ASD School Board Meeting 01-18-22

001[Music] thank you for your patience today is tuesday january 18th and this is our regular school board meeting we are starting at 6 15 and again i apologize for the for the delay board members present we have members wilson lessons jacobs holloman higgins donnelly and bellamy we also have dr bishop our superintendent as well as katie grant our recording secretary and with that we will ask that [Music] our student representative lead us in the in the flex salute [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and when you're ready we can do the land acknowledgement [Music] on behalf of the anchorage school board i want to take a moment

002to recognize and offer gratitude for the sacred ancestral lands of the denia 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 land throughout generations we are grateful for the opportunity to grow learn work and create educational communities on the sacred land we extend continued respect for the many cultures creativity and the resilience of its indigenous people [Music] thank you miss shaw let the record also show that michelle is here today as part of our um of our dais and that brings us to the approval of the agenda president i move we approve the agenda as presented second president yes i've moved to move i believe i think it's memorandum 80 to the non-consent memorandum the

003cip yes i actually voted against that at a previous meeting so [Music] some i'm not consenting to it oh so you want so what is your you want to pull it yes okay so then it would go to an action item that would be f1 [Music] is there a second on pulling that item well madam sure i don't think it's even a debatable motion because it's on the constant agenda yeah you are correct any member may pull a consent agenda at any time thank you [Music] okay any other adjustments to the agenda thank you member donnelly [Music] okay see none [Music] we have pulled items we have pulled a memorandum 80 which now moves it to an action item under f that'll be f1 [Music] are there any objections any other i don't see any

004other um adjustments to the agenda just that one so with that one adjustment can we pull memorandum 069 from non-action for discussion we can do that when we get to action items yes just when we get there you can pull that okay seeing no other the adjustment to the we have one adjustment to the agenda are there any uh is there any opposition to making that adjustment pulling memo 80. seeing none the agenda stands approved with that item madam president um we do have action that on december 6 the cip was approved so i'm just curious about why it's up there again even with it was approved even with um you know a disapproval if you will or not a vote for nay so i was just curious how it moved forward is it changed

005um may i request why sure so so through the president the the board did act and approve the the six-year capital improvement plan at the sixth december meeting the the reason why it was brought forward again is the district did receive the enrollment projections from our demographer so you know i'll take this one it probably is not in the right place maybe it would just be a report to the board that we have additional information that is being added to the packet that will be distributed to the board when we print off the uh the hard copy six year capital improvement plan so again it's already been approved so it wasn't a technical edit due to uh student enrollment numbers being added to the packet and it showed back up um it should have probably

006been non-action um with uh just for for board discussion uh may we uh move it at this point i would suggest that it be placed on non-action because it doesn't need an additional vote um would would that suffice that impression i'm not sure how the procedures work but perhaps asking the member who made the motion and the second to that if it could be moved on non-action [Music] my understanding is mr donnelly does not agree to the item on the consent agenda so he wants to vote against it a second time in my review or if not then i let's i would like the member to explain i don't think it's appropriately placed on the consent agenda because all the members of this board do not consent with it if it's simply a notification of

007of of a change in the fact pattern that's represented in the memorandum that can be done someplace other than the consent agenda i understand okay and madam president my request and recommendation would be the non-action to be discussed if needed remember remember donnelly right now we i made the decision to put it in action which really is an error it needs i would like to move it to non-action [Music] okay i have no objection okay thank you thank you thank you for the clarification uh dr bishop i appreciate the the president i did try to reach out to your office earlier today and let you know oh of his concerns all right thank you thank you all righty so we have uh we still have just that one item pulled it is now under it

008will be uh non-action number four uh g4 thank you all right moving right along um i'd like to read my opening statement since i overlooked that just real briefly real quickly but we do want to welcome everyone to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the school board and the district the board thanks students parents teachers staff school business partners and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time your talent and your tax dollars and that brings us to item b1 uh do we have a student advisory board report today we do thank you miss shaw okay so sab or student advisory board has held their fifth meeting of the school year on tuesday january 11th at 8 15 a.m to start off our meeting we

009played a fun gathering activity in periods of three um we approved the agenda and the minutes from our december meeting and then we were visited by ms doreen brown about the graduation regalia earlier in the year she spoke to us about voting on which option we think was best and she came back with the results that was like the option that was mostly favored by sab pass so we were very excited to hear that um we then talked about the upcoming positions that will open up for elections in the spring and then when school reports where we asked each school to share a challenge their school is struggling with um then we went on a zoom call with michael collins from rain associate ray and associates and answered questions about you know what we want

010to see in the next superintendent what qualities we like what we don't like and questions like that and then we had mr andrew ball come in and present the calendar for the next school year talk about what kind of changes we would like to see you know what changes we would make wouldn't make um and he gave us a google form to fill out it was a very busy meeting but a fun and informational one to say the least sab will be meeting february 15th at 11 15 a.m to 1 15 pm the week before four sab members head down to juno for the aasb conference or the association of alaska school boards that is all and thank you very much are there any questions for michelle thank you very good report appreciate it and

011now that brings us to item c1 reading proficiency and i need to pull my notes out here [Music] okay this uh we're now going to have our go our progress monitoring conversation tonight's conversation is on goal number one specifically interim goal 1.1 and on that goal um as you can see on the screen uh interim goal 1.1 the percentage of k2 students at or above reading at or above the reading benchmark on interim assessments fastbridge curriculum-based measures will increase from 35-37.5 percent and in the spring of to 80 in the spring of 2020. i would like to first of all confirm that the report clearly shows what is being monitored that report was shared at our last meeting [Music] it's it focuses on the specific interim goal the report also shows the data for three

012previous reporting periods reporting period and the target reporting periods the report shows the superintendent's evaluation of performance and the report also shows reporting documentation that evidence is the superintendent's evaluation via the tables and graphs provided and the report indicates next steps so with those four components present we are ready to begin our our conversation so for the purposes of understanding the current reality of our students uh we are going to start out with our who what and why questions and once the board fully understands the current reality then we will move on to the how that's a category of questions um that where the superintendent will share with us uh what is planned uh in response to the data so with that uh logic in mind we'd like to open it up for um questions

013and uh i guess who wants to go first tonight remember donnelly thank you mr president um dr bishop in in january of 29 200 2019 memory we had a report from a contractor that the district hired that visited our classrooms to examine the status of our reading curriculum um but it seems like ages ago now it was pretty right before covetous um and at that time my memory is when when i asked that it was that there was a correlation between our classrooms and schools that had adopted the current reading curriculum and success that those schools were actually in classrooms were succeeding more the ones that had not adopted the new curriculum adopted by the board is is is my memory accurate about that um that's a good question and in that timeline of um

014actions and we were you know had adopted it one year did some pd we're moving into the second year that was when we uh worked with someone to do [Music] classroom observations kind of walkthroughs of implementation snapshots we call it i mean it's not an evaluation it's literally looking in the classroom to see if um is what we believe should be happening with instruction happening um that was halted um because of we didn't do any further work on that um but there is uh evidence that um implementation uh or just instruction really uh does matter and so if that's your question i'd have to go back for that specific in 2019 what was said when but um if the bigger picture is when there's a plan that moves forward and it's implementing with a goal

015that kids do better um we have evidence of that from the summer from summer school so i would say yes but i just specifically i'd have to go back to that exact conversation to see so let's uh try to focus our questions on our monitoring report and and and i will capture all other questions that you may have uh that might not be connected to the monitoring report uh remember donald you've already thank you well i just wanted to explain why that was directly released i'm not i'm not indicating that it wasn't but i wanted to i wanted us to focus on this data tonight thank you uh member lessons yeah it's a maybe a two-part question one is be definitional if you could please make or clarify whether high growth is the same as

016catch-up growth or if those are two different things that's a great question high growth or stretch growth or catch-up growth uh is they're all the same same one of the same things and what we look for is that just so everyone knows um a student that scores at the 50th percentile that would be the normal year-to-year growth that when you're with us you're learning a year for a year catch-up growth has been if a student in their growth of how much they've gained uh falls about the 70th percentile that would be one and a half times approximately of making up the learning that was missed so catch up growth stretch growth high growth are different ways to talk about how uh students are learning more than just a year for a year the second part

017of that question um i want to begin with a glass half full and i'd love to know what went well for 187 first graders who did achieve that high growth it was a real small subset but it's a little success story so i wonder if you could eliminate what you think went well for those 187 students in first grade sure so at this point in time um [Music] just digging you know down deep um it's very difficult to um pick out we did not study those 167 because it truly is for classrooms to find out like to schools it just kind of tells us a story of data that's what data do they say look at this and then they don't necessarily answer questions for you um we call them um what does they call

018the the the deep five why's because they make you have five more questions um i want to share and some of the hypothesis around first grade versus kindergarten and how the other grades did so well is really the exceptional skill based um turning point tipping point in first grade first grade is so important and what our first graders have have shared in some of our principles when we've asked them is the hypothesis of that kindergartners truly missing that subset of skills that makes them successful in first grade that along with what's been shared with us in just the behavior ability to do school and attend a task and have that self-agency our first grade teachers above all are saying really they they feel as though and especially those that have taught kindergarten and feel as

019though the first graders coming in are like kindergartners they've had in the past because of the zoom um when we looked at summer school and we were able to make some ground with those uh kindergartners it it it did demonstrate that they were picking up on those skills specifically but there is a large subset of skills that were just missing and to be honest first grade has more subset of skills to put you on a path to read than any other grade level um but just so you know teachers shared things like the behaviors and just the differences and having kids learn how to do school so it's just attending to a task really high levels of stress in students where they would kind of what we would call a tantrum you know so the

