0017th at 609 PM recording in progress want to welcome you to the Anchorage school district school board meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the Anchorage School District the board thanks parents students teachers staff School business partners and the entire Community for your investment in our district with your time your talented your tax dollars with that said um first item on our agenda is to have a land acknowledgment and flex the glute with our student representative please lead us [Music] foreign [Music] School Board I want to take a moment to recognize and offer gratitude of the Sacred ancestral lands of the denina people we acknowledge and appreciate that our offices facilities and schools are on the sacred indigenous lands and we honor the traditional care that has been given to this
002land 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 chanon thank you I did want to note uh for regarding the call to order and roll call that we do have all board members present um except online we have member or president Bellamy and member Higgins um with that said the next item A3 on our agenda is the approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda as written move to approve the agenda is presented is there a second [Music] motion to approve the agenda as presented made by member Solomon a second by member lessons any objection hearing seen none the agenda is approved move on
003to B1 student representative Michelle so we had our last meeting on January 17th um and then our next one is next Tuesday February 14th at 11 15 a.m during this meeting we'll hear from our school spotlights from East Family Partnership Romig ruining and golden view we will elect the president-elect who will take my position next year um and then we will have discussions about the graduation regalia policy update the school start time and Civic engagement in education um so super looking forward to that meeting and then we also had four Sab High School Representatives fly down with member lessons and Wilson in Juneau this past weekend and they have been asked to give a presentation at the next school board meeting on the 21st about their trip so I will let them share all the
004details about that so that's about it [Music] thank you very much for your reports um any questions hearing seeing none we'll move on to B2 mental health and school start times update Dr Brian the floor is yours thank you Mr chair uh we will have a brief presentation from a guest speaker on the intersection of school start times and Wellness so I'll go ahead and pass it on to our guests good evening I'm Dr Lisa Meltzer I'm a Pediatric Sleep psychologist in Denver Colorado and I've done a lot of work over the years with school start times and I'm going to present to you today some research findings um someone else is sharing those so I can't pull my slides up no problem all right okay it says you should be able to see my
005slides now um so again thank you for the opportunity to present and we have about 20 minutes or so of information and then time for questions so I'm just going to jump right into the fact that we know adolescents have a biological need of um eight and a half to nine and a quarter hours of sleep so this isn't a desire this isn't uh just being lazy it's been tested biologically that adolescents have a significant sleep need but in the United States three out of four adolescents are getting seven hours or less per night so what happens when kids and teens don't get enough sleep the number one thing that we see is mood and affect changes so a significant anxiety increases depressive symptoms increase any parent can tell you when their kid hasn't gotten
006enough sleep because they're more Moody irritable grumpy definitely notice it right away we also see significant behavior problems including impulse control hyperactivity and difficulties paying attention neurocognitive deficits such as difficulties with learning memory and then concentration in the classroom and especially in adolescence we see increased risk-taking behaviors and accidents and finally there's a direct link between insufficient sleep duration and weight gain and we see that across the age groups from preschoolers through adults now there's a number of reasons that kids and teens don't get enough sleep so first we have homework and stress there's caffeine that's widely available technology that's used all the time extracurricular activities that occur into the late evening and of course what we're going to discuss today is school start times because this is something that we can change on a
007wide policy level for a lot for all of the teens at the same time most parents say to me well if my team just turned off their electronics and went to bed earlier we'd all be fine and the issue is is that when kids go through puberty hormones change all hormones change and this affects their circadian rhythm so your circadian rhythm is a 24 plus 0.2 hour Rhythm that helps to regulate when you're awake and when you're asleep now because it's 24.2 hours we have to use external cues to keep our circadian rhythm on track the strongest cues are light and dark and when darkness happens that sends a cue to our brain to make melatonin and melatonin is released and continues to be released overnight while we're sleeping and then in the morning when
008we have sunlight which I know your mornings happen a little bit later but bright light helps to tell our brain to suppress melatonin and wake up now again when adolescents go through puberty this natural hormone of melatonin gets delayed as represented by this red line by about one to two hours and this is across teens and what this translates to is in the evening when my melatonin is being released and most people are getting ready for bed teens are at the peak of wakefulness and then at 7am when we ask them to get behind the wheel of a car or get to school put their seat get in their seat and learn at their optimal ability they're at their peak of physiological sleepiness and so it's a significant detriment to our students to have early
009school start times and this is the biological science behind that now I want to take a step back and do a broader perspective of why changing school start times is important this is a model you may be familiar with that looks at the whole school whole community and whole child so of course our students and our children are at the center of this model we want them to be healthy safe engaged challenged and supported but it takes a lot for our students to be successful we need helpful policies processes we need improved learning and improved Health all of those things are scaffolded by Family employee Wellness Health Education Health Services factors in our community as well that help our students be the most successful and so it's an integrated perspective that we think of our
010students and so it's an integrated approach that we think about what happens when we change school start times I'm going to be providing data to you today from the Cherry Creek School District which is the fourth largest school district in Colorado it is over 55 000 students enrolled 53 of the students are white and 20 percent are Hispanic 29 of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch and notably the southeast Denver metro area of where the district is has a geographic footprint of 108 square miles and the reason why I point this out is because a lot of students have long bus rides in order to get to school in the fall of 2017 Cherry Creek implemented later school start times for middle and high schools but for elementary schools start times removed one
011hour earlier from 9 A.M to 8 A.M middle schools were delayed from an average of about 8 A.M to 8 50 a.m and high schools were delayed from 7 10 to 8 20 A.M the superintendent at the time when he retired said his one regret was not being able to push it all the way to 8 30 but because of busing limitations this was the best that they were able to do at the time that they implemented the healthy school start times I want to point out there was also significant health education around sleep provided to students and families in multiple languages and this was important to maximize the positive impact and ensure that with the later start time students continue to get healthy sleep as well as to improve healthy sleep habits so sleep
012needs consistent routines and limits to technology and caffeine were some of the things that were highlighted in order to study this we created the castle study which was changing start times it was a longitudinal effect study over three years in a comprehensive 360 degree evaluation of outcomes my colleagues are shown here Dr Amy plague and Dr Kyla wallstrom who are instrumental in helping me complete this work we did three annual student surveys of students so we did it in the spring of 2017 before the start time was implemented post-change in the spring of 2018 and our follow-up was in the spring of 2019. we have student data cohort of student whose parents said that we were allowed to link their data identified year over year and so we were able to follow a subgroup of
013our students longitudinally um I also don't have listed on here but we'll be sharing with you at the same time that the annual surveys of students occurred we also had surveys of teachers and staff as well as parents and finally we obtained Community data from the Colorado Department of Transportation about motor vehicle crashes so starting with the student and the individual level outcomes that we looked at this just gives you a sense of the scope of our study and when you look at the graphs that are coming up this pink color here where Elementary School students grades K through two these were parent reported data green is Elementary School students grades three through five who self-reported on data the blue is Middle School students grades six through eight and purple is high school pre-change was
014grades 9 through 11 and post change was grades 9 through 12. and we had a very uh decent representation of our students across years this was the average end per year they were representative of our students and then this was the cohort whose students we were able to link year over year so starting with bedtime was our first outcome that we look at when you start down here at the bottom these are Elementary School students remember their start time was one hour earlier so their bedtime was Advanced and moved earlier by um about 10 minutes whereas middle school students and high school students that times were delayed by about 10 to 15 minutes so this busted one of the first significant myths about changing school start times which is that when we have later start
015times students will simply go to bed later we did not find that however what we found were significant changes in wait time and this is an important pattern that we will see repeated the green and the pink lines here are overlapping because they were identical and it shows you that students were waking about 20 minutes earlier in the elementary school level middle school students were awaking 30 to 45 minutes later and high school students were waking 45 to 60 minutes later and so a significant change here was all due to wake time and the lack of variability is because wait times were tied to school start times so what this resulted were changes in Total Sleep time our elementary school students because their bedtimes did not Advance as far as their wait times um had
016got about 10 minutes of less sleep per night but we found no negative outcomes tied to that in our middle school students they averaged an extra 20 to 30 minutes per day and our high school students again an extra 30 to 45 minutes per day and if you add that up over the course of the week for our high school students that's an extra two and a half hours of sleep and that's a lot of sleep to increase week over week across the school year most notably we were able to see this in what something we call weekend oversleep which is when you sleep more on weekends than you do on weekdays to make up for your significant sleep deprivation this dark bar here represents the two hour mark which is clinically significant sleep deprivation
017and you can see our high school students following the change of school start times were no longer significantly sleep deprived as shown by their weekend oversleep another way of looking at this is in the perspective of healthy people which is a national initiative the healthy people 2020 goals were set back in 2010 and the goal was to increase the proportion of students in grades 9 through 12 who got sufficient sleep defined as eight or more hours on an average school night the goal for healthy people 2020 was to go from a modest 30.9 percent to a modest 33.1 percent they wanted to increase 2.2 percent across 10 years in one year of implementing healthy school start times in the Cherry Creek School District our students went from 30.4 percent obtaining sufficient sleep duration to 62.7
018percent this was maintained so the change was an increase 32 percent and that was maintained at follow-up we also looked at this in middle school students with a definition of sufficient sleep duration being at least nine hours because they are slightly younger students and again we saw a significant increase almost 21 percent of students when that was maintained at follow-up notably during the same time period what we saw Across the Nation was with a decrease in the percent of students who are getting sufficient sleep dropped from 30.9 percent down to 25.4 percent so these significant increases were due to the healthy changes in start time and not to anything else across the country and now the 2030 Target for the healthy people initiative is 27.4 percent which I will point out is even lower than
019where we started in 2010. I put this slide up here um I have a similar side for sleep and socioeconomic status that I did not include just for time limits and what you're looking at here is differences in students by their identified race and so we had white is in red orange is our black students Hispanic students in Gray Asian students in green and then I'm multi-racial and other classified students were in the blue and what you can see is the same pattern this is Elementary School students so slightly earlier bedtimes that were maintained slightly earlier wait times that were maintained and a slightly shorter sleep duration that was maintained whereas in high school students across racial groups what we see is that bedtimes 10 to 15 minutes later but the wait times significantly later
020in sleep duration for all students was significantly longer I want to look at our cohort students because a lot of people say well this is just a change that you had in an environment but when we were able to track you can see what how much of this is biology which is natural changes to sleep as opposed to the Ecology of healthy school start times so on these rainbow graphs what we're starting with is red is kindergarten all the way up to Black which started in 10th Grade and so what happens is students who are in kindergarten a pre-change were in first grade post change and second grade the follow-up that's the longitudinal progression and what you can see here across the bottom is that our early Elementary School students who started in k-3 their
