001progress we'll call our meeting to order it is the March 7th school board meeting here in our boardroom first on our agenda is the call to order roll call and flag salute so miss Foster can you please call the rule member Donnelly here member Higgins member Holloman thank you member Jacobs present member lessons here member Wilson here president Bellamy [Music] thank you Miss Foster we will now do our flag salute all police rise and then we'll have our land acknowledgment by member lessons on behalf of the Anchorage School Board I want to take a moment to recognize and offer gratitude for the sacred ancestral lands of the denina people we acknowledge and appreciate that our offices facilities and schools are on these sacred indigenous lands and we honor the traditional care that has been given
002to this land throughout Generations we are grateful for the opportunity to grow learn work and create educational communities on the sacred land we extend continued respect for the many cultures creativity and resilience of its indigenous peoples Shannon thank you member lessons good evening good evening everyone thank you for being present tonight we'll continue with the rest of our regular meeting next up is approval of the agenda I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda the move to approve the agenda is presented made by member Lesson seconded by member Higgins is there any discussion or amendments to the agenda okay hearing seeing none uh the agenda is approved as presented and for the record president Bellamy joined us at 6 10 pm my understanding is we do not have a military report or student representative
003report is that correctness Foster okay thank you then we'll move forward with Google monitoring our first topic of discussion is the 2022-2023 goal monitoring math reports I will read our introduction conversation to start we are now going to have our monitoring conversation on the report that was given to us at our last meeting tonight our primary conversation will focus on our Mass proficiency goal and interim goal the goal is beginning September 2020 the percentage of students in grades three through nine proficient in mathematics on the state Summit of his Testament AKA star will increase from 40 to 55 percent by May 2026 and interim goals uh 2.1 and 2.2 which read the percentage of grades three through nine students at or above the math benchmark on interim adaptive assessments will increase from 52 percent in
004Spring 22 to 60 in Spring of 23 and the percentage of grade 339 students on track to be efficient in mathematics on the state summative assessment as measured in the interim adaptive assessments will increase from 28.2 and fall of 22 to 30 percent in Fall of 23. I want to confirm that all four components of the monitoring report are present the report clearly shows what is being monitored and that its focus is specific goal and interim goal information the report shows data for the three previous reporting periods the current period and the target reporting periods the report shows a superintendent's evaluation of performance and the report shows supporting documentation that evidence is the opinions above with all components present we're ready to begin our conversation on monitoring so for the purpose of understanding our current
005reality for our students as compared to this goal let's begin with any questions that fall into the who what and why categories we'll go down the line member Higgins do you have any questions to start off the conversation okay moving on to member Donley any questions to start off thank you member Donnelly member lessons any questions sure can you talk about what what explains the differences in our outcomes between sixth graders enrolled in elementary and middle schools through the chair remember lessons there there really isn't a good correlation between those at this point because of the differences in all the different factors that go into what the difference is in a sixth grader at an elementary school sixth grader to middle school as well as what schools those are in and all the different factors
006of the different types of breakdowns of say EDS and ethnicities and all that kind of stuff so um there really isn't good data there to actually say okay these schools are in these schools to be able to compare that and in our district especially at this point follow-up member lessons yeah I guess I'm wondering then so is it a question of the educational environment that we're providing in in one sex trade context versus another or simply we have are there or there are different inputs right that are like what is in ASD has certain items that it can control and there's a lot that it cannot control you have inputs um that it you know are outside of our direct sphere of influence and I'm simply wondering um if the differences in inputs in our
007different clusters of schools can help explain some of the disparities that we're seeing um I'll just add a couple of pieces I'm not sure how much detail I can go into I think one really important factor is to recognize that we've not rolled out sixth grade across our district so it's it's not strictly an Apples to Apples sort of comparison so I think that's really important um is it uh it's Clark baggage and Mirror Lake if I remember correctly and so when we're looking at sixth grade across our district in the elementary it's really a wide swath if you will and so that's just one definite thing that we want to take into account I know that and you're a question that you wrote you mentioned EDS as one factor as um and and just
008generally speaking we find that EDS economically disadvantaged when we see that characteristic it does have a large impact across so many different variables and different metrics um now with that said there's a million variables that go that sort of Follow that um classification if you will I don't know if anybody else wants to speak specifically to the inputs and the Elementary on that front [Music] yeah this is Eric just the senior director for elementary education and I I I'd agree with uh senior director Lopez on the differences in different programs I mean if you're looking at the schools that currently have sixth grade in elementary there's a large number across a wide range of of social economic backgrounds and and schools um I think if you go conversely and look at the middle school it's
009this much smaller distribution of schools and in scope there there's some structural difference with differences between the divisions also um in terms of political services are delivered but the population groups there's some differences there too thank you member lessons the member Holloman any questions at this point we'll go online uh president Bellamy any questions for the team sure thank you Mr chair so I think uh slide three if I have the right I think I have the right one on slide three um just to um so it looks like we are near Target in grades three through nine we are near Target with the 40 40 being the percentile the 40th percentile being like what we're kind of where we're The Benchmark I guess is that correct yes that's that's what we use is the
01040th percentile as a benchmark okay so and and so when we look at um and so we have not tested this spring or at least we don't have that data yet so our Target right now is uh so our Target for 22.23 it sure is really like 60 correct that is correct okay um and I guess um in your conversations with with um staff and assessment I can't really see who's on the panel uh because I can see your backs right now I think I can make out then and maybe Chris oh I okay I think I got you guys now what what do we attribute because you know when we back in 2021 we were at the 42nd 40 42nd percentile I mean we weren't we so in like two years we pumped up
011to 55.8 what are we attributing that to um I think one of the key factors especially looking back at the 2021 is we're coming out of a pandemic um and so that's a pretty strong variable that we don't have a lot of background information on but simultaneously um Amanda Barr is not here our math coordinator but there has been a strong push uh to really implement the curriculum with Integrity um and so I would like to contribute that however um of course I can't speak directly to that variable but I do believe the pandemic out of 2021 probably plays a factor yeah thank you for that but it does show that it's possible for us to make some games absolutely absolutely our kiddos came back to us and um you know being back in school
012having quality instruction on a consistent basis implementing the curriculum with integrity at the classroom level does make a difference I also would add um president Bellamy that in 2021 for the winter testing window there was about 8 200 kids tested yeah that was when we were online and this winter was almost 20 years almost 20 000. yeah yeah okay all right and and I just if I might miss the chair uh just a comment on the the um sixth graders in elementary school and sixth graders in Middle School um I think structurally in looking at the model of each of those it's different uh so maybe we should really I don't know that we can compare them but we certainly could separate them and look at the data that way I think we've made that
013request um earlier to just try to see because I think the Dynamics of what's happening in an Elementary classroom um not so much in the teaching of the subject but uh just the the structure of the day uh going to six different classes um as opposed to staying in one classroom where you have um you know you can you can be a lot more focused and structured and and how you are structuring that environment I think all those things go into making it a difference so I agree it's like apples and oranges I don't curriculum we had a five-year professional development plan and the math team has done a really great job making sure that that has continued and we still work side by side with curriculum Associates on i-Ready math continuously reviewing the curriculum
014and how to support they've provided professional development as um as well as our math team has gone into classrooms to do side by side coaching and demonstrate lessons for teachers to increase their capacity thank you very much moving on to member Wilson any questions at this point remember Wilson okay we'll assume that's not quite yet so we'll Circle back remember Higgins a question just just one I remember and I think it was May of 21 um when the superintendent did a presentational math and we were talking about goals and why the goal increased for math was so low relative to England relative to really and she indicated that without the increase in Reading we needed that to increase the the academic school is in math and so I guess um I know that's an issue
015of holding of kids falling back if they get heavily math there's heavy reading intensive that was an issue with everyday math at one point that was in uh 15 years ago 20 years ago almost but I guess uh is there is that an issue still that in order to get Higher Goals in math we have we are delayed at all because of the reading scores is that a fair statement does it still exist today I didn't want to make an easy question I just so so just remember Hagins to the president um I think you know when you look at like Slide Five you look at some of our population group subgroups that have more challenges with with math um and you look through their our population of students who are English language Learners generally
016have a lot larger struggle with um with our math proficiency um our students in our special education populations and then also our students that are economically disadvantaged populations so if I'm looking across population groups for commonalities and the students that struggle I'd be looking at those three groups and saying how can we do better to help improve that for all students but particularly in these three groups how can we drill in and be more specific and targeted to support students at every level um in specific with math that I think that going back to the reading those populations also have um some more struggles in in the reading program too so I think you see some commonalities across some population groups that we need to continue to focus on and I appreciate that that's a
017correlation it is just to understand but that's all this is one one had to lag the other is what the former superintendent said that we had to get the reading scores up before we could do the math and I guess is that still a valid uh issue that even the groups are lagging and reading they won't go up until they until the reading scores go up before the math can go up I would say that you you definitely need to be able to read math problems uh Mr Higgins so I don't know what the correlation specifically is but I would I would say that's probably a fair statement thank you any other follow member against okay take another member lessons moving down I got another question sure um I guess I'm hoping that you can
018help me better understand how slides four and seven play together in the sandbox uh because it we move from proficient to the AK star prediction mystery chart so could you guys just correct me Chris has been I saw that we saw that question and Chris has a response for you on that one yeah I'm gonna try not to get too far into the weeds um so um with any assessment and vendors such as nwea um which is the vendor um or author of both the map products as well as AK star from the state of Alaska um what vendors do is they they make what's called a Lincoln study and so they look at the proficiency levels in a particular and these linking studies are public if you wanted to go on their website but
019these linking studies look at the proficiency of one assessment and then they project out um a level of proficiency and so a couple of things to keep in mind is when we look at map we are looking at a tool that helps us identify risk in students and so it's not necessarily A proficiency level it's really if you will sort of in a dipstick to check on the risk level that says hey pay attention this kiddo could uh potentially have some risk characteristics and that's why we use the 40th percentile um when determining if a student may or may not need more interventions and so of course that's only one data point and so our teams through multi-tiered systems of support mtssf mtss look at other data points to help determine that and so when
020you look at proficiency levels um they are based on a set of standards and what we found um when looking at the proficiency levels on AK star and again keep in mind we've only had a AK star one year and so this is something that the state and nwea is going to have to hone year after year after year because they've they've literally just used one assessment with their initial test items but we saw in their linking study that's again public anywhere from the 55th to the 85th percentile was required on map in order to become proficient again this is you know on average if you will potentially have uh to be projected as to be proficient on AK star and so a student for example might be at the 75th percentile on map doing
021fabulous and the next time around they might be at the 73rd percent online map doing fabulous but not projected to be proficient based on that one linking study and so it's it's something that has to be dug into um in more detail um and and again I don't want to go too far because it is sort of in the weeds all right remember holloman's still doing okay over there okay thank you um we'll go back online um president Bellamy do you have another question well I'm still struggling with size seven but uh I can I'll come in and talk to you Chris I don't I still that was one of my questions but I also saw that member lessons had it so I didn't ask it a second time um and and yeah so what
022is is what is your assessment of when we moved to the Alaska star we did see a difference in our performance um do you anticipate that that is going to get better or worse I wish I had a magic book um so however you know again I would just reiterate that that was the first year they're developing their test items we saw a significant you know 10 15 20 drop around the entire State yeah every single School District what I will say is I think the state has some work to do with nwea and and sort of a lining map and AK star because for example one of you know one of the questions that came to us was what happened in ninth grade why is this massive drop happening well on the map and
023in the winter in map in order to be considered to be projected at proficient on AK star you had to score at the 85th percentile yeah so that's that's a pretty that I don't know about you but that gives me pause yeah so um again I just want to reiterate they've only done it once they're developing those test items it's an iterative process they're constantly going to be sort of honing that but it is NWA in both assessments so I would really encourage this State uh to work closely within the nwea to kind of hone that process yeah I I and I would join you in that um because this is we are judged so um we are judged based on these scores and uh there's not always a um an understanding of what the
024score what they represent I mean that that um just that change in that test uh in in the state test and it's not like we can opt out right um anyway I I appreciate it and I I don't know um I hope the state will uh refine the tools so that we get a um a realistic a more realistic reflection of what our kids know and are able to do so thank you documented president um I've been through the line twice as there are there other um initial questions before we move to higher questions remember lessons yeah um I had a question about algebra one this is on slide 10. it's it's um sort of getting to the loftier kind of goals and intentions and I I don't think it's a bad thing to say
025that all students will have access and opportunities successfully complete Algebra 1 but since it's under K-8 can you just tell me what it's doing there because I don't know that most of or like are we tracking 8th graders completing algebra one I don't believe we were actually tracking 8th graders completing algebra one um all of our middle schools do provide algebra one as an option you can go with you can go through even geometry or some schools have Algebra 2 and middle school so um as far as that being in the K-8 goal um that the access and opportunity is the piece there they do have access they do have opportunity especially once we get when we get more kids into once we move the sixth grade up to Middle School we'll have even more
026kids completing algebra one I believe in Middle School okay so it's really an intention that it should be accessible okay that's helpful remember lessons do you have any other questions before we move on to how questions if anyone has one no right I'll wait okay all right we'll go through one more time making sure um president Bellamy any other questions before we move on to how questions and our technical report no I I I'll wait okay all right looking through I don't see anyone else so then we'll transition briefly to how questions or see if we have how questions that are outstanding before we move on to our technical reports um we'll start with the member Higgins anything no okay remember Donnelly anything okay uh member lessons anyhow questions specifically I'll try to use the
027word how in the question um does the fy24 budget we recently passed provide all of the necessary resources ASD would need to move 40 plus schools measuring its below Target to near Target for math proficiency during the 2324 school year and if so how um if not what additional resources would we need to move the needle so member lessons I'll I'll tell you we we got that question a number of days ago and none of us added anything underneath that or an answer but I'll give my best shot um every single day our teachers are doing their best to try to move that needle with everyone of our kids and both reading and math many many many well are doing amazing work in those classrooms with those kids and as far as do we have
028enough money we just because our budget is something or another we aren't going to change what we do we're still going to teach those kids math and and our teacher experts are working hard or curriculum departments working hard to make sure that we're trying to make those you know we we have the same budget probably for next year as we do for this current year and you saw that many of our school students are near Target right so we're I believe that we are able to move forward of course if there's extra money that we can add into more uh tier two and and tier three services that we would definitely do so um and I think that that would help more kids make further growth but as far as do we have enough money
029if that's a hard question to answer because we're going to try our hardest to do everything for him and if I could just chime in um member lessons so just a statistic for you ASCA recently did a study as to Alaska funding I believe we um fund schools 10 percent below the national average amongst their peers in the lower 48 um that's astonishing um one thing you'll notice in our staffing models there's a PTR difference between middle schools and elementary schools if there were more resources we may be able to equalize that across Elementary and secondary and then third there are a lot of evidence-based practices that we simply can't Implement largely due to funding also Staffing but largely funding such as small group tutoring or more paraprofessionals in our classroom so there's a lot