020teacher would have to address the tantrum that was a challenge and they're finding it again first grade is when you crack the code so to speak of um sounds and letters um but we've heard here that um from a teacher of a grade level that she did share that she doesn't know what her kids know or not and she felt as though some of um process of learning sounds was the mask that she doesn't know who's responding and who's not so there was a um i mean there's a long list but in essence first grade is just so incredibly important um but you see the the the the makeup growth in a good portion of kids is is good and um but we saw that too as an anomaly and so thank you for picking

021that out and we just did post that question back and those were some of the answers we received thank you dr bishop uh other questions um this is for the fall to winter growth at the end of the report the ketchup growth remember jacobs yeah following up but it sounds like maybe the answer is no do we do we know anything about the the students who experience high growth in terms of a correlation with um attendance rate being above average this year or if the that population also shared um attendance at our summer school this past year was there correlation there yeah that question did come from a couple of board members so i looked into it and i do want to share um just some some understanding of of attendance and we have found

022success um if we could look at um if you could pull up an additional slide that i presented before d kathy um just kindergarten in first grade we have an understanding that attendance does matter and then we're trying to say well but how much does it matter and for which child doesn't matter we certainly found in summer school the blue is the number of kids who showed academic growth percent of kids so if you look at baxter 75 of all the kids um uh showed growth but only 41 went 90 of the time so some schools showed greater differences than others uh and so we know that attendance matters of course it matters attendance of adults matters attendance of children's matters but then we want to say for whom and for how much does that

023affect and so for first grade we saw very similar evidence so then what we did was just take a look we don't have this for fastbridge but we did do um a look at what we do have for second grade um in a in a different exam so this is fastbridge um for the curriculum-based measure in reading that's what cbmr means and they are literally reading to get this and if you take a look this is district-wide second grade and on the left it's the percent of increase from fall to winter or the growth okay of kids learning and along um the the other axis you'll see 80 82 84 86 that is the percent of students present the attendance rate if you will and we've found that our schools and i'll give you this

024slide as well um our schools are all over the place and so this is district-wide second graders every school that has a second grade but i can't answer it district-wide because the questions don't necessarily reside with me because our kids and our our programs and what they're experiencing are different so here's one school with these same data so they took the same attendance data all of this is one dot on the pre the prior map so now this is a school of second grade and theirs has a pre pretty evenly distributed group of attendance rates with a pretty evenly distributed um group of uh growth it's not that different we open then because we're trying to answer this question about attendance then we opened up another school and dug deeper and checked this out there

025wasn't a problem with attendance and the growth and non-growth was just about equal now questions that they would do literally what they do is say what what's the story behind this and then they would say uh are the top kids in an mtss are the top kids in one of the teachers classes what's happening there um you they would just process through question and answers at the level where they are to really understand where their kids are and schools that are really really good at this that have trust relations with their principals and each other go to oh my gosh show me what you're doing because you're getting the success we still do have schools to remember donnelly's point where the teacher says i don't want anyone coming into my room and so there and

026lie the the whole gamut of instructors and what we're dealing with here's another second grade classroom at another school and so even with high attendance they don't have as many people succeeding and making that growth and then the next score we just pulled four schools to say is there a pattern and we'd have to say boy it's really localized and so doesn't attendance matter yes but there's probably whom does it matter for most um i would say as a parent i have taken my ch and have taken my child with me to go to the event um they missed school and it was a decision of mine uh we have students missing quite a bit for sports um hockey soccer anything that has its own um complete they miss we have students missing school because

027they're sick we have students missing school because they oversleep um so or their home life is is difficult and they didn't get up so that so we what we need to do then is at each individual school take a look and go okay let's drill down even more and what is the story of our kids and what's happening in our classes we know what to do and we have the tools it's just what can we influence in that regard so that those were great questions and it took us a really long time thank you for giving them because we kept digging and digging and found quite a bit different um outcomes at different places in different schools so these data really belong then at the at the building level to just talk about what do

028they think is happening [Music] and i guess kind of along those same lines what happened in i mean in summer school that kids just soared a lot of kids just absolutely they did well so what's what was happening then that's not that is the same thing happening [Music] now that happened in summer school relative to uh the the well i know they're not getting problems yeah yeah no no yeah so um they went to school for four days and then discussed data on the fifth day so they had more time to do this certainly work as a team there was a direct instructional focus in summer school that and a goal that said our kids just spent almost a year online we have to make up time especially in these early skills we narrowed it

029down and said this is what we're going to teach because kids need it and then there was an instructional model all staff were trained in it they bought into it they came in and taught now the elephant in the room is the pandemic the the instruction was the same the instructors were the same what we're having right now i mean i honestly want to say that it doesn't necessarily we'd have to look at student absences mean something but also um staff absences like right now the consistency um and truly we are just holding our heads above water to keep schools open that um we're doing what we can when we're here with staffing and and some folks aren't trained in it who sub like i've been a sub and always requested put somebody who knows

030the you know the exact instructional model in the classroom and i'll cover you know the the substitutes um or the electives at least get the core information so um i mean it was great instruction great learning a focus parent involvement there was a letter home from parents um or notification to parents weekly of of the progress so there are lots of different things it's hard to pin it down but there is evidence that even with minimal or questionable attendance of students gains can be made thank you dr bishop okay uh carly that answer your question okay all right and might i share if we can go to the data um i want everyone to know specifically too that when we re test or reassess mid-year the the goals for which we expect kids to have

031changed and i shared it last time it was about and i i don't i wish i had my notes from last time at the beginning of the year in kindergarten they were to know like three sounds in letters and by mid-year they're supposed to know upwards of almost 20. so it isn't that our kids haven't learned the longer they're with us it's that they're trying to catch up but the the goal post keeps moving for them we don't expect stagnant ends right so the mid-year what they had to do to be on grade level at the beginning of the year was a lot less than what they have to be on grade level at mid-year so the idea that you see oh there's no growth it doesn't mean there's no growth it's just not the

032expected growth of pre-pandemic because that's when the norms were created so i just want to be clear about that uh what's happening in our schools great thank you okay continuing on other questions uh anybody on this side okay um remember donnelly is that a acquisitive eyes i see yeah can we go back to the uh the chart that shows all the schools sure in second grade i just pulled second grade because of the attendance question and what was the time frame of this graph exactly the same it was this um the fall the same time fall to winter this year so the the axis that is zero down horizontal across the chart that is where the average correct that's the average increase of learning should be that's the expected the expected increase so we've got

033the vast majority of our schools that are underperforming to the expectation and then a few that are over performing is that accurate way to read this that's accurate and we shared that you can look at it um in another way of the schools that were on target or near target in their report so if you take a look at here um at the bottom next one so if you look at the bottom how many were below target at the beginning of the year how many are below target now how many are near target and how many are on target or above as you can see 51 schools are below target one school near the target 13 on target and are all some of our schools use alternative curriculum and use different reading curriculum such as

034folding and i think five schools are those schools represented on this chart also yes all schools are this is kind of a follow-up and maybe a companion to the 187 first grader question um so what what if anything have you been able to distill about those 13 and one schools that remained on your target um in the in the winter assessment sure smaller group than would achieved that in the fall so so those were schools that are likened to all other pretty much data that we have generally lotteried programs generally white non-hispanic [Music] so they liken other success targets [Music] wealth probably has the most to do that to that or socioeconomic status we know that it isn't just because you're lotteried if you're a parent generally parents at so higher socioeconomic status are the

035ones lotterying in so if you had to narrow it um we did find some other data though interesting and on that if i can share it just in regard to movement and and probably poverty has something to do with movement if you could look at k so this is interesting and i mentioned this and i just heard uh on the radio this morning so i i want to get the um report uh the research article on it but they not only said that it was ses it was actually parents of uh or children of older parents which is interesting so they said even in the same socioeconomic category if you were an older parent your kid generally did better and they basically shared the stress of the family of parent focusing on their career and

036having to get around their career and buying a house and all those things that you happen as a young parent that stresses off when you're older so i i haven't qualified it i just heard about it today but here's some data this is now fourth through eighth grade which has nothing to do with specifically fastbridge but i just wanted to share it because we were able to capture it for something else and we just found it fascinating so if you took all four through eighth graders on the fall map growth of 2021 and we targeted those that meet the 65th percentile if you meet the 65th percentile on map with a 99 accuracy we can predict that you're going to pass the peaks you're going to be grade level on peaks okay so 65th percentile

037if you hit that mark on map you're pretty much 99 if you take the assessment you're gonna pass peaks you know with some efficacy now we know that if you've been in one school and not just in different so fourth graders could be in a middle school or an elementary school it just means one school in your matriculation like one you didn't move in a middle school or you didn't move so i was in one elementary school and i was in one middle school if that was you as a kid you have 41 chance of being in that 65th percentile who passed peaks if you had two schools in elementary or two schools in middle school you moved two times then you have a 38 chance if you have moved three times in your education

038career from fourth through eighth grade or you know all the way through um actually it's starting from kindergarten but if you had three but we only had we only assessed this assessment in fourth or eighth graders but if you had three moves in that education up until that time you had a i mean it is almost a stair step of moving move and moving hence i mean mckinney vento is a homeless grant that we try to keep the kids in the same schools we we pay for mileage to get but what is movement and mobility in our district it's about poverty more so than anything else but even kids of non-poverty who moved actually struggled more than others and so consistency we can't control their movement but we can control what we can control which

