ASD School Board Meeting 05/17/21

001[Music] good evening and welcome to our meeting our may 17 2021 school board meeting [Music] board members all board members are present in the board room member donnelly is participating electronically before i begin i'd like to acknowledge with gratitude the denial of people past and present who have lived on these lands since long before anchorage was here may we all be good stewards to these lands [Music] chennai [Music] so we will follow our agenda we are now at the approval of the agenda the move that we approve the agenda is presented and we get a second and it's been moved in second that we approved the agenda as is however i erred we did not do the pledge so at this point before we move any further please stand and join i me allegiance to

002the 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] and thank you for your patience [Music] so are are there any um abstentions to approving the agenda as is [Music] see none the agenda stands approved as presented we are now at an exciting point our recognition [Music] our denali awards the denali is an athabascan word meaning great one and the anchorage school district is proud to have employees that display greatness in the areas of achievement service and dedication the denali award is the highest award offered by the district twice each year supervisors submit nominations and a panel of asd employees selects a number of co-workers and teams of colleagues that demonstrate outstanding commitment to the district's mission

003of educating all students for success in life i will now turn the mic over to member kelly lessons to begin the recognition [Music] miss nancy bale can you please come [Music] forward wonderful all right i'm going to go read a little bit a consummate professional during her tenure at the anchorage school district whaley school and adult community transition program school nurse nancy bale is unwavering in her commitment to the health of her students and staff nancy is dedicated to her students families and community they are always first in her eyes her attitude words and dedication reflect her passion nancy's dedication rose to new heights to support her schools during clover 19 ensuring families had mental health services medical care and food support stability she volunteered at both coveted testing and vaccination sites serving as a

004beacon of information for community members who had questions or or concerns whether in or out of school nancy was a liaison to school staff with the latest information during the pandemic she dedicated time attending multiple meetings at each school to keep staff updated on constantly changing guidance and policies one colleague wrote it gave me a sense of peace to know she was available to answer questions and stay on top of the latest information nancy maintains her extremely demanding schedule while meeting the needs of students and teachers uh thank you and i just wanted to say that um you're quite a humble person you wanted to actually you know what i'm sorry we weren't done pat higgins has the mic now and we're going to continue talking about miss nancy we've divided the labor and there's

005more ladies and gentlemen told i sound better that way so what can i say her supervisor sean bernard and robin harris wrote about her tireless effort to support her schools and community dedicating her time and supporting contract trade contact track tracing informing practices and volunteering as vaccine clinics were a few examples of how she made this world a better place she somehow made who makes herself available to support students and staff no matter how busy that she is nancy is an ambassador for the nursing profession due to her unwavering dedication she's an invaluable advocacy partner for students who may not be able to advocate for themselves she will go [Music] above and beyond to make sure students have access to documentation for of their medical conditions before turning 20 22 because it impacts their access

006to services said bernard and harris in a letter of support describing nancy's attention to detail one parent and colleague wrote my daughter was a student at the school and required medication during the school day after filling her prescription i bought the bottle to nancy nurse nancy to enter into the medical law medicine log when she went through the procedures of checking in the medicine she discovered other pills mixed in with my daughter's prescription by the pharmacy nancy was one was was one of the first to act up and hand delivered boxes of food for those individuals and families who didn't have vehicles the administration invites the boy to join us in recognizing nancy as a denali award winner for the outstanding example she sets for the entire anchorage school district community and now another round

007of applause and i was just gonna share that she just uh tried to get this plaque and run back to her seat but it doesn't work that way so um i'm gonna offer our board president uh has a few words to say as well well congratulations nancy we are so proud of you and we are thankful for your service so if you would just like to say i know you don't want to but just a few thank you margot and thanks dr yes you know um and thank you to my principals and staff who took the time to write up the recommendation for this nomination you know i really would be more happy if i could accept this on behalf of all the school nurses um because um [Music] i have a small school really

008i have about 300 students and that gives me time to spend time with the staff and do education and you know stay late and actually finish up but some of our nurses have 1600 close to two thousand students and they're out there working every day so if you don't mind um i would love to accept this on behalf of all the asd school nurses thank you absolutely and what a terrific job thank you that our school nurses have done ladies and gentlemen for nancy bell thank you so much next we have sylvia biondic please come forward stream academy administration assistant sylvia bjondich has a has been a member of the stream family for five years serving all five as a board member and two years as the administrative assistant sylvia is viewed as the glue

009that holds stream academy together and is credited for the program's continued growth sylvia goes above and beyond her position to provide a safe engaging and inviting space for students staff and community members stream academy is much smaller than traditional neighborhood schools and sylvia wears many different hats in her role on a given day she can be seen as the administrative assistant registrar nurse and the it help desk her supervisor principal adam mulcakey said sylvia is the first person most parents interact with and as the following letters attest our families love her she makes each parent and child feel special meets their needs communicates clearly and supports them she has an amazing impact on our school culture setting everyone up for success sylvia's connections with families students and colleagues run deep due to the close-knit nature

010of her board role and job as administrative assistant numerous colleagues shared their support with one saying during this unprecedented year of challenges she has been the communication hub for stream helping everyone stay connected through phone calls emails facebook instagram twitter and the school website during covet 19 she was constantly conducting wellness checks on families and students to make sure they had everything they needed sylvia also ends her expertise and time at both the academic policy committee and the non-profit board her attendance at the monthly meeting supports the governance and fundraising efforts at the school she also led an initiative during the school year to secure funds for cold weather jackets for students in need she is beloved by her school community for being such a source of positivity quote in addition to being the amazing

011coworker that she is she is also an amazing friend she makes work fun and purposeful whenever a gloomy day overcomes our students indoor staff she is always there ready to spread sunshine and make anyone's day better quote said one stream academy colleague another letter of support from a student said sylvia pours her heart into everything she does but she loves every single one of us like we were one of her own children if the school were a human body she would definitely be the heart she is one of my favorite staff i've ever seen in my eight years at string quote the administration invites the board to join in recognizing sylvia biondic as a denali award winner for the outstanding example she sets for the entire anchorage school district community yeah all right and uh

012congratulations and this is um all right this one's not blinking so i'd like to introduce everyone we're not finished yet sylvia we've invited uh adam mccalkey one of our wonderful principals up to share as well personally and celebrate with us and certainly um stream academy your this pandemic year we swam upstream and we learned how to do that so adam would you like to say a few more words thank you so much dr bishop sylvia's been involved in stream academy since its inception along with our founders she served on our apc board she revived and is the heartbeat of our 501c3 non-profit board and as the letters of test she does about 15 to 20 different jobs and roles at stream academy first off just logistically i i couldn't do my job without her she

013is the glue that holds our entire school and our school community together she's the face of our school she is our chief information officer and she is an amazing advocate for our program secondly she she's just really the heart of our school she loves stream academy so much and she cares so much for our staff and our parents and our students and and it shows every day and every interaction and everything she does i can't think of a single person that could better represent what stream academy is and what it means and what we're all about than sylvia beyond it i'm so proud to be able to recognize her here today thank you thank you did you know you were glue no i am so privileged to have this opportunity to recognize you and the

014work that you do for our staff and our kids day in and day out you are a shero oh and i appreciate that so now you get to talk just a few words i'll help you um listen you guys i i couldn't do i couldn't be here if it weren't for the founders that started the school and there's two of them here tonight whitney diatri and andernell brown they made my dream come true while i helped them make their dream come true and we've got such an outstanding community at anchorage dream academy that it is super easy to be a good servant we are all servants at that school and we are all in it to win it and and like we are the rapids and the rapids is the strongest force in nature water

015is the strongest worse in nature and we can overcome anything and we did we excelled so well during this pandemic send your kids to street there you have it once again there you go sylvia once again for sylvia would the project management office team please come forward julia melson julie shuttleworth andrea johannes ryan thrasher michael parker joe barron carrie payne and corey garrity the size of the anchorage school district requires careful yet rapid rapid planning on large-scale projects the project management office pmo helps facilitate organize deploy and keep projects moving forward enabling asd to meet the demands and needs of the community during the district's closure and response plan all eight team members contributed immensely to ensuring a smooth and successful phased entry to in-person learning in a letter of support senior director of special

016education tarlisha wayne said quote the pmo team has supported the anchorage school district's re-entry plan with grace patience flexibility and precision while i am new to working with the team their level of efficiency and support cannot go unnoticed the team is the glue that keeps our district planning together deputy superintendent mark stock said of their effort quote the projects with which the pmo team were tasked since the beginning of the pandemic have been endless some tend to overlap while all all required meticulous attention to detail without their support chromebook distribution school start planning remote instruction and ppe delivery initiatives would have struggled and students would have been even further impacted end quote pmo has been instrumental in helping launch sustain and complete several projects such as establishing 742 help for students and families coordinating ppe

017pro procurement for staff and students creating canvas templates and other structures for students supporting asd's summer learning program the work done by pmo is like a constant drum beat the employees and their work fly under the radar out of the spotlight the team works tirelessly to advance the district mantra of educating all our students for success in life the asd elementary education department wrote the pmo team routinely goes above and beyond members daily duties to make the asd a better place for both student-based and non-student-based staff with an ultimate goal of benefiting all students each member of the team shares models and embodies commitment to the culture that we are all asd the administration invites the board to join in recognizing the project management team project management office team as denali award winners for the

018outstanding example that they set for the entire anchorage school district community congratulations and uh i will just go ahead and add before the board president shares that there seems to be a theme tonight about glue through this pandemic so i do want to share that and originally the pmo team had worked on if we change an application or if a payroll something or other had to be updated and they worked kind of behind the scenes and the pandemic really thrust them through them up the stream uh into the rapids into the front and so it wasn't only about changing an app it was how do we deliver chromebooks how do we change an instructional model into something new so that we can reach our family so they really uh i think the entire school district

019realized um the work of these individuals and many times um there's a book out called the invisibles and many times people who do the work behind the scenes hate being up front which we had had demonstrated in our other two so i just want to thank you as well to all the recipients i'm glad i'm just glad everybody's not invisible anymore so thanks i have a working one madam president here you go okay you guys are awesome it's not often that we get to see who's behind the scenes and so this this really the one the thing i love about this award is that we recognize everyone within our system and so just know today and going forward and i know you knew it before that you are valued and the work that you do

020for our students our families and with each other is absolutely valued so now i'm gonna dry up i hate it when people cry before me anyway so if each of you will just say a few words i want to hear from you guys tonight i think it's it's about time we have heard some voices even muscled i'll hold it for you i thank you so much i can't uh express how honored i am to receive it and i work with the best team that's that's all i can say i have an incredible team all right incredible um as bad as the pandemic was it wasn't a great opportunity to really get to know new people in the district and to have an opportunity to go above and beyond thank you to the district for recognizing

021us for this award and a special thank you to all of you sitting along the side because we would not be here today if it wasn't for our collaboration with all of you to get us to this point so thank you very much for your support thank you it's my honor thanks well i just want to say that i am one of the invisibles that likes to stay behind the scenes too so um i just want to say thank you the last year has been really incredible to meet new people and work with new groups and so it's been an honor to work thank you thank you are you ready yes all right uh i just want to say thank you to the district for the award and thank you to this team in the

022project management office that i'm on and also on all of our projects um we work with a lot of other team members from all over the district so this uh the challenges that we overcame during the pandemic year wouldn't have been possible with all of those team members as well so i just want to recognize and thank them thank you michael i've always wanted to have the opportunity to make a difference in my community and at asd so i couldn't have done it without my team and i mean everybody that i work with uh so so thank you i really appreciate the honor being recognized thank you ryan and corey hey hey hi i appreciate the recognition i'm on a really great team i'm really proud of everyone here and it really is about there

023our team members our project team members put in all the work and who make us successful so thank you all right let's hear it let's hear it and ladies and gentlemen for all of our winners thank you thank you and ladies and gentlemen uh there's cake if you'd like to have some as well as well as popcorn and different treats and anyone and everyone in the audience is welcome to it thank you okay we're back to our agenda with our military report uh colonel are you on the line yes ma'am i am welcome [Music] and whenever you're ready all right thanks everybody hey first of all congratulations to all of our award winners uh it's great when you can recognize some great accomplishments for people um the next thing i want to do is just

