ASD School Board Meeting 06/01/21

001how are your life good evening today is tuesday june 1st this is our anchorage school board meeting members present in the boardroom our member higgins member jacobs member lessons member wilson member holloman is online [Music] mr donnelly is in the room and uh margot bellamy member bellamy is in the room [Music] so that's our roll call i'd like to ask mr jacobs to lead us in the pledge please [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] before we begin i would like to acknowledge with gratitude that the nine of people past and present who have lived on these lands since long before anchorage was here may we all be good

002stewards of these lands chennai we want to welcome you to our meeting and we thank you for attending and supporting the work of the anchorage school district and the and the school 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 talent and your tax dollars we are now at the approval of the agenda member holloman madam president i move that we amend the proposed agenda by eliminating the student hearing from the action item is there a second [Music] second any uh any discussion on the motion to remove the student hearing from the agenda any discussion see none that motion passes madam president move that we approve the amended agenda okay it's been moved and second that we approve the

003amended agenda all in favor say aye all right any opposes okay no we don't not for the agenda all right the agenda is approved as amended we are now at our community engagement section on the agenda do we have let's see i don't think we have any written do we have any board reports written reports i don't think we've met since we did not meet have not met rather since our last meeting community outreach reports and there's nothing posted for that either [Music] that brings us to our goal monitoring very nice thank you dr bishop [Music] thank you madam president today for uh goal monitoring and this is our our last goal monitoring of the year we've been utilizing uh this process to really build our muscles around how to do this monitoring in relation

004to the new board goals so we had a great discussion earlier but just wanted to share that this is uh while it's not the exact data that we will be looking at uh in the testing windows we put something together to again practice how we're going to look at student learning and measuring that outcome so the assessment is map growth and it used to just be map but the new name for it is map growth but it can give you a growth outlook as well as really an achievement where as a student today and how much have they grown as well so this is a a powerful tool that we utilize in asd and so uh focusing on the board goals and guard rails uh in i'm just gonna relate it back to the reading

005proficiency which isn't highlighted if you recall what we shared last week was specifically regarded um regarding reading because the interim was third grade which matched to that third grade student's proficiency so the goal was a smart goal which really limited a particular group of students that we were looking at and of course in order to meet those goals you would have uh you know years and years of of inputs and high quality instruction and and and intervening and multi-tiered system of support to look at that final so that's why we just talked about third grade but in contrast if you take a look at the math we are looking at the proficiency from three through nine and that's how the goal was written and i want to share that the interim goals that we uh

006tentatively designed around this when we're having our thinking they're in draft form uh that we're going to propose to the board but what we look at is setting uh specific interim goals so to meet the board goal the interim goals we have two of them the percentage of grade uh three through nine students on track to be proficient in mathematics and the assumative assessment peaks um as measured by the interim adaptive assessment map will increase uh from you know 40.59 in the fall of to fall 2021. we weren't able to have this year of learning due to the pandemic specifically with the assessment we did not take map assessment in the fall when we were out of school so of course we would adjust those when we bring them back to the board but just

007to give a mind's eye the interim will be pieces to see if we meet this larger goal and what we're looking at again is the data breakdown and the learning data of students so one of the things that um we practice in administration with our principals is that we are not in interested in increasing um scores or uh you know tests how kids do we are interested in improving student learning because we know that if we focus on high quality teaching and learning in our classrooms and utilize assessments that achievement will happen but if uh focusing on numbers sometimes you know it really sends the wrong message that we are interested in students first in students learning and that's what we're going to talk about today so we we're going to ask ourselves you know

008which students are above benchmark how many are below what is the growth that came up from a question from member higgins i don't want to know just what they're doing today but what's the growth potential and are we making that up for students who are already behind and those that are ahead do they get a year for year learning as well being in school um and then we want to know also if your goal was to proficiency on peaks that's a state summative assessment so we're utilizing map as an interim to predict uh and to to really change our instruction as needed with using it as a universal screener and a universal assessment to assist us on the way to meet your goal so a little bit about this map growth again even though it

009sounds funny we're going to look at benchmark data as well as growth data but the test itself changed its name they rebranded so generally it's given in fall winter and spring um i'm going to share the winter benchmark with you uh although at springtime our students were engaged with peaks and we had lots of computers out lots of computers in the school they were already at the same time the map window is the same time as peaks so really for some of our students especially those in middle and high we did not uh you'll see the number of students we didn't have a full-scale spring assessment and uh some students were engaged in the winter but generally it's fall winter spring what i'm going to share with you are fall scores from 19 to winter

010scores of 21 and generally you just don't do that you try to really look at the two the windows that were the same testing times but uh again we're building our muscle for practice and you need to start somewhere um there was a lot of criticism at the national level in regard to students anywhere in the us having to take their assuming of state assessments uh but um the administration uh biden administration really said no they wanted the data to be able to know where are we starting with where are we because they are pumping a good amount of money into public education and so i think they wanted a baseline um the prior year all the states did get a waiver from the state assessments we don't have peaks in 20 but we do

011have 21 peaks which we don't have the results yet but we use this for universal screening and that just means that everyone takes it till we get a baseline so that we can look at our mtss model which is our multi-tiered system of support and understand who needs advancement who needs uh additional re-teaching and who's learning in the classroom and trucking along exactly how they should it uh measures what students know and what they're ready to learn next um one of the beauties is uh this afternoon you had a four-part uh series of a rubric if you will about the board and how the board is when map gives a report back there's this beautiful report that teachers can use that has three different sections on their writ score which is just the unit that

012they use and it'll tell you what kids already know the middle one is what they halfway know and halfway don't know which is actually your learning level and the next set is what they're going to learn next because we always want to know not what students need to learn now but what is next um to have them prepared for the next grade level so uh map is one of the assessments that teachers parents students uh they seem to be personally motivated uh with to taking it it's amazing when you're in a school and kids want to look at their ritz score they don't even really know what rit means but they they uh get instant feedback uh from their performance it's dynamic i think we need to go back to the last thing it's a

013dynamic which means it adjusts to each student's performance level so this is key just so to have a mind's eye about this assessment it every time that a student re-enters it it's going to start them where they left off so a student that is advanced on grade level or a student that is behind is going to start where they fifty percent understood and fifty percent didn't so that that kind of frustration level or that learning level uh it's dynamic it'll change with them so it doesn't really frustrate students in addition it really tells us where they truly are i've seen second graders with outputs of sixth grade math um so it really gives us a good picture of learning levels so again it's where they're where they are are they above or below the grade

014level and again we've utilized assessments with national norms where they take a sample size and interpolate the data that way this is really they use the term as i shared before nationally representative and um it's about 24 000 schools across the nation millions of students uh that they have the assessment and they relate them back to the standards the common core federal standards which we have the alaska standards anchorage has the common core standards they all really um are are similar in ways some of the syntax is different but remember that level was increased uh during the time from really about six years ago at 2011 it started and then we had some adjustment changes and so understanding when we look back at assessments the assessments at that time had a lower bar for students

015you have to understand that that the not only for teachers and students but we took the old performance of what we expected and raised it about a year and a half about 18 months on every student so what a kindergartner used to know when i was a kid is much higher now it's much higher than it was eight years ago so so we have to keep that in mind that all even assessments change but also the standards alaska adopted new standards and and in fact alaska has um in relation to the 50 states the higher in the in the top quartile of standards i think we're 13th most difficult in the nation so just an fyi for that um so the national norms adjust for the starting achievement level it adjusts for the instructional exposure

016um it uh reflects effort behave behavior students will move on and then when they receive 52 to 48 um correct or incorrect it stops because it's not it's meant to find your learning level um this test it benefits from a large sample size and it has built on growth trajectories that we can understand into the future about what kids on a track might need so it really gives teachers insights as well as parents in fact this is for homeschool parents this is one of uh the the biggest test that i would say is requested by our parents uh one time we didn't print off the scores at um parent-teacher conference time and the only calls in the superintendent's office was because they did not get their math results so it is a really something that

017parents look at because it says my kid according to their grade level my child according to their school my child according to the state my child according to the nation and it gives peace of mind about what kids are learning all right so with that we can get school norms student norms and the like so let's look at the student counts we administered this for benchmark one which is the winter window for winter of 21 and the window was january 21 through february 24th so immediately we return on the 19th and the window opened so think about students who had not been face to face for almost a year and then they're taking an assessment most knew about it third graders didn't but it's a pretty simple computerized test because they were already on computers

018so but just get a picture of what that winter looked like um there were 8 225 students in grades three through nine who took the assessment students that remained at home did not take the assessment nor if you look at seven eight and nine it was used very specifically and deliberately to assist with different courses so that we're really going to focus if you look at the counts of third through sixth grade they're very different than the others elementary schools really provided this the sixth seventh and eighth and ninth grade at the secondary schools used it more deliberately but the board goals interim goals on math proficiency for all grades three through nine are going to be looked at as we move forward um with your board goal but today let's just take a look

019so here are the accounts again look at grade nine you can remember nine and nine there's only nine students so a lot of the information we're going to provide you this we're just going to say we don't have it because again um particular teachers wanted to know how their students were learning after they provided instruction so they had their students take map [Music] the um if we move on to the ethnicity we always like to take a look at this about who are our students if that was the count of students how does the count break up into who actually took the assessment and the district as a whole as i shared with reading matched we have 8.7 alaska native students that are self-represented we have in our district 10 uh a little over um

02010 asian so these were quite similar white students we have 40 in the district this represents of the people who took it 38 native uh pacific islander almost seven percent took the assessment we have seven four four point seven point four percent in the total district so we just wanted to see are the kids taking the test representative the general group or the aggregate that's put together not this aggregate so um yes we're confident that these represent our students so then we take a look at the interest groups and this is just another way to show uh students and their programs and last time there was a question asked about why i want to know the disadvantaged students with disabilities and so we didn't break these down by coupled we can do that it takes