039is curricular instruction things like that so i just thought this was fascinating because it was almost a perfect stair step yeah but but uh it just goes to that attendance movement those outside factors but a lot of those aren't we can't expect our teachers to affect those outside factors it's unfair for us to do that what we need to focus on is what we actually can affect and influence good thank you that that that is uh that's important that it's important because what we do as a district and how we [Music] when kids move in our district from uh school to school we should expect some kind of consistency as they move and i know we can't control them moving but when they get to us do they have the same opportunities and they have

040are they faced with the same barriers yes and some of the things we're doing to that is um if they were in a mtss we're trying to model or a win group we're trying to share those data when they move with the new teacher so it doesn't take them two weeks to get the kid adjusted it's like oh they were in this one group they're falling behind on blended letters at the end of us a word i mean it gets that specific you have blended letters at the front blended letters at the end they struggle with blended letters at the end of voting i'm going to put them in this group so our teachers are really working together to communicate with each other um but again these data were kids that didn't even leave the

041district they are literally still in our system wow questions i nerd out on this stuff so sorry remember jacobs yeah the moving the goalpost discussion i guess triggered another question is the or the the second half of our year the curriculum is it similarly ambitious or we might see other metrics the next time we review this data or do we anticipate to see an upward curve um as students catch up to the aggressive nature of learning that's happening sure that's a great question and just so you know outside of these data with fastbridge and the younger kids we do have areas in our district that kids were catching up like one of them which i'm fascinated with and i want to find out um is the sixth grade sixth grade made up some time more

042than any other grade level so we're gonna but that this meeting wasn't about sixth grade um i would say um if what is occurring right now with the manner in which we're working in schools continues through march i would say no and i specifically share that will they grow yes will they grow at the rate that we expect them to know because being present matters but also that that works for both teachers and students and we are being affected by omicron in our working force as well uh taking us out and many times um you know sub-plans are there sometimes they're not sometimes it is exactly what the teacher would teach because from this building we're sending out over 30 people a day with certificates that actually can teach um but this you know specifics

043and know a little bit more about what is happening in the classroom but as you know in in all over there are many subs that just come in i mean i i was one i had i had to adjust i didn't understand the game that was written in the thing but i could get enough about what we wanted the outcome to be so then i changed the rules of the game and taught it and the kids let me know that but you know i mean it it's daily just working with young people so so i the assessments are ambitious because we do expect especially in these younger grades for them to get them they are single subset skills literally like i just said knowing sounds being able to blend a word they are very concrete

044and deliberate but if they don't get them it's very difficult in our system to get them later on i have a question on the the page four special ed um they you know while i think most of the majority of us our learners are far are below or far below target especially what are we doing to um differently with special ed sure so population of kids thank you they are very very little so um with special education a lot of times what we uh would like to do is to have really a more deliberate curriculum uh which um if you talk about um direct instruction where really we're teachers are directly you know sharing repeat after me this is what we need to do um we call that big di in our business that it's

045it's more structured than not and um [Music] what we're finding is is that uh sometimes being removed outside your peers is not keeping you in line with actually what needs to work so we're um a few things i mean we are short of special education and generally special education teachers are our newest teachers so we're putting the kids with the biggest learning that needs to be done with the newest teachers so something in the whole premise is is difficult um to work with so within schools they're working through win groups uh to really integrate great the groups and not make it a special education just make it based on the need like this is what they don't have which teacher is teaching this during the win group that we can have so changing of curriculum

046changing of instruction grouping models that are fluid that when because we have special education kids who do know things and then they should be moved in fluid groups so we're really working with that and these are all best practices they weren't designed by asd they're written in the literature as effective practices and so among those i would say those are what we're doing and i would call up either tar alicia wayne our senior director of special education or jenny knutson who's the senior director of it all to add any other information in regard to specifically special education what what types of things are we doing to intervene and the learning to change the trajectory well and i would just um echo what you said dr bishop because it needs to be tight consistent instruction and

047the more of a need that a student has it's even more important that instruction is like that and given the staffing shortage and the subs that's not happening consistency consistently so we're trying to get people with that background in those classrooms so that we can have it as much as possible but again in our classrooms we are looking at the needs of the student and the more intensive the need the more explicit the instruction the more scaffolding that there is and the the tighter the the instruction is is making sure we're following those priority plans and that's what will get kids to move forward and we're just facing some challenges around staffing right now and we keep trying to promise with it with the resources we have thank you okay next question remember lessons good

048thanks um i mean i feel like we've danced around sort of the big the elephant in the room but if you could articulate what what is the cause of the decline overall in our k2 student reading um this you know from fall to winter you know the drop from 41 to 34 if you could just point your finger and um give it your best shot in this specific interim goal yeah in this in i mean in this interview and just everything yeah so i mean we've shared some of those things and it started with the question about consistency of instruction um you know with mr donnelly but staffing shortages we've shared all these um behavioral issues instruction and teaching but it really tells a story and and i'm gonna just share some data that i

049shared with you the other day and i've been thinking about it in how do how do we share how does this share a story of keeping our expectations in line with our focus and so um i'm just going to go to the overall data on peaks and and just share with you kind of the momentum that we've had over time to just try to do my best so you start in an area where you're not satisfied you get a report um that year in 1617 i for those of you that were here at the time this spring when we selected a reading series we put it into action we changed behaviors of teaching we we did professional development but we also started assessment there was a push back on us i mean there was time

050and time again this room was filled with this is too hard we can't do this at the same year if you recall we started to talk about the new standards we hadn't implemented them and taught to the new standards in our district when we when they were adopted back in 2014 to start so we were lagging that we learned them but our instructional models didn't match through that tough time i mean i would say that there was some growth year-to-year that was huge growth then i want to share this story tells where my focus went i and when i lose focus or change focus i think it it trickles down it's what's important uh i would tell you uh an earthquake happened yeah my work was not talking with principals about student learning anymore that

051took a secondary role the conversations at this board were about which buildings fema getting a bond pass which classrooms are hit what happened what are we doing about the mental health and safety of i mean this is like the pandemic that was a practice for me so then what happens we don't even take it again because of the pandemic and we're so i would say that i'd never want to share that we're not focusing on student learning but when outside things compete with the focus of me my team then who's not they're focused on getting information about fema not saying hey how are your learning data today and can you share that with me and i would say while we're doing that it's difficult because it is hard to go into a school and say

052tell me about all your learning i did happen to go to school the other day and she was just like look what we did i just want to show you that even now look at what i did and so i i mean the the conversations are happening but when we shift i would say that um that what we expect doesn't necessarily get done but data just tell a story and the story right now if if we look at the ability to have consistent instruction over time that's been with problems right now because of cobot and we all know it do i think we're doing the best we can um with what we have where we are yes do i think that it's satisfactory that we're all satisfied the teachers included with student learning no but

053i'm hoping that we'll get back with the time because the selection committee for the what it's coming out time and time again is the the people that selected that book the i still remember the 68 people on that team it is stand the test of time with research because the reading bill is just up again being discussed tomorrow senate finance next wednesday like you've had some good progress made by the folks in working through this to get there and with that consistency and taking care of kids and taking care of our staff i i think we'll get there but the story of our data right now is that i want to be hopeful that it can students will continue to learn but we need to be realistic with how much they will due to all

054the barriers and and i'm just being honest with you yeah i hope that answers it you know it is the element in the room yeah okay any other who what why questions so let's move to uh seems like we're ready to go to the how how are we what are we doing um what are we doing to uh what what's the future can you walk us through the graph on page seven i think so we have been training and working with uh folks as much as we can however our biggest training tool because we know that our time outside of the school day is limited is through coaching and consequently if you look at the coaching model for effectiveness uh hattie's work its research um he's taken many many different practices and education thousands of

055them and rated them on their effectiveness of how do we change learning behavior coaching is one of them and um just being able to coach has been difficult because coaches are now teaching classes uh being able to have reading specialists reading specialists are now covering whole classes being able to [Music] uh have data dialogue we don't have subs to pull the people the whole teams in together to talk so we kind of piecemeal it so all of the practices about their practice and teachers talking about their practice with other teachers is highly effective having a coach come in and assist me with my teaching to make sure that i instruct in the high value instructional practices works having the flexibility to work with curriculum within a parameter works but all that happens at the building

056level that isn't for dina to go in there and say because as you saw where people are whether it's regard to absences or not are all over the place they need to study their own data and have those so the structure and supports are behind it in looking at the addressing gaps and barriers things like that but just as our classroom teachers uh are getting subs their small group mtss you put the highest need children with the most skilled teacher in reading and when that most skilled teacher readings out you have probably a sub come in who might have the least skilled in reading so the whole way the system is designed has flaws in it during this time will we get through it yes but those are some of the things when we get

057back we need to do an assessment another one of implementation protocols that is a high value um intervention it just you don't go to see how's the teacher teaching you go to see how are the students learning and are the things that are set up for high quality learning happening in this classroom and if not you have a discussion about it it's not an evaluative piece it is okay we're about one-third of our classrooms have implementation fidelity or integrity whatever you want to call it and we just work to get all of them that way but there's different reasons why um there's being a new teacher you know being a sub a long-term sub uh being somebody that's familiar with different practices and reteaching them so there's quite a bit so this is the path

