001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] producer Grace Elliott over there by the door put the show together thank you for Fort James playing Helen Wicks on the drum and this is Steve Nelson on the team house all the way here foreign [Music] hello welcome isn't it funny how when people sit down all of a sudden it gets quiet I wish our students would do that a little more often it's like your teaching spot I am Brenda Edwards I am the acting principal this year I'm so glad that all of you are here tonight I hope you've come with your minds open ready to listen and to learn I know that a lot of you have signed up to speak so thank you for doing that um so I would like to recognize
002any City officials that we have here tonight we just want to wave stand thank you I also want to acknowledge Dr Bryant our superintendent he's up there thank you any school board members that we have here today yeah double duty thank you um and finally I would really like to recognize our Abbott Loop staff members that are here thank you so much for being here and taking care of our amazing children if you could stand really quick thank you [Applause] and real quickly the other board members there's Kelly lessons in the back Kelly Carl Jacobs over there in the corner Andy Holloman is over here and then Dave is the one that introduced himself is there anyone else who snuck in thank you Dr Stock I am going to turn it over to Mr Shannon
003Bingham who will start us off with our presentation tonight thank you so much for being here great thank you well thanks everybody for coming tonight is a presentation that addresses the proposed closure of the school not a very pleasant topic one that has become more frequent around the Western U.S during the last six or eight years this school is one of six schools that are currently under consideration by the board of education for closure and repurposing um Abbott Loop had 268 students in the fall the district is looking at a set of combinable schools meeting schools where we have two schools two small schools next to each other or two small schools in a in a group of schools where we could combine the attendance areas and close those schools down we have a presentation
004tonight that talks a little bit about financial issues talks a little bit about demographics that are part of the rationale behind why we might take actions of this type we are not alone in Anchorage with the demographics with smaller family sizes declining birth rates um most districts throughout the Western U.S lost about three percent of their enrollment to covid and so a lot of districts are looking at having significantly fewer students than they've had in the past um as far as other things associated with Abbott Loop we have a seven foot Headroom classroom area in this building you may have noticed that as parents here this building needs to be sprinkled and because of the structure of the building we cannot do that without demolishing at least half of it and probably the entire thing
005so Abbott Loop has been a consolidation candidate for about five years now partially for the reason of low enrollment combinability with adjacent schools and this issue with the need to address the fire code in this building I work for the district back in 2018 and did a similar study and Abbott Loop was one of the lead candidates for consolidation at that time we had some Cook Inlet Housing Authority property that was being developed and brought a bunch of affordable housing units online I had hoped that that was going to change our enrollment circumstances here at Abbott Loop quite a bit to put us maybe up above 300. but that has not happened you may have heard people say that we have grown this year we have not every District around the Western U.S lost thousands
006of students to covid and during the lack of in-person learning a lot of parents decided to go to homeschooling or a charter or private or a church opportunity so a lot of students have left public in-person schooling and we have had some return of students as covid has waned and conditions have normalized but it's still constitutes a loss in enrollment we just got some of them back as did most of the other districts in the country but we did not get all of them with that I'd like to introduce Jim Anderson who is our chief financial official and he will talk a little bit about our budgetary circumstances hi good evening everyone um first I'd like to start off and just recognize that um you know in a meeting like this and this is our
007I think fifth one we we appreciate that schools schools are the heart and soul of the community for the staff for the parents for the kids the relationships that have been built so when when we talk about numbers or whether it's dollars or numbers of students we're not making light of the amazing things that happen here at Abbott Loop every day there are kids who wake up every day excited to come to school there's teachers who work all summer long trying to be that much better at the beginning of school and and it is a great School you know we we do have a lot of capacity and we've lost a lot of students in the last 10 years when I talk about money it is it it is partially about money um and it's
008also about efficiency for the school district but um you know this year we've put a lot of things on school board members platter to look at and every single one of them is a horrible option frankly there's not a single one where people can say if we vote for this we're going to be happy and feel good um and and I'll explain why on this chart so if you look to my left ear right behind me you'll see a chart that has dark blue bars across the bottom they represent the base student allocation of five thousand nine hundred and thirty dollars on the very first day of school in 2016 in August we got five thousand nine hundred and thirty dollars times the number of students and then I went through some other steps but
009that was the Baseline for determining how much revenue we were going to get to operate the schools when you look at those dark blue bars you'll see that the numbers didn't change all the way through this year which is fiscal year 23 and in fiscal year 24 that's next school year that's the year that we're working on the budget now the legislature this last session increased it by thirty dollars so a thirty dollar increase over seven years is point five percent increase in the same time inflation has been well over fifteen and a half percent and and it simply hasn't caught up so if you look at the red line above the dark blue bars that that go up and down you'll see that almost every single year well it was every single year from
010fiscal year 18 through now there's a gap between the red line which is inflation and how much money we had so effectively every year when we when we did our budget we always went back and pretended for Revenue per student that it was August of 2016 and that's how much money we have to get through this year and we did that for six straight years going back to August of 2016 dollars so underneath the red line you can see there's some gray light blue and gold bars on top that kind of Stack um the the gray and blue was either District one-time money from our emergency savings also there's a blue where the state gave us one-time money usually we would get that in mayor June sometime one year I think July and and then
011really the last few years there was a conscious decision at the state level in Juneau not to increase education funding until after the federal relief dollars ran out they they will for the most part run out at the end of this school year and they'll be somewhere in the 15 to 20 million dollars left for next year but that gap between the gold bar and and the red line is about 60 plus million dollars so that's why we started very early talking to the school board and the public at the end of July and every two weeks since um and and I'll you know I'll tell you this exact same chart with the exception of the 30 increase on fiscal year 24 I showed to the Anchorage caucus last December it was briefed at the
012house and the Senate and the joint committees all spring last spring and and I made it very clear to people anyone anyone who would listen that if they couldn't fix education funding that we would be in a situation this year where we had a significant fiscal cliff to work and it and it's you know that the legislature is is challenged there's only three things that cost almost all of the money in the state and it's the Permanent Fund dividend Department of Health and Social Services and then education and everything else it's been trimmed down over the last 10 plus years where if you put all of it together it doesn't even it doesn't even make a dent in education so so that's where the legislature struggled it was conscious decisions not to increase education funding
013which led to the fiscal cliff um and and honestly I think most people saw it coming if they were in Juneau and we've been very very open about this is what's going to happen and that's kind of where we're at right now so Shannon I'll hand off to you great well thank you very much Jim just to talk a little bit about the structure of the evening we're going to have a public hearing that will follow the presentation that you're seeing now and we're receiving names on the sign up list in the hall to allow everyone a three-minute question or statement so if you have questions as we go along you're certainly welcome to provide those at the end I think the list is still out there if anyone like would like to sign up
