickly reacting to a student who falls off track. Lastly, I'm gonna I'm gonna phone a friend here, Marty Lang, um to talk a little bit about recent work um that a number of our district leaders are doing in regards to talent management and human resources uh to try to ensure that we have the best human resources possible in the schools with the highest percentage of vulnerable students. Thank you, Eric. Um, and I think we've had some uh teaser conversations about um the project that we're working on right now uh which we're calling the accelerator project and we're part of a cohort with six other districts that are doing this work. um some are a year ahead of
051us, some are um entering into this work um kind of at the same place we are this year. But really it centers around trying to define um what are our high needs schools, what are our high needs classrooms and that's using a combination of student data which we've traditionally looked at but also looking at a series of human capital metrics as well and um trying to really distill down what are the factors that we think um you know best define a high need school and a highly effective teacher and then trying to figure out um how to either um incentivize making sure those two things uh work together on a regular basis across the district um or build other uh structures um in the way that we staff uh in order to support those students
052who may have um higher needs than the students at some other schools. And so we are um really working across departments. We've got a lot of different folks from talent management, from assessment and evaluation, uh from community engagement, from the instructional divisions, from teaching and learning, from special ed. And we're we're trying to build out um the metrics that will help build the foundation for us to do that in a even more intentional way than we have in the past. And not yet to uh ready to fully put that on public display. Um but we are getting closer and at some point do um uh we'll be excited to bring that to the board in a work session and kind of um bring your full attention to kind of where we're at in that process.
053Thank you member lessons and team for your responses. Member Wilson, any questions at this point? Great. Um I'll jump in with one then I'll I think we'll go online to member Bellamy. Um we we're since we've got the slide up and I think um we just alluded to it a bit the the data regarding different subgroups in the um gain or um bit of a dip is I found interesting. I guess I'm curious as the the team who pours over this data and analyzes it. Is there one particular subgroup or a trend that you found most uh statistically significant that um prompted additional followup for you? So what are you tracking from this slide? I guess is my main curiosity. Thanks. Yeah. So, thank you board member uh Jacobs for the question. Um for me
054it's it's this chart and it's the last four years but this particular metric um is very consistent and stable. There's very little change even amongst the the demographic groups over the last four years. That's what we have ready access to quite static. Um and of course the disparities jump out to me. You know, we have two groups who have almost hit the district goal of 70%. Which is quite ambitious and we have, you know, three other groups really that are 20 c 20% below that. Um, and it really jumps off the page um from a systems point of view. Um, so I think we have our work set out for us. Um, I am pleased to point out that this year, the current year, we're seeing some important improvement in two grades divisionwide. Uh, we've
055seen a 5% jump in 9th grade from 52 to 57%. It's the highest it's been in four years. We've also seen a similar type of jump, not quite that great, uh, amongst our seniors who are now at 59%, the highest they've been in four years. So, we're seeing some movement and I would like to say that hopefully it has something to do with the high school division's laser focus on 9th grade as you're all familiar with and also our seniors. We're putting a lot of effort and focus there. So, I guess the takeaway for me is four years of static data and we're starting to see a little movement now that we're focused on this metric for the first time. And if I could just add, when I look at the data on the slide
056five, you know, I think about there's a lot of information that needs to get to our students. And when you look at the different subgroups, um, especially economically disadvantaged sticks out to me as an area where we can really target some of our resources and tactics towards particular schools. We've alluded to it in some ways with the accelerator project, but we know that resources are very scarce, and we also know that there are strategies that work. So, we've listed some of those in uh slide eight, some of the actual tactics. But, you know, as a former nth grade teacher, it does bother me that a lot of students still haven't gotten the message that what they do in nth grade will have an impact potentially on the rest of their lives. Like, if they get
057too many Fs, that has a direct impact on their ability to earn even industry credentials and also college. And it could even make those things less affordable or less um less accessible to those students. So, this is a really important issue that's going to need to be tackled from a number of vantage points, not just the academic pieces, but also thinking about if you're a student that's scoring under 2.7, what support systems might you need in addition to the academic? So, I'm thinking about our mental health supports. I'm thinking about food or shelter insecurity and these other factors that are really keeping our students from being dedicated to their job as a students and the reason for that are very complicated and it it varies from household to household. But we know this and we
058know that that data indicates that amongst some of our most vulnerable student populations, including economically disadvantaged, that they're more likely than not to not be successful. And that's why there's a lot of urgency to focus our efforts on the 2.7 and below, but on top of that, the economically disadvantaged, on top of that, the subgroups that are popping out as needing more supports. And even though we're in a very resource scarce world, in a resource scarce environment in a state, um we do know where those resources need to go um because they're not meeting their full potential because every single one of these students can graduate with a 3.0 and above. It's just a matter of how can we advocate for the right resources for them. We will go to member Bellamy who had a
059hand up and then I will I promise member will get back as soon as we can. Member Bellamy, the floor is yours. Thank you. Uh Dr. Bryant, thank you for those comments. You know, I the first time we had a conversation around um this 2.7 being an indicator of success uh for our kids. It it really bothered me, but it didn't bother me because our kids weren't capable. It bothered me because, you know, I'd already imprinted myself with a 4.0, 0 right that that's the s that's the rate of success for uh that we need to get our kids but all of our kids are not going to get a a 4.0 know they're not going to get a 3.5. There will be the exceptions and I think we will see the the we will
060see um success all across all of our demographics, but it's going to look different and I think this is one of the ways that it does look different. Now, I don't know if a 2.7 I don't know how we guarantee that a 2.7 is a 2.7 at every single school. Um I I don't know how to figure that out, but I do think it's it's reasonable uh for us to have a metric that that we can look at and say if we can if we can get our kids to this level, they can go much higher because that's how I look at this. If we can get our kids, get our ninth graders, if we can transition our kids from 8th grade to 9th grade with a strong sense of um I don't know, success
061and what that looks like. We struggle. I mean, my kid I I was a 2.5 high school graduate. I didn't become a 4.0 student until I literally was in graduate school. But there were opportunities for me along the way. So, I don't want us to look at our metric and make assumptions that it's too low. Uh because I don't think it's too low. I think it provides us with opport with a way to provide more opportunities. And I also think it meets our kids where they are, a lot of our kids. We're not we're not going to give up on them, but we absolutely need to have a way to um you know, to to to to start this conversation. So I I'm I'm not as freaked out as I was about the 2.0 the
062the the the the 2.7 GPA. In fact, my sorarity which is an international sorority we provide that is a cuto off for our scholarships. Do we get 2 point kids with a 2.7 to apply for our scholarships? Yes, they apply. Yes, they go to school. And yes, they are successful. So um I I just want to caution us to just not not see that as some kind of deficiency. So uh and I guess um I had some I had several questions. Some of them have already been answered. Uh but that the one on grading consistency I think as we how do we know when we move from school to school uh program to program teacher to teacher how do we know what is consistent about that 2.7 and how do we know um that kids
063are hitting that or is that something that's going to change um from school to the value the value of a 2.7 GPA. That's a really good question. Uh, member Bellamy, you also sent in um another one related to, you know, how do we know um what a 2.7 means and is there a correlation between um students GPA and their scores on our Alaska? Yes. State assessments. And um to your point, yes, in general, within the Anchorage School District, we do see a positive correlation between a student's grade point average and their performance on state assessments. Okay. Um students who maintain higher GPA tend to consistently perform um proficiently on those state assessments. Um and so we can gather a little that this reflects some sort of alignment between the classroom performance and um work on
064the state uh performance assessments and standards, but also um our teaching and learning department is working on um a couple things and I'll let um senior director Prince talk about um some of the work that they're doing. Great. Thank you. So, member lesson um sorry, member Melam, I really I really appreciate your your question and and also just the statement about recognizing where we are with our expectations. Um sometimes it's it's difficult when we think about, you know, we always want our our own students, our children, and the people that we're in charge of to be at the top. I think kind of globally like a 4.0 is that exceptional mark. you're you're you're meeting and exceeding all expectations in everything every class you've ever done. And that a 3.0 means that you are performing
065above average of all of your peers. And when we think about how can everybody be above average? It's it's a really conceptual conundrum. I have three children of my own and I I w I wrestle with that too. Um because having three kids gives me that that bandwidth to say that they're not all going to perform the same way. No, they don't. When we look for how we are actually meeting the mark for uh district-wide expectations and standards, we have a lot of opportunities and we have aspirations. We have an opportunity every Monday through our PLC's to have our teachers meet in uh learning communities where they are addressing hopefully they're starting to build common form assessments built on the standards that our state and our district agree on. They're looking at rubrics and ways
066that they are collectively at each school. We have cross district PLC's. We also know that there's a strong correlation when we have really committed ninth grade teams as students transition into that very critical year that Mr. Bachmann spoke to that when we actually see that if you if you have 90% attendance, you're going to have 69% of those students with 98 uh 90% attendance will have a 2.7 GPA, right? We also know that it's true that of those ninth graders who have a 90% attendance rate, 30, if they don't have the 90%, 33% of those those freshmen actually don't have that GPA. So, we're seeing that, let me just try to be more clear. No, I kind of jumbled there for a little bit. um of all the freshmen at the end of their their
067ninth grade year, if they have a 90% attendance rate, they're going to have 69% of them will have a 2.7 or higher. They're do they're setting off right towards that exit ticket that Mr. Bachman spoke about, graduating much higher rates than the rest of our district at almost 95%. It's huge, well above our district average. And I think it's the important work that we do with our um academy teams and that freshman cohort of uh kids that are being looked at with their counselors, their uh principles, and their teachers are really taking a look at progress FS uh progress monitoring to make sure they're looking at their attendance, but that we focus on this grade point average goal is separate than our middle school math goal, which is separate from our early litery goal and
068each one of them contribute, but we got to make sure that we're focusing our work on the early literacy here with all of our efforts. We're focusing on our our math numeracy and middle school and then in high school, we're focusing on this 2.7 GPA, our college career life goal. And they all weave together for that end result of a high graduation rate. Absolutely. And there are unknowns that we don't talk about in our monitoring such as whether kids have housing, whether they have meals, whether they have uh you know, so so I I just I just want to make sure that we see that we don't see the 2.7 as less than, but on the way to, I guess. Anyway, I appreciate um the responses and I'll let someone else ask a question and