058and the strategies that uh really the reading team and jenny and her people uh put out but it really is overlaid then on a principle in his or her school and then it's overlaid on top of a grade level and then they decide what they need and then from that grade level individual teachers decide and then the cycle starts over again but allowing students and what we will get to when we have trend data is that we really need to build capacity in all classrooms where they're where kids are learning and and we're showing learning progress okay thank you another how questions forward thinking questions remember jacob this wasn't one on my list but it uh it has come up since i guess and if we can't speak do it for you to put in

059a board connect that's fine but how do we how are we challenging students who who are i'm exceeding expectations right now in the context of trying to make sure we're we're meeting these goals with with reading growth too what does that look like sure um that that's a great question and um the what i need now time is actually an accelerated time as much as it has an intervention time you can intervene uh when kids need it and one of our um four questions that we have as educators is if you want to know what's you know we want to improve student outcomes so you need to know what are they learning that's the standards how do we know if they're learning it that's the assessment the next question is what do we do when

060they're not learning what we think they should be learning but there's a fourth question that says what do we do when they already are and that's why we keep track of growth because no child if i am already advanced and i'm not growing a year there's a problem with that that's specifically why map is such a valuable tool and so some kids move classrooms to a higher grade level some kids take zero hour classes some kids receive that in win time some kids receive it in ignite time some kids move schools to get that so there's varied ways because it's a plan with a parent and a school and capabilities but that that is a great question and the gap should not be made up by all students doing worse i can tell you that

061the gap needs to be moved up all ships rise [Music] remember lessons um i do have a how question and this stems from my own first grade students experience my experience with my student parents have access to um a lot of information on cue um but but as a parent i didn't have access to the breakdown of those fundamental skills that maybe are measured in fast rich so how can we better communicate um with parents to empower them to better understand the skills that their their child you know needs work on and it was accelerating yeah that actually is a great question i when i read that i was like shared that with the team that that may be something because fastbridge has a parent resource that says hey your kids should be doing this

062by this level um one of the successes of summer school that a principal shared wasn't that parents were involved in the school because they came in it was that both the parent and the kid knew what the target was at the end of the week and they reported back to him all the time so they knew oh they're supposed to be reading this much per whatever so parents would help them um but we'll take a look at that because i know for q for other assessments you have a parent resource we'll see what we can do with fastbridge but generally speaking what we spend a lot of time with at conferences and i know that that has been uh a struggle as well because of absenteeism teachers that um are in the primary grades they

063really sit them down and say this is what they should be doing and and some of the the the beauty of this is because parents then see their kid in relation to other kids and what they should be doing so it's not personal to the teacher it's you know because sometimes um educators get you know people being aggressive because other people are emotional but it removes them from it saying this is the outcome that we want work with me to help your child get there so that's a great idea and i think um if we can help educators that way communicate that um that is perfect just pulling them in because those were things that were effective this summer i don't have a question but i i do have a request at some point if

064we could really if we could get a presentation on mtss there is a lot of um i get a lot of questions that basically see it as remediation not remediation and acceleration and i think if we could um because i think it's a beautiful framework i think it works for kids but i think we i'd like to have a presentation on yes and i'll convince another board member to join me on that quest yes remember wilson oh okay oh she was going to join me on that class thank you all right okay any other questions i want to thank thank you dr bishop i want to thank you for uh taking sharing all of all of answering all of our questions uh and uh presenting all the data and oh yes it's not a question

065it's a comment i just wanted to thank you as well for the detailed information when it came to um analyzing attendance regarding all of this information so i i just appreciate all that detailed information it was very helpful for me thank you and madam president we will uh get those slides out to you and really our deeper dive at our level occurred because of your questions and so when you ask them i'm like well i know attendance matters it's always mattered but how does it matter and then we got some of those things so it allowed us to then rethink on on those and and and just wanted to show that that that whole process is really what the power of like those data meetings are at schools because it's it's fun for them to

066discover and they might say oh it might be because of this we go try something well that didn't work we start over again it is just a learning process over and over again and and educators seek when you go into education you want a child to learn and working together to find that that beautiful piece of a child getting it is um is a gift and uh giving back to teachers and so i know that they they care about it so thank you okay thank you very much and at this time uh i would like to have a motion to accept the report [Music] the outcome monitoring reading proficiency for that we just discussed president move we accept the report on reading proficiency is there a second second thank you moved in second that we

067accept the report on uh reading proficiency guard rail number 1.1 uh yes remember donnelly could i ask this uh secretary to to see if she could also provide us just email us some of the slides that weren't in the actual printed packet because there were some useful slides there i'd like to have yes sir [Music] yes remember darling we'll get those out to everybody thank you that's what dora mentioned as well yes we will get those out to board members they are uh posted but we will get them to you in an email so that we have it's been moved in second that we accept the report are there um any opposition to accepting the report saying none the report is accepted as [Music] presented thank you thank you dr bishop and staff yep big

068team good team [Music] and so now that brings us to our first opportunity let me make sure i yes our public comment section so welcome to our first opportunity of the evening for public comment the board has set aside an hour's time slot at the beginning of the meeting for public comment comments in excess of um that grunt if we had more than we could hear in the first hour we would move them to our second opportunity at the end of our meeting 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

069must be structured and civil asd conducts public meetings under robert's rules of order these rules require the board and the public to be civil respectful of each other's opinion and statements here are a few reminders there is also at the door we have a this form that you could refer to as well [Music] it is our um audience participation guidelines so here are a few other requirements excuse me under robert's rules do not attack a speaker's motives speakers may point out what he or she believes to be the natural consequences of a board action but may not engage in speech that personally attack others refrain from disturbing the meeting and this equates to no cheering applause or outbursts unless you are testifying you must be polite to the board and other speakers attendees will not

070be permitted to interrupt the business of the school board pro pro no profanity or foul language uh this is not the place this space is a space of respect and civility and please keep your masks on at all times including during your testimony make sure your mask covers both your mouth and nose unless you have a medical waiver and if that is the case you can see what uh one of you can see mr brown in the back of the room no waving of signs flyers or posters if you have any handouts that you wish to share with the board we welcome them and you can give them to katie's it's seated at my left and she will make sure that we get them so as the president of the board it is my duty

071to enforce the rules of civility and decorum as such i have the authority to rule any speaker out of order for violation of these rules further i will remove from the meeting anyone who does not heed these rules and fails to conduct themselves in a civil manner and with that i would like to welcome our audience tonight thank you for your patience early on and our first speaker will be katie lloyd telephonically okay i don't see her i'll try to come back to her uh next telephonically we have danielle kemp [Music] mr hello can you hear me yes we can hear you you have three minutes okay thank you to the board my name is danielle kemp retired army combat officer and a teacher here in the asd also a parent of 2as students also

072the president and co-founder of the alaska coalition of biopoc educators um there are two things that i just want to ask the district about tonight teachers of color and curriculum so what first question what is this administration's plan to recruit and more importantly retain teachers of color i haven't seen or heard of any plan have you has anyone here listening seen or heard of a plan to get and keep bipark teachers i hope the administration is is not thinking that black and brown teachers are just gonna appear out of thin air you know right now teachers of color represent only 14 of all educators in a district where 62 of the kids are students of color where's the plan to increase that 14 to then 30 then 40 then 50 then 62 where's the plan

073and uh you know the you know the the worker pool i've always heard that excuse you know the worker pool of teachers of color is just not there but that's all it's the same excuse that we hear over and over and over again you know parents of color are tired of excuses you just need to produce get creative solve it please second where's the plan to fix our curriculum in equities by park parents are sick and tired of our culture and our history being presented in the form of fairy tales i'll say again with clarification tax paying by parents are sick and tired of our culture and history being presented as fairy tales are not being taught at all and where's the nest aid curriculum we haven't received an answer for this simple question yet

074at least for the past month and a half you gotta fix this it's getting to the point of ridiculousness a harm to our children kind of ridiculousness but it seems as the evidence is shown that um that makes goals and and a plan for everything you make goals in a plan for everything except for teachers of color and equitable curriculum if i'm wrong great prove it i'll prove them wrong all you need to do is just show us the plan and follow up thank you for your time thank you mr kemp next in person we have jessica thomas welcome miss tubbs [Music] there's yeah [Music] yes you have three minutes all right thank you school board members and um superintendent bishop for giving me this time to talk today i'm wanting to talk to you

075guys about the contract for the teachers union our mediation did not go well and we are now headed for arbitration this is huge for our students for us teachers that are going through this at this time some of the main things we talk about retaining teachers we talk about having teachers in the classroom some of the big things that we really need is we need decent health care we've got a good health care program we need help with it some of our teachers at the beginning of this year took home four hundred dollars less in their paychecks because the price of health care went up which it's probably going to even skyrocket even more after all this um but it's gone up we need help with subsidizing that that takes a huge chunk out of

076our paychecks retirement i'm a tier 3 teacher this is my second career i didn't have a retirement with my first one i wanted to be a teacher i came after i went to school single parent i did everything that i needed to do to be able to become a teacher and to be able to work in a classroom and now i can't afford to ever retire i will have to work probably until the day i die i joke around about it a lot um i even had a principal station make me a little loft for me so that i can stay at school all the time it's something that i shouldn't have to be worrying about i shouldn't have to worry about if i'm ever going to be able to retire that i can enjoy