014um just let us know and we can get your name on the list um so basically what's happening we have this 68 million dollar structural shortfall we have declining birth rates and enrollment all over the Western U.S so I'm a consultant I work for districts probably from uh mostly west of the Mississippi I work for a few in the Detroit area but I work for a lot of districts in Colorado Oregon Washington State and Alaska I've worked in Alaska for about 12 years and I've slowly watched enrollment in most of our districts declined birth rates declined dramatically all over the west and when we say birth rates we mean the number of babies that are born every year so when you have fewer and fewer babies born every year the size of the incoming kindergarten
015becomes a pretty major factor because you just have fewer children to work with we have about 18 schools that have a utilization rate that's less than 65 percent uh which basically means the schools are one-third empty um and throughout the district we have a lot of underutilized schools um we have closed two schools in the last 27 years we've closed Mount iliamna preschool on the base and we've closed Mount spur which was an elementary school on the base but most of our schools that were in place in 1995 are still open so even though we've lost roughly 7 000 elementary students we still have the same we have 53 of the same 55 schools that we were operating back in 95 still open so that's part of the reason why we're looking at our operations
016it's not just a budgetary cliff issue this year it's a fundamental how do we operate issue for us from an efficiency standpoint now as stakeholders in this school that is kind of a weak argument for you when we start looking at individual schools that might need to make a change but the reason that we're looking system-wide is to just become to become a more efficient Institution and quite frankly that re results in US looking at can we operate fewer and larger schools that's the question that districts all over the West are asking so right now I'm working with five districts that are considering closing schools because they want to have larger schools they want to have three section per grade level schools at least meaning three second grades three third grades three fourth grades so
017as you look at how smaller schools operate because you have fewer children in the building we have a lot of grade to grade size volatility so we might have 25 first graders 37 second graders 19 fourth graders and we wind up with a lot of combination classrooms so around the district we have 67 or 70 combination classrooms depending upon how you look at those numbers so we have a lot of sections where a teacher is teaching half a group of first graders in another half classroom full of second graders that's called the combination classroom so that's an indicator of some of the problems associated with operating small schools also we have a lot of education Specialists who may be occupational therapists speech therapists Vision or hearing therapists special ed teachers instructional coaches counselors special ed
018teachers with a a centered need for children where there are only a few kids in a classroom a lot of those folks are circuit Riders they're working in three or four different buildings over the course of a week and we actually have art music in PE partial in some of our smaller buildings where a PE teacher might work into individual buildings the districts that are trying to get to larger schools are trying to get those folks to be more full-time in buildings where if they're needed on Monday they're there on Monday if we don't have to wait until Thursday to get the benefit of that person's expertise so that's something that Anchorage is also being faced with at this point as far as being spread thin because we have so many buildings and so many
019fewer students than we did in the Heyday of this economy and now we're in a situation where we have declined and every year we continue to decline overall and without a major energy mining or military influx of employment we're probably going to continue to decline and I'll show you a couple of reasons why we see that in the data in just a moment basically from a birth standpoint we have probably 750 fewer babies born in 2020 than we did in 2016. and there's no real indication that that trending is changing so every year all of the hospitals and birthing centers in the Anchorage municipality have fewer and fewer children born in those hospitals so what's happening is the moms that physically reside here are just having fewer babies this is happening all over the country
020it's not just in Anchorage in I would say 95 of the districts that I work in I'm seeing diminished birth rates and lower populations coming into kindergarten as a result when we look at our grade size this is showing 2017 are those blue bars and 2020 are those red bars and you can see back in 2017 we had about 500 more children in every grade kindergarten first grade second grade all the way through seventh uh we had 500 more children in every grade so that Ripple is passing through our system and it's pulling our enrollment down and then this diminished birth rate is coming at us from the preschool grades and we expect about a two percent annual continuing reduction coming from that it's not consistent all over the district there are some pocketed areas
021where we retain uh kids this attendance area has a lot of 25 through 34 year old folks but we don't have a lot of school-aged children in this attendance area so even though we have folks that are in the child producing age range the enrollment of this school just hasn't changed that much as that fact has kind of manifested itself in the 2020 census the six schools that are proposed for closure are listed here Abbott Loop Birchwood clatt nanaka Valley Northwood and wonder Park we are trying to hang on to those buildings in case Anchorage bounces back that may not be the case if we follow through with closing Abbott Loop because of the condition of this building but in the case of those five other buildings you see we are proposing either An Early
022Childhood Center conversion or a charter school conversion which saves us a significant amount of operating budget money but it allows us to hold on to those buildings in case something turns around economically we wound up needing to press those back into service so that's the reason why we're trying to hang on to some control over those so that we can use them as a neighborhood school again if things ever change in Anchorage so for Abbott loop we're looking at um dividing the school between two attendance areas so the students that reside north of East 88th Avenue would go to cassoon we've looked at cassoon we're comfortable that we have enough space there and there are actually about 170 children that live in the Abbott Loop attendance area that are North of uh East 88th Avenue
023the others that are south of East 88th Avenue are about 42 kids that reside in the attendance area and those children would be assigned the Trailside now the majority of those would be transported so we would be looking at instead of walking to this school if you live within three or four blocks yes we would be looking at Transportation being the way that we would get children to school there will be some differences for special education systems most of our special ed centers are Regional but the service model would still be fairly close we have two of our special ed directors here tonight so if you have a question about a special education tarlease tarlisha or Pam can answer those questions and they're both here we have a lot of other folks here that can
024answer really detailed questions about Abbott Loop its condition what would it take to make it right we have Eric this day who is our senior Elementary education director he can answer questions about programs at four o'clock from four o'clock until 5 15 today we met with the faculty of this school and we presented the same information to them and spent the better part of an hour hearing questions comments and concerns in order to address the faculty's concerns we have done that for every one of these town halls and will continue to do it at the last one affecting Wonder Park tomorrow night um we are hoping everyone will land on their feet and both families teachers children so that's the thing the reason why there are 12 senior folks from the district here to try
025to answer as many questions that you might have in that regard and we know that you will have some questions so that's our presentation tonight with that I would like to transition to our public hearing I have 15 people on this list there's a microphone right here in the center of the floor and Mr Thim is going to be our time keeper and he will say when we have about 30 seconds left and then he will call time at three minutes and that will hopefully allow us to cycle through this list of 15 folks and give people an opportunity to ask a question or make a comment so with that we'll go ahead and call Linda Erickson with John Burnett's following Linda thank you is this on yes ma'am okay I have some odd questions
026has ASD considered cuts to admin if not why not even if it's only one percent of the budget a cut is a cut is everything being considered are only big budget items I don't need an answer to this I'm just putting it out there for you to think about I know you're considering cutting elementary schools but why does Eagle River have two high schools and they're a population in the school is under 800 students have you looked at consolidating those two schools I got the statistics each school has under 800 students I got this the statistics from the ASD website and the Department of Education and early development and it is under 800 students per School based on 20 to 21 school year this is something that's on everybody's heart five Title One schools are
