001[Music] thank you mark sorry about that we are live good evening today is tuesday october 19th so we'd like to welcome everyone to our board meeting uh board members present although not in their seats but they are present we have members wilson lessons jacobs holloman higgins donnelly and myself bellamy so we'd like to call our meeting to order and we have a real special treat this evening we have kevlina and the boy scout troop number 170 they will [Music] do this portion of our flag salute present the colors so please stand [Music] you for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all myself ah please i was like that was amazing thank you troop 170 let's give them another hand that brings us to our land acknowledgement and our
002opening statement so whenever you're ready before we begin i would like to acknowledge with gratitude the denying of people past and present who have lived on these lands since long before anchorage was here may we all be good stewards of these lands tonight thank you [Music] we'd like to welcome you to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the anchorage school school district and this board the board thanks students parents teachers staff school business partners and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time your talents and your tax dollars i'd like to remind uh everyone who is in the boardroom that you need to wear a mask that covers your mouth and your nose unless you have a waiver and if you do not have your
003a mask on we are asking you to leave [Music] so we will take a 10-minute a 5-minute recess until everyone is in compliance [Music] thank you for your patience it appears that everyone is in compliance i thank you for that mr president yes member darwin thank you um and during our last meeting uh member holloman raised the point of parliamentarian we have not we need to prove the agenda and i will give you a this relates to the parliamentary procedure that we utilize in approving the agenda all right i'll hear your i'll hear you coming okay thank you ma'am president um there was an a point of order raised that asserted that under robert's rules of order that when there was a main motion on the floor and a member was recognized they could not
004speak prior to making a moving an amendment and i think that was not well taken and it relates to how we conduct our business tonight so i'd ask there was the representation that there would be investigation of that yes and a report back and i would like that report at this time thank you sir we do have a report uh remember holloman uh yes i was going to speak to it right after the agenda um and following up i did i think i was an error i believe from the fact that several groups i've been in have that rule as a standing rule but in looking through roberts while it sort of hints at it it does not ever explicitly say that so i would say that my objection was an error i apologize for
005interrupting you during the last meeting on it [Music] thank you member holloman that said i'd like to move we adopt the agenda as presented madam president um i would like a ruling on it from the chair because at that time you indicated that you agreed with the objection so i think it's important that you actually rule on it i have a hearing a response from jurassic parliament which is the contractor the school district uses on these issues and they agree with my interpretation of rules that i was in the order at the time uh if i recall correctly remember donnelly i said i allowed you to do what you did it wasn't a point of agreement or disagreement on on my behalf because i allowed you to do exactly what you did well madam president
006i have a transcript of what occurred at that time if you'd like to refresh your memory [Music] i do not we have a motion on the floor is there a second to approve the agenda i object a procedural motion takes precedence and we have a procedural matter before us over any regular business so at that time you ruled that um to quote um um i did allow that so you can blame me that implied that it was a proper objection so you need to correct that at this time and specifically rule that i was in order remember donnelly my comment was to mr holloman who raised a concern and i said to him i allowed it it's my fault well it wasn't your fault i was in order then you and he just apologized to
007that for that well all i'm asking you is as president to actually rule on the point of order the point of parliamentary procedure that was raised [Music] i still don't understand what it is you're trying to get me to say remember donnelly i do not there was a point of procedure raised you raised the point of procedure no actually remember holloman raised the point you're going back to the left i disagreed with it and you disagreed with it and i'm requesting that you rule on it at this time formally rule based on the information that was just provided to the board by member holloman he corrected himself and i think is does the board require anything else well as a member i'm entitled to a ruling of the chair on a point of procedure well
008remember don lee the rule he you you and member holloman had a difference and as chair you should rule on that difference and say which which point of procedure which i accept member holloman's apology to you so that means you were right is that what you want to hear you were right well based on what he found on it yes you need to rule one way or the other okay well i'm not ruling on it because uh i do not believe that that is necessary it has absolutely been cleared up that you that remember member holloman was incorrect [Music] and i would uh any other comments from the board on what the what is procedurally correct at this time madam president i would just call for the orders of the day president i'm not going
009to appeal the decision of the chair at this time because it seems pointless but members are entitled to a formal ruling of the chair when points of parliamentary procedure are raised thank you back to the order of the day we have a motion on the floor to approve the agenda moved in second [Music] is there any opposition to approving the agenda see none the agenda stands approved and that leads us to item b which is our student advisory board report ellie whenever you're ready okay so student advisory board or sab uh had their second meeting on october 12 2021 at 11 15 a.m in the asd center in this board room um yeah and it was our second meeting of the school year during the meeting we started by playing off a gathering activity called
010big boss and distributed sap of sab official zip ups to new members after we approved the minutes we elected myself um as a new sap president where i ran unopposed which opened up the position of vice president for sab members to run for next month we then briefly went through school reports um the assad region 4 representative report school board report and we had school board member mr carl jacobs attend which was very awesome of him and then after that and our break we touched back on the topic of the graduation regalia policy where the overall preference of the group was option three which clarifies the wording around the use of letters and numbers and it adds an allowance for headdresses instead of caps members then mixed with each other to discuss changes that they
011would have made and how their schools handled it and discussed it together as their own student governments finally sab discussed and endorsed a resolution from students at diamond high school where they wrote about the current backpack backpack ban happening at their school students are opposing this ban and asked for sab's support which was voted on and passed um the schools that attended the sab meeting were south service diamond eagle river family partnership bartlett betty davis east chugiak polaris stellar west and benny benson a student advisory board will be holding their next meeting on tuesday november 9 2021 from 8 15 a.m to 10 15 a.m where um the middle schools middle schoolers will be joining us in that physical okay thank you and congratulations on your election that's great and that brings us to item
012c which is our goal monitoring we're now going to have our monitoring conversation uh regarding goal 2 and that is our math proficiency goal and that that goal is beginning september 2020 the percentage of students in grades three through nine proficient in math on the state summative assessment uh currently that assessment is peaks will increase from 40 percent to 55 by may 2026 and we will also do our have a conversation around our interim goal number two uh the percentage of grade uh grade students in grades three through nine at or above the math benchmark on interim adaptive assessments will increase from 48.4 percent in the spring of 2021 to 50 in spring 22. so first i want to assert that all of the components um and in the report that the audience will see
013and in the report that the board was was provided at our last meeting we will look uh all of the components in that report are present and that basically means that the report clearly shows what is being monitored in that the gold and the interim goal are identified it shows data for the three previous reporting periods uh the current reporting period and the target reporting period and finally it shows not finally but it also shows the superintendent's evaluation of performance via the peaks and math growth for peaks the superintendent has evaluated below target and the for the interim goal 2.1 the superintendent has evaluated on target it shows supporting documentation that evidence is the superintendent's evaluation via the tables provided and it shows what our next steps are so with all items being present in
014and in order we're ready to begin having our progress monitoring conversation the first part of the conversation is to dig into the data itself with the latter part of the conversation being more forward focused in other words we'll begin with a series of questions the who the what the why in those categories of inquiry uh the purpose or given those categories of inquiry the purpose is to understand the current reality of our students as compared to this goal once we are done with the who the what and the why we will then move to the how and this is a category of questions to hear what the superintendent has planned in response to the data so with that conversation logic and model in place the floor is now open for the board to engage in
015inquiry regarding our math proficiency goal and so who has questions for the superintendent okay dr bishop uh thank you um there was one update uh since the last time of providing the board the data and if you can take a look at page five there due to some questions there was some interest in a request in understanding the changes in the numbers tested and so if you look at this page on the bottom that long uh chart the n stands for the number of students tested over time so you can see the change from into the latter years up to last year at a little over 9000 in grades three through nine okay thank you all right thank you for that clarification okay who wants to go first so i guess i'll kick off uh
016dr bishop we had um [Music] how are we including the monitoring of grade nine i know that our adopted curriculum is um it's k-8 sure madam president that is a great question and um what we have is through if you look at college and career life readiness algebra 2 is actually a target for there so the gateway into algebra 2 is through algebra 1. in the inclusion model of access for students for high quality uh instruction is is part of that uh moving to best practices uh and that's targeted as a strategy that is being used for data for algebra one we utilize uh course data from teachers work and grades and i appreciate that and i broke my first rule because i asked the how question first but at the same time um i
017will uh uh i'll watch that so but thank you dr bishop uh other questions remember thank you um i submitted a number of them but i think one of the things that really stuck out to me was if we think of our students as uh based on cohorts and which which we really didn't do in these charts but i can draw lines across them and what i noticed was that um there were significant drops from the i'm sorry i'm looking at page [Music] for the transition to middle school and exacerbated over covid and it looks like maybe there was the pre-existing prior drop in the spring of 2018-19 you can see a drop in proficiency from elementary to the middle school years and if you look at the say the fifth graders from 2018 to
0182019 they become the seventh graders measured in 2021 and that's a more profound drop and that holds true for the the sixth graders transitioning to eighth grade i wonder if you could um speak to whether that's a normal thing that middle school is a hard transition and and we have previously experienced drops in math proficiency um did covet exacerbate those those drops in proficiency and i guess i'm jumping ahead to the what are we going to do about that but i think that that's one of the data sets that really struck out to me thinking about the real students who have been impacted by covet and how we're going to move forward sure so um that that is a great question and in looking at our students to share these data were not presented in
019cohorts we did not match students generally when we are articulating cohorts over time we only use matched sets so these just clearly i don't want them to anyone to believe that this is actually a full set of data into the next year because we're not a cohort match these are just student groups in that given year and i point that out because the student groups that are actually being assessed in those given years are quite different uh in the end and that was one of the reasons why i put that number down there and um it's it's interesting in all of the data that we are going to share today when i say n that's the number of students but behind um those scores and those students is a human body and a person that
020we want to send off into this world with the skills needed and so i i just wanted to share that um however from my knowledge of education over the last 32 years is that when there are major transitions from schooling schools there generally is uh a drop if you will a little bit to to get started now um those drops are generally minimal and not statistically significant but they do occur so when you look at them in numbers you might you know take a look wow um but the statistical significance um isn't uh as great as it's shown here and i would caution this one specifically because of the n and the number when we we would need to look into further the students that weren't tested who were they and are those students different
021than the students that were being tested so generally a number on a random selection you could have a smaller number it would be fine but because these weren't randomly selected they were actually the students who came to school we would need to uh further look into that but that was a good noticing piece we would have to to actually specifically answer that question do a different type of of uh data look uh with um our teachers in schools to understand who the students were you other questions did i see your hand remember donnelly i don't think i answered the final question actually okay i did want to say yes covett had made everything bad anyway so covid and having schools closed down and absences and worrying about everything um every level of the organization i
022would say that covet has impacted so that was your primary question i would say yes yes it is highly impacted yeah remember donnelly thank you madam president most of our elementary schools using a new math curriculum but we do have at least five schools that use a different more traditional curriculum called saxon math how are our saxon math schools doing um through the president to member donnelly uh what we have before us in this monitoring is our collective look at all uh students in grades three through nine i don't have specific schools for you uh i can provide that at a later date okay thank you okay can you um katie you caught that request okay thank you other questions on the data before you yes remember wilson so i was looking at page 12
023um the map growth for grades three through nine and i partially a comment partially a question i'm looking at sixth grade and sixth grade um seems to be above the 50th percentile for for both the winter and the spring i would be curious to know if if there's what the factors are involved in and obviously you couldn't answer this tonight but what the factors are involving um sixth grade having the higher scores through the president to member wilson um [Music] they certainly do poke out at you as uh green and red and i do want to share that um winter of 2020 which was just last winter and then spring what we're seeing here um if you take a look at the numbers at 44 and 35 percent you'll notice um six seven eighth um
024grades all have very low numbers being tested and if you recall in um the winter the only sixth graders in school at that time were elementary students that attend sixth graders at 10 elementary schools so the other part of that data set middle schools were not in session so that could have some influence on it we'd have to take a further look um but if you see the the percentage of students are are pretty low there so uh understanding that if we were to add all of our sixth graders in how would that change and then again who were the students present and not but um i believe it it links back to uh the question from um member lessons which provides some evidence there about uh changing and moving from from transition of elementary
025to middle school [Music] okay member jacobs [Music] thank you mr president um question for um dr bishop the um assessment uh the overall progress assessment then the the current figure where it falls in the the color legends um similar to the last um a set a review session that we had those don't necessarily align i was thinking it might be helpful to um for the superintendent to go over that discrepancy sure so um this is uh in demonstrating just to share um if you take a look at the that's 36.8 percent and that was our math proficiency on peaks with all of the grade ranges and at 36.8 percent if you take a look at our goal at 55 uh that trajectory above it is there um so it is in this kind of tan
026line not quite orange or green however when we assessed at the below target when you look at peaks and you take a look at the trend over time we haven't moved much but we're on a definitely a different scale of moving downward there so the understanding of are we really close to our target and how can we get there um because it's all those grade levels um it's it's it's very difficult to um if there was one grade level and one skill that we had to change uh that is uh basically um more easily influenced so a group of teachers could work together and understand and this is just so many classrooms across so many different uh standards and so the standards in grades three through nine are so spread and the being out of
027school for so long i think that uh kids were affected math so i placed us at um in that orange section for below target not necessarily near target just an understanding of the significance of changing three through nine collectively as well as the many goals and information that students need to know and able to be proficient on a statewide test like that and again because of the assessment we don't know what it quite is yet it's changing now on this one i was i was confident in our target if you took our last spring about we hit the target of about 48.5 percent although it was only about 9 000 students so quite a small amount of the third through ninth graders who took that final assessment the target for the map growth is only
