001good evening it is 601 on april 20th 2021 i'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the anchorage school board before we begin i would like to acknowledge with gratitude the denying of people both past and present who have lived on these lands since long before anchorage was here may we all be good stewards of these lands um roll call i have uh remember donnelly remember bellamy myself a member of michaelis member holloman uh member mitchell we'll be right back with this uh i have superintendent dr bishop will be right back with us as well i have our student representative uh miss emily with us as well uh on zoom we have board member hildy so we do have a six member board for this one meeting and all board members are in
002attendance next up is the flag salute and i'm going to ask member mitchell to please lead us in this loop i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you at this time i'd like to turn it over to our student representative for an opening statement my name is emily hickox and i am the student representative to the board i was elected to serve through the student advisory board although my votes are advisory only i offer student voice to the body we would like to welcome you to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the anchorage school district and this board the board thanks students parents teachers
003staff school business partners and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time your talent and your tax dollars thank you emily next up is the approval of the agenda i know that a couple of board members had some uh amendments they would like to make um remember bellamy if you'd like to go first yes uh madam president i'd like to uh add under action items a statement that was forwarded from the uh communications committee on april 14th and katie could can i get a copy i can't remember the exact title it's a statement in response statement in response to anti-asian american pacific islander violence and acts of hate is there a second i second on the floor we have a motion to amend the agenda to add um [Music] the letter
004of this statement out of the communications committee directly to action items and uh did anybody have any questions on this or um margo did you like really really quickly smoke on the why for adding it today because we'll come to the discussion part of it later yes so we added it today because our last meeting it moved out of committee on the 14th of uh on the 13th i'm sorry of april this would have been the first opportunity for the board to um to engage okay thank you um so we do need to take a roll call vote to go ahead and put this on an agenda i'd move to amend and put it on the non-action as a non-action item for this meeting so that it would be available to vote at the next
005meeting is that a friendly amendment that you're offering no it's an amendment i i i haven't seen this yet and i don't think anybody in the public seen this yet and it takes a super majority to to add something to the action calendar with this short of notice it should have been provided there should have been a notice gone out i think that like friday or something like that i believe it just takes a simple majority to amend the agenda at this part of the process i think it takes a super majority yeah real quick check uh member hildy i see your hand up thank you um one it is just uh at the beginning of approval agenda it's just a simple majority if you amend the agenda during the meeting after the agenda has
006been approved it's a super majority but it gets to the point that we should not be amending the agenda unless there's some like emergency situation this should just go through the normal process you can go on non-action or action for the next four meeting um but it's not appropriate to amend the agenda tonight for it i have a motion to put it on action in a second and then i got a second amendment to make it a non-action but i don't recall if i heard a second to mr donnelly's request to put it as a non-action so not seeing a second then i am back to [Music] remember bellamy's amendment uh asking to put this letter on as an action item not seeing any other questions immediate questions by board members if we can do
007a roll call vote on whether to add this letter to action items on the agenda [Music] remember mitchell yes remember holloman yes remember hildy no remember donnelly no vice president bellamy yes president michaelis yes apologies our student voice yes and that was a guess for our student thank you [Music] that amendment passes with four years and two nays i believe there's one other agenda amendment to be offered tonight i moved to add the [Music] policy change regarding attendance that i provided to the president to the non-action item for a non-action item tonight so it would be available at the next meeting to be voted on i will also second that if nobody else says [Music] second okay um so there's a first and a second to add a policy amendment to non-action uh which is
008appropriate as policy changes do require two meetings uh first any second reading uh anyway uh are there any questions everybody will get a paper copy of it to discuss it later tonight i mean i believe it has been emailed to member hildy as well if there are any comments or questions when we get to non-action remember bellamy i'm just could you just clarify what it it's uh what what actually are we adding it is language to uh accountable to current policy to current policy yeah okay to account for absences under um pandemic rules um katie if you could please do a roll call vote emily yes thank you remember hildy no remember holloman yes remember mitchell yes vice president bellamy yes remember donnelly yes and president michaelis yes that amendment passes with five years and
009one name i now have an amended agenda on the floor are there any final questions uh or amendments by any other board members not seeing any katie if you could please a roll call vote on our amended agenda um and we didn't actually get a motion can we have a motion and a second before the amended agenda we went right into the amendments we didn't move it again i need a motion to approve the agenda as amended i'm madame president i moved to approve the agenda as amended second one now we can do a role probably it's okay when a main motion is amended you don't need a new motion to bring it before the body it's automatically back before the body is amended so i we didn't have actually an original motion is what
010katie was saying i launched right into no we did we couldn't have amended it unless there was an original motion we did have an original motion and then the motion because i'll go back and re-watch the tv we'll go ahead and vote now [Music] vice president bellamy yes remember donnelly yes remember holly no remember holloman yes remember mitchell yes and emily i apologize the student voice vote yes thank you and president michaelis yes [Music] all right we have an amended agenda now uh in its entirety five days and one days here we go next up under community engagement uh our first report is our meek committee and at this time i'd like to turn it over to our superintendent thank you madam president at this time i would like to invite our senior director sonia
011hunt of equity and compliance to come forward and then she will utilize her time to introduce good evening to the president to members of the board we actually have dr jane heisel who will be making the report she is one of the community co-chairs for me cac and she should be on zoom [Music] hello i am dr jane high as ms hunt stated and i would like to give you an update on me cac and that stands for the multicultural education concerns advisory committee and our mission is to work to ensure the equity for all students by providing input directly to the superintendent on relevant issues that impact student achievement including but not limited to parent involvement community relations curriculum adoption and implementation cultural competence equity and other instructional concerns currently there's a 30-member advisory
012and it includes people from the community which has been expanded within the last year and now we also have students at the middle and high school level which is great to have those voices there are parents from gifted and special education academic english learners and indian education child in transition and migrant education i personally am represented representing the special education parent in the multicultural committee and there is a asd staff at all levels that represent the schools and departments and in the last year we received some feedback and reviewed and things that have been changed in addition to expanding the membership we added an additional session in order to go over the proposed anti-racism and instructional equity policies we thought this was of very major relevant importance and we were fortunate to have student voice
013involved in that and this year we're also using a work group structure to address the issues and to create an efficient and effective focus and the work group areas are under policy community engagement and resources and community member recruitment now policy they're reviewing board policies curriculum and they're providing input on regulations and with keeping in mind wanting to reduce barriers for individuals and have equity and as i hear everyone go over robert's rules of order i think that's one thing that makes it hard for a lot of um people in the community to have uh equal voice and um also the community engagement and resources work group they're studying the communication and making the information get exchanged to the community and also make it easier for the community to give information back and make it
014in a way that is accessible to all people equally and we want to increase the use of available resources to continue and continue to evaluate through the feedback model to make adjustments and that's what the work groups are doing the third work group is the community member recruitment and the area of focus is primarily trying to expand the number of voices that are being expressed the number of views so that we can adequately address all issues and we want to expand both the membership in the community and having people contribute long-term and also if um community members have specific issue-based um information that they would like to exchange and get answers for that's where we're focusing now of course that's been somewhat halted with kovid but that's what we've been doing in the past year
015and really with the work groups and the expanded um membership so far that's the influence of awesome sonia hunt she's been a great leader and we're happy to have this committee gaining some momentum that we haven't had in recent years and that concludes the report borrowing any questions thank you did any board members have any uh questions for uh dr bishop or um [Music] well the person who was speaking i can't remember her name said that they take a look at the um policy that we're discussing tonight i'm just wondering if there were any thoughts that there were any concerns they had or what what the discussion was um i believe i submitted some notes and i don't have them at the podium but just from my recollection um the members of the group were
016in favor of moving forward with the proposed policy they thought it was a good structure um for which to move forward and provide equity to our students um something that will certainly live on because it will be policy um the only um probably areas of wondering would be like how would that be continue to be fleshed out and so then we talked a little bit about what would be the purpose of the administration administrative regulation thank you all right not seeing any other comments or questions we'll go ahead and move on to item number two which is lower yukon school district uh report and i will also turn this over to dr bishop as well thank you madam president uh as a backdrop for this uh as i invite superintendent i'd like to introduce him
017the superintendent of the lower uconn school district is here mr jean stone and then uh his principals so we will i'll introduce him and as his team and students walk forward as you recall this was a partnership that our board engaged in with the board of lower uconn to bring some opportunities and some partnerships between a rural school district and anchorage in getting experiences in career and technical education courses and certificates in addition we also expanded to the middle college and so with that we wanted to provide a report after the first year of the school please come forward and um if you guys could please state your name when you go and you could actually use both uh if you turn on the other mic as well you can use both [Music] thank you
018yeah good evening uh madam chair and uh superintendent bishop uh thanks for having us uh tonight but uh most importantly um just uh thank you for this partnership and as dr bishop said i'm superintendent for the lower yukon school district my name is jean stone and really the story here is uh going to be delivered from our uh residential director uh and also the district director for cte conrad woodhead and he's got a couple students here but um it i think is one of the better stories in a long time in education thank you my name is conrad woodhead i'm the cte and residential director for the lower uconn school district and i want to thank the board for allowing me to be here tonight to share the exciting things we are doing at koozlevec
019career academy over off of wisconsin street for those of you that are not familiar with our program lower uconn school district's moa with asd and our partnership allows our students access to king tech high school and the middle college the partnership is a cornerstone of our program we're truly the result result of some innovative outside the box thinking and it starts with bold leadership and a willingness to change what truly adequate education looks like for our students for those of you not sure what innovation looks like it's taken a two star but not spenard area hotel and turning it into a five-star place of opportunity our program came from the stark reality that lysd students academically perform less than their urban counterparts and have very little access to career and technical education have limited job
020aspects of prospects in their own villages upon graduating and attend school in a district with the graduation rate in the mid 60s so as a result there are very few examples of an lysd student who has completed a post-secondary program for our students the old saying that nothing changes if nothing changes has never been truer so how do you change you have a realization you take a risk then you become the definition of innovation you do things that haven't been tried before in my 20 years of teaching and being an administrator across alaska i realized that i was preparing my students for jobs for careers and for situations they had never seen outside of their village the limits i had as an educator because of a lack of job examples within the villages i taught
021in was limiting to say the least i would often ask myself what am i preparing our students for right now we have 28 students at koozlev career academy that have ideas and they have a plan they see what they are preparing for and so i've brought a couple students here to share their experience at king tech high school i'll see kagonic and joseph cholek they're both from scamming bay and uh i would like to ask elsie to come forward [Music] hi my name is elsie kahana and i'm from scandi and a senior in high school i signed up for kca because i wanted more learning opportunities i came here for the past three quarters and i get to go to king tech high school which i am taking welding i love welding this cord is
022my first time doing something like this and it is it is going very great after my experience here i want to try to go to school for welding and see where that journey takes me my advice for the juniors on down is always work hard to get where you want to be from point a to point b try new things because your high school years will fly by quickly and don't ever give up i thank you guys for this opportunity tonight hi my name is joseph chulock and i am from scamming bay i am a junior in high school and in the alaska middle college school i signed up for mcs because i wanted to challenge myself and earn free college credits while in high school my first semester was challenging i was struggling with
023my classes but this semester i am doing much better i have fewer classes than i did in the fall the teachers and counselor at the amcs den in king tech are very helpful and amazing they are supportive i'm also taking a class at king tech because of my experience in amcs my plans are to go to college and try to become a nurse or a teacher i'd like to thank you for the opportunities i have been giving given at the king tech high school and alaska middle college school [Music] so joseph sarlone a middle college student and i believe it was emerson who said the creation of a thousand forest is in one acorn joseph's our lone acorn uh for mental college and we're we're uh we're really proud of him so um we're gonna
024be able to use him as an example for uh many years to come so as you can imagine there's a lot of different facets to our program from the educational side of the house to the residential side of the house and everything in between but at the end of every session uh especially at the end of our in-person king tech experiences the thing that our kids talk about the most are the programs they get at king tech so to the folks at king tech and principal mcginley and his staff to our staff at kca and to our illinois lysd school board and administration and especially to the administration here at asd and uh school board support i thank you truly for this partnership uh you guys are changing lives so thank you we do have
025just for the sake of uh timeliness we do have some goodies for the board and uh we will uh we will leave these aside here um for you guys to uh to have so thank you [Music] certainly but if you have any questions why they're here they would be happy to share um and this again is uh we started uh last year uh halfway through the year and um even during the pandemic uh their village trusted uh the program to uh have the kids uh students rather uh reside uh here in anchorage and continue the program even from online learning as we've all experienced and it has been a joy for me uh to just work with um both um uh conrad and jean and just making good things happen for young people in alaska
026remember holloman uh yes to the students and staff that are here i'd like to say welcome to anchorage and welcome to the anchorage school district um we're we're all better for your participation in this so it's a marvelous idea it's not well understood by some people in the public but when you have the chance to fully explain it it makes a lot of sense and i think it will make anchorage and rural alaska better in a whole lot of ways so thank you not seeing any other hands up uh just on behalf of everybody thank you so very much for the presentation for uh sharing your stories with us uh just so proud of everything that this partnership can bring so thank you very very much uh next up on our agenda is our student
027advisory board and so at this time i'll hand it over to emily all right our last meeting was this last week on april 15th and we discussed um mostly we had a brief discussion about return to school and student engagement and then segwayed from that to graduation we had some good discussions it's definitely can feel across the district people are ready for the end of the year so we're really excited to hear um all the progress that's been made on graduation um and then we also discussed our elections as it is the end of the year um at our next meeting which is on april 29th we will be having elections and then hopefully we will have the new group that will lead us into next year which will hopefully have a lot more exciting
028events coming from the student advisory board so again our next meeting is on the 29th oh and i also forgot to mention um this past weekend awesome hosted their virtual conference and so we had some of our schools in asd send in resolutions so we're excited to hear how that went at our next meeting as well thank you right not seeing any other comments or questions um so an item that we have on our agendas board conference and committee written reports and there are several reports that are attached out on board docs for the public to read uh just on updates from our committees that met last week uh and those are out there next up on the agenda we're gonna keep this going because we've got a big agenda today uh goal monitoring and
029we have a primary reading update dr bishop [Music] thank you madam president today's goal monitoring is going to update the board on our fast bridge interim goal monitoring for the board's goal of reading progress and reading achievement if you take a look the goal for the school board is actually to look at peaks which is our state test uh that is a criterion reference test that basically gives a specific criteria for students to be on grade level and we are looking to move by 2026 to 80 again fastbridge is an um [Music] an assessment that we use within our schools in our district it's called a curriculum-based measure because it uses the actual curriculum that we're expecting kids to learn reading to assess them the scores that you're going to see are actually a composite