027on the closure list will that title one status follow the students if not why not many of these students have disabilities learning disorders IEPs Etc they learn and they thrive in a smaller class setting I just have to wonder are you only looking at dollar signs and not the student's specific needs can Cuts be made where it's less impactful for the younger students thank you Linda well let's um let's answer Linda's three questions here I'm going to go back to the wheel here and ask Jim Anderson to talk about the other categories of cuts that are under consideration so if you look at this wheel you'll see that there's three bands in a circle and we tried to start at the outside working end you'll see that at District admin and district-wide level if you
028were to include absolutely everything including the school board superintendent of everything that would be nine percent of our total budget if you look at everything in the blue area like School staff that's outside of classroom sixth grade band and Orchestra ignite sports activities all those things that equals about 30 percent of the district's total budget if you look at all those things from software and contracts and everything else that allow a general led and a special ed classroom to function that's about 61 percent of the district's budget so 88 of all the district's expenses are people salaries and benefits um and and that leaves about 12 percent that's all the contracts buses um everything else in the district um if you look over to the right we're still working on District admin up to the
029up at the top um we have found already um actually we made a little bit higher this morning um five percent reduction in staff seven percent reduction in other things and then on the blue ring if the board were to vote on everything that we've brought up and we're still finalizing cost estimates it would be about an eight percent reduction in personnel and again about a seven percent reduction so 68 million for Anchorage is 13 of our total budget that was the target we were going toward and and again if you were to cut every single piece of admin and not even have a payroll anymore or an HR or a warehouse you still couldn't have gotten to used to 68 million dollars so that's we we have been working from the outside in and
030on the outside part of that is school closures because at the end of the day that core classroom even if it goes to a different building they're still able to educate students and and we're trying to avoid we're trying to make it where the very last thing we cut is people to teach a ratio so your second question was why are we not looking at Chugiak and Eagle River high schools um trucia had about 911 students this fall so they came up a little bit after the pandemic to 9 11 and then Eagle River is sitting at 798. so you are correct that those are smaller schools we're mostly looking at just small operating budgets but what you're suggesting could we put Eagle River in Chugiak um it would be pretty tight from a capacity
031standpoint but I haven't been asked to look at that I have looked at Eagle River before and addressed ways to increase its utilization but that was back in 2018. and we haven't followed up with looking at some of these bigger schools but you are identifying two quote unquote combinable schools that would put those students in one building so your your other question I'm Mark stock Deputy superintendent so the other question was about Title One status and we get asked that question a lot one of the uh things to keep in mind is the way Anchorage has grown if you go back to the Northwest parts of Anchorage typically had the earliest schools built and they're also in vicinity where there you can combine them so if you take one school and take it offline you
032can combine it into the other two schools as you know how Anchorage has developed this the southern parts or other parts of schools are farther apart it's harder to combine them the schools are also newer and don't need as much maintenance so there's there's specific reasons why you know if we were to do another round of cuts which is something that we we really need we're calling these round one I mean we have 18 schools as as we're briefed that are under 65 percent or less capacity and so if Anchorage continues to decline in enrollment those are further and further things we have to look at as far as Title One status as many of you know students that get extra federal dollars to help students who are poor those dollars are not handed out
033by the child they don't follow a child they go to schools that have numbers at certain levels and so every year we we have to look at that list and do it some of the schools that are being closed could go to another school and that school then becomes a title school or not and some schools might not so we'll have to look at that as we figure out where each student goes and we'll look at those numbers and we'll make determinations so that's how it works thank you John Bennett's next Burnett's furnace I'm sorry John so um question here how many people here with like 37 million dollars to build a new building for this school raise your hands 37 million I live in a neighborhood around Inlet View school that's what's being set
034aside to build a brand new building and in The View School 37 million dollars I'm here to ask that that not be built and that instead in the current school be remodeled that's simply what I want to say I think any and then I come in here to the school it just seems like a beautiful school with a beautiful community and is absolutely tragic that two schools are meant to compete against each other or six schools are many compete against each other and I wish there was more resources all around but it is impossible to justify wasting whatever money you would save by remodeling a school versus building a brand new one when you have this much need everything could be made better by this extra money thank you John uh Christine Butler Bryant followed
035by Rick Whitbeck hello I want to first thank you for meeting with us and listening to what we have to say this is valuable to all of us I don't envy any of you or are bored for having to figure this out and make these decisions first I'm curious have you been Gathering these questions and answers answers and posting them somewhere most families don't have the time to attend or listen to these meetings and where can they go to get this information I know that some of these questions have been answered at our staff meeting already here but I'm going to go ahead and read to you what I've prepared I think families and community members also need to hear those questions answered emotionally I've already accepted that this building is closing as a teacher
036it's not my first move um I can bounce back but I think these kids and their families may not be able to do so easily and this is why I'm here and invested in this process I've listened to all your town halls some of the board meetings even the the meeting between the school board and assembly yet I still have questions and concerns I'm having a hard time making logical sense from the information I'm gathering I see the problem and I see your proposed Solutions but I feel like there's a lot of in between that's missing and I'm hoping we can get more you have mentioned it another town hall and again tonight that the admin only makes up something like nine percent of the budget yes I'm gonna go there again um and that
037those cuts are less likely but why with budget kits are we focusing on staff salaries from within our buildings what else have you looked at have you um what staff salaries have you considered have you considered cutting back principles or some of the extra admin positions or just teachers bus drivers cafeteria staff because that's how it's feeling um I find it hard to believe that every single admin position right now is currently necessary are you looking at non-contract salaries to consider cutting those down have we considered the instructional coach positions maybe not having one at each building what about the Ed Center itself what are we paying to use that facility is there another way to house admin maybe repurposed buildings now with the proposed closures what happens to these schools Title 1 identification when
038you blend schools that aren't both Title One do these schools do these students who need these resources still going to get them I've had a parent ask me what will happen with their kiddo with an IEP will these schools have that absorb our kids have the resources to support them I assume they will it's the law but I've heard that some of these schools have already maxed in resource 30 seconds what are we doing to build these schools up and get the enrollment we need what um what can we do to help families choose to send their kids there it might sound crazy but what if we um move the I'm just trying to gather quickly Charter Schools enter our repurposed buildings but maybe grandfather and some neighborhood kiddos so they don't have to move
039these kids are in Title One schools they typically already have adverse experiences and this will just be one more are we getting creative okay thanks thank you So Christine let me try to answer some of your questions um our time keeper Mr Thim is actually writing a FAQ that we're all working on we're transcribing all of the town halls and identifying common threads for questioning and we're trying to write an FAQ that will hit all of the areas that people are interested in and I think we're trying to get that up on our website in an expanded form very quickly there is information up there as as well now but we're trying to improve the quality of that and he's waiting on us as we interpret what we've heard um as far as other elements