028one and a half percent so the confidence in the work uh that we're doing now um the efficacy of classrooms and teachers and students um i believe we're on target to make that one and a half percent gain in the map growth because we're we're better at targeting what it is we need to know and move forward and i'll um build confidence in peaks once we understand what the new nwea assessment is going to look like great questions so i have a question um among the groups the students that are the groups of students that are um you that you referenced with um that are performing on or near target what do you attribute that to excellent teaching students that are progressing in math and have have reached those target goals are picking up on
029the skills that were needed and again if you look at map growth i really show that we had such a range of programs last year in regard to what students received and there was a frustration from i would say on the school side of students not logging in and not showing up to class was a frustration on the student side for not feeling as though they received the support they you know wanted there was frustration on the parent side because sometimes they couldn't be sit aside you know next to their students um but on the assessment of the students that did make proficiency i do want to share that they are the students who generally make proficiency in our school district uh and generally speaking it is the non-economically disadvantaged students so students who are
030not of poverty and generally uh students who are white and so i i do want to share that we do have a demographic that um does exceptionally well in asd and to me the goal of all students have success we're going to have to engage our students take a look at our practices how we reach out to families and support students where they are and move them along because they're already starting from a place that is not a proficiency okay thank you member lessons um thank you i'd like to follow up on that question um if the page four data certainly stuck out to me stuck out to me about showing significant disparities between who is doing well or better and who is not doing so well um but i did notice that the only
031peaks growth measured in these two data sets was for spread students and i was curious about your opinion about what accounts for the slight uptick and the percentage of students who measured uh as proficient in this group what worked well sure um that's a great question and i'm going to enter it with caution uh simply because about 22 of the students in this category were not tested so then we would have to look at who then were the students who were assessed and who weren't assessed um we did have a large portion of our special education students not desire to return so they remain online i would without evidence i would i would really have to again look into the individual students but i would say that uh face-to-face teaching is impactful to students and
032um the only students that were tested were the ones then that came back to in in-person face-to-face learning but again i would caution that assessment in the catchment of the assessments and it's a pretty significant amount 22 percent less about one one fifth of those that were okay all right i'll go to my next question then um so there were a signif a number kids who did not take the test we must be what are we using to um what other kind of data points or data are we using for those kids if they did it take the test sure um that's a great question and uh data that we use all the time which is really classroom uh information and so um if a student does not want to assess and frankly it's uh
033statutorily um allowable to not uh engage in a high stakes level assessments such as peaks uh as well as you can opt out of district wide assessment so with the map uh growth and other assessments that we give district-wide provide us is is really data on groups of students um teachers you utilize that for these are the kids in my class how do i what do i know what they know and how do i move them forward uh so for specific students it's just not giving you specific students um to their parents about where they are in comparison uh because certainly the map has a comparison nationally to our state to our district to every other third grade in my class i mean it really drills it down um so we're missing out on the
034ability to take a look and see you know how many students are in this set and how can we move them forward uh to take a look at how we're doing collectively but generally data like these like peaks a statewide performance is not really necessarily although it gives us student report it really is for high stakes it's for like the state um requirements so i would say that if we didn't have to take peaks we wouldn't but it is a state requirement so that it takes a look at schools in general what we're doing for students is what we've always done to understand student growth is teachers um teachers create um assessments themselves there's assessments with their materials some of them like to do that um there is observation assessment there's communication with the students
035so we we use quite a bit but those won't roll up to this report but quite often it's just a part of a classroom to have assessment and so if parents are missing this or if they missed a time you know the classroom is the best place to understand how students doing okay uh remember halloween um you know someone say as a as a former person that sent through faculty meetings anytime you got a chart with a lot of red and orange it was always frightening because that generally the message was going to come that we need to teach harder um and that often that really bearing down on the content bearing down on the students you want to see improvement in it is possible take students that struggle with math and actually turn them
036into people that hate math really badly before they ever leave us what i'm hoping is that we have a process where we look at teachers that are working with groups of kids that are struggling and succeeding and and incorporating that across the school and across our district in particular i know the right curriculum on top of fidelity means a great deal i i have a certain level of belief in that but i also have a belief that if we have a successful classroom in one of our buildings that's something that we can transfer more readily within our district and i i hope that's part of what we're doing to to try to make this more green and more important in the future yeah um mr hallman that uh just those comments uh i don't think
037there was a question in there but um those comments are great and um i would uh purport that none of these data are is a um an attack on anyone's effort to say that we have to teach harder i don't know how much harder we could work in this district given covet and everything else so this certainly isn't about hard we have hard workers what data tell you about a student like it isn't made up by the school district it is literally standards that children then are held accountable for in their lifetime and their skills uh that were designed in standards designed by educators so the alaska state standards did not come from a district they came from teachers creating um you know those things of what they believe kids will be successful if they
038know this this and this and so how do we know if they know that well you use assessments and hopefully assessments just guide then how we can look at our classrooms and exactly what you shared is hopefully a place where we can get to that when data are not value they're value neutral not really value driven where you can say man what happened at this school something's going on there just like you shared of wow something's happened in this classroom what's happening there the ability to discuss and to talk about successes as well as our areas of growth will bring um i would say collaboration to staff it has me in my professional life to understand what i don't do well and what i can do better what somebody else does better and what do
039i do to get you know my kids performing like your kids because your kids seem to be doing better so um i i think that it uh for me the um the orange yellow green um you know that's just signaling kind of where we are but the if you look at what is the purpose of this um it drills right back to kids it drills right back to where we want students to be and um it's we educators who they have the most time with the gimba the value added is at the classroom level and so what you stated about teachers um finding the best things and sharing them is is absolutely part of this process for students to to gain proficiency thank you questions kelly and then i'll go i'm still on um [Music]
040one of the things that i've most appreciated about this fall has been the opportunity to go visit schools and see teaching and learning in action and it's remarkable to go from one classroom to the next and see how our second grade teachers is teaching his or her curriculum and a fourth grade teacher um and so i've seen the new math curriculum in action [Music] one of the things that struck out to me is that it's very verbal and i think for a student with exceptional verbal skills this is an area where they can flourish but i also noticed for example in one classroom where they there were a lot of sped supports they had worked on to help provide an extra lift they had intervened by underlining you know the numbers within the word problem
041to say hey guys we're looking at the numbers here um are there areas that the new math curriculum will be a challenge for some of our students i'm thinking about our english language learners and our sped students and how are we going to make that less of an obstacle there are lots of things i like about the new math curriculum too but that's something that i'm wondering about that's a great question and and i would say that the language um in math programs uh or science programs or anything like that absolutely is a challenge uh the ell department as well as the special education department in dnn uh all participated in the selection of this series and some of the things when i when i asked them thank you for giving your your questions earlier
042when i asked about um the mtss process and and what um supports there are um they really shared some strategies and and information about um [Music] you know moving through those uh through mtss and i'm uh i wrote them down um [Music] but i i i'm on this right now they try to find it but um so uh actually the what they shared was the ell susports um are actually available right in the um multi-tiered system support framework so the design in mind uh with how the support is built in and probably maybe for special education some other things is what you saw part of that the program strengths uh that were chosen in regard to the team that had chosen this particular um [Music] textbook i'll have to find um i'll have to find
043those as well but um the ell title nine sped um they all were in the review the pilot and the implementation of the program and um i might need to get um they specifically wrote out for me um [Music] the uh items that were presented so i'll have to find where i place those here they are sorry about that um so the math review advisory committee and i want to read this because they spent a lot of time uh putting this together um we're presented with the program as it was reviewed and uh there were language supports for ell and struggling readers within the adoption differentiation of supports instructional strategies varied assessments parent supports letters powerpoints videos they have cultural responsiveness component hands-on activities for modeling different uh pedagogy styles so different models to deliver
044the information to kids as well as a student handbook vocabulary cards games and self-reflection and that these were also available online so i wanted to specifically share that because i you know that was back in the adoption some of those things but to your point a brand new year of an implementation of any program uh is a struggle it's it's uh learning something new that i'm gonna have to do um and and it's not just a platform on your iphone you know for an app that takes you a little bit to figure out where things are sometimes whole programs are laid out differently sometimes they have a different structure of how to present and so uh teaching and learning is working through the year started last year on the adoption but also in just small
045chunks of delivering professional development but it's um just what we call just in time because there technically hasn't been time for mass learning of anything due to covet and other things so i think the next training is november 11th but for sure this is new the math is not new the content is new the presentation of it is new and that's what's uh on the adult side of it so hope that helps and answering the questions and sorry i fumbled through i they i i wanted to specifically know those things so i didn't want to misquote them so just to follow up so where are we where are you finding that principals and teachers need the most support uh in liquid staff development for um yeah yeah i was gonna say actually and just um
046having more people um [Music] more so than than uh this so um really i i think it's it it's just gonna be in time the expectation this semester was not to be a master of our craft especially with something brand new when i uh asked about the professional development it has been in chunks since last february to different grade levels um but the best supports are really going to be job embedded that um i'm supported when i need it uh in my classroom uh as i'm teaching it and so through the department chairs that we have in middle school as well as the instructional coaches at the elementary school we're trying to build capacity into people to support other people uh in the jobs we do every day okay thank you it looks like remember
047higgins thank you um oh i've been quiet for a long time though yeah you were you want to be excited got some credit there i just want to um um join with uh um board member lessons comment in regards to the the reading skills required with the math and because i heard this from some teachers and principals that i'm talking to i recall everyday math i'm sure that that's not an unknown word because i know matsu pushed it out because it was so language intensive and right now it seems like it's more complex than that i'm listening to second grade teachers where kids are not really up with the alphabet because they've missed a year and a half for the most part and so the reading is really falling behind and the reading then is
048going to drop the math further behind and it's going to be catching up with one before you catch up with the other i know what is needed helps but that's a limited time compared to what you're doing during the entire school week and if if you're leaving the behind on the training that's going on that's what i'm hearing from the concerns coming from teachers is that it's a heavy language intensive math program and so all these kids i think back to 2009 all the kids that are suffering from having reading issues uh different groups that they're going to have the same problem in math now and we're going to go same way what like we did 12 years ago we're going to go back to that same issue that's my concern right now is that
049the selection i've talked to the people that participated in the selection process they felt like there wasn't a good selection other than the one they went with so at least i believe we got you know honest assessment this was the one they selected but it it bothers me that we have been through this with the public and staff before about reading intensive math and trying to tie it in together and the outcomes were so bad and the public reactions and the scores going down really made a big difference and and i know the reading level probably for the math is is equal to the reading to the grade they're in it's supposed to be appropriate so that's going to make it that much more difficult too when they're catching up um in that line so
050i'm just my reservation here is i can't help everyday math comes out because that was such a long nightmare that the school district went through of public concerns teachers concerns and parents and and kids i'm just concerned about the heavy intensive language skills and how that might impact not just the scores this year i know there's issues about getting enough training but you know when you roll out a program that's going to be pretty common but i am concerned about the impact in the next few years where we're still trying to catch up with the reading to make up for the last two years where we had limited school and and and the growth wasn't there as much that we're going to put math in that same category that's where my one concerns have yeah
051i am would you like me to yes so um [Music] yeah you know their concerns and i'm glad you talked to the teacher to say wow they're all like this now majority of them are so there wasn't a better option i think that the team of teachers who were on the selection um chose the best uh i was not there um i have a different experience with math as a math teacher uh specifically um i think that the board did at the time of creating these um outcomes took that into account therefore you see the urgency and reading as an access skill that should your statements alone should telegraph the importance of reading that it is an access skill to everything nowadays and so i believe that the board's goals reflect that that we need
052um 80 of our kids reading on grade level very quickly as quickly as we can because that does affect access to other things the goals for this are not as steep as a curve if you will i think that the math that can be of access is in this program as well you will have just those fundamental automaticity things that we're going to continue to to teach and and those don't necessarily take uh the english language but then the problem solving and the other kinds of computing uh we want them to gain and they're going to come with time but um to your point the importance of reading in our school district and teaching our kids to to gain those skills is highly important um to really transition over into math this math program does
053have individual supports that students can work on um on their own for what they need at the time hopefully that'll be in support and used by parents as well as kids to support teachers in the classroom because while we're responsible for some things it does take practice and supports from home as well just in that um you know just the behaviors of of good learning and and and moving forward so uh no disagreement um it certainly is uh has words in it you can open up a book and see that our math book has a lot of words to it but i would say that our work in our school district reflects that understanding in regard to really building competency and capacity for kids competency in reading so they build the capacity to do other
054things as well that's an excellent point not disagreeable i wasn't around with the prior reading series 10 years ago so but i am familiar with it thank you um so is algebra the goal for students by grade nine and then how are we um how do we know they're on track to if so how do we know they're on track sure um i i'd ask do i have a math specialist in the room here um miss amanda barr can you share a little bit about um our goals for that and uh the math in sixth seventh and eighth i know does lead to an ability in those skills to be able to successfully take algebra one as a freshman um but we have more grade levels than freshmen taking algebra so if you can um