069then I'll come back around. Thank you. Thank you, Member Bellamy. We'll go to our student reps. Um any questions from that corner of the dis? I'm curious if there's any data like breaking down for the students who haven't reached that 2.7 benchmark like how many students lie really close to that benchmark and how many are you know really far from it which are just going to make it really difficult to you know bring that grade up to 2.7 what I think Josh I want to use this opportunity to thank you for your leadership and your astute question right there as a perfect example Yeah. So, thanks for your service and leadership. Um, off the top of my head, I can't tell you what percentage of students are close. We'd sort of have to define what
070is close. But what I can tell you is that our assessment and evaluation team have built this really powerful tool uh called unified insights which really at the push of a couple buttons can tell you um by school, by grade level, by demographic group, how many students are really close. In fact, we have it built out to identify students who are below 2.0, between 2.0 and 2.6, six and then up at 2.7 or above. And we intentionally built that tool to identify 2.0 to 2.6 so that we could target those students you're talking about. And again, this is in the hands of our teachers and our counselors and our administrators so we can identify those kids and give them the support they need. Great question. Thank you. All right. Member Donley, any questions? Thank you,
071Mr. President. Um I think graduation rates and success u in academics is definitely worthy of the priority this priority. Um but as originally envisioned the life ready portion of this one of our three top goals here which is career college career and life ready was intended to be more than just academics as it used to be. articulated in this under as a subcategory where we identified personal finance as something we wanted for our students to graduate with the ability to have some sense of personal finance. At one point the board decided to remove that because it had been incorporated in the curriculum but we never replaced it with any other life ready goals. the some of which originally were envisioned to be water safety, ability to swim and survive. You know, we have more lakes
072than any other state. We lose people to drowning every year. um well baby care um uh statistics that I most recently I was aware of is we do great in um hospitals getting the babies home healthy but after they get home our state's one of the most dangerous places for babies percentage- wise um first aid which I believe there is some component of first aid in our classes now but um a knowledge of local civics would be something that would beant important for life readiness with graduating citizens, not just academics. Work ethic. I remember one of the meaningful things in a classroom situation I saw at the Katsubu Technical School was they had whole classes just focused on showing up at work on time and and how to manage your time to be a productive
073employee and and employment and job skills. Um, I really wish we had more of that contained under life ready because the graduation rates I think relate to that, but they also are clearly more very related to college and career readiness also. Um, so I'm hopeful that some of those other concepts are going to get rolled into here. I think the only way that personal finance got adopted was because it was specifically in here and then got rolled into the curriculum. And that's good because that's what I was originally championing as the first step. But I regret the fact the board hasn't chosen to add any of these other life ready skills to the list here because without being specifically added, I I'm I'm concerned they're not getting addressed as much as as our our students
074need to be life ready when they graduate. So, member Donn Lee, I I'm going to infer that there was a question there and just start talking on my on my own accord. Uh, I appreciate all the things that you said there. Um, I think that there are avenues and approaches that we are taking in the classes that we're offering our students that are addressing those very concerns. And I don't want to say that the newly re-imagined face course that's going to be career, you know, college and career exploration and personal finance is going to be the panacea or the silver bullet to all of those concerns. But there are definite areas as they've reinvisioned and reimagined what that course is going to look like. the group of educators who have been gathered this whole year
075working on that coursework specifically or addressing the ideas of uh budgeting for your own personal finance so that you understand what a checkbook is and the liabilities of having credit cards are what it means to set up goals that are reasonable. you know, smart goals so that students understand as a as a freshman what it is to not only understand the fine nuance of time management, but also how to work in a group. You know, how to divvy responsibilities, how to communicate effectively. Um, speech class isn't a mandatory thing, but there's plenty of opportunities for them to engage in that work. If you've been following and tracking some of the things that themies of Anchorage have tried to do with speed mentoring, there is plenty of opportunities for our students um to engage with businesses
076and industries and professionals who have careers that they might be interested in. And they have to sit down at a table across from them and pepper them with questions like tell me Mr. Donnelly like how did you get where you're at? What is it that you had to do to prepare yourself for this? What was it like for you to be in college? and then communicate those needs so they can best prepare themselves for it. I know sometimes it's hard and I I put myself back in the position of a a teacher in high school thinking like why don't my students come to me ready prepared to show up to class on time but that's that's even in adulthood you know 20ome years in this profession and we still talk about it as adults like
077how do we get from one meeting to another with a passing period in between so that we're not late for the next one. So, this is a lifelong goal and I'm I'm glad that we're trying to tackle it this way. Um, I know that career pathways and exploration is is not the end all beall, but it's definitely a way forward. So, I'm excited to try to answer those questions when we refine these classes and we explore more opportunities so that every student at every school has that opportunity to get that baseline. We saw pockets of excellence, but I think really adding this across the board is going to be the, you know, it's going to raise all boats and it's going to offer us a more, you know, fair and balanced approach to the education
078we provide for all of our students. Well, I really appreciate that. I just don't want to see the concept of life ready reduced to only academics. AB: Absolutely. Because the last time I checked, like uh no one was checking gradepoint averages to participate in a sports league for an adult pickup basketball game. Thank you, Member Donley. We'll go to Member Leus. Um thanks. This is a hybrid of building on your question and maybe building on part of a a question I submitted. uh ahead of time. Um I mean this report is about 9th graders through 12th graders, but one of the things that I've become familiar with in looking at our dashboard is actually eighth graders fail courses more than anybody else. Right? If you look at the rate of failure, and we're not talking
079about failure per se, but my guess was that there may be more Fs among kids students with 2.7 and below GPA than than above. So it just some kids who are struggling, right? And what I guess I see in the dashboard is that students are struggling in middle school and it builds in seventh grade and it builds even more in eighth grade and then something happens and maybe they get a new bit of wind in their sales but there's still a lot of students struggling in ninth grade to be like I mean and I'm also speaking as the parent of an eighth grader and the driver of a middle school carpool and um there's a lot of time management that goes into welcome to middle school. you're moving from one elementary teacher and a specialist
080if if we can afford them anymore uh to you know seven seven classes in a day and you're juggling what this teacher asked and that teacher asked and there's a lot of life ready skills that are being asked of our students when they enter middle school. So I mean I think that life readiness is happening throughout the journey and I guess I would um raise my eyebrow a little bit to say that we could just teach life readiness in a class uh because I see life readiness is really being learn to play nicely in the sandbox as an early life ready skill. Um so it's a longitudinal project. um where is the question all of this I guess how are you how are we mo how are we incorporating um middle school student outcomes and
081trends that we're seeing in in a project to look at high school student GPA beyond that transition period I mean are middle school students incorporated into a broader look at improving our student outcomes Yeah. So, thanks for the question, board member lessons. Um, I guess a couple of things. I think that ideally, um, and I I'll I'll draw upon the the graduate profile that we created as a district, which I think is a really powerful document that that speaks to some of the concerns that you've outlined, board member Donnelly. But I think um in an ideal education system, you know, ASD's teachers would be looking at the grad profile and those transferable skills and using content in the classroom as a vehicle to teach those transferable skills at every level. Um part of that conversation
082when we created the grad profile was was to begin to reach down into middle school and create a middle school profile, right? How do we identify those skills and attributes and and mindsets uh if you will that will lead to success in high school? The middle school profile. Um I think it's also important to note that we have in data dashboard um a platform set up for GPA of middle schoolers and the research metric is 3.0. Actually when a student in middle school is achieving a 3.0 0 GPA um that is predictive of success in nth grade and beyond. And over the course of the last couple weeks in preparing for this conversation, we've done a little data dive looking for correlation between middle school GPA at 3.0 and what happens in high school. And
083they're almost a mirror. When you look at a feeder middle school, uh that rate of 3.0 GPA is almost a direct mirror of 2.7 in nth grade. Um, I engaged in some of that work when I was at Mir's middle school as principal. We worked very closely with Diamond High. We did a a two-year cohort study looking at our eighth graders at 3.0 above and below and how they did at Diamond. And I would like to see that kind of work um broadened or replicated um throughout the district. Again, uh Joe Zawadney and I are really invested in beginning that work this year and I know we have school leaders and counselors and teachers who would be excited. Um Mr. Prince mention mentioned the PLC structure as an opportunity. It's it's ideal for that kind
084of work. Um I guess the last comment I would make is I I view the the board goals and our efforts to achieve them. um we're sort of working at the high end and the low end and we're beginning to work toward the middle and I think your question quite astutely points toward middle school. Thank you, Member Leon. This is member Wilson. So I don't necessarily have a question but um several statements primarily I just wanted to reiterate that I heard loud and clear that attendance has a direct correlation to academic achievement. Um and attendance is on the top of the list for expectations for employers as well. So, the real life skills that that we we want to make sure students walk out of ASD with um and continue their their success far beyond
085the academics of 9th or of K through 12. And to member Donny's point, um there are many ways for students to learn skills that turn these those students into um successful well-rounded adults. And I'm going to go back to the budget uh because it's very frustrating that as a board member we have to sit here and decide the many ways that you know cutting athletics, cutting all of the things we have to cut um if we don't get the BSA increase are all really important things for these students to become. become well-rounded adults to learn success. Um, and again, I I didn't have a question, but multiple comments about the importance of attendance. Our kids need to show up in order for them to learn. Um, and and we need to have the potential to
086provide multiple experiences for them. Um because not every child as as you very well know not every child learns the same. Not every child is engaged in in the same academics. Um but a lot of the extracurricular activities of a lot of whether it's sports or arts or all of the the different things that we have to look at cutting first are what brings our kids to school. It's what they get excited about. So, just a little bit frustrating kind of evening having to um want to talk about the future success of our kids while we're taking that those opportunities away. I'll jump in with a um a question. Um I am curious about the implementation stages and I I think I know the answer but doesn't necessarily mean anything. The this goal what I