077my later years because i should have a decent retirement that's going to allow for that our salaries that we have this is the main reason that i came here today i am a master's degree teacher i have been working with the school district for 10 years and i just qualified for housing assistance i shouldn't be qualifying for housing assistance i was six thousand dollars a year under the income guidelines i could make six thousand dollars more and i still would have qualified for housing assistance as a master's degree teacher working for our school district for 10 years that's wrong i shouldn't have to do that i already got 120 000 in student loans that i have to pay off but i was shocked when that happened and i think people need to understand as a

078general rule we get decent money i'm not saying we don't but like me i'm a single parent i'm the only income in my household i don't make enough and that's really hard the stress of it for my child who's still trying to go through school and what that puts on me it shouldn't be happening nobody should have to go through that thank you very much thank you jessica next in person we have richard goldstein richard okay richard's not here is katie online no let's go in person with elizabeth mertz elizabeth mertz m-e-r-t-z okay so we'll go back to the phones heather land heather land star six to unmute [Music] can you hear us heather hello yes we can hear you you have three minutes welcome good evening i'm the parent of two students at um

079an asd elementary school i pay taxes at support public school and your salaries i wanted to start off by saying that we really appreciated the crushing glow a few weeks ago right before the holidays where we were told masking would be a choice my children cried and begged not to go to public school when the decision was reversed as we all know the cdc finally admits after two years of this that cloth face masks do nothing to prevent the spread of kova 19. even if they did prevent the spread students must remove them to drink and eat which then eliminates any protection they offer the school board and teachers seem to worship this virus because following your so-called mitigation plan makes you feel heroic i was present in person at the last board meeting and

080was utterly disgusted at the brainwashing fear-mongering and political nonsense this virus has caused in our school district a young boy spoke about how he feels safer with a mask on rather than to have rather than having to quote worry about if the person next to him was vaccinated or not i was blown away that we have let this get to a point that that is what our children are worried about i couldn't even bring myself to stand up and speak because i was too busy being disgusted for all the support of these filthy masks that give you all a false sense of security and safety in regard to your mitigation plan i now understand that alaska schools accepted upwards of 200 million dollars a federal cares act and essr money which means you must adhere

081to a mitigation plan what i am asking is that your plan be reviewed and updated immediately to reflect new information and changes nothing in afc's mitigation plan prevents medical exemptions or parents choice masking the mitigation plan needs adjusting and less focus on case counts i highly encourage that you adopt a model closer to the matu valley where each school is looked at individually and not the entire organization when it comes to masking and mitigation procedures you must admit with the new event information over the last year that this plan is not ideal even right now with the cases being high the counts per individual schools are not alarming in the least my heart aches for the parents of special needs hearing impaired and autistic children and others who you refuse to accept medical waivers for

082the parents of these children have stood in front of you crying and begging for it to stop if even one child struggles to learn with a mask on that should be enough for you to implement mass choice now what about no student left behind clearly that no longer matters as parents have told you the devastating effects of mass wearing on their children people have left asd in droves for private schools or homeschool simply to avoid the mass mandate but i suppose that is what you want right you have been conditioned and manipulated to fear the virus so you will comply to the teachers who are tired of this and feel the same as i do i ask that you stand up and say how you feel without the fear of retaliation the cases with the

083new variant will soar quickly and hopefully curb quickly i only hope that you will finally see reason when the surge is over and realize that no amount of masking or vaccines will prevent it mass do nothing to prevent the spread unless they are fit tested n95 we must learn to live with the disease and get our lives back to normal as this is disrupted thank you very much uh miss land thank you next uh we have nile sherwood williams telephonically i don't see him nyle sherwood williams in person we have uh rochelle griffiths [Music] welcome and you have three minutes thank you sure i just put it right here [Music] all right so rochelle griffiths anchorage resident on january 10 2022 at east high school i heard adult sexual theme music on the intercom during

084the students passing time when i inquired about it to the front desk clerk i was told and i quote the music is to aid in motivating the students to get to class and when it stops after playing for five minutes they have two minutes to get to their class the songs i heard were i will follow you by imagine dragons and beautiful mistakes by maroon 5. the lyrics that came over the intercom were beautiful mistakes i make inside my head she's naked in my bed and now we lie awake making beautiful mistakes this type of music is inappropriate for the high school students and the alaska native cultural charter school or anccs which has elementary and middle school age students who are temporarily housed in east high school anccs has been displaced from their previous

085school due to covid since the ventilation system was uncovered to not be working these young students are at the mercy of a high school and sadly are being exposed to very inappropriate sexual adult themed music mayor bronson came by to visit anccs on january 5th and heard the inappropriate music he was extremely upset you may look up the lyrics yourself to beautiful mistakes by maroon 5 and decide for yourself if any child under 18 years old should listen to it also a justin beaver song came on over the intercom i got my peaches down in georgia that's that yes the curse word played out and someone in the front office heard it and shut it off when i spoke with the east high school staff mrs hill she told me that she has been playing

086this type of music for three years and i am the first to raise concern about it i then asked her if east runs the lyrics she plays past the parents she said no i asked does east have a pta she said no why aren't the parents being involved in their children's school life and consulted my question is which other schools in anchorage are exposing their students to these vulgar lyrics this genre of music is highly inappropriate for young children and young adults trying to attend school these students have enough on their plate and should be focusing on school work not relationships and being encouraged to have sex at a young age we must guard what we listen to as adults we have a responsibility to protect our youth and their minds parents show up to

087your children's school ask questions and get involved we need to get a and ccs back into their own school right away thank you thank you very much mrs griffiths next telephonically we have dr paula williams [Music] dr williams star six to unmute [Music] good evening you have three minutes and welcome [Music] welcome thank you good evening uh superintendent as well as the uh ancient school board i am dr paul williams i'm a proud member of the alaska black caucus and karen cheer of the alaska black caucus education within committee i am definitely standing with the anchorage education association and our educators in their effort to secure a suitable contract for our teachers that ensure the students and the educators think the protection of the educators time that will allow them to develop that will allow

088them to develop and deliver high quality instructional feedback with a collaborative approach to fit every student's educational needs the collaboration with educators and the asb leadership we are advocating for a competitive compensation package that attracts and retain the best educators especially educators of color i'm also totally against dropping the requirements of of masking in the midst of this omicron virus it would be pure recklessness on our behalf as an intelligent people we are too knowledgeable to become a weapon against ourselves as well as those around us true as americans we are the freest people in this world yet without freedom we must be responsible and consider it one of the other this omnichrome virus has caused an unprecedented number of infections across the state of alaska this past month alone almost daily we have students

089teachers and staff calling out elite leading school six from this various akovic viruses we must take more serious than ever the importance of public safety by wearing masks getting vaccinated boosted and taking adequate precautions for our safety and the safety of others and taking these measures will ensure that businesses school and communities remain open we all want our shore normacy and thank you to everyone determined to live our best lives putting an end to the spread of cold environments by using all precautionary messages available to us and i want to thank you this evening for your time thank you very much dr williams next in person we have louis embryoni thank you for coming and you have three minutes mr embryoni uh for the record my name is louis cimbriani i'm here today to voice

090an official complaint against the miss dambriani you need to put your mask back on please thank you [Music] i'm here today to voice an official complaint against the anchorage school board if not resolved tonight i'll be submitting a written complaint tomorrow also there any lawyers in the room listen up my complaint is that the anchorage school district is acting outside of their powers as granted by the alaska state statutes and the municipal code the school board powers to create and regulate their own policy is granted under alaska state statute 14.08.101 subsection 5 and municipal code 6.03 subsection 1. however there's nothing in code or statute that allows school boards to implement or create health measures we may be in a home rule city but the only person that can issue directives or orders related to

091the health in the municipal government is the mayor even then there needs to be probable cause as outlined in anchorage municipal code 3.80.065 even after probable cause has been established a person can still refuse the medical treatment this is clearly written in code currently there is no emergency in anchorage or the state and there is no emergency ordinance or emergency order in anchorage or the state that requires the use of masks this means there is no reasonable expectation for a mask mandate to be implemented in anchorage area schools since there's not already an existing law or ordinance requiring the use of masks you are a division or a bran or you are not a branch of the municipal government you are a department of it i was in front of this board on august 17

0922021 and gave you the definition of masks as defined by the fda i can provide you with that again if you'd like because it hasn't changed and it's still classified as a medical device you do not have legal authority to require anyone to wear any type of medical device for any reason your policy of forcing parents to send their kids to school masked is outside of your authority this forced application of medical devices causes the parents to choose between two rights that they are entitled to they are forced and you are bullying them into choose do they give up their children's right to attend a school which is granted under alaska statute 14.03.080 or they must give up their parental right of informed consent for medical treatment of their minor children forcing parents to make

093this choice is unacceptable and outside of your authority i've already filed one lawsuit against the municipality but i'm ready to do it again please look up lewis and briyani at all the austin quinn davidson it was filed it was heard and i have no problem doing it again thank you mr ambryani next in person we have ryan kennedy welcome mr kennedy you have three minutes let's see [Music] well i wanted to comment on the monitoring report i was going over the report and i was read about the guard rails and according to the asd website the board directs the superintendent to quote not leave student groups underrepresented in lottery application based programs and it directs the superintendent will not operate without a plan to develop a diverse or culturally responsive workforce and well this these

