001recording in progress testing good evening we'd like to welcome you to our board meeting the time is 6:01 uh today is Tuesday March 5th uh board members all board members are present in the boardroom uh along with our student representative Joshua Pac our superintendent Dr Bryant our uh executive uh assistants we have both America Sullivan and Katie Grant uh with us tonight we also have uh numerous other staff in the room with that um Mr Pat can you lead us uh into with to the pledge and then do the land acknowledgement pleaseed Al to the United States of Amer stand indivisible liy and Justice law thank you we acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of the denina people of the eler Cook Inlet for thousands of years the den people have
002been and continue to be the stewards of this plan ASD is committed to diversity and inclusion and it is with honor and respect that we recognize all ambition as people who live and learn in our community thank you very much again I'd like to uh welcome everyone um to our meeting and to thank you for attending and to thank you for supporting the work of the Anchorage uh school school board uh and our district uh we we give uh great thanks to our parents students teachers staff uh School business partners and the entire Community for the investment of your time your talents and your tax dollars that brings us to item A3 which is the approval of the agenda Madam president I move to approve the agenda is written there second second moved in second
003to approve the agenda is there any uh objection any objection seeing none the agenda is approved as presented that brings us now to Item B our student representative report thank you madam president got a couple of things first of all we got our next sen Advisory board meeting next week on the 19th it's going to be from 8 15105 a.m. we are expecting a resolution or two um one I know is going to be about a transportation policy for smaller alternative schools um and I'll report back on that on whatever happens we also had our stud students and their schools discuss a survey which was regarding the academies of Anchorage student voice tactic team and it was asking about barriers and potential groups who were left out underrepresent in our student governments and what ASD
004or their schools can do to include them and so we are looking to first of all hear what those schools are experiencing and then apply them possibly either individually or into a fter strategy and finally we are going to discuss Senate Bill 140 once again and hopefully all the students have read this by this time and knowing the current status of the bill I think it's important that students still continue to talk about that in other issues that are listed on the go for numerous um and we are also having the student government conference the Statewide conference from April 18 21 that's still a while ahead but we are plan to send a decent delegation from the Anor School District that concludes my report thank you any questions for Mr Pat good report as always
005thank you sir by and now we have a special report today from our seak committee that's our special education advisory committee please come forward welcome please uh uh announce your name and whenever you're ready to begin my name is Roslin Grady W I'm the chairwoman and I am Dale cope I am the co-chair so we are the special education advisory committee and here we Foster meaningful relationships that engage students promote health and well-being and prepare them for success in life we invest in continuous growth for all staff through relevant professional development to implement quality standards of practice that engage students expand opportunities and increase positive student outcomes we are committed to the success of all students through Partnerships with schools families and the community so here at seak we support all board goals and guard
006rails through our monthly discussions to include the special education leadership team members cak members and community members so for this year so far in October we focused on math reading and college career life ready goals the regional Elementary special programs expansion planning to support student access to schools closer to their neighborhood we also talked about speech and assistive technology held training on special education assessment of elll students and speech generating devices to support learning in November and December we focused on those same goals on the C CCL goal Community agencies partnered with East High to talk about independent living and Vocational skills Arc joined Benny vinon for work-based learning at Community job sites EDR and S RCC acronyms provide camps for students health care and construction we had students go to Juno at the healthc
007Care Connection camp at the Circ office students were able to determine if the if a career in healthc care may be a good fit they worked with Bartlett Regional Hospital hospital and students thought to see trauma care airlift and Fire and Rescue Department provided Services the students also got to do a lot of Hands-On courses and received CPR certification Healthcare careers are desperate for students and so and moving them from entry level positions to long care long-term careers were also discussed students from across the state participated and wrote personal career plans in January we focused on the CCL goal as well we discussed theems of Anchorage and transition tactic team we learned thatmy are pathways are going to be the pathways for students to access career Pathways and Special Education team members are working with
008others to improve the transition outcomes through these programs for students with disabilities this work is in the early phases and will roll out over multiple school years we were also told that the tactic teams will provide support strategies for theem to include all students transition supports will come to Middle School in form of soft skills inventories career exploration Etc and then in February there was a presentation that was held on the Department of education's National transition study for the self-determined learning model for instruction and some and that some ASD high schools will be participating in that study the Department of Education is excited to have Anchorage represent Alaska in the study um the top two priorities that were my favorite this year we in we ensure that we are reaching more parents of students who
009receive special education services and we are also supporting our families and communities by providing information and resources that support the students and their families how we will um it says the committee group and partnering with parents and other Community Partners and stakeholders we have been working hard to have a guest speaker every month I set a goal for everyone to bring at least three people to our next meeting so that they can see all the work that we've been doing and the collaboration that we been having with our parents and our our Special Education team it's been an honor to be the chairwoman this year just because I've been a member for the last three years I believe and so to be able to now put parents on the Forefront of what we're doing was
010one of my top like it was just really important to me that our parents are really engaged and that they are being heard and um in one of our meetings um Kelsey our assistant director she came up with this super cool plan with a parent to provide like a one sheet of information because being in special education is is like you you know you have this teacher and you have this person but who do you go to and who do you talk to and all these things and um I I implore you guys to even look at that presentation because py did a really good job connecting with the parents hearing the parents and delivering that to our parents and so and I mean I'm a I'm the chairwoman but I'm a parent also and
011that was one of the things that was talked about how it's always difficult to know who to go to sometimes you just want to be like who in special education knocking down those doors when really there's other ways that you have to go and so I was really really proud to not only be an ASD employee to see that come and to see that delivered this year so yeah have anything to add all right um and so how the school board can support our work is we would like all of you guys to join our meetings or come to our events um you can always contact Vicky cro and you know how easy it is to get our emails through there by her last name and first name um we decided to move our meeting