087I think I understand is it's relatively new compared to our others which is reading and math um have been and proficiency gains have been a focus whereas the GPA goal is has as member Donley alluded to been relatively new. I'm curious and I'll just dovetail two of my questions together. For efficiency sake, do we think that the um the relatively new goal relates in any and the implementation stages being um more rudimentary in nature relates in any way to the the slight dip we saw this year in the um number of students who've met the criteria? Um, and then I'll I'll also ask at the same time, speaking of the implementation stages, it it seemed odd that PLC's were listed as next steps when what I think I understand is those at the secondary level
088have been around and part of our culture for a bit longer. And so I'm curious any information on that. Yeah, thanks for the question, board member Jacobs. Um your question which we received in advance actually set in motion a very long and spirited conversation about the the tool we're looking at and just the the the the language on the tool. You know when something is in progress it says action steps are proceeding versus when something is a next step action steps are beginning. and it's really difficult for us to discern whether it's beginning or proceeding particularly with a new metric like 2.7 and PLC's which technically are just in their second year of development. Um related to that question, I I I followed up with um high school director um teacher lead of PLC's, Stephanie
089Alexander, and just asked her how many of our PLC's right now are focused on academic intervention and support. Um and she related back that at at least 10 are focused on the nth grade exclusively, just to give you an idea. So yeah, that's more than a beginning. it's proceeding, but we're also just in our second year. So, we're working on the tool um and may see some revisions to it as we look toward next year. Some of the some of the difficulty that we see is if you're if we want to feel confident in telling you that we are proceeding across the board with PLC's, we want to make sure that we are across the board. But right now, we are still in the process of refining our our practice and then also checking. So
090trust and verify and we want to make sure that that what we're presenting to you right now is the most transparent and honest like we are developing. There are some that are full steam ahead every time they are doing all this work. Some that still need a little bit more coaching and help and that's kind of where we're at with the with the tool itself. I would just follow up with feedback in that this board has been very liberal with how we've tweaked the council great city schools framework to meet our unique needs. And so please feel emboldened to do the same that um just because this is their the rubric that maybe aligns um to provide accurate information to us for perspective I would value over using a template. So thank you. Um, do
091we have any other questions from our student reps before I move on further down the DIS? So referring back to the actual data of the students that are participating in this set, you know, I look at the statistics for example of Alaskan Native students and I see obviously that there is an entirely huge gap between those of other students of different ethnicities being that in June 2022 23 that it was about 30% of students that had at least a 2.7 or above and only went up by 2% in the next few years. And so as frustrating as those statistics seem to stay at those levels and I know the school district is always working to help benefit these students and I mean we are a very diverse district and so I think we have many
092students who identify with this culture and ethnicity. It's very important that we continue valuing it, valuing it the way that we do. But I wonder if there are any more motives or goals of helping these students such as our Alaskan Native students who obviously seem way differentiated with their GPA than our other students. Like, how can we help them more? And are we already doing that? because I know as a diverse district, this is definitely something that means a lot to us with many students who identify in that way. Really appreciate that question. Um, three of the students in the in the Anchorage School District that are Alaskan Native are my own children. Um, so it's near and dear to my heart. And what I what I think that Mr. Backman spoke to earlier that
093is really on point is we have uh the Huey system that the in unified insight system actually gives us an opportunity to look at who the students are in a very specific way and pay attention to that group whichever group we might be looking at like for attendance or grade point averages or progress FS and actually I'm sure that if you think about your own experience It could have just been a conversation with a caring adult in the building that came by and said, "Hey, notice you're missing a few assignments. Can you get that?" Just being seen a little bit by some other caring adult in the school can make a huge difference. When we have that tool being used on a regular basis, it again uh the grass is always greener where you water
094it, not always over the fence, right? So, what we pay attention to is what grows the most. And as we continue to refine our practices and our methods to find the students that are falling between the cracks or not being seen, we're going to get better at this. And when we talk about the difference between 30% and 32% if you look at those numbers we're talking 36 students right and I always think about every student life matters and that's 36 students that are getting raised up and as we continue to raise them up that percentage is going to grow and just is a matter of each caring opportunity we have to talk to a student in the hallway, in the classroom, in advisory, during a sports match, when you're trying to get kids involved in
095activities, those caring adults that are constantly looking and nurturing, the constant gardener for the Anchorage School District, it's going to make a difference. Just takes time and attention. Thank you for that. All right, Member Donley, any other questions? Member Donnelly, that was for you. Any other questions? Okay, member Higgins, any other questions? Yeah, well, thank you. Um, yeah, I remember 15, 16 years ago, the board got really focused on graduation rates and when they did so, there was a lot little bit of push back from the schools because the teachers were under pressure to try to help these kids that weren't being successful. Dropout rates were 6 and a half% I believe, graduation rates low 60 and the board pushed hard to go faster. and some of those took that as we got to pass
096people and the other people took it more appropriately that we've got to recognize kids at risk and we have to help them and that's what they did. So I don't know whether or not you've got staff push back or not on this or giving a B rather than a C. I'm sure those issues go will be in people's minds and I understand you know at the end of the day I was happy because we still got the graduation rates up. the kids that had the higher that got through school has a better chance there changes their future. It changes their kids' future future generations graduation rates contribute that much. So, um I know there can be some issues associated with this and I don't know whether you've gotten feedback on that or not, but I
097don't mind I'm supportive of pushing the issue of of encouraging teachers you have to help the kids that need the help. Um yes, you do have a goal of trying to get them up higher. You're not leaving it up to the child by themselves and it makes a difference. So um I am concerned about the differentiation between looking at the different groups and all and what we need to do. But um um I very supportive of this being transparent. I don't mind pushing the issue. I know there's can always be concerns in regards to that is what's average, what is not, and all the other issues with it. I mean, if everybody's above average, what's what does average mean? Uh, doesn't mean much, does it? But I don't care. It changes their future and their
098opportunity. So, I appreciate where this is going. I had process it quite a bit to calm myself down to get myself focused on this. And um um I'm just worried I just want to focus on the outcome and for those that might look at this in different perspective. You're changing lives and uh leave it at that. Thank you. We'll go to have any other member Bellamy. So member lessons, any additional questions? Okay. Anyone else with a question for our team before we wrap up goal monitoring tonight? Great. Okay, Dr. Bryant, everyone, thank you so much for facilitating a really great conversation. It was good timing. So, with goal monitoring complete, we'll move on to public comment tonight and I'll read our introduction. Welcome to the school board's first opportunity of the evening for public comment.
099The board has set aside one hour. Uh a time slot at the beginning of our meeting for public comment. We won't have excess of one hour's worth of comments tonight, so I'll keep reading. During public comment, board members will not answer questions or engage in discussion with members of the public. This is the public's time to speak and the board's time to listen. The school board welcomes the public to observe and contribute to our meetings through their civil comments. However, to be productive, our meetings must be structured and civil. ASD conducts public meetings under Robert's rules of order, a set of rules for orderly meetings that have been used since the late 1800s. Those rules require the board and the public to be civil and respectful of each other's opinions and statements. Here are a
100few requirements under Robert's rules. Do not attack a member or speaker's motives. No profanity or foul language. Refrain from disturbing the meeting. Please. No cheering, applause, outbursts, or wavings of signs or posters. If you have a handout that you wish to share with the board, please give them to Miss Sullivan to my left. As the chair of this meeting, it's my duty to enforce the rules of order and decorum. Uh we do have our ability to rule a speaker out of order and additional details can be found on the handout located at the door regarding audience participation. Um Miss Sullivan will ring a bell when you have 30 seconds left in your time. So, please continue speaking. Then with that said, we have one student testifier tonight. Uh, sorry, two student testifiers tonight. Our first
101is Kevin [Music] Jiang. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. Hi, my name is Kevin Zong. I'm a 10th grade sophomore currently at West High School. I come before you today to urge a complete pause in the mies of Anchorage. Our governor just vetoed House Bill 69, which would have substantially raised the BSA. The governor stated repeatedly that raising the BSA would not work. It is apparent that ASD will have to prepare for another school year without a substantial raise in the BSA. Themies of Anchorage are currently funded by a federal grant. With the current state of the Department of Education, it is unlikely that ASC will continue to receive um funding for them of Anchorage. And ASC will have to put millions of dollars into this program, which is entirely unsustainable
102if the BSA is not raised. Enough funding for themies of Anchorage now and in the future is not coming. In the context of these problems, I'm here today to persuade the school board and the superintendent that number one, themies of Anchorage should be halted this coming school year, and two, the funds of approximately $3.5 million for themies next year should be redirected to keeping our teachers and programs. At my school, two science positions will be cut. Currently, each science teacher is handling around 30 students per period. And this situation will lead every teacher teaching six periods to handle around 40 students each period. How will we expect students to succeed with this large of an increase in their class sizes? Our science teachers are already overwhelmed. Miss Kelly, my Ivy environmental science teacher, graded rough
103drafts of our science papers over her entire summer break, uh, spring break, giving us meticulous feedback on our graphs, data, analysis, and layout. She just finished grading over 32,000word science paper final drafts in my period in my period just took another test today. Miss Kelly has four more periods of biology that she has to teach and grade as well. How do we expect teachers across the whole district who already face situations like Miss Kelly to grade 30 to 60 more tests each time they hand one out? How will great teachers like her still be able to give good feedback to every student? The school board should be putting the year 2 funds toward hiring teachers instead of themies and keeping them there. Themies of Anchorage are supposed to increase graduation rates and ensure that every
104student succeeds. Moving forward with themies will only increase the studenttoteer ratio drastically and ultimately be detrimental instead of beneficial. This will negatively impact not just a class, not just a school, but the entire district's students and teachers. I urge every one of you, every one of you who has the power to decide to put all our students and teachers first and seriously consider stopping at themies. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is Katrina Nelson. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. mic working. All right, great. Hello, my name is Katrina Nelson and I'm a freshman at West Anchorage High School. Today, I'd like to emphasize the importance of programs being cut with HB69 being vetoed and why we need to prioritize these programs over programs such as themies.