030that we could do if there are more resources remember lessons follow up I appreciate um the comments and I guess I do have a follow-up comment I remember when we adopted this particular goal uh for a 55 proficiency and um I cried and I didn't think I required upon adopting a goal and the question was um why why do they cry and and I asked Dr Bishop at the time you know why can't that be a higher goal and she said because we don't have the resources because we're focusing our resources on reading so I really do see this as a limited resource um she would say the pie is the pi is the pie and um Dr Brian I appreciate your your comments and I hope that there are people listening who understand that
031if there are additional resources we have the talent we can move the needle but we don't have the people [Music] thank you member lessons uh member Holloman any Howell questions or a question you can work out into okay I'm thinking that's no um we'll go online to president Bellamy sure I just have on page 10 um under instructional Focus K-8 I I just would like for Diane uh Dr uh Beltran to talk a little bit about the support the how are we being inclusive with our practices uh you know we just talked about the struggles and challenges of our ethnic students and so what does that look like in classrooms uh I I know mtss helps a lot with that but what does what how are those practices um what are they and how are
032they included in the instruction of of math thank you you're right so mtss is the main thing right and yeah so um we continue to do work in that area we've been working with curriculum Associates to identify um interventions that can be used in the price in the elementary level and progress monitoring tools so that we can continue to monitor growth um we have and they are working with us we work uh curriculum Associates works really closely with us to support all our needs and all we have to do is say this is where we're struggling how can you help us in terms of the secondary level we've been working with secondary to look at what inclusive practices looks like in a math classroom combining supports with kids who have IEPs and working in what
033we call a general Ed classroom and so just always keeping that in our mind that we're educating all students not just at the tier one intervention we want to make sure our tier one support are strong but we're also constantly reviewing and looking at how we can support at the tier two and tier three levels thank you no problem no I'm good thank you I appreciate that though because it you know when [Music] those things don't just happen uh but it's on our it's it's one of our primary instructional focus and I think that um just just making sure that we voice what we are doing and what that looks like um would help um you know not just us understand but those who are watching and listening to understand that it's not just a
034matter of just everybody getting the same thing our kids all need something different no matter what it is we're teaching and we have to find a way to do it so thank you for that if I can then add to that because we always say ncss but for uh everybody that's listening to wait MTS this is our multi-tiered systems of support how do we support it at all levels exactly thank you okay um you move back through member lessons do you have another how question uh member Holloman still doing okay all right and looking back over this way not seeing any other questions I mean any other questions online before we move to our technical report I'm good thank you okay thank you team yeah thank you team for the presentation my understanding is uh
035Mr Gustafson you're going to handle the technical report yes is there anything you want to say Dr Brian before I go into this or I just wanted to say coincidentally uh I'm in Nashville with other Anchorage Community leaders uh with member Wilson to see strong examples of CCL work um so we're excited to share this technical report um related to our CCL goal specifically on AP course completion and financial literacy so spend will cover for me uh for religious school purposes so we will first look at the AP Corps completion rate it's an indicator the first page of course is the goal and I am I we have tbas um in there I believe that in June when we have a retreat we'll be working on that goal and um or you will be working
036on that goal so that first page is about the goal um slide three is the trend data around the completion rate of Ip course AP courses and then the completion rate of AP courses by grade level is uh slide four um when you turn over to slide five that is an ethnicity and student interest group report of AP courses taken um and you'll you'll see the results from that and then moving down is our chart on moving into the Strategic plan um for AP course completion rate and the next steps that we'll we're looking at and then of course when you turn the page to the final Pages we're looking at um the action steps and uh where we're heading um for the AP course completion rate one thing I I would mention on this
037just uh you know this is AP course and I think that one of the things as we move forward into June is we need to also be looking at ipib courses into this because there's at least one particular school I'm kind of close to that most kids take IB courses and it does have the same type of data that we need to probably include in that moving over to the interim goal on financial literacy um the interim goal if if you look we um down under interim goal we still have tdas on there and that's because we are developing and we are piloting the financial literacy courses right now so that will all change when we revisit our goals um turning the page to the um three our Baseline is zero percent for financial literacy
038because we are working um right now and the action steps are actually slides four and five of what we're working on now to actually Implement financial literacy entire econ courses um over this year with the pilot and then moving forward for the next two years and then there's also a financial literacy timeline that kind of goes through what's happening um that we're working on and that is uh slide six so we look forward to talking with you about these things at our next board meeting okay um we'll jump to any questions on the technical reports um knowing that we'll be reviewing this in full at our next meeting hearing and singing I did have a brief one um I'm planning on visiting Eagle River High School which I understand is part of the pilot um
039I've spoken with a couple legislators who were really interested in the work we're doing and kind of leading the the way for incorporating financial literacy curriculum there's some interest in a a bill which will um make that a graduation requirement in Alaska I was curious if there's anything that can be shared ahead of our monitoring session regarding what the curriculum might look like what students are actually getting as part of the coursework you know what I am not prepared with that and Dr Johnson is actually in Nashville with Dr Bryant so to answer that question I I would have to go to her and I can put it into a board connect item yeah the bigger the goal was to have it in front of the board before our monitoring session next meeting yep perfect
040yeah we'll have that for sure great seeing no other questions um thank you member lesson sorry this is sort of formulating um I appreciate this update and I'm curious about whether you know what financial literacy opportunities do students have even in middle school I know that part of this on Slide Five suggests that we're going to partner with Junior Achievement which is great um I just wondering if there are you know courses like um I would call it home economics does that incorporate or whatever the appropriate name is um does that incorporate financial literacy at a middle school at a younger age are they young are there opportunities there's just a handful of family consumer science um programs now across our district but you know when they're talking about menus of budgeting and that kind
041of stuff they do talk about costs and and and that kind of thing um it isn't considered a financial literacy um but we are looking at especially with Jas doing things down to sixth grade in financial great question and thank you Mr Gustin see another question uh moving on next up is public comments read our introduction then we'll get started welcome to the school board's first opportunity of the evening for public comment the board is set aside a one-hour time slot at the beginning of our meeting for public comments public comments in excess of one hour will be heard at the second opportunity for public comments at the end of our meeting or comments may always be submitted in writing during public comments board members will not answer questions or engage in discussion with members
042of the public this is the Public's time to speak in the board's time to listen the school board welcomes the public to observe or contribute to our meetings through their comments however to be productive our meetings must be structured in 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 public to be civil and respectful of each other's opinions and statements here are a few of the requirements under Robert's Rules do not attack a member or speaker's motives no profanity or foul language refrain from disturbing the meeting no cheering Applause outbursts or waving of signs or posters if you have handouts that you wish to share with the board please give them to Amanda
043Foster who is seated to my left as the president sorry member president as the chair of this meeting it is my duty to enforce these Rules of Civility and decorum as such and consistent with Robert's Rules of Order I have the authority to speak any speaker out of order uh for violation of these rules or failure to conduct themselves in the Civil manner additional details and information can be found at the handout located at the door regarding audience participation and rules of the boardroom so we do have a few student speakers tonight the first in-person Kiana drexich dressel welcome your mic is on you have three minutes my time in ASD has not been that different nor has it had much similarity to analysis my individual experience started way back when in kindergarten I was
044always the last person to finish my work without or throughout Elementary School I was consistently told that I wasn't working hard enough or that I was a problem which takes a toll on a little child finally in fourth grade my teacher noticed this and didn't blame me for it rather she went the extra mile to bring her concerns to my parents attention soon after I was diagnosed with ADHD my new diagnosis was not an immediate fix I was still slow as slow as ever and my comprehension skills were mediocre at best I was afraid to be honest with my teachers due to my fear of being seen as stupid for needing more help I was lost with how to really help myself I also struggled with attendance during seventh grade I missed 42 days I
045rationalized it by telling myself at least they can't hold me back because of that every student succeeds act attendance didn't or my attendance did not improve much in eighth or ninth grade as I continued to struggle I was sent to the counselor for self-harm during our meeting whether or not I was using a rusty blade took priority over the active self-harm itself the entire conversation took less than five minutes it felt rushed like I was just another student she didn't really show any empathy or emotion after the stress of ninth grade I wanted to be homeschooled the next year that year I basically dropped out I had no motivation no sense of responsibility and no accountability my mom gave me the ultimatum to go to save I was really against it I thought it was
046just a school for kids who got kicked out of public school or those who really didn't care about school to begin with as I started going there I just realized just how diverse yet similar everyone was and that there was no social hierarchy no popular kids and no bad kids I've spent too many years being too afraid to communicate my needs believing they would be dismissed it's hard to stand up for yourself that's why I'm here today being at save was a big turning point for me all of us wanted each other and ourselves to succeed to graduate attending safe has had a huge impact on my Outlook on school and how I thought I just wasn't made out for it when the teachers here ask how you are they actually care about your reply
047there are so many support systems and ways to help you succeed rather than only creating a fear of failure everyone has their own work pacing system instead of feeling like a burden or scared I am able to have a direct line of communication to all my teachers without fear of judgment you can show how much work you're turning in and getting so while there is a drive to graduate you're not just turning in work so you don't fail because there's no penalty for what for late work it's all driven on you wanting to graduate and the teachers care immensely about helping you get there save his Focus on 30 seconds okay save is focused on how much you can do not how much you can't or have it it's an incredible flip from feeling like
048you're never good enough or not trying hard enough in school all the teachers have created a caring environment that I fear on moving next year fear moving on next year with one less teacher will disrupt the incredible ecosystem that is safe every teacher has their place in everyone's school life here these teachers truly matter to all of us thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Ivy Walker I also have some letters that are from safe students thank you all right next up is Ivy Walker let's walk your microphone is on you have three minutes welcome hello my name is Ivy Walker I've been attending save for the past six months as a senior save has become a second home to me my teachers have done nothing but bring Serenity and peace to my
049school days the days no longer feel as Dreadful and agonizing compared to my old schools the DJI currently have they all take my education and success more seriously than any other Staffing I've encountered throughout my high school experience the entirety of our program at save is based on individual individualized learning so we can all reach our success at the rate comfortable for us on top of that no matter what all of our staffing are there for our students whether it's for a hand of comfort or word of insight compared to online based schooling especially from a student's point of view you can see the many academic differences I attended online schooling for the majority of my high school experience both through Apex and online based school I could never seem to pursue at times let
050alone receive the help I needed got certain assignments and subjects yet it's saved I've never ran into this problem but with the loss of just a singular teacher it would simply destroy the structure and reasoning of our program our student-to-teacher ratio would go up causing our class size to increase heavily taking out of our one-to-one time with our teachers so why put us in fear when we're only a family here so help us save our school our next speaker is Jonah Reeves [Music] welcome Mr Reeve your microphone is on you have three minutes okay hello my name is Jonah Revere thank you to those who took time out of their day to hear me speak today my mother is gracious I don't know my father's name or what he looks like I represent Ana the
051Baskin you pick Eskimo Northern Cheyenne Arapahoe Mexican and the Italians because of my parents I'm a senior at safe high school and I've attended safe high school for two years now I chose to speak about the let off of Miss Williams the science teacher who comes to mind in this circumstance are questions as a as a junior I was out of state for school at chimawa High School this was right after the covet epidemic had hit and online learning was new I had a problem with my attendance at school but the work ethic was there this problem caused me to drop out of school get dropped out of school in Search and in search of a way back into school I had picked up a job at a local Joanne's Fabric Store in the coming
052weeks my mother suggested that I just not get my high school diploma and instead help out around the house to which I responded in a very Stern and passionate tone a voice as I had started to cry why would you say such a thing do you want me to become a become just like my dad as your oldest child do you want me to be an example to my brothers as a dropout I mentioned this because it leads to the topic of perseverance the large-scale school chmawa was unable to see how much effort I had put into getting back into school adding adding to that while employee at Joann's Fabric Store there were also aspects in which my work did not show to my employer Illuminating that I know how it feels when work does
053not get represented to anybody in this regard we can see that this may be the type of Burden we may be allowing our school students to feel after the let off of Miss Williams Because other staff will have to fill in for her for the science position consequently leaving students with less structured education one reason I came to save high school was because I came from a small village and I'm used to having more tutoring time with teachers fewer students or fewer teachers give students fewer opportunities the sense of equality from everyone being at safe high school for credit recovery contributes to the sense of comfort as there's no competition or the idea that one student is better than another teachers organize and structure our education based based on our individualized garden graduation needs does
054ASD expect students to pick up these tasks thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Josiah Looper welcome Mr Olympia microphone's on you have three minutes hello my name is Josiah Looper I came from I go to Safe high and I used to go to Service uh if I'm if I had to compare the two I would say they are drastically different service I didn't feel such a personal you know in-person connection with my teachers as I do want to save as save I feel like I can talk to my teachers about how I'm doing with my grades and how they are and at service I felt like all the teachers cared about was if I turned in my work and if not then I would get in trouble for it and one thing
055I like about save is how the teachers they're very real they keep it they keep it real and I like that because it makes me feel like they actually care and I just I have a good time to say it feels like a second home to me uh as service I just didn't I didn't uh I didn't feel welcome there I felt like I had to worry about what I had to wear or anything like that if someone's gonna talk about me or if someone was gonna you know try to do something to me even though that doesn't matter um that save it feels like everyone's on the same path they just want to graduate and cutting or science teacher that we have now would hurt the students because [Music] um because then it would
056have to make our Apex teacher and our gym teacher he's he's the same teacher it would make him have to go teach a science class and that would that would hurt the students because Apex is a good way for most students to get credits that they don't have and that they need to graduate I know I know a couple of seniors that are taking Apex class right now and if you guys were to take away our science teacher then it would hurt our students and prolonged and graduating opposed to keeping the teacher there you know um that's all I have thank you very much our next speaker is Xavier McConnell Xavier mcconnelly oh okay move on to Andrew Conley seeing Andrew okay uh Brian sampang welcome your microphone is on you have three minutes when
057you're ready little anchor School District board my name is Brian Zam Pang and I'm a student from State High School I've come here to talk about how safe high school has given its students another chance of succeeding and how it's different from our home schools I chose to come to save high school because of the lack of Education that was provided to me I moved to Alaska from the Philippines in 2016 when I was 10 years old I had less time learning and understanding the work that was given to me and was getting thrown homework after homework without getting a lot of explanation about the work before shooting switching to save mostly half of my classes were online on campus which had the lack of interaction with that students face to face nevertheless uh less