012to the end of this month because um spring break and so um I would like to invite you guys maybe somebody could be my one of three and or even Dell's 103 um to come and see what we do in there it's a lot of um robust conversation it's a lot of information we've connected with Community Partners they come all the time and give us information I believe even one of our moms is a member of the Stone Soup group so we're always connecting there to be able to P push that information out and then any information that we find out on the outside we're always able to bring back but I think one of our I I told everybody at first it was we'll bring one person but then when we moved our meeting
013to the end of the month I challenged everyone to bring three and so yeah that's that's pretty much it right thank you where where do you guys meet we're on Zoom so EAS place yes ma'am all right and this this month is what what is the date for this month or the next meeting March that last week March 28th always on Thursday okay awesome thank you member wion you had actually asked the questions I had can you go ahead and um just send a invite a zoom invite to all members I will make that happen okay right uh member Jacobs thank you madam president appreciate the presentation thank you folks for your work um I will happily um throw myself out there to be claimed as someone's 103 and I'm looking forward to the meeting
014and um if someone wants to participate in cak or is the committee accepting applications for members of the committee and how do they join what's the next step yes we are accepting members because we were talking about that before and um we have a simple flyer so I know like sometimes I get on Facebook and I share the flyer for members to for the community to join and so when we send that invite I will make sure that flyer is in there and um you guys will be able to see how to join and that that is one of the pushes for why we're inviting members to come of our community so they can be involved in the conversation and that they can connect and see all the work that's being done I think just
015from one conversation we learned that our special education department is supportive services and you know that means so much more than just understanding that I'm knocking down those doors to go get some answers you know like who else's door can we knock down and so it was really um interesting listening to director Wayne tell us about that and and how that works and and and even the moms that were there were like oh we didn't know how that worked so we want to be able to get that information out and and in order to get that information out we need more people to come in and so yes it is a open invitation and maybe we can get comms to share the fly you can get comms to do just about anything to to help
016yes ma thank you guys so much Dale good to see you thank you so much thank you right all right so that uh brings us to uh item C on our agenda and uh we have a uh a double uh activity tonight first we're going to uh receive the career and life technical report and then we will move to the monitoring uh of our reading goal from February actually so Dr Bryce thank you madam president so this for first report will be our technical presentation on the CCL goal so we can move on to the next slide uh so our uh CCO goal is to increase our graduation rates from 81% in June 2023 to 90% in June 2028 and today's presentation focuses specifically on interim goal 3.1 um which looks at the percentage of
017students that are on track for graduation we seek to increase that number to 90% by 2028 the definition of on track is defined by credits earn and the full description is on the slide next please and on this slide you'll see the percent of students that are on track for the previous two school years the dotted lines on the graph represent our yearly targets over the next several years as you'll notice the target for this school year is 70% and then on the table at the bottom of the slide you can see the number of students in addition to the percentage of students slide and we've also provided this slide which allows you to compare between June 2023 and June 2022 and you'll be able to see our percentage of on track students broken down
018by grade level and as always we want the board to be able to view this information broken down by race ethnicity and student subpopulations and that includes gender and then we just have a couple more slides that review the status of the Strategic plan on increasing graduation rates so if we go to the next slide uh this reviews some of the central points to the Strategic plan for improving the graduation rates in on track students and essentially that entails capacity Building in Key areas which include attendance as well as credit acquisition and other key factors it requires a focus on academic planning for example as well as student exposure to experiences that develop a sense of grit and perseverance and then lastly this this table breaks down that strategic plan into five critical pillars and
019those include curriculum instruction professional learning data discussions and multi-tiered systems of support um what you'll notice is that there's a lot of gray right now and that's because the board is now set to formally adopt its revised goals and guard rails and that would include this OnTrack information so this is a new goal that we're formally monitoring and we look forward to building out this plan and making progress we have some ambitious goals over the next several years but we'd love to see thousands of more students graduate from ASD over the next five plus years and that concludes the technical report and we'll go ahead and pivot into our goal monitoring okay so we're now ready for our monitoring uh conversation uh based on the report that was given to us uh I think it
020was February 6 but because the budget and uh other um budget basically uh it it kind of uh we had to push it back just a little bit so I appreciate the administration's flexibility and the staff's flexibility um our conversation today will be on uh our goal number on our reading proficiency goal um not gonna have any discussion at all about the life that's next that's next meeting on the 19th that was just a technical report so um so before we begin I just want to confirm that all Comp four components are present in this report uh the report clearly shows what's being monitored uh the report shows the data for the three previous reporting periods the current reporting period and the target reporting period uh you should have I think we had we did
021hand out another copy of this if you if you didn't bring the one that you had uh the report shows a super intendent evaluation of performance and the report uh shows supporting documentation that evidences the superintendent evaluation via tables uh the tables that are provided and it also includes next steps so with all these components in place we're ready to have a conversation regarding our reading uh Pro progress monitoring um or our our progress monitoring around our reading goal um so just a reminder we want to start with uh our current reality the current reality of our students by looking at the uh who what and why questions first and then we'll move on to the how questions once we have a a real clear picture of where our students are uh we did ask
022board members to send in questions but of course uh we also know that um questions will come up during the uh presentation um and we we invite all board members to participate and answer those questions so with that in mind um who's got who wants to kick off this time all right I see member lesson chomping at the bit yeah thank you um I'm gonna I appreciate the chance to ask a question but I'm gonna ask for the board's Indulgence and handing out um a little bit of my thinking so and I know that there's one copy up there and Dr Brant has that copy okay um so maybe there's one for president Bellamy and for board members um and I can send this uh for more of a public record if that's it all