055what is the trajectory that uh the expectation for students uh for algebra one through the president uh the um the goal for as dr bishop stated the um standards are specifically written in middle school for grades six seven and eight with the intention of preparing students for algebra one uh or the equivalent uh in high school so that has been our benchmark goal for ninth grade okay all right and uh the map assessment uh actually can give you map growth and can give us feedback as to those readiness skills uh for algebra one okay great so i don't i'm not seeing any more hands for the um for the who the what and the why so what about the how moving how are we going to um you know how how are we support i
056guess it's uh how our teachers and principals support it to support the goal itself and implement the curriculum that's one of the questions i have sure um so if we take a look at um next steps and again i i did want to share again as we did with the reading um [Music] a board member mentioned to me once well teachers said they're not doing this and they haven't been given this and and it is it isn't the amount of let's not go do that it was just the expectation for your goals um given everything that's happening in the district uh with covet was that we would know the goals this semester that was the bar that i placed out there and i uh specifically designed it that way so that we can get started
057it took us and um weeks to really get on step uh due to the coping changes the absences uh the unfilled positions uh so we're working in multiple areas and so um for the goals um again the my expectation was not to what am i doing in my class how am i getting this done all that like drilling it right down it was do i know what the goals are do i know what the district's goals are and um as we move forward this year we're taking a look at them to understand okay if those are the goals what does my school look like and then what does my school look like what does my classroom look like and where where do i fit in that bigger picture of the of the goals and so
058just uh in understanding that and the strategies um the strategies outlined by uh the math team really are in different areas to be able to move forward so it's in mtss the data discussions professional learning instruction and curriculum and then there's action steps like what is actually going to happen to be able to prepare and this is all in addition to a brand new curriculum in preparing for the new curriculum you know there were some asynchronous canvas courses and just trying to understand where people are there was a request for differentiation in supporting of teachers because some teachers found it pretty quick i can go do it others needed additional time um february in august we provided professional development again on november 11th which is our next in-service day um we're having three hours of
059of professional development on the map again to be prepared um but if we go to the general 30 000 foot view um you know the goal for students is to increase mathematical proficiency for them to understand their math uh so it's important for me when um we talk that um there isn't an interest in raising scores i mean changing a score is putting in a new number on a data sheet um what we want this to represent is that students actually gain knowledge and change their learning behavior where they're they're learning more so that they will have access an opportunity to complete that algebra one um the instructional focus will just understand the classroom mathematics with integrity to ensure that evidence-based mathematics is is used and supports students um understanding the multi-tiered system of support
060so when a child is not learning with what we call a tier one what comes next and what are the what's the in the infrastructure to help me and the students uh succeed in my class individual teachers we need teams of schools to really support this individual teachers um just in their class with that many students with that many levels it's our system isn't designed that way to to be able to have one single impact so the multi-tiered system of support is to wrap around those services and then the last one was what i touched on earlier which was just inclusive practices to be sure that students have access to [Music] the curriculum at the grade level so that they understand what it is many times what we do is we have to balance having
061them access to the kinds of high quality conversations in math or reading or science at the same time giving them direct skills to improve their skills but if we do one or the other um students either can get lost either way they'll be lost and not understanding or they'll be lost and they'll never have access to what's actually expected of them at their grade level so i know that was a long way to answer the questions but that those are uh really the supports but just to understand their it it is going to come at a time when um like i said i use the term just in time for when when when we're ready for it and we can actually take it in and i would say right now it's at the level of
062the school level understanding where the needs are with the um instructional coaches and the department chairs really helping to find that um this is another follow-up question that's been percolating and i think i had pre-submitted something to this effect could you just for me as a board member for the other people in the room for anybody else who might be listening could you explain how the math curriculum which i understand to be we purchased it from curriculum associates how does that work with what i know i see my own kids doing with i-ready math like on a device how what's the purpose of iready on a device and is that a part of the standard part of the school day is it a supplemental addition to the curriculum associates [Music] in yes yes it could
063be both and do all students have access to that at school um [Music] i think those are sort of that could you just talk a little bit about what it is that we have before us sure so in addition and um i might need to do another shout out but in addition to the actual instruction in the classroom with the tier one which is what it you know the core you know what a third grader should know um the iready program actually provides a drill down um kids you know take this dynamic assessment initially and it actually drills down to a program to fill the gaps of what they see that the the program actually targets the gaps that children are missing so it can move them along uh and that's what i i mean
064by that you know the classroom has many different levels of students and it can take them to the next level individually um we i'll have to get with amanda that the goal is for all classrooms to have access to that um but we really are not asking for any more than 45 minutes of that i ready work to be done in school um to remember holloman's point um for for too long sometimes even for our most advanced student what we thought we should do um instead of moving them up a grade level sometimes we had them take two maths you know and there's sometimes a way to get even the brightest kids not to um that love math if you give them two math sometimes they don't like it so um it's really targeted uh
065they can use it at home it can be an at-home practice it can be an end school the goal is to use it for the mtss model in school and the beauty of it is it it shouldn't be a time waster it's actually um specifically targeted to the skills in which the kids um the computer's picking up that they are weak in so it'll pro give them practice in that while the teacher can continue to teach to grade level standards as well as you know provide additional supports um but um in data in project red they did uh demonstrate that short term 15 to 20 minute um computerized assessments or computerized tutoring is actually highly efficient for filling gaps so it's actually research based let me follow real quick i know i've asked a lot
066of questions this is again sort of technical one of the problems that has surfaced in my conversations at schools is a bandwidth issue like not everybody can use their devices at the same time because maybe there's not enough bandwidth to do that's good i'm not supposed to be doing get that shout out to mr fleckenstein on bandwidth so we we do monitor that and and i'm not seeing anything peak over 80 in any of our schools at this time and so i would be if you if you have additional information and you you could provide that i certainly would would follow up on that we have the ability to um turn that up if we need to it's not something that um we would uh hold back on and so if if you know of
067a need please please let me know and i'd be happy to follow up on it sorry the second technical question was um really thinking about our youngest learners k12 um who i assume are all using chromebooks i was in a classroom yesterday and watched kids kind of fumble around they didn't know a backspace key they didn't know where the dot was they were hunting and packing to try to log themselves in um is there a way that we could make i mean use ipads is that something that would be more user friendly for the youngest learners in our schools or are we sticking with the chromebooks that we have because that's what we have i'm going to give a shout out again to our technology person there is an ongoing discussion about um uh sort
068of the earliest grades uh pre-k k one and two uh right now if you look at our one-to-one initiative that really has been a target at three through twelve we do use chromebooks four three through twelve uh that's the same device that that children are assessed on and use throughout the district there's a discussion right now around is that the appropriate device at the earliest ages and so we are engaged with elementary education and a group of folks to start looking at um are there other options like ipads or tablets that might be more appropriate at those age ranges and um and to sort of preempt that discussion or to get ahead of that we've also at the same time applied for a grant the federal grants that are available right now to help be
069able to purchase some of those devices as we make a decision on what those devices should be so hopefully that helps i would say probably the one they're most proficient on is their parents phone yeah great questions but sorry um yeah david's oh remember donnelly thank you madam president um [Music] madam superintendent um prior to the majority of the board getting elected we had a lot of discussions around the math curriculum adoption and the utilization of sex and math the more traditional uh program and about three years ago dr stock the deputy superintendent did an analysis of our saxon schools versus our top demographically advantaged uh regular schools and it came back that the saxon schools were at least doing as good as those schools in some cases better but when it came time to
070choose math curriculums to do a pilot program the committee that was appointed refused to do a saxon pilot program and in the analysis of it one of the main comments there reasons was it wasn't common core enough i remember that quote and yet it was very successful and then we subsequently had a discussion of possibly trying to move some of our schools to saxon and at that time the saxon publication was changing and you had raised that that it was going to be difficult to get sex and textbooks possibly well i subsequently confirmed that the home school versions of sex and textbooks are going to remain completely available and they're very successful in homeschooling folks very popular very successful so i just want to say if we run into problems with this current curriculum we
071have a viable option right at our fingertips it's proven in schools we have right now it's proven by home schools sex and math and we know we can get those textbooks now so i think we might want to be flexible and consider maybe moving that direction uh maybe incrementally even noted and we do have your requests for those schools who are using sex and math so we'll get that back to you i guess my um not seeing any other hands or questions moving forward i guess the you will bring forth any resources that are needed as we continue to um implement the curriculum and um you know so i guess it's not a question it's just a request that as we move forward and as we look at the data uh if something is missing
072whatever that's whatever you determine that to be you will bring it forth if more resource is needed [Music] manifested that's correct and and i would say um in my initial assessment of the the first quarter of school it's certainly um it's something that we uh have a difficult time with it's actually human resources at this time so that that's really impeding um when i visit classrooms and talk with principals it's about i could do more but i'm pulled you know a hundred different ways so understandably but absolutely we'll bring that forward at the next um [Music] as well as any changes in the next round of monitoring math thank you thank you see no further questions i thank the board for your questions your time and now that brings us to our public comment section
073on our agenda and we have people in person [Music] before we get started i'd like to there is a sheet near the door that uh that says welcome to the uh asd center and there are some uh [Music] some rules there we provide two opportunities for the public to speak to us um [Music] and so we people if you have those people who have signed up will be given the opportunity to a three-minute time slot to uh speak to us the board has the testimony in excess of the first hour will be uh heard at the end and i think we should be able to get everyone signed up today within the first hour all right we have more people signed up so we'll see we'll do our best so the school board welcomes the
074public to observe and contribute to our meetings through testimony to be productive our meetings must be structured and civil asd conducts public meetings under robert's rules of order a set of rules for orderly meetings that have been used since the late 1800s the rules require the board and the public to be civil rights and respectful of each other's opinions and statements here are a few requirements [Music] do not attack a members or a speaker's motives speakers may point out what he or she believes to be a natural consequence of a board action but may not engage in speech that is that personally attacks others we ask that you refrain from disturbing the meeting which means no cheering applause or outbursts and we ask that unless you are testifying that you be polite to the board
075and other speakers attendees will not be permitted to interrupt the business of the school board as uh also no profanity or foul language there's no place in in the public uh meeting of our board for profanity or cussing as stated earlier please keep your masks on at all times including during your testimony your mass must cover your mouth and nose unless you have a medical waiver no waving of signs flyers or posters if you have handouts that you wish to share with the board please give them to ms grant who is seated next to to my left as the president of the board it is my duty to enforce these rules of civility and decorum as such i have the authority to rule any speaker out of order for violating these rules and others further
076i have i will have removed from the meeting anyone who does not heed these rules and fails to conduct themselves in a civil uh manner and with that we are going to call our first speaker in person we have heidi uh cicada did i say it right heidi welcome you have three minutes [Music] my name is heidi cicada and i am this is my 23rd year with asd i'm here to advocate for teachers and principals and indirectly for students over the past six years i've watched the steady decline of asd's leadership in their decision making decisions are made all the time without talking to those of us that are in the classrooms those of us that are on the ground those of us who work with the students there's many examples of this but i
077want to focus on the one that has become almost insurmountable at this point in time i don't know if you're aware of it but this year somebody decided that they should purge the subsystem hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of subs were purged out of the says system with the rationale that they didn't sub last year well no kidding we didn't have school last year for six months we had no school and when we came back we had three months subs were told you gotta go into the classroom kids can't be vaccinated you may not be vaccinated asd's mitigation procedures were not sound they changed decisions on a regular basis so a lot of people didn't sub out of their own safety and yet asd decided oh we should purge them let's get rid of them
078we didn't talk to teachers we didn't talk to principals i needed to be out of my classroom this year i put in my request for a sub six days before i needed to be out i personally contacted 32 people and asked them to come and sub in my classroom 26 responded to me and said no i can't the only reason i was able to get out of the building that day that i needed to be out was because my principal was willing to step up for me we have one halftime super sub in our building for 29 certificated people that may need to be out on a regular basis for family members for children for illnesses one half time super sub that's not acceptable that's no good um asd says we want to be symptom
079free but if i can't get a sub and i feel like garbage i feel obligated to be in my classroom for my students i'm not going to stay home my kids need to have a steady person who knows them and who can have continuity for them in the day without a sub i can't do that asd i believe is aware of this i think leadership's aware of it but they've done nothing to change this there's no incentive to sub there's no real willingness to reactivate those no willingness to say hey we'll waive the fees come on back they haven't contacted they haven't aggressively recruited they've done nothing except leave us out to dry our principles are tasked in trying to fill this weird task this has to stop you guys have got to support us
080and get subs you have to thank you heidi next we have tessie canada welcome tessie you have three minutes [Music] for me this is not about politics or even a contract this is about the physical and emotional well-being of teachers and the students we serve decisions on policies have consequences when we were forced to return to person education without a vaccine last year i got sick three weeks to the day of return i lost a month of my life to covid the cdc and science have not changed however to deal with the severe staffing shortage that was caused by your policies a change of quarantine for asymptomatic individuals has contributed to a typhoid mary situation in my classroom at my school as positive parents have refused to keep their asymptomatic children at home and refuse
081testing the callous disregard for my life every teacher connected to my room my students and our families is unconscionable we now have over six teachers positive and more our testing countless students are going home sick worse we are on the precipice of mixing classrooms to provide win groups for 30 minutes a day do the benefits really outweigh the potential of harm for 30 minutes can't we provide similar lessons in the same classroom and centers and be more safe we're considering dividing classrooms into two groups to disperse when a teacher is sick because specialists are no longer enough to cover for the lack of subs this will create class sizes between 30 to 40 students in elementary there will be no mitigation no teaching to fidelity no ability to teach according to the pacing guides so