021a lot longer analysis because remember we are looking at a point in time from 2019 to a point in time now so we had to match the student's id number throw out the scores that we didn't have two of and the like so when we look at uh the change so we can get to that um that can be in our new plan if the board desires but we did not on these day to do that just uh just the end of the year and getting summer school kicked off so we just pulled uh in general sense the single indicators of economically disadvantaged and and i would say economically disadvantaged is is um students that probably mirror um more so than any one demographic mirror of students who struggle in asd and so uh when

022we look at what we can do that's the same reason if you didn't know why we have title schools uh chapter one they were chapter schools before that's how the law started after a jenkins and jenkins uh report in the 60s to demonstrate that all kids can learn but some come to school um poverty impacts learning and it's the experiences you have and so to account for that uh additional funds and grants are placed into title schools so that's that's the history behind that so economically disadvantaged english language learners and students with disabilities and you can picture an english language learner i'm about to tell you about a math test that the questions are written in english and it's someone who's first language is a different language and if they're english language learners on our

023form they're still in the process of learning the language they haven't scored proficiency and moved on from the program so um just to have a mind's eye picture of who our kids are so with that we're going to take a look at the winter benchmark and i just want to share with our mtss model when we look at at or above benchmark when i had that 100 meter stick when i i'm going to talk about percentiles and at or above benchmark is someone who's hit the 40th percentile which on a traditional bell curve is like 40 to 60 or above and we have other tiers that we talk about mtss just like we're educators we throw these words around because we use them every day but it means multi-tiered system of support and it means

024you know we utilize student learning data to help us know what kids need next and so tier two students instruction rather not students um kids get the core class and they get more which is tier two so if someone said oh they're getting tier two supports they're getting classroom instruction and more and tier 2 is the 10th percentile to the up to the 40th to the 39th and then our tier 3 which is really students who are significantly behind is uh anything less than the 10th percentile so just so you have a mind picture mind's eye picture a benchmark who's meeting the benchmark for that grade level and here they are it's in green so that we color coded uh we had some feedback on our last slides for reading that it's easier when they're

025differentiated and so thank you for the feedback it helps us do the reports better so they're easier easier understood these are easily maybe i don't know easier to understand and if you take a look at their grade um and third fourth and fifth are very similar overall about 36 percent of students were at or above the benchmark for map growth and that's there at the bottom for all students but again if you look at seven eight and nine they're so minimal that we just don't even um it's it's really hard to make any kind of uh on on the benchmark level um interpretation but you'll be excited when i show you growth because i know member higgins talked about that earlier um three four and five again had very similar grade six was higher and

026this was at a statistically significant level at 43 when we say statistically significant it's just additional um analysis placed on it to see is it just by chance or was there really something there and if it's statistically significant it was there was something there that was different than just by chance grade nine had no students or above the benchmark but again i'm sharing why it was used very deliberately not as a universal screener so how did then if we look at these by that ethnicity that we just looked at where do our students uh fall and the student group with the most students at or above the math benchmark is white at 50 almost 51. the rate of students at or above the math benchmark for white student group was higher than any other group

027and that was also statistically significant not just by chance and the second highest student group at or above the math benchmark was the multi-ethnic student group at 34. so and then the asian was at almost 33. so those were the highest and of course at benchmark at or above or below or just we we bifurcated this we said who's moving along at benchmark they're more like they're they're on track and learning at that grade level and then below again [Music] asd although we had um part of five years ago in the discussions at the board level if you recall the standards had changed but our instruction hadn't so we're really working towards those higher standards and incorporating those in the kids in the system got caught between you know k12 i had set a standards

028and then it flipped on me and then the rest so we have that catch-up growth that we're talking about for a lot of our students sometimes it's just exposure to what you're supposed to learn uh that that is is key so with that i'll go right to the interest groups with the benchmark distribution and the student group with the lowest percentage of students were students with disabilities those that already were identified with the difference in performance with iq that's why they do qualify because we know that there needs to be other inputs that they students have the capacity to learn but what are those things we need to do uh to assist students in learning and then the second lowest was a demographic group the native hawaiian pacific islander and then english language learners were

029at 17 so we have work to do both reading and math hence when we when we talk about how did we get to these goals the data in front of you are sharing the importance that the board selected reading and math goals along with um expanding uh graduation rate beyond just getting a graduation but having you know being career and life ready so when we look at um another look and this is map growth that are on track to make it to peaks so this is the second look that we're using the same assessment for on track what we've done is we've interpolated the data which really interpolation and the basic form is it's really a statistical measure that you take known values and you estimate the unknown values so when you interpolate we're taking

030one assessment and and don't have all the features but we're interpolating that they can they'll make it on the peaks before they actually make it so we're almost in predicting by interpolating the data and what we found and not just our um kids in asd but this is on that national group if students hit the 65th percentile they were 99.9 almost guaranteed to pass our state assessment so the 65th percentile remember if you're on benchmark you're 40th or above you're guaranteed to to be proficient or advanced on peaks if you hit the 65th on on this assessment so just want to share of the students who hit the 65th percentile or above this is your on track data these are your data for on track which you see that it dropped a little bit from

031benchmark to on track is about one-fourth of our kids we can guarantee right now today oh yeah they're probably they're going to pass the peaks they're they're going to be proficient or above um and uh the rest we we are going to work on you know it's not that uh statistically sound in in that estimate if you will that guess um grades three four and six had similar levels of projected proficiency ranging from 26 to 28 and grade 5 had a lower projected at almost 20 percent so um that that uh changed a little bit but grade 9 had no students at this time but remember it was given in stu in it in an mtss modeled classroom to catch kids up so they already knew that students were not on track seven eight and

032nine they already they're in a class specifically to help them and they use this for the mtss model so i just want to clarify that so when you say okay these are the kids in the grade levels who are those kids in the grade levels the students with the most students on track for peaks are about 38.4 percent when we shared the last peaks assessment about forty percent of our kids pass when we share nape these are these numbers should be coming back to you that they're they're pretty sound in this in in the statistical significance of the the um the standards that are being addressed and and the achievement there the rate of students on track for peaks proficiency for the white students was higher than any other group and the second highest student

033group on track for peaks math was the multi-ethnic at almost um i'd like to round that up to 23 but really the math teacher me can't but you know almost 23 and about 21 of our asian pacific islanders oh no asian students non-pacific islanders native hawaiian pacific islanders are together so um again the groups that we really look at that have the biggest headwinds again are the next student group so not necessarily ethnicities we um what we really look at what are the on any child whoever they are what are the headwinds that they're facing before they you know that that other students don't have to face economically uh disadvantaged um english language learners and students with disabilities these are some headwinds that kids need to overcome and and we have to have additional supports

034uh to build capacity again for that um outcome that all students achieve that is our mission so if you uh take a look here um we have um the student group um prior to this with the um math proficiency the the lowest percentage on the last slide was native hawaiian pacific islander but the second lowest was students with disabilities [Music] now this is um the growth so now this is map growth and the growth type and this is what member higgins was talking about about there's this um study that was done in kennewick washington and they really coined the terms about growth and ketchup growth students who are behind can't only grow a year they have to grow more than a year like one and a half times if you look at a a um

035a trajectory that's times two you know it's a straight line up like this a 45 degree angle cut it um so think about kids have to not only grow a year but we have to make up time if we ever expect kids to get on grade level kids who are advanced also deserve a year for a year so if i'm in third grade and i happen to be performing at the fifth grade level on map by the time third grade ends i should be on the sixth grade i should be able to do that so a year for a year all students aren't worried the problem sometimes when we start talking about these is the easiest way to get everybody or to to change and get rid of your learning gap is to have everybody

036lower we don't i don't buy into that we have to ensure everyone in our system learns a year for a year and if kids are behind students are behind they have to learn more than a year so we are not interested in regressing regressing to the mean we want to show achievement for all that's what the board goal is about not about eliminating the discrepancies but about achievement for all and then we figure out how do we eliminate um the disproportionality but we don't eliminate the disproportionality by lowering the mean lower in the bar so i want to make that clear but the growth is defined as flat growth modest growth typical growth year to year is typical growth and aggressive growth is like at the 75th percentile or higher that you actually um scored

037and your growth rate was one of the highest growth rate which places you on the percentile so with that um this is exciting because this is what um not very many other assessments can tell you so this one shares with us uh overall about three percent of students below the math benchmark achieved aggressive growth between winter of 2020 and winter of 2021 and we need to get that to about 20 as our goal so our goal is so it's about 3 right now we need to boost that so that we have kids making up learning uh grade three had counts below five due to the standard testing range for map if you look grade three there was no prior assessment to show the growth so that's why that looks like that um where there's zero

038zero zero zero zero they had no assessment in map growth because the k through two map test for kids is younger kids is very different than this one um so uh let's see grades seven and eight had higher rates of aggressive growth and this is the good news that when we place kids with high quality instruction specifically to catch them up they outpaced the norm so if everybody is three percent the kids in seven eight and nine we know we place them in the classes specifically for a specific set of instruction so yay secondary teachers because look they outpaced the growth grade nine they didn't have the prior those nine kids didn't have a prior assessment in middle school because we just moved to everybody being assessed this is map is actually even kind of

039new to asd over the last five years so um when you look at the growth the aggressive growth which means they if you took their score and how far they grew compared to everybody else they were up here on that yardstick they were right rah-rah they got it done so let's look at these people who are they so um the student group with the highest rate of aggressive growth is going to be on the next one is actually students with disabilities um so because i have uh the student groups now but um i'm jumping ahead of myself but look 5.8 they outpaced the growth of the district uh by two percent which is a good thing the student group overall with the second highest rate was black students at 4.3 seven or you know um

040and then followed by native hawaiian pacific islander 3.72 so we're we're happy that when we do focus we know it can be done our teachers that look to specifically focusing on teaching what kids need to know next works and i shared the students with disabilities already at 5.08 english language learners outpaced uh the um the the overall as well and the economically disadvantaged was right about where where we were with the whole group but e-l-l also outpaced so in summary i really like this stuff the student groups struggling with math are pretty much the same as we have seen for many years as well as with other subjects native hawaiian pacific islanders english language learners students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged we know that when we provide instruction we have to understand what are the