023helpful later on um what I think okay so I wanted before I even asked a question about what's happened this winter I wanted to share with the board what I'm seeing about who our students are and where they're coming from by Looking Back to the fall and this was inspired by a presentation um that uh deed gave to the Senate education committee on January 22nd when they present presented a summary of what Alaska students are doing versus what uh students are accomplishing Nationwide k33 and uh that particular presentation showed um Alaska versus National Trends sort of students in the well below below Benchmark categories you know at Benchmark and above Benchmark and what caught my eye during the Senate education Committee hearing was my goodness Alaska students enter well below kindergarten at a at a
024much higher rate than their Nationwide counterparts but by third grade um there's a lot of movement for Alaska students and that got me thinking what's happening with ASD students so I opened up our data dashboard and essentially plugged in ASD data for the same fall snapshot and what I saw is that we have roughly 75% of ASD students uh entering kindergarten this year this fall below below or well below uh Benchmark uh in Reading um if you look at the rate of what happens what has happened to this year's third graders though um let's just look at the well below category students who are assessed as well below are struggling readers if 58% of excuse me 55% of asc's kindergarteners were well below only 24% of asg's thirdd graders are well below we well below
025this spot um that is a difference of 31% now that's like almost triple the growth that's happening nationally at the other end of the spectrum we have massively increased the number of third graders who are above Benchmark nationally 21% of kindergarteners this fall entered as above Benchmark and that goes up by about four percentage points to 25% by third grade ASD had 12% of its entering kindergarteners assessed as above Benchmark by third grade we've got 32% of our third graders as above Benchmark so that's a 20 percentage Point growth K through three in the above Benchmark students category for Anchorage versus 4% nationally I mean that's astounding growth and so this is just a snap shot right but when community members say what are you doing to improve reading proficiency I mean the proof is
026there our teachers are doing the work over time we just have 75% of our entering kindergarteners coming in below or well below Benchmark so the our starting place for the district when you know most of our kindergarteners walk through the front doors um there's a lot of work to do but what this data is showing is that our teachers and all of the support staff and our families are working together we're all pulling the same direction and that growth has happened despite increases to PTR despite this year's third graders being kiddos who started kindergarten on Zoom despite all of these obstacles so before we ask any questions I just wanted to say um like let's frame it from where we've started from and then talk about where we need to go so I guess with
027that what so what I saw then from fall to winter is that our kindergarten teachers demonstrated a significant amount of growth um we had roughly 16% fewer kindergarteners assessed as well below in the winter than we did in the fall but less growth for our first and sort of second graders so maybe if you my question is what is happening in k kindergarten that maybe can be built upon more in the you know first and second grade thank you member lessons thank boy introduce yourselves please my name is Nicole Somerville and I'm the director of teaching and learning for the elementary division so I would preface this to say remember our kindergartners come in not having had any school so that is a big difference right there as they're going from not having had any
028school to having a quarter of actual instruction in reading and so you're going to see huge growth because some kids have I mean it's all new you know sitting down listening following directions the whole bid and so that's where you see why you're going to see a much larger growth when you go from zero you know instruction to one uh quarter of instruction that time okay follow up I guess I guess the follow follow up has done you know there's a lot of work I think I understand that a lot of the technical things that have to happen with reading learning I mean first grade is critical and the number of discret skill sets that our first graders are asked to master and that our teachers are asked to instruct I mean the sheer quantity
029is profound um what additional supports do they need from the board from the District to help accelerate the growth that needs to then happen in those first grade and second grade class oh before I answer that Diana belan senior director of teaching and learning and then I also want to give a shout out to Nicole Somerville as the Director she really spearheaded uh the CK adoption and everything that was read act so all that knowledge lives in her head so um what I wanted to add though is um to Nicole's point that they're coming in with zero instruction but even though it looks like the older they get the less they grow they're still kind of meeting national uh average and they and the composite score changes so even though it looks like nothing changes
030it does change because they're still kind of moving up with the the new scores um but in terms of instruction and what they need um Nicole has a great description of how kids learn as they get older and how the instruction changes so I'd like for her to share that with you so I mean it's hard to judge the difference between first grade all the way up to third grade in what skills they're learning in kindergarten it's letters and sounds and we know that by first grade what the beginning of the year test students are still sounding Out letters so when they get a word like did it's did middle of the year it takes a little longer because now they're going did what does that mean so now they're adding meaning it slows their
031process down and these are all one minute timed bench mark tests these are predictors this is not overall reading it's a predictor because we know fluency is very correlated to their understanding of comprehension by third grade we're asking for them to do what's called a CBM or CDR which is connected text so now they get a whole page of um a par several paragraphs about a story and so now we're not only having to decode each letter and sound into words and then each sentence we're having to build and look for context clues of things such as um compare and contrast or setting and Order of a story and so they're very different skills that we're looking for as the kids go uh get older and the testing changes the other difference in third grade
032is we're looking for fluency but that's also procity can they read do they understand what they're reading that's part of CBM but then they take the map which really gets into comprehension and can they answer questions about what they're reading there's a high correlation but it's really hard to say what you're testing a first grader on and they're making growth when they're just sounding Out individual words and sounds compared to what you get when you're at third grader and you're really dealing with that connected text and so it's hard to compare and to say that one needs more than another other questions uh yes Joshua thank you um I think you mentioned that a lot of the kindergarteners are coming in with no instruction is there some information showing how per have students who come
033through with a preschool just education very short instruction having different scores their kind we don't we we don't really track that data other than as previous principles we can tell you that in our kindergarten classes we could tell that when a student had spent time in a prek uh they came with more information more knowledge but they also came with uh like Nicole was saying part of the instruction in kindergarten is teaching them how to come in sit down for long periods of time even learning how to put their winter gear on because they start in the winter or in the fall and when it's getting cold so that's all part of it but kids that come through preschool they've already learned those different skills coming in and so it's noticeable by teachers but we
034don't have actual data m m Donley thank M president um did is Elly I mean remember lessons did you produce this mhm okay have you guys seen this you got copies of it I'm I'm curious to how we're going to measure the success of our new reading curriculum versus the past and versus those of our schools that are using different curriculum and I'm say it again we've got some schools that are using Spalding reading and do you have any comparisons similar to this chart that would show the distinction between our Spalding schools and our non-s Spalding schools we haven't disaggregated that data and Mr Opitz is out of town right now so something we can probably put in board connect I think I don't I'm not sure how how long it would take them to