040the some of the non-contract employees maybe I'll defer to Mark stock to answer that question by non-contract you mean like Consulting contracts or what do you mean by oh I see those that are not in the bargaining units yeah so yes we are looking at all the extra administered positions that that we can possibly figure out how to change or to not fill or to remove those are all under study now we spent another two and a half hours today going through lines and lines and lines of spreadsheet they fall into multiple categories so it's hard to parse out but there are positions which translate to people in positions but then there's also a lot of administrative uh what we call things of administrative nature they're not actually people but they're they're administrative and not
041directly benefiting kids directly we're going through all those things so yes that's all underway now you mentioned instructional coaches for those that are unfamiliar there are positions in the district where these are teacher type positions that are in the uh teacher contract but they don't serve children directly they coach up teachers all of those positions are in Grant funds and don't have any bearing on this budget and those funds by the way are still decreasing and also the instructional coaches positions are in danger of being cut just because those funds the carryover for those funds is declining so those positions even though if we cut all of them they would not help this budget problem because this is a general fund budget problem and we can't use those positions to be teachers and teach children
042so that's the answer to that and Jim I don't know if there's anything you want to fill in with I um I I may have misspoke if what you heard me say was I don't think any of the admin Cuts will happen we absolutely believe they're going to happen and that's what we've been building um what we have to make sure though is we don't completely break something that causes us to lose millions of dollars of Federal grant money because what we broke was there is no Grant manager or there is no somebody to make sure we're in compliance if if we fall out of compliance on our annual audit we risk losing all of our federal money so there are functions in the admin to include payroll um I mean most people want to
043get paid when they're supposed to um and and and so there are some where you you couldn't go to zero even if you wanted to um even if it just sounds good in theory um but we are going through we've gone through 16 departments already and we're going through the second look plus continuing down the list and um that's what we'll be working on over the next several weeks on the Ed Center lease so we have looked at the Ed Center we actually got with rim design and consulting or Contracting or architecture they're the ones who helped take a shopping mall and turn it into a current Ed Center um so it's going to take two elementary schools or one Middle School to be able to relocate the Ed Center and it's going to need
044significant design if you look at the parking lot here at Abbott Loop and the parking lot at the Ed center it's it's going to take some significant capital investment to turn schools into something that could be a Community Education Center but we absolutely are looking at that and I I think we'll be looking more and more as we look toward round two for looking at other options but but to answer your question it's about four and a half million a year we could save but we're going to have to put some capital investment in to even be able to make it a reality there are people who who think we could just move in but it's just not possible although I know that's going around on social media as a as an option it's going
045to take there's a lot of stuff on social media um and and some of it actually is great ideas but but the Ed Center is going to take some effort so the question about how could we be comfortable that the special education resources at the destination schools will be adequate I'll ask tarlisha Wayne to comment on that briefly she's our director of special ed good afternoon everybody so what typically happens with students that receive special education services is that their services follow them so if the students go to a different site that changes the allocation for that specific building and those services and the people that support those services will follow those students great thank you tarlesha uh let's see your other question was how can we help families choose from the options available to
046them in the event that Abbott Loop closes and I'll ask Eric this day to comment on that and talk about if we repurpose the school as a charter would students from the neighborhood be welcome yeah absolutely I mean one of the things that we will be putting in full Earnest depending on what happens with the decisions that are coming as we'll be putting in effort for all of our schools that would be receiving students to make sure that we have a complete welcoming environment that all kids are all kids and that were whether it's a student with an IEP or a student who needs support through through English language Learners I mean the focus will be making sure that we have the best and most open doors and welcoming environment possible for all of our
047families you know with regards to the charter schools and the acceptance and opportunity for students to access those programs that's something that we would be interested in maintaining the opportunity for all of our students to have access so you'd see an interest in that standpoint moving forward great thank you Eric I'd like to call on Rick whitback followed by Alyssa Ada Cada good evening there's an amazing amount of talent TR uh and time being given to this and I appreciate it my name is Rick whitback I'm the parent of a second grader an amazing little boy here at Abu Abba Loop's PTO president and a member of both the Anchorage school district and the state of Alaska's Title One Committees of practitioners lots of questions guys um many benefits many families benefit from title one
048here uh can you assure the absolute Community the title those those students won't be negatively impacted if they go to non-title schools like cassoon and Trailside that don't get to become Title One with our transfers what types of transitional support will the district be able to provide have you identified the specific families who most need the support how will the impact go for programs providing healthy food choices and child care during the summer what about those that need SEL guidance and counseling services during the transition what's the plan for Abbott Loops Indian ed students who like my son get additional services I know you guys don't have these answers but you need them before you start gutting a school and the school Community just to save a few million dollars you're going to leave students
049behind and potentially even unsafe during the summer if not my son's on an IEP we've already asked will soon be able to take the number of kids coming in or worst case scenario will all exist in consume IEP students plus the kids coming from Abbott Loop have decreased support which would be an incredibly short-sighted and damaging situation in good conscience you cannot close the school without answers to that this the families that have IEPs and depend on Title One need those well we talk about closing and reallocating schools earlier gentleman talked about Inlet View come on guys real 30 million dollars where can that go I know it's Capital versus operating but that's ridiculous then you pay for experts to help solve a problem that it's a micro fraction of the overall problem but it
050guts communities it guts this neighborhood adding into a BSA increase until you have a corresponding performance increase well there's some hubris there I have no false hope that you're going to stop that we're going to stop this that Abbott Loop's not going to uh be closed we apparently as a title one school are an easy target I don't know we're going to be a Pawn on a lose-lose game one that is just the tip of the iceberg phase one phase two what's next some of those other 18 the entire community's suffering right now 30 seconds I get it Anchorage deserves better our community deserves better my son and his 260 other colleagues here deserve better don't take the easy way out there has to be a better reason and a better way than getting this
051community thank you thank you Rick so let's try to run through this um regarding assurances that title 1 students will continue to get services at cassoon and Trailside maybe I should defer to Mark stock on this one so until we actually have all the boundaries drawn and everything is figured out then you can do the percentages and like I said earlier the dollars for title do not follow children whereas special ed dollars do title dollars go to schools and and then those Services then are provided within the school setting so we would have to take a look at the students who are going to which school look at what services they were getting here what they needed because every school has a lot of control over what title dollars they spend and how they spend