082far we have used specialists as subs but this prevents teachers from receiving their contractual planning time and sets up a situation where we have to teach for seven hours straight with only 15 to 30 minutes of break this does not follow any osha industry standards i have ever seen at what point are we deemed critical if you treat people like machines you should expect them to break the inference that we are not dedicated or somehow abusing sick leave questions are integrity and is appalling in spite of the dangers i have shown up every day for two years to support my fellow teachers and provide lessons for students who have had an utter arrested development during online teaching and they have done the same for me we have international teachers on j-1 visas that are teaching
083without a contract and only receiving subpay they could leave tomorrow but we haven't because of their dedication to us and our students we cannot continue with this farce of business as usual it is unsustainable thank you tessie next we have barb clark welcome barb [Music] you have three minutes [Music] i'm barb clark a 21-year asd educator i speak tonight on behalf of the aea board of directors a hefty body of research shows that three things correlate most strongly with student success a highly skilled educator in their classroom their class size and the family and family involvement in their education the data demonstrate that there is no purchased program no set curriculum and no pedagogy that in that at all approaches the effect of these three factors of these three the first two are things over
084which you have a great deal of control at present asd has approximately 100 teaching positions open and about 300 positions overall it is imperative to the strength of asd's workforce that we settle our contracts quickly and fairly the school board needs to treat it as priority one to provide compensation and working conditions sufficient to atta attract a cadre of new educators and to retain every one of the seasoned educators we still have and any we hope to hire anything less anything that drags out or sours negotiations creates a further distraction from this district's main mission the success of its students last wednesday the fed raised its estimate of average inflation for this year to 4.2 percent do you believe that the district's offer of zero zero and zero percent adequately takes that that reality into
085account no asd bargaining unit currently has settled has a settled contract with zero zero zero no district across alaska has settled a contract at zero zero zero as it rebuilds its workforce in a tight labor market post-pandemic private industry is certainly not offering zero zero zero asaea's recent survey data on this on the sentiment of your teaching staff displayed next to me is catastrophic only twenty percent feel good about their jobs and less than three percent feel fantastic about their jobs and educators need several reasonable and possible things in order to feel respected and heard and to ensure student success we need the academic flexibility to meet the diverse learning needs of the student of the students we know by name and know how to engage we need adequate planning time and grading time especially
086during coving we need ready access to our sick and leave time with the trust and respect from the district that we are fully able to manage our time professionally any attempt to separate aea from the remarkably efficient remarkably efficiently run care plan with which 94 of our membership tell us they're happy is in effect a threat to aea members well-being please let's focus on what's in front of us let's settle our contract both contracts put this distraction behind us and refocus our efforts and our energy [Music] thank you barb next we have corey angst ace sorry glory i know exactly what your name is welcome you have three minutes [Music] thank you president bellamy just to start with three minutes is never enough i have more to say but thank you thank you to the
087board uh i have testimony here but like has happened in the past i feel it's kind of mute i'd like to say i'm really impressed that school board members are getting out into the buildings and impressed about what you're seeing and sharing and sharing in the experience what it looks like sounds like and feels like out in our schools uh i shared an email with you guys earlier uh that covered recent survey data we took in the last two weeks on the sentiment of your teaching staff and miss barb clark just covered that as well we have a lot of work to do our uh our educators are working diligently every day on behalf of our students and families and those of us who are not in the classroom we really need to step it
088up and see what we can do to support them we also need to support our esps who are also working without a contract next to me i want to review some survey data that we took in terms of class size because we keep talking about sentiment and we also like to look at some of the other data i want to highlight in that other testament in the prior test by barb all research consistently demonstrates soon student success can be summarized by three consistent attributes every classroom has a highly qualified teacher low class size and parent involvement well we can control two of the three we can control every classroom has a highly qualified teacher and we can control the size of our classes i was shocked in uh in polling the membership that uh 22
089of our elementary classes have 26 to 30 students and 5 5.5 reported class sizes of 31 to 15 students that was 39 educators who have class sizes 31 to 35 in our elementary schools and uh 5 37 educators have more than 35 students and this is included this includes specialists secondary educators reported 23 of classes have 26 to 30 students over 41 percent of our secondary classes 208 classes have 30 or more students and 20 97 classes have 35 students i know we're working hard to hire educators but when we talk about data we have to put this in the context of everything that we're doing in our schools it's an amazing um it's an amazing battle we are fighting every day i just want to say i appreciate your efforts and i look forward
090to continued uh continue working together thank you corey uh next telephonically [Music] uh rihanna gay is rihanna gay we're not sure if she's telephonic okay i don't mind okay we'll come back to her john dice dykstra john dexter welcome you have three minutes [Music] thank you board dr bishop my name is john dykstra i am not only a teacher but a parent of a junior at west and a senior at alaska middle college i'm immensely appreciative of all their teachers last 13 years and i would not have wanted to raise them anywhere else that being said myself i've been here i started as a substitute teacher in 1998 i'm now in my 17th year as a licensed teacher sixth in elementary 11 in middle school i've dedicated a good portion of my adult life to
091this district and its students and families after all these years i still enjoy my students i think i believe i believe i create a welcoming inclusive classroom enviro environment that engages kids of all abilities there isn't a day that goes by that they don't make me laugh out loud i always thought i'd be a lifer meaning 25 years but i'm really looking forward to 20 because i'm not sure much longer i can do this when i watch these negotiations online i'm just sickened i feel like the asd negotiators come out with an adversarial position and i i don't understand what we've done to deserve this and a zero percent raise for three years is unconscionable as it is i drive uber four nights a week or morning so i can support my family that's three
092fourths of the way up the pay scale with no outstanding debts other than my mortgage and my car payment let alone how i'm going to pay for my kids to go to college none of us got into this to get rich but i mean i just read today even social security is raising six percent cola for the recipients and you know this current economy again i'm looking at career options because i just don't know how much longer i can do this i've been in the trenches for last two years i volunteered to come back in january with a student teacher and you just when i watch these negotiations it's like a gut punch it really is and i you know i just wish you could find it to support the teachers and totem staff and
093keep us in there fighting for our kids and you know i keep hearing over and over good teaching good teaching adults and caring adults in the classrooms that know these kids know the curriculum engage engage their students that's the best way to student achievement and a happy content staff thank you jim thank you john [Music] uh let's see we have jessica rodriguez and she's in person jessica is in person welcome jessica okay you have three minutes thank you [Music] at the board meeting on september 21st i was shocked and angered by some of the things that were stated the first being that teachers weren't asked to start instruction on day one that is not accurate as the pacing guide required instruction on day one this did not allow students to properly settle into their classroom
094or grant teachers the ability to establish relationships and get a feel for where their students were academically when discussing the reading curriculum and the expectation of 80 proficiency by 2024 it was stated this was quote ambitious end quote it is completely unrealistic dr bishop followed up by using one school's data in an affluent area as justification as to why every asd school could achieve this one school out of dozens with students grade levels behind dr bishop also stated he cannot you need to not blame or call out anybody by name i'm simply stating you may state this you can state the position yeah but that's that's not what um i'll give you your time back but you should not be calling people out by name i'm directly making statements that she stated it was stated
095you said it was stated you didn't need to say who stated it excuse me then how you may proceed it was also stated that phonemic awareness has never been a detriment to anyone this is a dangerous viewpoint for someone in leadership and the very reason asd does not have a strong phonemic program it's malpractice that so many students can't read by third grade and beyond in my grade level at my title one there are 46 second grade students three are at grade level three that's a 6.5 success rate more than half are at a kindergarten grade level what should i tell parents at conferences our hands are tied by systems so entwined in politics and wanting to be right that you have woefully lost sight of the very reason we are all here our students
096many statements were made quote we continue to use data to drive our instruction we build our actions around what our students need data determines needs what our students are demonstrating now every student advances each year high quality instruction matters end quote there seems to be a disconnect between public rhetoric and reality for those of us who are on the ground the district helps its allegiance to database decision making but its own metrics demonstrate how badly we are failing our students instead we continue a one-size-fits-all approach that simply doesn't work in many classrooms if these statements held any truth teachers would be afforded the professional choice to use replacement curriculum so students could advance instead we are forced to continue to teach students material grade levels behind their current academic skills what are asd's plans to
097help our students who are several grade levels behind why hasn't this issue been at the forefront of your meetings where are the districts accountability for perpetually failing our students this is not a teacher issue and you will not blame us teachers have been telling you what we need but we are not listened to and if we are it is something you think our students need not what their teacher knows they need parents understand that it is not the teachers it is the perpetual systematic failures of asd that are failing your children if you built your quote actions around what your students need end quote then you would get rid of your politics thank you jessica and next we have let's go to uh rihanna gay uh telephonic oh she's here hi welcome you have uh
098three minutes rihanna thank you hello board my name is rihanna tonight i'm here to share a few items to best meet our schools families need i had a few conferences on monday and tuesday most of all the parents showed up they showed up happy ready to listen to what i had to share and willing to help with what is needed to best meet their child's needs just think if your negotiating team did that all aaa and totem members negotiating teams are showing up and telling you what your educators need yet it is continued to be ignored and not listen to with what is best for educators all of your educators are saying the same thing keep our planning time competitive compensation package make plain sped protocols and make health care a priority walk in our
099shoes and give us what we need brain science tells us we don't learn when we're stressed we know anchorage aces scores are high please offer more benefits time at duty station and get the contract resolved are you aren't you ready to reach our goals taking away or redirecting my planning time is a direct neglect for students educators are the roots of asd ding dong school's in session i ask that you pay attention to this lesson asd you are not listening where are your parents bring your grandma here because someone else needs to hear all the hot air that the negotiators are spewing this year what's the matter you ask you're treating educators like we have small tasks we have your goals and guardrails you want us to appear this tug of where this tug of
100war is medi muddy unclear mandatory trainings have deadlines grades report cards have deadlines but getting a contract settled before it expires doesn't have a deadline that has already made adn headline october is fire safety month and asd it's time to stop drop and roll give educators a little trust and a little control it is going to take a huge paradigm ship yes more than just a cook a tasty cookie as a gift give us more and you will get more you cannot accomplish less with more nor more with less please just confess this is a lot of stress and in the end students will not have success when adults bigger and tug of war oh what a mess you have you have to water the roots if you're educators if you want your educators to
101produce productive fruits thank you thank you rihanna uh next telephonically we have danielle kemp [Music] oh he's in person okay welcome mr camp you have three minutes [Music] thank you to the board uh for allowing me to testify tonight my name is danielle kemp i'm the co-chair of the aea's human civil rights committee and the co-founder of the alaska coalition of by educators i am here to state that they the asd i do not believe is doing their level best for our educators during current contract negotiations with the aea and totem a zero zero zero increase in salary for three years uh poor healthcare package okay taking away teachers planning time [Music] you can't make this kind of offer and realistically expect to keep educators right uh the contract negotiators are also missing an excellent
102opportunity to address and fix the glaring racial disparity in our educator core too we must do better to not just attract and retain educators but moreover and most especially educators of color all our students need to see in our educators the diversity represented in the asd community itself you know that thing that we all of us love to brag about but rarely empower right now non-white teachers represent only 15 percent of all teachers certified black teachers sit at just one percent indigenous teachers too are only one percent of all certified teachers one percent how can this rightfully be in the land of the denial the demographic numbers are very similar to our administration as well a truly representative educator and administrative core also helps to broaden not just our students of course understanding of the
103diverse world around them but our white kids understanding as well so we can't put these problems on the back burner any longer racism in the asd is real as well and is a problem that should be on the top of your list incidences of blatant interpersonal racism have been on the rise the asd should do more to address and eliminate systemic institutional and individual racism if the district is ever to improve and meet the needs of its staff student and community one of the ways the asd can do this is to create a racism database to collect information on incidences of racism within the district and make it public as many educators here will acknowledge you cannot fix a problem unless you have the data to properly measure it we must make racism a problem
104that we can solve with a data-driven decision-making process please create this racism database yesterday if you need advice on building it just contact us at the alaska coalition of ipoc educators and we will help you on your way this is an expectation of ours and a call to action to the asd thank you for your time and have a good night thank you mr kim uh next in person we have martin hansen [Music] welcome mr hanson thank you for having me you have three minutes um first of all uh both of our styles can we use them mike sir yeah uh both of our sons received outstanding educations in anchorage school district and we're grateful and we support schools and i think they're one of the most important things that we have in our community
105um we have lived next door to interview school for 35 years and i want to talk about it let me use school i don't want to come across as the cranky neighbor so you didn't know uh i care about kids i've coached uh anchorage junior nordic for 20 25 years i'll do it again this winter i've coached boys and girls club soccer for three years on the new school playground or playing field i care about my neighborhood i was active in the south edition community council as president and vice president for a combination of four or five years uh we the neighbors first heard about the proposal [Music] to rebuild inlet view school in the south of the school property in september and when we were exposed to the plan we were also told that
106it was a final plan and the meetings that were provided the tuesday meetings were informative they were not there to take input they weren't being held so that we could make suggestions for improvements so i'm here hoping to persuade you to not put a 30 million dollar bond to rebuild the school on the 2022 ballot i'm hoping that we can all step back take a look at what is best for the school for the students for the neighborhood and for all of anchorage because all anchorage taxpayers are going to pay for the school box [Music] school district has educational specifications for an elementary school if we were to follow those specifications we would have an excellent school that's for the kids the neighborhoods the neighbors and anchorage the current i mean that by that i
107mean the existing layout of the buildings to the north playgrounds and playing fields of the south is excellent it's been excellent since 1957. [Music] the school is on the north end of the schoolyard it blocks the cold north wind protecting some of the kids when they're playing i know when they're playing closer to school but it does protect them and the playing field which is just a jewel for the neighborhood and for the children is at the south where it melts out first and fastest the picture that i gave to mr higgins is was taken a couple of days ago and it shows how the the snow that we got last thursday is only lingering uh where it's shaded by a six foot high fence my 13 foot high house the neighbor's dirt [Music] mr