094directives strike me uh as illegal you know they just sounded fishy to me so i i looked up you know so i looked up at the anchorage charter and anchorage charter reads article 2 bill of rights among the rights guaranteed by the chart the right to opportunities in housing public accommodations employment and education without regard to race religion sex color national origin marital status or physical disability and the right to an equal rights commission at the municipal level and in aid thereof so it strikes me that that this direction to the superintendent to not leave underrepresented groups in the program as in violation of the charter because um and the second directive is because it's it's basically saying you know it's it's saying i mean how would how okay if if the if the if

095these uh charter programs if it directs the superintendent to say hey there's underrepresented groups well how would you how would you modify it how would you remedy how how would she remedy that so you would have to discriminate based on race right so it strikes me as illegal and the second directive is any particularly more particularly troubling because it directs the superintendent to develop a diverse or culturally responsive workforce and how is the superintendent supposed to do that they have to discriminate right but that's the legal under the charter because the charter says it says that you not use race or religion or all those things as a criteria and so um so you know basically that that guardrail is directing the superintendent to make hiring decisions and using race as a consideration and the

096charter says you can't do that um and again um so i looked up i looked up regard you know it says without regard to race and says what does that mean so the webster is considered the webster's dictionary says consider it says um it can't use okay web servers defines the word regard as to consider so i would think that to be lawful you should the board should not use races in any consideration and shouldn't to my mind it shouldn't even use it in uh you know in any of its documents or anything and ideally it should be used thank you mr kennedy next telephonically we have brian shalafor i do not see him let's go back up to katie lloyd i do not see her richard did richard ghost things show up yet richard

097and mr williams now sherwood williams elizabeth mertz okay they're not in the queue and then we have uh dustin darden [Music] oh he's not here either okay thank you that concludes our public comment section we thank you all for for um sharing your thoughts with us and that brings us back to our uh agenda we are now at item e consent agenda and i'm president of the move that we approve the items as listed on the amended consent agenda is there a second second it's been moved in second that we approve the consent agenda items one two three four five and seven all in favor uh well first of all are there any objection to approving the consent agenda as amended scene none that agenda is approved [Music] and now item f we have no

098items that brings us to item g non-action items uh remember lessons did you have something to were you going to pull something yes please i'd like to poll number uh memorandum 069 from non-action for purposes of discussion okay so we pulled item069 for discussion and we also have we also have uh we've added item 4 underneath that which is asd memorandum number 80. all right so do you want to yeah i had um when i was reviewing it there were four things that kind of popped up and i thought it would be good to just bring them up um i noticed that a couple of pieces of information was missing from page nine it gives us the overall enrollment this year but there is nothing filled out for intensive needs or any zone exempt so

099i thought maybe that could be fleshed out if there's more data to fill in there i did have a question um maybe the biggest question was uh reflects uh interaction at the anchorage assembly meeting last week during the bond discussion and i was aware that there may be a more recent tentative drawing than the one that's included in this document and i wonder if the administration could elaborate on any more recent parking lot changes that might have arisen since um the the january 4th date through the president uh to member lessons i am going to request uh tom roth to respond thank you dr bishop through through the board president to remember lessons so specifically to to member lessons question as part of the the design for the inlet view replacement there there is a

100uh traffic control plan it's it's a fairly inclusive plan the uh traffic route the drop-off route uh the emergency route empties out onto inlet inlet place in front of the home of one of the neighboring residents based on a request by an assembly member asking that we would evaluate or draft a a proposal that would actually exit from the school on to 13th street which is the east-west road if you come off of minnesota east west road that goes right into the center of the inlet view site that we did in fact draft a uh schematic i asked mr mr paul burrell who is the architect who's actually here in the room this evening to do that that we we we have that and our intent is to introduce that schematic to the building design

101committee for consideration it would also need to be reviewed by the traffic department but that's where we are with regards to that and the follow up yeah so the follow-up would be just a maybe a procedural this is a non-action item we would see this in two more weeks as an action item it's a 95 rendering if there are if if the building design committee and everyone else sort of approves it do we need to then re-approve things or like how how live is the 90 minutes the update will come to you just just to share yeah okay anything else on memorandum 69. i did i wanted to say um i've learned a lot about the concept of ventilation uh recently and i i appreciated a comment within the document that co2 sensors um will

102be employed to ensure adequate adequate ventilation rates are achieved and does that mean that we'll have co2 detectors in every classroom that seems like a good forward thinking i see nothing i see uh mr mr barrel confirmed but the north south had not that yes there would be co2 detectors in the other rooms and then thank you thank you i have one final question um is the kitchen going to be capable of doing more than heating food and i i asked that because my sense from a couple of years ago is that asd had a going green initiative and a lot of our schools can't do any more than heat food and if we're going to be putting in a brand new school would this kitchen be able to do something other than heat and

103eat through the president if i might and i don't know that we've got to that level of detail do you want to speak to that paul he's naughty welcome paul [Music] i can answer that question pretty easily so we have coordinated through asd and c with the food service department and they've provided input on the kitchen design so that's what's shown in the documents is based on that input and it is basically just a warming kitchen there is not anything more than that at this time there is a dishwasher uh so they can wash um good or wash plates and utensils so they don't have to use styrofoam but that's where we're at right now with the food department our food service department so if i if i might just uh elaborate on that um

104so so the the intent uh to to mr mr burrell's point so we we generally feed in in schools through this system whereby at the student nutrition center our our staff prepare meals which are heated uh at the school they're individual meals what we are aspiring to get to is a situation where we are one using uh reusable utensils and trays but also serving from a methodology where instead of just individual reheated meals that were preparing meals at the central kitchen that are served to students using the re-usable utensils that's why we have a washing capability in in these in these school designs and plans so that's the intent moving forward okay thank you very much thank you [Music] member jacobs thank you mr president uh at one of our meetings late last year i

105had asked for a report from our building design committee for them to check in with us at one of our early meetings this year i wonder if that's still uh calendared and what the status of that might be [Music] good question i don't know that katie and i have it calendared um but we can do so yeah i i'm still very much interested and i and that would be a routine update that you would want i i i'm not gonna feel comfortable voting on this until i hear from the building design committee as to how things are going now that they've added a couple members and how the meetings have um have have kind of gone since yeah i think that that would be useful information from my perspective so between now and um the

106only opportunity we have between now and our next meeting would be a work session or a committee meeting or a special meeting [Music] so i'll get back to you on i hear what you're saying and i'll get back to you i'll work with the administration to do an update [Music] uh mr roth did you have any thoughts i saw your through the president just just for clarification um so that i recall the discussion i guess my my question is are we requesting that the building design committee schedule an exceptional meeting we did publish the building design committee's schedule my understanding that there were several board members that actually participated in those that we did we did in fact um add two members to the building design committee who who live uh adjacent to the site

107so i guess i'm just not quite clear what member member jacobs is is requesting madam president if i might clarify sure thank you so uh sure at our meeting and i think it was in late november early december uh i asked specifically to hear back from representatives of the building design committee as to kind of the impact of adding the additional members made there were concerns about how um how certain elements of the neighborhood felt included in the process i was hoping to hear uh kind of those tweaks uh to the building design committee process what what improvement that made and having that update from them so that commitment as far as i recall was made there wasn't any objection to it so just a matter of follow through at this point so and i

108guess my understanding remember jacobs was updates and board connect but what you're so i wasn't seeing that as a separate meeting i was seeing that as updates just an update and board connect yeah i had specifically asked for uh representatives to come to one of our meetings if possible that their the building design committee isn't interested for whatever reason and org connect is their preferred method to communicate or email perfectly fine but i want to give them that platform if they don't choose thank you dr bishop that would be my question that we could just pose the questions you have to the committee and let them come to you i mean was it you or the board i mean because we could publish the information to the board i would see value in the information

109madam president and dr bishop um if if i'm the only board member that's certainly fine i assume others might be interested as well okay we will um put their requests to um on the items of did they um just any update are those questions that you just said yeah i'll be happy to follow up with an email okay if you have an email then we'll post it we'll send it to them and i'll get back to the board on or if you want to send your questions to me or katie that'll be great [Music] okay let's uh the other item that we pulled was item any other discussion on 069 thank you uh next we're going to move down to item four um memo 80. mrs donnelly did you want to say anything specific or

110[Music] i think i i think you just wanted it moved but i did want to see if you had any any other comments there well it's a it's it's a non-action item on the agenda now um obviously i i voted against this the last time i came before our our board i didn't intend on speaking to it tonight but the reason i voted against it was i thought it would i disagreed with the three replacement schools on the six-year plan and i supported doing major remodels for those schools but not total tear-downs and replacements and it's tens of millions of dollars that i believe could be utilized for other i believe more essential projects spread out among the community thank you any other discussion on memo see none are there any people in the audience

111that wants to testify on [Music] memo 80 or 60 i'm sorry it's just public oh i'm not there yet [Music] we're almost there see no further uh comments on item g4 we are now at public testimony now you may come and please state your name you have three minutes thank you thank you for indulging me on the miscommunication good evening to the board and the superintendent of the audience my name is rachel reese and i am a registered candidate for the school board for seat b and i'm here this evening to express my growing concern about the continuation of the mask policy it affects me personally as the parent of a disabled child but it also affects all the parents across asd they are completely disenfranchised teachers and school employees are experiencing professional fatigue with