058explanation was given to us by teachers it would be really bad for our school to lose another teacher as teachers would have less time to get to know and help students and have less time understanding how their students learn and making it hard for us to get help in my point of view teachers that save have helped us more than the teachers at our homeschool I'm not saying our homeschool teachers are bad it's just that some of us come from other countries without knowing the background of this country and would have a really really hard time learning the history in just a short amount of time I started with nine credits in August of 2022 now that we're in March of 2023 I've accumulated about seven and a half credits in just short amount of
059time after switching from service High School to save High School I feel more supported to go to save because of how they're they have a good relationship with the students and actually help us to understand about the work they give us in addition I have about going to work five days a week and going to school and still have time to get work done with the help of safe High School teachers that's all right thank you very much next up is Paulie and Les Landers welcome your microphone is on you have to announce good evening I began attending State High School in January of 2022. I went from being a dual enrolled student taking seven classes to going to school for three hours a day on top of working virtual learning had not been so
060easy for me and after two years I was dropped from school I'd predominantly been going to this sent me into a downward spiral of not only what am I going to do now if I will not be able to graduate but also how am I going to tell my parents that I failed after my interview that first day of school on the dry snowy Tuesday gave me a sign of relief I finally felt wanted like my opinion mattered at a school I was no longer just a member on a paper safe high school has given me the opportunity to regain my interest in learning and was quite literally saved my education if you were to take a teaching position away at this already starting to grad school things would fall apart each classroom in the
061school is by about 24 to 30 feet within each classroom you can comfortably see 15 to 20 students at Max this doesn't mean you'll be able to talk to your teacher during that class period you're relying on our teachers to do the absolute most that they can do for each student the most incredible thing about save in my opinion is the relationships that you form here this is one way you can deferest from other schools here you can freely talk to your teachers about anything you can't save our truly a family surrounding education and continue to support each other towards graduation goals and emotions if you're as a board were to take away a position from safe we'd be forced to stack even more students in each of these classrooms taking away these close relationships
062and bonds made between students and the teachers thank you for your time and listening to my story and feelings of the small school tendencies that truly save students daily thank you for your Festival next up is uviana visionaro and Maria Boucher welcome your microphone is on you have three minutes good evening hi my name is iviana behrano I'm a student at safe high school and someone who's vegan impacted by this new decision made by the school board to elicitate I'm a student of the teacher being cut I'm fairly new that Mrs Williams has already made a difference in my life she's made a difference in a lot of people's lives has had many teachers at the school saves modern saves mottos we care and they do it's what makes saves so different from other schools
063each teacher forms a special bond with each individual's student we don't feel like just numbers on a paper but actual human beings these special bonds make us feel more inclined to work because after becoming so close to these teachers you really want to make them proud because they really want to seek succeed and it sucks disappointing someone you care about going back to their motto We Care I want to highlight another big thing at the school which is the receptiveness to the mental health of students as much as they want you to work as hard as you can they also want you to be okay they also want to see you succeed in life not just in school the teachers here at safe care about you as a whole and they want to see you
064bloom and students got really used to this kind of treatment from teachers respond well to it I've seen kids who have always had a heart doing opening up crying to teachers I've seen teachers who notice a student struggling and offer their private office for them to rest in if they ever need to this builds up so much trust in the teachers from the students that they feel like they can rely on their educators you'll see the students finding comfort in certain teachers and labeling them as a safe person you'll see that they work best at these teachers as they want this person who has become important to them to be proud Mrs Williams is that person to a lot of students she's that for me she's become someone I can confide in and find comfort
065in which is something I never thought I would have in high school so you can imagine my shock and the Heartbreak I felt when I found out she was being cut I believe it's going to be a big negative impact on the students and the school as it is already small in need of more teachers rather than fewer ones less teachers less individualism then say loses what makes it so great this decision this decision would deputize a lot of students and possibly the entire school and as a student at this high school at sporting I don't want my high school experience to be even harder than it already is and none of us do so we're really asking you to please reconsider this decision so [Music] all right we'll move on to Wyatt Gage welcome
066your microphone is on you know three minutes whenever you're ready hello my name is Wyatt Gage I've been enrolled in the Anchorage School District since kindergarten at Gladys Wood Elementary I was placed in a gifted program and was in classes with kids a grade higher that school came easy to me however this didn't last long at Mears Middle School my grades started to slip not because I didn't know the material but due to a lack of interest and motivation the majority of my teachers never made learning fun and it seemed as if they didn't even care I just felt like a number in the system one zero one six one five zero this only got worse as time went on at diamond high school I remember most days feeling like a mandatory waste of time
067rather than an opportunity to learn it felt so standardized and systematic my teachers didn't care that I wasn't turning in work one zero one six one five zero was just one of those kids after my freshman sophomore and half of my junior year at Diamond I should have had around 15 credits I had a I heard about save from a friend I applied got an interview and I was accepted save as a vocational school that school that focuses on credit recovery for students who are behind since starting at save last February I've earned 12 credits saved for me from one of those kids into a straight A student averaging a credit every 1.3 months I'm in school that's 468 the amount I was doing at Diamond needless to say save as an amazing school and
068I think more schools should be like it the engine that keeps save running is the staff that go above and beyond to help kids like me and when I say above and beyond I mean it save is already severely understaffed we only have one science one social studies and one math teacher working double time to keep kids on track the work that students do it saves individualized based on their interests and strengths meaning that teachers both produce and grade different work for each and every student that means teachers at safe have a lot of work to do as it is but they do even more work since there are less of them but the same amount of students we can't afford to lose any more staff especially Miss Williams the school's only science teacher and
069my sponsor teacher without her I wouldn't be nearly as close to graduating as I am she's been pushing me towards my graduation goal from the start and allowed me to study and report on science related projects that I'm actually interested in and care about she even went out of her way to buy me apple juice and keep it in her room in case my blood sugar goes low as I'm a type 1 diabetic this woman is exactly the kind of person you want in a classroom and her passion for teaching and the kids themselves is best put to use that save save is important to the school district as an opportunity for kids who have fallen behind continuing to cut teachers is going to make it impossible to do what they do I'm not sure
070where Miss Williams would go and what problems that might fix but I do know that if teachers keep getting taken from safe it will no longer be an option for hundreds of kids like me to receive their high school diploma thank you for your time and consideration I hope you make the right decision thank you our next speaker is Bridget kensh all right Bridget online hello can you hear us yes loud and clear your um three minutes Story Elementary I've been going to Denali since kindergarten I love cannoli how it is right now two things I like about finale are as follows I liked my classes I like quiet yesterday I performed for the school the teacher Miss Jill is great great because he wears the helpful things like fractions originally can say the same
071size and for other kids to be able to go to my awesome school because I want other kids to have the same great experience as me I also want to let other kids experience the feel of an average sized classroom finally I would be sad if one of the teachers left because I like all of denali's teachers thank you for listening thank you for your testimony [Music] thank you all right our next speaker is Izzy Williams [Music] it's your three minutes and your microphone is on begin when you're ready good evening board members My Name is Izzy Williams and like many of my friends here tonight I'm the C here at save High School back in 2021 I was told that my expected expected graduation year was either 2024 or 2025 as I was missing
072a lot of credits well I don't know how many credits I entered stay with I do know now that I've gained enough to where I'm going to be graduating early without save I would not be the person who I am today saves the motto is that we care and we always keep it classy and I think everyone is safe Embraces that in their own different ways I love save I am just one of the countless success stories from State High School this school has made so many others like myself feel so accomplished cared and encouraged when I was at my former School Diamond I felt that I felt like my voice was hidden and because of that I was shy and afraid to speak out now it's safe I say the announcements every day and
073part of the prom committee and I feel like voice matters more than ever it is because of save that I'm here today speaking one of the things I've noticed more this year is that the classes have gotten larger and larger every month every time I go to my class there are less places to sit and less one-on-one time with my teacher so to hear that we have lost a position here is absolutely heartbreaking the staff here put so much effort into making sure every student succeeds and that their true potential is shown and with the student staff ratio increasing I'm concerned that the peers will not get as much quality as as with the with the staff as I have I strongly urge you to reconsider taking away one of our devoted teachers we need
074it too much thank you testimony and our next speaker is Jesse Solway I just want to give a shout out to our amazing students today um they um they really showed up my name is Jesse Solway I'm the only math teacher at save High a school that currently has 176 students enrolled teachers as you've heard wear many many hats here in this in our building in addition to providing individualized curriculum to every single student we are also part-time nurses counselors social workers and stand-in parents to the young adults that attend save the students who come to save from comprehensive high schools and other programs all have one thing in common they are drastically behind in their High School Credit in addition to this academic deficit they arrive at our doors traumatized anxious lacking in confidence
075distrustful in adults and often battling mental health issues or recovering from family tragedies because students are coming in with such a variety of barriers to learning teachers take the time to individualize instruction for every single student for example as a math teacher I teach all levels of math from basic basic math skills all the way up to Algebra 2 and this is completely determined by student need as an alternative program it is our sacred job and privilege to teach our students and their families to trust in education and learning again not all of these students end up graduating I'll be honest they don't but every single one of our students leave safe knowing that there are adults here who care deeply about them I've been at saved for 20 years we have lost five ftes
076in five years that is five less adults who are able to do the crucial job of getting kids to care about bettering themselves and becoming productive members of our community we are set to lose one more FTE this year as you've heard it is becoming increasingly obvious that the students we serve are not being prioritized in this District as a teacher on a shrinking staff it is becoming harder to deliver the individualized curriculum and personalized care that these students deserve please reconsider the value that save High provides to the community in the district I invite you all to visit walk into our classrooms and witness the learning and growth that's happening on the daily come to our graduation it's 4 P.M on May 15th at the Performing Arts Center talk to our students please come
077visit and better yet speak to our students before making another cut to our program thank you our next speaker is Caitlin Poindexter well come here three minutes can begin whenever you're ready good evening my name is Caitlin Poindexter and I am a parent of twin twin daughters who are in first grade at Denali Montessori and I attended an emergency PTSA meeting last Wednesday where I was informed our principal has been told she needs to cut a teacher from our staff of 15 to 14. and that it's she has to make a building level decision about it but she wasn't told anything except for this is what you have to do I didn't I haven't seen any school board members I respect all of you I've read your bios I've looked at your histories Mr Higgins
078I know your children attended Denali Montessori I know yes three children um and I know that um you have done a lot of intricate work there I know that you understand how detrimental that would be to a Montessori School because our grade levels are very interconnected right or my daughters are in a first second and third grade classroom part of the reason why I lotteried for Denali Montessori was because I was excited to get to build relationships with their teachers and have my daughters not have to go through so many transitions you know each year and that kind of thing and and to get to be the teachers Montessori method is the whole thing I could talk for a lot longer than three minutes um so I'm begging you um to come in and visit
079with us and then talk to the other school board members and you know explain because it's different um just like I'm hearing save is different and I the other thing that I beg of you because you were in the positions of power is not to punish us for being such an amazing community and having such incredible teachers and having such passion my daughter's malga look who that is you pick for Grandma came into their school a couple weeks ago when she came to visit and I said what did you think like when you came in and she said it's so welcoming and everybody was so happy and that students were so excited to learn we used every square inch of that building right students are on the floors learning they're in the hallways like it
080is a lively Active Learning Community and everybody's working hard and we care about each other we have retired teachers coming in and fighting right that tells you something right they're still coming back because they care so I'm begging you to not treat this as a one-size-fits-all solution it's not appropriate to cut a teacher from our school you will kill our community thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Eva Gardner welcome your three months gonna begin whenever you're ready thank you I'm shorter they're our last speaker um school board members thank you for being here tonight thank you for your service and thank you for hearing from us I am also here to testify about Denali Montessori I'm the parent of a kindergartner so I am just a few months into my ASD experience
081and we love the school we are thrilled and we were crushed last week to learn that our school is losing a teacher there were no answers provided initially it took a lot of digging and a lot of emailing and a lot of calling to get anyone to explain to us why the chief why the cut happened but when we learned more we thought we all needed to show up here and tell you about it and I don't know if you can tell but there are a lot of Denali community members in this audience and everyone could raise your hands they're kind of in the back but we have shown up in force as well as we can with children at home um so I understand that you have a butter crunch and that you raised
082your people teacher ratio because you don't have more funding from the state and that led to a lot of hard decisions but keeping Denali police staff shouldn't be a hard decision I'll explain why first it's a school that uniquely meets your goals as a board it has over 60 percent of its students qualifying for for your reduced meals its diversity mirrors that of the district as a whole and it is actually accessible to people it has multiple before and after care options so that are need-based so that parents can actually work a full work day second Denali is an alternative school and that means that you have to let it be itself it's a Montessori school if you just heard testimony about the unique way that we that we use our building that we use
083our staff that we use our teachers the age banding of our grades that makes it really hard to just Shuffle kids around and to adjust class sizes our teachers also go through the equivalent of a master's degree in Montessori certification uh the PTSA funds that or subsidizes it the PTSA also pays for Unique specialized Montessori materials in our classroom so cutting shrinking us cutting a teacher from us shrinking our school is a bad deal for you you are losing a community that helps to pay for itself that helps make itself unique and third my main focus here with my remaining minute is that I've been doing my homework on this cut I've spent a lot of time making Elementary Ed talk to me having your CFO very kindly take a long phone call where I
084asked a lot of questions and politely argued with him uh and I learned that the productive projections that were used to make our staffing cut they projected enrollment based on demographic information from a one-size-fits-all model that doesn't take into account any of our unique factors typically the Staffing the project enrollment is based on the assumption that if we gain a student somebody else loses a student that's not true at Denali we pull students in from outside the ASD system you're going to be receiving written testimony from a parent who brought eight or eight children back into ASD this year for the Denali program we pull students from non-asd Montessori programs as well so we have the ability to grow the district if you will let us so please take that into account don't cut our
085teacher Telemetry had to give us a little bit longer to fill our school and we will fill our school and I guarantee we're all emailing our legislators at the same time as we are here thank you thank you [Music] our next speaker is Leslie Anders [Music] thank you Miss Andrews we'll move on to Paula Davis welcome your three notes can begin whenever you're ready okay you're welcome to sing um thank you members of the board for all your hard work and for taking testimony my name is Paula Davis I'm a Community member I'm a retired Montessori certified kindergarten teacher at Denali Montessori I'm on this Montessori School how it would impact Denali Montessori which uniquely groups first and third through third and fourth through six students with a separate kindergarten the loss of a teacher
086and also sixth grade may have a devastating impact on the program itself and that here's some reasons why um and it's been mentioned before in addition to State teaching certification Montessori teachers need to on their own get additional Montessori certification for specific age groups for examples I I have a master's degree in teaching but I had to get a pre-primary certification actually I got that one first but I was trained for the preschool kindergarten children but I don't know the curriculum of the older kids and the specific lessons for the first through third and the fourth through sixth graders and the teachers in sixth grade that are here would have to be retrained to teach kindergarten Denali Montessori School tries to raise the money to train the teachers for specific levels but it takes time