021bedtimes remained the same where bedtime start to increases when students progress to the Middle School level which is when they start going through puberty these Dash lines are when students change levels and we'll come back to that in just a moment you see that we came weekend bedtimes follow the same pattern with the exception of all students go to bed later on the weekend but the delays don't start to happen until the middle school years here's the weekday wake time again this pattern is really similar to the one that I showed you with the exception of these dashed lines and we're going to zoom in on that in just a moment but I want you to notice the big difference between the weekday weekday wake time pattern sorry it's late here um and the weekend
022wake time pattern the weekend wake time pattern looks very similar to what you see on weekdays but the wait time is not that way on weekdays because again of school start times so here's the weekend wake time pattern and what you see is it clusters here and here same at both here in follow-up because the elementary school students were starting at 8 A.M and the high school students at 8 20. whereas the middle school students who are starting at 8 50 a.m have later wake times if we pull this out even further and start with our students who if we're at elementary school pre-change so nine o'clock was their start time they progressed to Middle School where they had an 8 50 start time and stayed at 8 50. so you can see there was
023no change to their wake time because in essence their school start time did not change whereas in the pink you have a student who started in middle school at eighth grade and then progressed to high school so they went from an 8 AM start time to 8 20 so they slept a little bit later with a 20 minute later starts time in green these are students who are in elementary school started with 9 A.M following the change of start time went to 8 A.M and then went back to 8 50 a.m so you're starting to see the pattern here right that Us Wake times are set by school start times again a middle school student who went from 8 AM to 8 50 a.m back to 8 20 a.m and so this is the pattern
024and why start times are so important for sleep now I know we also wanted to talk a lot today about daytime functioning and we had four primary outcomes that we looked at and this again is in our longitudinal cohort again let me Orient you red is pre-change Gray's post change uh blue is follow-up the diagonal slash lines here are when students are in middle school and the dotted lines were when they were in high school and what you see again in our early Elementary School students is there were no significant changes in the proportion of students who were feeling sad nervous worried or too tired to keep up with their schoolwork with the change in start times where you start to see changes with the mood outcomes in particular are in middle school so these
025are students who started in sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade and then you can see some students here again fifth to seventh grade you see the feeling nervous also increase um as well as feeling worried and so a lot of these changes occurred um and the middle school years as students were going through puberty the most notable changes we found though were too tired to keep up with the schoolwork were significant decreases especially in our high school students so we went from about 35 percent of students reporting they were too tired to keep up with their schoolwork down to about 25 percent even though that still sounds like a lot that is an improvement because if students are unable to keep up with dual participation did decrease because there was a district-wide mandate that
026students could there could not be before school activities for elementary school students because 8 AM was deemed early enough there was also a significant decrease in enrollment in the before care programs at school middle school before school participation in high school before school participation did not change same with employment after school we did not see a change in percent of students who were participating at the elementary school level we did see small decreases in the Middle School participation in the high school participation this was not unexpected and is a challenge when Schools get out later but when we think about the proportion of students who may or may not be participating in activities compared to a hundred percent of students who now have the opportunity to sleep more this was a sacrifice that the district
027was felt was worthwhile employment you will see there was a decrease here in the follow in the post change here with an increase back at the follow-up year what was notable is we broke out the employment data by students who qualified for free and reduced lunch and those who didn't and students who qualified it for free and reduced lunch there was no change in their employ in the percent of students who were employed before and after the start time change so for those students where employment is very important for their family there was no change to their ability to continue working with a later start and end time all right stepping back um into the family and the school level outcomes this is parent sleep this is a very busy table so I'll just walk
028you through um what happens is parents have students sometimes only in one level but sometimes across levels and that's what each of these columns represent when you had students only in the elementary school level what we found was very similar to what we saw in the students which is that bad times were moved earlier by about nine minutes and wait times by about 14 minutes if there's no data in a cell that means there is no significant finding so even though there are these slight changes there is no significant change to sleep duration sufficient sleep good sleep quality or the percent of parents who reported feeling tired where we start to see really significant changes were for parents who had either a middle school student or in particular a high school student where their wake
029times were significantly later same thing with their sleep duration and significant increase of 20 minutes per night is an hour and 40 minutes by the end of the school week a significant increase in the percent of parents who report in getting sufficient sleep duration at a time when adults in the state of Colorado were getting less sleep percent of parents reporting good sleep quality and most notably for high school parents the ones a significant decrease in those who are reporting feeling tired during the day we saw similar patterns for our teachers and our staff sleep quick so again Elementary School teachers went to bed earlier but the middle and high school teachers bedtimes remain the same wake times it's the exact same pattern Middle School teachers and high school teachers got to awake later which
030meant that they also got increased sleep duration and what did that translate to um first of all looking at the percent of sufficient sleep duration did not change across elementary school but we saw a significant increase in middle school and an even more significant increase in high school and by having healthy school start times it provides Equity across our teachers across levels to have an opportunity to get sufficient sleep duration which also impacts teacher mood teacher functioning and their ability to be the best teachers they can be in a classroom the percent of teachers reporting feeling tired slightly increased in elementary school that was not surprising with an earlier awakened start time but you'll see by the by the follow-up period it normalized again and that's why you have to recognize change is hard and
031the first year after change things are still hard we're five years post change now and nobody remembers what life was like but I can tell you not a single high school student or teacher would like to go back to the way that it was and you can see here the percent of students that are percent of teachers feeling very tired significantly dropped at the high school level and then one final step out into our community level outcomes in particular drowsy driving this was self-reported data for students um who reported being regular drivers frequent drowsy driving which is at least one day a week that's a lot of drowsy driving there was a significant drop in the percent of students who were reporting that so that makes it a lot safer for students especially if it's
032dark in the morning when they're driving for school we also looked at teen motor vehicle crashes in Arapahoe County where the Cherry Creek School District compared to Adams versus Douglas County our neighboring counties and in the blue line here you can see there was a significant decrease in the um in the percent of Motor Vehicle crashes in Arapahoe County where it was maintained or increased in our neighboring counties and then of course in 2019 Cove had happened and so we took advantage of that opportunity and did a study called nested where we looked at sleep and teens across the United States including Alaska and we had over 5 000 teens complete an online survey that told us about their school type were you going to school in person did you have online synchronous school which
033meant you had a set time that you had to turn on your computer and be present or did you have online asynchronous school which meant you could do school whenever you wanted and what we looked at not surprisingly was that sleep patterns differed based on the school start times so red was in person glue was synchronous and green was asynchronous and middle school is lighter than high school colors here and so bad times again get slightly later the less stringent your school schedule is but you can see this very significant difference in terms of wake times between students who had to get up and get on a bus versus students who could get up and just turn on their computer versus students who didn't have to get up at all and most notably with the
034Sleep opportunity I want to point out the students who were not restricted by having to go to school at a set time were obtaining on average nine and a quarter hours of sleep the same number that I started this talk with that was biologically shown almost 40 years ago that this is an adolescent biological sleep need and then finally um this is looking just comparing in-person students versus the synchronous students are in dark blue in person is in light blue and these are school start time windows so starting with the earliest to the latest not surprisingly wait time is later with later start times what was really notable is that within each time bracket it's about 70 minute difference in Wake times between students who had to attend school in person versus those who are
035attending online and again that speaks to the amount of time that students must spend in the morning getting ready and transporting and commuting the same way that adults have to experience as well so in summary healthy school start times are important to ensure sleep health of secondary school students in general moving Early Elementary School start times earlier resulted in small changes to their sleep but no significant changes to their mental health outcomes while moving mental Middle School and High School times later had significant changes on sleep and daytime functioning there are Downstream effects for healthy school start times so while we're focusing on students and mental health it's also important to consider the benefits that this may have for parents teachers in the broader community so considering the entire socio-ecological system there are a lot
036of people who helped with my research they're all listed here um and I will now take questions thank you Dr Meltzer um turning to in the room first questions on the presentation member lessons I I don't have a question but I'm astounded at the presentation and grateful for it and I never thought to ask about the impact of start times on parent sleep um and I thought that was and teacher and staff sleep so very logical things to look at thank you for shedding me light on the subject that I think is incredibly important thank you other questions in the room seeing none any questions online now just a a ditto uh Dr Nelson thank you for this it's very Timely um and very enlightening uh we we um had a discussion maybe four years
037ago yes but we've circled back around I'm so happy that you have so that is uh and that's I I think that's a good thing um we get to look at it with fresh eyes and fresh ears and knowing that the data shows that it's good for kids and adults yes either you know we we do get so focused in and so much of the research has focused on teens and students which is our Central Focus here but again thinking about the broader Community um it is impactful for the entire families and I think that's important to consider we also did qualitative interviews I didn't share all of those results here I have shared that by email through our that was in our board report that includes sample quotes um as you're thinking about this
038and thinking about you know potential issues in terms of implementation and mitigating potential problems because they're it's not easy change is hard it affects a lot of people um but again the benefits so far outweigh the consequences of the changes and people adapt and so that's important to consider as well so I'm always available for additional questions via email or in a study section meeting if needed in the future okay okay thank you sir um we have one question for you from Member Higgins yeah Pat go ahead please if it's me I just I just wanted to say thank you I have been to the nsba and listen to his presentations that have given similar support for this type of change but I like objective data like this and it's something I think the board
039is has already expressed interest in pursuing And discussing and looking at options and putting kids first and I I just I've enjoyed your presentation it'll take me a while to process it all but I really enjoyed it thank you thank you and in closing Dr Meltzer I'll say yeah I appreciate the data thank you for making time especially late in your evening um and I found the data regarding the pandemic especially insightful I'm given the lack of restraints and the flexibility that we had due to the public health emergency it was fascinating to see how students naturally adapted to what we knew was the uh is scientifically best for them so yeah if I have one more moment I'll just comment because I just focused on the Sleep outcomes during the pandemic but we did
040look at mental health and academic outcomes and for what it's worth when students actually go to school clearly they have better academic outcomes and they have better mental health and so you know the takeaway message from this was that students need sleep right and they need to go to school so how can we merge those two right so in order to go to school we need to ensure that they're getting sufficient sleep to ensure continued academic and mental health um positive outcomes so I think that's just important to mix in as we're in our postcode era and reconsidering how do we best approach education students need to be in school I mean I I don't think they need to stay home and just sleep all day they need to be in school they need structured