035produce that yeah you just be breaking them out and then seeing what the the numbers look like here you know with our current General reading curriculum versus the the spaling curriculum being used at certain Charter Schools we will add that request to our information request list and U work with the superintendent to figure out how to get the information uh but to clarify this was member lesson's uh production um this these were she was sharing these thoughts with us um looking at growth uh other questions before we start another round yes remember well it's really a comment uh reply back to um our student representative um one of the things I was really happy about over the past year is that the Anchorage assembly increased its funding of the Imagination Library um the best Beginnings
036program which sends books out to families children and families for zero to age five it's the right book at the right time it improves all sorts of things the parent child connection you get a book in your hand you which way to turn the pages and they also shared data at the time that said that the students who are enrolled in this program um have shown to have increased kindergarten Readiness as measured in the Alaska developmental profile um including some of our highest risk students um higher literacy skills among entering kinderg gers faer reading and math achievement in grade three and um the children who are participated in Imagination Library before they come into our doors um ended up having higher attendance rates K through three than nonparticipants that early investment in just the foundational
037you know access to literacy and and Improvement of that parent child Bond PS dividends so that's not a preschool question but I think it is like relevant I know that you know the the the house finance committee um is talking about um you know they had amendments proposing do we fund this do we fund that funding a program like the Imagination Library to meet I'm no bring up that's beyond the scope or scale of what we can do but if Community Partners can help improve the Readiness of the students who come through our doors that's a win and and I I appreciate you bringing that up uh parents have to sign their kids up for those uh maybe perhaps we can um you know let them let parents know that that that's you know that
038that's that it's available uh but uh I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on best beginnings and other early liter literacy programs that that you share with parents great I would just say too that it I don't have any thoughts about best Beginnings but I do know that we're making a conscious effort especially through L and family engagement and so that would be a piece the more we involve families the you know um I think it will demonstrate iny soon is can one of you talk about how you are involving parents uh and you know uh especially with the new curriculum certainly so um we have uh established several new initiatives this year uh to help with parent involvement specifically around the areas of reading and reading development um Meg G and Leica
039MCA through Title One um have started our video series so we've had I think six different videos that we've taped this year and put out through social media we also have a um text message that goes out to all families I think we have 150 to 200 families that have signed up it's free for everybody every Wednesday or Thursday you get a text message with a tip of what a parent can do with their child to increase reading at home uh it's simple vocab vocabulary games or anything dealing with alphabe knowledge uh questions to ask your child when you're reading to them and it's just a quick text tip and it's through a QR code any parent can sign up for it we also have had something called coffee and conversations where um they've written
040basically a script for principles to use to have monthly meetings with parents uh whole group meetings like at a PTA meeting or whenever parents want to come in um to talk about different aspects of reading and language development and then uh kot Brothers has sponsored that activity by providing Cofe for um the title one schools to make and serve to their parents that show up in addition our new reading curriculum uh every single day actually has parent information sheets that go home they're already printed so a teacher doesn't have to print and make copies it's part of the workbook and they just need to be torn out and it has um sections of the passage that would have been read that day as well as questions that the teach uh the parents can ask their
041students tips on how to help their students with spelling reading any of the activities that are happening within uh the scope of the classroom and those are part of the curriculum okay thank you um member Jacobs yeah thank you madam president a question based on this data and then nevertheless I thank you for the the growth data this is um insightful I I'm thinking through to the next board's um plan for legislative advocacy and um I have a feeling that there's a fatigue in the halls of Juno from hearing BSA strung in a letter and so I'm wondering if you know Concepts like inflation proofing and then maybe this data speaks to things like Universal prek is as being kind of the a rallying cry um that won't fall on deaf or tired ears is
042this data I mean the data seems to be pretty clearly articulating that if we could not start from behind the curve our students would be better off more quickly um and while our growth might not be as prolific um at least maybe in K1 if I'm understanding the data right um that um proficiency and in and growth would continue to to achieve New Heights in grades three and four I was looking at um Mississippi and Florida's prek participation rates um because those states are often held up as kind of the precursors uh to what Alaska done with the Alaska reads act and um folks of Mississippi pointed to their full day pre programs and then um in Florida their pre- participation something like 38 times ours in state sponsored program which is a little embarrassing
043frankly um so my question to you experts is should the board consider really highlighting the benefits of prek and tying that to our goal of proficiency and using this and you know our slide deck today as an example and exhibit a um member Jacobs I feel like that that would be a fair statement I think it would be a reasonable extension of the efforts made for the reads act which provided that 0.58 M and if we could get that towards a vision for Universal pre kindergarten I feel like nobody here would refute that as a bad idea highly support that just a quick followup if I M pres yeah so and I I appreciate to be clear that the benefit of having um a pre- student being worth half as much as a first grader
044um but that that as I understand it now we we don't financially have the math even though were an approved and one of the only approved pre programs in the state to have it pencil out for full day um pre instruction which is one of the secret sauces down in Mississippi um and so just again just information that maybe helps more late a an advocacy plan as we go to Juno next year thank you thank you any other questions comments yeah well we we'll do our next round okay so um I may be getting ahead of myself here so of course correct as needed um I've seen um news reports data recently saying that um the oral pheic awareness program that we use known as pity which we've used for a few years I'm familiar
045as a mom because I've seen my kiddo um and his teachers use it um and uh anyway it's been very effective it's part of our plan um but the new research like from January said that it might be more effective if it showed letters along with sounds this is like a short 10 minute activity but maybe it's not just good to have oral but also visual so I guess is there a shift in what the heg curriculum is doing is ASD shifting can you just tell me what's happening right now with the hegr approach as one of our tools so hegr is a femic awareness tool it's 10 to 15 minutes each day in grades K and one some second grade also go up and use it there's uh extensions into older grades um that