041barriers or the headwinds to be able to adjust for that and provide that high quality instruction to our students high rates of aggressive growth shown by our most struggling students as a positive sign and um the increase we actually need to increase the rate of math proficiency throughout our our system and and that's our goal and again we looked at fall scores to winter which generally you don't do we are during this pandemic time when kids aren't really on a normal or regular assessment schedule we're trying to practice what we've learned uh about goal setting and monitoring uh to provide as much information as we can as a baseline for the board so that concludes uh the goal monitoring thank you i'll welcome your questions thank you dr bishop questions from the board i'll start

042[Music] grader who's i guess with fifth grade math class or something else what do they do when they're in sixth grade to give them a uh you know the advancement of a year's academic some of these kids i guess ready for algebra at some point or some other issues but the the deadline i mean the the limitations of the elementary schools are there and because the class materials and the like and that they may not be ahead in the other classes as well it may be but they you know they want them socially emotionally parents you know in that group for development they don't want to separate it too much anyway but um what do we have anything that we do for that sort of situation sure um through the president member higgins uh we

043do we have several things um depending on the location of the school some have chosen uh and a lot of that is run through um talented and gifted and uh they walk to this school if they're co-located many of our campuses are co-located to another building where students can walk over to that other building and get the instruction in a zero hour what we actually see the most of though and especially recently is our utilization of online math and instruction and so uh we we have always had the online but we really kept students kind of at a pacing guide and when what we've learned uh through really moving through the pandemic as well and and the understanding of the power of kind of rolling enrollment and allowing students to move at their pace uh

044a lot of that has changed where student have actually finished a course like when only three fourths of the school year is over and we have allowed them rolling enrollment to start on the next course and so i would say the majority of advancement if there isn't a certified teacher or a teacher in the building that knows how to do that some of our buildings we'll have northern lights that actually splits up and kids can go to the next grade level but when you hit sixth grade to your point what do you do uh utilization of you know co-locating of campuses as well as online learning and some have zero hours where the teacher comes in in the morning and the students get there early so lots of different methods it's written into their plans

045and and i can get a more in-depth of the number of kids in each of these but i've actually visited buildings and classrooms where all of those things were going on um remember holloman i see your hand uh yes was the audio coming through clear on this yes okay um and i think i know the answer to this but just to be sure when teachers aren't giving a map test is it adjusted for the time of the year that it's given if we give a fourth grader the map test in september is it looking for what they should know in march or is it looking for what they should know in in september is my question that's a great question and it is uh normed by those testing windows so there's an expectation that the

046assessment actually the expectations go up as the year progresses so that was a great question so it will adjust um not only to the what the student knows but also to what they should be knowing at that next time at that next level [Music] hence the difficulty in sharing you fall scores in winter because we know that that's already a change in there thank you remember jacob thank you um superintendent bishop we have the map growth scores um for sixth graders you mentioned were statistically significantly higher um what do we know about what we're doing right there sure so um that's a great question and we looked at that when we looked at the data as well and due to the number um [Music] what we guess is that it's it's back to what member

047higgins says that we're meeting student needs more in the middle school because the sixth grade um some of those kids are giving discrete courses in sixth grade and the the number of students changed and it didn't change enough to where they didn't use it but they did use uh we tested enough sixth graders and so our uh next step that this question that we asked ourselves when we received the data was let's separate these by school and then c to your exact question was it um some of our our when we processed these it was about targeted specifically math courses to students needs rather than just a sixth grade math book but it altered into algebra p algebra things like that um so what our next step was is to break them down by schools

048and then uh then we can look at specifically are these are is there a pattern to where students are to answer that question so that is uh one of our questions to dig deeper this summer into the data thank you thank you remember lessons did i see your hand [Music] you saw my light flashing um i had it i have two thoughts if i can go to both of them um the first one is at the work session earlier and maybe this is a suggestion for the future it would be wonderful to celebrate the educators who are helping accelerate our students the most you know what are they doing right and if if they're hitting the nail on the head then i think that should be publicly praised and celebrated and i think that's a

049wonderful idea um and the second comment is really a reflection on your statement at the beginning that we're really interested in improving student learning not necessarily the business of test taking and i feel like that's a really hard thing um the hard path to navigate how else can how else can we demonstrate student learning maybe that's my question yeah um through the president to member lessons that's great and i mean there's portfolios there's lots of things the point of the matter is i highly value i i believe that there is validity and reliability in these data but what happens is when we say we're interested in getting students test scores up to me that is the adult interest what i'm interested in is ensuring that students learn and these data show me that students are

050learning rather than another outside interest by the adults to just have a number be a number and so that that was what i was trying to communicate but there are you could do portfolios there's teacher um teacher observations that we use um there's lots of different types of things but in in the the for the size of our district and the information that we need to make decisions these assessments are sound they're reliable and valid it's just that to me semantics matter because i always want to put it back to the student uh not on an arbitrary number because i mean i mean like when you say you want grades to go up i mean you can just change a grade but what you want is like student learning to improve and and i know

051that sounds silly but i just want to i always just try to share that with people because they are little human beings that we want to do well yeah all right and dr bishop i have a question you know you talked about flat modest typical aggressive growth what do they all have in common is it the i think i know it's high quality instruction that would be the commonality across all of those is that your assessment um well i i would say that students learn best when they learn things that they need to know and they're not in a classroom doing things that they already know necessarily um but yes i what matters the most in student learning is the instruction from the teacher high quality instruction yes that's right okay that looks like all

052of our questions thank you uh dr bishop and thank you for your great question and i did not want to take anything away because teach parents or teachers or you know kids first parents are their first teachers but when they come into school high quality instruction matters i have three children myself so thank you [Music] all right we're going to move on our agenda that takes us to our public input on our sr3 funds and we have people who have signed up for that [Music] so first i need to read my little statement the board welcomes public testimony we value public comment as it ensures that we remain aware of public thoughts ideas and concerns and informs our decision-making process for this section of our testimony we've set aside time um so that your testimony

053will be those wishing to testify will have three minutes to testify when 30 seconds remain a chime will ring to inform you that you can finish your sentence and so with that we will go right into our sr3 relief funds input [Music] danielle kemp are you on the line hello yes we hear you you have three minutes all right welcome um before thank you before i begin i just want to make sure um you know i have a question that you know when i signed up i was first on the list for essa funds testimony and i just want to make sure i get an opportunity um to sign to to speak on the general testimony because i signed up for that as well but only got put on the list for the essence [Music]

054please proceed with your testimony okay no i was i was just asking a question i just want to make sure i could still speak for general testimony because i applied for that testimony as well [Music] even if it's at the end i would still like an opportunity to speak on the general testimony mr kim down to a minute and 10 seconds uh yeah two minutes okay um wow uh so i would like to thank everybody for the opportunity to speak [Music] so yeah just want to make sure the answer funds are used for the following uh making sure that we have uh racially equitable curriculum within the asd holding annual racial equity training for all staff and bringing on extra uh staff you said i only have a minute left uh you you keep going

055we'll let you know you have a minute and 41 seconds okay um all right um all right let me get back on my my game it was kind of throwing off i just want to make sure i could testify uh later on so you know to me all right so hiring teachers of color is especially important everybody should know that right research shows that all students benefit from having teachers of color the study after study from the learning policy institute to the center for american progress to the national center of education statistics has shown empirical evidence which reveals that when taught by teachers of color students of color in particular have better academic performance improved graduation rates and more likely to attend college this is of the utmost importance in the asd where students of

056color make up 60 of the student population yet whose academic opportunities and outcomes are well below their white counterparts you couple that with reducing class sizes then we will meet and exceed the asd goals that dr bishop so eloquently spoke about earlier today in reading math proficiency and life college and career readiness so i would employ the asd to make this a top priority for our students sake thank you and i look forward to talking to you later for general testimony thank you mr kemp next we have star marsette [Music] telephonically miss marcette are you there what is it yeah i'm here oh welcome you have three minutes hi thank you good evening first i want to congratulate our new school board members on their election to the board and then i'd like to point

057out that in our 2021-22 school budget sr2 funds are being used to pay 235 plus teacher salaries the district was facing a 25 million deficit in 2021-22 operating budget and 10 million in transportation we have done a good job of robbing peter to pay paul salaries utilities and other costs and services will continue to rise and one-time funding will not be there then what you have heard the need for more teachers i do not disagree but once you hire those teachers how will you continue to pay them when one-time funding is gone and juno is not creating the revenue stream that will support our schools those funds should be used for programs and salaries that can sustain one-time funding the after three funds should be used to support the goal set by the board community

058student parents and staff as first-time board members it's easy to want to support the promises you made by running for school board but all decisions should be around the goal set to support reading math and college career in life ready schools we all suffer when we graduate students without the above skills there are many reasons why students aren't able to reach a third grade reading level not having universal preschool parents who do not have the resources to help their child's learning and are just trying to survive suspensions accountability of teachers to follow programs seem successful in helping students read equity and programs and many more in june or at your next retreat you will be receiving the next steps to just supporting the goal set the superintendent instead excuse me we'll present the last in

059the strategic plan which will show the objectives of how the district will meet the goals and interim goals set during the retreat before voting on how to spend the sr-3 funds those plans should be reviewed as to how that money can best be spent to support all children and their success through the goal set by the board of communities i would remind you when individuals testify it is usually a very small representation of our overall community teachers and parents i listen to the last town hall meeting we're looking for input for community on how to spend the sr3 funds and what groups you would still like to reach out to but i have not heard any representation from our special education parents and students remember all means all within the achievement gap among our student

060groups you will find that special education students experience a higher rate of suspensions fewer educational opportunities and lower graduation rates than many of our other groups please use funds to support our students and support the goal set by our community thank you thank you next we have annie messi in person welcome hello my name is annie massey i'm a parent of three children two in the anchorage school district i'm representing myself i just want to thank you for this opportunity to share thoughts and feelings and offer support and encouragement in prioritizing academic with the esser 3 funds since 1981 the anchorage school district has consistently plummeted every year in the nape scores from second in the nation down to 49th the anchorage school district has a very low benchmark that says students are on track