052it so we would have to look at at Avid Loop particularly what kind of title services are were you getting how many of those students are then going to Trailside or to consume and then see what we can do and again it falls falls down to all the other schools in the district and what happens to their enrollment we have schools here that are in title one year and then no title the next year and then two years later they're back in title status and then they're out and so it's not a fixed thing whether they're consolidating schools or not the title dollars are always especially in those schools that are running in that 70 percent free and reduced or economically disadvantaged layers they often are in and out of title status so that happens
053a lot looking at it so let me ask Eric this day to help answer the question what sort of support and counseling will we provide for families making the transition and how will we identify them well one of the things that we would do and we do have some history with for what for many different reasons for closing schools whether that goes back to Mount spur or the earthquake out in Eagle River or a recent Ursa Major closure right with with the with the study that was done um so um we've done a lot of work in terms of how to create those opportunities for families and communication what I would anticipate us doing is working with the principles whether that's at Abbott Loop or whether it's at one of our other schools connecting and
054coming back to the school and tailoring our plans with the community here as well as the receiving school things such as you know blending field trips or blending community activities open houses and and sort of things as far as making the welcoming environment you know partnering with migrant education partnering with ell partnering with Indian education and putting together more of a comprehensive support that would be the the the the the focus moving forward but until we get to that spot we have to know who the people are that we're going to need depending on that Community too would that include the healthy foods program and summer programs Eric okay as far as as far as free lunches you know that this school is a cep school for Community eligibility Provisions so everyone gets free lunch
055um the the way that actually works is you can put one school or you could have a group of five or a group of ten and within that aggregate grouping if it rolls up to 40 percent economically disadvantaged then you have a lot of control over whether we could ensure that food security would would not be at least while they're at school whether it tastes good or not that's different but um but but we can we can really do a lot of things to include on the title one side of the house we can set aside general fund money before we start budgeting um without worrying about supplant rules to be able to provide some additional supports I think for the parents in the room for the staff in the room I think many of
056you realize it's going to take several months of very dedicated effort to be able to get down to some of those answers and um you know we we don't know at this point how many schools will close um and we so as soon as that does happen I think we're you're looking at probably after spring break being able to set expectations for next school year and get input from families to continue refining that so Rick did tarlisha answer your question about special ed or do we need to elaborate on that a little bit more sure yes sir yes sir on another point I just want to point out that board member Dora Wilson is here she showed up too so so Alyssa is next followed by Corey Agate please so I have a lot to
057say so I'm going to power through I appreciate the information that's been shared and the reasoning for the closures resonate but I want to remind or make you aware that the decisions you're making about these six schools have individual impacts and on more people than just the family with the families within those boundaries I live in the cassoon district with no pre-k program Trailside has Pre-K but the ASU website encourages people not to apply because of the low likelihood of acceptance my son's pediatrician referred him for speech therapy when he was three and he was given an IEP for speech when he was four I searched high and low for private speech therapy or for a program through ASD but nothing caters to working parents we are so grateful to have found migrant Ed Pre-K
058at Abbott Loop last year we love the program the school the community but most importantly we loved his teachers Miss Christina Miss Irene so much that we applied for his own exemption to attend Abbott Loop this year my son wasn't accepted because the kindergarten class was full even though enrollment is down although devastated he couldn't come to Abbott Loop this year he's been encouraging his three-year-old sister who also has an IEP for speech to practice putting on her snow gear by herself so that she'll be ready for Miss Christine's class next year we recently celebrated my son's graduation from his IEP last month a week after we finally heard back from that speech referral from his doctor Miss Christine was the most amazing thing for my son and her passion and dedication to prepare young
059economically disadvantaged kids for a lifetime of success is admirable to say the least Miss Christine is the kind of teacher that you fight to retain in a field that so many are fleeing I'm sure there's a parent here tonight that would make that same argument about each and every one of the teachers at the school families have moved to this boundary to attend this school because of the opportunities afforded through Title 1 and migrant Ed programs average Working Families can't afford to move with rent and mortgage interest rates the way they are we're stuck here regardless of school closures or boundary rezoning I caught a portion of Northwoods Town Hall where it was disclosed that economic demographics and the boundaries of these six schools weren't even considered when deciding which schools to close so it
060comes as no surprise that five out of six schools on The Chopping Block are Title 1 schools I don't expect any answers but I want to leave you with a few questions to consider I heard you say that the reorganization of boundaries may qualify because soon as the title one school you don't know yet why isn't that part of the information you prepared when proposing which schools to close if cassoon won't qualify as a title one school what's your plan to accommodate the influx of low-income students at cassoon and the families that rely on Title One Services because soon doesn't even have a cafeteria worker so they don't have hot lunch what about the low-income students that end up at Trailside well the migrant Ed pre-k program be moving to cassoon and if not will
061there be a Pre-K Academy on this side of town well my three-year-old speech delayed solo snow gear dresser have a Pre-K to attend next year or should I wait for that referral to move to the top of the stack three months after she starts kindergarten and you mentioned the specific Services follow the spread Student please there are already full classes so you're adding new classrooms to support all this new students thank you Alyssa so let me take a stab at um addressing some of this as far as title one we have been following economically disadvantaged as an indicator when we looked at the schools that we put in this first round of proposed consolidations so five of the six the resulting percentage of economically disadvantaged was comparable our starting point has been looking at combinable
062schools so the majority of the combinable schools are Title One schools so there's not a a rationale there it's just that those are there are 10 or 12 combinable schools in this District at the elementary level and the majority of them are Title One schools so that's kind of why we've wound up in that situation um there it's not there's nothing more complicated than that about it those are the combinable schools they're small Schools they're low enrollment schools and they have smaller attendance areas and the schools that we're not looking at or the higher utilization schools with bigger student bodies that happen to be in neighborhoods that aren't Title One neighborhoods if we were going to close one of those we would be moving a big chunk of kids out of a neighborhood where there
063are a lot of kids out of a bigger building so it's it's really coming down to the size of the schools if that helps that's kind of what our starting point has been and what almost every other District that does a school consolidation exploration their starting point is always small combinable schools and trying to provide an equivalent or higher level of service at the destination School now I know it's hard to understand that that would that you could get a guarantee that that would be the outcome at a different school if your school were closed and I would say that almost every other District that I've worked for and I've worked for 200 school districts and most of the districts that have explored consolidation that has been the leading concern is will the level of
064service in the new situation be as good as or better than what that this parents and students had before and I think that that's something that we're all thinking very carefully about let me address some of these other issues um as far as migrant Ed I don't know who the appropriate administrator is to answer that question but again it's going to be similar to the answer that tarlisha gave regarding special education is that when those students are categorized with that service need the services are going to follow the students I think Mark can you answer this one that I haven't knowledge of where it would go that will have to be worked with with the migrant Ed department and we'll work through those issues so I haven't been privy to that conversation on a migrant