108hanson yeah your time is up but thank you and we we will get you we have a handout we'll get it to everybody thank you next we have lisa sparrow in person welcome lisa you have three minutes i'm here to talk about the lack of school staffing now and in the future this lack of staffing is and will continue to reduce our students academic success the inability to staff schools is caused by two things versus substitute shortage and second and more frighteningly a teacher shortage i teach first grade where a big focus is teaching foundational reading skills students spend 40 minutes a day in small groups reinforcing these skills last year we were unable to do these groups once to twice a week due to a lack of staff this year i worry the same
109thing will happen it only takes one or two staff in the school to be absent to cause small groups to be cancelled when children miss the small group time their skills suffer the mts model can't work without staff how can we fix this a good place to start is by staffing our schools with knowledgeable experienced teachers and support staff unfortunately the current and potentially long-term teacher shortage combined with asd's unfavorable working conditions potentially poor health benefits low salary and retirement plan will make this difficult here are three problems that will make asd a less than desirable district to work for problem one teacher working conditions during bargaining asds proposed taking away planning time prep time and grading days and requiring teachers to be available for duties whenever they do not have students problem two health
110care to reduce health care costs the district wants to move us from our current health care plan to their lower quality care vera program again to save money tier three for teachers cannot cash out unused sick days at retirement problem three inadequate salary in retirement in bargaining the district is proposing a zero salary increase over three years with this proposal teachers will be earning less in the future than we are now as for retirement alaska teachers hired after 2006 had the worst teacher retirement system in the united states we're the only state without social security benefits or a pension furthermore at retirement social social security benefits earned prior to teaching are reduced along with social security spousal benefits these people these three problems make asd a poor choice for new hires who will likely have
111many districts hoping to hire them for young teachers building a career in a district with the country's worst retirement plan is a hard sell and for older second career teachers the loss of previously earned social security benefits is problematic where does that leave asd teachers angry yes the lack of respect during bargaining has been particularly demoralizing to hear after all the efforts teachers made to teach cobit but anger is exhausting most i feel sad and disappointed that this is the current state of our district but despite that disappointment my belief in the urgent need to teach my first graders how to read motivates me reading is an access skill children must learn to read but i cannot do it alone anchorage teachers need a compensation package that retains teachers and attracts new teachers without that
112improved test scores will not be possible [Music] thank you lisa next we have mary richards oh she's here okay welcome mary you have there not 30 minutes three oh come on i could take 30 easy so my name is mary richards and i'm a member of the alaska black caucus education committee as well as a high school english teacher and a proud member of the anchorage education association first i really do want to share a sincere thank you to dr bishop and the board for keeping our children teachers and staff safe during covid and continuing with our mask mandate and safe schools initiative we really appreciate your efforts and no it has not been an easy time in our community and i i really really really mean that thank you so much um i've been
113reflecting a lot lately on how adults in our relation with one another in our community and how this affects our children when community members and children see our teachers being treated so unfairly during bargaining this gives them the direct message that it's okay to be disrespectful and insulting when it is not and you know right now that we're in a fishbowl in this community not only locally statewide but nationally how we talk to each other as adults how we work with each other as adults it matters now more than ever i do want to give a shout out to the district's high school tier 2 edge literacy curriculum i'd like to invite all the school board members to come in and see that i think it's really amazing um back to yak high school where
114i'm teaching we're running a co-teaching model and i've been really impressed by the district's move toward a full inclusion model this is a prime example of how teachers are willing to go above and beyond for the success of our students there are tons of examples like this in our district where teachers are working in collaboration with administration to do what's right for children let's keep that ball rolling but of course now we got to talk about the current contract and the good faith effort in which there's none um i used all day on friday because my principal knew that we needed the day to actually work on our curriculum i spent the whole day grading writing and assessing writing i'm now teaching right now ninth grade full inclusion tier two all the right all the
115way through ap language and composition um i'm teaching writing in all those classes we're really teaching critical thinking and reading um but even with that full day i spent most of my weekend also wrapping up my grades and posting on monday um i think there's a lack of fundamental understanding in terms of what it takes for teachers to really address and assess the literacy needs of our students superintendent bishop and the school board are consistently referencing literacy data and rightly want to see growth especially among our more vulnerable children and yet when we put models into place to address these literacy gaps we hear that we want to take away planning time we want to take away grading days it's really pretty just insane so i hope that we can get thank you mary next
116we have uh jonelle jones it's star six to unmute janelle oops try it again star six there thank you board members i'm janelle jones uh east anchorage resident i would like to propose the mass curriculum which is an approach to discuss and discover the purpose of mandatory masks as a as a way to better understand the world we live in the purpose of the math curriculum is to help you prepare your child to identify the garage of media lies that are being downloaded into your child's mind by the cdc who and compulsory schools your child will soon understand and find empowerment through these this experience of tyranny because they will locate places where they can help where we are now will not last forever but if we want a brighter future we had better build
117it ourselves these children need to see a full human face the solution is so simple as we all know to stop cooperating when we stop cooperating as a conscious community whether local or global the mandatory mask will disappear because the need to see a free human base is fundamental has your child asked these four questions and what did you tell them number one why did we why do we have to wear these masks examples could be a the government has forced us to do it i don't like it but it is a temporary thing or b we don't have to wear a mask if you don't want to you don't have to you own your body and i trust you want the best for it number two when can we take the mask off examples
118a now you don't have to wear that mask who owns your body you do b when would you like to take it off now okay do it anytime another person wants to push the agenda on you for your own safety is a good opportunity to think for yourself what can we say to our children about the business of vaccines and fear campaigns we can tell them the truth or our best representations of it number three who is making us wear masks example a some people use coercion and they don't understand that you and i have natural rights to our life freedom and property b government officials acting like they have superhuman power over us sometimes use voice and intimidation that's not what kind people do but the government is based on these tactics so they
119constantly violate our freedoms see criminals use government as a tool of power to control other people and make make them do things against their will it's a bad system so that's why we are learning about self-reliance because one day we will not be cooperating with any coercive organizations you might even consider informing your child of truth that could affect their future our children need that information to prepare for a future that is on the horizon it may be helpful to share some concept concepts with them unfortunate ultimately i do believe freedom and volunteer relationships will be widespread and abundant again so this is a crucial time in history approaching as we head into november thank you janelle excuse me next we have sylvia law lowry sylvia lowry welcome celia you have three minutes i don't
120mean to chew their own horns but no matter what occupation you have in life you got there with teachers besides parents teachers play the second most vital role in a child's life as they grow and develop that is a lot of responsibility to have and we would like for the board to recognize our value and compensate us accordingly teaching is not a profession that you can do right out of high school we have to go to college just like many other professions yet we get paid a lot less than others who have the same amount of education that we do and i'm pretty sure we're the only ones i'm pretty sure we're the only ones that have jobs that can have our salaries frozen regardless of how many years we've worked or hours of education
121we've had we endured numerous hardships and still show up each day not because of the paycheck but because we have a passion for our profession teaching is a calling of the heart but over time we are losing many excellent teachers due to a lack of support both emotionally and financially we are spending more time than ever making sure we are doing our jobs teachers have always been notorious for working well over the 40 hours required but now it is beyond ridiculous i am a school teacher by day and after school i'm an assistant coach because i need the extra money being an assistant coach is hard on my body but i have no choice i gave up my lunch to take on lunch detention duty for the extra addendum i work instacart in the evenings
122and on weekends just to make ends meet and then i come home to do lesson planning for research to find a new way to help get a student get them that concept or prepare materials and the list goes on and then i fall in bed exhausted and ready to do it all over again you want to take away my planning time when am i supposed to plan why do i do this i teach because i love what i do i love seeing my students as they grasp new concepts i love hearing my students say miss lowry you're the best teacher i've ever had i love interacting with my coworkers to find solutions to better the lives of the students that we touch but also because i am a single grandmother who has raised two grandchildren
123for birth by by herself with no financial assistance from anyone i want them to be able to have a better life and like any parent i will do whatever it takes to do this for them i just wish it wasn't quite so hard by the time i get my paycheck one third of it is gone to trs taxes and medical which is outrageous all of this comes with a price our time with family is suffering for many of us our children [Music] thank you sylvia next we have amy tamal to mogni [Music] welcome welcome amy to manny thank you tomani to manny to manny you thank you administrative assistant for a department here in the asda center totem member totem board member i've been an employee as a totem person for 20 years 21 excuse
124me first in the building many a day this is the life of an asdaa switch on the lights and clock in start the computer and lock some doors big good morning to the boss and the co-workers too now chug some coffee already there is just so much to do fire up outlook to an inbox that's full oh dear 10 staffer out today survival is the goal next check check aesop to see if the subs were deployed 8 out of 10 spots are filled success i'm overjoyed the phones begin to jingle with a variety of needs from parents to principals and everyone in between all calls are important and deserve our utmost care someday i could be on the other end of the call needing help from the aaa feeling helpless or worse that gentle reminder
125makes even the grouchiest of callers seem way less cursed after hours emails are now answered and calls from voicemails have been made time cards are due no later than 10. oh darn jane forgot to clock out again correction forms pour in until 9 59. it's a race will i get payroll finished on time don't forget adenda they will be pulled for payment the next day now i've taken care of everyone in totem ace and aea parents teachers administration vendors all have important needs my list is getting along pause for a moment and take a breath now log on to zoom i sincerely missed the days we could all just meet in the room time to order books and noise cancelling headphones again p cards are an aa's new best friend a requisition is needed to
126cover training costs now log into ifis enter the data from vendor and every detail in between send it through the workflow and the procurement folks will do the rest filing scanning copying i'll sit in piles to wait for now it's almost two o'clock and i haven't left my desk since 8 48 a nibble a nosh and a bathroom rig oh gosh where did 30 minutes go there's so little time to breathe back at my desk i dive into the mess proofing and editing items from the boss's to-do list balancing the budgets is always such a chore i bet your bottom dollar we ages can stretch the money and are able to find some more asd has eight titles of administrative assistance in them and about 200 aaa positions in total that's about 1600 man hours
127a day 360 000 hours for a 10 month period that's just an average and doesn't include the 11 12 month aaas we do need some more time uh i'm sorry we do need some more pay we need a pay increase and we do appreciate what you guys thank you appreciate it [Music] uh next delaney schneider welcome delaney you have three minutes thank you i'm a fifth grade teacher at a title one school every person in this district is being consumed by the amount of work and lack of support this school year i feel and hear every day how we cross three things off our to-do list and it grows three times larger i know some of my to-do list comes from doing more like 21st century after school program and student council but if i
128don't do it for the students who will i do it because i'm here for the students and i know i have more energy than most people in this profession most of my colleagues are burnt out by the regular school day i devote my entire week to my students but i am burnt out daily and by the end of the week i am so exhausted all i can do is sleep and plan all weekend long just so i can be ready and healthy for another full week all while not knowing if i will get my planning time or a small twenty dollars for my miss time that's what my professional planning time is worth to this district twenty dollars my misplanning time happens often at my school because of the lack of coverage miss planning time
129also means being stuck in a room all day with students minus our lunch which is usually spent working being in a room with students all day is not great for anyone's mental health we are told to take care of ourselves with what time and to maintain our physical and mental health but now we're having to negotiate on that too i can't tell you the details of the bargaining going on with health care but what i can tell you is i notice it in my paycheck and my budget every month now i'm looking at a very high deductible starting over in a few short months and i'm trying to figure out how i can budget my money and the time i need to continue seeing my therapist to maintain the proper mental health needed in this
130profession especially being at a title one school this is only the start of the many things wrong right now all i'm asking for is the same things we teach our students empathy putting yourself in someone else's shoes please come sub for a day at my school because we definitely need the help experience what life in a classroom of students all day is like feel the pain of a missed prep and having to call someone to your classroom just so you can get out to clear your head and use the bathroom what saddens me most is that mcdonald's has shown teachers more appreciation than our super than our own superintendent mcdonald's offered all teachers a free breakfast meal all week long last week meanwhile our superintendent dropped off 12 donuts for a staff of 52 last
131friday thank you mcdonald's for valuing teachers more than my school district thank you thank you next we have charles thompson welcome charles [Music] you have three minutes thank you madam president again i'm here to ask to end the sro program i explained in my last testimony how it isn't a priority of the mayor given the program is dependent on you funding it 75 of the way i have a question for you to consider why did the mayor make a big announcement on changing the funding of the sro program when it represented a net zero change to the taxpayers the sro program isn't federally granted so it doesn't matter whether it comes from asd or apd he's cutting a lot of budgets something like 7 million total but moving three quarters of the cost of sros
132to the school district instead of how it's paid for already through the apd budget doesn't directly change the cost to the taxpayer i'll tell you why he wants to asd to pay it's because he either wants to take coveted relief money intended for the school district and apply it to apd or he wants to reduce apd overtime that's it he wants you to cancel the program so he can move 15 sros onto other assignments and reduce the need for as much officer overtime politically he can't defund the police but he can provide asd with a weird kind of bargain and in effect by putting 15 officers back into other assignments he can cut the amount of overtime by spreading the work of apd to more officers and they can do that their job with more
133rest and be better at their job i actually don't have a problem with that um that's the decision he's offloaded on to you with his budget proposal there's a culture of wanting to do the most as a first responder emt cop or firefighter it's a way of multiplying the value of your work but also comes from a place where you're serving your community but as administrators you need to allocate resources appropriately and when you consider the police work has to be done and that their overtime is available to officers because 15 other officers are being held up as acting as school counselors as as it's listed that's a lot of them that's a lot of money the muni could save but what about the teachers the money's going towards sros the money going towards sros