112the additional bureaucratic requirements and our students are caught in the middle it's an untenable situation it is long past time we set aside the political agenda and remember why we are even here which is to educate children not push agendas on public health policy the school board is here to set policy while representing this community and the community has spoken out many times that they don't want this you are leaving children behind it shows in your numbers you spoke about earlier this evening as elected officials you are supposed to be community leaders when i was in the military i learned leadership starts at the top you set the tone and the tone you're setting is that you're deaf to your community you are not hearing us you are not hearing your students you're not even

113hearing your own employees so i'm here tonight to ask you to revisit this policy and implement it as parent choice in closing i would like to remind you [Music] you can partner with us as their parents because they are our children but you cannot replace us and that's what these policies are doing thank you have a good evening thank you very much miss reece is there any other public uh comment anyone else wish to testify [Music] welcome can you give us your name my name is denise ludwell this is spur of the moment i have nothing prepared [Music] but i would like to first of all thank each and every one of you you guys have a very hard job um i want to thank all the teachers that do the work that they do

114but i also want to bring a very important thing to the forefront you guys spoke earlier about choices in the classroom if you have a student that's excelling or falling behind or all these different things you guys provide options for them you provide choices you provide a way for them to get the best education possible i as a parent and many other parents in this community would like that same choice as this board i have been here a few times i watch online usually i have witnessed many times a feeling where you know what's best many times parents have said their concerns they've asked questions you don't want to hear it i don't want to believe that i want to believe that you got into your job because you care about our students i want

115the choice to either mask my child or not i want the choice to send her to a private school religious school whatever i want to do i am her parent they are their children's parents and i don't want to hear any more about well it's because of this reason or that reason that all these children have all these issues going on in their education we are their parents you are their educators educate them in their curriculum and that's it let us parent them that's all i ask thank you for what you do and continue to listen to us and work with us be our partners be our friends that's all we want to do we just want to work with you can you spell your last name thank you uh for coming l-e-d-l-o-w thank you

116okay that brings us to item i superintendent update thank you madam president i would just like to share our new web portal on the dashboard for copic cases again my letter communicated that continued use of paper documentation sent home was problematic and access to where we stand in schools um was needed better access so uh we're just gonna call it up live if we can so that um [Music] ashley can direct us and talk about the different pieces and changes [Music] good evening i'm just going to walk you through the new dashboard on the website so everyone is familiar with how to find the new information um so this is just the asd homepage and the first step you'll do is click on the covid19 info that blue banner to the left and then next

117you're going to want to click on check school status and this is what has been on our website so most people should already be familiar with this and this is total case counts um per school for the entire district and you can see there has the total staff and students and then the active covid19 cases so that's anyone that is currently positive as of right now it's live data and then the change that we made and if you can scroll up just a little bit to the banner so you'll see right there it says click on a school to view cases by grade level so this is the new change that we made and kathy if you actually want to click on alpenglow because it's a good example to talk through so you see there

118at alpenglow they have 12 active cases and this actually changed from when i was just looking at it when the school board meeting started and then you scroll down and then it has the positive cases by grade level there and if you see at the top it says these numbers do not include staff cases so if you do some kind of quick math there you can see that there are eight positives but on the dashboard on the front page it said 12. so that means that the four other cases are staff and that's really just to provide more clarity for parents at home in terms of really the spread of cases in terms of students at the school so that's the new dashboard it's pretty easy to navigate um but if you have any any

119questions we can talk through that and i have mr roth here and then i believe kate is here to answer any questions that we might have okay i see uh member holloman uh yes on the old dashboard it had student attendance rates or absentee rates i'm wondering if that data is no longer available absentee rates i don't think we on the covet 19 dashboard i don't believe we ever showed absentee rates no we have that on our other dashboard you mean on the other at the main database there was a dashboard that showed uh you know whether or not classrooms were closed but also had our absentee rates we haven't been able to put this and what we found is um we could publish after t absentee rates of adults and students but when we've

120drilled down and we'll share again that to actually find out why they were absent whether it was cobit or another illness or a trip um that really takes significant amount of teacher input and i am reluctant to ask teachers to do one more thing so we have case uh or school-wide um absenteeism that we'll share but to break it down we found this problematic with staffing and one of the things uh just to share with you when whaley first closed down the first week i was concerned because there was um communication from a teacher from another school that made comment on that but when i made the decision the information that that teacher had was never in the conversation so what we did was work with the principal to drill it down and we found

121out that um no is actually scheduled um majority of them well not majority but they were split between um people being caught out of town and and traffic well like air traffic um there were covered unexpected copic cases there was a death in the family and uh two people met out for medical and so of the staffing we really had to dig down spend some time wise this was that so same thing for students we've just um to be transparent in the reporting we just did at this level because we're not determining um like we just haven't gone on a school bicycle basis in general yeah um it wasn't differentiated um but it's also matsu and keno did the same thing on their dashboards it is just a general number and kids could be out

122for any number of reasons but it just gave you an idea of how many kids are actually in the building um because some of the absentee rates were quite high in the other districts we just didn't want to i'm sorry we didn't want to communicate something that um because people would relate on the covet dashboard that that absence was due to covet and we didn't want that link to happen without being transparent about the true data and it takes teachers to find out to call parents to call this or someone to follow up if we don't have the information so we just decided that the value of that um [Music] wasn't worth the time but i wouldn't want us to do that but thank you thank you other questions [Music] any other questions on the

123covid upgrade thank you god i'm sorry amber wilson i just wanted to clarify how often uh the numbers are updated um so this is actually real-time data we have um what we call the pandemic tracking and charting system that i presented on last school year so anytime a nurse updates a case it automatically updates on the website so it's kind of back end work that the nurses are doing at the school level thank you okay and did you have a and just a further up madam president to add to that uh they're receiving uh information around the clock because when it uh the test is done you know it's qr coded the tests in alaska do reside at the state of alaska and um every morning we get an update if a parent doesn't share

124now that we have um antigen testing as well some are calls that are confirmed by parents but some are we're looking off of a list that's given to us in the morning about cobit positive and so um i i just wanted to share that because there's still some interest in antigen testing and the ability to do both is is pretty much zero for our nurses and so um ubiquitous antigen testing uh so we would just something would have to give because of that back end work and we would just have to change our procedures which probably will happen in the future as we move through high case counts but um it takes the nurses as she said to back in and all night long those things are coming through uh because of our beach tree

125testing sites they work through the night [Music] okay not seen any more questions i thank you guys thank you very much okay anything else dr bishop is that your report uh that was the report madam president thank you i think i've said enough thank you that brings us to item j uh school board and administration comments um i'll start with member higgins no it's not on push the mouth is it there you go it's on there you go yeah okay i know i sound better with it off but that's okay i'm gonna try it anyway i um uh want to just highlight from my standpoint what i've heard from testimony tonight because i really do try to actively listen and the first step to that is kind of acknowledge what was being said and then

126providing a response and there are several issues there that were raised that i thought were very interesting and and had me looking into the issues one is of course our effectiveness on recruiting uh teachers and diversity and it was also linked in with um um the issue of underrepresentation and lottery and application and the two got and the two guard wills with that and i think it would be interesting to have a discussion about that in a report from the superintendent just what how is that being met i know that there are limitations that you can't discriminate but there are steps that you can be taken after half a century of working in human resources i do understand the role of affirmative action and how effective it is i'm interested in trying to find out

127what the administration has done to try to ensure that we don't have groups underrepresented lottery application based programs so those those firs two guardrails i think would be a great follow-up the questions that have been asked multiple times now and in different board meetings or very legitimate ones to do and i think they're very important i mean we've identified them as a guard rail the board has and uh um and there's an expectation from the public in regards to that so um i really appreciate that i know that we're hearing again from the teacher's contract my issue my biggest concern is the message that somehow that the board or the administration is not concerned with that that we're not uh has focused in regards to it i'm very concerned about how i'm very concerned about

128retention i know that others are too i appreciate what all the staff members are doing in asb and i don't want any message other than that to go out because that's really the case so um just my appreciation for unbelievably tough times the last few years and it's continuing and the job that's being done in spite of it um there's also a comment that was made that i really want to comment back on that the board knows what is best um i do a lot of management training and i tell new managers that we've hired you to make mistakes somebody has to decide when you're in the middle of the road whether you're gonna go to the right or you're gonna go to the left but staying in the middle of the vote is unacceptable

129so somebody with the amount of information you get is not two plus two everybody knows that's four it's x plus y and you're making decisions with it and i am always focused on the issue of what's going to impact kids the best that's always what it comes down to i don't have the answers but somebody has to make those decisions and i try to get as much facts as i can in regards to it i'm somewhat concerned when i get emails that provide missing information or false information or quotes that are inaccurate and i'm wondering okay how is the public evaluating this or not but i go in and i look at the research i saw one recently that mr holland presented in response with the actual quotes and it provided information that was different

130than the information being provided and that's part of our job is research it find out what the facts are to the degree we can make the decision in our case at least with mine i'm trying to base mine on the best scientific evidence on some issues and on other cases i'm just looking at outcomes and if the outcomes are not good um how are we going to improve it and if they want improving how we're going to do that even if they are good but the idea that we know the board knows what's best i think i'm speaking for myself but i feel confidence it's for the whole board we don't know what's best we know that we have to make tough decisions every day that we make decisions and we're doing it based upon

131our best information and that's the reason why the public input is important and that's the reason why um what we got elected to do is hopefully make a difference watch more kids graduate my more kids academically prepared uh giving them more choices i fought in the past for career technology and i like to think that like when the first time i was on the board it went from 68 i think about how many of those kids are going to have a different life because of that and how many of their kids are going to have a different life because they have that high school diploma so um don't have the answers but i do believe in setting high goals and i do appreciate the questions that are being raised whether it's whether we mask or