061if they are between 40 to 60 percent proficient after this past year the anchorage school district has revealed that only 28 of students have met that very low benchmark dr bishop superintendent has agreed in saying quote this is highly concerning and dr mark stock remarked when asked about criteria and accountability for student outcomes in the fall of 2020 he said quote teaching isn't teaching if students aren't learning so that is why i ask this board to prioritize academic outcomes our previous board prioritized in the middle of a quote pandemic anti-racism policy and equity policy work over getting students in schools learning they had time to prioritize renaming of east high school and actively looking at renaming another hiring six new administrators salaries adding up to six hundred thousand dollars changing our equal opportunity office to

062a compliance office writing social statements and commitments as per tenants of a movement that the public had zero input on [Music] i just want to remind the school board that they're that you're there because our children and their academic education and nothing else that means that this money needs to prioritize academic outcome not anti-racism and equity work this includes student needs that are determined by the parent and the teacher this includes the teacher this includes excellent curriculum and pedagogy parental involvement and engagement that we know works and helps those outcomes thank you for your time thank you that concludes the individuals who have signed up to testify on the sr-3 funding we will now move on to our um public testimony which is on our non-agenda items and non-action items again the board welcomes public

063testimony we value public comments as it ensures that we remain aware of public thoughts ideas concerns and concerns as well as inform our decision making process there is a one hour time limit for this part of our testimony uh testimony in excess of one hour will be heard at the end of the meeting you may also submit uh testimony in writing each person will have three minutes to testify when 30 seconds remain a chime will ring to inform you so that you can finish your sentence and with that our first person wanting to testify is uh megan holton telephonically megan are you there [Music] can you hear me yes we can megan you have three minutes thanks my name is megan holton and i'm a graduate of west high and i have a white son

064who will enter the anchorage school district in 2022. i'm speaking today against the efforts to stop the use of culturally responsive teaching and social social emotional learning put another way i am speaking in support of open facilitated conversations about the diversity of experiences of students in our classrooms and the cultures they come from and i am speaking in support of approach to teaching that engages the whole child in the way people actually learn in the world and relationship with themselves their families peers and school communities these approaches are in line with what the district has been working toward and what our new school board has been elected to further it seems as though the people currently organizing against culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning are scared of the conversations that happen during facilitated conversations

065and discussions of race and racism in early january i testified for the first time in support of the proposed anti-racism plan in instructional equity policy it seemed then like a pretty straightforward step towards plans and policies that our school district should have already had in place the level of discussion debate and interest in these two policies highlights the need for a more curricular approach to talking about race and culture and the many ways people identify or are identified in the world rather than leaving this up to individual teachers or schools culturally responsive teaches teaching builds from the diversity of experiences of multiple races and ethnicities rather than centering just white women class history educational success can and does happen with and because of anti-racism and instructional equity policies my hope is that the board the

066school board can provide guidance and leadership so that students can talk about race and racism know that these conversations happen among students anyway and it makes sense for the district to think about its role in such a pivotal topic without having these skills how can we become anti-racist without knowing about the history of racism and the construct of race in our country how will you evaluate the policies and norms that perpetuate it i believe public school is a great place to have these conversations thank you for your time thank you next in person we have roslyn grady weish okay does it look like roslyn is here is she online okay continuing on we have zayana brownlow telephonically okay i'll circle back to i'll try to circle back to those two i don't see either one

067of them uh heidi northover heidi are you online star six heidi if you can hear [Music] hello can you hear me yes we can you have three minutes thank you good evening this is heidi northover i would like to welcome the new school board members and thank you all for your time as a teacher who is in the classroom with brilliant young people every day i would like to thank you for the steps you are taking that prioritize and center students that center students safety well-being and their endless academic potential as someone who was teaching in classrooms that had staff and students out sick including hospitalized with kobe um i wanted to testify that i stand with science-based covert precautions that protect the health of our students and their families as someone who rushed students

068to safety while the wall of my classroom unhinged during the 7.1 magnitude earthquake i also stand with structurally sound and safe buildings with proper ventilation for our students to learn in and breathe in i'm so thankful my students have the option to access the nutrition they need to learn i also stand with the social emotional learning as a means of providing our students with the skills they need for success in school in college the workforce and beyond i stand with board members taking steps to break down barriers our students face such as racism and socio-economic inequality i'm here for the systemic changes necessary until we reach equality for each and every student because when we listen to families of color and look at the school data it's clear we have not reached equality for every

069student in our district yet which is why i'm so disappointed to see politicians and groups who are not versed in what actually goes on in the schools who are not educated in the curriculum the learning objectives and actual needs of our students taking the focus off reals pressing student means to center partisan adult issues whether it's an attack on critical race theory which by the way is not being used or permitted promoted by asd or a parent's rights group posting hateful anti-lgbtq propaganda or false information i just stand against and condemn anyone who's misinforming or fear-mongering instead of centering what our students need in these classrooms i thank school board members who are choosing to center asd students and hope that all board members will condemn the spread of misinformation and hate speech at a

070local and state level thank you so much for your time thank you next telephonically telephonically we have sarah switzer sarah are you on the line i am can you hear me we can welcome you have three minutes thank you i am here for general testimony and to request that relief funds be used for access to preschool teacher staffing and to continue addressing culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning i also really want to thank the school board for its support of the anti-racism and instructional equity policies and ask that we keep doing this improvement work around diversity equity and inclusion as a community member social worker and mom of two asd students i believe that culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning are essential components to education culturally responsive teaching ensures equitable access to education

071for students from all cultures recognizes the importance of including students cultural references and all aspects of learning and builds on those students cultural cultural context in a way that is strength based social emotional learning is foundational in teaching academics from my perspective is my child kind can they wait their turn having patience and self-regulation skills do they share can they identify their feeling states and how to manage and cope with unpleasant ones do they have empathy for another child who is struggling and the compassion to offer to help them culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning help our children's cultures be honored and included and strengthens their sense of self and community and in our schools thank you for your consideration thank you next in person we have taylor mitchell welcome you have three minutes

072i'm taylor mitchell with the alaska black caucus there is an active effort in our community to eliminate anything that requires emotional intelligence empathy a focus on mental health current events and other relevant topics due to a false narrative that it takes away from education i'm going to focus on four things today first we need to retain teachers of color because they bring in a different perspective and lens our kids will encounter in the real world asd has not done a good job at retaining teachers of color that have driven many of them away and as a child of a current asd teacher i see the battle first hand our students deserve a diverse range of teachers that represent the popul the population of our city second culturally responsive teaching is an established method that recognizes

073the importance of including students cultural references in all aspects of learning if we remove this we are saying our students cultures don't matter it's not important what makes them them our students experiences upbringings and backgrounds continue to evolve classrooms now reflect families of varying races cultures and social economic statuses the way our teachers teach shouldn't be one size fits all culturally responsive teaching acknowledges that there's nothing wrong with traditional text using curriculum but strives to include literature from other cultures and including more diverse authors students should see how what they're learning is applicable to them third social and emotional learning seo is an integral part of education and human development sel is the process by which we acquire and apply the knowledge skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities manage emotions and achieve personal and

074collective goals feel and show empathy for others establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions so what's so bad about that certain groups in our community want to strip our schools of any kind of emotional social and cultural sensitivity the ramifications look like this history teachers would not be able to adequately teach about things like the trail of tears the civil war the civil rights movement redlining concentration and internment camps for example english teachers would have to avoid teaching almost any text because we're removing cultural recognition or significance and last the big buzzword that we keep talking about critical race theory it's an academic concept that's more than 40 years old misinformation is consistently spread even though we're not using it the core idea is that racism is a social construct and

075that it's merely it's not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice but it's also embedded in our legal systems and policies but remember it's just a theory like we teach theories in science math and history or we can just remove all the theories as a conservative myself some conservative organizations wrongly attribute and blame a whole host of issues to crt it's like a catch-all for everything that's wrong critical race theory is not a synonym for cultural responsive teaching social emotional learning social justice anti-racism or structural equity we can craft our curriculum to be appropriate for each aids group age group kids are human beings capable of processing complex information and our world immensely affects them we should teach them to be well-rounded in academics be emotionally and culturally intelligent and be able to process

076social issues thank you thank you next telephonically we have erica ahman erica are you can you hear i see you star six okay erica it looks like you're unmuted okay erica we will come back to you so don't hang up we just can't hear you uh next telephonically we have rihanna gay rihanna yes can you hear me we can welcome thank you hello thanks hello board my name is brianna gay tonight i am here to share three items number one there is a strong need for additional avenues of feedback from educators hearing not only from the employees or community members who give written or verbal testimony but all individuals involved with asd janitors principals teachers all the staff ideas to be used besides emails could be text message feedback hustling phone or even phone bank

077calls i recommend additional avenues of feedback to the school board in order to reach our school board goals and guard rails we have to hear from staff directly please investigate ways to encounter unfiltered dialogue and a better culture of environment item number two coming back around to guard goals and guard wells school board goals are measurable school board guard wells community values what students know and are able to do was presented at april's board meeting fast bridge data reading math life and career ready kindergarten to second grade scores where scores regress from the year 2019 until 2021. the problem is and has been the death of learning loss fast bridge percentile changes by ethnicity resulted in six out of the eight groups regressing between negative two percent up to negative six percent the solution could

078be asd considering a range of options including two full-time staff in each k-2 classroom either two teachers are one teacher and another paraprofessional smaller class sizes specific targeted interventions for students that need to get up to grade level or need more support we have already offered summer school and tutoring well done please allow k-2 grades to have full-time aids bodies in our classroom to bring up el a math etc we can do it with highly we can do high quality education with more bodies being used the right way so they are ready in grade three for peaks and maps the third and last item i want to share with you is looking at equity defined as asking ourselves what does each student need equity must be used to address learning loss and to meet our