087um and there's also a three-year cycle Montessori teachers have a three-year curriculum that they teach so they stay with the same students for three years and really get to individually know that child as and teach on an individual letter level as that child progresses [Music] um and it's three years before it's repeated again if you start moving teachers and students around or trying to put through third or fourth grade or kindergarten to First together the students the flow of learning is impacted and gaps occur sequential learning is really important in Montessori so lessons are specific to Montessori materials which I brought one of today this is a trinomial Cube those of you taking algebra and save probably no the equation that goes with it in kindergarten we introduced this as a puzzle it's 27 pieces
088and I'd challenge any of you to put it together without a lesson um and but in the upper grades and some of our upper grade teachers could enter talk to this it's a Hands-On algebra lessons and here's the equation that goes with it I don't know it very well because I've just learned it once um and I haven't gone back to it in a while um but when the sixth grader gets to it they have a really strong advantage and understanding and retaining the algebraic formula because they've had that before so in summary because of the need properties of Montessori education I feel a teacher reduction Davis your your time is up but I thank you for your comments you can submit any additional comments in writing to the board okay thanks [Music] our next
089speaker is welcome your three minutes can begin whenever you're ready thank you good evening I would like to express my gratitude for following me and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the students at safe High School my name is minu minai I'm a retired teacher of 33 years from English school district currently serving as the president of bridge Builders of Anchorage and a member of me Tech Bridge Builders of Anchorage is a business partner that's safe high school and we engage with both students and staff members where we can help my lifelong commitment to advocating for students learning within the English school district has led me to substitute at safe high school at my retirement days I firmly believe that every student in our community deserve the chance to reach their maximum potential
090except especially these students that we are sitting in this room there are several points that I believe you should consider the proof budget is going to impact education across the board which makes near impossible for the board to fulfill its own State stated mission and goals save is a credit recovery school focus on raw power prevention and helping the students obtain their high school diploma saves program strives to meet the board's goal by developing individual learning plans for each student to ensure academic success seventy percent of saves population qualifies for free lunch or reduced lunch AC is data dashboard shows that a 176 students enrolled 127 or for are from economically disadvantaged homes on average over 300 students enrolled at save throughout the school year you must consider that your budget reduction to save High
091School eliminates staff and directly directly impacts these students which is clearly counters to your mission and goal statements lastly in conclusion I would like to ask each one of you how many of you have stepped into safe High School have you guys seen what is going on at that school I really encourage you guys before you run for another re-election you would step into the school and see the wonderful programs that is running at that school there are wonderful people working hard so eliminate thank you thank you for Testimony our next speaker is Julie kench good evening members of the school board my name is Julie kench I'm the president of the Denali Montessori PTSA and the mother of a fifth grader whom you heard earlier this evening on the phone and a second grader
092at the school and I realized that Anchorage School Board is facing difficult decisions to accommodate our budget deficit and we are doing what we can to advocate for our legislature legislators to increase the base student allocation at the same time I urge you to postpone cutting a teacher from Denali Montessori I would argue that teachers are never interchangeable but there are several aspects of Denali montessori's unique alternative program that make this especially true for us the Montessori model involves multi-age classrooms where students send first through third grade and fourth through sixth grade continue with a single teacher for three years this model allows students to develop both academic skills and Leadership qualities as they gain experience in their classroom and cutting a teacher before Denali is able to meet the target student the target pupil
093teacher ratio through new enrollment unnecessarily disrupts those learning relationships secondly even though over 60 percent of our Denali population qualifies for free or reduced lunch our families and community and business partners have been very successful at supporting our Montessori curriculum which is expensive through fundraising our PTSA is committed to reimbursing each of our new teachers and we have seven this year up to three thousand dollars for their Montessori certification in addition in recent recent years we've allocated over four thousand dollars on top of that for our teachers continuing education if we lose a teacher we lose not only that valuable relationship but also the money that we've spent on there um you know subsidizing their education and finally one of this District's strengths is its commitment to offer choices in education to families Denali Montessori
094is a thriving School of Choice not only to our Lottery students but also to our neighborhood students we offer the child-centered research driven Montessori curriculum which has enjoyed success in educating for children for over 100 years our student population mirrors the ASD population and economic and ethnic diversity and we serve over 60 percent non-white students the three-year age bands respond to students developmental needs and the established student-teacher relationship that Fosters a powerful underpinning for social emotional learning so as you consider the district staffing needs this year I urge you to remember that schools like Denali are a valuable asset to the district and its mission to educate all of our students thank you thank you [Music] our next speaker is Robin peckwell and not seeing Robin will move on to Gavin kench Robin just a
095minute to get ready to justify welcome your three minutes can begin when you're ready good evening my name is Robin bakral I'm a 40-year teacher veteran and I have a master's in curriculum and instruction and I hold a special ed endorsement I refer you to Alaska state law 14.03 sorry section 14.03.016 entitled a parent's right to direct the education of the of the parents child a parent is defined by law As Natural or adoptive or legal guardian a local school board shell in consultation with parents teachers and school administrators adopt policies to promote the involvement of parents in the school district's education program because of time constraints I'm going to summarize some of those points parents one parents can object to and withdraw a child from a class activity or program two a parent must
096be notified at least two weeks before any class activity or program involving human reproduction or sexual matters three a parent must be provided with the opportunity to review the content of an activity class performance standard or program because this is abbreviated the full statute should be read by all question are the teachers who plan to use George Melissa or similar providing parents the opportunity to review the content performance standards and program I maintain that a well-written book with a good curricular reason to be studied with solid materials and content would be a joy to share with parents however a book that sexualizes students starting at age 10 would not be a joy to many parents a book whose Central character lies to his mom lies to his teacher subverts a long-standing school tradition because he
097is selfish and not admirable might be a Grade School principles nightmare when challenged by a concerned parent the challenged book committee reports that there are only a few mentions of child hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery but that's the direction of the book they dismissed the reference to a scissor gesture to the groin because it's not by the main character they maintain however such an action is consistent with a young person grappling with a complex topic and a realistic portrayal of sibling Dynamics really shouldn't the serious matters that this book portends to be private and addressed by a professional I'm wondering if schools need to identify the language spoken at home and ask that teachers get translations for the parents in accordance with the law kids we all know are impulsive and very open to
098suggestion Ms Pickrell thank you for your testimony our next speaker is ginger Jackson in person welcome your microphone is on you can begin your three minutes when you're ready I've been an English teacher at save high school for 10 years although my time is relatively short I've noticed there is a discrepancy in what save is all about and what the community and maybe even you think save is all about I hope that our testimonies tonight help set that record straight save high schools a credit recovery school there's a myriad of reasons why students find themselves behind in credit illness death in the family unstable housing mental health concerns unique learning styles needing to have a job and of course remote learning during covets set many students back regardless of why students are behind in credit
099it's our it's not our job to judge it's our job to care for and educate over the past few years the district has committed quite a bit of resources towards curriculum capturing kids Hearts but the reality is is that teachers don't need a manual of activities to learn how to capture a kid's heart they need time and opportunity at save we do this by working to build genuine relationships with our students you've heard our motto several times tonight and we take pride in it because of safe High School We Care in the last five years save has lost five full-time teaching positions one counselor position and half of a school nurse I understand their budgets to balance but I believe there's a flaw in how funding is determined for alternative schools our funding cannot be
100determined based on a single day's enrollment it's important to remember that students are always joining and exiting our school throughout the year we support an average of 300 students however that's not what's on our count date often the big schools refer quite a few students after that count date we invest a lot of time into each student that walks through the door whether they're there for a season or until graduation just like Miss always said earlier every teacher at save teaches every class within their content area each student comes with different holes to fill in their transcript and we individualize their coursework to meet their credit needs along with their learning needs with only one counselor who is also the job coordinator teachers at say leave have to deal with a lot of um graduation
101planning and other credit advisory tasks believe me I'm not complaining about my job as a teacher at safe high school I love it I love helping students reach their potential in the classroom I love helping students reach their goal of graduation and I love helping students plan for their future every year that a teacher is cut it becomes more and more difficult to do that to really serve our student body in a way they need we actually need an additional social studies teacher as well as a job coordinator but instead we're facing a cup once again please reconsider this cut please reevaluate the funding allocation for alternative schools in a way that prioritizes what impacts students most teachers in the classroom and don't forget at save High School We Care our next speaker is Savannah
102Bonfield welcome your microphone is on and you can begin your testimony when you're ready hello everyone my name is Savannah Bonfield I'm the Student Success coach with migrant education at Denali Montessori part of the community now he rubbed me in I'm really loving my time there so far um I understand the financial pressure that the district is facing and that the budget cuts are out of school board hands right now I was able to listen to testimonies at the legislative town hall on Sunday and speak with my representative about raising or about what is needed to raise base student allocation which she happily provided me details thank you LV gray Jackson and um regarding the recent uh School Board decision to allow us to keep a kindergarten teacher thank you um thank you for listening
103to our community and allowing us to meet that need however we know that we sought to face the teacher cut and that if the people teacher ratio is shown to be high enough we can either regain that teacher or hire another one in terms of time and planning within our unique program as you've heard we believe having a teacher in limbo is going to be more disruptive to the educational environment as a whole finale teachers as you've heard go through the specialized Montessori training equivalent to a master's degree and that would make a teacher replacement unreasonable to say the least we also have multi-age groupings as you also have heard about that are specific to the Montessori philosophy those age bands are very important for how students progress through the program we also were faced
104with the threat already of losing sixth graders which is another harm to the structure of a program as well so on top of this additional staff Cuts would in a short time lead to the closure of our school based on past lottery and enrollment data we know that the vast majority of kindergarten students are expected to remain here at Denali remain at Denali that said we understand that we can't make guarantees about enrollment and don't want to try to bolster our own numbers at the detriment of other schools we would appreciate having the chance to build a recruitment program that can attempt to reach more non-asd families such as the homeschool and private school sectors I want to remind the board of guard wall number one superintendent will not leave student groups underrepresented in Lottery
105application-based programs educational opportunities should be Equitable for all students in the district and the diverse student population at Denali reflects that staff Cuts will lead to the the eventual collapse of our program and further diminished already limited alternative choices for families instead please let us retain all 15 teachers and give us a chance to try to meet the new PTR requirements in another way thank you thank you very much our next speaker is Brent Ramsey thank you welcome your microphone is on you can begin your three minutes whenever you're ready good evening members I'm a proud teacher of our Anchorage School District a proud member of the Denali Montessori Community I'm honored to be here to address this body thanks to each of you for serving our community I'm here tonight with so many others
106from our community to ask you to preserve the unique program of Denali Montessori by preserving our current Staffing levels with our specialized teacher training and intentionally designed classrooms with three grade levels we are fulfilling the sports goals and protecting its guardrails by honoring Dr montessori's research and implementing a program that this board has sanctioned and which families continue to choose as other curriculums change every five to ten years the Montessori philosophy has remained impactful for nearly 100 years using a Hands-On and child-centered approach exploring research proven materials and manipulatives to guide students to Proficiency in math and reading at the core of the Montessori philosophy is the empowerment of the child to intrinsically Find meaning in their learning which builds Independence confidence and perseverance or as we call it today being college career in life
107ready our three-year classrooms are intentionally complex to allow for the mentorship and wider Community needed to support these goals while the Montessori program works towards this board's goals we also help protect against the first guard rail as well in which no student groups will be left underrepresented in Lottery programs our school is the second most diverse alternative program in ASD over 60 percent of our student population qualifies for free and reduced lunch ing one more teacher will force an impossible and self-destructive Choice upon our program cram 34 kids into an already small classroom eliminating space for materials and manipulatives or abandon our research proven three-year support system or abandon our commitment and investment in the staff that is trained to deliver this curriculum this program directly supports your goals and guardrails this program is highly
108specific and is based on Research that stands the test of time this program is highly sought after with over 100 names on our wait list we don't need an exemption from the budget cuts and slight increases in class sizes what we need is your help to preserve this program by allowing us to keep our currents specially trained staff in place families know what this program has to offer and they want in keep it that way please preserve our staffing levels to preserve our program thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Kristen hunts Kristen star six to unmute hello good evening thank you thank you superintendent Brian and school board members I just want to say Wow to the safe students um I am just impressed on them coming up tonight and speaking um
109and so I ask that you listen to them um I want to tell you how excited that I am about moving to a new curriculum for elementary at I've been involved in the science of reading for many years I am currently taking the letters course through deed keys to literacy class and have also taken many courses and workshops over the past few years revolved around the science of reading from many nationally known authors I have a true passion for teaching reading children to read because my daughter and son are both dyslexic I have strived to learn and research the best practices for all children to learn to read I went to our Alaska science of reading Symposium last year and was so excited to see our state really truly moving toward best practices for our
110children I want to say thank you to our District administration for putting together such a great rubric and team to choose which curriculum would best follow the science of reading and fit our students needs this rubric that they used and made up was excellent and the process was um amazing the curriculum that was chosen meant all the standards of Science and reading I love that the curriculum has a beautiful online portion that shows movements and songs along with mouth articulation and sound walls for teaching phonic skills which we haven't had it also teaches handwriting along with teaching the letter identification and letter sounds at the same time this is key to this is a key part to our Student Success in learning to read and spell having handwriting and letter sounds and letter naming at
111the same time one of my favorite parts of this new curriculum is the decodable readers I especially like that they looked at the chapter books for engagement not just for CBC words I love that they're true to codables in fact that all the phonics and the heart words have been previously taught in their scope and sequence that's excellent I also like that the text came first and the pictures were on the next page this helped so that the students will not be guessing based off what they see in the picture but truly have to send out the words it was also great to see that students are not required to memorize words but instead are taught the reasons why sounds are used at different times this curriculum teaches the why and the how sounds work
112together this is key this is the key part of Science and reading strategy to help kids put words and sentences together and build fluency the knowledge part or the comprehension part has a variety of themes and stories to teach comprehension skills along with science and social listen thank you for your testimony if you'd like to submit additional written comments to the board please do so next up is Irene bull [Music] your three minutes can begin when you're ready your microphone is unwelcome thank you I want to express concern about the recent events that have taken place in our community it has come to my attention that some school board members have received death threats that and that private citizens namely school librarians Educators and principals have been targeted by local blogs and activists this is