030of our computer adaptive test what we call the cat as well as other student reports in one item if you recall during aims web we would give different assessments and share the different types of assessments from the reading cbm to a letter naming fluency to a nonsense word fluency what we have for fastbridge is one composite score but it isn't called a universal screener because it's given universally uh to all of our students in k2 and then we utilize the data to understand what next best students need to learn and we know which students already know the information uh or that you know already have those skills and what next do they need to so it's actually used for acceleration enrichment as well as re-teaching uh in our win groups if you will all of
031those occur to know uh to meet those standards that the board has as well as uh what we call that catch-up growth to really kind of double down on the learning to catch students up it is essential again uh that we've learned that early learning uh things that happen before third grade matter the most for success later on so i'm going to start with the student counts fastbridge was just recently administered and the benchmark one is the middle of the year assessment it's also known as you know the winter so you'll see it labeled winter but uh in our school schools see it as benchmark one the testing window was between january 20th and february 25th of this year and again i want to share with you the students that we assessed [Music] in the
032winter of 2021 we had uh 2 000 kindergartners if you look down just to kind of orient you to the chart um 20 a little over 2 100 first graders and second graders you take a look at those arrows they're really giving um an assessment of what we're going to share with you of a match set so prior to cobit 19 the last full assessment window for fastbridge was in the fall of 2019. there was a window last winter winter of 2020 before the pandemic but it wasn't used universally basically it was used for students that were selected for progress monitoring to determine you know what they had learned so we didn't have a full data set uh to really create knowledge and a trend and an understanding of where our kids are so we
033went back to fall of two night to capture that full set so the students from fall of 2019 who are still with us who had two assessments those are the students we're calling a matched so that we can determine uh the change in learning and of course the fastbridge is going to give you a score that we're going to identify as the behavioral change of the behavioral change in learning and these are the students uh that were in our school's learning not the students that um were in asd virtual or in family partnership these are the students that entered our buildings for which we could assess so if we take a look at this um i i want to share that the next two slides are basically just going to be the data that we
034select to really break down who are the kids in those student groups so in kindergarten first grade that had a match set from kindergarten the first grade as well as who was in first to second grade and these are the students in those sets collectively we didn't break these down into grade levels but you can see that there was a change in the number of our students overall as well as a change in the individual demographics across the board these are the other student groups that we look at the economically disadvantaged the english language learners and the students with disabilities and you can also look at the decrease in the number of students tested in each of those categories however the and on these categories are quite large and and we believe that you could
035look at these and understand uh the student learning within them so let's take a look at who is on track and i want to just give you a picture of this assessment when it provides data on student learning it the system if you will places the students in three different categories on track students just like your benchmark for peaks who is on track meaning who's meeting the grade level expectations and moving in that trajectory also who is at some risk and then who is at high risk meaning they're very far behind on that on track status what i'm going to share with you today are the students who are on track as well as the students who are at high risk the students in the some risk category are their behaviors and learning behaviors can
036increase or decrease so they're that middle range and so the goals in our district if you can think about it in these three categories are to increase the students on track the goal is 80 just like your goal the interim goal we want to see 80 percent of our kids on track and we want to decrease the high risk students and the high-risk students we want to keep and continue to decrease this area and the really target that we've set district wide is 10 but in each of these categories at the school level just to have you understand this they have their own [Music] you know buckets of on track some risk and high risk at their own school and so what they do with their learning and their interventions is going to be different
037that must have been all right so just to share the goals are very similar so overall the rate for k2 students on on track for their reading proficiency increased between the fall of 2019 and the winter of 2021 and again we tracked the cohort by match so these individual students that were here both times did increase the on track by a little over two percent of the the in in rate in that group additionally first to second grade and then all students there's a mean for you on the next slide you can see that the uh in any one student group of on track the largest changes were the status change in native hawaiian pacific islander student group which increased statistically significant rate of 9.51 the asian student group also saw the second largest increase
038on track status of 7.37 and both of these scores were significant and in simple statistics when you're looking at significance you can think of it as it's more than by chance if a change in a rate is not significant we like to note it but in the regression analysis it could be by chance so the these increases we can say are we believe that they are true learning increases in these student groups so the asian student increased 7.37 english language learners actually saw the third largest increase on track of status at 6.78 on the previous slide you can see that the black group was the only student group aside from students with disabilities to see a decrease of on-track status decreasing at 1.22 and 1.44 or between fall and winter rather the students with disabilities
039was 1.4 neither the black category or the students with disabilities group again were significant statistically but should be noted they were the only decreases in the on track group remember this is one bucket of students that were on track again we're going to go to the next group we're going to look at as the high risk students the students that are far below the grade level expectation so if you if you think about it and i wanted to share with the board and understanding that all of our student groups are represented in each of these categories we have all student groups and on track all student groups and some risk and all student groups in high risk so all of our ethnicities and races as well as all of our other student groups of poverty
040language learning and students with disabilities so i i wanted to be clear on that so who's at i high risk overall the rate of pre-k students in high risk for their reading proficiency or k2 students increase in the fall as well so this is an increase that we don't want to see and that's why it's in red so we want to see again from the beginning high are low risk or students that are in that category on track we want to see them increase but this category we want to see decrease and that would show progress the rate of match students going from kindergarten to first grade that are high risk increased by over nine percent the largest change seen in any student group for high risk was the increase for black students which increased
041by over 10 percent students going from kindergarten to one had the second largest rate between 19 and 2021 and the next slide we're zooming right through them students with disabilities saw the third largest increase in high-risk status of note the asian student group english language learners and students going from grades one to two all saw a decrease in high risk status and the high risk status decreasing for the asian student group was statistically significant it wasn't only by chance neither the decrees for english language learners or the students going from one to first grade to second grade were statistically significant but again should be noted and the target again for all students is what on track so these are our data and just wanted to share some insights that we know that the covid19 crisis
042strained our resources but also placed a focus on a lot of innovation and uh teachers and principals and support staff in school as well as here uh really jumped in with two feet to figure out how can we continue the learning of our students the native hawaiian pacific islander group had a significant increase of on track students while the asian student group had a significant decrease in high risk both were positive results the kinds of results we want to see these significant changes in status mean we should really continue to examine what new and innovative methods of outreach and communication were made to make such a positive outcome in student learning in these groups at the same time those groups that did not make those changes are black students and students with disabilities both saw
043a decrease in on track and an increase in high risk they performed the opposite of our goal the increase in high-risk students for our youngest students in k1 while on track demonstrates the concept of polarization uh you may know it by the matthew effect the rich get richer and the poor get poorer what you're seeing in our data are that generally those that are on a trajectory on track move at a rate and increased during this pandemic those that struggled with the learning outcomes prior to the pandemic also stayed on that trajectory i i shared earlier about literature i was reading in regard to this pandemic by the um psychometricians and education they believe that over a lifetime of schooling 13 years of k-12 schooling that is that this covet cohort they call them will
044experience a 15 less learning productivity unless a change is made to catch them up over their 13 years because what we know about education is that the earlier grades and the fundamental skills build on the let next level and the next level so uh understanding that uh again we are shoring up our interim goals our actions working with school teams to look at their own data and understanding whom in their buildings are learning well how did they learn well how do we continue doing the things that work and revamp and reiterate those things that are not reaching students because we have them with us these also demonstrate i would say that that focus on early learning and i want to remind the board that in september we started planning for our seven schools to have
045primary students in right away because they understood that early schooling and understanding and getting that foundation is key and so that was um a project that we started when we didn't have the whole schools open we did have them open in the after school programs for specifically for reading we increased that to over 20 schools the second semester and we continue to do that today we have schools and children who are going during the school day and going after school to try to impact the learning so this is again a criterion reference test to demonstrate the question that the board asks what do students know and what are they able to do when you look at a criterion reference test it's telling you this is what's expected this is what they can do and the
046buckets of students demonstrate what percentage our kids are on track and those others you can interpolate these data into a percentile and the board has been aware of percentile scores uh they are given for uh nape testing nape testing also demonstrates as well as peaks a certain grade level expectation but then they are turned into a percentile to demonstrate where a child or a whole school or a group an aggregate of students falls with a norm group dr stock found out that this test fast bridge was normed prior to the pandemic and so all of this information that we're sharing with you about the different cohorts are from the prior norms many of our tests and testing companies are re-norming now and so they might change slightly so if you i'm going to share this
047so you have an understanding most of us understand a bell curve uh you know you you have a a timeline or a meter stick i asked to go get a meter stick it's a has a hundred different slots it's 100 centimeters and whether you have a horizontal scale or a vertical scale the percentile is going to share from 1 to 100 where they are not in equal categories but i could have someone here and i could have two people above them and everyone below them but it's basically showing um you know this is the second the 99th percentile and everything down would be below it so we just want to share we don't know exactly where it is it's just how many groups aggregates are in front of you where your kids fall how many
048behind you on a scale of a hundred so with that fast bridge in the aggregate of our students changed slightly in our position if you will so we were 35th percentile and in kindergarten to first and we moved to 32nd percentile so that does mean that aggregate groups were ahead of us our students performance were ahead 68 percentile of all the students were ahead of asd in those categories and there's 31 performing below us and these were the changes in percentiles the next one just demonstrates who are the kids that made changes in those different groups student groups and again you can see where the significance was made in student outcomes and the increases are in green and the decreases in the percentile in red so this is a really 30 000 foot view i
049think the board has many times asked about nape nape is not only given a percentile but then they're also placing those percentiles in another order of states so they'll give you another ordinal positional state where our kids are in reading so you could be at the potentially 35th percentile and be 50th or you can be at the 35th percentile and be um in the median range or i mean you would be in the 50th percentile in the median range but depending on the cut the score you received you could change that but the 50th percentile half the people are going to score in front of you half and back of you and the bell curve is that medium and what's going to happen we predict with the new norming is that that the score for
050that median range might change if they renorm but we don't we don't know we don't we can't predict that so but right now off of prior norms dr stock did find out that map growth is altering their norms so that's just gonna be we're just gonna have to to see what that looks like so i would like to really point out english language learners not only here but you also saw in their graduation data the work that dr knutson is doing along with christine garby uh the if you recall a couple years ago the graduation rate jumped over 15 percent uh in our school district uh they're really working communicating directing we changed the way that we did business we we went and changed positions from tutor advisors to hiring more teachers ell teachers raised
051the rigor of instruction and students met that that goal so uh this is just another demonstration that in the pandemic the work that the ell department is doing is really uh paying off if you will so if you have any questions we'd be happy to answer and i also have uh a team of folks to to give a shout out to if i need to to assist with that but as far as what students know and are able to do with 80 proficiency you saw the buckets of kids that that's our work until 2026. first up member hildy thank you and i i just very thankful for um the work of the superintendent and our team and all of our teachers working to get kids um needs met during this pandemic um my question is
052on a little bit of the who when we're looking at you know perhaps the norm will change for the um for the fast bridge but if we're comparing fast bridge i mean that's that's a nationwide so is it correct to say that when we're in those lower percentages the children in the higher percentages are the children asd students will eventually be competing with for colleges and jobs um so is that correct um because if it is we we don't have to wait for the new norming we can look at our own data to say what would be happening but um just some clarification on that through the president remember hildy i i i we have all what we need i don't believe that um the reality of our learning is going to change my new
053norms i just wanted to share that um that's what happens when you with the with the norming that goes on uh yes if you took our students are falling into three categories all of our students and we shared 3 000 students data and they fall in three categories all of these three categories are competing nationally uh the the norm for i know um map growth is over 20 million students is what creates a norm there so they they do put all their students in a bucket whereas uh it used to be on the terra nova test or the older tests um standardized testing they used to find a normative group of you know 2 000 kids from across the country or in a certain area that isn't done anymore uh because of uh ai and
054other efficiencies normative groups are now generally the buckets of students uh that take the assessments and there are millions of kids who take these assessments from across the country next up i have member mitchell and then member hallman thank you this is a teeny bit off topic but you mentioned that um the statisticians or the psychometric people think that um at the end of covid over the lifetime of students in their k-12 career they will have lost about 15 of their learning um and i'm just wondering [Music] how i know that we're offering the summer school if they're not remediated if they're not caught up i know we're offering a very robust summer school program i don't know if this is the appropriate time to ask about that whether you you know how much of
055that do you think we're going to be able to address within the asd sure through the president to remember mitchell um a summer school isn't going to impact just one time over and and what that um the article was from uh harvard and i believe um brown they partnered in it and uh basically they're just saying that if we don't because early learning is so important if we don't make up the learning on students who really fell behind because of opportunity or it was more difficult for parents at home to teach children there's a potential over time unless something's done so i don't want to provide doomsday it's just that if everything was the same going forward what they missed was such a building block that it could have a matriculation effect that they would
056just not be able to do the same things that the students were able to do before them so that that was the theory behind it but um our summer school this year what we're doing right now with after school uh certainly the board's goal and the the teams at the schools that really look at students and their learning and understand that there's um so much to do and so little time you know from uh charlie the chocolate factory if you remember that saying that really we need to focus and i believe that the board has aligned its goals with what is going to be highly important especially for early learners to be able to do the rest of school so again if you think of math proficiencies and math literacy and and reading literacy reading
057and writing as access skills and tools that kids use to learn that's that's what they're talking about that we have to teach them the tools so that they continue to learn because as you saw it wasn't everybody though those that generally teachers an excellent job of when when supports were at home in the communication and some things really worked and we had some success and other groups and student groups things that we did really didn't work for them and so the idea that the mtss system or multi-tiered system assist support offers exactly identifying what is it that this student needs that's different so that wind time that we put in our schools about four years ago that is going to be highly critical to have so that each student whether it is to continue to
058dig deeper and accelerate or be retaught and have two times opportunity to learn a skill is going to be essential and that and that was something that was very controversial because it was directed to really give students it took away from something else and that's why it was controversial it took time from here and put time here and so uh i believe that when schools really look at their students look at the learning that needs to take place and utilize the time i see the cup half full i i don't think that we're going to get to that because we have a driven focus our budget was designed after that the board goals were designed after that schools were work on their goals and so while summer school is one part it will take five