065Ed preschool here don't know if Chelsea or anyone's here Chelsea was at the faculty meeting but she um didn't join us for this can you hear me there you go um so with regard to the preschool program you know we've talked about in other in other meetings and in school board meetings we've talked about the proposal for a Pre-K Academy or An Early Childhood Center Chelsea Moreau who who isn't here right now she's been she's been heavily involved in terms of the forward planning for preschool and she's been super successful in terms of growing our preschool footprint in conversations with her and modeling it out that the the preschool program here would likely not go to one of the Early Childhood centers due to logistical locations and pieces so she's currently looking at possible areas
066where that could go obviously that would also be impacted on closures so if one school closes or doesn't close there's conditional impact of how that impacts other schools right so one of the things until we we can't say where that's going until we know what the closure aspect of it looks like and then after we know what that looks like and where the receiving students are going that's where then the concrete planning can go in terms of where the program would be played based but the modeling to have a preschool program within a a school is still part of the footprint of preschool going forward regardless of what happens with Early Childhood centers but in all likelihood it would be geographically around in this area still to be determined where exactly so I'd like to
067call Corey Agate followed by Dana Kane pardon me okay um let's see Dana Kane followed by Karen Johnson I'm Dana Kane a first grade teacher here at Abbott Loop thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to come and to hear the information and to be able to share our questions and our feelings regardless the condition of this building is personal we are a family we're a community a school Community who works together I look forward to seeing students ahead last year in the hallway I look forward to coming to work every single day and working with my staff because we work well together I love working with families former students and Families we all feel that way so it is personal no matter what the condition of the building it hurts it rips
068the heart out now a couple of other things I want to say I know brick has brought it up and other people brought it up about the title one and the food that's such a big concern something I am so worried about most of my children eat breakfast every day we have breakfast in the classroom the other two schools do not have that they also get the free breakfast some of my students will bring a lunch and get a school lunch as well because they're hungry what happens to them will cassoon have breakfast in the classroom will they have that opportunity the families because of the program that we're in haven't had to fill out the paperwork so I'm really concerned with our parents who have multiple different languages trying to fill out the paperwork
069to be able to get breakfast and lunch for their children what will happen to them what will keep them from falling through the cracks so that my children will not be hungry also busing we talk about transportation we already have buses that aren't running right now some of our students are struggling to try to get here what's going to happen when it's even farther away we have many families who can walk what's going to happen to my children that's what I want to know thank you so um regarding title one I don't I don't know what kind of guarantees we can offer right now I think that mark would you like to address this well I was just going to Jim and I were just talking over here the the question about food and the
070breakfast those are things we can work on we can design those combination schools to make sure that if that is a primary concern that we address that take care of it I think that we can we can assure you we can work on on that issue the transportation issue I don't know Rob if you want to take a stab at that one because I think hopefully by then uh you know I'll let you you answer it yeah on the transportation issue um fair question so you'll be hearing shortly about how close we are to to the restoration of all of the bus routes there's been a lot of work since the start of school a lot of new bus drivers um a lot of work on efficiency we we also have the wage fixed now
071much more competitive than it was when we originally lost all these drivers last summer so a whole lot of work has gone on there and and that Gap is just about closed at this point we're continuing to work with um the software and with very closely with the special ed Department with with some IEPs that would benefit from least restrictive environment and getting off of sped routes and onto gen Ed routes all of that is going on so we're not just stopping here where we have all of the drivers hired we're going to continue to to work out efficiencies in that department so that we'll we do have all of the capacity so very soon we'll be announcing to the community a rotation off of the cohorts we're still doing the work to finalize that
072date but that'll be coming soon thank you so I'd like to take Karen Johnson followed by Andrea Johnson please hi I'm a recently retired special ed teacher and I taught at the school for two years my question is is that a few years ago a bond was passed to rebuild the school I would like to know what is happening with that money and my comment was in support of reducing the size of the Ed center with reduced to enrollment there's a lot of empty space in that room or in that building um just I imagine the heating and cooling costs of that building are outrageous so like I said I'm also in support of reducing the size of the Ed Center thank you um so let's see regarding a bond election funding of this that's
073a Rob Holland question go ahead sir so I believe the the bond that is being referred to was the bond that passed for the addition of a fire suppression system here at the school there was not a bond approved to rebuild this school in its entirety but there was a bond approved for just north of four million dollars uh to put in the sprinkler systems no that's fine ma'am I I knew what you were referring to I principal that may have been um some speculation at the time or perhaps a misunderstanding there is definitely Bond money just north of four million dollars for the sprinkler system and Rob that money is unexpended right now correct that's correct it's unexpended we could still follow through and replace the sprinkler system here maybe not for that amount
074but that could still be done yes or that money can be used in other ways but it is not expended that's correct so it's it's standing by um so your other question was regarding the Ed Center and I think we've touched on the Ed Center a couple of times it's a leased facility I would say that 40 percent of the districts I've worked for have had least Ed centers so it's not an uncommon phenomenon to lease office space and obviously we could be operating out of an own facility but Mr Anderson mentioned all the tenants in it we would have to do to a big middle school or another large facility or multiple facilities and then we'd be scattered into three buildings and uh Mr vicalis and I have talked about some of the old
075days when we had the Ed Center in five locations and that was kind of a challenge so what you're seeing with the Ed center it's all in one spot yes it is leased and yes it is it is a significant annual lease expense um let's see let's go on to Andrea Johnson please um I've been a volunteer here for nine years in the library so I've seen the good and the bad of this school um I'm kind of disappointed that we have a new principal this year and that she's not being given the opportunity to make a go of this school now I don't know if maybe that was in the works before um but there's a lot of great kids here and they do do better in smaller classes and I worry about them
076going to consume in bigger classrooms which brings up my question the Specialists the librarian the music teacher the gym teacher the art teacher they're following the students but according to the school board but what are they going to do are they going to become classroom teachers because you can't have two Librarians and two gym teachers so I'm just very curious what's going to happen to them I think Mark stock can address how that FTE is combined yeah so the ones that are the the more challenging in terms of placement are the the Specialists who in these small schools they tend to travel some of them actually serve more than one school occasionally so you'll have an art teacher health teacher traveling from school to school covering those so teachers can have their planning periods so
077we'll have to work through that with the associations to work through the process for that to make sure that where they're going to settle because obviously if there's already a librarian there and there is no opening and now the library in here so where does that librarian go the likelihood of all those people having positions is very strong because we we have somewhere between two to three hundred teachers through attrition every year who leave or retire or move on and so these closures should not affect anybody's ability to have a job where that job is it has to be worked out depending on where the openings are at the time but Andrea I just want to clarify that we wouldn't be asking people to change their specialization so if people are an art teacher a