113an alarming development and cannot be ignored as a society we should be able to have constructive conversations and disagreements without resorting to threats of violence and intimidation school board members and ASD staff are performing a critical role in our community they are working tirelessly to ensure that asd's diverse student body is provided with a quality education and with the resources they need to excel in life they deserve our respect and appreciation for the difficult work they're doing it is unacceptable that they are being subjected to death threats and harassment just as it is unacceptable that a member of this body targeted ASD Librarians by robertfully accusing them of stocking School library shelves with pornography these types of threats are not isolated incidents either they are part of a nationwide movement that targets school officials and
114staff members to intimidate them we must take a stand against this Behavior and ask that elected officials not lend credibility to such abhorrent efforts I hope that Administration is doing everything possible to ensure that staff is protected and that their work is not disrupted by these threats we must send a unified clear message that violence and intimidation will not be tolerated it is not okay thank you thank you for your testimony that concludes our first hour of public testimony we'll take up our consent agenda after a brief 10-minute recess thank you [Music] thank you [Music] very much um [Music] services [Music] um thank you very much foreign [Music] okay we'll call ourselves back to order apologies for the longer recess we had some technical issues um to address our next item on our agenda is
115our consent agenda I'm going to ask if any member would like to pull an item from the consent agenda before we move to adopt the remaining items member lessons I'd like the whole memorandum one two one adoption tentative agreement with public employees local 71. number five ISD memorandum number one two one and place that under F2 and action items we'll make sure to review for speakers on that action item once we get to that point is there any other item that needs to be pulled from our consent agenda and hearing scene none would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended so moved made by member Holloman is there a second second amendment lessons is there any objection to the approving the consent agenda has amended hearing seeing none the consent agenda has
116been approved unanimously we'll move on to action items F1 ASD memorandum number 111 Ela curriculum uh Dr Bryant and team do you have a presentation or discussion points to start us off uh we we do not this is actually a follow-up to the work session that we provided the board at our last board meeting essentially this is the culmination of a grant that the district received from the state um to adopt uh heavily vetted research-based curriculum based on the principles of Science of reading so this item is regarding the adoption of a new Ela curriculum and outlines the five-year budget plan thank you Miss Foster do we have any testimony on this actually okay then uh what would be an order I believe is a motion to approve ASD memorandum number 111 Ela curriculum as
117revised Mr chair okay that was made by member lessons okay all right the floor is open for discussion starting in the room okay remember lessons sure um I just wanted to say that I'm really proud of the administration for moving forward with an important opportunity to create a new path forward for our youngest Learners in ASD I'm also really grateful for the Educators who devoted an extensive amount of time or many hours in a limited window of time to do their due diligence to get us to this point I think as we've learned along the way accepting 3.8 million dollars from deed for this for this grant seems really lucky question um considering that cengage won't be printed again after another year or two and then we would have been replacing it at our own
118cost um so given the intent of the Alaska reads act I see this as a path to align asd's career regular materials and just overall intentions with the intentions of the state um I'll pause there with my comments thank you member lessons um I'll jump in and ask um a bit of a question of Dr Bryant and and team um could staff speak to now that the selection has been made public um the the factors that set this one apart obviously the State Department of Education early development shows the four finalists based on experience in other states um what made this selection the right one for ASD what are the strengths what were the weaknesses that was brought up during the curriculum Review Committee and what set it apart uh thank you Mr chair um
119I'll ask CAO Mr Gustafson to extend upon that with some more information and I'm going to actually uh have Dan Beltran our senior director of teaching and learning and she was the major Force around that big microphones and your lab no okay um so I we did submit through board connect our rubric that we utilized the strongest areas were the four areas that we waited which were foundational skills um the now I'm trying to remember everything um the timing and pacing so the usability um trying to think of the other two you have them in front of you yes thank you so the four weighted were the comprehension skills fluency foundational skills and time and pacing and um even when you look at the rubric you can see that we were pretty close to one
120other curriculum but when we and we had decided in advance that we would double the weight on on these four really important components because they are based on the science of reading they made it up to the top in terms of which curriculum was the best curriculum we looked at different areas assessments grammar handwriting spelling you heard Kristen hunt speak to some of those because she was on the committee as well thank you [Music] everyone has a chance to speak member Higgins any comment remember Donley any comments okay check in remember to only you have a comment or question no okay thank you we'll go online uh president Bellamy any comments or questions right now no I'm good ready to vote okay um member lessons before I take a second I did have a question
121since we were just looking at the rubric and I appreciate your your kind of review of it the one thing that I saw that was a little maybe less ideal but not terrible was special populations and could you I mean when I looked at and Miss hunt also spoke in her testimony about the rubric that you used and again I was also deeply impressed with arubic and I shared it with our legislators because I think we're asking the right questions but I did notice that you know maybe it wasn't as strong overall in special populations so could you just maybe speak to what that means for ASD and like the path forward so what we did do and I don't have that part in front of me I I you know we I can we
122can address that but um we did have um uh feedback from title vi from Special Ed but they weren't part of the committee so they didn't complete this rubric they reviewed the curriculum based on a department look at it they still rated um ckla is one of the highest rating and like I said it was pretty close to another publisher so it was kind of uh two Publishers this one was the higher rated one so a quick follow-up on member lessons question um did I understand right so our title 6 staff weren't involved and uh they were involved in a separate method of how they analyze curriculum so we engaged with Paul McDonough and um he was able to go through the curriculum in using um an assessment tool that they use for title VI
123and he was able to provide us feedback provide a recommendation as to which curriculum of the four was their preference so for this process we didn't actually take recommendations we took feedback for each curriculum and then we waited them out so in other words what I'm trying to say is there was no consensus or vote saying I prefer this curriculum to that curriculum we went more with an objective viewing of each publication and could you are you in a position where you can share some of the feedback where we that we received from Mr McDonough specifically it was um feedback I received as well was that um this curriculum in particular had some weaknesses regarding cultural relevance um I don't I don't have it in front of me but I can I mean I can
124share it at a later time we did collect all the documents and we have them in in a folder for historical reasons that are to maintain for historical reasons okay um can you so I guess I'll check in for questions before I have a couple more not seeing any I'm not seeing any online um one of the questions I asked when this item was on non-action status was um kind of the timing the urgency behind the fact that the name of the curriculum selected wasn't on our agenda and just about the public notice regarding that and the administration made the case that it was important for timing um one of the data points that I asked for was any um data regarding what other curriculum was being selected in other districts in Alaska and if
125this wasn't board connect please my well accept my apologies I might have missed it do we have that data at this point we don't what we are doing because we're part of the grant is we're uh as part of the grant we have to attend webinars through deed with the other districts and as of yet they still have not disclosed what they're choosing it is my understanding though that ckla was one of their top picks but they haven't stated for sure they've been asking ASD because we are the largest District what curriculum are you guys choosing and at that point we weren't allowed to share until we finished the negotiation process um member lessons can you shed a little bit more light on what you know what you have tier one tier two and tier
126three if you're one beaning being you know curriculum materials that will meet will be delivered to all of our students um can you shed a little bit of light on what the implementation and or professional learning plans will look like um and this is going to stand alone as a tier one material right now Nicole Somerville is my director of of Elementary teaching and learning and she's been working with the staff in special ed to look at the different materials um she's been working with her social studies Department to look at how it aligns to some of our social studies work so we are right in the sausage making of what uh how we're going to implement the curriculum and continuing to engage all the different departments to make sure that we are hitting all
127the pieces so yes tier one um this will be our Core Curriculum and then we're going to adjust and look for what interventions can they support us with for tier two and then working with special ed on on is this appropriate for tier three or do we need to look at alternative curriculum for our tier three you know follow-up member lessons so does that mean that whatever our current tier two and tier three interventions are right now it's likely that they would be adjusted to align with a new curriculum that's a good question um some of the curriculum some of the interventions we think might stay the same for example we use phonics for reading as one of our interventions for wind we think it's still appropriate um we also used a Star binder but
128that was tied to cengage so that will have to change and we'll have to review how to provide um for the hey kindergarten and maybe even first grade win interventions what what we can do to Overlay your support for them yeah please remember listening we're hoping to do some of that work internally though I think I had one specific question of phonics to reading which I think I'm aware is designed for grade three and how you were using it for grades first first and second grades right now is that no phonics for reading is is more for third grade I think some second graders are able to have phonics for reading for intervention so the K1 Star binder is used for the first two so we will have a different K1 intervention yes likely more
129than likely because the K1 Star binder was taken the right okay cengage was aligned to this to the K1 starbinder and the phonics for reading may stay in place actually when and third I will say I'm sorry you don't mean to speak when you're speaking I do want to say that the um deed has identified um interventions that they find appropriate and phonics for reading is one of them so we're looking to to retain that as an intervention we're also looking to see we're looking at all the options all of them we still don't know yet what we're going to go with but we're also looking at m-class Amplified to see what interventions they have um and also what interventions that are embedded in the ckla program we started to do some research but didn't
130go too heavy into it because we wanted to make sure that we were going to be that we were going to adopt right thank you member lessons um so I guess I'm I appreciate the work of the committee and the administration gets to this point and I'm excited to adopt a new curriculum for multiple reasons especially um that these four are in line with the Alaska reads act and this is the direction of the board wants to go and our State Department of Education you know has joined us in that effort um I am concerned that our our title 16 wasn't a part of the committee and didn't get to participate to the normal process and then I also don't have a better understanding of their feedback right now and so I'm inclined to ask
131that we delay this vote until our next meeting I understand that we spoke about some detrimental impacts um if we were to let to delay until later this month could you go through those with me again I'm sorry if we were to delay this vote in this agenda item until our next meeting how would that impact the curriculum adoption yeah well do you like us getting the materials in time so that we can get our team trained and so one of the expectations of the grant is that we go full curriculum um 20 at in the fall and we don't want to delay starting we don't want to start the year without training our staff because then we would be starting with cengage and then having to make a shift that's a huge lift for
132our teachers especially at the Kindred through third grade level so we are concerned about getting the curriculum here in Alaska in a timely manner so a follow-up I guess maybe just a two-part follow-up how confident are we that maybe in terms of a percentage that we will receive the curriculum in time that we anticipate needing it currently and then where would that move to in two weeks and then you know that's a significant purchase is there any guarantees that the the vendor can give us no well I think that Mr Whiting might have a better answer in regards to timelines and and that kind of thing so I'd ask that he come up if that's okay you know thank you Professor well he comes up I'm going to grab my computer to see if I
133can find that feedback while we're sitting here that's Mr Whiting welcome yes sir to the chair um I'm sorry sir uh you were cons which issue did you want to so yeah so specifically looking to address um when we expect to receive the materials in um with our current timeline and um what would be impacted um and how would we be impacted by waiting until our next board meeting to approve so so if we look at the uh the the main bulk of the curriculum the student curriculum hard copy materials durable materials they would be received our our mission is really to order them in time to receive them mid-summer uh you know June july-ish and then distribute them to the you know deploy them my warehouse would then deploy them out to the schools
134the there are uh as Dr Beltran alluded to on the PD side there are some you know they have to prepare uh teachers for the you know the staff and teachers for the rollout so there is some PD implications of there may be some that needs to be shipped in early to make that happen which could be done in an expedited basis and there's also some digital aspect as well that assists in that matter so if we were to delay to another board meeting I believe the bulk of the materials could be received however I will say that currently the shipping in all Commodities that I'm dealing with because what we would do in this case is we would we work with a text distributor Northwest text Warehouse so we're buying this curriculum from amplify
135and we would have that then shipped from the Northwest Texas Warehouse which has a couple different metrics and if the warehouse has it in stock it is a shorter delivery time it is the standard you know delivery time if they didn't then we would have to it could be delayed so um I would say there is there is risk that if you delay it could cause an issue but there is also a probability that it could still be received in the summer because I can't I can't predict the the volatility of the of the shipping currently it is the mark Market is it has been you know difficult thank you Mr waiting um going through the queue making sure we don't not seeing any questions not seeing Oh remember Don like for sure this is
136not for Mr Whiting now yep the floor's still yours it's okay okay um I want to think about once you get the materials and you start to teach people how to teach it um five years ago when we went with the existing curriculum um we thought that teachers were going to accept it and the by a large part they didn't I mean four years in after that we still had a large percentage of classrooms weren't using the adopted curriculum so what is our actual implementation plan I mean if we believe in this curriculum it's going to make a difference then we need to have a plan to make sure it gets used in the classrooms so what is our plan to make sure it gets used in the classrooms some remembered only through the chair
137if I can answer that question um we are looking to bringing back our k-3 teachers a couple days early this next fall so that we can have some pretty intensive training with them and prepare them for the uh implementation of this curriculum one of the things that we did and we made sure we did was we asked aea to help us in supporting and building our committee this year um so that we could have those people that knew that the difficulties of the Lost curriculum on our committees and making those decisions to pick the committee or pick the curriculum we also are looking for as Mr Whiting said getting some of the materials here earlier so that we can offer courses during asdsa um right at the beginning of the summer and getting the curriculum
138actually in the hands of those K3 teachers early so that they can be looking because you know we have teachers that are just chomping at the bit to see the new curriculum already and we have teachers that are going to spend time in the summer on their own time looking it over and trying to determine what they can do for their kiddos so we we have that and then we also have we'll be bringing you some uh other opportunities for professional development at the elementary level in the in the meetings coming up in regards to some PLC time that we would like to exercise for for our elementary teachers and getting them um some ongoing PD throughout the um the year or two as we go through the implementation of this if I can add
139as well as part of the the grant we are still engaged with the grant process and we are charged with completing an 85-page document part of it which is explaining how we are going to follow through with our implementation plan and so we are like I said I'm we're continuing to meet with the the different districts and they have a coordinator through deed that's supporting us through the process and requiring us to submit these documents and in those documents we will include our plan for follow-through implementation walks going into schools to support but we will have the mindset of how can we support you if they're not implementing the curriculum and that will help us to monitor as well and it is a requirement of this project that all schools that have the curriculum are
140utilizing the curriculum as intended so just a quick follow-up I I would hope we would get regular implementation reports um because that's one thing we failed to do during the last curriculum process was to institutionalize a regular report like we received with the other goals we've got academic goals and so it kind of fell through the cracks there for for some months so if a part of that plan was a regular report on the percentage of implementation the percentage of classrooms that are actually utilizing the new curriculum I think it'd be really helpful to the board to know that it's getting in place and being affected and also as soon as it is available it using Maps measures of academic progress to establish whether there's correlation between those schools that are fully implementing that the