046take even less time for those students that need pric awareness we instituted in in ASD a number of years ago because our data showed that our students were not doing as well in their pheic awareness uh the research that you're talking about is relatively new and it's relatively few studies at this time so we're going to use the research you know the um Integrity program as it is until more information comes to make a better judgment about it we've seen um good success and uh we don't want to change things before we know did you have a followup member last okay any other questions for the team member Wilson so I I I don't know well it's a question and a comment but um and I think it's relevant for all of our teams that
047are presenting attendance rates I I didn't ask this ahead of time so I'm not asking for anybody to spout out numbers but I would like to better track um maybe for me personally and this could be a board request if that's if that's the case what our attendances looking like at particular you know in each first primary and then secondary as well um because as we all know our students are going to do better if we're if they're here present to learn so I am curious to see um what our attendance rates have been like in comparison to pre-co I know CO's a whole other kind of classification um and to continue to track those to see if if our attendance rate is improving um ideally the rest of our scores would be improving and
048and it moves into the next report the college career life Readiness because our our employers um when our kids leave you have to be present to be employed so we know that as well so are you uh just a PL of clarification are you wanting um information included in the technical report or you just want information on attendance in grade p through three I I would like to see both I would like to see it Incorporated in some way it I mean it it doesn't have to be necessarily attach to every report but I would like to see that data more consistently so we can uh or I can at least as a board member gauge to see what our attendance is looking like in our schools because that directly affects our our kids and
049their learning that's right yeah we would be happy to prepare a report on attendance I'll defer to the team on the best format but I think we captured the spirit of your questions so you can get that attendance Data before you as we look at the the next monitoring presentation can I say to although we don't have attendance data right now I'd love for Mandy Clark director of Elementary Ed share um all the work that Elementary at is doing to increaseing attendance and and all the celebrations hi I'm Andy Clark my director in elementary Ed um there are a number of things that we are doing right now to focus on attendance and to try to increase attendance um at our schools we have um we're celebrating um through golden shovel Awards and we're looking
050at both title and non-title schools and we're looking at um at the rate of students that are coming um 90% of the time we're also we have a silver yard stick that um schools can earn as well and that's for the most Improvement um from one month to the next month and then we have celebrations and we deliver those we have an actual golden shovel and an actual silver yard stick that we go and we deliver to the schools at a staff meeting or at an assembly to be able to help students see that we are um that their attendance is important we also have multiple schools who have um have students that participate every morning in taking the attendance and then writing how many students are present in their classroom and then doing um
051wish you Wells um to the kids that aren't there so when they go home and they're playing in the neighborhood or they see their other friends and they're like where were you at school um we really want you there we all wish you well and trying to help kids um H increase that connectedness to school wonderful thank you okay M Jacob yeah thank you m president um so I I heard today about a a system I'm not going to try and pronounce it but I think it's U okay you perfect let I didn't try um and I think I understood it to be kind of what we were discussing earlier with direct instruction that has Visual and verbal components could you explain for those of us who aren't familiar what that is and how we're
052using it thank you so efly is one of our supplemental intervention uh curriculums in grades K through three it is new to us this year um we were able to get uh copies of the manual from the state from the alasa reading Institute um and we started trainings back in I believe in December we now have 36 schools that are piloting and it is a direct instruction half an hour a day uh starting with vemic awareness all the pieces through comprehension uh it includes spelling uh writing um and it's it's very directive so what we're doing is we give the students uh an assessment to see what letters and sounds they know and where they are we divide them up during wi time into different groups and uh depending on what skills they know is
053where they start in the curriculum um and that's what you fly is sbur University of Florida literacy ins I believe um and so they're the publisher basically on this curriculum follow yeah another question more than a followup but um was looking at the um the overall goal for our read proficiency and it refers to the AK star data I I've heard both March and may um for us getting that data do we know which one of those is more ACC than the other and then what I don't think we've discussed since the cut scores have been um set in cement that may or may not have dried um is what we do we have any um guess as to confidence on ASD experiencing an improvement in the scores once they're released thank you that's a
054great Chris Opitz question um I do believe he's expecting the scores in March um and at the end of March I don't I'm not sure how it's going to compare because it's been a while since we've seen these scores so hopefully we're leaning into how to better support our kids for better outcomes for next time but we still haven't even seen what these results in okay number lessons um okay so this is I wouldn't call it the million-dollar question I think it's a $3.4 million question if I did my math right but maybe I'm wrong so this is in relation to S sp40 which has a component um should it should it move ahead and be cast into law uh where a student who is uh flagged was having a reading deficiency would receive $500
055per student but I didn't for k23 what I didn't see is when that student would be diagnosed um and if that is tied to the student formally receiving an irip which then becomes a really interesting question which is the individual reading Improvement plan thank you um and I think that earlier this year the commissioner said kindergarten students don't need a fall IR um because there's a lot of work to do um but but they've just entered that so we we'll wait until winter and I guess what's complic well everything's complicated when you're we've just passed a budget for FY 25 we don't know the number of kindergarteners who are going to walk through our door next fall who may qualify to have a reading efficiency but maybe we have some data that can give us
056a good guesstimate can you talk about what you do or don't know with respect to S 140 and how we would receive any funds and whether my calculation I I took the percentages of students in the fall who were below or well below Benchmark and I mashed that up with enrollment numbers and I got around 6,800 students in ASD K3 who maybe qualify so that gave me about $3.4 million of potential funding um so I guess am am I in the ballpark what do we know about when we would re receive that and then do you have thoughts about the wisest allocation of that is it to tutoring instructional coaches you know what are where where would that go in um as's world of possibilities should s sp40 become long so um member lessons I'll
057take that question we kind of talked about this because you did send this one in to us early so that was appreciative um right now it's way too early for us to even come up with anything like that how however we are setting up a small working group just in case we do get these funds of some sort so we are setting up um Diana and Nicole will be setting up a group with some principles and teacher experts and stuff to start looking at what could be um the best use for that money and as of right now though we don't know how much money we don't know when it would come we don't know how they would be working on it or any of that kind of stuff so for us to go through