105There's no other way around it. There's no other way to say it. These programs that are being cut save lives. That is the hard truth of the matter. When you cut these programs, you are cutting off students identities. Let's talk about what these budget cuts tangibly mean. What these programs being cut actually impacts students and how it impacts students. First, the arts. Anchorage schools have some of the best art programs in the country. Ask any artist in ASD and they will tell you that art has genuinely changed their lives. Even personally being in orchestra and debate drama and forensics, I can confidently say that I would be not only a worse person but student if I did not participate in these programs. The cuts that ASD is facing would butcher theater, choir, and countless other
106artistic programs. There are hundreds, if not even thousands of students who'd be affected. Their lives become less colorful and their potential would be severed. Let's also talk about another major issue, possibly the crux in this discussion, and that is class sizes increasing significantly. It has been proven empirically and anecdotally that class sizes increasing leads to worse educational outcomes. Alaska is already ranking, frankly, quite poorly in test scores nationally, and increased class sizes will be the final nail in the coffin, cutting off any chance of our students succeeding. In addition to this, teachers, administrators, nurses, and librarians would be cut. One of which being West's very own Mr. Like, an English teacher who we all hold very dearly. He heading the theater department at our school recently put on a production that was so excellent, so
107acclaimed that he was able to put on a show at the performing arts center mentioned at the beginning of this meeting. Like is a crucial part of our school and a person who many students view as a mentor, but he is simply being carelessly thrown away. This is only one story out of hundreds. Literal hundreds of other educators will be experiencing the same heartbreak. How can we say that we care about our teachers if we rationally fire them? I don't have the time to finish talking about the importance of all of the other programs that will be cut. Ignite, which is the lead pathway to the highly gifted program, several of high school sports and all middle school sports, which are crucial communities for young people who cannot afford expensive club sports. I dare you
108to all look me in the eye, to look every parent, teacher, and student in the eye right now and honestly say that this is the best option for our students. that this is unavoidable or inevitable or a path that we should be taking with almost no resistance. That these programs must be cut especially when considering them programmies could work. It has potential but we need to learn how to prioritize. Pursuing is unsustainable. We must keep our teachers and programs. Cutting these programs is short-sighted, ineffective, and would slash our educational quality. And on that note, I thank you for your time. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is Miss T Nelson. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. I think I'm ready. My name is Misty Nelson and I've proudly served
109as an elementary classroom teacher and librarian in the ASD for over a decade. I'm here tonight to share my experience with the recent displacement process, not just on behalf of myself, but for the many librarians across the district who are feeling discouraged, disrespected, and frankly expendable. When the displacement notifications were sent out on March 31st, something I remember vividly because I was in Juno meeting with legislators to advocate for education, I never imagined I'd be told to reapply for the very job I've been faithfully doing for seven years. and that even if I were hired back to my position, my home school would not be where I've been for the past 11 years. Let that sink in. I had to interview for my own job. A job I've dedicated over a decade to. A job
110where I've built relationships with students, teachers, and families at my school. A job I've poured my energy and passion into. It was a slap in the face, not just to me, but to every displaced librarian across our district. To make matters worse, the entire process ignored seniority. There was no consideration given to our years of service, experience, or commitment. In fact, I personally reached out to district staff to request clarity on seniority between at least the paired schools once those were finalized, and my emails went unanswered. Silence. This process also put principles in a terrible position, forcing them to choose between two dedicated librarians or to start fresh entirely. That is not how you build strong collaborative school communities. That is how you break them down. To add insult to injury, we were displaced on
111March 31st, but elementary librarian positions weren't even posted until April 11th. Some not until April 14th. That's nearly two weeks of anxiety, uncertainty, and stress. We finally find out tomorrow. I think where we have landed. The delay in job postings added to an already demoralizing experience creating unnecessary fear and instability. We often hear ASD leadership and this board speak about recruitment and retention. We talk about wanting to be a district that attracts and keeps great educators, but how can we retain dedicated staff when we're treated like this? The BSA may be beyond our local control, but how we treat our people is not. that is entirely within ASD's power. I plead with you to consider the message this process has sent. I ask you to take care of your staff, not just with words, but
112with actions that show respect for our time, our commitment, and our expertise. And moving forward, I want to be clear, this plan to have elementary librarians serve two schools is going to present real challenges. Less access to books, libraries, and librarians is not what's best for our students or staff. And I urge leadership to connect with elementary librarians and genuinely ask for our input on what we're going to need to curate and maintain two school libraries. If we're going to make this work, despite knowing it's not ideal, our voices must be part of the conversation. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is Amanda Thompson. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. Thank you. My name is Amanda Thompson. I'm a mom of two ASD students and I'm also a ASD
113teacher and I speak right now on my own behalf. So my position um I'm wearing this dress, this Carl for dress and I love how the student before me really spoke about the color that the arts brings. So, my position teaching seventh grade art, seventh eighth grade art has been cut. And I have a question I need answered from the members here right now. And I'll wait afterwards. I understand that there's no discussion allowed, but we have a question. I um we've been told that these displacements of arts and other positions are because a BSA increase has not passed. My ASD work email has been flooded with this. Our students believe this. At the legislative town hall a few weeks ago, I saw a little girl in a pink snowsuit on that chilly morning with
114a homemade sign. She believed this. But what did last year's BSA increase get used for? That's my question. I remember the sixth grade move cost discussion last year. finance officers told us that there was no cost to the district, extra cost to the district, that the money was there. And it looked like that's what was the case. I was hired last year. No one said my position was an unfunded position. The legislature last year passed a $680 increase, right? One-time increase in the BSA. ASD's budget to deed shows that that money from last year was not allocated this year. The money we were asked to advocate for was not used this year. This was not clear to us. This was not clear to that little girl in the pink snowsuit. Why wasn't that money used
115to fund these positions? The handout that I gave you, that is the math that my daughter did. She took $46 million, which is about what it sounds like is in the HR account. She divided it by $125,000, which is about what it costs the district for an average employee with our health benefits and other benefits, which I'm thankful for. My daughter came up with 368 positions. that $46 million in that HR account could fund 600 or 368 positions. Why has that money that was given to you last year not been used to keep these positions this year? I would like an answer. Thank you for your testimony. Our next speaker is Molly Hilcox. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. Thank you. Good evening, school board members and Superintendent Bryant. My name
116is Molly Hickox and I'm the uh principal of Huffman Elementary School. I'm here tonight to advocate for our neighborhood schools. Over the past few months, you've heard a lot from our schools of choice and I want to take a few minutes to speak about the great things that are happening at our neighborhood elementary schools. Neighborhood schools are the heart of our communities and they are where the majority of our students attend. They are not just places where students learn. They are where friendships are made, where families gather, and where a sense of belonging begins. Keeping schools embedded in our neighborhoods foster community engagement, strengthens family school partnerships, and reduces transportation burdens. Students thrive when they feel connected and safe, and that often starts with a school that's close to home. At Huffman, our team was
117just reviewing our fourth and fifth grade MAP math data. For fifth grade, our median achievement level is at the 79th percentile, and our median growth is at the 83rd percentile. For fourth grade, our median achievement level is at the 83rd percentile and our median growth is at the 95th percentile. I know that my colleagues at other neighborhood schools are also seeing success every single day. Some of this success can be measured in test scores, but a lot of it can only be measured by knowing that you provided a safe environment for a child that needed it or by helping a child read something that they struggled with, regardless of if they are on grade level or not. Success cannot always be measured by a test. Straight grade classrooms are an essential element of a strong
118elementary experience. I taught multi-age classrooms for many years, but during that time I had the flexibility of choosing curriculum and materials that were designed for a multi-age environment. Our current curriculum for math and ELA are designed for straight grade classrooms. While combination classrooms are sometimes necessary, they should not be the norm. Straight grade classrooms allow teachers to focus instruction more effectively and meet curriculum standards more precisely. A PTR increase at the elementary level impacts more than just the number of students in a teacher's classroom. It severely impacts the flexibility we have to use our specialists for intervention groups. We need our specialists, library, health, art, PE and music to teach their content and to provide targeted small groupoup instruction during our win time. These educators are not a luxury. They are essential. Specialists help close
119gaps, support differentiation, and help us meet the requirements of the Alaska Reads Act. When deployed effectively, they are a powerful tool in creating equitable outcomes. Please join me in sharing the success stories from our neighborhood schools. We hear from others that our schools are failing, but I see success every single day, and I know my colleagues do, too. We are all working hard to increase student achievement, and we will continue to strive for improvement. Please keep our neighborhood schools in mind as you face challenging decisions ahead with limited resources. Thank you for your time and your for your commitment to our students. And thank you, Miss Hickox. Our next testifier is Christa Mason. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. [Music] Hi, I um feel a bit awkward because when I was here
120before I had a speech written in front of me, but I felt it was better to just look at you all in the face tonight and let you know that I'm here on behalf of our students. Um I am a teacher. My parents were teachers. My brother's a teacher at Shugak High School and my sister-in-law was a teacher and I grew up in this school district and I'm very grateful to be here. um and and have lived in this area and I love what you talked about with the life readiness skills. Um, I almost drowned when I was a kid and I think swimming lessons are one of the most important like lifesaving skills that you can give a student and yet at Chuggeek High School there are no swim lessons that are given in
121those classes at that level and it it's important. It can save their lives. And I love what you were talking about with transparency. um the transparency thing. I'm thinking about when you were talking like ASD sent out a uh like a hey, if we're going to have to cut things in ASD, what do you guys want to cut? And I'm really curious with the transparency, what are the things that our public said this is okay, we want to cut this. If we have to cut something, is this what we're going to cut? And then Dora, you talked about like, okay, if we're gonna have to cut something, then obviously we have to cut teachers and electives. And I'm like thinking, well, is that is that really what the survey said? That that's what people wanted
122to cut. Did they want to cut teachers and and and kids electives? Because that's what brings kids to school. That's what takes our kids who um may not succeed otherwise and brings them to school. And then we talked about attendance and I'm on PLC. I found it ridiculous as an elementary teacher that I'm being we were every week when I wasn't with my own people, my profession um in my group that I was discussing how am I going to get kids to school. It's not my job. It's the parents job to get them to school. So how am I going to how am I going to talk parents into bringing their kids to school? I found it honestly a complete waste of time. How I'm gonna get kids to school is by providing opportunities where
123they want to be there. They want the like give them my my father taught math. He taught science, but he also taught at the King Career Center. That greenhouse was his classroom. He also taught taxiderermy. My mother taught at Stellar. They brought in kids by by the excitement of learning all these different areas and and that's what I want to give kids. I'm I'm here to speak for the our students in our community and I want to give them those opportunities of electives really good teachers and my brother talked about Miss Mason, we appreciate your testimony. We would Yeah, you're welcome to send comments in writing, but that's your three minutes. Thank you for your testimony tonight. Our last testifier is Evan Sheldon. Welcome. You have three minutes. Please begin when you're ready. Um, hello.
124My name is Evan Sheldon and I have uh three kids that go to school here in Anchorage. Um, but I've got issues. You guys talk about uh bettering things for kids, bettering our children. You guys talk about um indigenous kids and and the percentage and how high how high they are in what they are doing. But you know what? I got issues with the I got an issue with the school here in Anchorage that um my native kids get picked on. Um for one, one of my kids by a security guard um told told other kids in front of my son who was suicidal to tell these kids to stay away from my son. yet there's nothing being done. You guys want to talk about cuts? Why don't you guys cut the people that um
125are messing with our kids this way that wants to single out our kids, be biased against our kids? My son, my son should, you know, he he was going through hard time as a 16-year-old with a girl, heartbroken, tried to commit suicide. Couple weeks later, security guard go and told him called told kids, "If if I catch you hanging out with him, I'll give you SIS. You know, nothing's being done with the security guard at West High. Um, I've been having issues. I have another kid that go to Save High School. He got he got his his school got a phone call from West saying that my son has a weapon in school. My son got searched over at Save High School, another school. Do you guys want to talk about bettering our children? Why
126don't you guys start on finding out those the faculty? Why look at some of the faculty that disrupts our children's lives the wrong way? My children are Alaskan Native yet they get picked on. You guys talk about how low the percentage is. Come on now. People could see this. You know what? I've been I've heard by about eight other parents of how messed up West is, how racist they are. And my kids get picked on a lot. My kids don't even go to West anymore because of this. The vice principal had a argument with me during a meeting that she wasn't even supposed to be a part of and had some words with me and yet there's nothing being done about it. That's why I'm here today to speak up to you all. And I'd
127really urge you guys Thank you, Mr. Sheldon. And that completes our public testimony and those who have signed up tonight. Thank you everyone for making time to speak to us. We'll take a fivem minute recess and then return and continue on with our agenda. p.m. We've finished our item listed under D1, two, and three, public comments. We'll move on to item E, our consent agenda. Is there a board member who wishes to pull an item from the consent agenda uh to discuss an action item? Yes, member Donley. Uh memo number 48 and memo 136. All right. Memo 48 will become action item F1. Memo 136 will become action item F2. Is there any other board member who wishes to pull an item from our consent agenda for discussion? Hearing seeing none, is there a motion
128to approve the consent agenda as amended? Made by member Wilson, seconded by member Donley. Perfect. is uh we need to vote on that. Miss Sullivan, would you please call the role? Member Higgins. Member Bellamy. Yes. Member Donley. Yes. Member Jacobs. Yes. Member Lessons. Yes. Member Wilson. Yes. President Hollerman. Yes. Student Representative PAC. Our consent agenda has been unanimously adopted. 70. We'll move on to action items starting with F1 which is ASD memorandum number 048 approval of change order and contract modification in V elementary school replacement. Is there a motion to approve? I move to approve um one change order in the amount of $43,268 and a contract modification to Cornerstone General Contractors for a total value of $768,919. This will amend the Inlet View Elementary School replacement project contract for a total contract amount of
129up to 38,590,297. It's again it's memo 4048 approval to change order and contract modification for inlet View school replacement. Thank you member Wilson. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by member lessons. Uh is there discussion? Member Donnelly you pulled this item. Thank you Mr. President. I'd move to uh amend uh the memorandum by at the end of page one paragraph one after where it reads 38,590,297 the following uh language. So this would add this following language. The total cost of the inlet elementary school project is 50,586,948. [Music] suppose I should have spoke to it before. Well, I'll second um and then member Donley, you can discuss your amendment if you'd like. I appreciate that, Mr. President. Um if you were an ordinary member of the public and you read this memorandum, you'd think that the
130school cost 38,900590,297. But there's a lot of costs that aren't within the total contract amount. And I think based on our policy of transparency and and educating the budget budget um accurately as far as expenditures, it would really be appropriate to clarify that by adding what the actual total cost of the of the project is at this point, which is in fact according to our staff 50,586948. Thank you, Member Donley. Um, at this point, I will move an amendment to the amendment. I'm going to add um add an additional sentence to the added language that's a part of this amendment that states uh this align with the estimated total project cost for the Ursa major replacement of $51,68,550. And if there's a second, I will um explain the amendment to the amendment. Second. Perfect. All
131right. So that was seconded by member Wilson. And then I'll just add that um for the same reasons that um the mover of this amendment indicated it would be wise to add transparency and perspective for the public. I think this language also provides um perspective and transparency for the public that we have two ongoing uh rebuilds at this time and the costs are comparable um with this project in front of us and the subject of this um ASD memorandum number 048 actually being the cheaper of the two at this time. With that said, is there other discussion on the amendment to the amendment? Mr. Chair, if I'm I have a question, Member Bellamy. So, the memo 48 is a change order, right? And a modification. Is this a question, Member? This is a question on
132the Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out why. I'm I'm trying to decide whether I support either of the um amendments because to me, this is a change order. So if you could explain again why your your amendment to the change order. Yeah, sure. And modification. So I'll just speak to to my amendment to the amendment which is that the the prior speaker speaker uh with the underlying amendment indicated that they wanted to add context and transparency for the total cost of the related project. Um I'm doing the same with the identical project that we are undertaking um in a different location um in our elementary school portfolio. And so um I don't see that this um changes the scope of the work or the process at all. This just provides additional information to the
133public. And so al that's uh the underlying desire I have to add the additional language which uh is listed in the amendment to the amendment. There other discussion on the amendment to the amendment member lessons. I have a question for the administration. What I believe is that we receive quarterly reports of contract uh modifications andor change orders. I mean, I think the question is how do we track a project's uh costs over time and perhaps there should be a policy about I mean I I guess do we need to have a bit of a policy change if the intent is to improve transparency right to log uh so that a a person a community member who is interested in project XYZ whether it's a school uh being rebuilt or a just a construction project generally.