024cover a couple of things from the last couple of weeks here on the installation so first of all uh you may have heard a lot of aircraft here over the last couple weeks as we've had the northern edge exercise ongoing for the um for the past a couple of weeks um are you guys seeing video from me right now yes yes yes we see you all right okay good all right um so just want to make sure folks understand we've wrapped up the northern edge exercise a lot of aircraft here in town a lot of people we got through it we still have a few aircraft remaining in the area to continue some additional training with the folks here at jbear but hopefully folks can see the the roads around the installation kind of getting

025back to normal from a from a traffic standpoint um the second thing i want to talk about is just some of the recent updates to the installation policies in response to the cdc releasing its new guidelines on maskware we also got a memorandum from the department of defense that kind of outlines what we're going to be doing in most cases here on the installation we're going to be following the same guidelines from the cdc ex with a few exceptions still going to require mass where the hospitals and the medical facilities we're still going to require mass square in some of our child and youth program support activities that because that they pair very closely with the anchorage school district and then some of our on-base fitness centers so we'll for the most part though you

026can see a lot of folks around the installation are going to be enjoying the fact they can take their mask off if they're vaccinated finally in this in the vein of recognition of contributions of great work uh we we have sad to say goodbye to two fantastic administrators uh the principal of both the ursa major and ursa minor elementary schools here on jay bear mr hardwick and miss bronze um combined you're talking around 30 40 years of service to the anchorage school district and to the joint-based element of richardson community so big thanks to ben and wendy for all they've done and we wish them on their retirement that's all i have been any questions [Music] thank you colonel we appreciate your your report are there any questions for the colonel okay thank you all

027right next we have a report from our native advisory [Music] committee [Music] welcome good evening anchor school board members and school administrators i'm kazuko also known as kimberly santovada i am a nuclear my dad was raymond neutral from gnome and my mother was captain island from anchorage and speaking tonight about the title vi indian education and the native advisory committee also known as nac [Music] the nac is comprised of six parents or guardians of alaska native american indian students asd students three alaska native american indian secondary students and two teachers account student counselors of alaska native american indian students in the asd the stated purpose of the nac is to review and make recommendations to the title vi indian education program and to the anchorage school board referring to the education among the alaska native

028american indian k-12 students and asd our tribal and close partners are the native village of oklahoma connect tribal council shakeland village tribal council native village of trionic take emmett native i'm sorry cook inlet tribal council services or citc the alaska native heritage center asd's uber dual language immersion program the alaska native cultural charter school university of anchorage of alaska anchorage native student services with the cole bid 19 global pandemic there was extra funds from the federal title vi grant from the 2019-2020 school year that were allowed to be used during the 2020-2021 school year nac wished to support alaska native american indian families with needed supplies and help with associated fees for advanced placement classes and tests title six had age permanent supply distribution starting in the fall [Music] in the first semester of the

0292020-2021 academic year of the native advisory committee oversaw secondary staffing professional development of first family model of support virtual tutoring program for k-12 collection of 506 e-signatures virtual cultural programming esora indigenous library middle school indigenous northern games curriculum barnes noble book drive summer student supply distribution native youth olympics and dialogue with the community members in april the knack passed a resolution tribal headwear to the adjudicated report 5217b graduation regalia calling for an update that would allow tribal headwear to be worn during graduation ceremonies this resolution is currently prepared for the review of the school board as author of the resolution i strongly urge your approval and adoption of it in 2018 i testified in support of graduation regalia which makes the instances at west high school very disheartening i suggest that the future steps to

030repair and prevent further issues is examining other options for notification and improving and approving the title tribal headwear resolution thank you anchorage school district and title vi indian education for guiding my journey in the past 13 years i've been in the district please continue to utilize the native advisory committee for its wisdom and keep making education something achievable for all students quiana and we would like to open this up for questions if any thank you and congratulations on your graduation and i'd like to thank both of you for being here tonight and at this point we will open up for questions from the board regarding the work of the advisory committee thank you madam president and thank you for your work in the native advisory committee i really appreciate it um a lot of great

031things going on obviously i i had a question regarding the resolution you spoke to uh in the uh be it further resolved there was mention that the authority or the jurisdiction for a regular be given to the um title vi indian education department is could you are you in a position to elaborate more as to what you what you folks envision seeing happening absolutely so um that line touches on the fact that title six indian education stewards for its students so they are the most appropriate department and the most appropriate personnel to be deciding um the cases on tribal headwear this is different than the current graduation regalia policy where the decision is left the principles this decision should be given to the title six indian education department given that its mission is to to

032represent these students and they know best um regarding this um this decision thank you thank you uh remember yes i'm sorry member hollywood i have trouble i do appreciate the thought you put into it and the and the suggestion i was on the board when the policy was updated and uh of course at the time prior to that the rule was no exceptions that people wore the issued gallon and cap and so it was seen as a big step forward and what happened at west is very sad and of course a breakdown of what was supposed to happen i know that all of us intended at the time that the rules were fairly explicit and if it fell within that it would just be approved it wouldn't be so much like asking permission as simply

033saying this is in the guidelines and this is what i'm going to do with the expectation that then that would just happen um i i do think the idea of handing the decision-making process to a different body to different groups makes a lot of sense it's not something that boards are normally very comfortable with or administrative folks but i understand how we stepped in to doing something where we thought we were we were taking a big step forward uh but it turned out to be an intersection and there was some cross traffic and we kind of got run over so uh i appreciate uh i do remember at the time a lot of thought and planning went into making those rules in the hopes that nothing like this would ever happen and of course it

034did so i thank you all for looking at it i thank you for coming up with a very viable and thoughtful solution to it and look forward to addressing it as a board thank you thank you and if i may respond you mentioned that it is an uncomfortable position for the board to hand off that responsibility to the title six indian education department however i would argue that this entire policy is uncomfortable because it's fairly new it was only passed in 2019 it's only seen three graduations and the instances at west high give credible reason why the decisions for at least the tribal headway resolution be given to the title vi indian education department so i strongly urge you to consider that and improve that any other member comments questions i thank you for your

035okay yes um i thank you for being here tonight for presenting us i look forward to reading the resolution and i will just say that i was the board member at west high school a week ago and my heart went out when i heard of the incident and so i just want you to know that i'm here to listen as we move forward and i'm looking forward to working with you thank you so much and as i've said um i recently just graduated so i won't be in the district any longer but the district has saw me through kindergarten through my senior year so it has a special place in my heart and i know it can better um nothing's perfect there's always room for improvement and what happened last week is a great example

036of that and it's a great sign that we should be moving forward and thank you and you're not going to get rid of us that easily you are a legacy but thank you if there are no other questions do want to express dory did you have a i don't i don't remember wilson i i don't have a question madam president president just to comment um i had the pleasure of being at multiple graduations and fortunately for my experience the students were allowed to wear without any question um their regalia and it they just it was just so heartwarming to me to see them so proud to represent their culture um with the regalia that they were wearing so i just wanted to make that comment thank you and the work that you are doing and

037that the native advisory committee is doing it is going to benefit every kid every kid should have the right to wear their cultural regalia in the manner that they wish to wear it so i thank you and with that when is the next meeting it will be scheduled sometime in august they are open to the public and um to depend on like they've been um on the youtube channel okay um so you guys are always welcome to come um just see dorian brown okay when they set the calendar um i'll be a part of it next year for my last year but um we have not fully said it thank you dr bishop did you have any comments uh no i do have an update on this and the superintendent report as well but i

038appreciate um the report and thank you kiana all right thank you thank you so our next on our agenda is our conference and committee reports i don't we have not had any um committee reports and uh let's see our community outreach at this point there we do not have community outreach but i did want to um engage with the committee chairs to see if you have chosen a date for your or meeting time to share okay yeah so i will be sharing the finance committee and i suppose i'm just throwing out wednesdays maybe sort of towards the end of each month around noon and i don't know whether that works for other committee members and i have a list of dates but that was my general notion starting starting in june okay okay yep ma'am

039president uh the um governance committee i would like to begin meeting sooner than later but i know that um member donnelly has some limitations as to scheduling and so i'll be working with them very soon to get something on the books but we don't have a specific date in mind right now all right thank you member holloman i don't even have anything to throw out yet so i'll be in touch with the board through email about uh possible dates all right that sounds good thank you and uh in june in june we have our on the 7th of june we have our um joint meeting with the assembly and then on june 11th and 12th we will have our retreat and so [Music] by the retreat i'm hoping to have our dates identified thank you

040and now we are at gold monitoring and i'm going to turn it over to dr bishop thank you madam president and at this time for the outcome monitoring update as we don't have additional student learning information previous two meetings we shared our early literacy and cbms or curriculum-based measures as well as we shared uh some third grade learning data with you and it was suggested in discussion with the board president that we really take a step back and then to kind of give a picture of outcome monitoring uh to uh as an uh kind of a early mind's eye and she's going to expound on the goals and guard rails and the boards function in these at a later time so this is specifically about why the outcome monitoring and what does this look like

041after the last meeting a couple of board members just asked do you have you know information on this grade level or how come you didn't share this grade level or can i see this and just wanted to kind of give a mind's eye about that outcome monitoring piece of it in itself and you can rest assured that every board meeting uh beginning we will share uh learning data information with you about how our students are doing on the goals that the board has set and they are reading math and life career college readiness so to begin uh for you as well as others on the main website under the uh school board tab there is a lot of information there about the journey and the process through uh with all the the pieces of information

042the dates of meetings things like that in which the board engaged with the community to come up with its goals and guardrails that will take us from 2021 to 26 and they're these three uh goals and so the question is well how did the board really come to those three goals and we we did have um six goals in destination 2020 prior to that and in working with the council of great city schools they really shared information about keeping a focus um that when when everything becomes important then then sometimes other things don't like what do we want for the learning of our students and specifically in those learning categories there we have the goals then how do you do it is really those guard rails and or the parameters in which to do it

043but through the community input a survey uh individual electronic survey went out but many many uh community events whether they were at uh different really churches we offered to go to a church we offered to go to um uh you know um secular places uh schools we had big regional meetings uh we offered to go to different clubs um works of business and we presented actually board members presented uh with support from administration a process really to engage with the community and get feedback and those top four items are right at the top that you see uh but wanted to share that the all the information was really open-ended that the survey of it in itself and the questions were not do you pick this or this they truly were kind of wrapped around what

044is it that you'd like and then we took that survey data and analyzed it through a qualitative data analysis and utilized a very robust uh sample and the goal of the analysis was to identify the themes and and uh concepts and the frequency of like what is it that folks want the themes and the frequency and then we identified patterns to those themes to gain context and how would our community like uh their education of in their schools and then we created meaning out of a large amount of these data and with that we have these three goals and i'll just share a little bit about the reading proficiency and this one really is a building block for for other things it's imperative that no matter where our kids go to school and learn they

045reaching a certain proficiency level will open up doors after that that we want them to be able to participate in learning uh throughout their time with us and many times when we do not meet um that promise of of teaching a child to read the manner in which he or she needs to learn we find ourselves without success and and our students don't find success within the anchorage school district and so wanted to share that this is the reading for fishy proficiency and it is a major major goal and uh it has a huge growth to it and i shared before when a member higgins asked man that's kind of a big big deal that's a heavy lift it truly is and the idea behind it was um you know looking at and you can

046say you know here's the audience and i use this example there's four rows on that side three on this so technically right now about 40 of our students learn to read on grade level and it doesn't mean again that they're not learning to read but generally what happens is that reading proficiency stops in sixth grade and um that is the level uh that they reach by the time if we don't make these early markers generally it's not much beyond the sixth grade reading level so it's not to say that you can't read it's really that a lot of opportunities in a child's life is taken away from them when they don't have that proficiency and a lot of times it's it's a it's a gift it's one of the best gifts that we can our

047teachers can give so that's why we picked 80. uh that is um for our our first goal to really share that eighty percent um with with really uh quality teachers and classroom instruction we know that we can get there from these goals there are interim goals that actually are going to be shared with you like we shared last week peaks is a test that you know i really say don't even it just takes care of itself that if we're really having teaching and learning experiences in our classrooms peaks achievement will take care of itself that we really should focus on uh teaching and learning at at our levels with our students and we measure that with these interim uh fast bridge remember that's a curriculum based measure where you're actually using curriculum to see if

048kids you use reading to see if kids know how to read not you know the building blocks for that as well as uh the map because that again is a dynamic test that really shares information with parents on their child to show their progress so we do have five interim goals right now for reading they're both growth goals and proficiency so their performance on how they're doing as well as the set where are they because we're looking for growth as well students moving uh in the direction of um being successful in these early fundamental skills is progress so uh then we have math and of course um beginning in uh this year we have grades three through nine so we're looking at a broader section of the math proficiency and the goals are 40 to