058and try to do something right now would probably not best use of our time until we get that number right all right seeing no other inquiring hands we GNA thank you guys thank you so much appreciate you so next uh at our next meeting on the 19th we will uh have a conversation on the uh CCL report that you received tonight um and uh we will add the questions that came up tonight on the reading we will add those to our RFI business so that brings us to and yes they're going to do research to identify the distinction between the progress made by students that have had preschool um versus the ones who haven't and they're going to have to be careful in that analysis because not all preschool is equal I we've got students
059that are fortunate enough to be in ASD provided preschool then we've got a lot of parents out there that are just scrambling trying to find preschool for their kids and in my personal experience as a parent the academic delivery at a lot of those other preschools wasn't close to content they were ASD preschools and I I appreciate that caution it it crossed my mind but we also know Mr opit is not here tonight so when we uh have that discussion with him um I'm sure he will um give us the parameters the request so thank you all right now we're moving on to our first public comment period on the agenda as you entered the room there you would have seen uh you were able to pick up a um blue and white sheet that
060gives our gu the guidelines and expectations for the decorum inside our boardroom but now is our time to hear from our public uh we set aside uh at an hour at the beginning and those individuals who have not testified in that first hour are welcome to testify in the second hour near the end of our agenda but this is an opportunity for the school for Schoolboard members to listen and for members of the public to inform us about what's important to you uh please note the following uh your public comments are limited to three minutes uh there is a timer that starts when you start to speak in front of the de um you will receive a courtesy alert when there's 30 seconds remaining speaking time may not be shared uh or given to others
061when your name is called please come to the podium state your name and direct your comments to the chair uh please understand that this is not a time for dialogue uh the purpose of this agenda item is to is for you to inform the board about your views if you have handouts that you'd like to share make sure they are clearly labeled with your name and what the what what is uh the intent of the uh documents and give them to uh Mrs Sullivan sitting here to my uh my my left so with that guidance we're ready to call our first witness witness our first not witness I forgot where I was we're ready to we're got to start with our students so Sophie uh crater Rodriguez welcome Sophie come forward have a seat and
062looks like both mics are on so uh yeah and then um tell us your name and then you can start to speak welcome uh hello my name name is Sophie crder uh I'm a senior in the Anchorage School District um I wanted to talk uh because throughout my years at school uh the biggest issue I've faced is actually ice conditions icy road conditions uh in ASD while ASD is as prompt as they can possibly be with the removal of snow uh the same unfortunately cannot be said for ice in fact it's often after snow removal that Rose are the isos I can personally attest that these conditions are hazardous and POS threats to those who use the parking lot SE several students drift at the entrance as the entrance is so icy and lose control
063I personally lost control of my vehicle due to such icy road conditions that it drifted onto a curb of the sidewalk fortunately there was no damage done um it it's also a Str strle to walk from the parking lot into the school though it might sound just like a short distance it's very very icy out there some days um uh I've seen several people fall uh including myself uh this also makes it even more difficult for students with mobility issues to walk into the school as well as making coming to school less accessible SL unsafe for students who walk to school in the morning uh when I didn't drive I walked to school my freshman in sophomore year and was very ice um we invest in student safety through vaccine clinics counseling services and nurses
064for example why should this be any different if the complete removal of ice is not feasible for the Anchorage School District I uh implore you take swifter actions when roads are icy such as setting down gravel or or Sal salt before students arrive to school in the morning in the past days have passed before um the parking lot looking like an ice skating rink basically before any gravel has been put down any action being taken um so yes thank you for your consideration and your time and thank you very much okay next we have have Marissa I don't have a last name Marissa okay no on M A Prescott meals welcome you have three minutes please state your name my name is Prescott Mills I'm a parent of a Fourth Grade Student in the school
065District um I just wanted to come to you guys and share a major concerns held by parents School staff and homeowners in the mun area uh about transportation for malun elementary students my goal is to find a solution to to Bringing buses back to malun Elementary as you may be aware malun is a title one school most of the school population lives within a mile of the school so it's considered a primarily walking school zone while on paper this makes sense the model fails to take into account several mitigating factors that impact the educational needs of these students those being safety treny and attendance and available resources the school is located on a short residential two-lane road on Cherry Street with uh without bus routes during drop off and pickup time the entire population of
066the school is expected to be dropped off within a 10 to 15 minute period causing major inconvenience to homeowners First Responders and unsafe and dangerous conditions for students trying to walk to school the car rider line around the school past 6th Avenue blocking the stop sign and effectively turning it into a one lane of travel in both directions for half an hour twice a day causing drivers to have to Veer into oncoming traffic just to get through on Cherry Street and 6th Avenue homeowners driveways and mailboxes are being blocked there are very few walkable sidewalks nearly no crossing guards and all of this while kids are darting out into traffic trying to cross the street to get to school it's not a matter of if but when there's a tragic accident causing Serious injury or
067Worse we all live in Anchorage and we all know that malun isn't necessarily the safest neighborhood to walk in in general and that just goes for students who find their way to school there's a large portion of the school population that's only making it to school sporadically or not at all parents of young students who don't feel comfortable allowing their kids to walk to school or may not have transportation or unable to leave or take off work halfway through their workday to pick their kids up so they may just allow their kids to stay home there is a domestic violence shelter only a few blocks from Wun Elementary School with several kids who barely come to school at all because it's not safe for them to walk to school due to the other half of
068the domestic violence situation knowing their location every day fixing these issues doesn't have to be a huge financial lift for the school district there are several buses already allocated to mun Elementary for special needs students and these buses May hold a handful of kids at best I passed several nearly empty school buses on my way to school every morning that cross m Elementary and go to Creekside Elementary less than a mile away we reallocate the resources that we have available currently possibly allowing these buses to drop kids off at full schools it may not require the school district to hire any additional drivers and would alleviate the dangerous traffic situations on Cherry Street let's get creative thank you very much sir uh next we have a Delani or Delany cordoza welcome you have three minutes