041schedules that's important for socialization education and mental health but we need to give them the opportunity to get enough sleep so that they can be fully successful thank you Dr Meltzer for you again for your time tonight Dr Brian any closing remarks before we move on again thank you Dr military Echo the comments of the school board this was very informative very timely and you're informing a policy making process all the way up here in Alaska so thanks for all that you do thank you have a good evening okay moving on to agenda item C1 we have a goal monitoring conversation I will read the entry framing that we have for President Bellamy so we are now going to have our monitoring conversation on the report that was given to us at our last meeting
042tonight our primary conversation will be focused on our goal of college career and life Readiness specifically beginning with the freshman class on September 2020 the percent of high school students graduating life ready as well as college career ready will increase from a baseline of to be determined uh in Spring 2022 to 90 in Spring 2026 and interim goal 3.2 Algebra 2 completion rates the percentage of Grade 9 through 12 students successfully completing Algebra 2 grade a b or c will increase from 30 in Spring 2022 to 32 percent in Spring 2023 I first want to confirm that all four components of the monitoring report are present number one the report clearly shows what is being monitored and that its focus is specific and and in terms of goal number two the we chose data for
043the pre three three previous reporting periods and the current reporting period and the targeted reporting periods number three is the report shows the superintense evaluation of performance and number four that the report shows supporting documentation that evidences the superintendent's evaluation via the tables provided it also indicates next steps with all components present we're ready to begin our progress monitoring conversation so for the purpose of understanding the current reality for all students as compared to this goal let us begin with questions that fall into the who what and why categories once the board fully understands the current reality then we'll move on to the how category of questions to hear what the superintendent has planned in terms of the response to the data with that conversation logic model in mind the floor is now open to
044board members who wish to engage in inquiry regarding the reading proficiency goal one and interim goal uh 1.1 monitoring technical report I believe that's actually the college career life ready goal uh who has questions for Dr Brian and his team member lessons sure thank you very much um I was curious about what accounts for the increases especially among our economically disadvantaged students in both uh number and percent uh enrolling and completing there were some upticks and a number of sub subgroups but maybe most noticeable and are economically disadvantaged population doing things are going the right direction yeah they're going the right direction I just caution that those are pretty small they're pretty really most of them are less than one percent and so that could be just the maneuvering of the transitions between different schools
045and whatnot um and from our district and to and from so yeah yeah those are positive but it just kind of um want to make sure that we are thinking about that one one thing uh that we are looking at it a lot is our EOS equal opportunity schools work and trying to get a lot more kids identified into upper level courses and of course if they're getting into upper level courses they're also getting into upper level math courses as well yep November lessons followed could you just review what the Equal Opportunity schools are please I know that Kirsten she's really involved with that so I'll let Kirsten Johnson's chocolate senior director of secondary hand thanks through the chair um to member lessons um so our equal opportunity schools work is um work that we
046um there's an organization called the Equal Opportunity School so that we're partnering with essentially targets um increasing enrollment in advanced placement coursework um really we have expanded to um not just advanced placement coursework but some of the the prerequisite coursework that goes into advanced placement as well all eight of our comprehensive high schools are working on this project um and actively getting training um they're also engaging with students in a very detailed way to increase our student non-traditional students in those courses so we're looking at different demographic groups um and really trying to Target their enrollment in those courses um and then just to go back to the economically disadvantaged question that you originally asked um the other the other piece that um we are really working on is inclusive practices in our schools um
047so that's really um getting our kids back into regular education curriculum not an alternate curriculum and giving them the supports in that regular education curriculum um so that they can be successful and and start advancing through some of those upper level courses as well so they don't get tracked if you will um when you look at economically disadvantaged students they often have a another subcategory that's associated with that um and so that could potentially be some of the uptick there as well one one thing that we are doing um to help this is we we're piloting this year um Hampton algebra and geometry and construction identifying kids that need a little more support and a different way of learning those different uh subjects and the data that we've had before from other districts is success
048in Algebra 2 actually is better for those kids once they're in those courses so it's going to be interesting to see if that goes up once that's fully implemented with our first cohort in the next two years thank you member lessons thank you team member Wilson tell us a little bit more about those classes in the plan so Hampton algebra and geometry and construction are more Hands-On based um I am going to although I know quite a bit about them I'm going to let Amanda give you the real answer so this is Amanda Barr our coordinator for mathematics in the district thank you uh so those two courses are collaborations between CTE and math courses students get a credit for a CTE course and a math course in Hampton algebra it's targeted towards Manufacturing in
049addition to learning Algebra 1 content and then in Geometry it's aligned with the construction course for CTE and can you clarify how many classes currently and and how many if we intend to expand that we currently have three schools piloting one or at least one of those versions um we've got the uh at chuyak uh West there's one more service so yeah um and could I if I if I could just interject um and add to Amanda's um response um the the greater vision for college career life ready work um is to include more courses of that nature in the future um and not just math related courses that take that approach as well um but really looking at the subject matter through the lens of a career um so they're tangible they're motivating for
050kids um and and it's a different approach to teaching um in the classroom so um I'll stop there because I'm talking about algebra 2. foreign thank you member Wilson president Bellamy your hands up thank you um since it's just spring are we going to wait until the board reviews since we've got President Obama since we have uh got really involved in our college career life ready goal in our work with Ford NGL we are looking at um those options right now because we don't want to set something and then it doesn't match what our work is going to be in yeah okay we're looking at that now we hope to have something this spring for you okay that that makes sense can I have a follow-up or another question I'm sorry I'm sorry please proceed
051so I noticed um that we're looking that the data covers those kids that get an A or B or C because I you know that that really equivalent uh equates to success in college I mean the research tells us that do they have do our students have opportunities to retake and do we have that data on how many kids are retaking [Music] um like if they failed if they failed it I want to know what the kids who fail it or don't get a a b or c what are their opportunities to um either retake or um yeah to retake the class if they fail it yes President Obama we do kids can retake courses um usually we have them take those online so they don't take up any of their additional slots and their
052schedules but uh we do have that and occasionally that they do actually go back and do do it face to face but normally those are online courses that and we have numerous kids doing that all the time so but they can they can they don't have to take online no okay they can they can just choose to retake it yes all right so and it looks like um I I wanna I I want to thank that the Equal Opportunity schools that we are creating more opportunities for kids to be in these classes um and so you know I I I'm just a little curious as to how are they how are our students recommended oh that's a how question I can come back to that but uh so what support do kids get um outside
053of the classroom for the for for uh algebra 2. you know it all depends upon the school yeah and what the school offers for tutoring options um some schools are doing it during lunch some schools are using peer tutors some schools are doing after school tutoring um it just depends upon what uh what options in each individual school right you do we think uh every school is providing some support uh if nothing other than the mtss supports yes yes they're they're doing something at each of the different schools okay okay all right okay I'll hold for now thank you president Bellamy remember Higgins yeah I guess the question I always like and it's one of the things legislators asked if we had more money what would we be doing that we aren't doing right now
054that we could do to help improve these outcomes but I know finances is a problem but assuming that we had more money we had an opportunity we'd have to cut we had what what do we what opportunities are we missing Mr Higgins there's I'm sure we can find things that would help kids be more successful in these courses you know in order to get into Algebra 2 and be successful in Algebra 2 you need to have had many years of success in math from elementary to be proficient up through middle school and take your algebra and geometry courses so I'm really looking at all the way down to Elementary and making sure that we're preparing kids to be successful in Algebra 2 is uh is is something that we would always look at and if
055a big chunk of money came forward I'm sure that Amanda would be able to find something that would help us move this work forward especially to get kids prepared and ready for algebra 2. foreign [Music] this is something that I stumbled across um well no I didn't stumble across it came to me at some point in the fall and I remembered it while I was looking at the data and the takeaway from this um report was that the nation's economic competitiveness competitiveness and scientific innovation is constrained by racial and ethnic underrepresentation in the stem Workforce so my curiosity and we were sort of just speaking about this um was we have out we have students taking Algebra 2 in ninth grade that means that they're getting prepared as you were just saying they're doing pre-algebra
056in sixth grade to go through algebra and geometry do we know do we have disaggregated data for for who is completing Algebra 2 at what level and if we had that I mean at what grade so if we knew who was completing Algebra 2 it's great that they're completing algebra too whenever but if we want to provide further math opportunities for more of our students I guess would knowing who is taking it earlier versus taking it later help us Target I guess interventions New Opportunities new ways of teaching earlier in their Elementary years of a long question I kind of I kind of get your gist about the question member lessons I'm uh you know when we identify kids or when they're identified at earlier ages of being able to move forward in math it's
057important that we have um opportunities for them and I believe that you know what one of the things we just talked about earlier in the work session was about sixth graders to middle school we when we have highly uh [Music] effective teachers at a middle school that are teaching math those sixth graders get it get get to actually see those upper-level math courses sooner and we can move them forward quicker um so I think you know identifying who's doing the algebra 2 in ninth grade that would take us some work um now we didn't really prepare that we just got the percentages because it is normally a 10th and 11th grade course um that's where the most most of our kids take Algebra 2 but really um I think that getting sixth grade into Middle
058School help um increase these numbers once you know four or five years when we get them up to that level I hope that answers your question maybe yeah I guess I think it's a really relevant point it's one of the benefits of middle school I mean we received an email in support of ASD virtual saying that 17 children at one of our schools are actually enrolled in pre-algebra in sixth grade and that's clearly not available at most of our sixth grade programs across the um across the district so if we can be offering more of those early opportunities it would seem to me then that the downstream effect is that maybe we can help prepare a more robust Tech and math and steam Savvy Workforce for Alaska's future across all socioeconomic lines I think Ms
059Johnson has something so I was just going to kind of add to your point member lessons but um one of the challenges we have right now with sixth grade and two different levels is not the instruction that's one of the academic benefits to and we have seen some success as they've gone from those summer programs and then continue to work on on their deficits throughout the school year like Amanda was describing in the classroom um we are just really trying all of our our options to get instruction time for kids that need that help foreign thank you member Donnelly any other how questions in the room first before we go online hearing soon going online do you have a whole question uh yeah just that the question I almost asked before just validate our students
060recommend it how do they I know they Advanced through um we have to have certain levels of math before before they can get to algebra 2. but you know some kids are so focused on just getting doing the least I guess I'm still concerned about one wanting to know how are we what are we doing to encourage um and I like the fact that you're hooking kids up with adults and these adults are going to push them instead of saying well I already had algebra one I don't need Algebra 2 because I don't think they don't need it to graduate um but they do need it for um for their future uh so I don't even know if that's a question or just a concern but um yeah I just want to make sure that
061we are that we knowing that our kids come from different um you know uh backgrounds and different economic abilities I know that there are kids out there that can do this work and just don't have access to it and I just don't want us to forget to I just want us to figure out how we are going to reach those kids and keep keep reaching out for those kids that's that's it's not real I guess it's not a question but um I'm more of a comment thank you [Music] um I guess one follow-up is you know we have different levels of algebra some lower levels and and then the regular algebra and when teachers get kiddos into those classes they're they're doing assessments right away to make sure they're all they're placed appropriately and if