04955 understanding when the board made the goals there was discussion about how can we have reading here and math here and the idea was well um really putting energy and work and and the working groups with teachers that there is a significant amount of work i mean these are monumental um you know collaborative work pieces of work that we need to do district-wide uh with our partners uh with um our teachers our schools the supports to really uh ask each other how do we get there how do we get all students moving forward so math wasn't as uh lofty as a goal but nevertheless it is not unimportant but again when we break down the data just so the board knows we will get the percentage of students at or above benchmark and what students

050are below the benchmark what is the growth category distribution uh are they on track to meet peaks uh so that just our interim assessments are the classroom ones that help inform our teaching that the peaks will just take care of itself and again the peaks is highly aligned to nape that we uh take nationally um all school districts if you receive federal funding are subject to nape and then finally uh one of the exciting ones is life college and career ready and there was a discussion from the board about okay so we count our graduation kids but what about are they ready for their future and and are we ensuring that the experiences they have here are not just let me take a class finish it and move on that what are the kinds of

051experiences that we should look to for all students and so we started with life ready and and went around uh the country and studied if if that was something and you saw from the data that parents wanted the success how do we look at that and uh so through just different resources uh in uh texts as well as surveys the gallup poll redefining ready there are several resources out there they really talk about life ready with having a growth mindset that um understanding and having the self belief in oneself to be able to struggle and pull yourself out of it with the grit and the resilience and that mindset of success even when uh failure happens that perseverance is hugely important and so uh supporting our students through this through those social emotional skills and

052teaching them and having those experiences of uh struggling helping them supporting them that individualized decision making are all very important honoring who they are as people and that it will look different uh in those in those areas so a lot of times we say social emotional this um the me skills of the self-awareness and then the we skills of how to communicate your thoughts with a group uh and sometimes it isn't the way that um you know the teacher wants to communicate that we really uh look at how do we work with our students um and that's we we've started um the meeting times the circle times to share where everyone's giving given of a fair opportunity to speak just different examples like that to give you a mind's eye but then the relational capacity

053as well so life ready indicators uh this came through with the parents as well as the students interestingly enough just as many students requested financial literacy what do you need to graduate they shared with us our young people shared i i need to understand money more so that that's actually a good thing and um i think as a parent that would be a good thing and so we are uh creating and we have financial literacy courses but they're not uh in uh ubiquitously taken by students that they're of interest through economics or other courses we're working with junior achievement to see about incorporating those lessons into some other curriculum and teachers are going to really support that in understanding financial literacy and then also the attainment because we know that that life ready is essential

054through uh some of our believe it or not a blended course and understanding was one of the key features in in being redefining ready and that was pre pandemic so we feel like we're pretty good on that one but that was in the research believe it or not because when kids leave either to the workforce or to college they're having to take a lot of uh online learning online certification osha training things like that and really prior to this time prior to the pandemic we did not have a significant amount of students um about 15 only uh with experience on online learning so we can check that box but um social emotional and uh just having sel and then uh participating in lions quest and the health course that those are the sel items for

055middle school so this is not a robust list this is just a checklist for which the board started thinking about what would it look like um for students to know and be able to do and then again it's about performance uh as well as achievement uh we do know that a gpa of 2.8 or higher is a a good indicator of a child working and being able to be successful as well as standardized uh exams so one is the persistence of getting the job done and the performance and one is the actual achievement of what they know according to sat and a c t um other attainment of one or more of the academic indicators uh just being in uh some of these courses uh actually have demonstrated success after and being college ready when

056the gallup actually was involved in a research of freshmen at college and they studied their transcripts they that were successful that completed the year and they liked it and they felt they were ready they studied their transcripts and these are um algebra 2 actually was one of the courses that was the most common for people in college that they had completed uh that uh was similar so that is kind of a base and that's why algebra 2 is there we do know that algebra 1 and algebra 2 in high school prepares you for algebra 1. algebra 1 in college is a general education requirement and failure in that uh sometimes has kids believing they can't do college and so um when you think backwards from that on that research you understand it but algebra 2

057if we can really build capacity for our students to be able to do that course it's good and we just have other experiences that through research demonstrate uh a success rate that kids can do something when they when they do something in addition now the career ready indicators are really and we would hope that students graduate with college career and life ready because we we want their future to be a choice of um you know whatever whatever they desire so uh a an interest inventory alex uh is um on our our access rather is on our state it's free it's a kind of a fun engaging program we want to incorporate that a little more and it really helps helps kids think about what they like and some career pathways it doesn't tell them a

058job it tells them the kind of pathway that they're interested in that they might want to look into more and then also attendance matters showing up you could talk to employers about that we would like to include community service field studies credit by choices so that our different community partnerships and we just uh heard from our native advisory committee that there are uh as well as other communities that we have there are um expectations and things that students are doing that we should incorporate into uh career life ready indicators to demonstrate to the board that students can do this in multiple ways two or more courses which we call a capstone in cte has a high success rate um baseline we have about 65 of our students now taking two or more um with a

059c or better and we would like to increase that knowing that experience in learning experiential learning is key we want to allow internships mentorships and work experiences to count for high school credit industry credentials dual credit pathways the next one is co-curriculars um it could be athletics band orchestra clubs whatever it might be we do know that students that uh compete uh that's another thing from the research algebra ii and being in a club or co-curricular were two of the highest examples of common um transcripts and the and the thinking behind this and the research is that when you belong to something greater than yourself that is important when someone relies on you and you have relationship with team members or other members that rely on you and your performance and your preparation uh that

060it's key and that feedback is also uh really shared more openly in uh team and supportive events so we're looking for others that could count and again these aren't the only ones these are just ideas behind them so these are the college life career ready indicators that is going to be behind the monitoring that you will see throughout the year we will share these many students were successful in completing this course so we're creating an easy way to manage it to look at it so that it's not just left to a single person a check box but that parents could also look at their students dashboard students could look at their own dashboard to be able to uh share with the board so the goal monitoring is about your goals it is about the interim

061goals to demonstrate to you how we're working towards achievement they are dynamic and the fact that as we learn we should uh look to iteration and changes in in our learning and we will bring that back to you uh for revisions for the interim uh every year so i just wanted to share the overall mind's eye of the goal monitoring for next uh time when um the board president shares more of the council great city schools work with boards and goals thank you madam president and that is our goal monitoring thank you dr bishop are there any questions especially from our newer members remember higgins do i see your hand [Music] your mic please your mic is that better yeah the first slide had the three goals on there that you were making reference to

062the third goal of course you focused on how does asd stand right now on that i see that we want to have growth but i didn't see where we kind of stand right now if the numbers were there if we did something or do we have that that data to kind of compare to madam president uh through the president to member higgins on the reading or the life ready i'm sorry on the live ready on the live friday that's a great question we are calculating these right now what we've had to do is we have some where algebra 2 our baseline is 52 on the slide you can see some of them we don't have a baseline because we literally have to go into every course and see what's the financial literacy how many people

063have taken it and that's our work this summer to get a baseline by august was our timeline to come back to the board with the baseline so seal of by literacy about 10 of our students in high school receive a seal of by literacy and they can do it in any language uh that and and it's actually a third party assessment in that and uh so we have about 10 there of the indicators that were very quickly assessed it's on here and but many of them are not to your point and august we will have the baseline and the growth for each of those uh two or more courses in the cte we had um our industry credentials we don't collectively have the aggregate we have them all uh the the different pathways have them

064but we don't have a way to collect them other than word of mouth so we're all of those systems are being created so that's a great question and and the board will get that and deserves that to know where are we starting and where are those interim goals to get us there member lessons thank you this is um a reflection and a question as well i know that summer school is a key thing we're looking forward to right now to help overcome many of the obstacles or some of the obstacles from the past year i've started doing site visits and one issue has come up repeatedly and that is transportation i'm a little bit concerned that there are a number of students who would benefit from summer school to help attain some of these goals

065that we have set out for us and they're not able to access summer school based on the current transportation configuration is there any way that asd is able to kind of surgically target these students who who we know will benefit from summer school and can't get to the situation the setup as it currently stands through the present to member lessons uh we have heard um from about transportation and other issues and a lot just where summer doesn't work for me because that's the time we're with our family and so we do have uh supports that will go on throughout the year as well as uh really there are um [Music] individual school options open where people can can walk but uh collectively door-to-door we don't have that service right now uh the expense of it

066uh is really beyond what we could put together for the summer and have the drivers the door-to-door does create additional uh work we have 700 people now um but um i can get back to you that this section really isn't about the how to but i can respond in a a board connect about the types of things we did to prepare and we just couldn't summer school wasn't meant to be everything to everyone we're just um doing what we can um again a lot of students go off to camp uh or with their family um uh lots of different kinds of campfish camp or um their parents work i receive that uh today so uh we will look at other options for really capturing the unfinished learning if you will to assist parents and students

067thank you dr bishop member wilson hey i just want to jump ahead to the career and life readiness portion of it and is the intention to incorporate and track career and life readiness skills for all grades as is relevant so or is it figured geared toward primarily high school students yeah through the uh president to member wilson uh that the the goal that the board wrote was really for high school graduation it replaced the graduation to look and so our uh tracking though and understanding the data and the students where they are will most likely have to begin in middle school but for this goal and the amount of work we're really starting with our high schools now and then i foresee us with success and understanding students and their different pathways they like expanding

068it but the goal itself and the work is really around high schools right now okay let's see we're going back to uh member higgins just one follow-up i see on there 90 attendance as i recall before the three indicators of people having problems uh whether at risk was um attendance was one taking algebra one people you know certain times and then uh uh misconduct issues would be big indicators of kids at risk and i was always thought it was 10 days or more if they missed 10 more days a year and now it's 90 which is two days per month so i just turned that a little bit surprising is there some rationale on the 90 or where that stands uh through the president member hinkins uh basically we just looked at the research for

069expectations of what went into other indicators of success so we we could work with um other pieces of information but we just pulled that from the literature i was just curious any other questions all right thank you dr bishop and this brings us to our public testimony 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 there is a one-hour time slot at the beginning of the meeting testimony in excess of one hour will be heard at the end of the meeting or may be submitted 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 in person

070we have diane holmes [Music] i'd like to start with a story about a neighborhood boy some years ago he was visiting me with his mom and for some reason i asked him does your head hurt he said yes i don't he didn't know that it wasn't normal not to hurt and his mom wasn't cognizant of allergies nor dairy intolerance we have children in this district who exhibit behavioral and physical manifestations at a particular time each day that point to lactose intolerance when a child has a meltdown a couple hours after her school breakfast i would get money that dairy is at the root cause south central foundation tries to educate parents on this condition but some ignore or refuse to acknowledge the signs that then ties the hands of school nurses they can't consult with

071pediatrician by chance however if dairy is removed from a distressed student's diet nurses may tell you there's an improvement the asian population is also prone to take on this task of recognizing the potential for learning disruption for certain students and of course those around them that dairy products may trigger surely there are studies on this that some of you could research quickly and of course consult with your district experts contact teachers nurses and counselors to refresh their knowledge of this issue and ask for their observation educate parents too maybe a few minutes at teacher conferences or maybe back to school night provide pertinent information in the language spoken at home by these families i realize time is too short to do anything this term that you have this summer take this as a challenge to

072investigate how we can positively affect charles students learning by making some schools dairy free with at least lactate as a replacement for milk we have peanut free schools why not try lactose free schools this might be a little more expensive but could federal dollars for the free lunch free lunch programs accommodate this change keep it simple try to just obtain observations from the schools i'm sure they can relate many examples and can help evaluate the success or not for removing the potential irritant and stumbling block to a child's well-being realize too that allergy tests for dairy are not accurate trust me i know but i have heard of one test that might be thank you for listening and hopefully you can take this on throughout the summer and the fall thank you next in person

073we have iu attack [Music] exactly one week ago our family seal skin graduation cap was taken from my son as i sat there connecting that violation to the bigger picture of alaska natives historical experiences in education memories of all art elders endured in boarding schools kept surfacing in my mind i thought of my dear friend ottnett elder fred john who bravely speaks out about his experiences at rangel institute including the fact that he was called number 77 for so long he thought it was his name he's told of a new belk students like me and my son [Music] brought there in their fur parkas mukluks and caribou skin pants meticulously sown with such care by their families having their clothing stripped and thrown into the furnace this is living history please look him up on