134won't go towards reducing class size or paying teachers a better wage if the funding is approved by the school board for sros i will be doing my best that i can to make sure the teachers remember the fact when they vote on their new union contract thank you charles next we have sarah osborne [Music] sarah it's star six to unmute [Music] sarah star six okay we'll try to circle back let's try regina pierce in person regina pierce okay take your time welcome you have three minutes take your time all right good evening members of the school board dr bishop totem and fellow aea members my name is regina pierce i am the aea nurse ad hoc committee chair and the west high school nurse sorry i've been with asd for 11 years i come to
135you today to give a glimpse of what school nursing is like i start my day with multiple voicemail messages students often lined at the door for medication and diabetics awaiting care i have two gastrostomy tube feedings multiple other insulin and medication administrations throughout throughout the day these are just the scheduled visits unscheduled visits can include injuries illness mental health emergencies such as anaphylaxis seizures hyper or hypoglycemia cardiac respiratory conditions and a myriad of other concerns in addition to visits nurses are required to perform screenings for all new to district students special education for their ieps and state of alaska's greenings that vary by grade level for west high school alone this is over 700 screenings this school year in addition to treatments scheduled and unscheduled visits now there is covid currently nurses are struggling to
136have lunch breaks planning time is non-existent and we are exhausted [Music] the email sent out on friday october 15th that the district plans to have district-wide coded testing in schools by november 11th was a shock even to nurses the district has formed a contract with beech tree molecular labs to run lab results however your school nurses are the labor force performing testing all communications with parents receiving results and getting those results to parents and with no compensation personally i am lucky i just i just began getting assistance from a certified nursing assistant four days ago however only nine schools get any assistance if school nurses are rock stars that you say we are show it to us in a form that counts not a cookie not a brief email recognition but with a contract that
137is not disrespectful to nurses teachers counselors ots pts slps school sites librarians and all other aea staff we are this district and we are the shape of anchorage thank you thank you regina let's see uh sarah osborne can you unmute hi can you hear me yes we can welcome hi my name is sarah osborne and i'm an asd educator and aea member and i'm testifying tonight from denial land um i wanted to echo the concerns expressed by other members here in support of fair aea and totem contracts um i'm really just concerned about the future of public education in anchorage currently we have over a hundred teaching vacancies in the district and i've heard from many colleagues who plan to retire or leave the profession this year due to low morale and unreasonable workloads the
138contract being offered by the district is frankly going to push more and more teachers out of the district and it also is just bad for students students need teachers who have time to plan meaningful instruction time to analyze all of the data and test scores that the district loves to collect and time to provide thorough and meaningful feedback in addition to making family calls and providing individual attention to students and yet the district wants to take away all of the parts of the teaching job that makes those tasks possible so i urge the district to think about the long-term impacts of offering a fair contract now if we want robust schools or even just functioning schools if we want improved outcomes in math and reading if we want healthy happy children and critical thinkers we
139need to think not just about this year or next year but how are we going to achieve that in five years or 10 years and the way we're going to do that is by investing in educators and education now um on a different note i just briefly want to respond to something that was stated in a recent letter to parents and families from the superintendent office in that message the office cited the increase in behavior concerns and stated that there have been two incidents um this year involving hate speech for racial slurs and when i read that i really just could not understand if the letter was intentionally false or if folks in the superintendent office really just don't know what actually goes on in schools unfortunately hate speech and slurs are a much bigger
140problem and this got me thinking that a lot of incidents in which hate speech is used often involve other discipline such as fighting and i think these incidents often get coded as fighting um and therefore the data on hate speech is not collected and i just want to kind of echo danielle kemp's testimony from earlier and urged the district to revise the discipline reporting system so that it includes a mandatory check box to disclose any hate speech we need to collect that data so that we can correct the problem and make sure that we're providing accurate communications to families about um what what kind of what schools sound like and um and what okay thank you sarah uh that is the end of our first hour of testimony we will resume um at item madam
141president eight i'd like to move that we alter our uh agenda to finish the few people that are left on the we have people sign up as well oh okay thank you i would crawl yes thank you [Music] um [Music] so that brings us to item e on our agenda our consent agenda president moved to approve the consent agenda as listed on the main agenda thank you it's been moved in second that we approve of the items on the consent agenda uh asd memorandum number zero three eight and september 21st regular session minutes is there any opposition to approving the consent agenda seeing none the consent agenda is approved we have one action item remember holloman madam president i moved to approve asd memorandum number 042 and authorize the superintendent to award a contract to
142install a new intercom system at west high school running middle school to audio enhancement under emergency procurement guidelines in the amount of one million two hundred twenty thousand sixty six dollars the administration further recommends that the school board approve and authorize the superintendent to transfer the amount of one million two hundred and twenty sixty six dollars to a general fund balance into the capital projects fund there a second it's been moved in second that uh we award con that we award caught the contract to west romic intercom emergency procurement is there any opposition [Music] we could do it everybody's here we could do a vote get ready to vote please i thought somebody was online sure yes you can [Music] um so this is not related this is before the vote so we're doing questions
143right now this is a all right i just see it popped up on my screen um you know in the spirit of um promoting feedback has asd asked our staff whether the microphones and safe buttons that are proposed in this contract would be welcome used and useful within the intercom system i mean it seems very fancy but yes i'm going to turn that over to mr roth [Music] thank you dr bishop through the president to member lessons so so i i think what i would just offer to the board what we have here is a failing intercom system which is inclusive of the intercom the public announcement system um it's it's it is the the public communication system uh for both those schools that that are inconsistent unreliable uh and and frankly they are they
144are failing so so the the request is that we replace what is called the tc6 intercom system which is the with the the audio enhancement which has the same functionality as the tc6 but also as as a core component of the system has audio [Music] capability that that is installed in classrooms if that answers your question [Music] it did not um answer the question so so the question was um did west high provide any input into it through the chair um yes uh in fact uh we've we've had probably multiple prolonged communications on this this broader subject and and i've personally uh conversed with both the school principles on this matter if that is responding to your question i guess i guess i'm not i'm not totally understanding if if we're asking the the school
145staff if if they want a functioning intercom system and public announcement system um i i don't know that those questions were presented um and it i mean our schools need those for safety is that what you're oh i understand the intercom systems observe them and you can't avoid hearing them it was more of a question i mean i don't i've never shopped for an intercom system before and i don't know whether you know all of the bells and whistles are something that would be useful um or whether there's a you know a different option that would also fit the bill i guess i i was hoping to invoke the spirit of um grassroots information gathering i i guess i i i i'm not completely understanding there's no bells and whistles to it it's not it's
146not intended to be a cadillac system against something else uh it is to replace what is what is an integral component of a of a school building or school buildings um with the system that that we expect will function uh the way it's intended to function um i appreciate that i'm just also reading ahead and if we're going to be you know changing out the intercom systems as i'm sure time will require at 18 other schools all of a sudden that balloons to like a 20 million dollar proposition and so what we buy seems [Music] and i appreciate that that question that clarification so so we are we are coming to the board and and we we we take this very seriously we recognize we're asking the board to to make an an emergency procurement
147uh for for the intercom systems for both west and rome because they're connected and they are both fairly dope they don't they're not interoperable these systems are failing and again these are the tc6 systems so we we know we have in addition to these two schools we've got 17 other schools that have this tc6 system and our challenge is the the vendor the company that produced this tc6 has has basically uh they've cut it off they don't support it there's no parts so so we recognize that we have a potential longer term issue to deal with with the tc6 we are aware that intercom systems are eligible under under sr3 funding that we could potentially um compete a contract to replace these additional systems that again they're all vulnerable that they're all unreliable that if
148we were to do that we would come to the board with with with a a recommendation to award a contract to replace these longer term and then seek federal reimbursement if that gets after that that we we recognize there's a cost we see that there is an opportunity to correct what is a a pretty significant outstanding matter with our intercom system or are those schools that have this tc6 [Music] um thank you i think that um it's interesting it's interesting to hear that it would be eligible for sr-3 funding we haven't yet heard of the presentation i think that's coming at the next board meeting for the allocation of sr-3 funding um i'm wondering if a big infrastructure project like this thinking again at the larger scale of all the intercom systems would be more
149i don't know applicable for like a bond issue rather than something right now out of an emergency fund right and we did not place that on the bond um again those are functioning but we do see a life uh ending and so we'll present to the board at the time different options for which uh to purchase or not um the particular one in front of us is due to safety reasons and that's why we're asking to go outside of that regular procurement but the all those would come to the board [Music] and that was my clarification the system that's currently in place is failing or failed so it is a safety issue yes madam president that that is correct it is extremely unreliable it requires multiple maintenance uh call outs to try to keep it
150on life support and and when it goes down again there are no parts there are absolutely zero replacement parts so if you have a mechanical failure it's down it's down for days until our maintenance staff are able to patch together a repair to get it functioning again okay thank you any other questions is there anyone here i don't see anybody signed up to testify anyone wanting to testify on this matter this matter need to have your mask on sir dustin darden [Music] i recently purchased a emf radiation detector in relation to this specific 1 million dollars you intend on purchasing this intercom system [Music] and it has to do with electricity because this intercom system is of unknown origins and um madam president as i was listening to the gentleman previous to myself speaking i
151was alarmed at his speech in the urgency of this intercom system at this time using emergency funds for a million dollars and through uh through the madam president uh miss lessons brought up a excellent point as well that if if this if this passes for a million dollars it would set the president for a multi-million dollar upgrade and the question i posed to the board for what absolute reason would this be necessary is there something more to this system besides an intercom system for communicating to the school children and i was interested too i heard no questions about what exactly was wrong with the existing system and how could a how could a system that's been implemented for years all of a sudden be an emergency it poses a a severe questionable opportunity of conversation
152which i did see a lack thereof through the board the only question was through this lessons uh madam president and with that being said um the veracity of the gentleman who spoke before mrs lessons approached towards children and the militarized tactics i would caution [Music] all residents listening to this communication on what implications this intercom system could be for example i spoke earlier about the emf detector that i purchased i hold it up to a light bulb a fluorescent nature that's 1 200 volt meters per bulb so if you have two bulbs that's 1200 and 1240 12 2400 volt meters per fluorescent light bulb in the classrooms what kind of radiation are potentially going to be propelled through this intercom system and there's this multitude of questions i think need to be asked before you
153proceed thank you for joining thank you [Music] state your name please and we are testifying on memo number 042 thank you madam president members of the board superintendent teachers that are on staff today thank you for uh coming supporting the students niall sherwood williams speaking to the emergency authorization for procurement of a 1.2 million dollar communication system that's a lot of cellular telephones that could be purchased a lot of ipads that could be purchased for the students uh mr dustin darden brought up an interesting point how does this possibly end up in a situation where we have an emergency well it failed madam president did rats get into the walls and eat the lines madam president was there a water failure on the roof where water got in and damaged the lines is there an
154electronics issue with the backup of this system what exactly failed it really begs the question if we don't have parts madam president through madam president tom roth if we don't have the parts that's a problem that could be addressed maybe the students could start building some in the shop class maybe we could start teaching technology and math and science like we actually talk about in these board meetings that's the way to get results give the children a task ask them to complete it you'd be surprised with the results that they may come up with but 1.2 million dollars for something that you could i ordered a megaphone cost me 60 from amazon it can be heard from three football fields away 60 bucks get a couple of those shout down the hallway that'd be a
155solution but through madam president remember lessons only person to ask the question only person author offering forth a different solution discussion transparency who's behind this company that we're going to give this procurement check to because all this will be a matter of public record where we'll be able to investigate exactly who owns the company search through alaska department of commerce who owns the company thank you for the bell ring again don't appreciate that [Music] and as well emails and communications um that may have been in the back channels to effectuate this procurement it'll be found out whether it's really an emergency or whether this was a conspiracy so i urge the members of this board to no vote and to look into this further thank you thank you that's fun i'll keep it short my
156name is angela butcher i find it you know interesting i actually think it's probably [Music] um so one thing that i did notice this year is that the students were sent out with the notices for the teachers to be able to take them outside of the school for safety reasons and be able to go on trails i'm sorry could you state your name and we are we are only taking testimony on memo number zero four two yes i understand ma'am okay my name is angela butcher yes so this year the students have been doing like safety drills kind of like we do safety drills for earthquakes and uh fire and stuff and i'm not really sure what it's for but i do know we're in a weird time i believe though that like as far
157as telecommunications you know he's a little confused it seems like some people might be on what causes something to fail but wires they don't make the same wires like back when they started this intercom system as we do now we cannot transfer the same information the sound won't transfer the metals just wear down over time so with 100 certainty any intercom system will not sustain itself for you know any kind of electronics and they are expensive um i think some people one of the questions it seems like is uh i think she was asking was with the what the equipment that will be inside the classrooms and how this will be if you have video or if you have audio how much of this where the teachers are going to be comfortable in their classrooms
158that they have the privacy and the children have the privacy also some things are told that are very private in the moments in the class that you know maybe should not be shared you know or that could be a consideration like um i think that's the concerns that people have with it but as for me i think definitely even having cameras sometimes in the classroom if you have a shooter issue it might be nice to be able to see what's going on in the classroom if you can't make it in there or there is an earthquake and you know anyway so that's some of my supporting things with that that's all i had thank you miss butcher okay see no other um mr donnelly is your mike on to say something okay thank you madam
159chair i just wanted to learn a little more about the designated contractor for this um in the 2018 work that they did do at consume and eagle river high school did they win that contract over other bidders so through the president to member donnelly i'm going to ask mr whiting to talk to the the contract but it was a pilot of the the audio enhancement system to see how those those systems would function uh in a secondary school which is eagle river high school and then in an elementary school which is kasum so that that pilot program mr warren are you able to talk to the the contractual aspects of it and then we have miss ashley lawley who is our director for security and emergency preparation she can talk to the the performance of