134Um when we go into this app, how how are we um logging changes over time to construction project costs? Uh Mr. Ratliff or Mr. Fenf, would you like to provide some insight? So um through the president, there are there are two main methods that we accomplish this. Um the first is we're required to give a monthly contract modification update. So you receive that monthly and then also board policy um such as in this case any change order over $250,000 must be approved by the board and that's the reason why you see memo 48. Thanks. I think my followup. So, it sounds like there's nothing in any any policy or practice right now that allows anyone to see u the cumulative costs on any given project over time. you could go back and look and see
135what was in December of 2024 or September of 2023 um and piece it together yourself, but we don't have any sort of a a summary or a portal of of a project project cost over time. Does that make does that make sense? Yeah. We we don't have an easy way for somebody to see the total number of uh you know changes that might have occurred on any given project over time. I believe the change order report aggregates that. So it'll say here's the the amount that's been increased over time. If we didn't have any change to it, of course there's not a mechanism where it's a kind of a current reporting of it. You just have to go back and look at the previous uh approval. Okay. So you could look up in the monthly
136reports at the project's history how it began the total changes. Yeah, I believe that's correct. Yeah, in the aggregate. Great. Thank you. Member lessons, member Wilson. Again, we're speaking to the amendment to the amendment. see if it fits. I'm just wondering if uh past practice has been uh with the intent to change or what the past practice has been. Do we typically add this type of language at the end of any change order or is this a project that's being singled out for a certain purpose and how do we plan on moving forward? I just I I I like consistency and if this is inconsistent, I I have an issue with it because unless we're looking at changing the process moving forward to add the total project or changing costs at the end of of
137every um project that we're reviewing. Yeah. Um I can as the mover of the amendment to the amendment, I can tell you that I I don't know the answer to that question. Um and my amendment to the amendment is just language that I would need to feel comfortable adopting the amendment um as amended for the exact reasons you articulate that without this additional context I am concerned about our consistency to our process um as we don't prepare these memorandums administration does and so um with this additional language I could support the underlying amendments without it I can't um however you may wish to ask the mover of the underlying amendment once we get back to that um primary amendment if that makes sense. Okay. Are there other is other discussion on the amendment to the
138amendment? Member Higgins, I I just want to say I I don't see anything misleading in it. I don't have a problem with getting clarification of that as well. I think we're going to be looking at more modifications in the future with the inflationary factors that are being factored into this. So if we come out with some standard way of doing it in the future with the administration so that it's all transparent, it would be appropriate. I remember in the 90s it was so quickly changing in the construction cost there that they'd have to go out for supplemental bonds to be able to finish the project. So I'm concerned about that. But I but if we find a simple way to do this in the future, that will be fine. But I wanted that for the
139administration purposes. I don't see anything that was deliberately misleading. I think it's clear. But adding additional information as requested by member Donley, I support that completely as well. Thank you. Thank you, Member Higgins. And again, it sounds like that the report we get does aggregate the same cost. Um, so appreciate that feedback. Hearing no other debate or comments on the amendment to the amendment. Uh, Miss Sullivan, could you please call the role? Student Representative Pac. Yes. Member Higgins. Member Lessons. Yes. Member Wilson. Member Donley. Yes. Member Bellamy. Yes. Member Jacobs. Yes. President Hollowman. Yes. The amendment to the amendment is adopted 70 with the youth member voting yes. Uh we are back to the underlying amendment made by member Donley. It is now amended. Is there additional discussion before we um conduct a roll call
140vote on this amendment? Member Wilson, like to reiterate my question of is this the intent to change the process so that our projects show a total amount due for for any change orders or is this one project that's just being singled out? We have member Donley. Yeah, please. I don't know if this has been done before, but I think it's the right thing to do. So, I would hope that moving forward, um, memorandums that reflect significant increases to bonded projects would reflect what the actual cost of the project was. Member was a followup for clarification because I'm trying to grasp the whole concept. Is it for all change orders or I'm sorry. Oh, is it for all change orders for any project or only projects over a certain dollar amount? I guess I'm I'm trying
141to understand the intention. Member Donley, I would support it. Well, first of all, the only change orders that come before us, I believe, are over a quarter of a million. So, I would support it for any that come before us in that process. Any other follow-ups? Member Wilson. Okay. I have member Bleaming. I just have a question. Uh, with the amendment to the amendment that we just passed, do we need this? It seems a little redundant to me. And now we got three different costs there or values, which is confusing. So, it seems to me the amendment to the amendment makes it all perfectly clear. I don't see that we need to add a I don't see that we need this piece now that we've approved the other piece. Thank you. Yeah, member Bill, I
142appreciate that comment. Just for for clarity purposes, the the piece that you referenced that you you feel added clarity is now attached to the underlying amendments. So, we would either pass both of them or none of them. um as it currently stands. With that said, is there other discussion? Sorry, Mr. Chair. Yes, member Bellamy. So, I've missed the point where I can add another amendment, but you have absolutely or make another amendment. Can you can amend the um amendments as amended at any time? So I'd like to amend I'd like to strike the ad total cost of Inlet View Elementary School project is 50,586,948 given that we just approved clarifying language. That's my motion to strike that. Um I'm gonna ask for just a twominut recess. Um yeah, to to get some clarity. I think
143we all need to get on the same page. So um just a two-minute recess, please. Um, member Bellamy, you have the floor. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, since there I mean I I I appreciate the guidance and the discussion. Um, and I I will withdraw my motion, which never got a second anyway, I don't think, but I will withdraw my motion. Thank you very much. Okay, we're back to the underlying amendment to ASD memorandum number 048. It um that amendment has been amended already. Is there any further discussion on the amendment to ASD memorandum number 048 before we conduct a roll call vote? Member lessons. Um I think it raises a really interesting question about uh the prospect and the utility of of amending our board policy at some point in the notistant future.