062they're not they're moving them and getting them and talking to them and their parents about getting into the regular algebra one courses that also happens at middle school all the time um as kids come into Middle School um the the math trained teacher is able to assess them and get them into the pre-algebra or into the algebra one courses um earlier on and that same transition takes place in high school right from uh uh eighth grade to ninth grade yes yes it does and it does whenever any kids come into the school district new too yeah okay awesome thank you guys I appreciate you President Bill me any other health questions [Music] if nobody else has one I just have a real quick one on on staff uh development um what does it look like
063and how how are we helping teachers um I know yeah on this chart here I think it you know I know there's collaboration there's um you know um onboarding there's all kinds of things here so on every school doing these things or how is how does that work well a lot of it has to do with things that happened district-wide when we get new teachers and onboarding them into their curriculum that happens in the summer our department chairs are working with the new teachers when they change course levels to make sure they have somebody or the materials the wherewithal and usually if it's a new subject to them they're hooking them up with another teacher through the mentoring program or just in an unofficial mem deal in the schools Amanda's team you want to talk
064a little bit about professional development you're doing yeah we through the district uh district-wide professional development days we have access to teachers and then as Sven mentioned the um the department chairs at each school do a lot of job embedded onboarding and and collaboration within teams and then at Middle School there's the team um approach they've got the time and the schedule to actually collaborate with their teams okay so if if I could um add on to that President Bobby um we have a real Focus this year on inclusive practices focusing on math instructions specifically uh last year we focused on English language language arts and essentially what inclusive practices does is look at our students in special education or other programs like ell and um many of those students sometimes are in an alternate
065curriculum based on their needs what we are doing is systematically across all of our secondary schools looking at those students needs and seeing if we can approach it differently in a regular classroom so they are exposed to the regular education curriculum what that does is accelerate them into Pathways that make it possible for them to get to Algebra 2 at a faster rate rather than going slower um and and more methodically and so that's where where I think we're going to see a lot of changes in in upper level math achievement okay all right all right I'll stop there thank you guys I promise I'm done thank you president Bellamy I'm hearing and seeing no other questions I think that wraps up a goal monitoring C1 on Algebra 2 completion rate thank you everyone Dr
066Bryant C2 goal monitoring on the reading proficiency technical report thank you Mr chair uh we'll Dive Right into our technical report on interim goal 1.1 on reading proficiency uh board goal one is to increase reading proficiency from 40 to 80 by May 2026 our interim goal tracks performance on Fast Bridge with the goal of increasing the percentage of students meeting the reading benchmark to 80 by Spring 2024. this next slide shows historical progress the dotted lines on the graph above show our yearly targets for 2022-23 the goal was 65 up from 38 in 2122 the red boxes on the chart show the percent of students reading at or above Benchmark there's much work to be done on this front that we can discuss at our next board meeting this chart disaggregates the data by grade
067level you'll also be able to compare the performance of the winter to Performance in the fall snapshot the final column shows the percentage Point change since the fall snapshot foreign desegregates the data by race ethnicity and special populations including economically disadvantaged and non-english Learners the bottom portion of the chart illustrates the number of schools currently on near and below the target and the next couple of slides provide an overview of the status of implementation here you'll see the instructional focus of the pre-k2 implementation strategy this included early literacy instruction and the multi-tiered system of support structure this approach is a continuous loop of building capacity of teachers implementing strong instructional practices and analyzing data to inform practice and this chart provides a status update on the implementation strategies in place which include multi-tiered systems of
068support data discussions professional learning instruction and curriculum and that concludes the technical report we look forward to our book robosa robust dialogue rather between the board and academic leadership at our next board meeting thank you Dr Bryant's clarifying question number lessons thank you so um when I recently logged on to the data dashboard um to kind of take a peek at all of this there's a you can look at students who are at risk and some risks so when we look at the metric this is on slide three a percent at above grade level like which of those segments at risk some risk are included here uh so here Benchmark is defined as 40th percentile in terms of the data you're looking at online I would need to ask our uh I'll have to ask
069our academic services to define the definitions and when you or someone on the team be able to clarify foreign can we put that into board connect for you on Friday because we need to look that up make sure we give you a good answer [Music] would you mind repeating the question remember I'm sorry yeah the question is what's the definition of being at risk or some risk as measured in the data dashboard and is that the same thing how does one of those levels or both of those levels as not or as as being at the 40th percentile how do they match up yeah that's a great question so we'll clarify that concordance is appropriate oh okay um actually I believe our senior director of assessment evaluation might have an answer to that [Music] I'm
070asking you shall receive go ahead this will be his first time in this role in front of y'all this is uh Chris Opitz [Music] did it turn on yeah um so when we look at those different risk levels first the 40th percentile and above is uh low risk as well as aggressive growth and each vendor is going to describe those um various categories slightly differently but 40th percentile and above is going to be your low risk or high achieving and then typically the metric is um 15th percent and below is considered our sort of high risk category and 15th the 40th percentile is at risk um and so that's those are the percentiles that are typically broken down when you look at just to clarify to clarify though when you look at each vendor it
071could be up to percent or two difference so just I would use caution when looking at those foreign member lessons okay thank you any other questions on the technical report from Dr Brian remembered only um Dr Brown what were the two schools that met the target at the very last column on that started on page six that is a great question uh we can clarify that either in a board connector during our discussion usually we have an appendix but it wasn't affixed to this particular presentation okay so thank you thank you member Donnelly seeing no other questions on the technical report that concludes our goal monitoring section of our agenda we'll move on to D1 student comments my understanding is we do not have any students signed up moving on to D2 public comments read
072the introduction statement now welcome to the school board's first opportunity of the evening for public comment the board has set aside a one-hour time slot at the beginning of the meeting for public comments public comments in excess of one hour will be held at the second opportunity for public comment at the end of the meeting or comments may be submitted in writing during public comment board members will not answer questions or engage in discussion with members of the public this is the Public's time to speak and the board's time to listen the school board welcomes the public to observe and contribute to our meetings through their 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
073have 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 speaker members or speakers motives no profinity or fall language referring from disturbing the meeting no cheering Applause outbursts or waving of signs or posters if you have a handout that you wish to share with the board please give them to Ms Foster who's seated to my left as chair of the meeting it is my duty to enforce the Rules of Civility and decorum as such the and consistent with Robert's Rules of Order I have the authority to rule any speaker out of order for violation of these rules or failure to conduct themselves in a civil
074manner additional details and information may be found in the handout located at the door regarding audience participation and rules of the boardroom foreign list up first in person Marnie herzl not seeing Marnie and I don't believe she's online we'll move up to Peter muss in person foreign [Music] advocate for childhood wellness and obesity prevention uh over the years I've worked with many experts and advocates for in those Arenas including uh sometime with Dr David satcher who at the time was the U.S Surgeon General also advocating for the cdc's recommendations of 60 Minutes of actual physical activity daily in 2005 mayor Mark bagich convened A large group of childhood Wellness Advocates and created the nationally recognized mayor's task force on Fitness obesity with four areas of concern one was nutrition one was the built environment one
075was worksite wellness and one was physical activity I was head of the physical activity section I would say that uh prior to the meeting Dr Richard monsaga who was then the chief of the Alaska division of Public Health presented this PowerPoint which was overweight and obesity in Alaska and epidemic this is only worsened ladies and gentlemen and he presented among others this data overweight and obesity the health consequences in Youth and old and adults this is quite extensive and furthermore obesity the economic costs comparing National and state data [Music] an outgrowth of that was that I um according to CDC recommendations [Music] um uh recess could possibly be structured and I I established a pilot program at Tyson Elementary which only lasted for half a year on four uh various reasons but the outcomes were
076significant in that um it demonstrated among the students increased Behavior improved behaviors improved attendance and improved academics um but you have you must remember that this epidemic is absolutely real such that today many of you are probably aware that the recommended treatment of choice for extreme obesity among those 13 and older is medications and or bariatric surgery it's that critical I then met Dr Kelly lessons and her colleague Carrie Carpenter and was honestly astounded by their encyclopedic knowledge and research of these issues I was fortunate to help shape the 2019 ad hoc committee incorporating their recommendations um the proposed Wellness Advisory Board edits are a reflection of their tireless efforts on behalf of childhood Wellness endorses your time has just expired we thank you for your testimony your three minutes um just just as up
077now thank you next up Jay McDonald in person [Music] evening so I'm Jay McDonald um I'm here to talk about diversity inclusion and Equity so we hear so much about diversity inclusion and equity and how it's one of the main threats uh main objectives of the school board and the school district we don't often see specific examples of what um diversity inclusion Equity looks like though so today I brought an excellent representation um this is like the archetype of diversity inclusion and Equity material that it's one of the books that was just recently purchased for our libraries is it uh Romig and Bartlett it's called Let's Talk About It by Erica Moen so it's got a one of the chapters in here is about sexting and I'll just read some of the text here so
078before you start sending your naughty masterpieces around the world take some time to get friendly with photo editing software and apps digital photos are permanent and impossible to retract once they're out there so keep your recognizable features out of them before you share them this is a book for kids don't forget to tell your wait crop out your face hide your birthmarks and scars and edit your pre edit out your piercings and tattoos and don't forget to tell your sweetie how hot they look let them know you appreciate the little gift they've sent you Mr McDonald yes yeah I'm going to interrupt you at this point sounds like you have a concern about a book I'd be glad to get connected to the superintendent on their team to go through the appropriate process um I'd
079appreciate if you don't interrupt my time Mr McDonald I've asked you to defer to the superintendent of their team if you have a concern about a book we have a procedure and a process and a team ready to assist you if you'd like Mr President I don't think he's violated any rules I mean he hasn't used pornography I mean he hasn't shown any pornography he hasn't shown any bad words lots of words Mr Donnelly you can overall the ruling of the chair if you'd like it's my determination that we should ask Mr McDonald to go through the appropriate process well I understand suggesting that to him I think that's fine but I don't think he said anything that would cause us to cut off his testimony at this point I I think we have a
080past precedence in this boardroom which would support my ruling you're welcome and I support your um right to appeal the ruling of the chair sir well yeah I would appeal the ruling of the chair based on that I haven't heard anything that specifically violated our our current rules for public testimony understood is there a second one second okay um I don't believe there's a debate so we would go straight to a vote whether we're going to uphold the ruling of the chair um Miss uh Foster can we have a vote a yes vote would be to uphold the ruling of the chair a no vote uh would be to sustain your overall I suppose remember Higgins yes remember Donnelly no president Bellamy I think you're amazing yes thank you member Holloman [Music] member lessons yes
081member Wilson yes and remember Jacobs yes okay my 105 to 2 the ruling is upheld um so Mr McDonald if you have any other items to testify on you're welcome to do so uh well yeah sure I mean I I keep getting cut off when I just read these books that are just there's still purchase orders out for these books like they're not old things that were just put on themselves to rot like these are they're things that you're actively procuring putting in class the the first book that I read um I'm gonna bring some of the foia documents that I have next time I'm in here but there's teachers that are actually using it on their reading list in their classroom as part of their class material so I don't want to hear that