059years of summer school and we are looking at um summer school is not a one and done that this is going to continue as an investment to ensure 80 of kids by 2026 are in that on track category where about 30 are right now that's a great question though next up member holloman thank you uh this is just in reference to interpreting the numbers a little bit and i think i know the answer um we are looking at a group of students that we were able to track over two years and in one year that group was smaller is there evidence that what we have is a random selection or is it a biased selection of say students that had more stability and obviously there there's a big chunk of the pool that's missing i'm
060just wondering if that pool represents achievement that would be on the same level at a higher level at a lower level and my guess is we really don't know because we didn't have access to them um through the present to member holloman that's a great question and we were actually ourselves theorized on that about whom are the students that were actually testing but if you if you notice that the student groups were quite large oven in themselves even when we um didn't have it and the matched sets that's what we need to know were the who are the kids uh in these different subgroups and those different grade levels you know that was a question that we asked ourselves that we didn't have access to right away um who are the kids that we test
061as compared to the kids we didn't test as compares to the kids and asd virtual so there's quite a few questions that we had just like that but my assessment uh just given the large numbers 500 800 and large numbers in those categories in k2 that they're generally we're going to find uh the trends to be on target it would be my guess after spending time with them but we had the same questions and we continue to ask ourselves and again dr stock talks about it as all data do as they give us one set of data gives us another set of questions and then we go find more data and that gives us more questions because we're it is interesting uh with the end role result though is we want the kids to be
062on track next step in the cube remember bellamy thank you thank you dr bishop um i i really appreciate the on track some risk high risk categories it really um it helps me to uh to just visualize you know where our kids are my question i have two questions one is did you say that we assessed uh asd virtual students or we did not are they included in those numbers um through the uh president to remember bellamy only students who came into buildings oh because they were assessed okay is there and there's no um so we don't know how those kids are doing the ones that didn't come into school uh we are working on additional assessments okay yeah okay and then my other question had to do with um [Music] you know just because
063i how are schools can you just briefly walk through how schools are using the data for their particular school to design um you know how how are they i assume every school gets their data they're they're sitting down together as teams and they're going through and planning can you just talk us through how what that looks like sure and um through the president's member bellamy there's lots of different skill levels of folks that do this and uh someone who guides them along uh is not only their coach is highly trained in this as well as their principal but also many times the school psych assists as well as just that understanding numbers and data what we like to have is that they receive their school and they really go in through what do you know
064about this what what do you see so they really have time to look at it and really do what member uh holliman did like ask a question what about this what about that um we generally talk about what the data tell us and what they don't tell us one of the things when we um when i started here five years ago we used cbms which are fluency measures for like fifth grade and we would talk about our kids in fifth grade for fluency they were really high but we were wondering while our comprehension was low and we would say they don't know how to or they're reading at this level we need to know what the tests tell us fluency tests only tell you fluency they don't tell you comprehension so we have to use
065and really build our muscle around what assessment tells us what and and you know but the cbms are generally used for the building the skills they'll talk about it as a whole school and then generally they break it down into grade levels and then they talk about their grade level according to what is supposed to be learned and the standards and what do our kids know and are able to do and then they talk about that and then a lot of times i did see this happening where they'll identify in someone's class they had different kinds of scores and they'll say why is it that your kids perform better when they started off here then they start to really engage with each other and set plans for learning and relate what kids are supposed to
066know back to what we call those priorities or non-negotiables and they start talking about those there was a reason why a priority was in second grade for students to learn because that was on the trajectory of what they needed to know and so they really engage with the data and they become very good at it and sit and wait and can't wait when they when they do engage with each other with that communication they can't wait to sit down and talk about it many schools and this is especially in the upper grades will automatically share their map data with their students and so then their students look at the map data and will graph their progress they look at it as how do we utilize this to address it but generally those data groups will
067create every quarter win groups of like students and share them to be able to say i'm going to work on the group that doesn't know how to blend sounds someone else might work on the group of students that doesn't really have all the sounds down and someone else might say you know what these kids are scoring very high they're into the reading so we're gonna do something else and move into higher level reading and so there's lots of different ways it doesn't look one way and that's why the ownership is at the school to really understand their students about what instruction would we do for the students that are in my building so while we have the non-negotiables in our curriculum and the standards we have the standard of what is expected and then they
068build upon that and adjust it according to their data that's a great question and it's they're very good at it uh many many schools and um then share with other schools and it is a delight it's um it it's working um we need to continue to move in that direction that that personal ownership of your kids [Music] remember hildy did you have your hand raised again or i did thank you um yeah i just had a question on how this will translate into summer school the rigor of summer school um i know it's a limited session limited part of the day and you know still fun parts of the day as well um is there kind of a sense of urgency or intensity and really seeing where a child is at and where that child
069needs to get to through the president to member hilda absolutely the summer schools are really built around uh the gaining skills and the proficiency and they're utilizing assessments and these types of data to identify the students who are most at risk to be able to fill the seats first so we are coupling a learning activity or an engagement activity very similar to how we did our reading after school boot camps if you will the students had a very intensive reading lesson very standardized intensive reading lesson and then did an engagement activity so that they're attracted and had fun and and they tied them together so that they're learning as well as you know this is the coolest thing ever coming to school so uh teachers are great at what they do of embedding that but
070there is an urgency to the students who were invited for the person face-to-face but again if parents want to just continue as you saw there's lots of online learning that um students did quite well with their parents at home following along and that's going to be opened up as well for for choice but there i would say there is quite an urgency and that's why these data are assisting in selecting the students thank you dr bishop at this time we're going to move on in our agenda and next up is public testimony on non-agenda and non-action items i'm going to read a brief statement the board welcomes public testimony we value public comment as it ensures that we remain aware of public thoughts ideas and concerns and informs our decision-making process there is a one-hour
071time 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 i do not see our first uh person on the list she was supposed to call in i will keep an eye out for her if she shows up so our next um [Music] batch of testifiers are here in person and i'm so excited for this next group speaker number two zachariah gross [Music] my name is zach gross and i'm a first grader in mrs larson's class at inlet view elementary i am here to thank you for the iv program at my
072school in my class i am learning spanish and about the 10 ivy learner profiles tonight i want to share three profiles with you one profile is being balanced i am balanced when i have many different emotions in my body another profile is being a risk taker i'm a risk taker when i try new things like speaking to you or eating new foods i am an inquirer when i raise my hand and ask questions about things that i want to learn or don't understand i have enjoyed learning different things through the ib program and i hope you continue to support the program and in the view gracias and next up is speaker number three willow larsen [Music] good evening my name is willow larson and i am in fourth grade at interview elementary thank you for
073the opportunity to learn spanish with the ib program i've enjoyed exploring the learner profile traits risk taker and communicator i'm a risk taker because i learned downhill skiing and went down without fun i'm a good communicator because i like to talk a lot and share information with others i have two more years at inland view and i look forward to learning more within the ib program i hope you continue to support the ib comma program gracias [Music] and next up apologies if i don't pronounce it correctly uh speaker number four sid salway [Music] uh hello my name is sid sal i am a sixth grader in libya elementary school the ib program has challenged me to be a better person it has provided a foundation for my classmates and i to dive into ourselves and
074the kind of people we want to be the program also gives us a sense of place in our school community state and world kids at inlet view have learned to be risk takers communicators thinkers and inquirers these attributes not only help us persevere in school but i found they can really help shape your social life too by learning to put ourselves into other shoes and care about those around us we have grown to be accepting and positive the ivy program opened our eyes and helped us reflect upon how to better ourselves and the school environment and if we can start with improving smaller things in our community we can begin to positively impact the world around us the ib program in libya reaches all students in this neighborhood school the students and families from diverse
075backgrounds and incomes all have equal access to the ib program in libya it would be fantastic to expand this program so more students in the anchorage school of school district can learn and grow from this program like i have to the school board i would like to thank you for valuing a more worldwide perspective in education and giving inlet view a chance to embark on the ib learner program thank you next up we have speaker number five eli bundy hi my name is elias walker i'm gonna have you scooch right over to your right just to that red microphone right there thank you um just to make things clear my name is elias walker there's a little bit of a except my mom's last name is bundy hi my name is elias walker and i'm
076here to talk about the new ib program my school in the view in my opinion the ib program is really an improvement from the old ways of learning for example with the ib program we can work more independently or with more help whatever we need another way the ib program is helping is that we are learning more about other cultures and how they lived or lived today my brother's class is making native american hunting hats in my class is building call pots club is a mixture of cobb is a mixture of sand clay and straw we are learning about cultures and building at the same time as you can probably tell the ib program really helps but i still have a few more ways that it does so we get to learn other languages like
077spanish we also get to learn about the ib way of learning that will help that will help us succeed in the ib program at west high i want an ib degree in high school because it will help me learn and travel all around the world as the famed yogi berra said when you come to a fork in the road take it our school did just that the people who run our school saw this fork as an opportunity to improve so they took it bring your school into an ib school so that we could improve our learning this is why we should keep the primary years program at in the view school thank you for listening all right i want to just take a personal point of privilege and just say thank you to all the
078students that come i can tell you guys honestly you've made my night so just thank you very very much and i'm glad we got you up at the top of the agenda uh next up i do have my my first speaker on the phone and then i'll come to um speaker number six um rihanna gay are you on the line with us tonight [Music] rihanna if you're there it's star six to unmute [Music] all right we'll try again in a few minutes um so and speaker number six in person uh corey aced and three minutes and the floor is yours you these are really hard acts to follow and i just want to say that i uh i love optional programs i come from an optional program myself and uh we should have more of
079them around the district more and more especially at our title one schools it would do us some great uh they do greatness for us uh thank you for your attention and time my name is cory ace president of the anchorage education association i sent the school board a letter in regards to memorandum 110 earlier today i'd like to retract that letter i was mistaken in which federal relief act memorandum 110 is referring i want to go on the record the anchorage education association supports memorandum 110 and the allocation of crrsa grant award funds as written in that memorandum i appreciate the commitment by the district to be open transparent and accountable to the public when considering how to allocate these funds to better student learning in that spirit in regards to the next batch of
080federal relief act funds asd is scheduled to receive i know the school board will want to take input from students families and educators on how best to support student success next year again thank you for your time but we support memorandum 110. [Music] thank you now we're going to circle back up to speaker number one rihanna gay rihanna are you with us tonight thank you finally i am here thank you go ahead three minutes and the floor is yours thank you providing a good experience is all about listening to your educators students and community needs and letting them have a safe in the classroom or district how it is ran maintaining regular lines of communication with educators enabled identification of main concerns and unmet needs concerns initially that the bargaining team would not come with
081an initial proposal danielson level basic evidence no proposal to share when looking at domain 2 the bargaining environment 2a creating an environment of respect and rapport danielson level basic i could go on but i move on to a quick pd on bargaining etiquette i will use a stoic model structure as structure bargaining with organized procedures and routines for successful time t teach tell attractable compensation package tell how educators will remain safe and respect their time oh observe colleagues and clarify when needed i interact positively high rates of positive interaction between each entity has shown to increase trust and can even lead to increased academics as well see correct calmly accurately concisely please come correct to the next bargaining session you are wasting time when you come unprepared not putting your best foot forward getting rid
082of our emergency leave ouch elementary is getting a new math curriculum we have a new curriculum-based measure of fast bridge that we are still learning yeah you think it's wise to strike professional development lead solutions keep my instructional planning time academic freedom fed protocols and student and safety to say that this year has been hard as an understatement your educators deserve better than a zero percent increase we are not asking costs to cover cars or phones provide your educators a comp a competitive conversation package as we see from the fastbridge data presented tonight we have work to do ase we are in this together we are the body those who serve at the existence are the brain and those at the school the hearts we must align our head and heart to be on one
083accord ase we can can we do it yes we can thank you thank you next up in person uh beth daley gamble [Music] thank you for joining us you have three minutes thank you good evening and that's daily gamble and i'm the pyp coach at inlet view elementary school i am also here tonight to celebrate and thank the anchorage school district school board for your support this has been an unbelievable journey as the coach of the primary years program of ib in our school i have seen tremendous growth in our teaching and our learning skills the journey to become the first pyp in alaska has been incredible over the past two years as we progress from a candidate international baccalaureate school to a certified ib school we are so so close developing our skills with
084the pyp framework has brought us new opportunities to explore our teaching facilitate meaningful learning and most importantly give more opportunities for our students to learn and put that learning into action into our community with a global mindset as the coach i have worked with all teachers in the school to develop units of inquiry and help make the transition into more inquiry-based teaching and concept-based learning the students are loving it the outcomes have been remarkable our students are using their voices their ideas and innovations to guide their own learning our outstanding teachers have been putting in many extra extra hours to develop the program within their classroom they believe in it but they're also strengthening their own learning with professional development opportunities on their own time i witness excitement in their teaching and motivation to go
085further i witness strength as a stronger communicator as an educator and as a collaborator with other teachers they're sparking more excitement with each other and in turn developing more ideas as you heard this evening from some of our students they're gaining and strengthening their voice choice and ownership of their education and therefore are becoming more motivated empowered learners future leaders they're asking questions they're seeking answers and exploring different perspectives and approaches to solving a problem our learners are gaining stronger awareness of who they are where they are and how the world works oh and i'm short on time basically board i am very thankful for you and your support and i look forward to future support and this ongoing hopefully very sustainable program um with your help thank you thank you next up on the
086telephone uh speaker number eight patricia ahrens patricia i'm sorry uh star six to unmute good evening can you hear me you sure can you have three minutes and the floor is yours thank you good evening my name is patricia erins and i'm the proud principal of inlet view elementary tonight i'm here to tell you a short story four years ago a group of educators got together and decided they wanted to enhance their teaching practices and provide more opportunities to students to have their voices heard teachers parents and the school principal started pursuing the dream of becoming the first ib elementary school in the state their dream was big and to be quite honest only a few people believed in them however they kept working fundraising money for training doing book studies and learning the new
087id jargon which is kind of a learning a new language parents students and teachers attended several board meetings and presented their ib plan on january 7 2019 the school board approved their proposal the school community was thrilled excited and at the same time nervous of the big responsibility they got themselves into since then everyone at school has worked tirelessly understanding what it means to teach concepts instead of topics to listen to to listen to students questions instead of asking all the questions teachers have learned to give students voice choice and ownership so they develop agency students are taught the 21st century skills that will help them succeed in life just like asd's mission statement reads today interview has met all the requirements to submit his application to be certificated as the uh as an ib
088world school the first in anchorage and in alaska this journey would have not been possible without the support of our parents who trusted the idea and decided to send their children to our school it would have not been possible without asd leadership who has given us latitude to accommodate our program and meet both asds and the id organization's requirements and last this would would have not been possible without your support thank you to all the school board members for allowing us to pursue a different teaching model a model that is based on the constructivism of doing and the increased based learning approach of lynne erickson we've learned a great deal about inquiry and i can guarantee you that we are not the same educators we were when we started we've grown and we've improved and