069hi my name is D on cardosa I've worked Ford as care professional in an SLC classroom for over eight years in that time I've been slapped punched kicked scratched headbutted bit head Furniture thrown at me and my shoulder separated all of this for Less pay than the average retail worker after eight years during weather closure days we receive emails saying teacher stay home stay safe support staff you must return to your building or use your own leave to pay yourself we're being punished for the weather by having to pay our own wages in other words the teachers lives mattered ours don't leaving us feeling as though the district sees us as Expendable easily replaced right now our Elementary SLC classes do not meet the basic legal requirements due to lack of Staff offering a higher
070on bonus is nice but there's no incentive for us long-term employees to stay half of my staff is leaving this year they've already G to their jobs offering us a 25 cent raise is an insult since it still won't give us a living wage I have a life-threatening medical condition requiring me to wear a medical braac L during a training one of the ASD trainers asked me if it was worth the possibility of scratching a child to wear my bra my life is not worth scratching a child to the district this is not okay we're not Expendable we are people ASD and the community as a whole needs to remember that they need us we don't need them we don't get paid enough to need ASD I can leave this job start up at Walmart
071and be paid more than I do after eight years with this district and that's not okay we are the support of the schools we are your par professionals your Tas we are all of your support staff your new duties your office administration we are everybody the schools cannot run without us just ask La the entire city shut down for a week because their support walked out because we don't get paid enough we don't get treated like people we're treated like we're Expendable and we are not right now we're going through negotiations for our contract and the district needs to remember that they do need us we are important we are not expend hope thank you very much that concludes our person's uh wishing to be heard in our public comment period and that brings us
072to uh we're now on item e our consent agenda mam president I move to approve the consent agenda is written second moved in second to approve the consent agenda as presented is there any opposition to the motion any opposition all right that the that motion passes the consent agenda as uh is approved as written he actually has no objection so we have no action items but we do have quite a a number of non-action items under G um that will come back before us on the 19th if you have questions on any of those please bring up uh get get them to the uh superintendent and we will get you what you need so we can have a discussion next time if necessary all right so we are now on item there are no more
073persons to be heard so we are now on uh item five the superintendent update thank you madam president uh just uh one brief item just a reminder that April is around the corner which means that voters will soon have the opportunity to weigh in on proposition one during the municipal election which is a school bond focused on safety security and school revitalization so our wonderful communic Communications team has launched our new Bond website this is a working digital resource that provides helpful information on the state of our facilities and the impact that the school bond would have if approved we've already gotten some great feedback from community members on ways to improve that experience on the website so be sure to check back regularly at asdk12.org bond that concludes my any questions for superintendent no
074questions thank you Dr briyan and now we're at uh school board and administration comments item J okay uh let's start with member Hollman I don't have too much I I do want to say I have been watching a lot of gble gble and um appreciate how our staff has presented this to the legislature to the Committees uh no Mr rap is not here because he's a g but also watch the superintendent president on there and I I think I've done a good job of presenting the issues before us to them in a very reasonable way um other than that I do want to raise the issue that in the midst of um I don't know what you call it confusion over what the budget might be um and the potential Cuts we're making this year
075and possibly next year we're continuing to talk about the career Pathways one of the questions I get from the public is how do we afford this and I I realize things are still being worked out but we're at the point now where people are registering their eighth graders and um students are actually thinking about it and making choices we we do need to have some more substantive information I think to give the public uh to explain how we know this can happen um on the timeline that we have laid out I hope that'll be forthcoming in our next meeting um that's all I have thank you thank you sir member leson sure um after um I had a lot of fun last week after the budget was passed um I was uh I got an
076invitation to go to the Polaris General Assembly no General General GA okay uh the the student leadership um I guess it's just supp to call it General Assembly um and I think there were about four dozen students there um it was so engaging um that pack was was there along with some other wonderful student leaders uh practicing um Robert's Rules of Order and mostly being totally engaged um in the concept of increased student engagement um there was a robust discussion about um the historic embargo uh between us and Cuba and I thought this is better than a history lesson because the students brought it to the table themselves they were discussing issues and not a single student for at least the 20 or 25 minutes they were discussing cuan history and Cuban American relations was
077on a phone they were just um they were just so engag as after school um so that was a really fun opportunity to watch Young leadership in action um all board members were invited to a special lunch at airport Heights um with some sixth graders who were gracious enthusiastic um and it was a wonderful chance to break bread with community members and just um hear about um their priorities and and what they were valuing and um talk directly to our students which is one of the hardest things that we can do as a school board memb is actually spend time with a student during the school day um and I also got a a quick peek at the model un over the weekend and Josh was there again as well um but I was particularly
078impressed with this the questions that I caught students from ASD around the state asking the Cil General uh for the UK who work out of the San Francisco office and presumably has jurisdiction over Alaska and the rest of the West Coast um asking really great questions at the end of their long two-day uh model un meeting so wonderful that just sort of get those glimpses of students and as and what they're doing and then I had um more fun comparing the proposed budget prior to budget passage with the the budget that we amended and um what I think the outcome of our amendment is that every Anchorage legislator has no fewer than three schools in their legislative district some as many as nine these are schools that will receive um FTE back uh due to
079our reversal of the PTR plus one so across I mean we know but just comparing legislator X represents these schools um I was able to sort of divine that every legislator is seeing teachers coming who will not be pulled away from their schools as a result of the budget that we passed pending passage of SD40 um but hopefully we can talk more about that in Finance on Thursday at newon moving on um so I had the pro the pleasure of of doing a attending a couple different mes I I peaked in on the there was career technology education instructors there their leads I forget what they called them no no no no it was it was the CTE um teachers that got together there's there's leads in every department and I and they called them
080something else but anyways they had the the pleasure I had the pleasure of um just hopping into that meeting which was great I also participated in the academy steering committee um meeting regarding the acmy and I know andyman brought that up um I wanted to share a couple things including the the the academy update in our Communications committee meeting our Communications committee meeting is coming up on Thursday at one correct or one o'clock still Yes okay um so please attend we'll discuss further our bond messaging plan that Dr Bryant mentioned we will also have an update on our Communications plan for the school start times Middle School move and and like I said theem of Anchorage so that's a perfect time to tune in if if you want to get more information right off the