144I do think uh it would be helpful to have a longitudinal record that's maybe more easily available than the monthly reports uh which are given. Um and that that's something I think that we could work towards. But I feel like as it stands now um beginning uh with this one particular memorandum uh to highlight to change our practices um it just seems out a little bit out of place. Uh though certainly the language in front of us is is clear. Um so I think that I I want to align with the intent to improve our board policy um moving forward. Um so I think I'm going to be a no for this but but a yes uh for for thinking about a better path for the future. Thank you. Member lessons. Uh member Wilson. Actually
145you said that very well. Um, so I will not repeat it, but I I will agree with what you just said in that um I think moving forward if we want to change our policy or our opportunities um to clarify in a different way the amounts of projects. But I I don't think we should um change that process until we have more discussion overall. So I'm not supporting this clarification. Okay. Any additional discussion on the amendment to ASD memorandum number 048? Again, that amendment has been amended. With that said, uh Miss Sullivan, would you please call the role? Student Representative Pac. Yes. Member Bellamy. Yes. Member Higgins. Member Lessons. No. Member Donley. Yes. Member Wilson. Member Jacobs. Yes. President Hollerman. Yes. That amendment to ASD memorandum number 048 is adopted. 5 yay to nay. With
146the student representative voting yes, we are now to the underlying memorandum as amended. Is there any further discussion before we conduct a roll call vote to approve the memorandum? Um, member Donley, has your point of inquiry been satisfied? Has the member pulled this item? Yes. Great. All right, then. Miss Sullivan, please call the role. Student Representative Pack. Yes. Member Jacobs. Yes. Member Lessons. Yes. Member Bellamy. Yes. Member Higgins. Member Donley. Yes, member Wilson. Yes, President Hollerman. Yes. All right. ASD memorandum number 048 is adopted. 780 nay. We'll move on to action item F2 which is ASD memorandum number Z sorry 136. Just a minute while we get that language. All right. So, we are on action item F2, which is AST memorandum number 136, waving social studies elective credit for freshman year of 2425 school
147year. Um, is there a motion to approve this memorandum? So, moved. Move. Sorry. Okay. ASD memorandum number 136, waving social studies elective credit for freshman class of 202425 school year to approve and authorize the waving of a 0.5 social studies elective credit for the freshman class of the 2024-25 school year. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by member Hollerman. Moved by member Wilson. Um is there discussion? Member Donley, you pulled this item. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted a more explanation of what the impact is going to be on our students civic studies here. Um, it's I think the board is rightfully focused on reading and math or l I should say language skills and math over the last eight years. But un it's really unfortunate we haven't been able to spend
148more time on civics and what's and the importance of civics and I'm just concerned with any change about what elective what the requirements are with civics and I just like an explanation of how this going to impact our students educational opportunities or educational requirements for civics. Sure. Uh through the president, member Dunley, I think that's a great question. It sounds like you're specifically talking about courses that discuss topics of civics, sometimes called government, that sort of thing. So, we're not replacing any civics related material. Um really, this is a response to the fact that we're no longer changing the high school schedule. So, when these students enrolled in the freshman academy course, the thought was they'd eventually take eight classes instead of six. So they would have had ample opportunities to take um four social
149studies credits. So ASD actually goes above and beyond what the state requires and asks that students take four years of social studies. The state requires three. To succinctly answer your question, this isn't replacing a civics class. This is replacing a course that was called ancient civilization. Um that was t that was typically taken by most students in nth grade. Instead of that, they'll be taking a 0.5 course next year called College and Career Exploration and Personal Finance. And that course will be eligible for a social studies credit or a CTE credit. So, moving forward, students will have no issues getting four credits of social studies, but this particular group of students will because the previous version of the freshman academy class did not have a social studies designation to it. I hope that answers the
150question. I'm happy to clarify. Member Donley, any follow-up questions? Is there going to be some opportunity for students to get that education in in classical civilizations ancient? Sure. The good question. And so if a student is a freshman now, they they just completed their freshman academy course, then they enrolled in an Alaska studies course, and the question is, can I take an ancient civilizations course while I'm in school? And the answer is yes, if it's offered at your school. um in terms of what social studies classes are being offered, especially in light of all of the budgetary conversations is an open question, but certainly they could take ancient civilization, but we didn't want to put that added burden on this class to take an additional 0.5 social studies class when most students get that credit
151their freshman year historically through the ancient civilizations class. But moving forward, students will be in a college and career class that is a social studies credit moving forward. So I I want to make that clear because in other words, the board only has to do this once. We're not saying that students will have one fewer.5 social studies credit. What we're saying is that for this particular group of freshmen, they enrolled in a class um that could have been designated as social studies, but it was not designed that way. So we've made that change and moving forward, they'll be enrolled in a class that'll give them a social studies credit. But to your original question, it's not replacing civics. Um it's not replacing a civics course. Member Donley, any additional questions? No, but I believe member
152lessons has something. Understood. Member lessons, the floor is yours. Um, thanks. So, this I appreciate this being pulled. Um, I appreciate the question and the explanation. Um, some time ago, some number of pages ago in my notebook, um, I was comparing, um, the classes, the social studies classes that freshmen took in fall of 20 fall of 2023 with the with the social studies classes they took in fall of 2024 um because they were taking the face class this past fall, which was not a social studies class. And so there were a handful of students who squeezed in um Alaska studies somehow uh this this past fall. But by comparison and what will not essentially be offered moving forward from my under my understanding is um preAP world history um global geography, AP human geography, Alaska
153studies, world history, honors Alaska studies. Um there are a number of the electives and I think it looks like it depended on the each school maybe didn't offer all of them but uh those have been paired down to focus on the freshman academy revised as social studies class um if that's making sense. So that's just sort of a a broad way of saying that [Music] um the range, you know, I I don't expect students moving forward to have the opportunity to study the fall of the Roman Empire in the way that maybe they used to because they're going to be taking um Alaska studies as their other partnered um their other class by and you have to take Alaska studies to graduate and students next year moving forward. forward are going to be taking the
154freshman academy class that's being rebranded as social studies and rewritten and Alaska studies. So, I don't see where ancient civilization or civics or uh geography uh is really going to be a part of that freshman year um curricular experience. um because we're now calling freshman academy career exploration social studies and um not really giving students choice well the budget especially is not helping us uh in this in this uh situation. Um I think that this to me points out a number of things that have changed over the past year. Some things are due to our well a lot of things are outside of our uh ability to control them. Um, but we did have the administration did cancel the intended three and a half or$5 million general fund investment in a high school schedule change,
155which is why we're we're here tonight talking about um giving a waiver for freshmen. Um because there won't be an expanded seven or eight period schedule next year in which they could make up that social studies class from this fall. Um we if you look at the Academy of Anchorage um uh master plan that was passed in June of 2024, the intended implementation was a year-long face course for 25 26 again within that seven or eight period day. We're not doing that now. Um we've heard a little bit of a reference to the district is changing the usage of the uh department of education grant uh by decreasing the number of academy principles so as to preserve some pathway options. Um I think that was we talked about that in a communications committee last uh
156last month and um and then of course here um we're talking about but not necessarily approving the revision of the face curriculum so as to enable the class to fulfill a one semester um social studies or CTE elective. My point being a lot of things are changing uh really because of our budgetary realities. I think it's the root cause. Um something that I considered bringing and I will not be moving tonight uh because that felt like a bigger fight than I was willing ready to handle at this point in time. Um but I I believe that we may need to ask the administration or recommend or create a resolution uh at some point in the near future saying that we need to see a revised master plan for themies. Um a lot of changes have
157taken place. I don't see the state's uh budget permitting and a schedule change investment next you know for the to to provide for themies as we move forward at least in the immediate future. So, um, I'm talking a lot. Um, I had some thoughts I wanted to share that seemed reasonably relevant at this point in time. I will be supporting the memo. Uh but I just wanted to throw out there that um I think that some uh an update for the academyy's Anchorage master plan uh at some point in the near future would be helpful uh to un to help everyone and all stakeholders understand uh what the direction is exactly uh beyond what's being shared in our communications meetings. There other discussion? Sorry, we have member Bellamy with her hand up. Yeah, just a
158couple of questions for the administration. So, my understanding is that uh Alaska studies is a requirement for graduation. Uh ci uh what is the other class? Ancient civilization is not. Is that correct? That's correct. In fact, so I'm sorry. Go on. Go ahead. Alaska studies is specifically required by the state of Alaska. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. uh ancient civilization that is an elective that not all schools uh number have but if they do have it it will be available in 10th grade. Is that correct? So it's correct that Alaska it's correct that ancient civilizations is not required by the state of Alaska and uh principles do have the autonomy to offer it at their buildings and if it is students are able to enroll in that course if Exactly. And last I checked, only
159five of our big eight high schools offered it. So, it's not something that is consistently offered. Um, and I and and I get why it's not consistently offered, but it is an elective and it will be available uh to students other than grade nine. Uh, so I think I mean, is is that correct? Is that my summary correct? That that's correct. It probably wouldn't fit in a freshman student's schedule, but really any student that has the space in their schedule. In their schedule. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, I I feel pretty comfortable that um that we're not going to deny students an opportunity to learn about ancient civilization if that is what they want to do. They just might not get to do it in ninth grade uh if their school provides it. Uh
160so I will be supporting uh I'll be voting in support of of of memo 136 uh because I think as we and I also support member lessons requests for an update. I mean I've been trying to because I I I attend some of the meetings. I've been kind of tracking you know some of the changes but you know it's not a it's they're not huge changes. Uh but it is we've scaled down from where we were. Um I don't know that we can scale down anymore but at the same time um that I I don't make that decision. Uh but so I do support having an update uh updated plan as we move forward with themies. So uh with that thank you. I will be supporting uh the motion. Thank you member Bellamy. Member Wilson.
161I do have a a question. Um when we talk about civics and we talk about the um the the class the upcoming class and the changes to include social studies credit is one of the discussions um career paths in government because that I I feel like that that's an absolutely valid career path um in government and practical skills that students can learn in what they might choose as a career path. Uh, member Wilson, can I uh restate the question? Are you asking if the career and college expiration course covers a pathways in public service or government? Correct. Correct. Uh, no. Johnson, would you like to clarify that, Mr. Josephson? Uh, yes. So, there there is a pathway in public service. Um, South High Schools having that specific pathway. I don't know if other schools are
162doing that or not. Mr. Prince and uh, Mr. Gusson, she uh specifically means will freshmen be exposed to this information during the college and career experation if their school has it? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Follow member Wilson. I I just wanted to follow up with a statement. The in our communications committee meeting we typically have the opportunity for an update on themies of Anchorage. So that's a great opportunity to learn about um how themies of Anchorage is progressing and consistent updates in the communications committee meetings. Member lessons. Um I think it's been really helpful, but I will say that on the Academy of Anchorage Master Plan on page 34, it says it's scheduled to be reviewed and updated by the steering committee on an annual basis. So yeah, so I I feel like that's a media.
163Yes. hand. I don't I don't disagree. I just know that I wanted to share that if people wanted to hear more consistent updates, it's an opportunity. All right, we played just a tiny bit loose with Robert's rules there and members have discussed that amongst themselves. We'll go back to the item being debated. My pleasure. Um, so any other discussion on ASD memorandum number 136. All right, seeing the Oh, member Donley, is that a question? Fair enough. Go ahead, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, I support them of Anchorage and I'm convinced this is necessary for them to proceed in a reasonable manner. I I just really hope someday we're going to get reading and math under control and we can focus on on social studies. I I I just really regret we haven't had the
164the finances or the op time to do it. I mean, we got here and we had an earthquake and then we had COVID and I think we've stayed focused on what we had to stay focused on, which was reading and math, but golly, I social studies are important, too. Agreed. Member lessons. Um, you've served up something and I'm going to ask the administration and I'm looking at our CFO real quick, but I believe or maybe maybe a c any anybody really. Um, do we did we delay uh curricular revisions, updates of social studies as part of our budget passage? Yes, we did. Could you just tell us a tiny bit more? both social studies and science. We um eliminated those um adoptions for this year mostly at middle school. Okay. Seeing any other discussion or
165debate, I'll just put my brief comments in which are that um I support this for the reasons previously stated. I would appreciate and ask since we're taking the time to uh make asks and comments now that we consider aligning um the face course revision and adoption process to include some meaningful public input. Um I think that's been a reasonable ask from me a few members of our community that I think getting public buyin and perspective on the product before we start rolling it out to the extent that that might be feasible I think would add value and add comfort uh to future um participants in that course. With that said, Miss Sullivan, could you please call the role? Student Representative Pac. Yes. Member Higgins. Member Lessons. Yes. Member Donley. Yes. Member Bellamy. Yes. Member Wilson.
166Yes. Member Jacobs. Yes. President Hollerman. Yes. All right. AS memorandum number 136 has been adopted unanimously. Seven yays, zero nays. The student youth member voted voted yes. All right. That completes our action item calendar. We'll move on to non-action items G1 through 4. Is there any board member who wishes to discuss a non-action item before those come in front of us for disposition at our next meeting in May? hearing. Seeing none, we've completed our public comment for tonight. So, we'll move to I1 superintendent update. Dr. Bryant, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. President. I just have a few updates. Uh, and I really, this is more geared towards the community because I did share a lot of comments two weeks ago about the urgent need to really make a difference in school funding and
167the educators are at the forefront of my mind. This is a really difficult time to be an educator, not just in Alaska, not just in Anchorage, but all over the state. Uh I stated these stats before, but I'll state them again. Here in ASD, we're looking at closing about 10% of our teacher workforce. Matt Sue, even if there were a slight funding increase, is looking at displacing andor laying off hundreds of teachers. The same thing in uh Kenai, the same in other districts across the state. And this is terrible when you look at it because at the end of the day, if we don't take any action, we're going to see an exodus of hundreds of teachers because of the positions that we close and perhaps even more because of the way that our educators
168feel just the burden of all of the uncertainty and workload that they see coming across the horizon. I they have my full compassion and empathy. This is not an easy time to be a teacher ever and especially in this situation. But with that said, so two weeks ago I uh made a plea uh for the legislature to to pass House Bill 69 with urgency. Um I was very pleased that a few days later it did make it across the finish line. Um but sadly um you know a few hours before we started our first meeting uh unfortunately the governor's veto of that bill was sustained. Uh which for some people may feel very deflating. Uh for a lot of people, they may be wondering what what is the next step? What what can we do?