074facebook fred john of delta junction he's the son of katie john one of our fiercest protectors of our rights and our ways of life every single alaskan should know about her but likely doesn't so let's talk about that multiple administrators have expressed shock about how this happened in the first place yet the one who took my son's cap grew up in this district and graduated high school with me then as now the very few teachings about alaska native peoples were poorly done in fact going through that unit in third grade myself marked the time i started getting beat up on the playground in this district for being native children learning in our schools grow up to be the adults who make mistakes like he did the roots of this incident are systemic and so too

075must be our solutions the erasure of our native people is so pervasive it's hidden in plain sight so how do we take our blinders off you ask questions like if we treated western eurocentric perspectives and cultures as a unit or subject matter like we do native and bypoc people's cultures what would be left of our curriculum you re-educate like we have to do with our children after asking what they've learned ask whose perspective is centered how do they feel that story might change if it came from an indigenous person's perspective with so much centering of western perspective our district is robbed of the most highly localized time-tested source of irreplaceable rich knowledge and centuries of innovation related to this place within our indigenous communities clionic book for quickly addressing what happened to my son and

076for your commitments to make it right fixing the regalia policy so native students no longer have to unjustly seek approval to honor our cultures in this way teaching all educators in our district about alaska native peoples cultures and histories using curriculum co-created with us our district will be stronger when we make this right i stand with you in your efforts to make it so quiet thank you our next person to testify is on the phone uh roslyn grady oh she's funny okay then we'll move on to jackie cason jackie are you on the line [Music] okay jackie's not on the line yet we'll come back to her or him uh marlo scully next mark marlo's not on the line in person we have sarah price [Music] good evening school board members and superintendent bishops my

077name is sarah price and i am a junior from eagle river high school while i've spoken at several meetings over this last year i recognize that many of you are taking on this great service to our community for the first time there's truly no better way for you to start your term than attending graduations around our district this last week however as you looked out at the sea of graduates i hope you reflected on where they have all been this last year your school district chose to break laws and mislead the public to strip these students of opportunities education and the last year of their childhood that they will never get back and i say chose because this was truly a choice by asd not backed by science not backed by moral obligation but rather

078choosing to politicize the well-being education and safety of 4 40 000 students as a result of being attentive to the decisions surrounding our education over this last year i have unfortunately seen the willful neglect of officials who i thought were looking out for our best interest while 80 percent of students and parents requested to just be given an education in person the first and second reopening plans were canceled by justification of false scientific data from there the union deals closed-door meetings of secondary principles and comments by top asd administrators confirmed that our lives and educations were not prioritized while considering any decisions so while the district may have thrown the class of 2021 a bone as they walked out the door make no mistake that you chose to take away their experiences education and a

079whole part of life they will never get back however that is the past there's truly nothing we can do to make to redeem the cruelty inflicted on innocent students over this last year what we can do is move forward and as a new board you can do this but you must choose whether you will hold this district accountable or continue to allow decisions to be made which harm our students your first opportunity presents itself now many activities for this summer have been shut down by this district this to include eagle river high school's junior rotc summer leadership camp this program is truly like no other and has been carried on since before eihs was even of school for years my fellow cadet leaders and i have been looking forward to passing on the lessons which

080teach students strong morals service to our community and ways to develop oneself never thought possible in our real lives however we feel if fear if not carried on this year future students may never be given this experience again this camp happens in the middle of the woods with no contact with anyone yet covert restrictions that the cdc does not even support have been cited as reasons for barring us from going the air force junior rotc home center decided this district would make the most informed decision so please open the packets i provided you and read eagle river's covid data however you may not be able to read those numbers because they are so small they do not even show up on the graph as this city begins to shift i hope this district will change

081with it and choose to finally put students education success and well-being first again thank you thank you sarah next on the line we have megan holton megan [Music] it's star six megan i can see that she's there [Music] hi hi what link is my name is megan holt great my name is megan holton and i'm testifying in support of the young adults who wore their cultural regalia at graduation ceremonies and to thank the students and families who stepped forward to share their stories when they were not allowed to wear their regalia i'm also testifying in support of the work that has been going on going as an ongoing to change the district's approach um to cultural rebellion and graduation and i support removing the requirement for alaska nato's families to seek in quotes approval of

082their cultural regalia through the district's policy with these events fresh in our minds and hearts now is the time to reevaluate these policies procedures and norms that got us to this place in the first place and this is the role of the recently passed anti-racism policy and instructional equity policy i would like the district to commit to re-evaluate the practice of asking and receiving permission in light of the recent unanimous passage of the anti-racism policy as ayukos attack shared in her story this is an example of systemic racism the status quo of not aligned cultural regalia by default is baked into the system so that even when the rule is changed from the top the new policy isn't uniformly enforced or understood at all levels of staff this is a problem with the system and

083it's not that only the individual of it's not only an individual problem or error i think there should be more training so that staff and teachers can be advocates for broader cultural expression rather than enforce a policy that they likely had no hand in drafting i want to send my white son to a school district that io described in her testimony the alaska native advisory committee that spoke earlier offered concrete steps for moving forward and i support approving the tribal headwear resolution and the transition to decision making to the title six indian education department is an interim step to removing this requirement altogether in the meantime i think it's also important the district issue a public apology i mean commit that these types of injustices will not be allowed in the future thanks thank you

084megan next on our list in person we have jonathan barber jonathan are you here yes [Music] you have three minutes thank you hello members of the board my name is jonathan barber and i'm currently a student at eagle river high school recently this administration has made a decision to strip away yet another extracurricular activity for my school this time as talked about previously by one of my peers this is the jrotc cadet leadership course that has been hosted every summer each year cadets are invited to attend this five-day all-outdoor course to learn skills that are critical for dividing and creating good students of their characters as well as communities each year we will talk about orienteering leadership skills among others this year our jrotc has over 25 first-year cadets these cadets will come into this

085leadership course we host every summer and learn valuable lessons as well as learn and meet lifelong friends that they will continue throughout their entire high school career i myself moved here as a freshman and attended this course and i have been sticking with this group of friends that i met since then as these students have had not the opportunity to be socially interactive with their new peers this is something that i believe very strongly we should have the air force jrotc home center approved our leadership course but mistakenly allowed the district to make a decision for themselves this course takes place in eureka alaska where coven numbers are quite literally zero now that the anchorage municipality has lifted the mask mandates it is ever showing that covet is becoming a thing of the past and

086as cobot changes we must change with it sitting in front of me here is a brand new board for the most part this new board has the power to change all district policies and create a better asd this is one more thing that this district has taken away and stripped from students so we ask you as myself and my peers to please allow us to have our extracurriculars back thank you thank you jonathan our next call uh uh next person is on the phone danielle kemp mr kell hello can you hear me i we can and you have three minutes okay all right thank you um my name is danielle kemp um i'm a retired army uh combat officer i'm a teacher here at the asd and parent of two asd kiddos i'm also the

087co-founder and president of the brand new nonprofit alaska coalition of five park educators this black indigenous and people of color um today i am here to make a push for that the repeal and replacement of that um graduation regalia the permissive portion of that graduational day i mean what happened to iu um last week and and all and the other graduates alaska native graduates who were denied the right to where their rightful regalia was shameful and should never have happened and should never happen again um people of color are tired of having to explain ourselves or just bargain for rights and privileges we should have had some get go i'm just being frank with you all right we're just sick and tired of it all right but we're going to keep on anyways all right

088because that's what we've been doing we're going to keep on doing it uh sick and tired or otherwise um iu she eloquently explained all that what i'm saying and so any reference or any questions about um graduation regalia i will refer you to her um the closer we can get to having the permissive requirement being given to alaska native elders the better they are alaska's first peoples over 25 000 years worth of history and we they should be respected as such so please get get rid of that permissive requirement um asap and i would also encourage this board to consider they're conducting land acknowledgments for each school maybe introducing a policy board policy that all schools should conduct a land acknowledgement maybe either before or after the pledge of allegiance at age school so thank

089you for your time and have a good night thank you uh next on the line we have elsie hugo lugo sorry elsie lugo not seeing him there in person we have david murray hi david you have three minutes good evening my name is david murray i'm a junior at eagle river high school and also a jrotc cadet with the recent decision to cancel summer activities i believe that is detriment and very important that it isn't cancelled as like my peers before me said there's been summer camp for every year since our air force rotc corps has been around the camp is based upon leadership teamwork dedication resiliency effort and so much more [Music] you develop skills that i believe and i know people around me believe that you use in your everyday life and upon

090farther than your high school career [Music] from personal experience going to this camp for two years freshman and sophomore year i know that i wouldn't be sitting here if i didn't go that it was so important that i can speak to you now [Music] and it's not only a crucial part to the students of eager high school to the parents to the teachers but it's detrimental to our community and the impact that we as kids have on our community to make a difference and to serve from canceling these activities you take away that opportunity you take away the growth that i had that miss price has had that mr barber has had you take away the spark that gets them those freshmen to be involved that gets people to get out of their shell and

091to change for the better i believe that we can change for the better thank you [Music] thank you next on the line we have christy lalton christie yeah good evening can you hear me we can't hear you chris can you your volume is very low can you hear me now yes you have three great thank you good evening my name is christy lawton and i'm thankful to live on the traditional land of the danaya athabascan people i am the parent of two high schoolers who will be starting their sophomore and senior years in the fall and i'm testifying tonight to request the school district to permanently abandon the policy of requiring students to seek approval for the wearing of traditional objects of cultural significance or tribal regalia at graduation students having to seek approval from

092an institution that played such a huge role in efforts to force assimilation and the deculturation of alaska native people and other people of color throughout our country is like dabbing a rusty steak into an already open wound the history of education in alaska was founded in a practice of alaska native children being forcibly torn from their homes and supporting schools where the educational system's goal was to make them less native and more like questioners this history may seem ancient but it is not educators as late as the 1960s were still teaching students under a framework that viewed alaska natives as less than or inferior so many elders their families and young people still bear the scars of that history the loss of culture and identity of entire communities and generations of alaska natives as a

093result of an education system that purposely intended the system of their language traditional ways of being culture and connection to their lands caused irreparable damage graduation ceremonies are for celebrating the achievements of the student who stands before their family friends and peers to bask in that accomplishment it is a rite of passage as the student transitions from childhood to adulthood why a student or their family would be denied the right to celebrate in a manner reflective of who they are on the significant day of faculty the connection to culture is as strong and essential as the connection of mother and child culture is a proven protective factor to which studies have shown serves to prevent or reduce the risk of adverse experiences and unhealthy behaviors culture is restorative and helps create and increase resiliency in

094young people who will undoubtedly face many of life's challenges post-graduation and as young people of color the racism they replace daily as well i respectfully ask that the anchor school district primarily end the requirement for prior approval of wearing a traditional regalia or other objects and institute mandatory training for all staff i missed the native advisory committee's presentation earlier but i strongly hope that you take their advisement seriously as well thank you very much thank you christy our next actually our next three are in the room are in person rochelle pasetto [Music] hello my name is rachelle pascetto and i'm here to testify against our children wearing masks at school are children likely to spread or contract cover 19 a january 2021 study involving 100 000 students and staff says 99.968 percent of children do

095not get covered from school there were zero instances reported of a child infecting an adult a july 2020 german survey where most states do not require masks found from studying children and teachers at 13 schools that not only do schools not play a major role in spreading cove but keeping schools open actually slowed transmission by acting as a break in the virus the majority of school children do not get infected themselves despite an infection in the household do masks harm children physically in an october 2020 german study of mask wearing in nearly 30 000 children of the parents reported impairments caused by wearing the mask the 24 distinct health complaints include irritability headache difficulty concentrating less happiness reluctance to go to school malaise shortness of breath impaired learning and drowsiness or fatigue nearly a third

096of children experience more sleep issues than they had previously and a quarter of children developed new fears hundreds of the participants reported experiencing accelerated respiration tightness and chest weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness masks are especially problematic for asthmatic allergy prone hearing impaired or children on the spectrum depriving the body of oxygen creates long-term health effects we are creating a cure that is worse than the disease do masks from children develop mentally psychologically socially or emotionally and april 2020 brookings institution article says covering children's faces has the potential to impede verbal and non-verbal communication and by extension language development and social skills among the very things we send children to school to learn it is near impossible to imagine effective phonics instruction with everyone masked especially for a phonetic language such as english which has