079diverse student bodies despite some pushing the ban to critical race theory educators must be committed to helping students examine the systems in which we all live and work and help build a better future for everyone it is simply called good teaching to tell truth and have students look at a variety of perspectives and experiences a lie is always more of a threat than the truth even when the truth is painful our children need to be need to understand the painful truth of racism so you guessed it we don't repeat it please investigate unbiased unfiltered information regarding crt thank you for your time thank you next telephonically we have toyah brown toyah hi thank you my name is toyah brown i'm also a member of the alaska black caucus i would like the board to know

080that i do not think you allow children to learn if you have more equity in learning i do not think you can properly educate any student white black brown or the like if you ignore the environment in which children are learning i would deeply appreciate consideration for curriculum review and i would like to see a plan for increased education on american history as it relates to the actual ongoing events of that were specific to incidents of slavery and the achievements of bipoc americans in american history removing the filter creates individuals who are tolerant and less likely to participate in the current fallacies that are in our textbooks in the anchorage school district today i find it is critical to implement equity training for all persons on asd campuses including teachers staff and if possible the

081apd officers who are president responding at our school campuses i would like the school board to understand our demands for cultural responsible teaching and social emotional learning and awareness will not stop my daughter's ib literature class this year was the first example of cultural responsible teaching that i have seen in our 10 years in the anchorage school district this was not a fun buoyant change but it was a curriculum inclusive of literary works from various cultural perspectives and honest discussion on the historical events which impacted those works i really hope the school board will consider equity when you guys are under review for this coming school year and i greatly appreciate your time and consideration thank you so much thank you next in person we have sarah katherine bryan [Music] welcome you have three minutes

082thank you hi um i'd like to echo uh what many people have said tonight and in the interest of time just go through some bullets um i'd like to get straight on the definition of critical race theory which is just an academic movement of civil rights scholars who want to interrogate how the law intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream approaches to racial justice inclusion this in any curriculum is a matter of equity i think personally it would be a pedagogically valuable exercise it makes civics in history more tangible to students um it encourages students to be to be more civically engaged um it also helps students hone their critical thinking skills i personally did not go to a high school or at a school that taught critical race theory and it has

083been a trip learning about american history and then returning to you know my natural state of patriotism so i i think it would be best to um to teach it obviously but the reason why i felt compelled to come back um after hearing about comments made in last week's meeting in opposition to teaching critical race theory is that i think it's a fundamental misapprehension of what critical race theory is and i perceive it to be a part of a broader attack on fact-based historical narratives um and particularly the inclusion of people of color in those fact-based historical narratives um so thank you for your time and advocacy thank you next telephonically we have jacob powell jacob [Music] star six to unmute hello yes we can hear you you have three minutes welcome thank you uh

084first of all i'd like to say thank you for um listening to community testimony and considering but um and for making the time i like to quickly provide testimony in support of efforts for different equitable outcomes for students including social emotional learning cultural responsive teaching mental health support and comprehensive education um first of all since um there's been a lot of discussion about it and i'm starting with um issues of culturally responsive teaching uh as a white man i would also like to strongly support the instruction of racism as a social systematic conflict um some folks have circled the modern instructional race that goes beyond the whitewashed portrayal of the civil rights movement if unnecessary uncomfortable and it does require comfortable work um but not that's not not any of us comfortable not on calculus

085and it draws attention to a troubling legacy of state-endorsed racial violence in this country and it's necessary that necessary comfortable attention to race is not a choice for folks that don't pass this right like i do and it's responsibility of our school system to ensure that we do everything we can to dismantle racist thoughts and structures which starts with learning they exist in the first place that uncomfortable work allows us to progress all of us together towards a more complete and whole life with stronger community relationships just speaking after a couple i one of the most incredible experiences i had the privilege of having was when i got out of college and realized that there was a lot more about race and history in america than i had learned in high school and it allowed

086me to more deeply engage with my community more um seriously understand the thoughts and concerns and experiences of people around me and it made me realize um you know how important that is to child students in schools and how much um that all folks including white folks experience negatively are impacted by racism even though you know obviously um we are not at the target of social and um societal contracts with racism i'd also like to point out that uh traumatizing life altering negative experiences of things like racism and sexual assault are carried with us for a whole lot they affect school performance they affect work performance upon leading the education system and so many of these issues and instances could be could be prevented reduced or more effectively processed if schools put an emphasis on

087comprehensive securitization comprehensive education on race and now i think that they're incredibly important efforts and i'm very happy to see you that the anchorage school district is taking steps in that direction and it's one of the many reasons why i feel that i would never there's no place i would rather raise my children than anchorage and a big part of that is the school district and the serious efforts that they're making to improve every day so thank you for your time thank you next telephonically we have donovan camp donovan yeah hello hi welcome you have three minutes hey my name is donovan camp uh born and raised in alaska here and uh i've grown increasingly concerned about some of the uh outgrowing movements that are speaking against some of the anti-racism anti-racism uh learning efforts

088that have been done especially in these last couple years as someone who's grown up in the alaska school districts i've had to do a lot of adult learning on different racial events and uh in my life and and i've regretted that i was didn't know these things beforehand and i kind of wish that my schooling had taught me those things um also i've done a lot of uh kind of social emotional learning that has helped me as an adult in the workplace and uh with my peers um and so i'd like to speak today in support of uh culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning uh within our school districts i think would be a huge benefit if we support these things for our whole community here and if we do that i think alaska

089would be a place i really would like to continue to live here thank you thank you next telephonically we have chanel afghan afghan hi that's me hi welcome you have three minutes thank you so my name is chanel afghan i'm a community member i vote in northeast anchorage i've also substituted as a teachers they did numerous schools through asp and i'm speaking today in favor of culturally responsive teaching so i think educational material is just plain easier to understand when it's in terms of your own experiences and a school district with wonderfully multicultural student body has such rich opportunity to teach curriculum reflective of their cultures i think also this is culturally responsive teaching is an opportunity to lift up those student populations with more students below learning benchmarks than their white peers i.e alaska

090native asian black hispanic and native hawaiian pacific islander students currently below winning benchmarks can have a great like key part in meeting that 20 aggressive growth goal outlined by dr bishop earlier today using culturally responsive teaching i would say benefits aren't only limited to these groups though we know that culturally knowledgeable students are better able to participate actively in numerous cultural environments and they can engage more deeply with local cultural communities this means that students across the board can acquire insights from other cultures without diminishing their own and finally in order to be culturally responsive educators need to work closely with parents elders local leaders to continually build on the strengths of cultural knowledge that students bring with them from home and community i think this is a clear line to lift us all up

091with strong engagements from families and i ask that we continue culturally responsive teaching and that's it for me thank you very much [Music] next in person maria elva edwards you only get three minutes [Music] welcome again thank you for everything that you guys do um i just wanted to say um [Music] so you say that you value public comment and feedback but you only give us three minutes how can we truly give you our thoughts and opinions when you usher us through a line like salmon being processed in a cannery i had to come in person even though public speaking terrifies me her fear of being cut off for my testimony not being read if going over three minutes i had to come back today because last week i was cut off to three minutes

092i wanted to express how important i thought that it was that in classroom learning returned to schools this following year i was reading an article that in january 2020 child abuse was raised by 30 30 imagine that number now i needed to make that known because it seems that no one is talking about this these young and vincent children can't speak up for themselves so i want to speak up for them today i also wanted to speak up to the interest of access of equal access to preschool programs in asd earlier today in your meeting you spoke about the importance of preschool education for our students and how that plays into their reading levels later on asd does not make it easy to enroll kids into asd preschool programs i would like to see easier

093access into those programs you also spoke about how you understand that there were challenges to enrolling our students in esd preschool programs but you seem to come across that that was okay because there are private institutions these private institutions are also equally challenging whether because of cost wait lists or heritage preferences against others earlier today when the board was asked what is the vision for asd district no one could answer that was very concerning i want my board to know the vision of our school district since this is what we are expecting them to be fighting for lastly earlier today the concept of two-way conversation was brought up i believe that it would be most important and most valuable to implement two-way conversation with the parents of asd i also believe that a blockage to

094more valuable parent input is the difficult to navigate school board website as well as the not easy way to communicate back and forth the values of asd we should be able to ask questions during board meetings and not just watch as the board is only asked questions to each other and answers only each other's questions have some questions as well why can i not be answered to conclude why is there such worry against not having the latest state tests and assessments we should be confident in anchorage school district no matter what test or assessment the state or nation throws at us when my fifth grader is telling me that he doesn't want to go to school because he already knows everything and asd is not allowing him to excel with more challenging courses because of

095one test percentage that upsets me when the majority of parents and students tell me that their kids are not ready for the reality of life that upsets me thank you thank you very much next telephonically we have sarah osborne hi can you hear me we can welcome you have three minutes hi my name is sarah osborne and i'm an anchorage resident a title one middle school teacher with the district and a mother of two and a white woman i live work learn and teach and am calling in today on denial land i like so many others who have called in today and pro sel and culturally responsive teaching but i'm also calling today to testify on two topics um first masking and second a request for response to the um 215 student bodies found in

096british columbia canada first as a mother and teacher i strongly urge the board to rethink its math policy for the 2021-2022 school year many of our students are not yet eligible for the covid vaccine additionally many of our students families staff and staff families have underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk for covid or make them ineligible for the vaccine at this time the district's current policy does not protect or take into consideration these students and individuals the district's current policy puts our vulnerable students staff and families at risk and also puts an undue social and stigma burden on students staff and family who cannot or will not get the vaccine it puts a burden on them to self-identify and make public their private medical decisions i strongly urge the board to adopt

097a mandatory math policy for every person in school buildings for the 2021-2022 school year second i ask that the district and board issue an actionable response to the recent discovery of 215 student bodies in a mass grave behind the kamloops indigenous residential school in british columbia on june 16th last summer this district issued a statement in response to the racially fueled murder of george floyd and that was an admirable decision making good on that statement this board later passed a long due anti-racism and instructional equity policy that was an achievement about which you should all feel very proud as in canada schooling in alaska is founded on genocide my first summer job in alaska was at a fishing lodge in electric and the lodge building had been a wreck had been erected a few decades