169And I just want the community to understand that the fight is not over. In fact, the the fight is more urgent than ever. And I guarantee you that our kids and our teachers and our educators are worth it. So, with that said, there's a lot of urgency. Um as soon as tomorrow morning, we need to understand what are the pathways to get a funding bill across the finish line. I do understand there are some reasonable concerns about $1,000 within the legislature, but I don't know how we can afford certain things that come with a thousand BSA. I don't know how we can't afford to lower our class sizes beyond what they are right now. And with $1,000 BSA, the ASD board had already committed to lowering our class size back to what they were in
1702016. It wasn't perfect in 2016, but it's a lot better than what we're looking at next year and even what things look like this year. There would have been an opportunity to increase funding and resources for our correspondence families, for our charter school families. There would have been an opportunity to reverse cuts to our counselors and nurses and librarians and all these really critical support services that our students need and deserve and frankly should expect from their public school systems, but we're not there. So, with that said, my message is that I don't think that there's a single reason not to seriously consider a $1,000 BSA increase. In fact, even a thousand dollars within a few years will mean cuts for districts again. Um, and I know that there's a lot of urgency to pass
171something, even if it's 560 or 680 or whatever the number may be. But I will not be celebrating uh if $560 were to pass. I I think it's a a very positive gesture in the right direction. But I'm thinking about ASD's structural deficit for FY27. I think that would put us at over $70 million. that's within ASD and across districts they're looking at major cuts even with a 560 because frankly that that's a cut from where we were at 12 months ago. So I have a lot of concerns but I really want to communicate to the board and to the community that I'm approaching this topic with a lot of urgency. I'm not losing hope. I'll be talking to legislators and whoever I need to tomorrow to understand what is the path forward. I talked
172a little bit about the funding. Um, but I also want to clarify some misinformation that's going out there about ASD's willingness to compromise and be a part of the solution. We've always wanted to compromise and be a part of the solution when it comes to policy reforms. In fact, um, House Bill 69 at one point had a number of policy reforms that were put in place in good faith to try to cooperate to get a bill across the finish line. It didn't turn out that those policies stuck to the bill, but ASD was largely supportive of a lot of those things. So, when it comes to what needs to happen to get this across the finish line, I think within Juno right now, we're negotiating the amount. I think that we need $1,000 to really
173move the needle on academic achievement within ASD. Um, but I also think that we do need to talk about uh policy concerns and we're ready to be a part of that conversation. I want to remind the public that ASD has had an open enrollment policy for years. So for years, if there's space at your neighborhood school or local school, you don't have to live in that neighborhood. You can apply to that. That's something that we've been proud of in ASD for many years, and we welcome that type of reasonable educator vetted policy. Uh and there are others. You know, I spoke briefly to the reading proficiency language that's in the governor's bill that was also in House Bill 69 for a moment if my memory serves correctly. And while I didn't agree with the way
174it was written, I was in agreement with the fact that our students need more support. And if by using an incentive program from our reading proficient students to invest in our students who are not proficient, I'm willing to have that conversation and we always have. And lastly, there's been a lot of misinformation. And I would say it's coming from a very dark and cynical place that for whatever reason, uh, some people seem to believe that ASD is sitting on, um, extra money that could have been used to address our deficit. And that's false and frankly insulting because that completely throws out the window the role of audits, the public process, and the many many months if not years that the eight people at this table have been looking at our budget line by line to
175figuring out how can we, you know, connect two dots together so we can afford what our kids need to to succeed academically. So with that said, we had a wonderful work session today where we went through line by line all the pieces of misinformation around the funding about how the one-time funding from last year is already programmed into the budget. We talked about attrition budgeting. Clearly, there are a lot of legislators that don't understand attrition budgeting, and that's fine. Most legislators are not CFOs. I wouldn't expect them to be. But what I do expect is that when you're going to talk about attrition budgeting that you should ask the district that has attrition budgeting before you speak about it on the record. That's really important because when you spread misinformation like that, it's a disservice
176to the public and it's damaging to students and families because now they're confused and they think that there's money that's there that's not. And they and I would suspect that some people knew that they were spreading misinformation. And I hope that's not the case. I want to assume the best. But if that's your tactic to address systemic underfunding that's impacting all the school districts in the state of Alaska, that's not a great tactic because I think across our communities, we see the truth. We see the 120 teachers in Matsu that are going to be displaced. We see the hundreds of teachers here in Anchorage. We see the hundreds of educators in Kenai and all across the state whose jobs are in danger because there's been legislative inaction. So the time is now. It didn't happen
177today, but that doesn't mean it can't happen tomorrow. And I just want to plea again with the legislature if there's any way that the Anchorage School District can provide data, information, a conversation with me or my chief financial officer, with board members, if you want to have any sort of clarity as to what the board is willing or not willing to commit to, the time to talk to us is now. And I want to say on the record that we're ready to have those conversations, and I hope some of them will happen tomorrow because our students don't have a single additional day to have wasted on them by the legislature or anybody else. So, with that said, I'll end my remarks. Thank you, Dr. Bryant. Well said. We'll move on to board member comments. We'll
178start at my left. Member Higgins, the floor is yours. Thank you. Um, as always, I appreciate the speakers that not too much to really talk to about, but the the the fact that people show up, they got the passion, they got the interest and hoping to uh express their opinions and views, I always appreciate. One of the things we don't do in school board that we used to do is a lot of recognition. And a couple of things or three few things have happened this last week or so whenever I'm here. One of those was the blood bank. Let's they're here. They were getting blood donations from um packed apparently all the schedule was filled up u Thursday I think it was with uh school board members and I greatly appreciate that. I am a
179big blood donor. I'm up to 16 gallons and I always tell people um you're giving blood for a good reason. I remember the Monday before the Friday before Thanksgiving in 2004, I gave blood and on the following Monday, I went through a window, almost lost my arm. Could have lost my life, lost four pints of blood. So, the life I saved may have been my own. So, you got to really look at this really selfishly. Uh, but giving blood and giving donations is something they need to have more donations with all the time. And I appreciate ASD getting behind it. There were two significant events here that I um uh just want to share. One is um and Trickyak High School that you had Mil Lake, you had Grueling, they had the composer for music
180that came up from Florida and did four um um four pieces that one was specifically made for this event. and the two directors for those schools was there and I was so impressed with the quality and the play with it was it was a professional um massive band and it was fantastic. I saw a bunch of parents somewhat uh teeyed um and pretty proud of what they did but that music was something else. I remember the uh director for the music at at Mirror Lake because in 2008 I remember going there one early one morning to listen to uh he has him there at 7 o'clock in the morning and the vast majority of all students take music with him. He's his love for this music is so great and it it was at one
181particular point he parted to different students. They're up here doing solos. It was it was so impressive. There was one particular one that stood out. I felt like it was Lisa Simpson, you know, up there with the music. It was it was absolutely gorgeous. So, um, and the number of students that get engaged when you have a stu teacher like that is just impressive. So, I appreciate the invite and I appreciate what I had a chance to see. The other one that jumps out is they had a contest here of competing to have a um piece of art for the uh Congress with um Representative Begage and they had stuff from all over. Um the student that won that from um um um I don't know what grade she's in is is Doria. No, I'm
182gonna butcher this. Okay. Uh, Dander Rico, I apologize for that, but I have a chance to see the picture. The um, the teacher is um, Savon O'Hara. It is fantastic. If there was some way for us to be able to share that, that would be great. But my appreciation with that, I um, want to share that uh, last Thursday was a busy day for me. I hit the MEAC meeting. And then I had two uh meetings with uh community council. So it was running around like crazy. Anchorage and then uh Triak and then down to Bayshore. So it's kind of I I didn't speed officially. Uh but I managed to I couldn't leave Mik. I have attended those meetings from 2008. A lot of different meetings. This one was the absolute best I've ever attended
183because I've always questioned we need more information. I hope the administration will share the report that was provided to MAC as well as access to the tape on that because it gave a presentation in regards to issues and concerns how um the parents they had work groups. this whoever did this whoever was a key behind this presentation and who did the work on this with all the surveying and the work groups it was very informative there was good news and there are areas of opportunities that we need to address because it was significant there but I hope that we get that information out to all board members and we can do a follow-up discussion with that as well and the the last thing I'll go ahead and mention is I know there's a We are
184swamped with activities because of the budget and I appreciate that. But I'm getting so much feedback from different people, some of which are leaving the school district uh for a variety of reasons. The one with the presentation with MAC talked about some leaving because they're concerns of of of abuse or or um um you know racial type statements. They're leaving because they didn't think it was being handled. Um but um the start times is an issue in the 9:00 the start times that we I totally support changing it but we delayed it one year with the idea that the we could look at trying to make it so it would be more feasible. We could work it out and uh help parents and understand the impact. I think some schools have the capacity there with
185the 7:00 until 6 and I've seen that. others do not and that is causing people to walk away from this and I I don't know the full gambit of how many schools have the early start to be able to assist but that plus the extra hour it's not the decision it's the execution is there things we can do that will help parents and listen to what the parents are saying and listen to what the um businesses are telling us or problems in in trying to work with this because they need staff there certain times if the kid if they've got staff with the uh change in start times. I mean, you don't have the older kids watching younger kids, right? Because the older kids are getting out after the younger kids are in school now
186with the start times. So, there's some other issues, but I it's the start times to me is a no-brainer. We really need to improve administration, but to me, the execution is what we're being challenged on. And I would love to get into a detailed discussion with some type of of group dealing with some of the principles, dealing with some of the uh parents and the staffing. What can we do different? How can we respond to this and still achieve the goals that we have? I'm not trying to to hold back on the goals, but it we've got to recognize the impact on families uh attendance and and employers that are really struggling with this and how we're losing today. I think some parents that are opting to make changes simply because they can't make it
187work. So, that's that's just something I hope that we really get. And the last comment, I appreciate the superintendent's comments regarding misinformation is the most frustrating thing and I like the passion with it. Uh because we should be this is it's we're hurting kids. We're hurting them bad by not being honest about the finances and knowing that we're going to do that. I made a comment to some others. We got six schools without some without uh lunches. I made that comment in one other meeting. And imagine you've got kids that are eligible for free meals. They don't they they need it. They're title one. Their other issues. They don't have the breakfast and lunch is a plastic bag with jerky and cookies or uh crackers or something and milk and something else. It's not the
188same thing. And that funding is is hurting kids literally. So, um there three minute rule. What the heck? Thank you. Member Donley. Thank Thank you, Mr. President. Um, well, you know, one policy change, we talked about policy change that the the school district has supported, some of which have been before the legislature, but I really continue to advocate that the ASD current policy of having to comply with national common core standards in all our curriculum should simply be replaced by what we already do, and that's comply with the state of Alaska curriculum. requirements. It is essentially just symbolic. But I think symbols have meaning and I I think it would be it wouldn't it has no harm to anybody and it would be very meaningful I think to many people in the legislature that the