089when teachers get better students get better learn better and enjoy school i think that you have heard a snapshot of their voices tonight tonight students parents teachers and myself come to you to say thank you you believe in us and we are delivering and we will continue to do our best so all students that enter our doors are empowered to solve real world problems and strengthen their enjoyment of working towards a goal we will continue to develop students who become compassionate engaged lifelong learners who help to create a more caring and peaceful world thank you for your investment and education and for supporting thank you um speaker number nine uh nadine baker i don't know if she's in per oh beautiful thank you wasn't your all right three minutes uh and the floor is yours
090thank you hello good evening i um i can assure you the enthusiasm you hear from all the teachers and students just radiates in the school i am at parents of two students at inlet view and uh you know it's just been so great to see this program in action i am i should share that i'm a clinical psychologist at providence and so we all know how tough this year has been and not just for my kids but obviously for our community our state uh so i just want to take a moment thank you as a school board and as a superintendent for a job i know was very difficult um and helping us navigate this past year as successfully as as i've seen it personally and professionally um but i think this ib program really
091highlights what we want for every kid and to me as a parent the fact that it's not optional every kid at that school gets the philosophy the framework and the understanding that they are important that they have a purpose in life to foster their own personal growth but also to share that with their community i feel like every aspect of this school is infused with the principles of the ib program and being able to use that language and framework and helping kids understand all the complicate complicated things are happening in the world right now um is really important to me i know looking at test scores uh and assessments how important that data is but i also know that helping kids have the traits and characteristics to help them navigate things successfully regardless of how
092much they like to read or how well they feel writing things out it's important that we are building resiliency and connection and promoting an idea that at every level whether you're a kid or an adult is seen so i just again want to highlight that this has been a great program i would love to see ideas like this permeate throughout every school in every neighborhood so everyone has an opportunity to enjoy a creative model that allows you to learn but also not realize that it's a lot of work or efforts because your teachers love it your principal loves it the parents love it um so again thank you so much for giving inlet view the opportunity to show that this could work thank you so much for your support at our school and in our
093neighborhood i greatly appreciate it and i look forward to sharing more wonderful things with you in the future thank you next up on the phone speaker number 10 amber glasser amber are you on the line with us tonight [Music] hello um can everyone hear me we sure can you have three minutes and the floor is yours thank you so much for your time and i do appreciate everyone's hard work and you know i know what kind of position you're in and i do respect it tremendously i represent myself and my family i'm pulling my kids out of asd as soon as possible with the hope i won't have to this is heartbreaking that i have to do this i went to willowcrest romick west high and graduated from save with a scholarship the teachers and
094counselors in asd during the 90s and early 2000s changed my life for the better and saved me in so many ways i am in debt to them forever i am so sad my kids will not be able to have the same school experience i grew up with in this wonderful city that is falling apart because people can't focus on what's really important they're following an agenda our most beautiful precious gifts in life why are we doing this to them recently i've been wishing i lived in the valley or somewhere that the school district seems to care about providing an education based on the freedom of choice masks on children should 100 percent be choice masks on anyone should be 100 choice i have periodontal disease and ptsd i cannot wear a mask my daughter has
095sensitive skin and breaks out in a rash when when there is pot and i i just want everyone to know when there is possible harm there must be choice she's been complaining about not being able to hear the teacher very well and she's not heard when she's speaking she's eight years old and deserves a healthy learning environment that includes physically healthy and emotionally healthy my 12 year old son has lost all his school friends because they were pulled from asd or are doing virtual he's depressed at school because none of the other classes play together and the kids he has left in his class don't really like him he's missed out on last year's fifth grade overnight field trip he is missing this year's sixth grade overnight field trip i've been an aquarian charter school
096parent for the last seven years and i'm astounded this is what we are doing anchorage municipality acting mayor and anchorage school district are completely out of control and are not meeting the needs of our children this needs to stop kids are dying from suicide at alarming rates my son's best friend that attends stellar called the suicide prevention hotline he's 12. my heart is broken by your actions my son's 6th grade graduation will be a drive-through meanwhile 35 miles away in the wild wild west people that want to celebrate are afforded that freedom people want to stay home for health and safety reasons are free to make that choice why not here in anchorage my son got into stellar for next year and if masks are not optional he will have we will have no choice
097and my daughter has already decided on homeschool i hope you fix this so she can stay at aquarium and feel good about it we miss our school community we miss our friends and thank you so much for everyone's time thank you at this time that ends our public testimony on non-action and non-agenda items uh if there was any written public testimony for non-action or non-agenda the public and board members will find it attached to the board docs section of the agenda next up on the agenda is our superintendent update and at this time i'd like to turn it over to dr bishop [Music] thank you madam president and board i would just like to update the board that uh our principals are communicating uh graduation and the procedures and tickets and all the like uh
098to their schools and teams uh if there's concerns about it if you could let me know and we will reroute it back to the schools and the secondary directors but we're happy and again thank the mayor for assisting us with the guidance and the health mandate to allow us uh to have our graduations thank you [Music] that was quick miss margo you're up next the consent agenda thank you i move to approve the consent agenda as listed below second i have a first and a second uh katie if you could please do a roll call vote some point of information do we have the opportunity to pull first or after the vote definitely pull first um i would like to pull i think one time asd okay [Music] yep it's item number four under the
099consent agenda so [Music] so we will pass the consent agenda or vote on consent agenda items two and three [Music] okay emily yes [Music] all right let's back up remember mitchell [Music] yes remember holloman yes remember hildy yes remember donnelly yes vice president bellamy yes president michaelis yes [Music] the consent agenda passes with six years and zero nays and if i can get a motion to approve asd membrane 110 i would entertain one i move to approve asd memorandum number 110 a second thank you i've got a first and a second member holloman you asked for it to be pulled i will let you ask questions first um thank you i think primarily just a little bit more detail on some of the components um [Music] i'm sorry i don't have the copy right in
100front of me [Music] we had some questions from folks in the community if we're providing internet access to families during the summer um my understanding is that it's more of a placeholder because this is an expense we may be looking at in the fall but i would like to ask the superintendent if she could fill in for me on that madam president thank you uh through the president member holloman i'm going to request our chief information officer mike fleckenstein respond uh through the president to member holloman we are provide continuing to provide that through the summer our agreement with the providers was a two-year agreement or an 18-month agreement and so the reason we got such a great deal on it was that um for them to amateurize the costs of the equipment they needed
10118 months or we had to buy it up front which was going to be more expensive than the entire contract that we had because we're only paying what amounts to about ten dollars a month for each of those students and so we are going to continue to provide that service the entire time as if we were to quit we would have to pay the rest of the contract out anyway and was that your only question number holloman um did any other board members have any questions on asd memorandum number 110 just to make this a little quicker is there anybody opposed to asd memorandum member holloman um also our funds for asd virtual teachers i want to ask um i know when this started some of our asd virtual teachers actually were non-resident to alaska
102and i'm wondering if we're still looking at that through the summer and into the fall through the president remember holloman i will request that [Music] mike fleckenstein also additionally address uh teachers and ast virtual yeah um so these 20 teachers are asd teachers very specifically right now we are hiring asd teachers for all things virtual unless there is um a position that has gone out and cannot be covered by anybody in asd and then we look to cover that through other means but that's a pretty rare event at this point and so these teachers very specifically are all asd teachers all right do i see any board members opposed to asd memorandum 110 all right then unanimous consent and our consent agenda is now complete moving on into our action items i'm going to read
103a brief statement regarding public testimony the procedures for agenda item testimony are as follows an action item memo is first introduced by the vice president and if seconded by another board member i will open the floor for public testimony each person will have two 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 official vote the voting results will be displayed on the screen and i just wanted to um point out a couple of things outside of my script that it did go from three minutes down to two minutes because we have many speakers tonight and we want to ensure that everybody has a voice to be
104heard uh and because we do have two big policies to discuss that we would like to get done we are going to take a quick break uh between uh items number four and five and so after that break is when we will start the bulk of our um our action items so at this time uh i would like to ask uh our vice president to introduce the first item uh number one i've been reading 102 yes madam president i move to approve asd memorandum number 102 a request from family partnership charter schools academic policy committee to amend their current charter to increase the enrollment cap from 1500 students granite drink which was granted during the pandemic to 2 000 students second i have a first in a second are there any board members with questions
105on asd memorandum number 102 uh remember holloman i was just going to say that i i will be voting against this even though um expanding the capacity and family partnership uh makes a it makes a lot of sense to me but i also understand the explanation of of the administration that they have to budget for a certain number of students and changes in that require moving resources from somewhere else in the budget in order to account for this that uh expansion in these programs does come with a labor cost and it does come with a capacity i i do hope that i expect that everybody will be prepared in case this pandemic is not done with us yet i think we all know that it may not be that that them being able to grow
106and expand was very beneficial to us and we deeply appreciate it and i hope they're ready again uh if it comes and in the old students inside of asd but given the fact that we do have to allocate resources i agree with how the administration has chosen to do that thank you next up in the queue member hildy thank you i second some of what mr holloman said um also knowing that the renewal the charter renewal is coming up um i think that is a more appropriate time to amend the charter rather than in between particularly when it is coming up so soon but i very thankful for the work of our charter homeschool programs and responding to the needs of our students during the pandemic and really going the extra mile to make sure
107kids needs are met so i'm excited that they're willing to serve even more any other board members with comments or questions not seeing any katie if you could please do a roll call vote emily um no holloman no remember hildy no remember mitchell no remember donnelly yes remember bellamy no and president michaelis no esd memorandum number 102 does not pass with one yay and five nays but his members have said we look forward to seeing it at their charter renewal uh next up i move to approve asd memorandum number one three zero a request from charter i'm sorry frontier charter school to amend their current charter to increase the enrollment cap from 750 students granted during the pandemic to 950 students second i have a first and a second to be clear that csd memorandum
108number 103 were there any board members with comments or questions uh on this memorandum remember holloman i'll simply say same logic as before and we appreciate the work they've done thank you [Music] not seeing any other hands up katie if you could please do a roll call vote emily no vice president bellamy no remember donnelly yes remember holloman no remember hildy no remember mitchell no president michaelis no asd memorandum number one zero three does not pass if with one yay and five nays also same comments um next up is uh we're going to take a quick uh five minute break and i want to come back and restart promptly at 7 55. and we will start with asd memorandum number 108 in the public testimony thank you very much i thought you were down a
109little low there i was really in pain hey [Music] all right it is 7 55 we are going to get going as promised we are up to we're up to our um public testimony on action item number one zero eight uh what probably most people may or may not see we have over 50 people that are signed up for this a particular action item with another almost 38 or more signed up for the second one that is why we've reduced the time down to two minutes in the event um you can keep your comments inside of two minutes we can keep calling on folks that would be awesome but you have the two minutes available to you our first speaker on the telephone uh mr danielle kemp hello hi we can hear you you have
110two minutes and the floor is yours all right let's see if i can do this in two minutes here we go uh good evening thank you to the boy for this opportunity to speak tonight my name is danielle kemp i am a retired army combat officer teacher in the asd parent of two asd students i'm also a co-chair of the aea's human civil rights committee chair of the naacp anchorage education committee and president and co-founder of the alaska coalition of fire park educators i'm here tonight to offer my support for the asd's anti-racism policy and instructional equity policy throughout history there has been a constant drip drip drip of white supremacy coming from our quote unquote educational faucet well it's time to turn off the tap we need to replace that uh tainted water with
111the clean water of anti-racism all so that we may finally begin to heal after so many years of institutional harm anti-racism and equity work is not easy but nothing worth doing ever is we're at a pivotal moment in our nation's history movement for racial justice civil rights and equity has picked up energy and steam in 1962 john kennedy gave his famous man on the moon speech during a similar time of another struggle to make black lives matter when he said quote we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they're easy but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept one that we are
112unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win and the others too the question now before this board is will you do that which is hard and the right thing to do and pass these policies or will you do that which is easy and just stick with the status quo i pray that you follow in kennedy's footsteps and do that which is hard thank you uh and also just to clarify the speakers are to speak uh specifically to the uh memorandums uh that we have in front of us uh so this first one is uh the memorandum number 108 the anti-racism policy next up on the telephone speaker number two uh rosalind great rosalind are you on the line tonight yes thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is
113yours [Music] hey i'm a mother of five black beautiful children and the co-founder of the alaska coalition of bipac educators i want to point out that black america finally won today but there's still more work to be done i would like to thank the district and school board members for their support and understanding on the anti-racism policy the fact that you want to listen and support black students teachers in your community which has been systemically ignored in silence for too long shows growth within the system i appreciate that you have decided to examine anti-blackness and inequities brought about by systems rooted in white supremacy anti-racist work means getting out of your feelings and imaginations and acknowledging that racist beliefs and structures are penetrating every part of our lives d.d and his team keep shouting what
114is critical race theory what is it the critical race theory is an academic movement made up of civil rights activists in the u.s who seek to examine the law as it intersects with the issues of race and challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice what is wrong with that i am a civil rights activist but i'm also an excellent educator but i wish people like that would quit causing smoke clouds and deception because crt is not on this policy listen carefully anchorage families are being affected by white fragility we live in it every day we're targeted by police education is taught differently we get paid differently those that do not want to see this change you are a part of that problem this is america this is not 1981 we are living in 2021 where
115our children deserve to have equal education but we have about 60 or more children in the bipap community that don't get that opportunity no one is deceiving us because we live this i wake up every day praying a different type of prayer because unfortunately those opposed do not have to prepare their children for rides in the car walk to the store trips to the park or even to pumping gas so don't feel sorry for us just be a part of the problem i mean be a part of the change to help those that are not privileged like you and your children and i want to make this clarification i'm talking to those that are opposed of the anti-racism policies but i'm in support thank you your time is up i got so excited to get
116back after a break i forgot one of our key pieces of procedure uh miss marco if you would please introduce that memorandum i will thank you i move to approve asc memorandum number 108 and pass board policy anti-racism next up in person speaker number three kevin mcgee [Music] thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours good evening board directors i'm going to read to you a short story then i'll give you the ending in the purpose the day was january 15 1984 or maybe it was the 17th no no it was the 15th tuesday i remember because i had pac scheduled for that day and i still had a long week ahead longer than i thought on that cold crisp january morning i took a ride from a stranger
117not just any stranger but an anchorage school district maintenance drive maintenance man driving a school district japan i think back now and say to myself what was i thinking when he offered me a ride suddenly all i could think of was that i had no mittens and that the sleeves in my old winter coat were just an inch too short these people were screamed weren't they otherwise they wouldn't be around children i could trust him just like a teacher or a policeman or a minister it could have been worse much much worse i mean i could be dead now rather than a terrified broken little girl running down the street as fast as she could her head coated with blood as i sit here now with tears streaming down my cheeks i know that i