082this we're not giving this to kids I was at the police department today and I was talking to them about this and what it comes down to is there's there's a gray area where they say that because you got to understand the distribution of indecent and pornographic materials to minors is a class C felony I hope that people understand that so the if there's the argument that well it's Loosely covered by the First Amendment and that's what you're doing that's what you're hiding behind to give this to students in school then how can you say I don't have First Amendment rights to just read this to adults at a school board meeting is it or is it not a First Amendment issue I don't understand how it's appropriate for kids and it's not appropriate for
083the school board I didn't even say a bad word it feels a lot like you don't want parents to be seeing what's given to the kids you're happy to give this to children I've seen you I mean you even host reading times on the weekends what what's what's your reading list when you post reading time on the weekends with Felix you're happy to give these books to kids it seems like you're terrified to give them to parents and I think it's an absolute travesty that you cut off my time and don't even let me have my three minutes I think you're breaking your own rules thank you I think your three minutes are up thank you Mr McDonald's I see no other individuals signed up for Testimony Ms Foster is that correct I think all
084right thank you much we're going to take a 10 minute at ease thank you foreign okay we'll call ourselves back to order it is 7 40. um having wrapped a public comment or next item is e consent agenda would any board member like to pull an item currently on the consent agenda I'm going to ask that we pull ASD memorandum number 100 revision to school board policy 50 40 student nutrition physical activity for discussion that will move to action item F2 any other member wish to pull an item from our consent agenda before we move forward with a motion to adopt or approve the consent agenda is written during seeing none would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended the move we approved the consent agenda with the uh suggested change on
085memorandum 100. made by member Hallman is there a second second of Our member lessons um Miss Foster are we going to do a Voice vote okay member lessons yes member Wilson yes member Donnelly yes member Higgins yes member Holloman yes yes president Bellamy yes member Jacobs yes [Music] zero we'll move on to action items um F1 ASD memorandum number zero nine eight revision to school board policy BP 6115 ceremonies and observances I have a motion to approve to approve ASD memorandum 098 revision the school board policy VP 6115 ceremonies and observances maybe I remember Holman is there a second seconded by member lessons is there any discussion remember Donnelly uh Mr Mr President the chair is fine sir no Mr chair um I think this is a wonderful opportunity to fulfill the charge that the
086board is given in the existing policy to develop uh patriotic observances and ceremonies um so in addition to the the main motion that's before us I think it's a great time to visit some of the things that that the district could be doing to help instill patriotism in our students um one thing that I felt for a long time would be really important was that we emphasized the national anthem of course and uh this you know some of the days that I think it would really be important for our our students to hear the national anthem would be Veterans Day which has made motion applies to and also September 11th and December 7th Pearl Harbor Day um so I have drafted an amendment that we would do that and simply say that um you know
087in all schools the United States of America's national anthem shall be played at the beginning of any regular school day held on Veterans Day September 11th or on December 7th and I would so move amendment number one remember Dolly can you for the record can you read your Amendment please yes in addition to the the new language that appears in the main motion it would add the language in all schools the United States of America's national anthem shall be played at the beginning of any regular school day held on Veterans Day September 11th and December 7th foreign [Music] member Donnelly would you um like to further discuss your Amendment well there's few days in our countries culture and history they're more significant to us as Americans I believe than than Veterans Day and Pearl Harbor
088day and the tragedy that happened in 9 11. um I really think it's something that should be immortalized in some form of Remembrance in our schools um and this could be a very simple way to do it that's patriotic and be formally adopted ceremony that's part of our adopted by our federal government or our national anthem um that's it part of our curriculum in our music classes um it only takes about a minute uh to play it with loudspeakers um we have more than one school that our district to play it every morning I believe and those schools happen to be excelling so I think there's no question that there's sufficient time to do it and it would and this particular proposal would only require to be done on three days out of the year
089and only when there's a those were actual school days thank you member not only is there other discussion member Holloman um I'm gonna say the the original amendment to our policy was really about empowering individual employees to have an option on on that particular day um this changes it to where the board is trying to direct activities in the school buildings on several days and there are a couple more amendments like that so I would move that we refer this Amendment uh to the amendment back to the governance committee for consideration is there a second to the motion to refer second second by member Wilson um any discussion on the amendment to refer member Holloman any additional comments uh just I'd like for there to be some time for the administration to be able to
090look at them and uh advise the board on any impact they see you any additional discussion a motion to refer but we tell everybody else talk to him okay I don't see up Madam president I see your hand online yeah I um I I go back to we have a process if we are going to bring uh prior to Bringing uh items to uh um to be voted on while I understand this is an amendment uh I think it this amendment changes the intent of the policy so I I I uh I think we need to um it needs to go through governance we need to try to follow our processes whenever possible thank you thank you madam presidents see no other comments remember Donley thank you um there's a lot of talk about the
091processes I could give you examples over the last six years where the board didn't do anything like that they changed things at the last minute without public notice unlike this proposal where I actually brought this up at our last meeting and gave notice that I was moving forward with these amendments and provided these amendments 10 days you know in plenty of time for the secretary to deal with those I requested that they've been posted on the agenda to provide public notice and I in addition to me making copies to provide to the public which is very unusual to have in this meeting the secretary also generously agreed to make copies to make sure they were available to the public on the on the table out there and I've never ever really seen that done before
092either so I think I've jumped through every hoop I could possibly think of could provide notice on this it couldn't be more simpler I mean play the national anthem on Veterans Day 9 11 and Pearl Harbor day it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing that we need to have a huge analysis of as far as the impact on our school district so I would think that it's something we could go ahead and vote on by the way I didn't point out of course so the public can understand that this is exactly the board policy that deals with these kind of things that we've got before us in the main motion it's board policy 615-115 ceremonies and observances so it clearly seems appropriate at this time remember Holloman I'd just say I don't think
093it's inappropriate at all but um we've got plenty of time on all these Veterans Day September 11th December 7th they're all months and months away uh it'd just be a chance for any feedback considered feedback by the administration or any other board members so it's not meant to make it difficult um but just to have that time and committee to discuss seeing no other hands in the room um no additional comments the we'll go ahead and have a voice code on the motion to refer uh member Donnelly's amendment number one to governance Miss Foster member Wilson [Music] yes member Higgins yes member Donnelly no president Bellamy yes member Holloman yes member Jacobs yes member lessons [Music] yes a motion to refer passes six years one nay Mr chairman we're back on the main motion and
094we have like a one minute at ease sure yep it's great for these places [Music] I understand [Music] I I don't you can't find it [Music] did you ask because you said it for Katie because I was wrong I might have because he was you know I was told that you weren't yeah available yeah so we're going to call ourselves back to order uh remember Donna you have an amendment too you just hand it out to the board members um I'm gonna ask that you read that into the record because we don't have copies at the door yeah thank you um um with the yeah we I submitted this last week Mr chair but uh we the secretary was out of town and I apparently sent it to I sent it to the secretary I
095was told but the president was acting in her place so um there's um two um federal holiday two particularly two federal holidays it might just have better framing if you would agree to to move to amend and read the language first and then speak to it will you allow me to speak to it if I move it absolutely of course yeah it just might be helpful because some folks don't have it in front of them right I'd be happy to do it that way if you allow me to that would be great yeah yeah that paragraph so please go ahead and read your Amendment into the record and then feel free to speak to her um so this amendment um uh would say that on two federal holidays um in in recognition of two federal
096holidays that are celebrated during the district's traditional summer break um the 4th of July and the um Juneteenth um that the first two in for in recognition of the Declaration of Independence which of course coincided with the 4th of July the first two sentences of the Declaration of Independence would be read on the last day of the school year to acknowledge that for the pupils that are going to experience that holiday during the summer and also that the first two sentences of the Emancipation Proclamation um would be read at that same time to celebrate Juneteenth what traditionally comes at a summer uh during the summertime [Music] um these sentences uh appear below um the first two sentences of the Declaration of Independence um and the on the back page here the first two sentences of
097the Emancipation Proclamation uh to commemorate juneteen teeth up here also um so you can see they're not very long I can I think I timed it it was about 60 to 80 Seconds to read them so I would move amendment number two okay and I'm going to ask you read that into the record please yes so it would be to add to the main motion the following text on the last day of the school year in recognition of the two federal holidays that are celebrated during the district's traditional summer break the first two sentences of both the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation whose reading in Texas on June 19 1865 is now celebrated as Juneteenth shall be read over the public address system of district schools and to read what those are Mr
098chairman the Declaration of Independence when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bans which has connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which laws of nature and the Nature's God entitled them a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to seek separation we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men driving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whatever form of government becomes destructive of these ends
099it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to Institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness and the first two sentences of the Emancipation Proclamation read whereas on the 22nd day of September in the year of our load 1862 a proclamation was issued by the president of the United States containing among other things the following to wit bet on the first day of January in the year of Our Lord 1863 all persons held as slaves with any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in Rebellion against such persons and will do no act or act to repress such persons or any of
100them in any efforts that they may make for their actual freedom National conversation on Amendment two sure I'll take the opportunity to speak to this amendment um thinking um thank you Mr chair um I appreciated remember Don Lee's um his packet of amendments I did see this the original version of this of this amendment as an opportunity to recognize um the summer federal holidays and at our recent governance committee meeting I had brought up the concept of well what do we do about Juneteenth it's a Federal holiday that it's not in any District calendar and um I think that there is some amount of um value in recognizing this important moment in our annual calendar and this moment in our nation's history alongside the Fourth of July another a v foundational moment in American history
101so um would I rather you know design wonderful interactive lessons around each of these yes is taking a moment at the start of one day reasonable I think it's okay other conversation on Amendment two member Wilson so just for clarification you're asking that at every every classroom at every grade level correct what I mean what I would propose is that it'd be read over the loudspeakers at the beginning of the last day of school but for every yes grade level yeah like I guess one of my concerns is to read it without additional context and explanation especially for our youngers and and even for some of our many of our older students um would be for our kids at least just hearing some information but not having any context to it necessarily I just feel
102like reading it without the context without any lessons attached um kind of loses the purpose that you're hoping for I don't know if I'm phrasing that correctly but I feel like without that context without the additional conversations without some wonderful lessons to go along with it um I I mean I I just would have a difficult time um [Music] assuming that that even my older teens would have any context to it and understand it thank you member Wilson I'm going to jump in with a question um for Dr Bryant could you weigh in on the the um what the process for implementation for something like this might look like if you had the chance to consider and discuss this for a team with your team and then if you have um concerns that might need