160those systems [Music] through the board president to member donnelly i would have to research i am aware of the pilot projects but i would have to research the methodology in which they're awarded i don't have that handy with me here [Music] my other question is my understanding this is the entire s west high end roman campus is that correct with all the classrooms that that is correct [Music] did you have a question about something specific about the system my question okay so this resolution proposes to hire a specific company in an emergency appropriation um we normally would go through a bidding process to establish them and the justification is that in 2018 they perform some other work and consume an eagle river that's been real successful and i was wondering did they go through an
161open bidding process to obtain the contracts that resulted in their work at cosum and elementary consume elementary and eagle river because it would be a fair indication that they had already gone through an appropriate open bidding process at some point in time they haven't uh through the board president to remember donnelly they haven't yet for us um only because we did cassoon and eagleburger as a pilot to try out a new intercom system essentially and then when looking at the emergency procurement for west and romig it really came down to cost the two systems are comparable but this one was significantly cheaper which is why we went with audio enhancement over our current district standard so if i if i can just just highlight the the the cost of this system so as an example
162that the district has a designed plan to replace the intercom system at bartlett at a estimated cost of 2.8 million using a system built by the same company that produced the tc6 now that same functionality that the district could procure through audio enhancement instead of 2.8 million is being charged or quoted at 780 000 and that seems to be representative of the the costing so so again we we believe that this is best value that that the reason that this has been a direct uh solicitation to a vendor is again from from an emergency procurement standpoint that this system if if we're the board to approve that we believe we could have it installed by the end of this calendar year and then harvest the parts from the tc6 systems of the two schools and
163have those on hand to address what we reasonably will expect to have additional failures in this tc6 system so that mr roth as we move down in time if um really i'm curious with member lessons uh question we're gonna need a significant amount what is the process from this point on um in regard to acquiring intercom systems thank you dr bishop so so the the process um as we move forward is that the district would submit or would put out an rfp for a competitive bidding process to replace these these unsupported tc6s and why is this different the reason this is different uh there are a couple things one we recognize that we are asking the board to to allocate fund balance typically the the superintendent has authority to to take immediate action but we
164believe that based on that uh aspect but but also since since we don't have a system that is completely non-operational that we we believe that there is you know time to bring this to the board to to get board approval we didn't think it appropriate to ask or expect expenditure of fund balance as an example so so that's why it's different in terms of timing and again we believe that based on what we've been informed by the representatives from audio enhancement that this system could be installed by the end of this calendar year if that answers your question dr bishop [Music] remember higgins did you have a comment i i do and i um i appreciate the comments about it being a very competitive bid but i don't think that's relevant because what we're doing
165is saying it's an emergency so we don't really have a choice if we had if we were going to not do it because we didn't have a competitive bid then we're saying it doesn't qualify as an emergency bid so that's my reservation bypassing a competitive bid process unless it's absolutely required necessary now i'm not disagreeing over the importance of the communication systems it's really a major security issue [Music] for a number of reasons if things you know fell apart and um within it i just don't know that any other providers might be able to provide a similar product today or what else would be out there but i'm very leery about bypassing competitive bid process i'm not going to be swayed because we think it's a good product or that we think it's a good
166price that's not a criteria to me for emergency bid processing with processes we have a crisis it has to be addressed right now and we have to go forward and that's the only choice and whether we got the best bid or not we have to get somebody to get the dog job done right away i appreciate that aspect of it but i'm just letting you know that that i i'm just don't like bypassing competitive bid process with public funds unless there's really an urgent emergency issue and not enough and not swayed in regards to whether it's a great product or was it we've used it before so let's go ahead and go with it neither one of those to me is consistent with the issue of whether we should be using a non-competitive bid process
167as an emergency that's my only concern right now yeah and i would um may i through the president to remembrance i you know agree that um emergency processes shouldn't be used except for an emergency what was shared is that we just have some information about it so we're using a process and we're not taking a gamble on a product that won't give us a delivery i would suggest that not having an intercom system in today's world into every classroom and every square foot of your building is an emergency because i would not want to not to for the employees students families that enter that building if anything should happen and in today's world um i wish it wasn't the way it was but um school violence is a part of what we deal with and
168so for me um [Music] when i hear that we can no longer source things on ebay which is what we've been doing the last few years for the parts um that has me concerned uh for this particular building the other ones are further along where we're not having uh the significant call outs and so um i would charge that for the people who enter that building every day that they would see this as a serious safety matter and and that that's why and but anything in the future absolutely bid it out best bidder best product whatever however that all works i'm good with that but um [Music] i don't want to have something happen and we were asleep at the wheel thank you remember jacobs thank you mr president i'm hearing that uh the administration
169is looking to to go through a full procurement process going forward and i'm hearing that there's a potential safety liability by not taking this action so i'm in favor and i call a question thank you thank you no further discussion [Music] we will open voting [Music] please though [Music] memorandum number 042 emergency procurement for west romic intercom [Music] has everybody voted it's okay [Music] you want to give a thumbs up for them his computer no oh you got it okay that passes uh memorandum number zero four two passes seven to zero thank you board now we're down to item g non-action items these will come before you again at our next meeting moving forward we're now we're back at our public comment so we will pick up with number is erica jones telephonically or is
170she here erica yes erica it's star six can you hear me yes we can hear you perfect okay so at the last school board meeting i spoke about how the lack of teachers and subjects affecting our students today i would like to talk about how our current contract negotiations are not helping the district solve this problem bankrupt school district used to be a fantastic place where teachers wanted to work for asd they felt valued respected and heard this unfortunately is no longer the case the current contract negotiations show that the district does not value having the best teachers not as an owner that teachers are also using their own cell phones cars supplies and money so fund their classrooms when our current superintendent first became superintendent the district gave rather large pay raises to several
171district office staff stating that the district needed to increase their pay in order to hire and maintain the best people and within the past two years many other head office staff were also given raises the board recently gave the superintendent a substantial raise on top of a car and cell phone allowance yet the district is offering zero percent pay raises for teachers for the next three years having the district suggested zero percent rate for the next three years is a slap in the face to the time effort and money that we ourselves spend to better our classrooms our teaching our spaces i have heard comments spoken under the graphic district staff that teachers are just money-backing teachers when they ask for back pay for the loss of planning time or the loss of duty for
172launches but it's not about the money it's about the back-handed way of saying that teachers and other teaching staff such as our amazing paraprofessionals and front office staff don't matter as much as those who are working in the district office it would be one thing to offer zero percent range over the next two years if those working in the main asu building hadn't just received races themselves but many of them did receive raises some of them quite substantial on top of that to hear that the district wants to reduce planning time take away grading days and forcibly change our health insurance is insulting teachers already spend many more hours planning and prepping materials for students than is given to us during our planning time even with the most scripted curriculums that are being forced upon
173them teachers still need time to look over the lesson and prep the materials for students to use and don't get me started on grading the time required to even minimally grant that in grade a student's assignment is two to five minutes per student for a class of 30 students that is at least an hour for one assignment to actually look over a student's work and give meaningful feedback especially a writing assignment is much much more teachers are required to submit two grades in each course subject area weekly that is over six hours a week just in grading assignments yet you want to take away the time during our contracted workday to do such things this is not the way to solve staffing issues these negotiations are insulting and are causing many of our best teachers
174to retire and making those better thinking of entering the field that can guess their decisions too many teachers have left asu in the past two years to either retire from teaching completely or to go over to private schools my school a title one school is still lacking a health teacher an indiana tutor [Music] thank you erica uh next in person kathy mobley welcome kathy you have three minutes and questions about i found that agenda i feel like my tax money is being well spent my name is kathy mobley and i have the best job in the world i'm not kidding i love my job i've got great supportive principals who take care of all the details and let me just teach and i get to spend my days working to with my colleagues to develop
175hard-working educated responsible kids that are going to be just that way when they get to be adults and it's an exciting job and i just absolutely love it i also have this sunny disposition that makes it really hard for me to be demoralized i mean it takes a lot for me to be demoralized so when i opened my paycheck and i looked at my paycheck and i compared it to last year and i thought hmm you know this looks like just looking at this it looks like i'm making a dollar an hour less than i made last year what kind of an idiot works for something like that what kind of an employer lets that happen for any reason i mean that's just scary i mean i love my job and i've tightened my belts
176and i've gotten a second belt i have a large waistline i've i've gotten a second job but i've got bills to pay i mean i just now got my third job so i'm going to be teaching all day going to another job till 10 o'clock at night and then getting up and teaching the next day i don't want to do that i don't want to have to do that but i do have to my principal once one of my principals described me as my teaching style go big or go home can you believe she said that um and i'm the kind of teacher who in may is thinking oh what am i going to do next week for lesson plans and the teachers say kathy it's summer vacation you can go home i really like
177my job and i think i'm good at it and i hope that's the kind of people that you want in your schools smart people driven people people excited to come to school and teach your kids because honestly it can be the best job in the world until maybe you get your paycheck i don't know if i can work three jobs and still provide a dynamic education to your to your kids to my students and it scares me and all i'm asking of you is to be good employers and protect your assets keep dynamic intelligent hard-working driven teachers in your school rooms by offering your employees a fair contract thank you kathy sandra thompson in person welcome sandy [Music] good evening anchorage school board dr bishop and asd team i am sandy thompson-wallace president of one
178of the hardest working groups in the anchorage school district totem association of educational support personnel tonight i want to share with you a tale of numbers as i know many of you can relate to numbers as this district seems to be so focused on numbers anymore leaving the people who make it successful behind and as an afterthought the number of bargaining unit employees represented by totem the number of job positions represented within our group the number of employees who have been with the district 10 years or more an additional 120 who have been with the district 20 years or more the number of total members who hold advanced degrees doctorate masters bachelors the current number of unfilled classroom support positions the current number of unfilled clerical positions 13.97 per hour the starting wage of a
179kindergarten paraprofessional working three and a half to five and a half hours per day versus fifteen dollars as a starting wage at numerous fast food restaurants adding in a signing bonus or up to twenty dollars at car safeway [Music] 23.89 per hour the top wage paid to our employees most of whom had worked for the district for more than 15 years versus 23 dollars an hour for a brand new hired facility maintenance helper with a high school diploma i could go on and on give you more numbers but to me this district isn't and shouldn't be just about the numbers it should also be about the dedicated hard hard-working individuals who give you a hundred and ten percent of themselves every day to work with our students and families totem employees show up to work
180ready to create a learning environment for students regardless of their abilities they care about their students their families and their colleagues many times they are the first to show up and the last to leave they spend their own money on supplies to supplement areas of need in their classrooms knowing that they won't be reimbursed but because it's for the students they do it anyway once again i ask you if not now then when when is the value that totem employees keep hearing about from the district going to translate into a living wage and be recognized for the important contributions made every day on behalf of our students our most valuable resource if not now when [Music] thank you let's go to the phones uh toyah brown toya can you uh unmute hi i'm toyah brown
181i'm listening to the conversation tonight and we identify that the target and achieving learners in our district come from white households and households which are not economically disadvantaged this information is not new to asd i hear the questions being asked in regards to how do we positively impact the demographics outside of the on target group i feel there is a life there is a failure in our school district and not with our children i have spoken with teachers parents and administrators in the district and there has been acknowledgement of blatant racism in our district a lack of representation of teachers of color anti-racism policy with no accountability a violation of these policies and no transparency in racism reporting by asd it is not possible for children of kohler to achieve at an optimal level when
182asd is not addressing creating a positive environment conducive to our children of color showing up and just being able to learn you have her testimony from parents and students alike of specific incidents with racial motivations in our schools that impact our children's ability to show up and learn i ask that you please address these issues and you will see the improvement you desire in scores outside of the currently achieving demographic because you will be creating an environment that mirrors the environment that you're achieving economically advantaged white students have it does make a difference i would like to also support better contract negotiations for teachers no raises for three years is not acceptable i have personally been moved to tears by some of the teachers testimonies tonight we are in a teacher shortage and we are
183only going to make it worse as a member of this community not representing any association i would also like to take time just to express some discontent with the displays today regarding pressing for a ruling on a null issue it just felt like a waste of use of time for purely parliamentary flexing i truly feel as an example to the children present we could all agree that just because you can do something does not make it the right thing to do i hope we can truly do what's right and bring the focus to digging into the many moving issues we are setting before you as a community i would also like to thank the president for moving past the issue as a result and hope we can move towards resolving some of these issues we're
184bringing forward thank you thank you toya next we have dustin darden in person [Music] you have three minutes sir to fight vaccine misinformation like you have that right at all let's talk about who's really spreading this information here so every post that you do online about the vaccine will be flagged as safe except there are no long-term studies there's no generational side effects the short-term side effects are pretty debilitating and fatal and all the animals died during testing does that sound safe to you oh mr garden are you speaking mr garden are you going to testify are you going to address the board could you back my time up please it's public comment to the board not through your phone that was mindy robinson and you need to wear your mask that was mindy robinson
185and she was um i kind of halfway anticipated your uh your tyrannical emotions of um of sensory in my my three minutes that i waited here for and with that uh god did leave this to be said you know those were facts about how you're guilty of pushing a bio weapon on children and muslim their auction supply which is a domestic terrorist which you all are guilty of the entire diocese executive board you're all guilty of being domestic terrorist now my friend william topple was was sadly his life point of order could you pause my top point of order mr what's your plan welcome mr welcome mr darden is welcome to address the board he cannot will not attack staff thank you thank you madam president um so sadly my friend william topple his uh