118will never in my entire life be as alone as i was during those moments inside that school district band at the time the anchorage school district superintendent was mr gene davis this gentleman testified on behalf of the perpetrator saying that he was a good old boy apparently the police department and district attorney former gayle frates thought it was not enough strong evidence even though the little girl's blood was found inside the vehicle and on a pipe wrench that was used to hit her in the head at the same time this district attorney was was further busted for driving under the influence fear is a tangible thing discrimination and racism is a tangible thing this little girl with my daughter [Music] the one i spoke to you of that went on to complete her education in
119anchorage school district earned a scholarship under academics and went on to john hopkins to graduate thank you next up in person speaker number four darrell mitchell [Music] thank you for joining us thank you for having me two minutes and the picture is yours thank you i want to start off by saying that i'm completely impartial my desire in giving this testimony today is to put an end to racism completely to put it into it now for if racism does not end today it surely will not end tomorrow and our history has proven this fact to be accurate if i ask myself what will end raise them to today i asked will it be a policy protest an organization a theory or idea time and being serious i see that none of these qualities have ended
120racism today and being that my primary concern is the actual ending of racism altogether i naturally negate all these qualities and what i am left with is the actual problem of racism itself now from here i ask what is creating this behavior we call racism what is the actual cause to defect as racism being that there is no solution of any kind in my mind for nothing has solved racism one explicitly sees that the actual root cause of racism is racial identification and a direct outcome of racial identification is divine behavior we call racism within the very identification with a particular race you are in fact a racist i am afraid that most of us in this room are completely insensitive to the actual reality of racism and thus are completely insensitive to its root
121cause but for those who are sensitive to the immense dangers of racism there is a demanding question will you end racial identification within yourself completely will you die to your identification with a particular race right now today if not then i am afraid that no policy of any kind will ever put an end to racism for putting the solution before the total comprehension of the problem will inevitably create more problems within itself thank you all [Music] thank you next up in person speaker number five taylor mitchell [Music] thank you for joining us two minutes and the floor is yours i'm taylor mitchell i'm with the alaska black caucus currently serving on the education committee i'm speaking to everyone listening condescending gaslighting dismisses statements like racism i mean really we're talking about racism or maybe the
122ahd should stick to being worried about reading writing and math which came from public attendees at the last board meeting or remember donnelly suggesting in his article released last week that equality laws passed in the 60s and 70s somehow equates to we've done enough which really has an undertone of we haven't done enough for you people of color already let's move on this is a huge reason why today's vote is a paramount importance racism is taught whether that be be a media schools or home life it comes from people making a specific commitment to combat racism isn't divisive it's necessary and the right thing to do mentioning acknowledging and teaching race isn't divisive it's being real and honest whether you like it or not your kids are growing up in a world full of color
123anti-racism is not some newfangled political idea the opposition accuses you that if you support anti-racism policies you're either a marxist socialist or anti-democracy since apparently being asked to critically think and introspectively think in relation to racism inequity and discrimination is bad which is interesting because we teach critical thinking in our schools but now all of a sudden because it's being tied to race moms and grandparents are calling in claiming it'll destroy their children the policy in question is about ensuring the district is examining its practices protecting its students at every turn to say let's ignore this policy is to say that all our students aren't worth protecting racism discrimination retaliation and inequity are not made up issues hear this we all have equal protection under the law but we're not always all equally protected the
124flawed execution of laws show itself in the systemic ways the asd has much room for improvement and the policy at hand is a good step in achieving what we all want for our students which is to be set up for success and be safe and free to learn i urge the board to vote in support of the anti-racism policies thank you thank you next up the point of personal privilege yes sir yeah um i never stated that i thought the 1960s civil rights laws were the only thing we should ever do to promote fight to fight um racism anywhere in this country so that was a this statement okay um speaker number six on the telephone is polly carr polly are you on the line with us tonight i am can you hear me we
125sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours [Music] great thank you um my name is paulie carr and i want to express my support for the asd anti-racism policy and thank the school board for committing to strengthen district systems and practices it's not new information that racism exists in our society institutions and in ourselves or that because of racism black indigenous and students of color face more barriers to success in education feel less supported and safe in their schools and experience a sense of being unseen for their contributions what is new is an awakening across our country by individuals communities and institutions about our racist history and current systems and a desire to acknowledge heal from and directly address these impacts and today we saw a glimpse
126of that in action as a white mother of a white child i am one of those who has come to reckon with my own upbringing the history i was taught in western world view that shaped my thinking and the privilege that kept me blind to the inequities all around me i want my daughter to be aware of our true histories to understand why it's important that all students have the same access to learning safety and support and to know that ensuring equity for all does not mean removing opportunity for any construct by those opposing these policies on the basis that they would introduce critical race theory into our schools like some sort of boogeyman critical race theory describes an academic approach in multiple fields to understanding the systems and socially constructed ideas that influence our
127fundamental understanding of the society we live in this term has been co-opted as something to be frightened of and a reason to oppose good policies that our community wants i challenge those using critical race theory as a reason to oppose this policy to articulate what they understand this term to mean how positively addressing measurable inequities in our own district data is related to critical race theory and how they see enactment of anti-racism policy actually harming them their children in the district and the community i welcome the passage of this policy and look forward to how it will benefit all students including my own thank you thank you next up on the phone number speaker number seven megan mcbride uh megan are you on the line tonight hi thanks for the opportunity to comment on the
128proposed instructional equity and anti-racism policies i'm a high school social studies teacher in asd and i actually shared the draft policies with my 11th grade students and invited them to give me optional anonymous feedback about their thoughts before i share a few quotes from their responses let me be clear that i did not coach or guide their answers i did not define racism for them or share my own opinion um they read the draft policies on their own and if they wanted to they shared anonymous comments with me the vast majority of my students shared that they personally have not experienced or witnessed racial hate and speech or overt actions at school which was a relief to hear and in spite that my students still see value in the school board adopting these policies here
129are a few quotes so they are proposing these policies you mean they don't already have an anti-racism policy another ever since the start of the pandemic i feel like everyone is just giving me a death death glare nowadays i just want to stay home i don't want to go out another there are students certain teachers who treat people differently but they are very sly with it another it would mean a lot to me and i definitely want it to happen meaning the policies to pass another why is it just happening now it's crazy how convenient it is that we are just now thinking about an equity and anti-racism policy after we heard about george floyd brianna taylor jacob blake etc and two yeah the policy might help racism but it's not going to solve it
130i also think about how it's a start for us minorities it's not much but it's a step towards ending racism and the last quote i have to share i'm really surprised that there is not anything like this already in place i think that it would be good to have an anti-racism policy i hate that people discriminate just because of a person's skin color and or culture i'm so sorry your two minutes are up thank you so much for that speaker number eight on the telephone chelsea foster uh chelsea are you on the line with us tonight hello can you hear me yes ma'am you thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours hi thank you for the record chelsea foster thank you board members for allowing me to speak
131tonight um i want to just start off by saying i strongly support this anti-racism policy um my nieces were pulled out two years ago from the anchorage school district for racial discrimination and uh if this policy is not passed there's a real chance that there's five students in my family alone that will not be a part of the anchorage school district this next year um so that's that's all i have to say i i echo the comments made before me um man i have goosebumps i hope you guys do too it this needs to be passed we are decades late thank you guys thank you next up on the telephone speaker number nine jeffrey mayfield jeffrey are you on the line with us tonight hello can you hear me we sure can thank you for
132joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours my name is jeffrey mayfield thank you for hearing from me today um i am here to testify in support of the anti-racism and equity policies you'll be considering tonight i am caucasian and in a mixed marriage myself and have an amazing bi-racial son he's intelligent thoughtful and kind but already at the tender age of 10 he has experienced racism from multiple sources that has made him ask questions that no dad ever wants to have to answer this has come from within the district and without generally speaking the vast majority of people don't do or say racist things because they're bad people they do or say them because they don't know any better and haven't been trained to see their biases or haven't had the
133luxury of being in someone else's shoes i fully admit to having been unaware that some of my past actions were ignorant at best and could have been classified as racist at their worst it took marrying an immigrant to really open my eyes and supply to people less privileged than myself i have seen as recently as one week ago today systemically racist practices bring my wife to tears she is highly educated has two master's degrees and a doctorate but that still does not make her immune to racism that is inherent in our society before i married her i would have said be more prepared or it's one little hiccup but when i've watched those hiccups affect someone as educated as her and as privileged as her frankly day in and day out month after month and
134year after year it becomes more than isolated events it becomes evidence that systemic racism that the of systemic racism that these policies work to combat anchorage was on the verge of electing a school board member who says multi-relationship multi-relational organizations like mine aren't normal she actively fought against our anti-discrimination laws in 2015. we also have a sitting school board member who wrote an op-ed recently full of half-truths and fear-mongering if my personal story doesn't convince you for the need for these policies and the fact that nearly half of anchorage voters think that this ideology is acceptable should do the trick no person is perfect we all make mistakes and the best we can do is to learn from them that's what these policies do they help us learn and give our educators staff and students
135the tools to help overcome some of these challenges thank you for your time thank you uh next up was supposed to be a speaker on the phone however i don't see them i'll check to see if they are in person carly dennis all right i will watch for them in a little bit speaker number 11 on the telephone uh aiden weitzner aiden are you on the line tonight hello hi there thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours [Music] thank you dear anchorage school board firstly thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is aiden weitzer and i am a member of the alaska black caucus education working group i'm here today to commend your support of the anti-racism policy that is up for votes this policy is
136the first step in working towards eradicating institutional racism in the asd as we all continue to witness fatal police shootings this time in minneapolis chicago and honolulu we must also consider the impact these events can make on our students there is no longer space for silence and they are listening for our response to show that we care for them and will no longer tolerate the decades of overt and subvert racism we must be proactive in addressing biased incidents that may occur by firstly establishing that we are as a community expecting better i hope that this policy will be passed to put the framework in place for action to be taken and that our students can see racism will not be tolerated to the slightest extent this action must be taken swiftly the community will no
137longer tolerate incidences slipping through the cracks any longer once again i think it should be said that this policy is not about telling children what to believe or generating bias against white students it is about providing an opportunity for every child regardless of skin color to feel safe to express themselves and learn without hindrance in their classroom no matter how uncomfortable it may be these conversations on racism and bias are important to have and i encourage further discussion with the community i commend your support of this policy and look forward to seeing the action that will be taken thank you for your time thank you next step on the telephone speaker number 12 jedediah pollard today are you with us tonight hello can you hear me you sure can thank you for joining us you
138have two minutes and the floor is yours [Music] all right my name is pollard i'm 19 years old and a graduate of bartlett high school i'm a current college a student attendee there and i wanted to show support for the anti-racism policy i think it's important to vote for adoption i know a racism won't be eliminated completely with the passing of this but this is a great step in the right direction if this is uh voted in for adoption there thank you next up on the telephone uh speaker number 13 celeste hodge grodden celeste are you with this tonight hello hi we can hear you thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you school board members and superintendent bishop for this opportunity to testify today is a
139historic day for many of us feel a sigh of relief for justice from today's verdict however we know there's still much work to do to reform these archaic systems that perpetuate racism i want to thank many alaskans who are working hard to ensure that every child in our state regardless of race has equal access to educational opportunities in our public school system let's be clear about the policies that are before us the anti-racism policy simply acknowledges that racism has existed and continues to exist in our schools racism is not good for anyone and racism should be identified and eradicated the instructional equity policy simply requires our superintendent to assess whether or not resources are being allocated fairly across the district and to report on that annually as the president of the alaska black caucus i
140would like to testify again in support of these policies as many know the alaska black caucus is a nonpartisan organization with the goal of representing black and marginalized marginalized voices we strongly believe the public school system has a duty to identify and address racism and ensure equality and education anchorage has some of the most diverse schools in the country we have the top three diverse high schools six of the seven most diverse middle schools and nineteen of the nation's most diverse elementary schools why then would it ever be a question of whether or not the anchorage school district should ensure that our public schools support all kids there is currently a lot of fear-mongering and misinformation spreading about these policies and what they mean to our schools and our children let me just say that
141it that it is not courageous for an affluent white male school board member to take a stand against anti-racism policies it is not indoctrination to acknowledge that racism exists this isn't as many have argued a change in curriculum this is acknowledging and eradicating racism this isn't an attempt to hold back white students so children of color can catch up can you really represent the most diverse school district in the nation if you are not willing to acknowledge racism because it makes you a little uncomfortable and do you really think that two minutes are up i know it goes fast speaker number 14 on the telephone barb clark barb are you on the line with us tonight [Music] barb it is star six to unmute if you can hear us hello hi thank you for joining
142us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you as i wrote this testimony i had two documents open one a post a post about the proposed policy that member donnelly made to a blog and the other the proposed policy itself a venn diagram of the subject matter of each piece would show very little overlap mr donnelly raises some scary specters marxism socialism whatever reverse racism is and he goes on about two books that i've read a couple of his quotes from those books do indeed condemn capitalism though most of the content of both books does not more to the point the actual policy you're being asked to ratify does not sometimes i get sideways with my more activist friends because i'm basically a left tilting moderate well much of what i read
143in how to be an anti-racist and white fragility seem to me to be spot on some does feel a bit over the top and that's okay i read a lot of things and i don't get my back up in the presence of a thesis with which i'm only mostly enlightened and neither of those books awaits your ratification anyway nor does the proposed policy require anyone to read them let alone concur with them is a card-carrying moderate i can tell you that the proposed policy is a model of moderation of common sense justice of standard issue fairness no well-informed person could argue that there's been that there been no barriers to full participation for some racial groups that those barriers have had no lasting repercussions or that the ongoing disparate inc outcomes for students from those
144groups are inexplicable and unrelated to any conditions over which anyone but themselves or their families might have had any control the notion that existing barriers ought to be identified and dealt with not only isn't radical it's not even especially remarkable it's hard to see how we respond to it with anything other than of course of course we'll look for those barriers if we do find some of course we'll set about removing them methodology tba but as always the board retains oversight 120 concludes the superintendent shall submit an annual report if there's a more moderate more conventional less burn it all down less wild-eyed radical response to a perceived problem than an annual report to a board of directors i don't know what that might be thank you thank you all right next up speaker number
14515 megan holton megan are you on the line with us tonight hi this is megan holton thanks so much for listening to my testimony um this is a third third or fourth time that i've testified in support of the anti-racism policy and i feel that everyone here um school board members have a choice um to make the right decision here earlier i spoke and and many others have spoken very eloquently on the need for the policy and then i've spoken before my experiences as a white student and the mother of a white son the importance of having policies like this in place and then i've also spoken before on the on the positive outcomes that come from anti-racism policies i just want to remind you all that it is racism and not race of the