103some time to be worked out regarding the path forward for implementing this amendment if it's adopted sure um I have not discussed this particular Amendment with the team and for that reason that's why it's helpful to often talk about this in a government a governance committee setting so that way we can hear about all the considerations when it comes to implementation loudspeaker versus classroom um and whatnot I know we've had similar conversations around um the the Pledge of Allegiance so in terms of implementation we would want to make sure that the board is informed on all the considerations I do know one thing that I would bring up would be similar to what member Wilson brought up is that even the level of vocabulary in some of these sentences might be new to some of
104our younger students so we would just want to make sure we were informed on how to make this what it was intended to be which is a really powerful reminder of our nation's history and how far we've come along thank you Dr Brandt I see President Bill in his hands and we'll move to member Higgins so um [Music] that that that this amendment makes to Juneteenth uh is one view it is not a global view it is one history yes it is not global and I think it's one thing for for me as a board member to want to feel good about um what is patriotic and what what what is um um considered to be um you know what we want every kid to do in terms of being and show and know or
105hear in terms of being patriotic but I just think this goes way too far um and I would like to have time to talk about it um not attaching it here I think it's out of place here um but but but you know it's not it's not about being anti-patriotic it's about for me it's about being real you cannot attach none of us can attach a meaning to a holiday in one way and this is what you're asking this is what this is asking us to do and I think this is beyond what we need to do if we want to have Doom teeth celebrated then we make it a priority like we make everything else a priority if we want to have uh you know we are in the business of educating kids um
106about a lot of things and um it can't just it can't just be packaged this way thank you uh we'll go to member Higgins the member Holloman thank you um you know I'm listening to this and I'm I'm watching individual parts of History being selected out as if like 9 11 is the one of the most historic like you want to remember the main you want to look at Pearl Harbor you want to look at all these other dates so we got a lot of things out there which we try to cover in American history and we cover in Civics and if we're going to make a decision to do something during the year uh to kind of remind people of the history of where they are and things like that I don't mind looking
107at that I don't want to pick out a particular thing and say oh we have to do it this way um I look for the administration to to work with us on that kind of issue I have no problem with it I from a historic standpoint I remember 2010 when we came out all these goals John Steiner said we got to review Civics top to bottom and and and I like that that was okay he was he was looking at saying what are we doing for American history what are we doing with Civics and I don't mind that discussion but I don't want to just select a particular issue and say okay let's add this to some activity and and so that established patriotism and somewhere along this line we've got a lot of activities
108with with this and lots of options I'd rather give that careful consideration before we move forward remember Holman um once again I'll say that anytime we reach into the school day and grab time whether it's a minute or 10 minutes um I want us to do it in a considered way with time for staff members and the administration in particular to review it and be able to come back and talk to us about it and have that conversation once again I'll move that we refer this to the governance committee for consideration yeah we've got a motion by a member Holloman to refer amendment 2 to governance is there a second seconded by President Bellamy um any additional discussion from yourself starting off remember Holloman I've already spoken to it thank you thank you additional discussion
109on the motion to refer the amendment to committee um I see so no other comments in the room or online so remember Donnelly and Rapids thank you Mr chairman um president Bellamy is um said that reading it well the quote I wrote down as she was speaking because this would attach the meeting of a holiday detach something to the meaning of a holiday and that's just one View but this is not common it is word for word the foundation historical documents that are the very reason for these national holidays I mean you wouldn't have a June teeth without the Emancipation Proclamation and you wouldn't have a Fourth of July independence day without the Declaration of Independence and this is word for word what they say I I'm hoping that it inspires students to do more
110research about it and to read more about it and think about it and what a great way to leave them at the end of their school year but with something like that to challenge them to go learn more about it additionally I can see how this could be turned into a great educational exercise by schools where they could have students preparing for it in the week before by reading the you know more about the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence um so it would be more fresh in their minds when they actually celebrate those days and more meaningful to them and additionally I could see them having individual students read just individual phrases from each of these um sentences it could be quite a excellent way for students to participate and learn from that
111so I think there's some real real positive elements to this and it's not common it's not one world view of this or a different view of it it's the actual historical documents that are the reason we have these holidays thank you member Donnelly um before we vote I guess I'll say that I uh I tend to agree with member Holloman um and I think the past 10 minutes or so have documented why um we were holding up many governance Committee hearing um live during our board meeting which isn't how we work most effectively and I think the last year and a half documents that we do have a process in place for governance to take these matters up we're hearing from Administration that they aren't prepared uh to even consider how to implement and so
112I think that those are are worthy reasons why government should take this up and um as member Holloman Brent mentioned previously we still do have some time um and additional meetings to come where the committee can do that so um that's my preference and we'll leave it there see no other comments um Miss Foster can we have a Voice vote on Amendment too member lessons um what kind of order are we voting the motion is to refer to committee correct apologize for the framing the motion is to refer amendment to to the governance committee as is written on their screens here member lessons yes remember Wilson yes member Donnelly no member Higgins yes member Holloman yes president Bellamy yes member Jacobs yes about a six to one Amendment two is referred to governance for further
113review going back to the original motion for ASD memorandum number 098 on the motion to approve is there other conversation discussion remembers okay so back on the original motion because you've spoken twice now Mr Donnelly we're going to go with Madam president president Bellamy the floors so we I just wanted some clarification so we are back to we are back at the original correct yes well taken we are on the main motion to approve ASD memorandum numbers as we have referred the two amendments uh to committee okay thank you I'm good okay um I have member Wilson then we'll go to member Donnelly I just have a question actually I should probably go to back to the original one um as it's phrased employees may choose to use a personal day without penalty if they
114choose it's the without penalty that I would like clarification on I'm not understanding why that verbiage is what that verbiage means I mean remember Holloman would you like to speak to member Wilson's question um first of all it's poorly worded foreign [Music] and has to but if it's an in-service day um attendance is expected unless you're too ill to come to school but it is a day that has a huge emotional impact on individuals um veterans in particular but a lot of family members as well and some of them have particular things they would like to do on Veterans Day and the the goal is to allow our certificated staff to do that if they choose remember Wilson doesn't answer your question or do you have a follow-up I have a follow-up so I I
115guess I did not answer my question as to is there currently so they're not staff is not allowed just for clarification can you clarify Dr Bryant is are Steph not allowed to Sure yes it's spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement specifically that language so this would essentially amend that specifically as it relates to Veterans Day when it coincides with staff development and I think the intent of the original CBA language was to ensure we have as many certificated Personnel participating in staff development as they only get a few days a year that was the intent um but we went through the process and discussed why this is something um worth of the consideration of the full board remember Wilson any follow-up okay all right um so we are still in our main motion um
116any other additional discussion on the main motion to approve ASD memorandum number 098 so yeah I do I have a question okay um Madam president I'm going to go to member Donnelly then yourself as as you know thank you Mr chairman um Mr chairman there's a national federally recognized holiday called Constitution Day it's September 17th and it's kind of unique because it comes with a federal mandate that any public schools in America that accept federal dollars must do activities to educate our students about the United States Constitution on that day to be able to be eligible for those federal funds recently we did a survey of our schools and it's quite a confusing hodgepodge what schools or do or don't do out there to observe this Federal mandate um so one thing I thought would
117be really appropriate to do that to be consistent across our district was to have the Preamble The Constitution of the United States be read over the public address system on Constitution Day and so just to say what that would imply that what how quick that goes and it's pretty beautiful Mr chairman I remember having to memorize this when I was a kid at Willow Crest Elementary we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice and share domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity to abdain and establish this constitution of the United States of America and amendment number three would simply say that on Constitution Day the Preamble of the Constitution the United
118States shall be read over the public address system of district schools at the beginning of the day and I would move amendment number three thank you member Donnell is there a second [Music] by member Holman uh member Donnelly any further discussion on your motion to amend um thank you for the opportunity to speak I appreciate the second um this is a federal mandate that we're not assured that really clear that all our schools are complying with right now it's up to us as the board to make sure we're complying this because it comes on the condition of federal funds federal funds are conditioned on us doing something in all our schools for Constitution Day and it's not clear from the survey that was conducted a few months ago that it's absolutely happening and so I
119think it'd be a very wise thing for this board to adopt this to ensure that we continue to be eligible for federal funds thank you member Donnelly I see member Holman's hand um once again I'm going to move to send to the governance committee and if there's a second I'll speak to them a motion to refer by remember Holloman seconded by member lessons um member Holloman on your motion to refer the amendment um once again anything that that actually takes a bite into the school day I think the Board needs to consider carefully again giving Administration and uh School staff an opportunity to speak to it and and digest it as well especially given that they're legal implications which I have to admit I would have always been unaware of um like for the administration
120to research that and one make sure this meets the requirement um or if we need to do more than this um yeah again I I agree with the spirit of it and um I see it as a potentially valuable addition to what happens in our schools but I do want it to all be considered in context of everything we're considering asking schools to do that comes into the school day and also making sure that what we propose is adequate to meet the requirements of the for federal funding thank you member Hallman additional conversation on the motion to refer the amendment seeing no other discussion uh Ms Foster a Voice vote on the motion to refer Amendment Three to committee member Wilson yes president Bellamy yes member Donnelly no member Higgins yes member Holloman member lessons
121yes member Jacobs yes I wrote a six to one Amendment Three has been referred to committee we're back on the main motion to approve ASD memorandum number 098 is there additional discussion I have a question Madam president of the floor is yours suffocated people people and I'm trying to understand I think I know why but if the maker of if Andy uh or Kelly could speak to that why not all employees okay thank you madam president for the question remember Hallman are you able to address um yes the the change in policy says employees it doesn't I to my knowledge certificated or the only people actually affected um although I may be wrong on that but uh the amendment says employees in order to be completely inclusive may I follow up follow-up men in prison
122so then I'd like to ask the superintendent uh what is the impact of this I mean how what what what do we think what what would the likely impact of this be I mean there's no way to know how many people are gonna not show up that day the good thing is there's no kids there but uh what would what would the impact be have the administration thought about facts we have uh this went through the governance committee process so we had the opportunity to share the concern that there is a possibility that fewer staff members will fully participate in the breadth of staff development that we offer every year and for that reason in the long term we're exploring our calendar in general uh there may be adjustments that would be appropriate which could
123include re-looking at what holidays that we offer we're also looking at snow days and some other things um so I'm anticipating longer-term Solutions not just in response to Veterans Day but really our philosophy to staff development because I believe that professional development shouldn't just be a day it should really be an ongoing experience that happens throughout a teacher's time so that's on my mind but in the short term there may be fewer people that participate uh in the full breadth of staff development that we currently offer and so those people will take they would actually just take leave without being without the lead being denied is that what it could no longer be in violation of the collective bargaining agreement so this policy sets aside the CBA correct um it clarifies um and actually amends