141new curriculum and those schools that aren't as far as testing scores thank you member Donnelly um Dr Beltran um I was wondering if you had a chance to identify that feedback and find that yet if you're still looking no pressure I just saw you looking at your computer because I'm also secretly texting my directors remember Jacobs I one thing that the state did is when they were actually vetting the seven going down to four curriculums as a state the state level they were looking at cultural relevancy as well um so as as far as ours process Diana will find that up but at the state level that one of the things that they were looking at is cultural relevancy for the four that they finalized on to agree upon for our state very true that
142was the that was part of the initial rubric that we were required to look at when we were looking at the seven curriculum cultural relevance um professional development and um in use right and usability thank you Kathy thank you very much I see President Bill misandism yes thank you I I just wanted to uh remind the board that uh this is a bold initiative from the state and I know that the they went from 12 to 8 to now four [Music] um uh curriculums and cultural relevance uh relevancy was one of those uh that set these four apart so I'm not worried about that while I think any curriculum that we choose is going to be short have a shortcoming but I have the absolute faith in our staff that they will through our mtss
143planning uh our individual plans for students I I think we're we're building this what is what is that saying we're flying This Plane while building it in many ways so um I to hold it up because of all of considerations that have already been baked into this process I think it you know potentially sets us up to just might miss a you know an important deadline but all throughout this whole process this is probably step 42 in this process of and there will be more steps so um again it's the Bold initiative it's not we there were pieces these pieces were baked in way before it even got down to the final four and even the Final Four uh I'm sure are uh uh missing some pieces but that's where we have to depend on
144the expertise of our staff and all of the considerations that the law itself has in it we don't get to sidestep on this one um the way we may have allowed people to do before otherwise we would not have been approved to get this to get the grant uh so so I that that's just what I'd like to just add that I think I think we I think to put it off causes us an undo um and looking at the rubric information in the in board connect it's no doubt that this was the choice of four excellent uh uh curriculums so thank you for the time Mr Jacobs I will I will I did find it and I will tell you that um his this this curriculum was his second choice but with no specific
145reason for enthusiasm from a cultural lens was what he noted when and there's and I can share this with the board um I I can send it probably through board connect uh what the what his evaluation was of all four curriculum because he has notes throughout base and he used um used indigenous knowledge Bearer consultant rubric as a loose lens for program evaluation um so follow-up question on that point Dr belka thank you um did Mr McDonough fill out um one of those rubrics for each of the initial sets or just the Final Four the Final Four um and the final the final four they were picked um not from our large committee those were picked from the Committees when we were working with deed initially so they gave us seven we presented our rubric
146from our initial committee as the other uh districts did and then they told us what the top four were you um I don't want to cut off I for purposes of discussion I plan on making a motion to postpone but I saw a member lessons hand up so I'll honor that first then we could discuss my Amendment thank you thank you for the privilege I wanted to ask as a follow-up to what Mr griffison was saying about professional development and I don't know if I'd like to ask what what the cost of the professional development might look like and I asked that because I noticed that in today's um press conference the governor um shared this afternoon he said that he had a proposal for 17 million dollars for deed and there would be five
147million dollars embedded in that to support the Alaska reads act and that would go to conferences trains materials and professional development um we're talking professional development so is there potentially additional State money to pay for professional development that we're aware of and if so what how much do we need to help implement this I they so they've been asking us for a cost analysis for the Deeds um the REITs act and so part of that professional development I'm going to make an assumption because everybody knows we need to train our teachers to be trained in the science of reading and I think that's the ask Statewide from the districts is how are we going to train them and what costs will we you know where will the cost where will the costs come from when
148we train our teachers I think I mean I'll be interested in that my gut feel says that five million dollars Statewide is not by a very very long shot that's just my assumption we're also one we're going to be looking and talking with Dean about some of our teachers are already trained in the science of reading so if the trainings that our teachers have gone through if those will qualify so we're looking at that also bringing teachers back for a couple days does have a cost you know we will have a cost on that and we're working on trying to figure out where that costs how we're going to fit that into our budgeting for next year as well but training in science reading the cost with this yes there will be some costs as
149far as the professional development goes thank you member lessons um so at this point I'm going to move to postpone this item until our next meeting on the 20th of March um and if there's a second I can speak to my motion I'll second it for the purposes of discussion thank you remember Donnelly um so I appreciate Dr Beltran the team um uh speaking and then the work that's gone in thus far the members of the committee um I remain concerned that this curriculum choice is the largest decision that we are basing the biggest piece of our strategic plan on um and to Mr whiting's point I I live in the world of risk professionally I understand that there's increased Risk by delaying this decision um I think it's worth looking at it's from the
150other side and identifying that there's risk in um looking back in a few years and recognizing that we made uh could have made a better choice out of the final four I'm not saying that that's the case but um I think 13 days I think is what it works out to be um isn't a or shouldn't be something that equates to a deal breaker um although certainly maybe percentages change around the margins um the fact that our title VI staff weren't a part of the committee process I think is a relevant point the fact that the curriculum choice to public knowledge of up until 72 hours before the meeting I think those are enough reasons to consider delaying and providing a bit more time before we make this incredibly important choice which we'll be using
151to base off everything going forward for the next few years so um so my fellow board members I would urge support for a motion to postpone but I um respect the will of my colleagues with that said is there's discussion on the motion to postpone to our next meeting we can discuss now member lessons I think one of the things that makes me worried maybe more risk-averse than you here is what I understand about the the prior Ela implementation and it was something like teachers thought the materials the day before school started and I think that is a sure if I were to have been in their shoes and would have had a large amount of materials given to me at the uh you know at the 11th Hour um I don't know that I
152would have been really happy with ask to being you know Pat my head and rub my tummy and tap dance at the same time um I'd like to give our teachers a Fighting Chance um to implement a new curriculum and if two weeks buys us time to get this here in a significantly more timely fashion I think that that matters enormously and I guess I wanted to go back to you know when I raise the questions about special populations um it's not that the rubric that I shared back at you it didn't fail by any stretch of the imagination the questions here were you know key considerations were materials provide specific strategies and supports for differentiating instructions to meet the needs of students in special populations Advanced Learners low-level Learners sped yellow materials and materials
153support students in special populations and regular and active participation in grade level literacy guidance for scaffolding instruction for special populations provided throughout the lesson teacher guidance around using grouping strategies with students in special populations is provided and it was a sort of In The Middle on a scale of one to five it was like a two point something two and a half two and a half or two two point seven and that suggests that some or many of those key considerations were addressed I guess I was just curious you know what it might have been less than perfect on I don't know that I have direct concerns specific concerns but I was just curious about where it might have been a little bit weaker for our special populations if I can just give one more
154push too it it so when we had the curriculum committee they were teachers that were involved teachers that actually teach the curriculum when we engaged with the other departments they come from a different lens uh when we showed um so when we showed Mr McDonough our rubric that didn't mean anything to him because he didn't have the experience in that part of the rubric but he was able to look at it from the lens of what the one that I the rubric that he used and so it um I just wanted to let you know that he gave the input based on on their lens and not as a teacher in the classroom yeah thank you and I think that lens is an important one due to the makeup of our history of the population
155um with that said is there other discussion before we moved to a Voice vote Miss Foster The Voice [Music] member Holloman no member Higgins [Music] no member lessons no member Donnelly yes [Music] member Jacobs yes member Wilson and president Bellamy no motion to postpone Bales two years fournies we're back on the main motion uh to approve ASD memorandum number 111 Ela curriculum revised another we're back on the main motion I'll just take the floor briefly to say my motion to postpone wasn't any indication of my appreciation for your work Dr Beltran the work of the administration of the committee um with that said as an earlier discussion before we move forward to the Moon yeah I can't hear he's saying none Miss Foster in the main motion member Donnelly yes [Music] member Higgins yes member
156Holloman yes remember Jacobs yes member lessons yes member Wilson [Music] president Bellamy yes [Music] did you hear me yes that motion passes um six two zero thank you thank you we'll move on to action item number F2 um ASD memorandum number one two one adoption of tentative agreement public employees Local 71 AFL-CIO 2023-2026 they have a motion to approve move to approve second by member Holland second by member lessons Ms Foster do we have testimony on the section item yes I believe we do welcome uh you have three minutes just please identify yourself for the record and your Mike's around good evening to the board um my name is Bill Mears with public employees Local 71 and I was going to speak here but uh I wasn't sure if Jordan Adams who's the business manager
157of Local 71 was going to make it and he did so I'm going to defer my comments to him uh thank you for for inviting us up I guess um so Jordan Adams business manager Local 71 what we're talking about today is the the approval of this contract this is for primarily the custodians uh the bpos on the lower end of the pay scale um much needed increases we have been fighting not just since the pandemic but for a lot longer um wages in this category of middle to High Teens um that have serious competition in the marketplace I mean we've all seen our grocery stores Checkers uh increases that they've received so at this price point is very competitive uh what these folks have done in the past three years has been pretty outstanding
158they've taken care of your children the teachers principals administrators everybody that passes through those schools who knows how many cases of code it had been avoided because of the work that these folks have done so with that I would urge you to pass this contract it's much needed um we're sitting at about 20 percent vacancy and as of today we have people on our list that we're looking for the approval of this contract to sign up and come work for you so it's going to be vitally important that we get this approved it passed through our our uh our folks at a 92 percent success rate so they want to see this go through and due to the competitiveness of of the marketplace I would advise you to do so thank you very much for
159the consideration thank you for your testimony [Music] okay we have a motion on the floor to approve as their discussion which is only thank you Mr President just really quickly my memory of all our polling that we've done as a district we ask parents what's the most important thing I think school safety in cleanliness is number one and I don't know if that's changed anytime recently but it was pretty consistent for quite a while so this is really important to our parents and to our community remember lessons I just want to say how I do notice right that safety and cleanliness when I go into any of our school buildings you know you you walk in and you want to be welcomed by things working things looking bright and sparkly you want it to be
160an inviting place for our students and our teachers and community members who come in and volunteer and so I um I'm grateful for the administration and for Local 71 for coming together on this agreement um I'm eager to support it and put it into action thank you for my part before we vote I'll just say that uh yeah I fully support the agreements and I'm glad to hear that 92 percent of Local 71 members do as well um you know there's been some talk about resources um AST expense what's in the classroom what's out of the classroom I think this is a great example of how um staff that aren't Educators in the literal sense have such a huge impact and direct impact to facilitating learning every day in classrooms and so um I definitely
161will be I guess vote and appreciate the work of administration Local 71 and coming to this agreement with that said I'm not seeing any other comments online so miss Foster the vote please member Higgins remember Jacobs yes yes member Holloman member Wilson [Music] member lessons yes member Donnelly yes president Bellamy yes oh yes team memorandum number one two one adoption attendant of agreement public employees Local 71 AFL-CIO 2023-2026 passes six to zero all right so we'll move forward to section g our non-action items is there any questions or discussion on these items which will be back before the board on our next meeting hearing seeing none will move on to section h of our agenda now the remainder of public comment I believe we still have a few persons to be heard um our next
162monster you prepared to proceed with public income okay perfect our next speaker on our list Ms Sherry streisak foreign [Music] many of you today may have heard Governor Dunleavy announce a bill to ensure parental rates in schools the bill ensures transparency in schools by codifying parental rights I will come back to this shortly after addressing some of Alaska's statutes section 14 period 0-3 period 090 partisan Secretariat or denominational doctrines may not be advocated in a public school during the hours the school is in session a teacher or School Board violating this section may not receive public money or does sectarian or the root word sect mean one definition is a philosophical or political group especially one regard as extreme or dangerous section 14.03 0.016 A Prayer a parent's right to direct the education of a
163parent's child a local school board shell in consultation with parents teachers School administrators adopt policies to promote the involvements parents in the school district's education program the policies must include procedures recognizing the authority of a parent and allowing a parent to object to and withdraw the child from an activity class or program providing for parent notification not less than two weeks before any activity class or program that includes contact involving human reproduction or sexual matters providing a parent with an opportunity to review the content of the activity class perform centers or program section 11.61.128 distribution of indecent materials to minors a person who commits the Chrome distribution of indecent materials to minor is a person and 18 years of age or older intentionally distributor Pro possesses with intent to distribute any material to a child
164that they believe is under the age of 16 years the person knows how the material depicts the following actual or simulated conduct psychopenetration Lew touching of genitals in his female breast masturbation and bestiality alluded exist exhibition and sexual masochism or sadism and the material is harmful to minors distribution of indecent materials is a class C felony going back to uh Governor dunleavy's proposal it would clarify existing statute 14.03.01683 requiring parental notification prior to discussing human reproduction or sexual matters to include gender identity and requires written permission for the child to participate in activity also names and pronouns are mentioned I ask why is gender identity and pronouns including Governor dunleavy's Bill perhaps Alaska parents need to consider a suit against the current Administration and School District just as the mama bears of the Forsyth County
165School District in Georgia did they just won a federal First Amendment case thank you thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Jay McDonald welcome your microphone is on you have three minutes you can begin with you're ready yeah so my name is Jay McDonald and first off just real quick I'd let your desk address some misinformation I've been seeing some people in the school district and uh members of the school board spreading online that all of the books that I've been reading here are in the ASD Library uh about half of them were actually on classroom reading lists and based on what I've heard so far from everyone parents were never informed and the school district has never given an answer on why they put those in classrooms or why they didn't inform
166the parents and I'm going to keep reading these things and complaining about them as long as you guys are illegally transitioning kids at school and teaching them to keep secrets from their parents so anyways I've got a good selection here this was printed in 2021 that's very interesting it's called Jay's gay agenda by Jason June so it says on the inside cover from debut novelist Jason June comes a moving and hilarious sex positive story about the complexities of first loves first hookups and first heart breaks and how to stay true to stay true to yourself the whole book is just about this guy's escapades um you know as a kid in high school so I got a fun passage here Tony toss is close to the floor and he sprang up in the best millisecond
167of my life number seven was gone penis in real life officially stricken from the agenda forever as I stared at the best view I'd ever seen he was beautiful I couldn't stop my hands from flying in between his legs uh Tony's moan was the sexiest sound I had ever heard he kissed me while I held on to him but my whole body aches to put my mouth somewhere else Tony ran his fingers through my hair and gently took my face in his hands to pour lips together to seven meters apart do whatever you want he whispered he was like he could read my mind I lifted my body using the hand it was still on Tony's you know what a little too much to give myself a boost Tony shot forward careful sorry I'd like
168to go but with both my hands in the air unable to hold myself up my head fell onto Tony's chest chest he laughed softly then moved my hands on either side of him so I could steady myself against the mattress try again Tony said I braced myself against the bed then kissed all the way down to Tony's chest I kissed through his chest hair down to his belly button and into that tough that his waist I looked up and Tony was watching me smirking he gave a slight knot I kissed all the way down until I was face to package this was really about to go down I was finally it was finally time to do all those things I'd imagine happening in my item number seven I went for it at first I wasn't
169sure what to do with my hands so I thought back to the car billion porn clips I'd seen on the internet and yes that's a technical number when talking about porn stats no matter where I put my hands it didn't feel natural I probably looked like one of those car dealership guys waving my arms back and forth into different positions Tony grabbed my head and pulled me up pulled me up stop stop stop oh God I totally messed up is everything okay did I do something wrong Tony gave me scratchy Chuckles and said nothing is wrong I just didn't want to finish yet it goes on for a couple more pages this one's at Bartlett thank you very much there's Thessalonians our next speaker is Charity Christensen welcome your three minutes your microphone okay I