097a highly irregular system what's the who's advice on mass for children children aged up to five years old should not wear masks this advice is motivated by a do no harm approach do no harm the best interest health and well-being of the child should be prioritized one of the reasons i chose to continue virtual learning the entire school year was because i could not send my child to school all day wearing a mask because of all the reasons i previously mentioned and so many more that i don't have time to mention wearing a mask for the 2021-2022 school year and beyond needs to be a choice for our children i have a sweet five-year-old who will be starting kindergarten in the fall as he was excitingly talking to me about how you couldn't wait to

098go to kindergarten he turned to me and asked do i have to wear masks to kindergarten because if i have to wear a mask i don't want to go this is not something a five-year-old should have to worry about school supposed to be a place for children to learn to socialize make friends and expand their knowledge masks inhibit this for children our local leaders have removed the mass mandate and it is time for you to do the same for our children thank you thank you all right our next speaker is dustin sherman thank you dustin sherman for the record first i want to welcome the new members the new board members here um i hope you will all listen and pay attention to the concerns of all the parents and citizens that testify let me

099ask you all this first how many of you can build an engine change a tire [Music] hang drywall or frame or house i bet some of those junior rotc kids can at least they can figure it out i can do all those because the things i learned in school many of those things i learned in middle school we are all you are all elected to govern the public schools within this municipality and have my respect for doing so with so many things have to be done to get the kids back to where they should be there are many things i believe would make our school system a lot more robust and educational for the kids as a whole for the last few years many programs have been cut and or removed i'd like to see

100many of those brought back there are they are life skills many of those will help kids help keep kids off the streets as adults home economics and shop class are two huge classes that should be added back to the curriculum many kids neither have the resources or drive to go to college but but uh but want to better themselves with occupations that can be learned in a hands-on environment back in the 90s i was one of those kids college wasn't right for me your job as administrators is to facilitate and prepare these young people for their future not just in more schooling but actual life experience and life skills sewing cooking check balancing are important skills that one needs to survive just as in justice and it's just as important as that piece of paper

101that you hand out in graduation tangible things in school like home economics math pe and language skills are a must to continue learning but coupled with life skills actual life skills based on uh actual life skills based learning will allow these young people to thrive on their own if they decide not to take on a four-year college education there are a lot of trade schools that will not only save a young person a ton of money but will also teach something that they can get and get and started very quickly these types of job skills should be fostered not taken for granted counseling art junior rotc is one of the craziest things i've ever heard this is something that these kids can learn if they get stranded somewhere they can survive why would why would

102asd cancel that it just makes absolutely zero sense to me so i'm definitely opposed to that and i'm opposed to the masks that you guys are wanting the kids to wear i see kids every day in the business that i run and they are completely all of them are completely opposed to it thank you thank you next in person annie messi [Music] how do i know this song [Music] all right you have three minutes first i want to welcome the new board uh i'm annie massey tonight i'm representing the alaska chapter for parents rights and education we are parents organizing our communities to raise public awareness about k-12 education we value students empower parents and enlightened communities we stand for the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children including in education

103when conversing with one board member this week the question to me was just exactly what does that look like i'd like to answer that question here in two foundational phrases respect and restore parents rights that honor u.s supreme court precedent to opt-in policies that are transparent consistent and easy for families to protect their children because unlike adults children lack capacity these are the public policy issues that directly affect all families and our decisions to enroll or withdraw from public education i've heard it said there are two problems with public education everything our children do not learn and everything they do we can see this with dr bishop revealing that only 28 of students have met the very low benchmark expectation and an advancement of critical social justice policies in asd a broad agenda for pre

104would be implementing a parental involvement program viewpoint discrimination addressing social emotional learning as an elective addressing comprehensive sexual education as an elective the current agenda items would be to review bp 6020 parental engagement discrimination and medical privacy including mask choice critical social justice theory and language not stopped in universities [Music] student and family data mining retention and sharing removal of unnecessary non-academics i've had the pleasure and great opportunity to work as being a stay-at-home mama volunteering thousands of hours in public education for over 11 years my husband and i we work to ensure that we are the primary source for food housing emotional needs and ultimately preparing for their futures while teaching our values to them and expecting every educator and every curriculum to respect our values not attempt to change them yet in the

105legislative priority meeting legislator harriet drummond revealed a dead wrong interpretation of what public education is and is not this dysfunction was spoken about such primal parental roles being usurped and replaced by public education she said to the school board i know that there's a lot expected of you not only do you have to get our children prepared for the future but you've got to feed them you've got to house them and you've got to make sure that their emotional needs are being met not one board member corrected her so i will i'd like to go on record and state that miss drummond is fundamentally wrong in her assumptions [Music] thank you our next speaker is on the phone polly carr polly are you on the line yes i am thank you you have three minutes

106good evening okay good evening um i'm calling in from unseated santa eno lands and recognize that all alaskans are living on indigenous lands and i wanted to speak tonight to alaska native students being denied wearing cultural regalia at graduation we have a painful history of colonization and traumatization inflicted upon indigenous peoples across the country and the impacts of this are felt every day throughout every system including our education system high school graduation is an incredible time during which each student's achievement is celebrated allowing individuals to feel proud of themselves and for their community to recognize this milestone my child is years away from graduating but i can only hope her moment is filled with joy and pride and love and so i'm i'm heartbroken as i know superintendent bishop and many on the school board

107are heartbroken over these incidents that deny alaska native students pride in their identity connection with their heritage celebration by loved ones whose hands often designed the regalia they intended to wear these experiences are re-traumatization of historical injustices and i'd like to see the district issue a public statement that acknowledges and apologizes for the wrongdoing by personnel in denying students their regalia commits that these types of injustices will not be allowed in the future and commits to overhauling the policy so that native families no longer have to seek permission to honor their cultures at graduation but these incidents are emblematic of a much broader systemic issues in which our understanding of what is acceptable centers on a western non-native experience in which we have erased alaska native cultures to the point that many students think of

108indigenous peoples as from the past and in which curriculum still paints negative ignorant pictures of indigenous communities perpetuating harm my own daughter has brought home homework this year that i am appalled by as in terms of how it depicts alaska native cultures so it's not surprising that these incidents occur i'd like to see the district commit to implementing training for all faculty about alaska native peoples histories and cultures and i'd like to see the district commit to aligning practices in accordance with the newly passed anti-racism and instructional equity policies which i am very grateful for i want my daughter growing up understanding the incredible knowledge practices and contributions of alaska native people to the place she lives i want her to know that what is good for indigenous communities is good for all of alaska

109thank you so much looking forward to seeing you all act on these issues and i stand with you in doing so thanks thank you uh in person we have amber glasser [Music] hello i have to push the button up there we go there it is let's see here all right my name is amber glasser and i'm a parent of two children in asd i'm testifying in support of memorandum number 123 a charter school amendment for eagle academy eagle academy has consistently achieved the very highest student outcomes in the entire district i would also like to touch on a couple other things our family is against critical race theory the definition of theory a supposition or system of ideas intended to explain something supposition is defined as an uncertain belief so why would we pass curriculum

110based on an uncertain belief i understand there are a lot of racist people in the world but the responsibility to fix that falls on the families and it is our job as parents and caretakers to make sure future generations are not racist critical race theory will create problems where problems never existed third rumor has that you want to keep our children masked in the fall and possibly beyond my eight-year-old daughter here in the audience has been struggling with math since the very beginning she's smart and she's been listening to the assembly meetings and the hours of public testimony by doctors osha experts surgeons nurses and many others in the community that are completely against mandatory masks when she did get to go back to school she was sad and confused recess was taken away with

111only a half day offered we go to a charter school and the academic policy committee decided 8 30 to noon with math continued on zoom at home was what we would do and what the majority of families wanted because of this she's had neck pain and back pain from all the screen time she wants lunch pe music recess and all the extra curricular activities back she wants to be able to hear her teacher she wants to be able to go to her school library and walk around freely she wants to hear her teacher and classmates she wants to be heard when she's speaking she's tired of repeating everything so she doesn't like speaking in class anymore this is wrong nonverbal communication is so important how can we achieve this with masks on i worked at

112boys and girls club and i ran my own classroom i've taken many early childhood education classes i know covering the faces of anyone for extended periods of time will have consequences but to cover the faces of innocent children who can't wear the mask properly and touch it consistently constantly just think about that seriously please please think about that i've worked in restaurants over half my life and cross contamination is something you learn on the first day wearing mass should be 100 percent choice if my child is suffering like this that means many others are as well and it is your job to protect them and to right your wrongs please take my testimony seriously i will be devastated if i have to pull my kids out of asd because you can't do what's right for

113them and what's right for the families thank you for your time and i'd like to welcome the new members as well thank you our next speaker in person is rachelle griffiths hello hi you have three minutes thank you my name is rochelle griffiths and i have a 13 year old daughter in the anchorage school district and i strongly oppose the critical race theory i think that there's too many unknowns when it comes to the critical race theory i've been involved in other aspects of our community and haven't been able to really look into what this is i didn't think it was going to be passed however i go to wikipedia and it says critical race theory opposes liberalism and uh it rejects the concepts of truth and merit so i click on liberalism and that's

114basically our american values and all the good things that america stands for and if this is coming against america and focuses on all the negative things uh a certain aspect that is not as big as this makes it out to be concerning race then it is anti-american and it needs to be revisited we need to put more um parents ask the parents what do they want their students to be taught because i don't want to sit there this coming year and have to sit down every day and tell my daughter what is right and what is wrong that is being taught to her so please revisit it um and then also concerning mask it's it's a big problem i really appreciate the people the parents who have come today to stand up against the mask

115i didn't realize tonight why my daughter doesn't want to go to school and one big issue is the mask um you know the kids they their shoulders are hunched forward they look down more they're not as happy she comes home she doesn't want to wear a mask and it's not okay to do this anymore and it's not helping them there's a lot of research that says the masks do not work and it's just you know it's hurting the children i just don't want to see them masked in the fall and i don't i think a lot of parents feel the same way and i believe um we don't need to be masking our kids anymore and i'm here to stand up for my daughter because that's what i i'm to do as a parent um

116they're just not good for our kids and i think that for the last week of school it would be great to see them unmasked just so that they can see each other's faces it just means a lot to be able to see people's faces um we've suffered enough our our our students have suffered enough we just have to let it go and we have to move forward and i'd like to welcome all of the board members and thank you for listening listening to me today and i hope that we can work together to do the best by all students in the anchorage school district thank you thank you okay so there is uh we received a written testimony and it will be attached it is attached to the agenda online and next up is our

117superintendent update [Music] sorry [Music] thank you madam president uh i will uh just touch on a few things and there's quite a few people in the audience that would like to introduce themselves as well and then probably get home to to do more um to get ready for tomorrow the the third to the last day of school so uh first is in regard to survey then regalia uh and then uh the introductions of new principles so i wanted to share just briefly with um the uh whole board uh some of the work uh that the board president and i have uh looked into in regard to the sr3 input and um in the law it uh for receiving of the sr-3 there's very this deliberate language in regard to gathering information from different teachers principal

118school leaders educators school staff basically stakeholders for the expense and the support of students in our school district and last friday asd released a survey to individuals that meet many of those categories uh our parents and our community members it's actually wide open and they can select whom they represent themselves but we're also planning uh for a stakeholder input on different groups so providing the survey with questions to community non-profits uh tribes other interest groups and support of education of our youth for the use of the esser funds and the anchor school district then on may 27th the board president i have settled on uh the best date that being for a town hall meeting uh with the board and administration really to share the results of the different pieces of input again from the

119individual groups that are speaking for their membership and their goals and their experiences as well as individuals it's a very uh simple um report and it demonstrates the areas that are allowable use of the funds to garner some insight into where the value is for our stakeholders and then we'll receive additional input at the meeting and answer questions as as we believe and then the plan would be for june 1st at the board meeting to allow for public testimony a time certain 45 minutes and the rest can be be written testimony so uh plenty of opportunity whether in person with the board uh dialing in to a dual session zoom session town hall my thoughts are as well as just electronic for those that choose not to do either the two and you can do

120all three if you prefer so that's just uh kind of a timeline of input in regard to uh the s or three and uh there has been uh quite a bit of testimony in regard to regalia and the incident that a couple of incidences that happened at west high and what we don't know is other concerns that may have come up that weren't brought to our level and so wanted to share with the board that immediately when we did find out we took immediate action as um remember wilson mentioned that just uh really move the approval communicate with your families share the information uh be sure that we're communicating um the uh what's expected and the intent to please come share it uh and not really remove those roadblocks uh for the rest of our