098prior as a mission school alaska native children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to reside in the building in which i later worked out behind the old school gym there were several grades of students whose bodies were never returned to their families the violent roots of our school system in alaska inform every aspect of education for our students and families here in our in our district and the you i'd like to go back up to roslyn grady weish are you in the room okay how about ziona brownlow no and erica amman it's erica i don't think it's you anymore okay so now we are at uh our next telephonic testimony is joshua arbison [Music] it joshua be telephonic no okay joshua if your caller user one okay next in person annie messi [Music]

099hi my name is annie massey i am i'm a parent of three children two in the anchorage school district and i'm representing myself um first i just want to say that mandatory masking for the upcoming school year will deter families further from enrolling in anchorage school district many families are not enrolling because of what happened last year first of all i just wanted to say that myself included and many people that i know after listening to hours of work sessions board meetings and both town halls i do not support bp 6140 or 0-400 policies that were written and approved and i respectfully request this board work with the superintendent to suspend these policies until our true goals of academic outcomes are met or the policies can be revised to language that we can agree on

100policies are the equal instruction policy zero four hundred um or equity policy excuse me and bp 6140 anti-racism policy we have many policies that deal with actions surrounding racism like non-discrimination and harassment bullying zero tolerance discipline we need we simply need to practice those policies so i have revised them in this language racism policy the board rejects racism the board will work with the superintendent to champion a district culture and values that respect the diversity and life experiences of all stakeholders to support the district's mission vision core value goals and guardrails period and a revision of 0 400 to be called equal instruction the board believes in the equal access to instructional opportunities for all students the board recognizes that having equal access to opportunities improves individual academic achievement and overall district performance the board

101will work to support local schools to adopt and implement effective procedures and processes that identify communicate and eliminate barriers to various instructional opportunities so that all students can access them equally in order to ensure the equal access of opportunities and subsequent improvement of academic proficiency goals are being achieved the superintendent will report to the board the inputs and outcomes of school procedures as part of the board's goals and guardrails monitoring i look forward to working with you thank you for your time thank you next telephonically we have danielle kemp [Music] good evening can you hear me yes you have welcome you have thirty thirty three minutes thirty okay all right uh thank you to the boy for this opportunity to speak my name is danielle kemp i'm retired army combat officer teacher in the asd

102and parent two 2asd kids i'm also the co-chair of the aea's human civil rights committee and president and co-founder of the last coalition of by park educators there is an unfounded fear of the truth in this community it has been for many years and that fear manifests itself in many ways but mainly as the white washing of our shared history whitewashing is being defined as the intentional hiding of some kind of wrong doing ever unpleasant situation or an uncomfortable truth or to deal with it in a way that attempts to make it seem less bad than it really is you can see whitewashing in our asd curriculum as they glossed over outright omitted historic events such as the alaska native people's forced indoctrination and cultural genocide of the early to mid 20th century look my

103mother gertrude kemp taught history in penalty mississippi for 37 years mama didn't compromise even under threat of physical harm and administrative retaliation when the district refused to adopt the black history pro curriculum you know what she did she created her own she had the knowledge and skill to do so as she studied history at russ college and historically black college university hbcu and like my mama i studied music music education at an hbcu2 jackson state university so when i called up the fine arts department earlier this year to inform them that they were putting out incorrect information regarding the history of african american spirituals you would have thought they might have deferred to me due to my extensive extensive knowledge of the subject matter as well as my hvcu academic background right nope they straight

104up dismissed me and told me i was wrong white washing at its finest the administration must do better groups like alaska parents rights and save anchorage holler about critical race theory but don't even know what it is and don't even care they're just trying to use it as a general term for stuff they don't like about race but don't let them fool you these white supremacist organizations in disguise only want to continue whitewashing our curriculum by the way these are the same folks who called covet 19 a hoax and perpetuated the big lies that led to the attempted coup and insurrection on january 6th if it were up to them no one would learn about the tulsa race massacre the cultural genocide of the alaska native peoples or other relevant history so to all board

105members and educators within the sound of my voice i implore you to take a stand and tell those white supremacist organizations no to not bury our heads in the sand but instead be like my mama virtue at hooper camp and never compromise the truth thank you for your time and have a good night thank you and that concludes our public testimony on non-agenda and non-action items a written testimony is attached to the agenda if you care to look at that and next our superintendent update [Music] thank you madam president and i do just want to share we had the little pop quiz on the vision and from what i know and the mission was started a long time before i arrived uh asd has believed values and mission but not a stated vision there's lots

106of different um standards and you know templates to create what you say there we don't use the vision one is my understanding so there is no vision it's beliefs values and mission i think that was a pop quiz earlier right i just wanted you to feel okay yeah all right uh thank you and i have a very brief since i spent so much time on monitoring um the some updates uh first thing i wanted to share was about our parent survey when we did ask about esser funds we slipped in uh in understanding because we had uh quite a bit of feedback uh and responses in regard to school start time so i'm gonna share about that uh just share a little bit about an equity report we have as well as summer school that

107started today our block one so we did just ask one question how uh did you feel as a parent if you are a parent or do you have an opinion about the school start times because we did move it back some to eight o'clock 8 45 and 9 30 for these different school levels and there was a positive response in fact thus far we've had really an ask to leave it as it is so we wanted to put it out there to provide the board some data and uh i'm organizing around beginning high school at 8 o'clock and following this structure right now unless um the board decides not to but we're organizing around this uh since we operated this way this year but wanted to share and ask what the community thought so the

108next uh thing i want to share is our equity report and this is just one piece of information and a little bit about this uh sonia hunt's gonna come up and share some information a couple of things it was done by the hanover research and hanover research is a research institution that helps executives make informed decisions uh and really sees opportunities it is actually in corporate america as well as an education um most businesses and and education institutions used to have a research uh department many companies used to as well now they don't they use collective uh you know basically knowledge um ai you know feeds information and stuff so uh one of the things that educators that we uh have a criticism is that we look for the next shiny red object right and

109so in making informed decisions about moving forward we want to look at the research that's done to be able to move forward so hanover really collects the research out in the public uh but also as a part of this belonging to hanover you have one research uh one they'll you know look at your data and give you a report on it uh what we did is take the data from our dashboard it's already existed it's called extant data it was already there we didn't do anything new and we provided it to hanover to take a look at um give us an equity score card it's one of the things that they do i'm happy to say that their uh research actually supported what we've been reporting supported what the board goals are so uh with

110that i'm going to turn it over to sonia because this is going to live on our website uh in addition to the data dashboard that the board is familiar with sonia [Music] i just wanted to make sure this is my first time using this mic good evening to the president to members of the board dr bishop um thank you so much uh dr bishop for an amazing introduction to the equity uh data analysis and what you will see this is the um kind of the landing or main page of the equity dashboard and the main page provides a quick navigation to all pages so what we see first is the key findings and that's hanover's synthesis links sorry synthesis analysis of our data um what we see next is recommendations and it's the recommendations for

111further research and actions and it includes a qualitative one of the recommendations where qualitative interviews on non-academic factors that impact academic outcomes like our capacity and so what you will receive later on in the month of july would be our actual equity audit which is a qualitative study of in-depth interviews to precisely do what they have recommended is look at non-academic factors that impact outcomes like capacity next you have a walk through and the walkthrough is just a brief explanation of the representation index of the scorecard our scorecard displays this proportionality of outcomes by subgroups um and next you will after that you have equity outcomes and it displays the number of students by percentages achieving outcomes by subgroup and it's broken down by school grade and year so it's it's pretty in-depth then you

112have our data dashboard and it's a side-by-side worksheet comparing outcomes and students by groups so that's again down by uh school grade gender race um link limited english proficiency special education and gifted gifted sorry economically disadvantaged and 504 status then we have our data methodology and it's an explanation of data methods and a glossary of terms and here are our findings there's consistent opportunity gaps in the following areas what we know academic outcomes behavioral outcomes and program access in the district and that program access looks at special education gifted and advanced placement courses and so from 2015 to 2020 the following student subgroups are persistently underrepresented in many of these outcomes black african american students hispanic latinx students economically disadvantaged students english language learners in terms of map outcomes and students with disabilities please note

113that black and african american students english language learners and section eligible students are among the smaller subgroups in the district next we have more findings that female students students that identify as female generally have better academic and disciplinary outcomes than male students and just to further tease that out it means that female students are more likely to have a 3.0 gpa and that's a 67.1 percent compared to 50.8 percent of males they're more likely to have no disciplinary incidents during the school year 89 as compared to 80. more likely to take ap courses 23 as compared to 15 and more likely to graduate in four years 83 as compared to 74 percent [Music] what we what they also found according to our data is that earlier disparities in advance to at in access to advanced

114academic services in grades k through 8 translate into later disparities in enrollment in advanced placement courses grades 9 through 12. so to further tease that out for example 60 of 60 of students who ever identified as gifted later took ap courses as compared to 22 percent of students who were never identified as gifted [Music] other key findings include that black latinx multiracial students and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to have participated in restorative practices if they have ever had a disciplinary infraction and those restorative practices would be mediation prevention intervention prevention intervention counseling more likely to have been cited for a disciplinary incident during the school year and more likely to have received a suspension and so what these dashboards what this dashboard does and particularly in discipline for example is that it takes

115us on a journey it shows us what our data is and it shows us what we're doing in terms of restorative practices in terms of having leanings to those restorative practices further uh take following steps to enroll in um one of the other recommendations was to take in steps to enroll more english learners or english language learners students in ap courses so to counsel high performing ell students to enroll in ap courses assess the extent to which current ell students in ap courses are being supported determine if this support can be improved to attract other ell students and to include ap spanish and course offerings district-wide and that's some of our work that we're doing with equal opportunity schools if you recall other recommendations include to further investigate into the performance gaps that exist between