081that um about what's going on with ourmes we'll also have an update for from our diversity equity and inclusion team um and Community engagement team and if you haven't seen the March edition of the ASD digital published uh the ASD digital published last Friday so please check that out aside from the big projects and priorities there are great shine bright moments and our latest edition of our shine bright podcast and Madame President um I heard from a little birdie that you might be on deck for a shine bright podcast yes thank you thank you thank you um anyway so please if you if you want to know more about the acmy um get that update this week please join us at the communications meeting on Thursday thank you all right so Joshua no further comments
082okay thank you member Donley thank you m president anticipation of our discussion in our next meeting on H college career in life our U our goal there and our outcome monitoring I wanted to give a notice to the administration there's a few things I really would like to talk about at that time um many years ago when I was in the Senate I I just learned some disturbing numbers about Alaska and infant mortality um we were doing a really good job prenatal and getting babies home safely from after being born but then the next year we were leading the nation in the fatality rate of the babies after they got home um and and so at that time I sponsored legislation with past which added to the optional list of things school districts could teach
083is um U infant care um because so many of our kids are home at some point in time with an infant and I wanted us to have that as an option it wasn't a mandate but I would like to know what kind of instruction you know for next week or two weeks from now when we talk about what kind of a instruction are kids are getting infant care because there's a few really basic things could be taught in half an hour that might you know save some lives really address that issue of kids coming home safe from the hospital babies coming home safe from the hospital um also i' be and I know member Higgins has talked about this too another life Readiness to me is in this state the ability to to you know
084swim to the shore make it make it uh you know how to survive falling into the water out of a boat or or you that and I I know it's very expensive swimming is expensive um but I'd like to just have a discussion of that as a possible addition to one of our life life Readiness aspects is that our kids be able to survive um a basic swimming survival skills and the final one I also wanted to discuss is know how much our kids are getting basic cold weather survival information right now in school too because we we do live in the Artic and uh I remember when I went to elementary school here we we talked about that a lot but I don't know what's happening in our schools right now with basic cold
085weather survival so those were three things that I wanted to discuss at our next meeting when we talk about life Readiness possible things that we could explore thank you sir member Jacobs thank you madam president um did want to acknowledge first that it is after women's month and um while I'm solidly sandwiched on the gentleman end of the table please know that my appreciation for our other board members and and key staff um extends to both sides of our Das and then um wanted to reflect on the reading proficiency report that we reviewed today um we we wouldn't have that growth data in part without the um hard work of some uh amazing educator support staff building leadership and administration which has worked with the board and Community Support to prioritize that proficiency and so
086uh thank you to all for making that growth a reality thank you thank you sir M hens and I won't use the four hours up I promise um um I I wanted to say first I appreciate individuals that bring up safety concerns uh because it not only affects them it affects everyone else uh so a special appreciation for that I hope the administration will look into it not just for the safety issue but why did it come up here why wasn't it addressed at a lower level or issues and why couldn't it what did the individuals think how they could have gone to different locations to raise it if they didn't get a response so I think that's a that's going to help safety in the future as well that's really critical uh comment in
087regards to the negotiation process and Labor Relations no one likes to hear that people don't feel appreciated um every employee in the school district uh plays a critical role in what we're doing we can't do it without it um and if and we we recognize that and I um just want to say I appreciate what uh the speaker had to say and I'm disappointed that she feels uncomfortable uh but I appreciate her and I hope she stays with us because I that's that's important to us and then the last I'll just send uh that was very interesting information uh member lessons uh I like that data I like the research I like logical decisions and then I like to look at why and that type of data where we have the growth that takes place
088at different points at a faster Pace I've always know between fourth and eth we were for a long time substantially ahead but below that not reaching the point where we want to be but uh that's that's really important information I knew 10 years ago we talked about 40% of kindergartens are not prepared to ENT kindergarten the figure 55% is shocking on top of that um but the the programs to help the kids before they get to kindergarten is absolutely critical for us to be successful sucessful so I appreciate that research quite a bit thank you and that's it all right thank you uh Dr Bryant do you have any other comments okay no further comments I would like to just uh thank um a couple people uh actually I thank everybody for all the things
089that they do but the oped that um members Lon Jacobs and myself uh um submitted uh published I just want to thank you guys uh member lessons is a researcher to her heart if there is data to be found anywhere on the universe she will find it and and that is a gift to all of us um this is woman's history month and I had the most delightful time this afternoon right before our meeting with uh Laya I think her last name is White from um pois kwell we had a wonderful she was actually interviewing me but I was just enjoying her for I mean she's just very a special young lady so uh please um it just reminded me of how we how we engage with um young people who don't even know we
090don't even know they're watching us I mean we suspect they are but they really are and so how we mentor how we support uh it's just very important not just during women's history months but all the time uh so I I do challenge all of us to um to spend as much time as we possibly can with our young people and and and having conversations with them whether it's about your life their life somebody else's life uh but that that was just that just reminded me today of how special uh those moments can be um I do want to thank and I think someone has already done uh thank Communications for the uh I had an early a real early uh actually I had two events this this week that I really needed to have
091support from uh Communications and they just came through in flying colors uh we had the we the league of women's voters presentation Bond presentation and I want to thank uh uh Larry for his support what's Larry's last name Mars uh he was right there by my side we gave a fabulous report uh and and I really do appreciate that because that was in the evening on his time um and I also want to remind board members that if you are having or plan to have uh and uh Bond presentations and you need to have information uh really that there there's lots of information available and you can you too can have a uh you can call a friend if you need to call a friend to help with your bond presentation so with that that's
092all I have um I'll entertain a motion to dismiss to adjourn oh boy two people is there a second there a second mov in second any objection seeing none as people exit the room we are adjourned