121graduations so uh the information came that some schools work directly with students but not back with families and that was a goal as well don't only let the students know please communicate as well with the family so that did occur last week and that notice went out and over the next few weeks we're really working to review the process of the administrative regulation uh it is in its infancy uh this is the second year actually that uh it went into uh action but uh we want to find out the input to kind of do an after action where are the changes um my understanding and just some of the discussions i've had was to get to a yes uh that to make regalia allowable and just say we can have um individualism and uh really

122celebration of our cultures at graduations which we hadn't in the past and um but the purpose of the ar did not land uh on the people who it was written for in a in a good way in an effective way so it is being um reviewed and uh spending time with after action as soon as school is over so those will happen uh after next week after this week rather and then really are our we're going with a recommendation of uh what we've heard from our senior director doreen brown and support of our native cultural committees to to really have that uh reside with them and the native uh community of elders so we are moving uh in that direction just haven't gotten there but wanted to share with the board the action that was

123taken i also updated you last week and the i just want to share some other good news our elementary hires and some of these folks are in the audience and they've waited for us but we've had some changes and open positions and our elementary hiring completed i believe uh over the weekend and so i would like to introduce to you and as i say your name and say a little bit about you if you could come to the mic because we would certainly welcome you to share some thoughts i don't know if you knew this would happen so molly hickox you're number one and miss hickox is mostly known for being the mom of emily our school board rep but we'll give her this other credit as well so uh miss hill cox has been

124appointed huffman elementary school's principal beginning next school year and she comes to us with two successful years as an assistant principal at lakehood and i believe over 12 years at gerdwood k-8 she's excited to join the huffing community and aboard please join me in welcoming mrs hickox to uh the uh principalship of huffman and if you do and if you just want to take a minute um molly you can share what you'd like with the board or not it is totally up to you well i'd just like to thank everybody for this opportunity and i'm looking forward to uh starting the year at huffman i think it's an exciting time as we kind of emerge um out of this pandemic stage and back to hopefully a little more normal looking school year um and i'm

125really excited to kind of take what we've learned during the pandemic we've um our teachers have made a huge leap in in learning and i'm excited to see where that takes us moving forward so thank you thank you molly and this next principle couldn't be here but uh chris opus who um left hoffman elementary to work at toku elementary and mr obitz will be starting the year at taku next year and uh prior to that he was an assistant principal at san lake elementary and a teacher at bowman and russian jack so he's been in our district for some time he's excited to join the school community and uh desired uh just a change and to offer his leadership and you might recall he and his staff shared uh the first very first i think

126it was december january the um mitigation that every you know in a school and what it would look like so um if you remember visiting huffman so we welcome him to taku uh also this person is here so tina come on forward tina bartlett and tina bartlett is ursa minor elementary school's new principal and she'll start again next year she's stepping into the principalship at ursa minor after a successful year assistant principal at muldoon and prior to that she's taught at willow crest elementary school for 11 years and she's very excited to join the school community and we want to welcome her but in our discussion was kind of funny because we talked about her significant other her husband and i think we met a long time ago in another district and i was just

127hoping because he's a trooper that it wasn't for anything bad because i was like oh you're related to that part so uh it was very i think it was good and i just want to welcome you and thank you for your service and share a little bit about yourself as well hi thank you so much um for having me here tonight i just want to express my gratitude for the opportunity my goal is to be of service to our families in anchorage school district and i want to build my capacity in a broader sense by doing this in a principal role so i'm grateful for this opportunity i'm a proud um anchorage school district kiddo miss bellamy was my middle school principal so i am grateful to be here and i'm excited to keep pushing

128kids moving forward and collaborating with families to have an effective and successful year of growth so thank you so much for the opportunity congratulations i don't believe this next person is here it's eagle river elementary school and don campbell who is presently at um baxter is moving to eagle river and she's worked many years in asd and began her teaching career at eagle river elementary a school where she is going back to be the principal the very brand new school so it's it's quite exciting she also taught at ravenwood elementary for 10 years before working two years as an assistant principal um at baxter in the last uh she's been at baxter for the last six years as assistant principal principal and just want to share that uh she is excited to go back to

129eagle river uh that's where she lives uh that's where her community is and so she was excited for that opening and eagle river elementary welcomes her and um for ursa major elementary school did i get that yeah ursa minor and then this is our major darissa martin and she couldn't be here with us tonight she's taking care of a family member but um she'll be at ursa major starting next year as well and miss martin is stepping into the principal ship after two successful years of assistant principal at fairview she has a passion for education and personal ties to the military community so it was fitting that she moved to ursa major and was very pleased to do so and uh just welcome to miss martin at ursa major and i don't know if she's

130listening to this tonight but we welcome you too so and our next uh principal is here christine irwin if she can come forward and she's at wonder park elementary school and i really do want to share uh my personal thank you to her we pulled her from her position last spring knowing that we were full fledged into a pandemic to lead a school with folks that she hadn't worked with and bring them through the pandemic in a successful school year so i want to personally thank you uh for taking that leadership dive last year as an acting we placed her as an acting and her success of course has led to her liking the school in the school liking her and now she is the full-fledged official principal of wonder park elementary school and she

131served as an assistant principal before that at sand lake and bowman schools which she um we pulled her most recently from sand lake last year and she's excited to continue to work and for wonder park and she has a plan for many good things to come please join me in welcoming christine irwin as the wonder park elementary school principal well i'd like to thank you for this opportunity i grew up here in anchorage i went to school at chester valley in baxter when they're in east high went to college out of state and came back and uh began my career at the anchor school district in 1991 so this is the pinnacle of my my uh my career i've been looking forward to leading a school and championing my students in the community so thank

132you for this opportunity i love that folks have theirs family support and friends in the audience thank you this next person was here but had to uh uh run home and it is our new principal of cassoon elementary corey engstrom her boss is here though present boss um and it's my pleasure to introduce uh corey to you and hopefully next meeting you can see her she was sitting right next to out there and she worked successfully as an assistant principal at wayley school and two years at clark middle school prior to that she's excited about her return to ella to the elementary ranks where she began her career with asd and interesting i had met her almost 20 years ago uh in a different position in a school that i worked in uh in a

133different district so it was good to reconnect and and realize that we had known each other years ago and uh we welcome to cassoon elementary school corey engstrom and i do believe dr jenny whits in the audience with a guest who we and please come forward with your guest and uh dr jenny wood is uh campbell elementary school stem and she will uh take over as principal next fall she comes to the principalship after working for the last year as an assistant principal of clark and if you uh remember as a side note um mrs williams has really trained folks well because we took her co-worker uh and uh he is now at service so poor cecily is without her assistance but uh prior to this year dr whit served as an instructional coach and

134special education teacher in asd and worked as a science teacher and district technology director outside of asd so she was a perfect fit for campbell stem elementary school they were just thrilled please join me and officially welcome dr whit and her little one as the new principal of campbell's say thank you to everybody um we are new to anchorage with the last three years um when people say where are you from i say alaska even though i wasn't born here uh being a military wife for 18 years i forgot actually where i was from you move every two or three years and 2008 we were lucky to land in alaska in fairbanks and when we left we've just had this yearning to go back when my husband retired and at the age of 40 we

135had something unexpected we were like where are we going to raise our our baby and we ask all our other kids all the other five where do you guys want to go and they all said mom we want to go home and home was alaska so we're back here we're excited to be taking over camel stem i have a lot of stem experience as uh dr bishop had mentioned and so we're just really excited and we want to thank you sorry did she want to say anything into the microphone you just say hi everybody no way okay all right and i would like to invite uh mara rosenthal from baxter elementary school forward she is the acting principal of baxter elementary school and she was our most recent hire so mara has served as assistant

136principal for four years at willamel elementary school and prior to being an assistant principal she also taught for several years at willow she's very excited to join the baxter elementary community and we do want to say thank you uh we did a transfer if you will ask her if she would take backs for being this late in the year and doing a community group and the whole process would be difficult and we wanted to have baxter be involved so uh we have an acting principal there and uh mara's leadership fits perfectly with that community and we're very excited for her to lead the community and hopefully uh really talk her into applying for that job full-time mara well thank you so much for this opportunity i am honored to um be sliding into this position

137and sliding from northeast to kind of more southeast anchorage i grew up here and went to all asd schools and i'm really proud to just continue to support our community i can't wait to get to know the whole baxter community so thank you so much thank you all right and cherry galloway is here yes oh there she is come on come forward so cherry's our new principal at o'malley elementary school and uh she will begin at o'malley next school year and she's stepping into the principal ship at o'malley after serving as an assistant principal and intern at spring hill and cruise side park elementary six years successful classroom teaching at orion as well she's excited about the opportunity to join the o'malley school community and one of the features is that uh she had children

138in an immersion program and under and then taught in a non-immersion program so she really understands uh the dual programs and moving everybody's uh forward for success so uh please welcome uh cherry galloway for me thank you dr bishop and thank you to the board um this has been a really amazing year of growth uh seeing the staff work so hard this year i always get choked up but through the pandemic and and then also coming out of it it has been a really good growth here for us all it's been a very humbling experience um i have had the great privilege to serve the base community for the last six years and um i'm so looking forward to going and joining the o'malley family it was a perfect fit being an immersion parent i

139have a freshman in college that just got done at oklahoma state this year and so and then i have my other son is actually gonna be a sophomore in the immersion program and so this was a good fit and i'm just thrilled to join the o'malley family so thank you so much and our last elementary school principal is eric anderson at spring hill elementary and this is mr eric anderson he comes to us again like i said from spring hill uh just most recently but many years of teaching an administrative experience including uh principalship at onalaska city school in onalaska winterbury charter in anchorage and kodiak middle school he has quite a uh depth and breadth of experience in the administrative ranks and continues to come back to asd and choose asd so we're thrilled

140with mr anderson presently he is the assistant principal at abbott loop elementary school please join me in officially welcoming dr or mr anderson as a new principal at spring hill elementary school [Music] thank you i'm very honored to be here um i'm really excited to move forward and start working with uh spring hill staff and community uh i've been welcomed uh greatly there and uh i'm just very excited to be here and get moving this year with working with covet has taught me a lot about what really matters in education and i'd like to take that knowledge and move forward so thank you excellent thank you thank you so much and then uh this is the final introduction of the board of our new principals and please come forward maria hernandez principal of stellar secondary

141school and uh this year we just had two secondary principals and again we uh had service and now stellar and let me uh share a little bit about maria uh maria hernandez has been appointed for next school year and she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to stellar she's currently serving as the assistant principal of benny benson secondary school but prior to her time at benson she served the district in many capacities uh and you'll recard listening including a project manager she was one of the the folks that we honored tonight prior to moving into a school she's been an acting counseling coordinator she's been a counselor at benson and service high school so she comes to us uh um with lots of different skills and trades uh to be able to support stellar

142uh please join me in welcoming maria hernandez as the new principal of sellin stellar secondary school thank you for the introduction i've been here so long i forget what i've done already welcome to the new school board members i am extremely excited to be joining stellar it's a wonderful programmed school it's been around for 47 years not many schools can say that and so i'm just proud and excited to be part of that community and help move it forward and help our kids excel and do the best they can so i'm really excited for this opportunity thank you thank you mr hernandez and uh with that i want to share with the school board that those are the the the final um roundabout uh group of our hires as principals in asd the superintendent report

143is complete thank you dr bishop and congratulations to all the new principals that's awesome lots of familiar faces so uh are there any questions for the superintendent regarding her report [Music] yes remember jacobs thank you madam president uh first i want to congratulate all the principals one more time appreciate their service um dr bishop could you speak to uh we were talking about the earlier the response to the regalia uh incident um i've heard that there might be training um regarding that do you have a timeline at this point or an expectation as to when staff might be receiving and when would be appropriate for the board to follow up sure well we are beginning with uh really in the uh sorry through the president uh to member jacobs uh in the fall we have

144uh invited uh to to speak with leadership at first but our um [Music] you know professional development and training will be ongoing so we're starting with that starting point to understand where we are uh as well as introduce our uh we had uh some planned with the um equity policy as well as the anti-racism policy to really educate our staff starting with our school leaders and uh iu is going to be a part of that as an israel start and then we can follow through with our planning after that [Music] other questions or comments lessons yeah i um thank you uh for for really helping the community um i don't know so swiftly realize the significance of this moment i think that when we when we when we locate that that trigger that thing and