116students of different racial and ethnic groups a regression analysis will provide more explanation about performance differences between white and students of color by accounting for confounding factors lastly other recommendations being provided are that we continue to evaluate access to advanced courses and the identification process for gifted education so in terms of our equity outcomes and this is actually already up on the office of equity and compliance uh website and it's under equity dashboard where you can click on all of these following of headings the equity outcomes displays the number of students by percentages achieving outcomes by subgroups and when you hover over each square for example it will tell you a story of that particular outcome what we wanted to do with this was to make sure that this is like the newspaper method that

117it's easy to read by the public um that it's um it's simple right you can click on your child's school you can click on the grade level you can click on the year and be able to see what the equity outcomes are and that concludes my report barring any questions thank you so much for your time [Music] and uh to add that i do want to share um that uh sonia's on the team that is uh leading with secondary and i'm not sure who else is with you i know three different people um working with the um on equity and ap already we had started that two years ago and we have four high schools that did a report at nicac and it was actually pretty fun because it's really that um audit that we

118did took a look at all student scores first and said who are the students that are not being tapped that have um the ability to move into ap so then the schools themselves what this looks like is the schools gather they look at their own data and they really um bring to the surface things in their school of why things are happening or not happening so it's really related back to um schools themselves and data teams themselves and the same thing is going to happen and should happen that it isn't this well here's the goals let's just drop everything down because you're going to look at different schools they're going to look at where their kids are learning and participating and then they're going to create at that school level uh using data understanding data

119how to change the outcomes for all kids and so um we had two we had service south east and bartlett report at mecac and it was just a fantastic report we'll have to do that as an update in the fall but it was a a great uh response and they're changing lives just by um you know telling kids about the courses but then also um a lot of times we want to when things become hard if there's no like not an advocate for us you know there's somebody there saying no you're not going to drop out you're not you're just going to finish and you're going to do one more thing and i'm going to help you and then the student gets over the hard part and then you know has that perseverance and so

120a lot of them are just figuring out who are those people that can can really assist and so it's just great work so happy that this supports some of the work that we're doing and if i can may i say one more thing um i would be remiss if i would mention that this was like a collaborative effort um so um just some kudos out to partners that um collaborated on this was patrick garrity carolyn ticks um jenny knutson kirsten johnson's harley wayne mike fleckenstein kathy moffett and so many more you know you always get in trouble when you name names but i would be remiss if i didn't mention the collaborative partners in this thank you miss hunt are there questions okay uh dora and member wilson just i just wanted to clarify i

121i i think it's awesome work and i appreciate all the effort that everybody's doing um to really make an impact on on the students that haven't been necessarily identified in the past can you clarify the efforts at the the younger i i see the you know the 9th through 12th and the work that being done in high school do you can you clarify the effort being done for the for the younger students the elementary the middle school to identify them particularly the the elementary school students who haven't normally been necessarily identified for the gifted programs or i can share on that yeah um through the president to member wilson uh one of the things about three years ago what we changed was the first indicator for gifted was a referral from a teacher and then

122we went to the data and now we use map data and we go to the data first and say who would be recommended and then we follow through with teachers and parents so that we're not um one of the biggest groups and it came out in here the data that uh children who aren't recommended are generally very highly active boys aren't generally recommended because their behavior gets in front of like the frustration of like not seeing their giftedness if you will so we moved to um data first and then have that lead us in our conversations another is the access if um in kindergarten first second third grade if kids don't have the fundamental skills at a high level like we showed benchmark they're generally miss out later on so your middle and high school

123is determined by your elementary school so that is just our wrap around around identification high quality instruction to ensure that all kids have those the ticket to learn so that i can continue because um and this was brought to us by our community when we talked about programs such as middle college this and that they really put it back on us and said that is a great opportunity but it is not for everybody you took the opportunity away in third grade because if they were behind in their grade that just kept going and so uh those are just a couple of examples of of what we're just organizing around knowing students and we're looking at giftedness more than while it starts with a map score it's more than a score it's actually um a broader

124sense of giftedness of students so great questions and do you have anything to add yeah one of the things that we've been working on particularly like during uh the pandemic in the equity work group is that we've been looking at the data like literally drilling it down per school and looking at particularly elementary school to see where we can supply programmatic supports in scaling up programmatic supports particularly in federal programs um and there's been a lot of work done with like for example ell um we have been looking at just how do we um provide that continued technical assistance around this to schools and there's more to come but there's a lot of intentionality around it to make sure um and to even piggyback on what dr bishop just said said that the research also

125shows that um the recommendation for things like gifted should mirror special education and creating like plans for children that include parents right so that parents can be advocates in their children's educational journey as well so i hope that helps remember lessons i just want to thank you for this work i'm playing around on the on your on the equity outcomes webpage and i appreciate deeply that to me it's it presents so much more information at the school level than the data dashboard did you can say oh this is what's happening here this is what's happening here i just was playing around with different schools so um congratulations to you and your whole team for making information accessible i would encourage you to maybe find a way to link it to each individual school's webpage only

126so that um more community members can be informed about what's happening at their neighborhood school just get the information out there thank you so much and it also brings up a point where um for example schools like uh chugiak optional don't necessarily have like traditional grades and so there are some exceptions where the public will still have to interface with the school directly just to understand their particular culture and their approach to things but thank you so much uh remember jacobs [Music] thank you for the presentation um the in the recommendations that indicated an interview study or um a survey might be appropriate to get more data on the outcome gap what what have we done thus far to to try and get more information as to to why the gaps are occurring except they're

127not new with they're not a covet 19 product and it was occurring before so any information on that sure to the i'm sorry i didn't do this last time to the president to remember jacobs um we simultaneously um and in the creation of this dashboard there is an equity audit going on we actually added some things to it so that's what's taking the extended time so the equity audit again is um more of a qualitative deep qualitative interviews so there were interviews with cabinet members of cabinet um community members principals students students um definitely thank you so much uh forgotten that students um and uh there was a an aea um survey sent out and so far we have had almost 500 respondents which is pretty good um to that survey to really um assess

128where we are in those non-academic factors that influence academic outcomes so we look forward to being able to add that to this website in july so definitely more to come thank you anybody else before i say bye to that remember donnelly thank you how much did this report cost um as far as the contractor and how much is the upcoming equity audit costing sure um to the president to member donnelly so the um upcoming equity audit that you'll receive the results of in july was about thirty four thousand dollars um i can get the um exact amount to you in board connect um if it's okay with that condition and um secondly the district has a yearly contract with hanover to do different projects and this year this happened to be the project and we

129can also get you that exact amount um through board connect if you don't mind yeah thank you okay so i i also want to thank you for the work that you and your committee is doing i'm not surprised but i am glad to see a third eye and i'm glad to see that there are some you know the work the number one the work is continuing number two we're getting deeper and deeper and more intentional and so um you know i i my only question is uh how are we training staff to to work with the data to i know we had i think we have how our schools could see it this could be so empowering for schools we um to the um to the president your question that's a great question so our

130uh directors actually work with their uh principals as well as the coaches the instructional coaches to understand learning data to be able to talk about it to come up with their own smart goals in regard to what the data tell them for their school and really how um you know you would examine it and ask questions um what do we want students to know what do they already know where do we need to you know raise so really creating those um school level discussions they call them day-to-day sometimes they you know data discussions they um so it's really a deliberate work at the school level on our in-service days as well as other days uh in which um teachers would be released or get paid after school or coming on a saturday to do okay

131and my last question is uh then we once we empower schools to make some changes are we supporting them with the resources to make the changes um yes we're actually supporting them for the research the resources another support is also support from the board support because again to change student outcomes adult behaviors have to change first and that's the most difficult part of it because we are really creatures of habit we've been doing things the way we've been doing them for quite a long time and human behavior is just difficult to adjust whether you're a little person or a big person and so support and alignment in that area is probably the most critical at this point okay thank you thank you miss hunt we appreciate your report thank you thank you and very quickly

132i'm just going to zoom through this summer learning started today for elementary in block one those are the schools block two starts july 12th 3600 students started today and it was a great successful day um the only you know thing was the rain perhaps that folks didn't like and uh secondary is going to have middle and high school which starts tomorrow and they have two sessions and those are the schools uh in which uh students will attend and i can give an update on the numbers after the first day there and um with that we also have don't forget esy which is extended school year program which we've had uh most longevity with and those are the dates of esy and the school locations quite excited about that uh we really are um over 10

133000 students from esy to elementary and secondary are going to be actively learning with asd in the summer lots of kids actively learn with you know outside of school as well but these are additional supports that we're providing and then finally i would like to just share with the board good news that um the um commission uh on veterans affairs in the military recognized um our veteran volunteer right here on george vicalas and uh he was awarded yesterday at a memorial on memorial day their celebration and so i just wanted to celebrate him as well as the other uh military folks on our board in the audience uh in our district uh for the not only the service that they continue to do as you see but the service that they had to protect our

134country those that have fallen as well as those who have passed so i'm going to stand and i wish you all could do that as well stand up george uh anchorage as a military town and a state as a veteran state we're quite proud to actually hire veterans uh and so it's something we've done for quite some time um in our midst i just want you to know alan brown jen patronus um you know george michaelis i probably don't know everyone uh some gentlemen over here uh i'm not sure if um oh dan barker so everybody's pointing so we have uh just great support as a second career uh and i think that is the anchorage um that's the beauty of anchorage is that and why it's a desirable place uh so thank you uh

135once again and uh veterans are a vital part of the asd [Music] absolutely thank you dr bishop and that brings us to our consent agenda madam president to move to approve the consent agenda mr holloman can you hold on your second mr higgins is going to read the consent okay so now the motion please i move to approve the consent agenda asd memorandum 121 personnel report asd memorandum 129 acceptance of grant award hazardous mitigation grant program tier seismic evaluations it's been moved in second that we uh approved the consent agenda katie if we're ready to vote remember lessons yes remember wilson yes remember jacobs yes remember holloman yes remember donnelly yes remember higgins yes president bellamy [Music] yes [Music] and that motion passes unanimously [Music] now we're at our action items we don't have i