124a portion of the CBA to be favorable to our certificated employees [Music] member Hallman yeah I'll just say I don't think we as a board have the ability to amend the CBA but this is a message from the board to the administration that if somebody wanted to take a personal day on Veterans Day specifically that particular holiday that the the administration would not penalize them in any way I mean the CBA still stands um and and I think that numbers affected by that weigh it I mean uh we all as someone who's been in that position understanding that you're missing a provided training um that you may have to make up or or be without is a consideration um so I don't think people are casually going to do it but there are people that
125just have very strong feelings about what happens on Veterans Day and it's not it's not the same kind of holiday as President's Day or Labor Day um it it's very emotional and personal for a lot of people so in my interpretation CBA still stands but the administration would understand the wishes of the board in this case [Music] that is correct it wouldn't alter the the CVA but it does send a message and perhaps even encourage the administration to proactively seek a letter of agreement just to clarify for all parties thank you member Holloman uh president Bellamy uh would this not be more appropriate as an AR and did and I was not at the um um governance meeting when this was uh when it was discussed in full uh but was there any discussion about
126this being being an AR as opposed to a policy I mean I don't I don't disagree with it I just think to make it policy is is I don't know I feel like it's out of the board's Lane but that's just me so was there any talk any discussion on whether this could be better as an administrative regulation does business yes Madam president for your question to our Governor's chair member Holden um unfortunately it was I become the superintendent I don't get to make ARs and I don't want to do that no but yeah [Music] um this is a message from the board to the administration and as such I think policy is the right place for it and it's um not revocable unless someone asked the board to revoke it I think that's appropriate
127um we we get to make policy that's one of the things we did thank you member Holloman any other additional discussion remember Wilson I guess I understand we get to make policy but I also understand there's a collective bargaining agreement that the the Administration has bargained um and I guess I'm not understanding how the collective bargaining agreement as it stands without the negotiate negotiation of a letter of agreement or a memorandum of agreement um even with I I guess it's just I understand we're giving the direction to the administration but there's a conflict in how that could actually be put forth I I I'm not clarifying correctly but I'm very confused so Ed and member Wilson just to add well maybe well Dr Brian addresses this I guess my question to dovetail on to that
128is what administration or does Administration have any preference if this uh desire that the board um May Express through a vote uh via the language that member Holloman and the governance committee have drafted uh be in the form of a board policy Amendment or what a resolution be a preferred vehicle or is either one uh equally appropriate [Music] we could go in either direction at this point because we've deliberated this particular issue through multiple governance committee meetings we're comfortable um with this as it stands but to the points raised tonight um I think this is a conversation for us to think about as a board as it relates to what direction do we go policy versus administrative regulation I think the fundamental difference for this item is that it came from a board member so
129we went through the process and the board members means of achieving changes through a policy versus if there were something that came from the administration it may have started as an AR that would perhaps become a policy so sometimes it almost depends on the order of who's expressing the preference for the change so I think that's the issue here and I don't have the answers tonight but we did have the opportunity to discuss administrative implications it's really helped me reflect upon how we're going to approach holidays and professional development in the long term so I'm not very concerned I think that the spirit of this policy is coming from a very good genuine place and for that reason we're comfortable pursuing the Loa route in the situation could this have occurred in a different way
130yes thank you for the insightful response Dr Bryant we'll go back to member Holloman and I just want to mention Robert's Rules is pretty particular that we speak no more than three times but we are clearly deviating so wrap up conversation uh before we vote I was just going to offer some historical reference the prohibition about uh personal leave on in-service days is long-standing for the reasons that Dr Bryant outlined before historically Veterans Day was either a holiday or a school day and it varied depending on what the board voted and what the calendar committee suggested it's relatively recent that it's become an in-service day and that was um of course the reason is that the administration is looking for time to have trainings but when it became an in-service day the option to be
131in the building with your class in the building or be out on holiday evaporated for a certificated Personnel so it's not that um the language and the contract was specific about that at the time that was adopted uh Veterans Day was either a holiday or a school day and on a school day you can take personal leave on a holiday you don't have to take any leave uh it's just two different things coming together in a way that created a conflict that used to not exist so [Music] um you know as much as we can we try not to direct the uh Administration and bargaining um but this sends a clear message about whether we have a particular desire thank you member Hallman seeing no other discussion we will move to a Voice vote on
132memorandum to approve ASD ASD memorandum Mr chairman I have one more Amendment okay um member Donnelly the floor is yours thank you Mr chairman thank you for the leeway moving these amendments um there's been a lot of discussion about going through the committee process I have several proposals that have gone to the governance committee and haven't gotten the support to move forward to the full board um and under our current rules unless I can get a second from the board I can't get those before this board so this is my only opportunity to discuss some of those at least one of those proposals and that's the uh the um having the national anthem played in our schools on some sort of regular basis I I would love to have it be here as a main
133motion I've tried to get that for a long time um but it isn't um and so in this particular Amendment it would it would simply say that in all schools uh the United States of America's national anthem shall be played at the beginning of the school day on the first day of every month and also that in all schools this Alaska state flagstone shall be played following the national anthem at the beginning of the school of the school day on the first school day of every month and individual schools may choose to begin additional school days with the national anthem and or the Alaska state flag song that proposal on this subject has been in the governance committee and it hasn't been brought to the full committee and I this is my only opportunity to
134get this discussed so I would move amendment number four I'm going to ask this chairman ask for a point of information remember Donnelly I believe that these amendments are similar to previous amendments that have been referred to committee are these substantially different from what's been referred to committee um the I believe the version that was referred to committee said that uh was a version that said that just any playing of the national anthem during a month that schools should have something that could be at a football game it could be uh at an assembly but that would qualify as the once a month mandate this is more specific and it's it says that it show that once a month it Shelby played at the beginning of the first school day of the month so I
135think it's a little bit different Mr chairman okay um all right and have you have you read the the full language of your Amendment of the record at this point okay thank you yes sir I have thank you member Donnelly is there a second hearing none um that Amendment fails um I will note that a similar version has been referred to committee previously um and is sitting in governance at this point with that said is there any additional discussion on ASD memorandum number 098 hearing seeing none Miss Foster can have a voice mode on the motion to approve member lessons [Music] yes member Higgins yes member Holloman yes member Donnelly yes president Bellamy no member Wilson yes and member Jacobs yes [Music] I wrote a six to one the revisions to ASD memorandum I'm sorry
136the reviews to bp6115 ceremonies and observances contained an ASD memorandum number zero nine eight um have been approved we'll move on to action item um Personal Privilege member Holloman a point of personal privilege I just want to say I think member Donnelly raises a good point in that it's not clear um what a member would do if a if something's presented in committee and it fails it's not clear how to bring it to the fore there's to me there's somebody watering the whole process of the governance committee should clarify um because it may not it may come out with a negative recommendation from the committee but it should still be able to be brought to the board um for a consideration and possible adoption so that is something I'll make a note of to look
137at and make sure there's uh try to either find Clarity in our existing policies or work to include that so that um it's clear because yeah no vote in committee doesn't mean it can't be considered by the board it just means the committee is not going to recommend that it is so thank you thank you member Hallman we're moving on to action item F2 which was E6 ASD memorandum number is zero one zero zero I'm sorry number 100. revision to school board policy 50 40 student nutrition and physical activity um could I ask for a motion to approve foreign memorandum one zero zero revisionist School Board policy BP 5040 student nutrition and physical activity second made by member lessons seconded by member Holloman member lessons the floor is yours as the maker of the motion
138thank you uh Mr chair I want to say that one of the purposes of um pulling this I think this evening is to clarify the intent of the committee that brought this together and that is that it would become effective no later than the start of the 2023-2024 school year um it is really a landmark piece of um or policy it's complex it's comprehensive it aligns ASD with best practices and federal requirements it reflects the will and um desires of a lot of community members and it is in the best interests of our students but but all that being said it's not easy to implement overnight so just pulling it and making sure that the intent is that it will become active for the start of the upcoming school year we'll give the administration and
139individual schools and principals and staff I think ample time to prepare thank you member lessons I'll take the floor at this point I did want to acknowledge um the acknowledge the individuals who were a part of the subcommittee that member of the president Bellamy formed um member lessons and I had the privilege of chairing a group of individuals that represented um health professionals ASD staff ASD parents community members foster parents there was a really wide breadth of perspective that helped take this momentum that started with member lessons years ago as before she joined the board and get it from the 10-yard line to the The End Zone here today so I wanted to thank them for their participation wanted to thank member lessons for her leadership and persistence frankly um in getting this through the
140committee process through the subcommittee process I'm and then here in front of us today um I think that this represents a significant change that will be best for students as we've heard in public testimony and in committee meetings over and over again um the the only thing I'll say is we or you desperately need to address the vacancies um that plague some of our cafeterias right now which I think is kind of just the last piece where we have the the properly paved compensated and fully staffed Workforce to make this policy um you know fully a reality and so I'm hopeful that that can soon occur um you know certainly uh our state Partners have a role to play in there for sure and so um in closing I'll just thank member lessons for your
141leadership I think the um the committee members thank the board for making this possible um and I'll leave my comments there thank you other remarks before we proceed to about Dr Brian yes I just wanted to briefly share two things uh one uh just to put on the record that is our expectation that we will begin working on the implementation plan for this including any applicable administrative recommendation or regulations rather um such that we can fully implement the policy at the beginning of next school year so that's in the works and then two I just wanted to commend the co-chairs of the committee members Jacobs and members lessons and those involved in the committee I really do think that this is a wonderful example of what happens when the community and the school board and
142administration come together and really troubleshoot ways um to make better outcomes for kids um and then specifically to you member lessons I want to commend you on your leadership I remember researching all about ASD during the interview process and I read all about your passion on this topic and you've really taken it um to the finish line or about to take the finish line so I just want to come in the incredible um way that you're a champion for this work I could make one brief comment thank you Dr Brian Wilson and get member lessons to Fortress um thank you for the kind words but I've learned one thing on this board and that there's no magic wand and I don't get to do any one thing by myself except be persistent and so I
143am deeply grateful for the collaboration and comments that board members before this board initiated um for the time and dedication of Staff members who participated in hours of meetings um your thoughts and insights and expertise were deeply valuable so thank you all right I think it's fitting again conversation well but maybe not every time the floor is yours um at our last meeting I raised some concerns that it brought to me by some parents at some schools um that where the parental advisory folks had had a policy of sometimes utilizing recess for study periods um and I inquired whether what can we do for those schools that would no longer be able to do that under this policy and I was just wondering if the administration or anybody had had developed any guidance to profit