078music teacher or PE teacher for the most part Eric correct me if I'm wrong they retain that specialization regardless of their assignment correct another music teacher so in the past what we've done with those is sit down with the association and work it all out in a letter of agreement or understanding so that everybody's clear and then what would happen is the the association in the administration would come to Abbott Loop and meet with all the people affected and answer all of those questions for everyone and explain the process that's been agreed upon with the the teacher Association Andrea thanks for your years of service here appreciate it I'd like to call Deborah Hansen followed by Haley McGrew hi there I'm Deborah Hanson I'm a 40-year resident here I live right next to Inlet View
079school and I fought the ASD when they wanted to close Inlet View back in the in the 80s my advice is to show up for meetings if you don't want your school closed I can tell you if you were looking at closing Inlet View School there'd be 300 parents and 200 kids here there would be standing room only they would be ready to Lynch the board I know that's the problem it's real easy to close a title one school because parents don't show up and fight for it it was real easy to close Ursa Major you know I mean anyway I should get through with this um just to be aware ASD setting aside uh 37 million 37 not 30. departure fund new in The View school probably won't cut it's probably going to cost
080more than that the parents showed up for every meeting if you've got two or 300 parents showing up of course ASD is going to do that my background's in business and in solving problems there are always ways to solve problems I'd like to know why you haven't asked the community for solutions to this problem you're having these meetings you're not asking me for my suggestions you're asking the parents here many of whom haven't aren't able to sell off anyway I've got one to offer you got to look at that 37 million dollars and see if you can come with a better plan um I figure you're you're cutting Title One schools because it's easier I mean you talk about combinable schools I can give you some other combinable schools but anyway um I don't know
081what to say there's other Solutions and I'd like to see the answers to Joel Potter's commentary that was in the paper on Sunday where it talked about you're getting some easy cuts now but it's going to have a bad impact on ASD later I mean it looks like he knows what he's talking about with this and I can tell you my with working on fighting the whole and live view school thing over the last year I found there's a lot of numbers and there's a lot of ways to lie with numbers anyway thank you Deborah Haley McGrew it's Haley here hi everyone I am the I'm Mr group I am the second third teacher here at Abbott loop I started my career here at avaloop when I was fresh out of college this is my
082school I come to school here every day I see my staff I see my students I see my past students and I love every single one of them they may be ornery on some days but I will still love them I care more about them than anything and I will give anything to them one thing that my students are kind of scared of what's going to happen next year to them that scares them they like the security of knowing that they're staying here they know what teacher they're going to get next year some of them are saying well I move up there with them they rely on that security of what's going to happen next because sometimes they don't have that in life they see this school as a safe place for them to come
083and if it is ripped away from them it's going to have very negative impacts on them for the rest of their life so before any hard decisions are made and I have kind of made peace with it but I look out for my students and I love them please think of the students and how they're going to be affected later on in life because they're going to look back on this moment thank you thank you Haley Margie Bellman followed by Marilyn Russell perhaps Margie Bauman um I just want to bring up some points that may or may not be popular but um I've lived here most of my life several decades and our population Ebbs and flows like a yo-yo different projects earthquakes so forth so the fact that the population of the school district
084is down now doesn't mean it's going to be down in five years or so and I'm estimating that most of the families that live here perhaps chose to live here because of the school they're either renting or owning a home and the prospect of moving is a big Financial deal to everybody the third point I want to make is that um well I've lived here most of my life I grew up in New Jersey where they have a big income tax and you don't have a choice to pay it up here since we established a Permanent Fund it seems like everybody looks forward to it of course and for a lot of people it's never enough if I take my whole PFD and spend it on a trip to Hawaii it's not going to help
085students that are going to school now when they get out of school if we paid a little bit less in the PFD every year and put more money into our schools that would benefit the future of the state and the other thing I want to put on a plug for that I'm sure a lot of people aren't real thrilled about is this state income tax because every time we have a big project here we get a lot of out-of-state workers who make a lot of money and they take it all out of state and pay taxes in other states so I think that's something we all need to think about it's not something the school district can solve but we can think about it and talk to our legislators thank you thank you Margie a
086Marilyn Russell Maryland Russell oh here there she is great followed by Steve broon Stephen green I wrote my name there just because I thought maybe I would talk but I don't know um why are you being so picky about what the building looks like I go along with that gal I don't know where she is but um you know sprinkler system and this and that and the other I mean I know somebody who had big leaks in their roof and rather than paying fifteen thousand they just put a tarp over it I mean why are we spending so much money on that kids are our first uh you know there's sponges at Young ages it's really important that we pay attention and get them so they're comfortable and I care a lot about that and
087now that I have the microphone I'll tell you about one project and I'm not going to stop talking about it but I really care about kids entering School and being at a certain level no matter whether they're four or five or six years old until they show that they have the skills to move on because that's a far better system than them flunking out in sixth or seventh grade and their peer pressure oh you loser you funked you know I just think that I like that and having them so I'm I'm espousing that for it but yeah I'm just asking questions about you know holding back on all the regulations to sprinkler this nail I don't care my kids had went to a school in Fairbanks that had wrecking the floors and everything but they
088still did well and got went to college can't we cut back on some of those things thanks Rob could I ask you about the um um the sprinkler system is there a a deadline for us to act on doing something in this building so it's not that it's a deadline and that's why the money is just it's currently on hold this school is safe it's not an emergency the sprinkler system mainly protects the infrastructure what protects the people in a building is heat sensors smoke detectors and adequate egress exits out of the building and keeping those not blocked so that does not mean that the school is is sitting here unsafe that that's a false narrative but no I'm yes ma'am so what but but to your very good point about a neighbor or acquaintance
089you had that couldn't or didn't want to spend the money to fix the roof on their house so they put a tarp over it we do get into some things where that that really isn't a choice for us mainly because our roofs are so large so expansive and they're not pitched roofs so when we have leaks those leaks can it infiltrate the building in ways that they do serious long-term damage and it becomes cumulative and that's one version of deferred maintenance and so really if we don't address some of that and we try to kick that can down the road we make the problem so much bigger that it multiplies and then we're just not being good stewards of public money the the schools in this District all the buildings are worth about two and
090a half billion dollars and everyone in this room and everyone that's an Anchorage citizen owns that infrastructure and we are compelled to keep it safe and healthy for kids but also so we can keep that building lasting into the future to where if we don't keep the infrastructure repaired adequately pretty soon that building starts to crumble down and we have no choice but to spend 40 million dollars to build a new Elementary School we'd like to prevent that and and that's why we do have major maintenance great thank you rob Stephen groon followed by Nancy Winifred please hi I'm going to run through this pretty quickly sorry for the rapidity I don't have a dog in this hunt anymore my daughter is in sixth grade she'll be graduating out of a loop and she'll be
091gone I volunteered here for six the last seven years I've walked my daughter to and from school along with 151 other kids who are walking to school every day I see them they are here they will be required to be bussed to other schools that busing will cost you money closing Abbott Loop is going to result in a supposed cost Savings of 700 to 900 000 that's about one percent of your shortfall I don't know if you factored in the cost of your increased busing but that's certainly going to happen another thing you may not have factored in is the cost of the decreased Revenue property values in this neighborhood are going to decrease people like to pay more for a house near a neighborhood School there won't be neighborhood School in this neighborhood anymore