146students that causes these outcomes that we've been hearing about and we need to explicitly work on racism to eliminate these disparities and that's why the anti-discrimination policy isn't enough um so that i urge you to pass these policies thank you so much thank you next up speaker number 16 dr paula williams dr williams are you on the line with us tonight oh yes good evening i am dr paul williams i am dr paula williams a proud member of alaska black caucus and i'm also the co-chair of the education committee i'm testifying in favor of the anti-racism and instructional equity policies asd in his statement in response to the death of george floyd in the last paragraph invites the community to partner with you as you work to improve our educational system the community came forth
147to partner with asd by testifying to racist practices and instructional inequities within our educational foundation if asd sincerely intend to partner with our community then you must vote in favor of the anti-racism and instructional equity policies thank you to all the students speaking on this evening you are why we testify and i want to thank you for allowing me this time thank you uh next up speaker number 17 on the telephone mike groomst mike are you on the line with us tonight [Music] if you can hear it good evening hey good evening can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes in the fall yours great thank you very much uh my name is mike grunst and let me just start by saying i support the adoption of
148the anti-racism and instructional equity policies i'm a proud parent of two elementary kids in the school district and myself a graduate of the asd way back in the early days of 1990. in my 32 years of military service to date with multiple overseas deployments being a former small business owner a husband and a father i've learned a few things one of those things is that you need to always look for ways to improve yourself your organization your community the anchorage school board is proposing an anti-racism and instructional equity policy that addresses those potential improvements the policies we are discussing seem pretty simple to me we take the time to identify potential roadblocks or barricades any of our children may experience that may keep them from learning these barriers can be physical financial language social emotional
149historical if a path is blocked a door is locked is a job as a leader to remove the barricade to open the door we need to know these barriers are there and then identify them the policy review being proposed and discussed here is nothing more than an opportunity to do better to be better when we make sure everyone in our community is able to learn without barriers to learn equitably and our entire community is better our entire community benefits i'm sure we can all agree what we want is what's best for our kids and for alaska's future for all of our kids you know i'm going to tell you that education is not a pie when someone takes a piece of the pie out it doesn't leave less pie for everybody when it comes to
150education that's not how this is here by ensuring that everybody has equitable access that everybody is treated fairly and we identify any barriers we do better as a community thank you for your testimony tonight um just to check and see if this person is showed up in the room instead of on the telephone uh kimberly waller right not seeing this person uh speaker number 19 in person madison knutson thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours good evening members of the school board and superintendent bishop i am madison knutson and i am in 11th grade at the alaska middle college school thank you for the opportunity to testify on the anti-racism and anti-racism policy uh to be clear i am in favor of the anti-racism policy um i would
151like to open with a quote by the reverend martin luther king jr i am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other they fear each other because they do not know each other and they do not know each other because they do not communicate with each other and they do not communicate with each other because they are separated from each other this quote was especially meaningful to me after listening to the town hall meetings work sessions and public testimony what i learned is that there is a lot of fear in our community we must work together as an anchorage community to ensure that all students no matter their race or ethnicity have access to high quality education as a student i strongly support this policy because i want every student in the
152asd to feel safe and successful in classrooms to be able to achieve the outcomes they deserve i believe that these policies are step in the right direction of ensuring awareness followed by actions so that all students can feel safe in their schools additionally i believe that it is important that we acknowledge that racism occurs in alaska and in our school district so that um and instead of ignoring it we can educate ourselves and do something about it after listening to the other testimonies i realized that people wonder what will happen when these policies are passed and i would like to suggest an action for the administration to consider first i believe that we need to include more literature written by people of different races and backgrounds by reading stories created by diverse authors students may
153learn to acknowledge other cultures and understand their classmates better and thank you for your time thank you next up on the telephone iu custo tuck yeah come here can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours okay thank you good evening i grew up in this district and currently have four children in the district from second to fifth grade i'd like to speak to you from my experience as an induct woman growing up here in the policy before you tonight it says the board acknowledges that racism has historically existed in our education system i feel that part of the problem facing us right now is that we're not taught the true history of our education system in alaska most alaskans don't know that
154after becoming interested in the plight of alaska native peoples general agent of education sheldon jackson was charged with establishing an education system through the missionaries with the expressed purpose of civilizing alaska native people this kill the indian to save the man assimilation era was often carried out in violent demoralizing and deeply traumatizing ways including through the removal of our kids to boarding schools far from the protection of their families and communities this is an ancient history survivors walk among us today the strongest people i know if you're not familiar with the boarding school era it's imperative that you educate yourself on this critical history you've inherited as educators and administrators so why am i telling you this this weaponized school system created a hierarchy of worth based on race by centering white western values and
155perspectives on history and all subjects it effectively displaced our own knowledge while not teaching about the history that removed it and really what has changed today this legacy shows its face in the demographic breakdown on which students succeed and which experience low achievement and graduation rates voting in support of this anti-racism policy will exemplify our moral courage to open our eyes to the ways racism has been built into the structures of our schools and take a stand to say that it is both unjust and fixable thank you next up in person uh speaker number 21 corey east [Music] thank you two minutes and the floor is yours thanks again for your time tonight uh miss pick ride reminded me that the loudest voices the most important voices we should be listening to tonight are those
156of our students uh those this will impact uh fully madison madison excellent job tonight thank you i was looking over uh the written testimony and i found [Music] uh some from our students amazingly enough so i'm going to read that on their behalf after discussing the policies with our student government the feedback we had for the anti-racism policy was positive we were glad that the issue has been addressed and all agree action needs to be taken i believe that was diamond after reviewing the policies advisory representatives reported that polaris students understood and supported the policy's purpose and intent after reviewing and discussion uh discussing the policies with our student government class the response was uh was this response and reaction was positive this is from service high school they support it and stand up our
157discussion yielded very similar thoughts and ideas about the two policies overall the idea and the action behind them are great i am not a i think that's uh i think that's south uh stellar's discussion seemed very similar to those above we like the policies your students are screaming the vote is obvious overall our school had a lot of positive feedback about the policies and was glad the issue was being acknowledged the only thing the only negative comment about this consistently that it's just a little vague that there needs to be more detail it's our students it's all about our students as the president of the anchorage education association we stand with the students please support these policies thank you thank you next step on the phone speaker number 22 ben walker ben are you on
158the line with us tonight yeah i am thank you for joining us and the floor is good evening my name is ben walker and i'm a parent of two asd students and i'm also a teacher here and i'm here tonight to unequivocally support the anti-racism policy you know this is life-changing even life-saving work and the most important change i've seen in my 15 years as an educator in this district i was planning tonight to refute some of the massive amount of misinformation those in opposition unfortunately continue to spread but anti-racism however i'm not going to get distracted and make this about them this isn't about them and this isn't about me and this really isn't about any of us testifying here tonight this is about the students we can't spend our time energy focusing on
159adults right now this is about the students in our classroom you see we teach two ways but what we do and say what we don't do and we don't say what we don't talk about and leave out says as much about what we value as what we include and when by not actively continuously calling out and discussing racism in an anti-racist fashion we allow the status quo to continue whether it's healthy for society or not ninety percent of students attend public schools and it is in these classrooms they learn about the priorities of society by both what is taught and what is not it is here that they learn how society values them their culture their past their perspectives by what is taught and what is not for a student who is in public education
160from kindergarten to graduation they spend over fifteen thousand hours in classrooms they say it takes ten thousand hours to master something so our students have mastered and more whatever is taught and not taught in schools about society if we want more just equitable and compassionate society free from racism both acute and systemic we must have more just equitable compassionate and yes anti-racist schools free from racism both acute and systemic and that starts by taking a hard look at every part of this system and identify identifying where we are knowingly and unknowingly making it more difficult for our students of color to be the best versions of themselves one of my students recently said we were discussing representation in science while reading a hidden figure she said you know i like learning about all the white
161scientists like einstein and newton but i just wish i could also learn about scientists that look like me too and then maybe more people would be interested in science please don't fall for the trap of those making the most noise and make this about adults this is about kids all kids thank you so much your two minutes are up uh speaker number 23 on the telephone tanya aidan tanya are you with us tonight hi this is tanya can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you honorable school board members and superintendent bishop thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of board policy zero 400 anti-racism and 6140 instructional equity my name is tanya eiden i'm a mother of a
162seventh grader at romig and a fourth grader at aquarium a small business owner in our community and i was educated k through 12 in this school district graduating from betty davis east anchorage high school in 1991. thank you for introducing these policies these are sensible and necessary statements of truth you are doing the right thing unfortunately there is racial inequity in our educational system to overcome it we must name it and enact anti-racist policies to support racial racial equity between racial groups as a student at east high i saw how the unequal footing between racial groups played out when primarily white kids were in advanced in ap classes it plays out when students of color are more likely than white students to be suspended it's reflected in how this district teaches about alaska native people
163today presenting them as if they are not contemporary peers who may be sitting in the classroom but long ago lost tribes and overlooking the history of disease and pandemics brought by outsiders and forced assimilation in our own state these policies are uplifting and additive they challenge the district to give equal weight to the stories and achievements of all racial groups as the anti-racism policy states you are to champion a district culture that values and respects the diversity and life experiences of all stakeholders education is not a zero-sum game teaching about one culture or race doesn't take away or lessen another learning is infinite we owe it to our kids to expose them to the truths and injustices of the past so they can be critical thinkers today i'm excited to think of the improved educational
164environment these policy statements can lead to the anti-racism and equity policies are a step in the direction i thank you so much our next speaker number 24 in person uh jeff houghton how to no okay maybe not uh on the telephone speaker number 25 marlo sully marlo are you on the line tonight if you can hear us hi i'm here perfect thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours [Music] thanks um should i talk about just the anti-racist policy or both of them i'm signed up to testify for goals this is only uh testifying on the anti-racism policy there will be another opportunity for the next policy fantastic thank you yeah my name is marlo scully i'm in the fairview area i just like to quickly amplify what other
165folks have said in their powerful testimonies and thank them for all of the energy and the passion that they brought to this meeting um especially you know all the students and students of color as a white person it took people holding me accountable to finally address you know my implicit biases and do better when it comes to supporting the people of color in my life and i think that's exactly what these policies are about as well the anchorage school district is really making a commitment to address racism and once that commitment commitment is made we can start to make progress as a community i'm strongly in support of this policy and urge school board members to vote to adopt it thank you thank you next up speaker number 26 on the telephone emily taylor emily
166are you on the line with us tonight yes um hi my name is emily taylor and i'm an indigenous high school student who attends diamond high school and i'm showing support for the anti-racism and instructional equity policies growing up in the anchorage school district i've been surrounded by the cultural and racial diversity that reflects the uniqueness of anchorage as well as alaska while most students are not outright racist towards their peers some are unequipped with how to adequately respond to the diversity of their community for example students may ask offensive or invasive questions or direct microaggressions at other students without knowing the weight or consequences of their questions or actions the actions taken after these policies could help alleviate that and make a better environment for our students i believe that first acknowledging that racism
167exists and moving to help educate everyone on how this affects students is a great first step and it is also important to teach the true history of bipac people especially in classes such as alaska studies this policy would not only help our school district become a more welcoming and safe environment for students and it would improve the district greatly for a school district that contains many of the most diverse schools in the nation it is the bare minimum to acknowledge the existence of racism and promise equity for all students this would not hurt white students and would help buy puck students and i encourage the school board to pass these policies koyana thank you our next speaker in person speaker number 27 scott hipsek [Music] thank you for joining us you have two minutes and
168the floor is yours thank you my name is scott hibsack and i'm here before the anchorage school board to respect floyd requests and anti-racism memorandum be rewritten as well as the ideology of critical race theory not be taught adopted or otherwise instituted in any form in the anchorage school district critical race theory is just one more ideology that sounds new but in reality is nothing more than some rehashed ideas painted over with the code of racism to make them sound new and fresh beside theology and others in the past are about power and control and history has shown numerous ideologies in the past have uh resulted in a complete failure and more of the very thing they sought to resolve since my time is short i've compiled three reasons why adopting this ideology would be
169detrimental to our children and society at large three reasons our critical race theory is by definition a racist ideology it further divides our children and society instead of bringing us together and it does nothing to further the school district's primary goal of educating our kids to their future success in society now removing races is something we all strive for this is the common ground we all have regardless of social political or religious groups we associate ourselves with while i firmly believe that we all feel this way today's media pounds us with the idea their systemic institutional racism and white privilege and white people have white privilege and that we all must be anti-racist otherwise we're racist so the ideology of critical race theory though by definition is racist it seeks to legitimize the category categorization
170of people using their race skin color ethnicity in order to justify policies procedures even strategic planning initiatives this idea in individual itself to use race ethnicity or any other inherent characteristic to judge categorize or otherwise treat people differently is racist and anything towards that end is entirely racist and therefore i respectful request memorandum be looked at and rewritten if not removed thank you i appreciate your time thank you next up is speaker number 28 in person shirley hipsock [Music] thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours i'm here to talk about critical race theory critical race theory is really bad for our children it's a dangerous educational agenda that should not be used in any fashion in the anchorage school district it perpetuates the very racist racism you seek
171to eliminate it reinforces the division of children by race and removes personal responsibility and accountability from the equation of success the anchorage school districts already focuses on the social emotional learning of our students equality means treating everyone the same regardless of voice equity means treating everyone different to ensure the same outcome equity sounds good but it's impossible to achieve the subtle but very real message here is the child cannot succeed unless they overthrow the oppressors or the oppressors treat them different than others this goes against the very idea of this country that all are equal and it's a very dangerous idea to suggest to our children critical race theory is completely dependent on racial segregation if there is no racial segregation then critical race theory would not be needed critical race theory must perpetuate the
172idea that racism is systemic and continues to affect various groups of population this completely counters to the current district mission of social emotional learning taking place in our schools critical race theory instructs the teacher to look at the race of the child first a child should never be judged by the color of their skin going one small step further critical race theory dictates that our white teachers are the oppressors and the students lack success in the classroom due to the teacher not the students this disrespects our teachers and directly opens them up from all attack from all angles makes their job much harder if that's it that's it thank you so much uh next up in person uh speaker number marvin hipstock condensed condensed version i guess here thank you two minutes in the florida
173marvin hip sack the last time i was here i had a few questions for you but how much advanced notice are you going to give to give the parents on this critical race theory or is this going to be a nancy pelosi hijinx you know when she said pass the affordable care act we need to pass it to know what's in it is that what this board is going to do to the parents pass it tell them later so when you inform the parents as to what you're going to teach about critical race theory please do not sugarcoat it with some other fancy names like we'll be teaching anti-racism diversity and inclusion and or equity inequality tell it like it is it's critical race theory socialism marxism also is there going to be any opt