186he lost his life at providence i was outside praying walking around recently and they refused to give him the treatment that he needed his uh funeral is going to be this friday on the corner of 15th and c at the assemblies of god church if anybody knew william topple so i do appreciate you interrupting my time so that that could be mentioned because i figured you would possibly 50 50. also providence hospital you're guilty of murder conspiracy to murder and you will be held accountable and all of you that are implicating this bio weapon injection your party to conspiracy against rage with the intention of taking human life which is a penalty which is being investigated by the good men and women that serve in the alphabet soup networks i pray that you guys repent
187from your wickedness [Music] and i pray for healing for those lives are being lost thank you next we have we have angela butler angela [Music] okay thank you so uh larry larry collins i think welcome you have uh three minutes either yes either one whichever one you'd like you can move that down if you'd like i want to thank you for uh hearing me out first thing i want to say is i am not a teacher but i do stand with the teachers that are have been in this room today that are online and they're outside to paraphrase one of the things that you said earlier dr bishop is the way that we are going to advance our math our literary skill skills is through the dedicated teachers that we have in this district one
188of the things that has constantly amazed me is how much time the teachers put into their classrooms before school after school on the weekends when you look at some of the statistics that sandy mentioned a little bit ago as far as the salaries uh somebody working at fred meyer cars safeway uh they're starting out right now they've got ads on their front doors saying that they start out at 20 dollars an hour that works out to about 42 walgreens i believe is paying 25 dollars an hour that works out to about 52k a year uh starting teacher with anchor school district is at 52k a year how are you going to maintain staff when i can run a cash register for the same amount of money y'all i've heard teachers talk about the insurance class
189time uh prep time being able to grade the kids work you're losing that's what's happening right now asd uh uaf did a study that showed that anchorage school district is losing ten percent of their teachers a year y'all keep hiring teachers you're running out of teachers y'all really do need to maintain what you have give them the voice give them ability to earn an honest wage the totem employees they're not even paying a minimum wage when you come into negotiations negotiate in good faith those teachers those totally employees they're there to serve the kids it's your job to serve your staff thank you sir that brings us now to uh item i on the agenda uh superintendent's update [Music] thank you madam president i have just a very brief update just some three topics that
190have occurred recently i do want to share uh those that uh wished greening well and were able to come out on a snowy day to the ribbon cutting that occurred october 14th so thank you that was a successful event and uh if you need a school on your visit list uh please uh head on uh into uh eagle river to see that new school um the international shakeout day is on the 21st this year so it's at 10 21 at 10 21 they try to keep it very very simple and i just encourage everyone we pre-register uh all of our departments and schools and uh we participate that practice year after year has done as well there was a mention of of just those practices seem redundant until i guess we we have an earthquake
191so they they do i recall um and then finally just this past week uh in the general leadership you've heard it here tonight as well uh there just is lots of um ups and lots of downs and so having students back and and being uh we had testimony here today uh in my school visits there's lots of joy uh in our schools and our team in our teachers in our classrooms with our children but it is a tough job and that's the down part of it in working with apa uh just streamlining communication would be of assistance and understanding the hardship was another topic it did come up this evening and i'll just throw it in that we actually do um go out to schools from this building if you're certificated uh every morning we
192facilitate a call to fill subjobs with certificated people and i am as well on that list and uh last year uh i was a um wonder park person that went to park every wednesday um we really discussed uh and put a name on it in regard to studying what they call the pandemic flux syndrome there's never an end to it and our initial surge capacity to be able to deal with an emergency is innate in us in our fight or flight we just take care of things um but at this point in time uh the manner in which the pandemic has moved on has added uh additional stress and they've actually coined the term now pandemic flex syndrome so we talked about what is it that we can do uh in working with apa uh
193just looking at some prioritizing of uh staff and resources to be able to set up our school days to target what matters most uh and have the essential fundamental skills being taught but uh be allowed to take extra breaks um you know passing time we we talked today in regard to prep time that is a serious concern uh just that 30 minutes when your students are away when we have our specials teaching uh many times we don't get that needed break so looking at ideas and prioritizing to solve for that i'll be coming back to the board with some ideas about how we can do that through this semester to move hopefully get into a better place especially with uh substitutes employees and the like and absences just from uh the pandemic so that's my
194update i look forward to coming back with you soon in regard to a plan thank you dr bishop any questions on uh the superintendent's update see none madam president oh yes i have a question as much as a comment i it was mentioned during public testimony tonight i've seen other districts in the u.s come up with incentives to identify and find substitutes in this in this year with everything going on and i know i would be very receptive to trying to identify ways to bridge that gap as we're hearing that's a big need so i'm looking forward to the discussion as well [Music] other comments yeah remember donnelly yeah um when i'm superintendent three years ago or so we um in response to some complaints from parents i brought up to the board um that
195i was getting reports that not all our schools were saying the pledge of allegiance and of course we do have a policy regarding that it's uh specified in ar 6115 [Music] and it's it's specifically that it shall be every school we have shall do the pledge of allegiance in the morning over the intercom system and so recently i got some more inquiries from parents that it wasn't happening in some of our schools and i visited several schools where in fact it wasn't happening and one of the schools was one that i specifically had brought up three years ago so i know you reached out to them and advised them that they were required to comply with the existing you know administration and board policy um what should we do at this point that schools aren't
196complying with the policy if you could report to me and offline and send me that notice we can address it with them [Music] okay so let's move on uh well we're already in actually in jay because we're doing our comments so uh we can take any board comments that you'd have at this time uh remember higgins i see your lights on there that it's easier we'll just come right around when you're done thank you um first of all i'd like to uh appreciate all the the comments tonight uh from from staff and and of course just general public um a lot of passionate uh information and some good valuable information one thing that was commented on i was kind of impressed with was having a base information in regards to the type of discrimination complaints
197that are raised the state has a state statute that says in the state everything dealing with discrimination has to be reported to eeo and they track it to ensure it's handled because it's not that high a priority and so i just proposed to the superintendent that that type of approach has been very effective in addressing uh issues that otherwise never got addressed and so if you had to report them it got logged it helped give um insurance that they're being handled and we're getting a trend on whether things are going up and down so i really like that particular state statute and i think it has real value so that recommendation i really appreciate um a lot of comments in regards to union contract negotiations the best i can tell you is that we're listening
198um uh i think of the worst part about this situation is staff not feeling appreciated because they're doing so much under tremendously difficult situations right now and it's really um disappointing to me that staff are not feeling appreciated because it i realize what you're going through um and um not having the subs not having the staffing and i'll just remember one comment the human resources and that was the effective way of recruiting on the difficult times is don't lose the staff you got that's about what it does come down to so i do appreciate that i recognize the importance of it and just to share that with you and i'm most concerned about the morale the stress that individuals are suffering from right now and i appreciate that um i also attended the girling middle
199school grand opening and a very impressive facility i do want to express appreciation to to two students that gave us a tour gave me a tour i was up with that truck to a group um anna i hope this grew up uh and if it's not right i screwed it up but i think that's right and britain nelson uh both of them just outstanding representatives of the school they gave a tour it was very informative very friendly and uh can't think of any better representatives of the school or asd than what they did and i like the fact that anna's going to be working towards working with special ed kids as i recall uh britain's going to keep her options open and personally that's the way i was too so i like both their their
200enthusiasm and their dedication and being in there in the afternoon doing this so my appreciation to both of them thank you thank you remember donnelly any i mean i'm sorry holloman any comments um yeah it's a little bit to follow up on what member higgins said i've watched some of the bargaining and i've listened to comments both from staff and from people approaching and unfortunately i think we have kind of a perfect storm we we have a year like none other where we're back to normal but i think anybody will agree it's anything but normal so it's fast dealing with a lot of issues that no one ever really anticipated it's consumptive it's problematic and there's a lack of resources for those things and then when when bargaining seems quite frankly to be pretty hostile
201it has a real impact for the most part in my personal experience the district and teachers are trying to do the same thing they're coming out from two different directions but we have the same problems to solve you know unfortunately one of the big ones is time uh teachers need time to do their work it's a it's a funny year in normal times one of the things that most people i think understand is teaching is one of those things where the actual time required to do the job never fits in the contract and in most situations in the private sector you have some way of dealing with that you you're just not expected to do things that you don't actually have time to do uh in education it's been that way for an awfully long
202time that you just find a way you take work home with you you stay late um and i would hope the district would acknowledge that district has a desire to train people up in programs that they think will make a difference to kids that's incredibly valuable and important too solving it is not easy there's not a magic solution on it but i think we have to do something that shows respect for the time that staff is putting in and somehow balance that against the district's needs i think both groups will walk away dissatisfied like every other time in bargaining but i think there is a way to do it where both sides feel respected and feel like the best possible solution has been worked out it's just not what i'm hearing anybody say about the
203process that we've got going on now i think it's very tough to change i would hope that we could find a way to change the atmosphere of it thank you thank you yes member wilson [Music] i i also want to share my appreciation for the work that our educators and staff have been doing i i try to say that every meeting because i truly do appreciate the work that you're doing to support our students to support our families and and i know it's work i truly do know that so i will continue to share my appreciation for that every meeting so thank you i i also um wanted to recognize that on october 11th it was indigenous people's day i wanted to recognize the contributions made by american indian and alaska native peoples and um
204one last thing i wanted to share is i i had the privilege of touring our gifted and gifted and ignite program and i got to learn about the work that's being done within that program to reach out to students around the district and identify students for that program that normally would not have been in the way things were previously set up identified and so i i really am excited to hear uh about the progress that they make in reaching out to the students um and identifying and supporting our gifted students um so i i just wanted to to give a shout out to to those folks because i got to be behind the scenes and and see some of the work that was being done and and i really appreciate that thank you remember lessons
205you have any comments [Music] now i want to go copy door and go do that uh take a tour i just i'm reflecting here that each of every person in this room comes wearing different hats tonight i'm a community member i'm a parent and sitting at this seat i'm a board member and that means that i'm one of the seven people who are empowered to do the most we can for our school system and i think that's an incredible responsibility because these seats will come and go but our system needs to sustain itself [Music] thank you remember donnelly thank you mr president first of all i want to let you know the parents out there the anchorage school district does have a policy that is the expectation that an opportunity shall be provided to all
206students and staff to salute the flag with the pledge of allegiance during morning announcements daily so um if you're a parent and you know that isn't happening in your schools please contact me or contact the superintendent or anyone else but if you hear about it not happening as several parents did for me contacted me the last few weeks and turned out to be true that it wasn't happening we don't you know there's like 90 schools in the anchorage school district we can't know what's happening in every school all the time but if you if you're a parent out there and you know this isn't happening please let us know because this is a policy of the anchorage school district the other thing i wanted to mention that i did submit a resolution to the president
207and i believe it's being referred to governance uh madam president uh regarding the letter that was sent on september 29th from the national association of school boards of which this district is a member to the department of justice asking them to utilize the patriot act against parents who they believed were threatening school board members or other public officials at meetings there was an analysis of the citations in that letter from the uh national school board association and under the 24 examples they cited 16 of them did not involve any threats of violence whatsoever they were simply people that were excited or animated or or ad you know advocated for their position regarding critical race theory or other things they didn't agree with i think it was very inappropriate for the national school board's association to
208send that letter it was only five days later five or six days later that the department of justice issued a memorandum that dealt with the request of the national school board association anybody that knows how the department of justice works that's extraordinarily suspicious madam president that only six days after getting a letter like that they would have a formal position on an issue usually it's vetted through the department uh carefully and there's a lot of speculation out there that it was an orchestrated coordinated effort that it was all prepared ahead of time in fact the pennsylvania association of school doors which is the state parallel to our alaska association school boards has now pulled out of the national association of school boards in protest through this inappropriate letter that they sent without check clearing it
209with the members their membership which i never heard anything about it i don't believe anybody in this district got any notice of it or else we would have been allowed to comment on it or consider you know consider it so i have introduced a resolution on this subject i think it was highly inappropriate for the national association of school boards and i agree with the pennsylvania association of school boards that said this was counterproductive they made their job trying to bring citizens together much more difficult because of this this request for federal interference with our school board process thank you member donnelly remember jacobs uh thank you madam president just uh another reminder that we do have um two subcommittee meetings tomorrow 3 30 and 4 30 for communications and governance finances on the 27th
210at noon i did want to express my appreciation to the staff at gruning for hosting remember higgins and i in the community we did take a separate tour so i could get a question in [Music] and the lastly i did want to express appreciation uh for everyone who took time out to come testify tonight uh as a public servant former public servant who's had to collectively bargain for a contract i understand that we're the supporter always welcome but uh simply aren't enough in and of themselves so thank you folks and uh we'll see you next meeting thank you dr bishop do you have any comments no madam president i've spoken enough this evening uh what about you guys over in the gallery any comments i'd just like to briefly just thank everyone who showed up
211tonight to testify to share your thoughts to write your letters um sometimes we can't respond to every single one but i do try i try to respond to every single one that that comes to the board and individual board members may also decide to uh respond as well but um these are difficult times i don't have the answer i wish i had the whole answer i wish i had everything that you need but i think together we will be able to figure that out um and like remember higgins it breaks my heart when people tell me they don't feel valued and then i'm searching to try to figure out what can i do and then i realize this is not a i marvel thing it is and it is all of us together no matter
212what job we're doing we got to figure this out and i really do believe we will figure it out because our kids deserve it and each one of you deserve it each each employee deserve it and so um we just gotta we gotta steady ourselves and do what we gotta do keep talking to each other and um we'll we'll make it there because our the at the core of our existence are the kids so i thank everybody and with that seeing no other uh everybody has had a chance to comment good night [Music] is