144to them uh how to replace that uh tool that they're currently utilizing with approval of their parental groups um for helping the academics of students that are struggling Dr Brown would you like to answer the question either directly or through board connection I think your board connect would be best because I don't want to speak on behalf of the committee that worked on this for hours and I'm sure that they have a lot that they want to say to ensure that we fulfill the spirit of this and also ensure academic outcomes aren't Falling by the wayside it's a great question thank you member Donnelly any additional conversation or discussion okay hearing seeing none Miss Foster a Voice vote on the motion to approve ASD memorandum number zero one zero zero uh revision to school board
145policy 50 40 student nutrition and physical activity member Donnelly yes member Higgins yes member Holloman yes member lessons yes remember Wilson yes president Bellamy yes and member Jacobs yes motion passes seven to zero that concludes our action items we'll move on to section g non-action items these are six items which we'll be back in front of us the next meeting is there anyone who wishes to discuss any of these six memorandums tonight hearing and seeing none will move past our non-action items we have no additional public comments um Dr Bryant superintendent section I the sword the Floor Source all right uh good evening ASD board and Community uh February is off to a great start uh from an exciting Battle of the books competition that I got to witness at West High School um for
146the first time uh to some movement in Juneau towards uh structural reform of school funding uh there is a lot going on uh later this month I'll be taking my own trips to Juno in support of our legislative priorities for the Public's awareness those are the three b's the base student allocation bus funding and bond debt reimbursement visit asdk12.org legislative for more information on those three priorities I do look forward to our next meeting when we'll have the opportunity to Deep dive on our reading proficiency data and by the end of this week I'll share more on the direction Administration recommends going with regards to the state's Ela curriculum incentive Grant a recommendation to change curriculum would mean board action as soon as this time next month so more on that to come this week
147on a separate note I want to invite board members to ask any outstanding questions regarding the proposal for sixth grade to Middle School between now and the next board meeting we want to make sure that the board is informed on this so we will prioritize those questions while shifting sixth grade to Middle School uh will not necessarily result in financial savings more importantly it opens the possibility of more enrichment and academic opportunities for those students this change wouldn't happen next year so we'd have plenty of time to work through the logistics and act upon the concerns of those impacted and it also gives ample time for the current fourth grade class and families to process and internalize the shift that'll be an action item next meeting all of that to say we're keeping strong momentum
148with regards to focusing our energy on shifts that can positively impact academic outcomes once we pass a balanced budget this month I am hopeful we can move full steam ahead on the goals and guardrails on being front and center of the conversation and then lastly February is also black history month and I look forward to attending various events throughout the community where the contributions of black leaders and community members past and present will be honored and celebrated I'll also be presenting on a panel at the Betty Davis African American Health and Equity Summit on February 18th where we'll discuss and gather feedback on how we can strengthen our pipelines for educators of color and lastly a happy board appreciation month being a board member and elected leader in the community can be all-consuming and I'm
149incredibly lucky to be working alongside seven incredible Community leaders who are all in this for all the right reasons so on behalf of the administration we appreciate your role in shaping the vision and direction for our school district and we're not done celebrating you quite yet so stay tuned if we have a full month to celebrate board members so thank you and that concludes my report foreign thank you Dr Brian I think that's a great way to end but unfortunately we've got a couple other agenda items so we'll move quickly J1 in school and administ School Board Administration comments um we'll start on my left member Donnelly the floor is yours for a school board member come I just thank the board for allowing me to put some proposals forward regarding our patriotic observances so
150thank you for your time tonight all right so I will go next I'm in our order well I'm sorry our student representative Michelle would you have hung in there with us tonight would you like to make a comment uh I don't have anything just some high school sports wrapping up and going into spring season same with middle school too so bowling Seasons ended guys so thank you Michelle um I'll take my place in line to say that remember Donnelly I appreciate your recognition of our allowance of your amendments I also appreciate your continual um and accurate references to what this board has done versus what previous boards uh may have done prior to at least my joining the body I did want to take a second to acknowledge and thank members Wilson and lessons for
151heading down to Juno and providing much needed both on the record and off the Record testimony to elected officials um watching the hearing yesterday I think it was much needed hearing a student voice and I think it's the same reason we adjusted our board policy to to move students up in the order um when we make appearances or give remarks um for better for worse we are seen as elected officials students Bring No Such agenda and so their voice is especially valid and pure so I think thank you to those students who participated thank you to the lawmakers who made time and looking forward to more discussion I remember Wilson thank you I usually try to keep a short tonight is not that night so just make it up for it tonight a little bit
152um I appreciate Dr Bryant mentioning the battle of the books I spoke to um a young man who I believe is in fifth grade who proudly told me that his uh team took fifth place out of 57 teams and he actually said that he read the books two and three times every book he read two and three times so they these students did a tremendous amount of preparation for this uh for this competition so kudos to all of our kids that participated in kudos to the the staff members that worked with these students um and put this competition together for them I also wanted to talk about a little bit about our trip to Juno I had an amazing time and in part because our students were there we had a teacher and four students
153who were extremely articulate who were extremely thoughtful who presented testimony at the education hearing um and and got actually close to a standing ovation in the area where I was which was not in the room but um I I it really was a mic drop moment for our students to talk uh they were absolutely amazing amazing and I look forward to all of you getting to hear them when they join us I think it was next meeting but when they join us soon so um and and thank you again to the legislators for taking the time to meet with us they were super excited that we had students with us and February is um maybe a short month but it's filled with many celebrations we ASD are highlighting a few of those celebrations such as
154Black History Month for example this month's edition of ASD connect has a beautiful tribute to Dr etheldra Davis Dr Davis was the first black teacher and principal in Alaska and the Anchorage School District taking the helm at Fairview Elementary School in 1969 last year the school was renamed in her honor check out the interview we did with her daughter about the legacy of Dr Davis all month we'll be sharing stories highlighting these amazing people making a difference in our schools and community and on a side note I am a Fairview resident so I'm I'm super proud of the name change and all of the recognition we also have many events happening here at ASD this month we recently wrapped up a curriculum review and an alternative programs expo at the Ed Center it was wonderful
155to see the turnout from the community and there will be or there there was way more than expected so that was amazing um and on our next event is next Wednesday February 15th the lottery system will begin accepting applications for the 2023-24 school year April 6th Lottery closes for applications at 5 pm and April 7th the lottery will run April 14th the parents notifications of the lottery results will go out at 5 pm and I also wanted to recognize that it is national school counselor week so the 6th through the 10th so thank you to all the counselors for all that you do for our students you do tremendous work and it's extremely valuable and um I hope that families take the time to to thank their counselors at their school thank you thank you
156member Wilson member lessons um I'll be brief tonight um but first we have a finance committee meeting tomorrow at noon from uh 12 to 1. um I will Echo member Wilson's comments that the weekend with our students um Jesse Shane Rachel and Mika as well as their teacher Mrs Lewis was extraordinary they each came from four different high schools across ASD and um it's really one of the joy last year attending this flying weekend and getting to know those four students was one of the absolute highlights of my time my first year on the board and I think that this weekend will be no different um it is just a joy to get to know students individually I feel like at the board level we hover around the 30 000 foot level and we can
157parachute into a classroom but to get to understand what makes one student passionate about a language course and another passion about a science class um or or calculus these things or or each each student shown in a different and unique way and it was a joy and um frankly I was proud to sit next to them as they spoke about What mattered to them in education and I want to Echo I don't want to steal their Thunder but I do want to amplify one of the phrases that one student used she said Believe in Us and I think that's a really important message to um to carry forward thank you member lessons member Holman um yeah I want to say I didn't go to Juno but I did watch testimony um and a lot of
158it was compelling and a lot every student I saw did a marvelous job and uh and in particular I think just helped make it really personal and they're talking about what their school does for them on a very individual level [Music] um I believe it was Billingham that mentioned that 25 of the kids in their school are in foster care is staggering to me I and they get no additional support it's just that the the state moves foster kids there because there are some resources in Bellingham um schools around the state are really hurting with a lot of the issues they face and uh I don't think a lot of that got brought out to the senate committee and the senate committee gives me a lot of hope that something will happen in that [Music]
159um a 2-1 Echo the recognition of counselors and of course February has a number of recognitions but it it seems like we're we're seeing more Brash actions by people since we're back in person and I don't just mean in our schools but I also in our schools that just people react more quickly more violently more erratically um the need for understanding our mental health has never been greater and the load has never been greater um but I don't think we staffed up for it I think we still have the same Cadre of people working it and really appreciate everything that they're putting into it um lastly I want to say this budget process has been different from any other in that we've been talking about the budget for about six years now from what I
160can tell um but I think it's been helpful I think starting at the time we started it back in August I believe early September at the latest um developed recognition by the public and by a lot of people that just wouldn't be there if we hadn't discussed some of the impacts that we were facing uh if we'd started talking about it in November um I don't think we'd have the same reaction that we're getting right now so I do want to say I appreciate what the staff did I appreciate the way they have brought it out we've had a lot more time to think about it we've had more time to get feedback from the public um and and watching it evolve um is has been kind of painful because it has been sorting through
161a lot of different programs um I I can't see the value of sixth graders being in middle school but that stands out to me as the one real Improvement for students most of the time you have to cut the budget you you cut something at benefits for kids and um it's a whole lot of cuts in a whole lot of places and it's it's been frustrating so again thank you to staff for rolling it out the way we have and for all the time it's meant that we've gotten to talk to people and try to explain it um and thank you to the folks who made the trip to Juno and spoke to our legislators thank you member Holloman going online uh member Higgins thank you um I'm in Juneau and I had a chance
162to watch the students do the presentation to the Senate finance committee and I have to say it was extremely impressive and had a chance to talk to him after that with dinner and and it was just the feedback from the legislators with the students this year is probably stronger than what we what I've seen in the past when I've gone with them it's just they did an absolutely spectacular job I appreciate obviously uh the board members here uh participating and being not working with them and the teacher with The Chaperone uh so I mean the the nightmare there is that if we're going to get something done um we've got to recognize it's got to be the public pushing that issue I think that's a safe statement um we um last time I remember they
163really made the change it was great Alaska schools when they called again and started telling the legislators what they want I think the house is going to be the big issue to get the funding we need the vanish the Senate is that it's a mix of Democrats and Republicans and they're just not fighting each other they're just dealing with the issue I kind of like that it's a really nice fit um but the house is going to be um you know half a half and only a certain percentage will be involved in decision making and so how that comes out is going to be an interesting challenge but the house is is it but we need the public calling to make a difference that's what we really need to for the public to tell them
164what they want uh and we need the help um I would just say I like tonight's meeting when we deal with the issue of school start times because we're dealing with academics and all of the discussions that we have in these board meetings to me that the highest value is when we're looking for opportunities to approve academic outcomes I appreciate the boys role in in pushing that issue they've talked about it prior to now about was the Lord interested and I think that was a good move forward and I appreciate that um so