174out for my grandchildren if they start hearing this in the classroom i want to opt out i don't want to i don't want to listen to this stuff then uh [Music] critical race theory defines human history as a struggle between the oppressors white people and the oppressed everybody else like marxism it advocates for the destruction of institutions such as the western justice system also free-market economy orthodox religious religions while demanding that they be replaced with identities complement with the critical race theory ideology have you heard about the school in new york city that beverly uh uh school is a 50 000 a year tuition to go there one parent andrew gutman wrote the letter very long but one paragraph he wrote on it i accept i object to the view that i should be judged
175by the color of my skin i cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin but encourages and instructs her to pre-judge others by theirs he's pulling her out of there after seven years this is how social socialism starts then to marxism the left just wants to get their foot in the door do not vote on this until you tell every parent what you are teaching that you owe that to them thank you so much thank you next up on the telephone speaker number 30 rebecca noblin rebecca are you on the line tonight hi this is rebecca nelson hi there thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you i'm calling in support of the anti-racism and the anti and the
176instructional equity policies and i'd like to support and uplift the voices of folks who spoke before me especially the people of color who spoke in favor of these policies as a parent of two white children i recognize that my kids are in a privileged position their teachers by and large look like them the books they read are about children who look like them the history they learn is the history of european settlers adults implicitly assume that my children will succeed and when they have a bad day the adult knowledge cuts them a break i want all children to have the same opportunities my children have the anti-racism and instructional equity policies are a first step toward creating an educational environment where each and every child is given their full opportunity to grow the policies are
177a recognition of a problem and a promise to work to address it there are small but critical first steps i'm not the least bit worried that the policies will have a negative impact on my white children to the contrary i deeply wish for my children to be in an environment that is equitable and inclusive and nurtures everyone we have wonderful teachers in our school system and i'm confident that they have the same vision for our children that i have these policies simply provide our educators with institutional support to pursue that vision of equity and inclusiveness for all children thank you thank you [Music] next up on the telephone michael patterson michael are you with us tonight [Music] michael if you can hear us it's star six to unmute oh can you hear me now you
178sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is york hi uh thanks for having me today and uh this is kind of awkward because i'm actually marx's so i'm going to try to be very quick with this and just say you know anti-racism is not a anti-white policy it's not divisive it's frankly just common sense for people who think that in this country for this country that we should not be teaching kids about anti-racism or that the school district should not have a policy which in my opinion is 2021 policy already it's really a disservice to their children and it's a disservice to children in the district i'm a graduate of bartlett and i remember when i was 15 i was walking home one day and i was stopped
179by apd and they accused me of being in the hit and run which i didn't do anything i can't drive i'm 15 and one of the officers both of them white asked me for my identification and so when i you know i was raised to respect authority i was in the army and i you know i basically what happened was officer asked for my id and then when i reached went to go reach for my wallet he pulled a firearm on me and then had the audacity to tell me to calm down and so racism is here in anchorage the school district needs to have an anti-racist policy and kids need to be taught about anti-racism they need to be taught about racism and white kids even talk about this too half of my family
180is white and i have difficulty having conversations with them about racism and to i'm the oldest of my brother and we're the you know they have black family members and it's a difficult conversation and so i can only imagine that for the district and for students it's not going to be an easy conversation but it's one that needs to be had and i think the importance of education and anti-racism is so paramount because of the role that education has played in spreading white supremacy and then oppressing people there's a reason why manifest destiny education was at the center of manifest destiny because they wanted to destroy indigenous cultures and there was a reason why slaves it was illegal for us to i'm sorry your two minutes are up thank you so much uh next up
181speaker number 32 in person nathaniel rivers i'm not seeing anybody come up uh next up on the telephone speaker number heidi mccroskey heimerle [Music] heidi are you on the line tonight hello can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours okay thank you for the opportunity to speak today my name is heidi mccroskey heimerle and i am a white woman a social worker a partner a friend and most importantly a mother of three small children my eldest daughter started kindergarten this year in the anchorage school district i come today to express my full support for the anti-racism and instructional equity policies these policies are one step toward acknowledging that our educational system was created by and for white able-bodied wealthy christian males this
182is the reality white people in power have informed and created the systems policies norms and values our country lives by to this day as such these systems policies and norms and values impact how people are judged how decisions are made and enforced and the type and quantity of resources that are accessible our educational system has and continues to disproportionately impact black indigenous and people of color due to systemic racism and the lack of equitable policies and resources yesterday high school students across minnesota walked out of their classrooms to protest racism and injustice not only police violence but the racism and discrimination they experienced in their schools minnesota school district leaders made promises last summer stating they would act students all over this country are demanding change will anchorage school district leaders act on the commitment
183they set out last summer will adults listen to what our students are saying they want and need will we admit that our educational system is filled with racism discrimination and bias acknowledgement that our structures are inherently biased is a start this is about humanity will we choose to see hear acknowledge and love all people or just a few i want all those listening today especially by individuals to know that you matter your stories and experiences matter and you are loved please pass the anti-racism instructional equity policies so all of our students can have an equitable safe and just future our students are pleading for it thank you thank you next up on the phone speaker number 34 heidi brooke heidi are you on the line with us tonight hello can you hear me we sure
184can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours wonderful thank you good evening this is heidi northover asd teacher and mother of two if parents approached our school with concerns about bullying it would be entirely unacceptable for our school to respond with oh my students don't experience bullying bullying doesn't exist in our school asc has a zero tolerance anti-bullying policy in place for that reason yet right now families of color all across this country have been telling us in these school board meetings they've been sharing their experiences of racism in our school we know from the from personal experiences from testimonies from the data that the racism exists in our schools and it hurts my heart and it's completely unacceptable that black community members alaska native community members on
185native land at that are being ignored gaslit even vilified for just speaking their truth in support of a reasonable anti-racism policy that is for the benefit of all students in our district recognizing that racism exists is the bare minimum speaking to my experience as a white person in elementary school we were taught you know and racism racism is bad we were never taught what is racism and what powers racism we were taught don't talk about racism don't notice racism don't acknowledge white like even saying i'm a white person was taught to be icky decades later we see parents afraid their child their white child is going to be more severely punished we see parents scared their child is going to lose learning opportunities and what i'm hearing is misinformation and fear stemming from no education
186about racism or a misleading education about racism it's so unfortunate because we're missing the mark and it hurts my heart to have to say this but you don't need to have black and brown kids in your home or your classroom to support anti-racist efforts when we oppose anti-racism we're missing an entire world of opportunities for our students and yes our white students too miss heidi i'm sorry your two minutes are up next up uh i don't see her on the phone but in the event she showed up in person christine hill [Music] all right i do not have her uh speaker number 36 patty wilbanks okay hello my name is uh i'm patty wilbins and i'd like to say that this is the first time i've ever engaged a school board or testified before this
187body but after reading the anti-racism policy prelude in the actual letter and policy letter i think i felt compelled to provide testimony my kids no longer attend asd and after reading this letter i'm really kind of grateful for that i do oppose this policy if they were they were in school i would be doing everything in my powers either homeschool move by the state or go to private instructions this is how strongly i believe the board is headed in the wrong direction supporting critical race theory i've listened to the speakers that support of this policy and during their testimonies people who oppose this policy have been called racist marxist white supremacists and haters i find it amazing that they can still freely make these statements accuse excuse people of this and don't realize that they
188sound exactly what they are accusing those of there is a great divide in our country and it's only growing wider because of the policies like this in your letter you say that that racism historically exists in our schools i like to ask the question exactly where is the race in racism racism you clearly state in the letter do we have segregated schools segregated lunch or segregated bath that is the true definition of systemic racism i understand the bullying can be very quietly done and i understand racism can too but my concern is is that what it what this is actually doing is putting a policy in play that teaches our children that every person should be judged by the color of their skin and not their individual marriage i don't think an institution should judge
189people or kids or anybody by their skin color and instruct others children to prejudge others by this color of their skin i do implore you to not approve critical race theory thank you thank you next up i believe in person speaker number 37 stephanie mcfadden hi thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours i stand before the board today to say there are a few school board members that may share my lived experiences i'm a retired navy veteran african-american mother minority small business owner and a parent of a black male if you fit into any of these categories you like me would be a vessel for ending any and all racist practices that impacts educating all students when i grew up all the older people in my small close-knit
190community would say make sure you get your education that's one thing the white man cannot take away from you what they didn't know is that they can and have taken our access to quality education by implementing policies and silent push procedures that largely impacts the lives of colored students i am not testifying on what i think is happening in the district i am testifying based on the data the district shared that shows kids of color are being left behind and being outperformed by their white counterparts it is easy to turn a blind eye to students that do not look like you are more important because they become a threat to students who have always been tracked and placed in classes this policy will even the playing field by enrolling by ensuring enrollment access and resources
191are provided to students of color in the district and it will ensure all kids have a chance to be successful in college and work history has shown us one of the greatest equalizers is education as the journal truth said if my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quarter wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full we have the ability and the responsibility as elected officials to ensure all kids cups are food you have the responsibility to ensure all students receive the same high quality education and are prepared for college and a world of work if your passion aligns with anything i said approve the policy if nothing i said aligns with your values you should not hold a seat on the school board thank you
192for allowing me to speak thank you next up on the telephone speaker number 38 rachel blakesly rachel are you on the line with us tonight hi good evening we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you so much my name is rachel blakeslee i'm a mom of the future asp student and a proud member of the alaska black caucus allies for change i'm speaking tonight in strong support of the anti-racism policy as the board is also voting on an instructional equity policy this evening i want to start with the core truth we cannot ever achieve educational equity without racial equity to ensure all of our students receive equitable access to opportunities we first have to actually recognize that systemic racism exists and that it exists
193in our education system and that's what this policy is a recognition of the structural inequities rooted in systemic racism that have long impacted educational outcomes and a commitment to do better this policy is aligned to what asd already preaches the mission of the school district is to educate all students for success in life without a commitment to anti-racism the district can't uphold its own mission statement this policy is not about indoctrinating students with radical ideas it is simply put a commitment to self-reflection growth learning and improvement for us as adults the very characteristics and values we see to impress upon our students it's about shifting our thinking and confronting our own biases to work towards a better future for all kids in essence it is about educating ourselves silence and inaction reinforces the status quo
194one which has produced a system where a student's background determines the educational opportunities that are afforded in our school district making it so that students of color suffer at a disproportionate rate compared to their peers this has nothing to do with potential to succeed and everything to do with access to resources and opportunities acknowledging the racial inequities that exist in our education system is the only way we can work towards solutions to prevent continued harm to our most marginalized students i not only urge the board to approve this policy but to build upon it it's a good first step in the right direction but it's critical this policy is not just performative in nature the district truly values the experiences and educational opportunities of all students and to be a foundation to making structural changes
195that dismantle centuries-old racist institutions from the ground up thank you next up in person speaker number 39 judy elledge [Music] my name is judy elledge by viewing every element of education every aspect of history and every facet of society through the lens of skin and color we are desecrating the legacy of dr martin luther king utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believe fought and died unlike many of you i'm old enough to have seen systematic racism having moved from the west coast to the south as a sophomore in high school i experienced segregated schools and separate lunch counters and i was appalled because that was not how i was raised to state otherwise as a flat misrepresentation of our country's history and adds no understanding to any of today's societal issues
196if anything long-standing and widespread widespread policies such as affirmative action point in precisely the opposite direction is not mrs bellamy on the school board an example of where a person of color or any person can become with hard work and a good education as an educator that's been many years in rural education i assure you the worst form of racism is when a teacher walks in a classroom and lowers their expectation of that student because of the color of their skin that is true racism and we have been doing it for years in education i on the other hand have spent my adult life working with students of color in my not supporting this policy you can call me racist you can call me anything you want what you will not find is any person
197of color i have ever worked with or any student i have ever taught that will call me likewise for they all know i will assure all students receive the quality of education necessary to further their development into a critically thinking responsible enlightened and civic minded adult for all of you that have uh said something tonight about needing this policy i would refer you to the very strong very strong anti-harassment policy that exists uh exists in anchorage school district that would address all these issues thank you thank you uh next up in person speaker number 40 uh victoria kennel nope okay uh back to the telephone speaker number 41 sarah osborne sarah are you on the line tonight yeah can you hear me we can hear you thank you for joining us you have two minutes
198and is yours thank you my name is sarah osborne and i am a middle school title one educator with the district a parent of two and a white woman i strongly support the proposed anti-racism policy as a mother i will rely on the district to prepare my kids for success in life yes that includes some reading writing and math but it also includes so much more when my children spend seven or more hours per day in your care i also am entrusting you to play a role in my child's social and emotional development development of empathy compassion citizenship character and values as a white as a white mom of white children i entrust you to prepare my children for success in life in our multicultural world by giving them the opportunity to develop these skills
199and to think critically about the complex histories and systems of race and racism in alaska america and around the world as an educator i also understand that families are entrusting me with the same care of their students when they entrust the district to educate their students for success in life as an educator i take this responsibility very seriously i also know that this policy is not about teaching critical race theory and classrooms as some of those testifying in opposition fear because i have read this proposed policy i know that this policy actually is about committing to rejecting racism and affirming our commitment to all students at the district level i enthusiastically support this policy which is wholly aligned with our district mission thank you thank you next i'd like to go back up to speaker
200number 35 christine hill christine are you on the line with us tonight christine if you can hear us it is star six to unmute all right can you hear me yes we can hear me now yes you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you very much for your patience first off i was hitting number six instead of star six so i have to say um that everyone that is participating in this school board meeting agrees racism racism is outrageous and cannot be tolerated and i say to all of you if you are witnessing racism by teachers or students they need to be recommended and if they're a teacher they need to be removed immediately i am personally vehemently against racism it is offensive and what is being proposed right now in fact
201is racism i beg all of you to vote against these uh these things that are being offered tonight because they are discriminatory as i was listening to the meeting tonight they have everything broken down by authenticity you know where does that information come from we're a melting pot here i'm made of a made up of a lot of different things but predominantly i look like i'm white with freckles but i'm made up of a lot of different things and so are many of my friends it's wonderful i love america we are americans we're we belong to the human race we need to be respectful of each other if there is any hint of racism then they need to be reprimanded immediately and if there's any teacher that's racism they need to be fired i don't