145then we act on it that's a really important and useful it's a launching pad for something new and for me a lot of this comes back to the curricular experience because that's again that's what education does it's that k-12 system um i think i look forward to seeing both a process unfold and a new kind of a product and i think that that product and i'd be happy to help work on whatever it is um i want to see you know if it's an ecosystem or like a deeply informed spiraling system a foundational knowledge right it begins in kindergarten it's layered throughout every year that um no our alaska native people are not just a chapter or a unit that we we close unit for and we're done with but but their but our students

146understandings of um this place and its histories and the ways in which alaska native people and all of everybody who's here um i'm not really sure where i'm going to this but i i i think we can get there [Music] i'm looking forward to a deeply informed process and product as a result of this sort of cultural moment all right thank you member lessons seeing no more remember jacob thank you i didn't want to cut anyone off from having a first question um the superintendent bishop the we had a couple folks testify regarding the jrotc program cancellation um i was curious if you could speak to the thought process behind that program in particular um if there were any uh circumstances surrounding it then yeah thank you through um so in regard to that testimony

147i i certainly can answer that and through the president to member jacobs um uh it actually what what the students shared were getting gaining more information but there isn't a change to not allow it um there had been non-travel uh in our policy from from part of our mitigation early on and since new um and then lots of things have changed with sports and masking and unmasking and outside so we've been updating those as we go along uh we are looking into it it looks like a possible miscommunication at the school level because we have approved other rotc units to do that so we um if you saw immediately they spoke to the students to get more information and we're going to work on that we'll report in the board connect any other comments remember

148wilson the conversation regarding the regalia being worn during graduation will that our will that include an all-compass doll culture conversation uh through the president to member wilson yes the actual regulation and intent was for all cultures and and that's what was displayed yet okay that brings us thank you dr bishop that brings us to uh our consent agenda madam president would like to move the consent agenda which consists of march 2021 regular session minutes the asb memorandum number 116 personnel report asd memorandum number 107 award of professional services agreement professional services selection for multi-site secure vestibule upgrades group 3 and group 4. is there a second second it's been moved in second that we approve the consent agenda as listed is there any opposition see no opposition the consent agenda is approved that brings us

149to our action items and i think we have public testimony [Music] the procedures for agenda item testimony are as follows an action item is first introduced by the vice president and if second by another board member i will open the floor for public testimony 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 after all testimony closes i will open the floor for board discussion before finally calling for the final vote the voting results will be displayed all right so and there is also written testimony that is attached to the agenda online so we are at remember yeah uh madam president like to move asb memorandum number one two three a request from eagle academy academic policy board to

150amend their current charter and add seventh and eighth grades to their school grade levels and increase their enrollment count from 180 [Music] it's been moved in second and we have two people signed up to testify we will start with annie massey [Music] hello again hi my name is annie massey i'm a parent of three children two in asd and one currently at eagle academy charter school we actually have a second student that has also lotteried in and depending on how things go with anchorage school district we may or may not still be in public education but eagle academy charter school is exactly where i'd like to be i'm testifying in support of memorandum a charter school amendment for eagle academy eagle academy has consistently achieved very highest student outcomes in the entire district they offer

151a dress code which i believe if enacted district-wide would alone improve our district outcomes they draw from back to basics teaching including spalding and saxon math curriculum and with an emphasis on ideals of patriotism and good character that consistently works this expansion means a furthering of this successful model for middle school students and the opportunity to expand enrollment support our goals to increase grade three through nine proficiency in math and the guard rail that honors and represents more student groups in lottery application programs within asd this expansion will provide a valuable example for other lottery application programs to also expand and of how we can easily improve student outcomes in the anchorage school district neighborhood schools thank you for your time thank you [Music] our next speaker is [Music] i think vanessa i can't read

152your last name her what is that him we'll let you tell us how's that [Music] oh from the back um it's hall hall yeah ajl okay oh okay apparently i was writing my signature not legible all right you have three minutes thank you my name is vanessa hall and i am the eagle academy academic policy board chair but i'm speaking to you as a parent tonight i have a current fifth grader my daughter and second grader my son at eagle academy i am here tonight to speak in support of the 7th and 8th grade expansion on the board's agenda my mom was one of the original eagle academy founders and 7th and 8th grade expansion was always one of their plans for the school they've gone through the process several times to try and plan

153it out starting back in 2008 but never had the funding to make it a viable program over a decade later it is finally financially possible for us many parents including myself want to see this expansion move forward [Music] hit your mic again there you go um did you hear it okay we did most of it i mean we heard all of it except that last little sentence so um for the following common reasons continuation of a rigorous academically focused program continuation of our spalding and saxon curriculum and an alternative local choice to the standard middle school option our school has proven year after year through high student achievement that our program works our curriculum has set many students up for success in high school and beyond continuation through 7th and 8th grade will only improve

154the path they are on some families value a more traditional back to basics program with smaller class sizes and the ability to place students in the appropriate language arts and math levels eagle academy provides this please consider approving the expansion of this program for an alternative program to the local middle schools thank you thank you i'm not showing anybody else that ends our public testimony on this action item so the matter before the board right now is uh motion to approve memorandum number one two three uh for uh eagle academy charter school the floor is not open for debate uh yes through the chair i'd like to ask the administration that they're in support of this change thank you uh through the chair to member holloman yes we support uh this request other questions any

155more debate yes remember lessons so this is my second meeting i have spent an inordinately large number of minutes considering that many hours considering this because it's the first chance i feel like i've had to really consider um how to make a choice in a kid's best interest and i've been impressed at the academic plans that the goals for seventh grade are opportunities to explore diverse points of view to learn from conflicts challenges and change to explore multiple perspective and appreciate yourself and others and i think those are really important and admirable um i have no i've been impressed that um the director of charter schools i sat next to him at the family partnership graduation and you know he said this is a well thought out plan it takes place over three years nothing

156happens next year they think it through a little bit happens a year after that a little bit more happens the year after that so conceptually it makes sense and it's great to hear the administration's support i asked a lot of questions in my first official request for information and i got some answers um i guess for me the biggest and i'm hoping that other people can can speak here um how does how does removing these 60 kids what's the ripple effect in another school um how does it change class sizes for those other schools with those those students and not just class sizes but you know are there fewer curricular options so there's a lot of support for this program which i appreciate i just don't hear what the larger that larger ecosystem what happens

157there you know if we i think about a kelp forest you know and if you remove something from that kelp forest something else happens and that's not exactly the same thing as what's happened in the eagle academy charter school um but i do see us as all connected and maybe my information my quest for information is uh never going to have a concrete answer but i i do have the awareness that removing 571 000 from greening and mirror lake in some capacity and building eagle academy that's going to mean something for some students so i really like how well thought the plan is i just don't know what will happen at the other schools dr bishop did you want to um respond sure through the present to member lessons uh and and that would be

158difficult for us to know as well because we really don't know the future choices we don't know the future uh but in uh in line with the board goals and uh parent support and liking it i have always been a supporter of parents being able to um parent involvement is key to any child's success and that this is a well thought out plan they are stakeholders in the program already uh there's if this isn't offered they could leave the district entirely which would even be additional funds and so if we speak in the unknowns it's it's difficult uh we don't know where kids land but what we've done and demonstrated through this pandemic is that we create and build programs that parents support and desire and see their child successful in um i share with

159principals that you don't have to have a school that's everything for everybody because we can't meet that need just like we'll just water it down but i i hope that all of our schools are the special place for someone um this same uh discussion uh just so you know uh was in place when we started alaska middle college we weren't thinking of what students can get and parents can get with the option we were worried about what everyone else lost but i am secure in knowing that the schools that are supported by parents built thoughtfully have evidence of success and are researched that we can adjust and meet the needs of students and so i totally understand where you're coming from because uh previous to this i did not recommend growth because of the uncertainty

160and actually the success involved but every step of the way this proposal has meant every marker it went through an administrative review it went through planning it has parent support and i i just think that we make decisions today based on the needs of children and um we are a living breathing organism of a district to begin with and it's changed over the years and if we didn't support the programs and the ideas of our parents and and what they enjoy around them that that that would be problematic for the future because school will always continue to adjust and look different as it should as we move forward and and so i don't see a as huge of an impact because it is such a smaller number um we did look at what does other

161look like but because we don't know whether they would even be removed from the district we just wouldn't have a sense of that so but certainly i i would want you to know that the thought of revenue and adjustments did come to mind but in the belief that funding is for students in their education that we we could figure it out as a district to support this and and i guess that was a long answer but hopefully it provided the background of how we made our decision to support it thank you uh member remember higgins and then we'll go to um remember harlem thank you i um um president i think uh remember lessons asked the question she's supposed to be here a year before she's supposed to know to ask that question so i

162object to it that way but um there's been a lot of history in this that you've raised a very good question we've looked at the issue of consolidating schools how that could expand optional programs at one point we also saw that when schools got bigger you got less money coming in from the state because they expect to be the efficiency so when you consolidate you actually can lose money rather than actually pay for savings to the to the taxpayers locally on what we're doing with education uh so you you raised a very good question i think i think the focus i've always had is what's going to be best for the kids i i i the heavy the more involvement from the parents the better for everybody and i find there i've ever i haven't

163seen a school board yet that hasn't supported new charter schools and expansion of the charter schools because of that reason the academic results have varied uh when you look at the demographics of it and what schools are really being super uh you know performers versus others and sometimes we draw conclusions without looking at demographics but i think i agree with you that looking at the impact this goes beyond that within it but i think we moved staff around from schools to schools its population changed anyway so it didn't make a difference that way we have the ability within this larger school district to move staff if we have a significant impact i remember when we had a number of teachers at uh vegas middle school that broke off for the charter school and we worked

164with that just as well and we knew we lost some of the students there so while i do appreciate the question i think it shows an insight that you're looking at the big picture and i appreciate that i think the parents involvement is so critical and i think the the charter schools do such a good job of bringing in the parents involvement that i've always been supportive of expansion like this and new charter schools when they come in but i appreciate the question thank you mr holloman thank you member higgins i was going to commend you because i just got a yes when i asked a question she really answered yours um i'm not complaining i was going to say from personal experience a disturbingly long time ago when asd opened the charter it so

165happened that it appealed to a lot of people at a school i was teaching at and classmates of my son who was headed to that school as well and i saw a number of students that that i expected at my middle school because you feel that way about it um deviated and left for a different program and interestingly through the course of the year and the following year a lot of them came back um and i think you'll see things like that happen it's easier to go to your neighborhood school easier on everybody it's your next-door neighbors there's a yellow bus that picks you up and drops you off um but people choose them for a reason and often the reason is fit for the student for the faculty for parents for for everything about

166it recently i sat through the graduation ceremony for that same program and one of the things you'll hear from our smaller schools the students stand up and say i don't think i'd be here if this place wasn't here um and they'll often acknowledge that they don't fit very well in the normal school in the average setting for some kids it's great that's just exactly where they want to be um but i just see a lot of strength in all the different programs we have um schools will have to deal with it and if you actually see students choosing other programs that that makes people in neighborhood schools kind of step back and look at whether or not they're really delivering what they think they're delivering um it's it's kind of a there is competition there

167in that way not so much that you you want to take students away from another school but you just want to be aware of what's driving their success especially if it is having that impact and and then there is the larger impact of the fact that the more programs like this we have the better chance we have of students staying in the district rather than being frustrated by by a more general school that doesn't meet their needs so i'm very glad to see them go through all the process expansion is great it's an exciting time for school to to add to that and we wait and see what happens so i will support it and uh wish them well thank you any other comments yes remember wilson i just wanted to tag along basically what

168uh member holloman said is that our students all and and those of us that have kids we we all know that our students learn differently and trying to find the best fit for each of our kids so that they can find their own success is really important and what i appreciate about the anchorage school district is that we have so many choices for our students and as parents if um we're so willing to to put in the additional effort to get them to different schools which believe me i've done um that those opportunities are there for them to find their own success and these smaller programs they are often um a great fit for for those few students that that really need that smaller type of learning and some of my kids liked the larger

169school settings so i i just wanted to say that i really appreciate all of the different options that the anchorage school district provides for our students so i also will support this okay and i i'll just make a quick comment i i will be supporting it as well you know i think any any given year we have there's so many unknowns we have zone exhibit exemptions you know that kids that families can take advantage of you know that will put them somewhere else uh but i think the the uh this plan is absolutely well thought out it gives it takes place over time and the kids who are going to be those seventh and eighth graders are already there um and i think that's uh um so i will be supporting it seeing no more