132we don't i'm basing it on science but i'm not happy with wearing a mask and i wear it all day long because i have to uh just from a safety standpoint working in a medical field has to be done i will comment too on the inappropriate music i don't know what actually took place i know the administration looks into that sort of thing my only concern in that area is to make sure that we have a system when you run into a barrier at the high school or middle school elementary at the principal level you clearly understand where to raise that level after that so it's a clear process um not the superintendent because that's that may be something people go to but there's a process other people are supervising it and somehow if we

133communicate that better i think some of these issues and concerns will get the kind of attention they need and be addressed in a positive way because we our boss is the employees and that's who we work for and having that type of feedback whether they're students whether they're staff or whether it's just the general public is really valuable for information and i appreciate it so with that thank you thank you very much remember holliman i'm going to make the unusual step of agreeing with some of member higgins comments but we really do try to look at all the letters that come in and we are getting what i would call some direct misinformation and a number of letters echo that they say the cdc has determined that cloth masks are useless but i can't find

134that on the cdc site anywhere they did make the comment the cloth masks are the least effective out of the various masks but they never made the statement to my knowledge that they don't do something a number of people reference comments attributed to dr mclaughlin with the state we had the opportunity on friday in a zoom interview to ask him directly his comment was he has no idea how anyone construed his remarks that way at all and in some cases people are sending articles and citing them with links saying this shows that mass don't do anything and when you go read the actual article it does establish that masks have an effect it is a tough thing i don't think any of us want to have kids wear a mask and and i'm also baffled

135by the idea that it's political i i don't see political gain either way with a masked mandate or without but protecting children's health in public school is something that we do all the time as someone who spent a lot of time in the classroom the health of the kids in front of me their immediate safety and their long-term safety and i say this is a technology teacher that provided common touch surfaces for hundreds of kids a day and you watch them share their soft drinks you watch them share their gums without even touching it with their fingers sometimes you watch them wipe their nose and start piping again schools have a public health problem and trying to control that with kids is something we do that's just part of what we do the master contemporary

136i i'm hearing a lot of people's medical folks say they think we may be seeing the end in a few weeks um i i hope so i can't wait but but in the meantime as we are experiencing once again the biggest spike in cases we've ever seen don't want schools to be a vector for transmission um i think we're all gratified that children uh for some of the people that suffer the least consequences the least severe cases but we do have a responsibility to try to tamp down the number of cases that move through our buildings that's all we're trying to do there's not any other agenda i can imagine that's attached to it so i hope people again try to look at all the information that's out there mask help slow the spread i

137wish they could do more they they don't prevent it they don't prevent any particular individual from getting it or not but over 40 000 kids we assume that some number of them aren't getting it on any given day if we keep this policy in place hopefully that will change soon and we can all all stop worrying about it i do want to say also i know the administration heard the comments about the lyrics i do hope they'll investigate and report back to the board on that situation um things happen and then kids sometimes will request music or be in a position to request music adults don't always listen to it you can't always easily understand the lyrics again as someone that worked with technology i faced that as a classroom battle but need to be

138alert to it and and if what happened if what was described happen we need to make sure it doesn't happen again uh and that there's just some sort of a review and monitoring of things like that i appreciate it who brought our attention thank you thank you and that also came in a in an email uh dr bishop did you want to yes thank you um just for the board's recollection so nobody else has to speak to this um as you know the process for the board is that when complaints are made that we look into it and then we report it to you so that's perfunctory and that's happened um for this particular one not only did um the issue was first it wasn't brought up to either principal until um from one principle

139to the other that they liked it or didn't like it immediately when it was done the people involved work together to solve the problem they select the music now as well as [Music] when we found out about it tom worked with his people to try to limit the space and the alternate building it was also said that the board put them there nobody cares about the in fact it was just the opposite um the building did have ventilation issues and we did not want to put children and staff back in the building so we made space while we're presently seeking an alternative uh place to stay the parent felt as though last week we could do nothing more that things were satisfactory so tonight was just a re-demonstration of sharing it out loud but i

140would hope i'm not sure the board's interest in sharing it out loud again but i just want to share that it'll be an updated to you about what we do and uh up timely and that this particular parent was satisfied with the work done by the principals and administration [Music] thank you dr bishop um remember wilson so i i appreciate a lot of the previous comments but i will not reiterate i'll keep it short i i just want to share my appreciation for the continued commitment of all of our asd staff i know you guys are working hard i i see it and i appreciate it thank you michelle um i just want to say i appreciate the mask mandate being lengthened out and with no end date because um i know myself i tested

141positive for covid that i was close contact the saturday before winter break ended i tested negative twice and then i went to school for two classes went to go get another test and they're like oh like you saw sometimes you should go home like all right like that's fair and then that next day i tested positive and then i had to since i was already like pre-quarantined i like finished up my quarantine so i definitely appreciate it and think it was a smart move especially with no end date because we don't know there's no end dates of when spikes like this are going to end especially with spring break coming up thank you michelle let's hop over to member jacobs thank you madam president um as always i want to express appreciation for those who

142take time to come out and connect with us at meetings um upcoming opportunities to engage with board activity tomorrow at 3 30 is our communications uh subcommittee meeting 4 30 pm is governance finance is at 12 p.m on the 26th and then the 27th at 5 30 p.m is the second board leadership webinar which i understand was well received and attended the first edition last week no other comments thank you thank you did you mention the town hall for tomorrow that we have uh the 20th not tomorrow when is the 20th thursday i did not okay so we we got the town halls coming up so lots of ways to engage thank you mr jacobs remember donnelly thank you madam president i just um wanted to note that yesterday was martin luther king day and

143i believe all americans can learn from dr king's legacy including that words have the power to spark positive and important change and dr king famously said the time is always right to do what is right and the time was always right to speak up for what you believe in accordingly i made a note of some quotes from dr king and things i believe and i believe that why pop culture critical race theory advocates such as mr kennedy disparage actually disparaged in his book dr king's advocacy of equality um and instead advocated in favor of racial discrimination to achieve equity i stand with dr king's dream of equality and opportunity and equality of treatment for all of us and dr king famously said i have a dream that my four little children will one day live

144in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but that by the content of their character and unfortunately critical race theory is advocated by mr kennedy and many others is just the opposite of dr king's dream of color blindness and actually calls for discrimination based on race and you can go to page 19 of mr kennedy's how to be an anti-racist and see the proof of that dr king also said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and my belief is that holding some americans guilty for the acts of people in the past of a certain race is clear injustice the us constitution article 3 section 3 specifically prevents corruption of blood for this very reason even when it comes to something as serious as treason and dr

145king also said we must live learn to live together as brothers are perished together as fools and my belief is a critical race theory is a marcus construct intended to divide americans against themselves and weaken our great nation and actually i also identified one of my very favorite uh quotes from dr king and it said all labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence and i certainly agree with that and i would add that labor should be fairly compensated whenever possible thank you thank you member donnelly remember lessons [Music] sure thank you um so this is kind of i'm going to bring together a response to a comment about guardrails and actually the martin luther king comment um so thank you for that uh member donnelly uh i

146wanted to make sure the members of the public know that the district tonight we accepted our our first guard rails report on the fact that the superintendent will not be allowing underrepresented groups to be will not leave student groups under represented in our lottery and application-based programs and there's a wonderful synopsis of where we're at i appreciate that there was data that's gathered so we can understand where we're at and that one of the key next steps is a listening strategy to understand what are the obstacles that families face when when it comes to them not being a part of it and so we know for instance that are need of hawaiian pacific islander student groups asian students english language learners and black students are significantly underrepresented so now we know we need to figure

147out how we can connect with them let them know more about the program so i appreciate that this is there um i do hope that this will be posted on our goals and guards goals and guardrails website um and i think that this work bends asd towards justice um in that long arm that dr king art the long arc towards justice yes it's long and separately i do um i want to remember wilson's comment about thanking staff there's just so much good that's happening in our schools right now curricularly and extracurricularly um our elementary students are headed towards the district battle the books competition next week there's so much staff time that goes into that process and i wish every competitor um a hardy good luck in that in that battle there are other competitions

148that are engaging our kids i was invited down the road to a we the people a civics competition event that's happening um i know our ignite students um they're doing extracurricular activities or curricular activities um there's just there's just so much good and i know our staff continue to um to work with with the intent that every student can succeed so i appreciate that thank you member lessons dr bishop did you have any comments closing comments no madam president what about staff nobody in the gallery i would like to take a minute just to um do just a moment of silence for um macon roberts his uh he was a board member back in the 90s he was also a mentor and a friend um he passed away actually in november but his celebration of

149life was just recently and so i'd just like for us to honor him with the moment he loved serving kids he loved serving period but he really loves serving kids so if we could just have a moment of silence for making and our hearts and prayers are with his family as they navigate this difficult time um again um i want to thank the staff as well the work is i mean those of you who are subbing i know you're subbing and you're not getting your work done i hope i hope you're not stressing out over that but i if i were in your shoes i'd be totally stressed uh because you got you got you know you you're doing good but it's coming at a cost not just uh you know health-wise but it's coming

150at a cost that you're not getting what you need to have done and we so we know i mean we recognize that and we appreciate that and um with that i think uh i'll i'll entertain him um adjourn that's it jordan second