170know I only have three men so I gotta make this quick um but three months is not nearly enough time to convey the detrimental impact the ASC school board has had and continues to have on the community they're obligated to serve let me get Begin by explaining why I'm here how I'm a stakeholder and there's a grave miscarriage of public servitude I'm appalled with ASD I'm here today as a mother a friend a behavioral health worker and an advocate for our children what supports my opinion well first my grandmother was a long time educator in the Anchorage School District and then a mental health practitioner providing family and marital therapy to the Anchorage Community I learned a lot from her my aunt currently is a teacher and she's a teacher at a private school thank
171God uh I myself have worked for ASD in the classrooms of early Learners my educational background is in Psychology Child and Adolescent development and behavior health I currently work with kids experiencing disabilities providing support and implementing safe healthy interventions where the learner's best interests are my number one priority I follow the expert guidance of Developmental behaviors when working with this vulnerable population where I know that strapping a child down or forcing them into seclusion when they're experiencing big emotions is not an effective or appropriate response by School staff I'm also an advocate for the lgbtq lb lgbtq community in fact I've written received grants for research on transgender inclusivity in the Anchorage area my biggest issue right now is that ASD is an engaging in deceitful practices teaching our kids deceitful Behavior breaking the strength
172of the family unit taking away a parent's right to be an intricate part of their child's development taking away their right to choose what their child is exposed to and in an environment that they should have a mutually trusted relationship with and pushing pornographic materials into the hands of our children who are not developmentally ready for it my day-to-day Behavior I support positive growth and development of both the kids in our community I support the foundation of Healthy Families which includes a close therapeutic relationship with parents where their input is always supported and included what are you doing because right now the assembly's grave and grotesque agenda portrays a frightening picture and from my educated and deeply invested perspective you've lost my trust that ESD is a safe supportive Institution for the families of Anchorage
173I implore you no I demand you re-examine your behavior and your purpose because right now you're destroying families by severing the educator-parent collaborative relationship here parents are not the enemy please stop grooming our children into believing we are thanks for the testimony our next speaker is Christine George foreign [Music] thank you [Music] um I'm gonna finish I I'm responding to the librarian's question from Bartlett that I referred to in the last board meeting when she asked where do we draw the line and my suggestion is we draw the line with um traditional alarms of decency and with Alaska state law so I wanted to finish Sherry streisak actually read out of Alaska statute section 1161-128 and I wanted to finish that because um item C on that and I did prepare documents you all have
174a copy of all these so you can read along a little better um uh item C says in this section harmful to minors means and this was under distribution of indecent material to minors harmful to minors means one the average individual applying contemporary Community standards would find the material taken as a whole appeals to the puriant interest in sex for persons under 16 years of age that's just normal for kids that age two a reasonable person would find that the material taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic educational political or scientific value for persons under 16 years of age number three the material depicts actual or simulated conduct in a way that is patently offensive to the prevailing standards and the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for persons
175under the age of 16. D except is provided in E of this section distribution of indecent materials to minors qualifies as a classy felony and then I want to read out of the criminal law title number 11. statute 41 440 sexual abuse of a minor in the fourth degree and the reason I'm reading this is because last time I shared that there sexual addiction is such a huge risk every addiction is initiated by a first try and when we take advantage or intervene when kids are sexually curious and vulnerable which they are is this the prior statute referred to uh we run the risk of having them try out what they're learning about and this said this addresses being under 16 years of age the offender engages in sexual conduct with a person who is
176under 13 years of age and at least three years younger than the offender and as you can read it goes on describing this but we're talking about materials giving ideas to kids that age so it is very very dangerous thank you for your time our last speaker is Shannon sark there is welcome to search you have three minutes deployed horse thank you kindly for having me it's good to see you all again so um I was just going to start by the um law I mean might as well just start there right let's just go with the law so the law says section 1141 455 unlawful exploitation of a minor wow a person commits a crime of unlawful exploitation of a minor if in the state and with the intent of producing a live performance
177film audio video oh look look oh that's funny newspaper magazine that visually depicts or conducts engaged in or simulated conduct sexual penetration the lewd touching of another person's genitals anus or breasts the lewd touching by another person of the child's genital anus or breast masturbation bestiality the lewd exemption of child's genitals or sexual masoism or sadism so um first off this is a felony so I mean I don't know if everybody heard me this is a felony right um this is the law and it seems like I don't know if we missed this did anybody did we miss this because this is pretty serious and I don't know if we're like breaking the law but it kind of seems like we are um so I I like to talk about my unconditional love and I
178bring it up a lot and I use the word unconditional a lot because when it comes to my kids um if they have uh wanted to transform or transgender or if they had chemo or a cold or if there was anything that my child was going through as a parent I love them unconditionally so I mean if my son wanted to turn into a pigeon I would pigeon him through it you know I would work with him through it and as the person that loves him unconditionally regardless of what he's going through I feel like I have their best interest at heart so I should be the person to walk them and guide them through it um I'm a little thrown back at you know I know teachers you have a huge impact in our
179children's lives and supposed to be for the better and I'm very much concerned with um the fact that these things could be being kept from me so we could be grooming children and you could be turning my child into a bird that he really desperately wants to be and I have no idea you're not telling me these things and I am the number one provider and unconditional love for my child and I am now in the dark not having any idea that my son's trying to grow feathers you know this is just it's just getting out of hand so I think my biggest concern is parents consent and US knowing what is taking place in the classroom and what is being taught to our children's is up the utmost priority so I would really appreciate
180that all right the results are public testimony our second hour um we don't have any other testifiers signed up correct semester okay all right we'll move on on our agenda to superintendent update Dr Bryant you're here with us remotely that's Larry horse yes thank you Mr Sharon hello from Nashville ASD board and Community uh I have the wonderful opportunity to be here in Nashville Tennessee to see firsthand a successful college career and life Readiness movement in action I'm joined by mid Wilson and another exciting part about this trip is that I'm joined with senior Anchorage Community Executives from the aedc UAA the muni and others um here in Nashville we have the opportunity to meet with their counterparts and start laying the foundation for across organizational task force to take things to the next level
181these are exactly the players who can support our broader effort to make ASD a core part of the Workforce Development strategy for the entire city in other words this work is all about getting more ASD student certifications and degrees by high school graduation day so they can enter into high wage high demand jobs in Anchorage the bulk of my career as an administrator has been in the area of CCL so while the the jet lag has been rough I'm not gonna lie I'm all in and enthusiastic to get the ball rolling uh and I want to recognize our community leaders who took the time out of their very very busy schedules to come down to Nashville to support our schools and work through our Workforce challenges as a city and On a related note I
182want to acknowledge that we're making progress towards meeting our goals with the adoption of the new K3 curriculum and with the recent decision to um start planning for moving sixth grade to middle school and continuing to explore school start times uh we also continue to make progress towards tackling our vacancies with the approval of more competitive wages for our custodians and with that said that means the cost of doing business and ASD continues to increase as we just become more competitive so we'll need to continue to keep the momentum up for structural increases to funding at the state level but overall this is a very exciting time for ASD and it's a pleasure to be a part of the movement so uh it's pretty late here in Nashville and I have school visits bright and
183early in the morning so I'll close with that and keep my update short and sweet more updates to come thank you thank you Dr Brian just a quick housekeeping item I understand that member Wilson had to step away at 6 30 for a personal matter just for the record and then questions for Dr Bryant regarding his report member lessons this isn't directly it's a part of their I guess it's the the question portion of the superintendent's report um not what he directly presented on but we certainly have received a large amount of testimony um well from Save and then also from Denali Montessori and I wonder if the superintendent or another member of the team could respond to um the public messages that we're receiving about these schools need for reversing PTR cuts sure I
184think at a high level what I want to share is that this is in response to the recent decision to increase PTR by one and also our metric based Staffing model which essentially allocates teachers and determines the number of teachers that ASD has um based on enrollment um so these two schools were impacted just like a number of other schools in fact the majority of our schools the either decreased or enrollment or were impacted by the increase to PTR um with that said I could Envision a universe where in the future we look at the Staffing model more closely to make sure that you know it's Equitable um but right now we're uniformly applying our staffing model which is approved by the board um and we had a number of people advocate for their particular
185schools and there are dozens of other schools that are impacted as well that we didn't hear from so I want to acknowledge them as well um this is really a system level response to the austere Financial Times that we're in and we're just implementing our staffing model with fidelity thank you member lessons I had a follow-up question since we went down this trajectory um my understanding is that we typically have a contingent of hold back teachers Dr Bryant that get allocated shortly before the start of the school year is there a possibility that staff are allocated based on enrollment figures um to mitigate the loss of any of the campuses that have experienced um potentially other possible loss of a staff member we do have a small number of holdbacks and it's to address you
186know bubbles or specific situations that may impact a school as a result of our metric based Staffing model so yes it is possible we need to make sure that those old backs are used very strategically and wisely to ensure that they best serve the needs of the whole District um based on a number of factors thank you and just a quick follow-up I guess um as regarding uh save and Denali Montessori specifically um the I just want to confirm I guess the the PTR increase in related Staffing changes were applied uniformly in that special programs weren't given any additional consideration it is just an across the board based on board Direction correct so correct so our staffing model is very much one size fits all and I'm not saying that's the best way to approach
187a staffing model but that's the Staffing model that ASD has implemented for many many years I'm not even sure if there's ever been a different type of Staffing model where essentially all schools are essentially treated equally there's slight differences for elementary middle and secondary um but we uniformly apply that Staffing model with very few exceptions with the use of holdbacks across the district and that's to ensure that there's a standard there are some positive things about our staffing model um this is very different than what I'm used to in Houston but the positive thing of our staffing model is that it ensures that every school has a nurse for example or access to a counselor but it also means it's very rigid and doesn't uh accommodate for specific things like special programs or let's say
188schools that serve large populations of economically disadvantaged students so I mean there are certainly conversations that we could be had to differentiate a little bit more but we got here by implementing with Fidel quality our staffing model thank you are there other questions for Dr Brandt before we move on not seeing any online thank you Dr Brian for your reports and best of luck tomorrow uh we'll move on to school board Administration comments versus School Board Administration comments will start in the room to my left member Higgins we'll go with you first please [Music] thank you um first I want to comment in regards to a lot of the uh individuals who came and testified I was extremely impressed with with the students I mean with everyone but the students was showing their life their
189information how important it was um and and how it's impacting them it really makes a difference on Staffing and I really do mean a lot like that all I can say is that I hope that many of the saved students that came and testified today keep on going and I'd love to see them be teachers one day they understand the connection they they recognize it they see the difference and I do um in regards to Denali it raised an interesting question because theirs is um they they do the combined grades one through three four through six and and how will the sixth graders moving out early if that applies to every body how will that impact the Denali Montessori system raise the question to me in regards to that I had three kids that went
190through Denali and I will tell you I have six grandkids right now at tutor Denali so yes I am connected heavily to that and regards to the same program I haven't been through it recently but I went through it a lot when I was uh the first nine years I was on the board what I remember special about that is going into that school getting the overview meeting with kids and teachers and seeing what was being done how they were connecting with kids that were working half day and going in and you had a principal there who was bringing in the little meals that you could heat up and microwaves and all that for the kids that didn't have it in there and paying for it or so because of the connection to the kids
191I took pride in the fact that I was involved in the budget change that provided money for that so it wasn't coming out of the teacher's pocket but she would have continued it anyway but it was it was a sacrifice she made it just showed you how connected they were that kids at high risk and it means a lot one of the things I remember at the National School Board Association is it talked about equity and equal being different uh and they would have a story with three kids who were trying to watch a baseball game with a fence wooden fence and one child was taller than the rest and didn't need any assistance to see the game another one was more mid-sized needed one stool there one one box to be able to see
192the game and then one that was much smaller needed two boxes when we look at the Staffing issue and we talk about Equity you know about equal we got to think about equity and what the needs are for different ones and the different programs whether it's Montessori whether it's saved I appreciate that uh the real issue here is whether or not the parents who spoke the well as well as others will make sure their voices showed at the legislature because that's what can eliminate this as an issue because I don't think the board wants to increase the the ratio anyway but the funding issue if it not next you is going to be a crisis to you after anyway and it's going to be much worse if we do not get an increase in BSA
193substantial and uh permanent with some adjustments we're going to be in an awful situation and we can't stop the kind of changes we do when I saw the administration make all these cuts it was at the bottom where they started increasing the pupil teacher ratio so it will be something that the board will be looking at when we have get additional funding how much and what we'll try to do but I don't think anyone wants to see an increase there and I guess my last comment is if I look at classroom sizes and look at the at prior studies we've done all class massage is so much bigger than low 48 you got 36 states with maximum effective plasma sizes well k23 is 1 to 15 above that is 25. we go to deploy do
194they have a different ratios 18 for all but they're all in that category and we're so much larger in our classroom sizes and we wonder how that is impacting academic results I promise you 36 states are not paying to have more teachers and lower classroom sizes if it wasn't for the results and that's what we're at right now we need to support from the public we need to support from legislature and I hope that that individuals right now is a is a great time for everybody to get on the phone write the emails write the letters but to be very vocal in regards to the demands because it's going to impact kids and that's what we need to stop and so I really enjoyed the presentations uh the discussions in watching both the students and
195the parents to be so engaged and wanting to make sure their kids get the good education uh it's really moving and I really do appreciate it a lot so thank you thank you member Higgins member Donnelly horse thank you I'm familiar with that diagram too with the three kids at defense the boxes but what I would like to see is defense lowered so all the kids could see over it and not to give one child a particular advantage over another child I believe in equity I mean but also equality and equality of opportunity and I think lowering the fence would be a superior way to do that rather than just helping one one particular class of individual Love More but um the the um the whole subject tonight of the the superintendent identified that the
196uh the cut at Denali Montessori was part of the PTR um increase that was in the budget two weeks ago I had proposed an amendment that would have prevented that um it would have reduced admit non-classroom administrative costs by five percent and that was uh way to fund not having to increase class sizes um so it sounds like that amendment I proposed a couple of weeks ago was directly related to what we were hearing about tonight um I I'm sorry that this is happening I really believe it would have been a superior resource or priority choice to go with the other types of reductions that I suggested at that time um and that was one of the reasons I voted primary research I voted against this budget now it was a horrible situation everybody's been
197and nobody wanted to do this I completely recognized nobody wanted to increase class sizes but I think I presented some valid options to doing that that night and I'm disappointed that we didn't go that direction and we wouldn't have to hear the concerns that we heard tonight apparently because the superintendent said that that was related to that decision that night but there was a meeting earlier today uh with uh some members of the legislature and during that meeting the discussion came up about the district cost differential and the need for a new study um and I guess this is one of those things that's a little bit complicated but we just need to keep talking about it so that the public gets educated as much as possible because it's so crucial to the future of