136don't think we have any public testimony so no one signed up for public testimony on action items um did you want to pull it's not an action oh no i'm sorry you're pulling a non-action okay so we should do the action first all right we're ready are we ready for number 26. yes okay thank you i moved to approve asd memorandum one two six to approve and we and authorize the reallocation of one million three hundred sixty three thousand from completed 2018 bond proposition 2 roof projects to allow for the partial restoration of the chugach's high school roof project in addition the administration recommends the anchorage school board approved award of a contract to trimco roofing and building maintenance for over five hundred thousand dollars utilizing cooperative purchasing per bp three three one one ar

137three three one one point one d second it's been moved in second that uh we approved memorandum 126. seeing no public testimony we're ready to vote uh yes member comments on memorandum 26. any scene none we're ready to vote remember donnelly yes remember lessons yes remember jacobs yes remember wilson yes remember holloman yes remember higgins yes president bellamy yes and that passes unanimously memorandum number one to six right that moves us to our non-action items non-action items anyone wishing to pull an item i'd like to pull the school calendar for discussion for 2022 2023 okay okay anybody else all right member lessons will you speak to your motion please yeah i was curious about the november 8th uh which is election day um this is november of 2022 um it's proposed to be an asynchronous

138learning day my question is how will all students participate are we going to be handing out devices on a one-to-one basis as we did this past year just for for that day or and i'm a little bit fuzzy here i kind of recall remember donnelly about a year ago or during covet proposing to change this past november's election day maybe to a professional development day and i think that maybe the intent of this was to clear the public out of the schools so i'm perhaps suggesting that something like what we did before moving a professional development day to that election day might be a good solution rather than pivoting to asynchronous for one day about the bishop sure thank you that's a great question and um just to clarify asynchronous doesn't have to be on

139computers asynchronous just can be we had lots of kids um in asd who did not utilize computers that used um books and packets and things like that basically they're learning from home um there was a request um and again i just want to go on the superintendent that i don't necessarily support it but it was what the public wanted to do and the group that created the calendar as a principal i'm going to go on record saying i find it highly valuable to have election days when kids are in school i think it's important for them to see that to learn from it i believe that we have safety measures in place nevertheless the calendar committee that created the calendar before was concerned about um student safety and and understandably we know in history of

140what's happened um you know in schools but but i find election day highly valid valuable as a learning tool um the non-uh asynchronous learning day was uh on another in-service day which happened to have been the fir the last friday of february uh to participate in a local uh celebration and we continued that i believe uh next year it fell on that day anyway the in-service day um there are so many in-service days in the year and the committee that puts the calendar together kind of places those around the learning and big you know ideas that happen um we could do another in-service day or a non-work day and then just extend the school year but it would have to be a non-work day because in-service days are paid days so it really depends on

141we have a contract to deal with and then days to disperse unless we pay additional pay so um what we did with these calendars just so you know is uh during the pandemic we did not get everybody together and all the stakeholder groups to come out with the next three years we simply extended one year to have time to be able to do that uh in a meaningful way and uh mr chiefer can you share um i i believe the having off and not having kids in there is of a concern for safety and so that's why it was selected as asynchronous you can share that yes thank you uh is it your own computer speaking to you no no okay try it out um that seems to work okay so the the feedback that

142was uh considered was really from the 2018 calendar committee process and that was the where the concern about election day was expressed by various stakeholders so as you mentioned in considering this extension so that there are two adopted calendars on the book so to speak one of the issues that the smaller calendar committee consisting primarily of cabinet members considered was how to account for those concerns expressed back in 2018 but also as you mentioned um professional development days are hard to hard to find on the calendar they're hard to get calendared and particularly during that time period in november there wasn't um in our view a good way to account for that concern with the professional development day so the notion of asynchronous day was proposed as an alternative the fur randy day which was

143an interest on the current year calendar happens to be captured in the 2223 calendar proposal because it does fall on a state release professional development day so there wasn't in the calendar committee's view a need to have a separate uh additional release day uh to celebrate uh or recognize that for randy um day although it is mentioned on the proposed calendar in the center column so those were the factors that the committee looked at in proposing the calendar as is presented um but understanding that there are competing interests as as any any time a calendar proposal is is put forward there are different stakeholders with different views thank you any other questions discussion so that brings us uh remember higgins did you did i see it okay so that brings us to um our act

144actually there is no public testimony no one signed up for this request oh yes did he sign back on we did want to go back to mr joshua arvidsson mr arbitson are you there star six to unmute there you go greetings marshall can you hear me yes welcome you have three minutes thank you madam president um and started that earlier i was calling from a caller id blocked line at work so i apologize for that my name is joshua arvidsson and i'm the chief clinical officer for child and family services at alaska behavioral health we're alaska's largest behavioral health provider for services health services and supports to to alaska's children we'll serve 1200 children this year 600 students in the anchorage school district and i'm calling as a lifelong resident and graduate of the anchorage

145school district 1994 and having spent the last 20 years as a licensed mental health professional in our community i can testify that the mental health needs of our students our community are are significant and they have increased dramatically in the last year i could offer hundreds of stories of the benefits of making mental services available on site in schools i'll speak to one example a young man high school student experienced significant loss in his family death of a loved one engaging outgoing student always performed well good learner really withdrew and was suffering significantly of course the school is aware of this the school is providing a lot of support as schools so often do but they recognize that he needed professional assistance assistance that is can be supported by schools but was beyond the scope

146of the school's capacity to provide he wanted help his mom wanted help for him and the school recognized that he needed help and so we were able to find a good solution by actually extending services to this this individual in his school and through a systematic collaboration were able to provide ongoing mental services for numbers of students in that school this was something we did in another district and another community in the city i think there's a real opportunity to do something similar in anchorage to really extend mental health services and supports to students where they need them the most i think we can do it in a way that meets students needs that is responsive to parents choice and decisions and also respective of the academic and developmental goals and objectives of schools so

147again the organization i work with has 44 mental health professionals who specialize in working with children and the majority of those work here in the anchorage community and we've submitted a proposal for your consideration and hope that the school district will consider this because i think that there are real opportunities to really meet the needs of our our communities children and i think schools are one of the best places to do that and it's particularly necessary given the stressors that children and families have faced in our community in the last the last year so i want to thank you so much for your service to our community um and for your willingness to bring me back again here at the end thank you very much and thank you very much that brings us to school

148board and administration comments remember higgins hey young that better that's better i i just uh shout out first of all to thank mr ross and his group for giving a presentation on capital improvement process uh that was really informative as to where they're at what they're doing but there is some questions i'll go and share with the board in regards to it one is with all the seismic reviews for making sure our schools are safe which i think is critical the issue is expanding that to the charter schools we know the charter schools are not built to the same standards it's increased school district buildings they're rented places they're all these other things and one of the things we try to do is make sure institutional buildings survive the quake the big ones if something

149happens and that's always been a concern of mine is the safety of the charter school children we don't want to see the kind of destruction that could take place and some of these are built more like a strip mall and and that's a concern so just uh having a chance to have an assessment of how much of a risk we have there may be a value as to what could be done long term and how we might want to plan that i know that the timing of the bonds i've raised that is an issue if there's a dispute between the administration and the and the assembly if that becomes an issue in the bond it may require additional time to be resolved so if we do it to the last minute of eligibility to get

150the assembly approval we may not have the time for the assembly to address that that dispute and have a chance to revise it in time for the bonds we have about two billion dollars worth of property or in excess of that now and it takes 50 million dollars a year by business standards to maintain that so the bonds are critical to maintaining the schools in this in a safe way in a in a responsible way so that's an issue uh within it i just uh i i hope there's a review at some point of what we can do in the way of bonds that might impact educational outcomes used to be career technology it may be other things but if there are factors in there that could be added we've even done separate bonds where

151the public support is there if we're doing something that's really expanding educational outcomes for kids so i just didn't see anything in there along those lines and the last issue is just the issue of having excess space i mean there's always a concern we've got less kids what are we doing from a space standpoint um the pikas auto study that was done probably 10 years ago looked at the issue based upon classroom sizes compared to the majority of all other states we are a lot larger classroom sizes if we provide the same classroom sizes as the lower 48 we'd be looking for space i believe so somewhere along this line we need to look at that but in the short term we may have again the s the excess space if we don't have it

152that might be available for charter schools i know that's always been a contention as charter schools want to be the building themselves so they want to get all the neighborhood kids out but we can't can't accommodate that and i would never propose it but looking at some of the space we have in some of the schools and what we could do might be the the safest thing for all kids and uh beneficial for everybody in that group so there's a number of good questions in there the the presentation and the responses were great i do appreciate it from from us and his entire team it was a good discussion and i think it was real educational thank you thank you other comments remember donnelly thank you thank you madam president um i know we heard

153some folks uh the public discuss how some people like myself who are concerned about critical race theory haven't read the books i'd like to show everybody this is my copy of white fragility tabbed in many places where i was concerned about the text in the book and this is uh my copy of how to be an anti-racist by the way both these books are on our website also tab as you can see in the locations that i was concerned with the text i read these books over a year ago i believe now i remain concerned that we have a new anti-racism policy that specifically says the board rejects all forms of racism but on ninth page 19 of how to be an anti-racist it states the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the

154only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination and that's why i remain concerned about these documents thank you mr dunley anyone else remember wilson i i just wanted to say thank you to all of the staff i know the administrators and the teachers lots of staff within the district put a lot of work into the summer learning programs and the summer nutrition programs for our students so i just briefly wanted to say thank you i appreciate all of your efforts that really i anticipate it will make a difference for a lot of students thank you uh dr bishop staff any comments you guys don't have to be real quiet over there you can speak up no comments thank you all right thank you with that i'll entertain a motion to adjourn [Music] come on yeah

155i want to stay i make a motion to adjourn i'll second all right any oppo any anybody opposed to a journey no they're packing up