092if you close the school my property values I'd be happy to give you more taxes I voted for that four million dollars of funding for the the sprinkler system which has not yet been installed I'd be happy to vote for more taxes to pay for this school but we are already at a tax cap you will decrease that that tax cap by decreasing the revenue in the area from the property taxes the neighborhood shareholders right now um we have a lot of Title One schools title and students in the school who are come from economically disadvantaged families if you send them to school that's going to require busing they will not be able to partake of extracurricular activities such as choir Battle of the books running club Ski Club Samoan dance club all the other
093things chess club that my daughter has been involved with here at this school those will not be available title on students whose parents are either working in the evenings working odd hours do not have vehicles can't afford to drive around these things are going to be hardships for those title one students who are economically disadvantaged and they will not be able to partake in these extracurricular activities which will diminish their education and diminish their likelihood of successful outcomes in high school and Beyond both cassoon and Trailside have larger Square footages than Abbott Loop that generally equates to a higher heating costs you have to heat more air and space I'm kind of wondering why they're being selected because soon for example has a 61 capacity Abbott Loop is at 65 capacity why not close the
094one with a lower capacity my My overall thinking is that the anchor School District isn't the source of the problem or isn't the cause of the problem the school district school board isn't the solution resides in Juneau but you're not going to get a solution from Juno if you have the Optics of spending 37 million dollars on a school the voters rejected you're just not going to get your base student allocation from Juno you're just not if you want to get your base student allocation increased you need to follow what the voters are saying and not spend the 37 million dollars at the Inlet View time please thank you Stephen I'm gonna call on Nancy Winifred who is our last speaker tonight is Nancy in the room hello so I I just have a couple
095questions um it is my understanding that we hired a new superintendent who wasn't qualified for the job and that we are currently paying two superintendents so that the old one or someone can be teaching the new one what to do and so my question I have two questions are we wasting money in other ways besides that and are we going to fire one of those people hopefully the new one immediately second one second question that I have unnecessary programs so I'm older I taught for a long time and our main focus was reading language arts skills history science math those were our main focuses we did not try to socially engineer our children by teaching them things like critical race Theory or sex ed or anything like that and how much money are we spending
096on those kinds of programs other that are kind of extracurricular to those five basic things that we need to be teaching our students and could we cut some of that money my third and final thing is I know that I saw from the graph that the money Source from the state is not increasing in other words it's flat okay if that's maybe the state is trying to tell us something like we're not going to keep raising your funding anymore and that means that the burden goes back to the local people to provide the money for the schools and is our school board looking into ways to fund schools other than expecting the state to Pony up because apparently they're not going to so are we addressing that problem or are we going to be in
097this very same predicament next year the following year the following year so let's try to address two questions let's address um do we know what percentage of our instructional expenditures are specifically focused on core academics I don't know of many districts that know that number um and then secondly local funding augmentation is that really possible in Alaska whoops the way the state formula Works Anchorage already provides 100 of the max if Anchorage were to provide more they can in either student nutrition Transportation or capital um I'll give you an example Keen I decided to go ahead and pick up all the utility costs for the Kenai Peninsula Borough but the way they wrote the state funding statute they have to claim that as in-kind Revenue even though they didn't pay it and so they still
098end up getting less money that the states the state's formula is is uh pretty constrictive you can get grants and donations but not operating fund type dollars um from this city and so the the city has given us um not quite but almost two million dollars in alcohol tax for pre-k um this past year and and whenever funding is available which is um you know we are a boom and bust um then then it's available and that I tell you Anchorage is one of very few cities who have always always always given 100 of everything when this this city does has always supported ASD and the community but it is the way the state wrote the revenue formula and um if they allow Anchorage or any other one city or Borough to significantly increase local
099funding it'll cost the state about 100 million dollars because of an agreement they have with the federal government that allows them to take a portion of federal impact aid for us it's about seven and a half million each year for some it's much much more and they do that based off being able to keep down local spending with a cap I think our board members have been very clear to people they talked to I'm in a political position but the best thing you can do and our board members have openly talked about talking to your legislators so I've been going to Juno for for over six years and and when I go into an office it's very frequent that a legislator would tell me that none of their constituents talk to me about education funding
100they talk about the homeless they talk about drug abuse I talk about suicides and they talk about the PFD and Jim and Andy comes in my office and you want to talk about education funding the other thing that comes out is and and there's many people in Juno saying this they know that we're down 5 000 plus kids and and they're they're pretty honest about what are you doing to become more efficient with the money you have when are you going to close schools and that's when the whole Timeless formula came out a few years ago from Natasha Von emhoff and um and there was a article written in the paper about the revenue so the first couple years we get to pretend that school still exists and we get we get some additional Revenue
101as if you did that but it does go away by year five down to zero and it was designed that way to give districts time to figure out how to get some efficiencies in order to take those cost savings into something else so um there were a lot of people year after year when when they first passed the whole harmless we closed one school the next year I went back to Juno and I heard over and over really one five thousand kids in one school that holds 400 and and so there are divides in Juno of people who have expectations whether they're results based or for some of them it's efficient facilities based um and then there's always the group that would give us education money every morning noon and night because they would but
102it's just complicated there Dr Stock are you going to add something okay very good well I think that's going to conclude our evening we've had 15 speakers and really appreciate your contribution we are documenting everything that everybody has said and we are summarizing it so the Board of Education can consume it and understand the perspectives that have been expressed in this town hall and in the others we also have an online survey that's available on our website in six languages we would encourage you to participate in this process via that survey so with that I'd like to thank Abbott Loop for hosting us our our superintendent is properly licensed and qualified and there is not a second superintendent on payroll that I saw that email go around it's untrue we have cut and merged multiple
103programs in the last six years as funding has been flat and if you paid attention to some of the board meetings recently all of the programs we raised as possible reductions um the room has been full with people who believe that those are necessary every single one when we did a survey in Anchorage the highest most favored action to take was close and consolidate schools except for naturally their school um so when you say unnecessary somebody believes that's the reason they wake up in the morning and that's the dilemma and that's why it's so difficult to be a board member trying to get consensus when of six different programs five of them will say cut the other but but none of them want to close their own they don't consider them unimportant consolidated well I
104think I'm going to go ahead and conclude the evening we are at the front here if you'd like to ask any questions we can circulate and if anybody has any specific questions for the team members individually thanks for coming everybody good night foreign