198this school district and there was a for after six years of studying this matter there was a suggestion that it could only be requested by the Department of Education and I asked some of the leadership of the the State Board of Education and the Department of Education to do today about that and they said that they did they weren't familiar with that and that you know even if that was true the legislature has the power to change any law that would even imply that and so they clearly have the authority to deal with that if that is true um and additionally they can simply appropriate the money for the needed study when we last looked at this this was so important that the Anchorage assembly even passed the funding to accomplish this but you might
199remember the history that when we went to the Institute of Social and economic research at the University of Alaska who were the folks that did the original study after the law that uh that was back in the 1990s designing this Statewide funding formula for Education they were really excited they wanted to do it but they said well we can't do it because if it's just Anchorage paying for it people think it's a biased study so then we attempted to get the Department of Education to ask for it and they they didn't want to do it and we attempted to get the Alaska School Board Association ask for it and they didn't want to do it so it's really going to be up to legislators to get this done it's going to be up to the
200Anchorage caucus to pull together and get this done for this community I've heard some of the press accounts of this even some of the testimony before the legislature that I thought well it was not very clear they said well Anchorage is the base for the cost differential well it was only the base because when we wrote that law and I was one of the four or five Senators that were the leaders in doing that at that time Anchorage was the least expensive place in Alaska to deliver educational costs but we really truly believe that is no longer the case and we never anticipated that there would not be a follow-up differential study conducted at least once a decade and now we've been a long time this has been a long time overdue it needs to
201be done and it could be and then the discussion came up well we we can't do this because some people would get less and I said well the way we've always accomplished that in a legislative process before because I recognize the politics involved is you hold people harmless you say okay we're going to make steps towards Equity here and fairness by holding people harmless and so we've never been advocating that others lose but we're advocating that because the current form the the current study is archaic and obviously no longer accurate but it's a data point that needs to be adjusted and of course you want to not dramatically negatively impact people delivering education to children so you're probably going to have to hold them harmless for a certain number of years at least until everybody
202catches up to the reality and the accuracy of a true accurate differential study that could be done so those are some of the points that were raised today I think there's really good counter points to those I think it can be done it's a it's a challenge politically but that's the way to accomplish it I believe thank you member lessons orders thank you so two of my favorite things take place this month I want to wish everyone a Happy National School breakfast week this week and next week's National sleep awareness week so everybody have good breakfasts and work on your Healthy sleep habits um I had a wonderful opportunity to talk to some of our high school students last month about civic participation it was a really lovely engaging conversation and had a really remarkable
203opportunity to attend amazing National History Day presentations by some of our sixth graders which was hosted at the Beartooth theater last week um it's my sincere hope that I can forward some of the spectacular demonstrations of what our students know and are able to do all the way up to a federal delegation and to our state leaders so hopefully I can make that happen um I wanted to say that I appreciated um a real clear consensus among Anchorage constituents attending the legislative Town Hall this past weekend um we heard that there was a tremendous amount of support for that VSA increase and to that end it sounds like there may be some revisions to Senate Bill 52 that are proposed tomorrow um so that'll be interesting to to listen in on um I wanted to
204also spend a little bit of time at the very end offering my personal appraisal some of the dollar figures attached to Governor dunleavy's educational education proposal today since he did say that he'd like to have quote an honest appraisal of what we're trying to do um and so in short the two sort of financial items were one was a 17 million dollar I don't know grant program for deed and then the second was a three-year teacher incentive program which would total about 58 million dollars Statewide and these are just my chicken scratch notes so if I got anything wrong um I'll be happy to clear it up so to my understand standing the 17 million to deed the Department of Education includes 5 million to support the Alaska reads act with as I mentioned earlier
205conferences trainings material and professional development um you know from the past 20 months on the border so um my sense is that time is expensive and I'm concerned that five million dollars to support a really important Act is simply not going to be enough um you know we have 54 districts in Anchorage alone I think that the initial the additional costs for profession professional development are going to be Hefty so I would really urge the powers that be who want the Alaska reads act to succeed to consider a more weighty investment um there was another item in that 17 million that included three million dollars to grow the to help teacher preparation and licensure to grow the pool and make the certification process less honorous and remember Donna you talked about lowering the fence and
206I hope that this doesn't lower the fence quite frankly um I think that we're kind of talking about lowering the bar for our standards for educators if I interpreted this correctly um I mean we need our Educators don't get me wrong but I think that when we look at what nations like Finland have done um I think that's our path forward we need the most highly trained Educators we can get our hands on and to that that and I'm curious about you know what does that look like in ASG so I did share an RFI earlier that's a request for information with um Dr Bryant and president Bellamy saying that I would be interested in understanding uh the relationship between our student outcomes really plotted according to our teacher degree level and like does it
207matter that some of our teachers many of them have Masters and some of them have doctorates um so I think that that could be informative um so I would I would urge the state to not lower any fences or any bars I want us to have high standards for the people who are preparing our youth um the second item so there was the 17 million to deed and then there was a three-year teacher incentive program um it sounds like for ASD as an urban District would receive about five thousand dollars per year per classroom teacher and I guess I really only understood that to be classroom teachers not like the wrap around all of the other staff that we have so I really appreciate the governor's attention to retention I think that's one of the
208narratives that one of the talking points that we're hearing a lot about um Statewide but I don't hear a framework for how incentivizing classroom teachers only is going to prevent students from being stuck with shelf-stable cheese sticks for lunch because we don't have the funds to hire cafeteria managers and I I don't hear how we're going to continue to be able to provide competitive salaries for our custodial draft staff or bus drivers or all the other Frontline employees you know who collectively support the whole child um so I don't think that we can only selectively offer carrots I think we really need um we need to focus on that entire I know I see it as an ecosystem and I was reminded of the April of 2021 deed study on teacher retention and recruitment surveys
209teacher retention recruitment survey um from a couple years ago and for our Educators um their priorities we're number one adequate compensation for their assigned duties and number two positive workplace conditions uh followed by personal connections with students and then retirement benefits and I emphasize the positive workplace conditions because I think if you've been visiting any schools over the past couple of years short staffing means that you know principals say what hat are you wearing right now right now I'm a cafeteria worker no I'm a custodian now I'm a nurse now I'm in everything so I think that our staff are really pulled in in more directions than we'd like because um because we are so desperately understaffed and so I think that adequate compensation is going to help promote those positive working conditions so um
210yes I'm grateful that the governor is paying attention to teacher retention but I really see a three-year trial program only incentivizing classroom teachers as um insufficient so thank you memories well thank you um you know one of the the unfortunate things is our comments always come after most people are home in bed I hope certainly I hope our students are there and getting ready for tomorrow uh and we should I think remind people more often that public testimony is that time for people to speak and for us to listen um we don't applaud we don't boo either whether people are here to ask for a change or praise us or condemn us uh we want them to feel equally welcome or it comes across I know is equally impassive but we mean for it to
211be an environment that doesn't stress the speakers uh particularly earlier when students spoke they did a marvelous job and uh I too appreciate the fact that we went ahead and didn't say anything about group Applause because we normally try to to not have that as as a former teacher at a high school I saw save students from the other side and that was when they were leaving a comprehensive high school to go to save and they didn't look like these kids these were kids that were failing these were kids that had failed a number of courses and were failing most of the classes they were taking then they didn't fit in they weren't happy they didn't feel a sense of community um some of them seemed sort of fatalistic about going to say some of
212them were actually excited about going to save to see them on the other side coming out the level of eloquence and confidence that they expressed tonight is an incredible thing and it just speaks to the value of that program which would not be a great program for very many of our students but it's the perfect program for those students that are there we need that variety across the district we we need lots of different places where students can settle and find their place and grow like they have it it really was inspiring um and of course the the value that the the Denali parents or and students felt for their teachers uh is was very positive as well all of us have had the experience of being in other places with other groups where people
213can just stand up and say well the Anchorage School District is just a complete failure and it goes unchallenged and what I would hope for everybody that wants to keep our staffing up that wants to keep our programs in place is they won't let that statement go unchallenged certainly ASD is not perfect I'm not asking anybody to ever say that but I do hope they will speak back about the value they see and how it worked for them and how it's not a complete failure that that a lot of wonderful things happen um the other thing is I am guilty of it we can talk about increasing class size as a budget item it sounds pretty good the truth is we don't save any money by increasing class sizes we save money when we stop
214having an instruction and when somebody leaves the building that's when you say money um and in the larger schools you have a certain amount of attrition anyway so it's a little bit painless people aren't being forced out but in our smaller programs if nobody happens to leave that year someone has to be um relocated and voluntarily transferred uh and it is painful especially in small programs where people play three or four different roles inside the curriculum so I I do think they help bring some of that pain into focus and I do hope they'll speak to other people about it something as simple as in being able to expect inflation adjustment from the legislature each year would keep that from happening um in this case the other uh play I just want to say real
215quick is I got to stop by roaming a while back for their stem day they had more than 50 people that are in technical careers in Anchorage giving seminars on what kind of work they do how they prepared for that why they love their jobs and the the day's schedule was redone students got to pick the seminars they wanted to go to and just a lot of excitement and you know like a really different day in the school great to see people back in our buildings um and and things starting to happen in a much more normal way so yeah once again I am very heartened by by what I see I think there will be an increase in the BSA I'll also say several years ago when I was a president we were in
216sort of the same situation where we were looking at some layoffs and a lot of involuntary transfers um because the budget has to be based on something real and the decision from the legislature doesn't happen very soon it's a mechanical thing about when the legislature meets versus when our fiscal ureas versus and when our budget has to be in and all that stuff it's not really anybody's fault um but something dramatic would have to change to be to be able to fix it in talking with HR a single like this seems like we could kind of freeze things and walk this back when this money comes because we're all pretty sure it's coming we don't know exactly how much it'll be but logistically when you start looking it really can't be walked back this will
217do damaging things um but it's a little bit like the Wake behind a boat it closes up behind you as you go down some people don't want to transfer back some people take other jobs some people [Music] um there's just a whole variety of things that keep it from being possible to undo except maybe in a handful of situations so it is something we'll face again um and and lastly I do want to say to the superintendent's remark that we are using a formula to Fidelity that's painful too and especially when it hits a small school it's especially painful but I'll also say I I grew up in a district that did not do things by a formula to Fidelity and I happen to go to a couple of high schools as a senior and
218it was very clear to me that one high school had a very favored status in the district they didn't get those cuts and they their choice was in such better shape and they had really nice stuff and then I would go back to what was my home High School it was very different um I won't say that Anchorage distributes everything with Equity inequality but I'm gonna say we'd come a lot closer than most communities in this country part of it is because we're one big District part of it is that I think that's just been the way it's been done for a long time not perfect way to be sure but unfortunately it means when there's pain everybody feels it and um when there's good times everybody feels that too I don't know what the
219best way is but but this is maybe the least bad way to to deal with this thing unfortunately but um I do hope more people see the good things that are happening every day and kind of start from the fact that we do succeed in a lot of stuff and we need to build on that and we need to bring it to every student as opposed from starting to the negative and tearing the system down thank you member Holloman I'll take my turn before we head online um didn't want to express appreciation for all of our testifiers tonight our students were awesome in speaking to their experience in the classroom um I had the privilege of as a board member of being up on stage for saves graduation in was it already 2021 yeah it
220must have been 2021 already and um I was having one of my the children in my home walk across the stage out of that program it was pretty special and they do amazing work they don't uh their students typically don't have extremely low um adverse childhood experiences scores they don't walk in with you know traditional um and adequate credits and so kudos to those those folks for advocating and I'm hopeful at some point we can address um some of the changes that had to be made for financial purposes um at Denali Montessori save and the the Dozen plus programs that were affected one of the um considerations I had really grappled with when we passed our budget is were we wisely using one-time funds um with the uncertainty coming from Juno and tonight I think
221was a pretty clear example that we were um it was pretty heartening to see because the the outcomes would have been significantly worse had we not and with that I guess I'll turn to fy25 um you know I'll work with President Bellamy to this end but I want to continue to urge Administration I think it's time to start talking about what fy25 looks like we don't have fiscal certainty um yet um the BSA bill hasn't passed either chamber and so I think it's time for us to start taking a serious look at what that future might look like if legislative inaction occurs um I I wish I could share optimism um of member Holloman but statistically speaking um a BSA increase isn't likely if you just go back and look that's when the foundation formula
222was instituted and so I think we need to start informing ourselves and educating others um exactly what's at stake so there isn't any surprises um should the legislature adjourn without taking action um with that said I'll hand it off to president Bellamy thank you well you guys were long-winded tonight thank you I appreciate all your comments uh I I kind of want to end on the analogy between equity and equality um we talked about adding a box we talked about leveling the Box making it the same size I just think we need to just read it remove the barrier period or just put up a chain link fence this is what we can do as Educators as a board we can change the landscape for kids we we can do it and I know we
223can't do it alone we need the parents we need our educators um we can't you know so barriers are there because we put them there somebody put them there and so we've got to anticipate um what that removal is going to look like and as we redesign our programs and we reimagine education in our district in this District we can make things better more accessible and to give kids what they need the kids don't come all needing the same thing they come from different backgrounds different ethnicities different cultures uh different parts of the world different family structures they are welcome in our schools and that's that's whatever that barrier looks like we we've got to remove it or redesign it and so I like that analogy but I know that you know it's not about
224it's it's we can't give everybody if we give everybody everything the thing the same then some people aren't going to they're not going they're not going to be successful because they need more or they might even lead less so um but that's the beauty of the work we get to do every single day in this District uh uh uh whether we are settling a contract with a valued group of of of us employees I do want to thank the bargaining teams for Local 71 and that amazing ratification of 92 I don't know that I've ever heard that uh a hide before uh in a while so um and I do want I do know that any cut anywhere is of value to somebody else I mean it's we it's not something we want to do
225and so I don't have the answer but I know if we keep looking and we keep talking we keep uh telling our stories the kids had amazing Stories tonight those are the stories that the legislature needs to hear parents have amazing stories and at the bottom of each email that I answer I do ask please consider telling your story because it is a valuable story and the legislators don't know what they don't know and so we've got to find ways to tell our story uh make sure that we are um representing or at least portraying the needs of our district so I do want to thank um you know all the board members I'm not in the boardroom tonight but really you guys are amazing I appreciate your hard work our job is not done
226I appreciate the staff and I look forward to learning all about Nashville Dr Bryant you and member remember member Wilson so I thank you and I moved to adjourn [Music] seven I'm not seeing any objection we're adjourned thanks everyone