170comments let's go let's call for the vote remember donnelly did you have i see can you hear me remember donnelly yes i can hear you i'm ready to vote okay oh i thought you had a comment all right hold on remember jacobs yes member lessons yes remember donnelly yes remember higgins remember holloman yes remember wilson yes and president bellamy yes [Music] and that motion uh passes unanimously okay on our agenda we are now at um non-action items anything anybody want to pull anything that's there um to the president i'd like to pull uh memorandum number 128 paid lunch price increases okay any anybody else all right you may speak to you great um thank you so much so to my understanding the premise is that uh lunch price increases would go up by about 25

171cents which is not a tremendous amount netting about 160 thousand dollars my question actually i have two of them and maybe they don't have exact very clear answers right now i would like to know where that money is going to be reinvested and how in particular i would like to see the quality of our school lunches improve as far as fruit and vegetable you know fresh foods um i have a kindergartner and a fourth grader and i allow them to do we allow them to do a hot lunch once a month and they search out the lunches that have um the sweetest sounding or the most processed sounding things because that's not necessarily what they get at home but that's what a lot of kids get every day twice a day for breakfast and lunch

172and um so i would hope that we could take that additional revenue and maybe i don't know purchase alaska salmon i know down in other school districts maybe sitka they're making salmon patties every so often um i think that would be a really fabulous way of reinvesting families additional um you know those additional funds um my second point and i don't know how to say this exactly is um why are we serving chocolate milk and to that it's my general understanding from the department of health and um human services um that there's about three teaspoons of added sugar in every container chocolate milk and i just did the quick math that if a student has three teaspoons of added sugar every day from their like k through 12 experience that's about nine gallons of additional

173sugar which is a large volume of sugar uh and it contributes to things like heart disease diabetes high blood pressure um stroke and those are all things that really don't prepare anybody for success in life that's the long-term implication will a glass of chocolate milk do anybody harm at any given moment no um might it make discipline problems and unruly behaviors increase in a classroom maybe uh does the american heart association think kids age 12 age 2 to 18 should have about six teaspoons of added sugar a day you know yes so that's about you know one of the chocolate milk boxes is half of what a kiddo should have for their added sugars that i don't know what the nutritional value i know annie massey agrees with the bananas um so i don't know

174what to do with this information but i would like to see the additional revenues be reinvested for our students well-being and i would like to maybe make a motion if it's in the action item stage in two more weeks that we consider removing chocolate milk and i don't know how to do that okay before hold on let me um ask dr bishop to respond to your okay initial two points okay thank you correct through the president uh to member lessons i think you asked two questions that i'm going to request uh assistance from tom roth um where does the money go and why chocolate why do we sell chocolate milk were the two questions within the statements thank you dr bishop uh through through the board president to remember lessons so and and i'll probably

175i'll defer to mr ratliff to speak specifically to where the revenues go when they are collected through through the the point of sales in schools but i think in general student student nutrition unlike most departments is is really expected to be a going entity in that the revenues that student nutrition generates through through paid meals and through federal subsidies go to pay for that that department and that the student nutrition is not funded through the general fund so that's where those monies go to and in addition to that just some of the the comments in regard to updated lunches uh prior to the pandemic we do have a changeover in our high schools offering uh unprepared meals and just different with different trays and um farm to school products uh and we are um working

176through those issues at elementary school because the schools were not built to actually have a full kitchen back to you mr raw thank you dr bishop so i i would say and and it's it's probably a much more involved conversation in terms of the the procurement of of local produce and meats that the district student nutrition does procure locally uh there are some uh there are many requirements i don't know that fish local fish is feasible just from a preparation and a storage standpoint but but to be sure we're very keen on purchasing fresh fruit uh and vegetables and meat locally for our students uh but again i think member lessons you know we can probably set a time uh to brief the board have andy mergens come in and talk to those details with

177with regards to the chocolate milk um i i'm probably i'm not qualified to offer a personal opinion the district does offer [Music] white milk chocolate milk they're both shelf stable the the district also offers lactose free milk that was addressed earlier i i think what it comes down to is offering students options and and the truth is uh many kids will quickly walk past white milk but they'll take chocolate milk if there is a way to get that calcium in the other nutritional value not withstanding the sugar and that's a that's a great point as a parent i understand that but if that's the only thing a student will consume when they take a meal it's an option that's available to them okay and uh to your third point uh this is an information only

178item so it won't be moving forward i know that's where i'm going i don't know how to do it but that's where i'm going all right all right any other comments did you have another point okay all right okay that brings us to public testimony on non-agenda items we have uh natalya gruber group you gotta help me out [Music] no worries it gets butchered all the time um thank you um hello my name is nathalia grabogel i am a mexican and athabascan mother of an upcoming kindergartner and second grader i am testifying today in opposition of bringing in critical race theory to our district upon research it is apparent that over 50 percent of our students are not proficient in english math and science i want to highlight some peaks testing statistics that i obtained

179from the anchorage school district website these statistics come from the 2018-2019 school year 95 percent or more of the students in the district were tested for english the data showed that 57.7 of students were either below proficient or far below proficient regarding math the data showed that 60.56 were either below proficient or far below proficient in math for science the data showed that 53.39 of students are either below proficient or far below proficient my point is is that 50 percent of school-age kids are struggling in math english and science and we're discussing bringing critical race theory to this district why are we going to bring in a concept in my opinion should not be taught in the school system when the district is failing these children and every other aspect based on this data i

180think the district needs to focus on increasing proficiency in math english and science not adding critical race theory to the curriculum i want to also testify them against against masking our children in the fall fact only n95 respirators prevent airborne viruses so every other form of mask will not filter out an airborne pathogen i want us to use some common sense if i can smell a fart through a mask a virus will also penetrate there are various vaccines out now for people who want to protect themselves further from a virus that has over 99 survival rate we now know that masking keeping kids apart and having barriers between students are just for optics they give people a false sense of security as a licensed professional counselor who specializes in working with chill childhood and developmental

181trauma i want to say that there is no vaccine or cure for the psychological impact that these masks physical barriers and staying six feet apart has had on our school age children please don't continue this madness our children's mental health is more important than adults false sense of security thank you for your time thank you okay that ends our public testimony we are now uh at board school board and administration comments anybody got any comments okay member higgins um your mic please sounded better that way but um first of all i just wanted to shout out congratulations to all the graduates i've had a chance to go to diamond and different schools with that and watching the celebration and seeing the parents who were so engaged in it just congratulations one of the things i

182did when i first got on school for the first time in 2008 was i remember attending migrant education and they had a connection with kids and it was pretty cool because i just come from a a presentation on america's promise that said people kids that are in uh not kids but people who were in poverty they had top three goals were uh the the survival you know food everything else the second one was entertainment third one was relationships and it was all set up to do that you walked in and there was food there was arts and crafts and books and connections so i one of the kids wore the paper you did a rabbit ears kind of thing and a word school board so what can i tell you you gotta give them credit

183and one of the things i did this weekend was to this uh this yeah this weekend was i had a chance at tudor elementary to go by there with all the plant sales and watch all these teachers that was so engaged with the kids helping them do the plant cells and i was dragged out by some kids so i just want to say it was a very nice function and just a thanks to the teachers there the uh chelsea boyd man [Music] danny jeffrey is christy kojic and i'm sure i'm mispronouncing all this so don't hold it against me uh jessica mallory uh courtney romain i guess uh derek debusk and katan uh uh connet um it just you know they were just so connected with the kids so i had to buy three but

184i have to share one thing with you it's pretty cool because i let's see this is a if i want to do this right this is boy lauki and this is um aiden lowkey and this is sophia buckhold and it's kind of fun they even use the newspaper to do it with so i thought that was kind of cool type of event what they were teaching them and getting involved and a little capitalism right out there if you want but uh i did appreciate that and i just when we got events like that being able to comment at least give recognition some of the teachers and the kids that are doing things and they just say thanks and appreciate the job you're doing so with that thank you thank you other comments from the board

185remember wilson just wanted to congratulate all of our graduates um i was i had the pleasure of attending uh actually quite a few graduations and some immersion ceremonies and i was just super excited that they got to participate in person this year um they were super excited to participate in person and also i i wanted to say thank you to all the educators for helping those students get to that point um i've worked with many of them and they work tirelessly to make sure k-12 they work tirelessly to make sure that our students get the best education they possibly can and this has been a really tough year so thank you to our educators as well thank you remember lessons i just want to you know echo the graduation huzzahs um it was a really

186remarkable week of witnessing students who have overcome a lot they've developed grit they've developed perseverance they've developed new ways of thinking um new modalities new practices and it was i had nothing to do with their success but it was a privilege to to look them in the eye and sort of bear witness to that and i also wanted to add that i in addition i had the chance to um help be a i don't know a community a participant in the rogers park highly gifted ropes course and if um the others of you haven't heard of it it's this rights of passage experience and if we're talking about students being life ready these sixth graders were conceptualizing implementing and then reflecting back on year-long objectives so one student presented on creating her own art store

187on etsy and the challenge she overcame was nobody bought her art so what did she do she had to adjust her prices and then um she had to make the art make the etsy store deal with supply and demand and then sort of reflect on that all during the pandemic um another student um uh she taught her she wanted to do a big project on american sign language and you can see how that mobilized her to she's thinking bigger she's thinking about middle school she's thinking about high school the importance of asl as a language and i was just so deeply impressed by both of these hour-long presentations that these young ladies gave and i would hope that more of our students have the opportunity to engage in these self-directed project-based learning where they can

188really develop these capacities for for grit and perseverance and seeing something through it was wonderful [Music] thank you carl yeah just briefly i wanted to congratulate the the graduates as well i uh had two um kiddos graduated this past year and i i saw uh the district did what it could to make that process as normal as possible and it was awesome but there was something about the the students marching through the the service football field that was definitely uplifting so yeah great any comments from staff i'd just like to share a couple of uh like uh things uh relative to um congratulating the graduates of course it was cold i'm not gonna tell no it was cold it was windy but it was fabulous i absolutely enjoyed that experience especially um not having not

189having any um having a different experience last year the other thing is is the korean-american uh scholarship program i got invited to that and it was basically uh students from throughout the community with their with their actual mentors who had actually or sponsors and so those kids got um recognized with their families for that and i really enjoyed being a part of that um i attended winterberry's virtual community meeting and that was a great experience because um i i didn't know as much as i thought i knew about winterberry and the wall golf philosophy so i i was really glad to hang out with the parents on that um the rasmussen foundation also convened a meeting that uh was very enlightening and they are um sponsoring a couple of i mean the people are on

190the call were all doing some wonderful things uh but there is a blacks in alaska project that is being uh sponsored by them and i i just think that's uh going to be a wonderful um addition to our historical context here in in in alaska and then uh the only other thing had to do with uh a virtual town hall to just see where all the policies are and they're kind of everywhere but um with that same president yes mr donald thank you um i really appreciate the data that was provided by the administration regarding our math testing over the past 20 years i did i thought it would i would very much appreciate if they can shed any light on why the transition from the sba testing in 2014 to the amp in 2015

191resulted in such a dramatic drop in the proficiency assessment um i'm sure there was a increase in difficulty there and but it seems like a 50 reduction there there must be more to the story there and if at any point of time the administration they don't i'm not asking for that tonight could provide some additional data about that significant uh drop that occurred between 2014 and i'd greatly appreciate it uh from the point of view of really understanding where we've been the last 20 years how we've evolved to where we've gotten to today thank you okay thank you member donnelly uh dr bishop has a response and then we'll see where we are after that thank you member donnelly that's a great observation and we have noticed that as well uh when we talked about

192the the reading and the reading program and the change and the frustrations from our teachers uh the sba uh was an assessment of the prior standards and i shared at one time that when we alaska was rated with other states we received a d on our standards at that time for rigor in the change to the alaska standards we then were in the top 10 of all 50 states of rigor in standards with the alaska state standards and so you are correct that the assessment which assesses the standards and the students knowledge of the standards changed as well became a more rigorous test so those two differences demonstrated the change in the alaska standards what we expect children to know and be able to do thank you thank you dr bishop remember donnelly did are

193you good yes ma'am thank you thank you all right seeing no other hands or gestures to comment i'll entertain a motion to a juror oh second