189ASD was willing to move towards just simply saying we're going to comply with the state standards rather than the national standards uh common core standards with our curriculum. um wouldn't cost anything and it would be a symbolic gesture I think that might buy us some goodwill when it comes to our advocacy for funding. Also want to say more and more experts and and scientific data is emerging that that clarifies that the way we closed schools during COVID was a mistake. At the time I remember arguing that this wasn't happening in Europe. Europe kept their schools open. There were no negative health consequences to those children from that and they didn't lose the the and had the academic damage that American children suffered because of the closures that we did. We were closed for way too
190long. Um, I, you know, there's nothing we can do about it now other than, as with 911 and Pearl Harbor, just not forget and remember that. And the next time if we're ever, God forbid, we're faced with that kind of a crisis again, we just keep our cool before we before we go too far and endangering the academic success of our children. Do our student representatives have a final comment tonight? No further comments from us. Thank you, member Wilson. So, I wanted to recognize um the ASD print shop. I did a tour of the ASD print shop that is housed at King Tech and they do a phenomenal job. I've I've seen other materials in other school districts and I I feel like ours is um always above and and at a lot it's just
191outstanding and incredible. So the work they do is is amazing. And as someone who has ordered um materials from print shops, I know the actual cost involved with that. And so I believe that the district saves quite a bit of money by having an in-house print shop. And they um the efficient they're they're incredibly efficient. They can order what they can print what is needed rather than typically having to order above and beyond what might not be needed for um other organizations and businesses that do that to bring the cost down for each item printed. So the efficiency is there as well. Anyways, I just wanted to recognize I they did an amazing job um giving me a tour and explaining what they do and how they do it and showing me all of the
192equipment um that that they have. So, kudos to them. Great great job and and thank you for all the work you do for the district. I also wanted to recognize that there was a Spirit of Tomorrow awards, the school business partnership spirit of tomorrow awards lunchon. So, congratulations to all of our nominees and all of our winners for for that. The the work that our school business partners do in our district is is immense and extremely helpful and extremely appreciated. So, I I thank anyone who was able to attend the Spirit of Tomorrow Awards lunchon and all of the work that went into to um to running the lunchon, but um to especially to all of our school business partners that help in our schools every day. Also wanted to share that uh we have
193our committee meetings coming up on Thursday. Our governance meeting is at 11:00 am. Our finance meeting will be at 12:15 and our communications committee meeting will be at 1:30 p.m. And um just also a reminder that we do have a um running uh item on the agenda to talk about them of Anchorage. So thank you member lessons. Um, yeah, very briefly, um, I know that I spent a lot of time thinking about and emailing with folks who had reached out to me regarding rumors, um, that they had heard. I really appreciate the administration's partnership, um, and helping to and advocacy and helping to dispel, uh, those rumors as best as uh, we collectively could. Um, I think that's really critical. Um, I wanted to share how much fun I had this morning at Collegegate Elementary
194School uh for part of their career week. Uh, the task was formidable. I needed to spend a good 30 or 40 minutes talking about school board career choices to kindergarteners. Go. And I ended up uh bringing a number of children's books with me. Am I an engineer? No. Am I an architect? No. And then I pulled out the cap and gown that we get to wear when we do high school graduations. And um you'll all be very pleased to know that I practiced good handshakes and eye contact with our kindergarteners and first graders. We practice moving tassels from one side to the other. I don't know if I did it the right way. Um, but I had a great time and listened to all of them eagerly raise their hands and tell me how they
195wanted to become um doctors and policemen and nurses and one little boy wanted to be a monk which I don't know that we have in the pathways but um thinking big. So anyways, it just um was a great reminder that we have so many wonderful students and families and all of their hopes and dreams that we get charged with um helping enable. Um so that was uh that was just a great opportunity. Um I also wanted to just give a nod and member Higgins already did to the arts in general. Um I too went out to Chu Yak to see the um uh world premiere of the uh Qualup Palik uh production. Um unfortunately my car had a situation about a mile south of the Birchwood exit and uh I made it to Chukiak High
196School and spent the majority of the performance in my car troubleshooting how I was going to get home. And thank you to member Higgins and to another member of the community for coming to my aid. It all worked out fine in the end. Uh but it's a good reason to have multiple school board members, I guess, at any far-flung event. Um and really I wanted to give an extraordinary nod. We've talked about Hades Town. The students um involved in the performance in every aspect sold out the performing arts center um which apparently has not yet been done this year. And I wanted to share, if I've cued this up correctly, um, a few s a few moments of, uh, one of the many ovations before the show. I'm just going to play this on my
197mic because I can. [Music] that was like a 45 second standing ovation for every hardworking teacher in Anchorage and Alaska. I'm going to end there. Thank you, member lessons. I'll make a couple quick comments before we pivot to member President Hullman. Um did want to echo appreciation for administration um who have spent considerable time being a rapid response team to combat um either um honest misunderstandings or intentional misinformation um with rapid speed. Um our communication efforts and work has been outstanding this session. and we frankly we've needed it due to the um unprecedented level of roadblocks that have either been placed or have occurred on the road to passing legislation that supports public education. With that said, I also wanted to um give a special shout out to our teachers, our students, our families who
198have really testified their hearts out to elected officials in Juno. Um, you can't, at least I can't scroll on my social media feed without um seeing a post that um should be should be heated by our elected officials um that that relates to the the challenges of what chronic underfunding has done to um our state and our young people. And so um to those who are making time to testify, send an email, call, visit Juno. um you have my and I know the board's sincere appreciation. Lastly, I just wanted to provide um just a a a brief moment of acknowledgement for a former ASD school board member and Anchorage Assembly member, Tim Steel, who passed away um this month at the age of 79. Mr. Steele served on our board from 2001 to 2010. Um
199if memory serves that was one of the more recent times where the board had some similar sense of stability and leadership um that our group has experienced um was you know roughly 20 years ago. Uh he also went on to serve in the Anchorage assembly uh serving West Anchorage until 2018. Um so definitely wishing his family um cond the best condolences there and I'm grateful for his service to our district. With that said, I'll transition to member Hollowman as member Bellamy doesn't have any comments tonight. Well, thank you and uh thank you member Jacobs for mentioning Tim Steel. Uh I was active before the board as an educator back during that time. Uh and later uh Mr. Steel was on the board or on the assembly uh during part of the the AO37 uh controversy
200which I was also involved in and always someone that would talk honestly and simply uh really an outstanding citizen and uh he has struggled with health issues for a long time but he really was an outstanding person that served the community very well. Um, I do want to say that the last few months have really been consumed by the focus on the legislature and uh, it it's taken everybody's attention to a fair degree. I want to thank all the citizens including students, parents uh, and various people that have approached the legislator legislators and the legislature as a whole. uh it clearly is having an impact and I think part of that is reflected in the fact that Anchorage has been a bit of a target from some people. Uh they're frustrated with us and unhappy
201because of that. Uh and I think it's a positive outcome actually of what people are trying to do. We're pushing against something that is of a great need and I think we're having success at it. uh if it was just a matter of the legislature itself, we would be there. But it also involves the governor and um we are where we are and we're not done yet. Uh there were a couple of us on the board involved in a phone conversation. Uh it was there were only three of us because that's all there can be um outside of an open meeting, but discussing the issues surrounding the reassignment of our specialist and some of the other things that that frankly are not going very well uh as the administration grapples with trying to build a
202schedule for the fall. And I'll back up and say that a lot of people don't understand that the planning for the middle of August for the opening day of school starts in January uh in kind of in earnest. It really starts with the budget in December, but it really starts in January as principles usually begin to look at their staffing, put their schedules together, begin to build what's going to happen in the fall. And everything is behind schedule, including doing some things that we've never done before. We've never dropped below one nurse per school. We've never dropped below one librarian per school. And then to top it, the the issue uh has hit our specialist at elementary in a much more difficult way. And in the past, any number of these similar things have come
203up. But I I hope people begin to understand that we've shaved here and there for most of the last 20ome years. Uh we see what looks like a large cut. There is push back. it gets mitigated. It usually comes through with there is money and a lot of the worst of the situation gets walked back. Uh but in the process people get shuffled around in ways they don't appreciate and the ultimate result is often just a little bit less than where we were before but not dramatically less. And I really do think this year what we have hit first of all we were looking at a 20% reduction in the fall despite what some people in Juno want to say um what was initially proposed for us in December is a really significant cut. It's
204not that we're going back and asking for way more money. It was really a search to try to have the funds to continue what we're doing this year on into next year. But as it has unfolded um I think the resiliency that we've depended on in the system has been gone. Uh and it it got damaged a lot during CO and the ups and downs of that and coming out of it. We we just don't have as many people. There aren't as many people that can cover. Uh and the way we've gone about things has not turned out the way I think everybody hoped. Uh it it's a really sad thing because ultimately uh it all rolls downhill to where it negatively impacts the people working in our schools in our classrooms directly with our
205students. There are not as many of them or there won't be as many of them and they will be stretched thinner. They'll have more responsibilities. their ability to continue to do what we've done for so many years simply will not be there and even just in our capacity to try to schedule it and pretend to go forward is falling apart. And so it it's very frustrating. The legislature, some people in the legislature seem to feel like there's a lot of time and they can craft a new bill, but we actually have to go forward now. And uh it is still very unclear what might or might not happen uh between now and the time where they finally gavvel out and we have a budget in hand. So I do apologize to staff uh and everyone
206involved in it. I do want to thank the administration. They they have responded a lot and they have worked hard I think to try to get the message across. And there are some people that really are seeking the right answers and there are other people that are seeking political agendas. And that that's normal, but it's an unhappy thing when we've reached this point where we can't really shuffle the cards and just take a couple out of uh the deck and have it seem to be something like what we've done before. Uh the other thing I did want to mention is uh for every meeting for some time now we've mentioned Hades Town because it's been such a incredible success and I was having a discussion online where uh someone talked about the failure of the
207Anchorage School District and our test scores and how low it was and they they mentioned like you you need to emphasize or have more things like Hades Town and we really can't. That's kind of a remarkable turn of events. Um, but what I realize is that if you talk to our students and teachers that have either taught drama or participated in drama, even without uh something that catches fire the way that Hades Town did, students come away and going, I was afraid to stand up in front of people and speak before I took drama, and now I can do that. Or, you know, I I never appreciated the arts. I never appreciated the stories. I never all kinds of different things that really transform people's lives. Come out of our ordinary classes. Come out of
208our ordinary play productions. Come out of the ordinary things that our students and teachers are doing every day across the district. I call on parents again, please share that with your friends that may not have people in uh may not have children in schools. Please share it with legislators if you get the chance to talk to them. If you hear people that that are making that claim that nothing good is happening in schools, please share your successes with them. We need to turn this narrative upside down because it's being used in a way that is really damaging to our students and to our employees as a whole. So, for now, um I wish there was better news and there's not. We still have to wait this thing out. Continue the fight. Urge parents to continue
209calling your legislators and talking to them about your priorities. And uh hopefully the next time we come around, we'll have something a little more substantial to work with. Thank you all. Thank you, President Hullman. Seeing no other comments from district administration, would it entertain a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Made by member lesson, seconded by member Wilson. Seeing no objection, we are adjourned at 9:25