202care what the unions say or what they have to do but i'm against it and uh what what is being proposed now is only more divisive so thank you for your patience and i hear the bill thank you next up on the telephone speaker number soarin worth soren are you on the line tonight hello can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours good evening my name is cern worth and i'm calling in support of memoranda 108 and 109. i'd like to first acknowledge the jurors in a minneapolis courtroom who today handed down a guilty verdict in the case of a police officer killing an unarmed george floyd the jury's verdict is a small but significant step toward repairing systemic injustices against people
203of color that has plagued our nation since its founding of course true justice would mean george floyd was alive today that dante wright was alive today that a 13 year old boy in chicago and hundreds of other victims were alive today true justice would also mean that our students academic successes did not depend on income race and ethnicity true justice is a school board in anchorage alaska passing anti-racism and institut instructional equity policies we are all community educators we should recognize this teachable moment i'm concerned however too many teachers would be unwilling to discuss the trial and the black lives matter movement for fear of rebuke teachers need the unwavering support of courageous administrators and board members to affirm a stance of social justice district-wide and i hope these memos are only a start after
204all it's 2021 and we're still dealing with in institutional structural and systemic racism to address explicit and soft bigotry dozens of microaggressions stereotypes and biases our students of color face every day we need anti-racist policies like this one and many more before our school district begins to feel safe and equitable to all students thank you next up is speaker number 43 susan derrera susan are you on the line tonight susan if you can hear us it is star six to unmute all right we will come back to miss susan and try again in a couple of callers speaker number 44 on the telephone leah slemens leah are you on the line tonight yes i am um thank you superintendent board members for taking testimony tonight thank you for joining us a few minutes and the
205floor is yours thank you um i am testifying not because i like talking about racism i actually find it uncomfortable because i'm afraid of saying the wrong thing and um hurting people's feelings or damaging my perception of black health as a good person um but i think racism is more complicated than that i'm testifying because systematic racism is break into our society um the anchorage school district um is diversity big but our municipality is also a result of its collective history we've had red mining um in neighborhoods putting um white families predominantly in airport heights and south edition and black families predominantly in the neighborhoods of fairview and that's trickled through our our schools and the opportunities students at these different schools have and i've seen that in my experience volunteering for the girls on
206the run program at different schools throughout the district and now as the parent of a white kid at a predominantly white school you know had even her pediatrician before kindergarten said oh she'll be in the ignite program and you know and we have these um biases that we might not even be aware of so i think this is a policy of moderation i appreciate that it brings out a lot of emotion for people but i think leading this policy uh it's i would underline that uh the policy seeks to end the predictive value of race and um tracking that as the memorandum 109 does and and tracking equity measures and in um i am so sorry your two minutes are next up is speaker number 45 cynthia cufo cynthia are you on the line tonight
207[Music] cynthia if you can hear us it is star six to unmute okay we will come back to her as well uh let's go to speaker number 46 carrie brown carrie are you on the line with us tonight carrie brown if you can hear us it is star six to unmute hi this is carrie brown hi thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours all right well um i am a proud asd graduate and um have a child now in the school district and i'm just going to save you all a lot of time and i cannot say it more articulately or with better reasoned examples than everyone before me who has spoken in support of memorandum 108 i support it too please count my vote and my voice
208and my experience with anchorage school district as someone who absolutely supports it and thank you for putting it out there and for passing it thank you thank you i'm gonna go back up to the last couple of callers that we didn't quite connect with speaker number 43 susan derrera and susan if you can hear us it is star six to unmute all right let's go ahead and try speaker number 45 one more time cynthia cufo cynthia are you on the line with us tonight all right in person speaker number 47 kim paulson thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you thank you for having me kim paulson um i guess i'm really surprised because what i'm hearing is that our principals our teachers our school board our
209everyone you gina bishop i'm sorry superintendent first step you're all racist all of your racist um and i can't believe that you're allowing what i heard tonight that uh people of color are actually being paid less that's what i heard tonight in testimony i can't believe that you guys are allowing this so my concern with an anti-racism policy is it is a stepping stone toward critical race theory and it actually is a stepping stone people education universities who have um moved on full into critical race theory they started off with against racism policy um and what that does is it places a burden on our innocent children our children who have no choice of what their skin color is to carry the burden of racism we are teaching our white children in schools that they
210are racist i've had the opportunity to meet a lot of people in the community as a candidate an eight-year-old girl comes home crying she doesn't want to be white anymore my own son told me that they are taught that you should be feel bad for being white probably the reason students are surprised the policy policy isn't already in place is because frankly they're already being taught this in school thank you so much i [Music] don't see uh the two colors um uh susan derrera and another one she may have dropped off um cynthia if you hang up and you call back in uh we might be able to get things um to work and i will continue to watch for your names uh i do not see uh judy justin in person or on the
211telephone so i will move to speaker number 49 elise galvin elise are you on the line with us tonight hi this is elise and i'm so grateful to you madam chair and to the board for your work i want to celebrate with you that you're taking such an important first step i i do acknowledge that you've immediately well relatively immediately responded a year ago on i know on june uh 16th you did um make a statement uh in response particularly in this case it was said to the death of george floyd so shortly after the may 25th death that you responded immediately talking about how you intended to do these actions that you're doing tonight you wrote that you were going to develop anti-racism policy that will translate into programs and other things and practices
212to create a more equitable and kinder world how wonderful i want to commend you for your work and bringing it to fruition tonight i noticed that this is signed by i think all of you who are there um star marsett is no longer on the board but everyone else who is there tonight has signed this letter of intent to do this work so i'm just calling in to say thank you i appreciate it it's important work to be done it's critical to help our young students know where they came from know true history to feel that sense of worthiness and especially after hearing the report earlier from our superintendent about the work we have yet to do if we have 30 percent of our kids right now working at grade level then we have much
213to do and i'm just so grateful that you're on the way there thank you very much thank you next up on the line speaker number 50 pat galvin pat are you on the line with us tonight hi thank you since i'm on the phone you should know that i am a middle-aged white person and i'm here with an unusual request for public testimony i don't think you should care what i have to say about this topic on the question of whether an anti-racism policy is warranted in anchorage schools my observations will likely hold very little insight and should therefore carry very little weight in your decision i advise you to listen instead to the members of the communities of color and those experiencing the inequities and racism that we know is present in our society
214today let their support guide your decision don't listen to me as a middle-aged white man would do i will illuminate my point with a baseball analogy about a mid-20th century pitcher the great sydney kofax who is known as the left arm of god i recently read how sandy would come every year to the dodger spring training facility to impart his wisdom on young pitchers he once told clayton kershaw today's great left-handed pitcher if you held your curveball this way it would be more effective and sandy would grab a baseball and his middle finger would wrap around the ball and touch his thumb for those who haven't held a baseball in your hand i can tell you that sandy cofaxes must have huge hands and clayton just laughed and said sandy i can't do that kofax
215seemed oblivious to the fact that what came easily to him simply wasn't available to even another great left-handed pitcher it's well known in baseball that naturally great players rarely make good coaches they don't recognize the advantages that their natural abilities provide and they don't see what it takes for others to do what they can do easily in short you wouldn't ask sandy koufax how to throw a curveball if you wanted a useful answer and you should not look to a middle-aged white person like myself to advise you on whether to adopt a proposed anti-racism policy thank you thank you next up speaker number 51 moira smith where are you on the line with us tonight i am can you hear me we sure can thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the
216floor is yours thank you madam president i am a mother of a seventh grader at romick and a kindergartner at inlet view i'm a lifelong alaskan attorney and former anchorage school district student i'm testifying on my own behalf tonight in support of anchorage school district policy 400. the land that i am on is the traditional land of the denia athabascan people when my mom gave birth to me at the old providence hospital she and i could look out from her hospital room and see the waters of chicago or cook inlet where the tiona denina used to hunt beluga whales for subsistence in my lifetime i've had the privilege of living in post-colonial west africa post-soviet europe and in various american states since coming home to alaska i have seen alaska natives increasingly celebrate their cultures
217speaking their languages continuing their subsistence activities as they adapt to a rapidly changing world i have also seen white people like me moving past their shame about the atrocities of their ancestors we cannot undo the wrong we cannot unwind the generational trauma but neither can we ignore them the question now is how do we make anchorage a place that acknowledges its path while helping each child regardless of race achieve his or her potential by adopting anti-racist policies we acknowledge this history thank you for your public service thank you for supporting this policy and thank you for your commitment to our children thank you next step in person speaker number 52 annie massey thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you oh gotta gotta have the mask on
218in asd district policy okay thank you my name is annie massey i'm a parent of three children two in asd on behalf of myself and community members i would like to present the board administration and superintendent bishop a petition opposing memorandum 108 and 109 on tonight's action agenda we ask this board focus on education [Music] and not continue to be distracted by critical social justice agendas [Music] i will summarize the petition due to time [Music] we oppose the two proposed policies written in the language of social equity theory and critical race theory the board and administration has not shown in meetings and town halls clarity unity and understanding to the threats these policies impose on students parents and teachers and have ignored repeated attempts requesting they prioritize professional continuing education regarding theories in scholarship the
219history behind these ones and the consequences and regulation [Music] of regulation and compliance these policies their language and any subsequent administrative regulation pose a threat to our youth and teachers and is damaging our youth's mental stability and divide and divisive to our community the language of these policies intend to force a social sexual and political agenda to have no place in public education it distracts from the true intent of education that of academic excellence our children have been out of school for nearly a year they must not now be subject to further non-academic agendas that are not progressing academic learning nor value and respect family values and individual privacy rights we have 447 signatures [Music] i have emailed those and also i have them here if you want them thank you so much two minutes
220i'm sorry um i do not see speaker number 53 is there anybody else that wishes to testify before we go into our board deliberations oh number 54 in person joan wilson is joan still here uh let's see speaker number 43 susan derrera star 6 to unmute [Music] now susan if you can hear us you are welcome to um submit written testimony um [Music] all right uh all right board um it's been a long process um since the introduction of this policy and all the iterations um that the governance committee has worked on we went through a public process these last couple of months to really reach out to the public um [Music] are we going to unpackage this and where are we going to start who wants to go first because i know lots of
221folks have lots of comments questions and maybe even a couple of minutes remember bellamy so i'll start with an amendment to last paragraph and i think i sent it to katie and that will start with we will hold strike [Music] i have it all right we've got printed copies for everybody [Music] my amendment is on the second page of the packet that you're getting and it simply strikes instruction should encourage and replaces it with the board values critical thinking etc and the reason for that edit hold on just one second is there a second to this amendment thank you my apologies the reason is to uh make to make to make the adjustment brought up for at our last discussion um that we do not speak to not to speak to uh instruction but to
222state what the board values and i think that will address and be consistent with the rest of our policies did any other board members have any comments on member bellamy's amendment remember donnelly well i greatly appreciate this amendment i think it's a good idea my only concern is it continues to utilize the word critical and if it wasn't for the actions of the administration over the past four or five months in in talking about their plan to utilize critical race theory and developing pro or uh school district policy which is what the director of the office of equity and compliance advised this the plan was to do i you know if it was just a neutral world i would be fine with saying using the word critical but i think it has become a very
223very dangerous dog whistle is the terminology we hear a lot regarding critical race theory which is totally objectionable and and unconscionable to bring into this school district so i do think this is a good idea but i would move to amend the amendment to delete critical and replace that word with objective thinking so the board would read the board values objective thinking on the history of racism in alaska america and around the world and the current so structural explicit and unconscious bias towards people of different reasons [Music] so i now have an amendment to an amendment so is there a second to remember donnelly's changing of the word from the board values critical thinking to the board values objective thinking [Music] all right i don't see a second on that one so now we're back
224at the main amendment which is the board values point of order because i want to say in the future we need to make our emotions and amendments first and wait for a second and then give the speech thank you um so now we're back at member bellamy's original amendment of uh crossing out instruction should encourage to the board values are there any other comments on this amendment as offered you know i object to point of order i don't think that's proper the prior point of order was properly thinking there is absolutely precedent and normal in a roberts world of order for people to offer debate or comment on a proposal and then following that comment to offer an amendment it is not required to offer an amendment as a condition to speak i believe what
225member holliman was speaking to was you made your amendment and spoke to it before we got a second on it i think that was the procedure that he was taking question with um remember hilda saw your hand raised did you have a comment or question on this no okay um let's take a boat on this first one [Music] first amendment katie if you could please do real call them emily yes remember hildy yes remember holloman yes remember mitchell yes remember donnelly yes remember bellamy yes president michaelis yes amendment number one passes with six days and zero nays were there other board member comments on asd memorandum number 108 as now currently um amended remember donnelly thank you madam president i want to thank everybody who testified this evening there was a lot of very thoughtful
226excellent comments uh in support of this policy um there was also some very legitimate concerns expressed with how this policy is drafted will and how it will be administered and i strongly support the school district's current uh very strong anti-discrimination policies and our constitutional guarantees of each of equal justice under the law and it's just a given that racism of any kind against anyone should not be tolerated and i want to thank the committee for the tremendous progress they made on this from i think it's a vast improvement from the original proposal um and i think there is clear evidence of racial disparities in educational outcomes but russia racial disparities and outcomes doesn't necessarily prove discrimination i have heard some interesting arguments tonight that i had not heard before regarding the linkage between the two
227but in general just to say that because there's disparities there's racism is a faulty system of logic it's in debate we used to call that post hoc ergo prompter hawk in other words because something occurs after something else it's it's the reason for the first thing happening and and why there may be other reasons to identify systemic discrimination and we need to fight those we need to truly identify those and work to get rid of those the fact that it has occurred doesn't mean that it's necessarily because of a racist motive um i'm concerned and i joined the concerns of many people in this community as you've heard even a petition with over 400 signatures that poorly administrated anti-racism policies such as critical race theory can be misguided divisive and counterproductive and if misused these
228policies may destroy what remains of our national unity then it's so important to the survival of this country i mean this is not a normal country this is a country of immigrants and a small number of remaining indigenous population but unlike countries all over europe we don't have that single source of you know thousands of years of the people just being in one spot together we've taken people from all over the world and put together and to push the concept that everything is racist is very divisive and we ought to be focusing also on things that unify us that's why i worked so hard to try to get this board to say we should have our schools play the national anthem at least once a month it's a way of unifying this country and not
229just dividing it so the concerns that i'm hearing are not so much with the policy itself but how it may be executed and unfortunately over the past few months the district's behavior has not lended a lot of reliability or credibility to its ability to fairly execute this policy we had the announcement that we were going to use critical race theory authors to develop district policy uh we had the placement on our taxpayer website of multiple books advocating critical race theory with no counter balancing views allow despite requests uh to have from the public and from myself to say well let's have some counter articles on there the critical of critical race theory that's never been allowed and that doesn't lend a lot of faith in the current administration to to to execute a policy as
230important as this one in a fair and objective manner and i strongly oppose critical race theory and there has been a lot of debate that and testimony that this policy is not related to that so i i intend to offer amendments to make that clear and let's just say that it's not related to critical race theory and it's not going to be used as a backdoor way to impose critical race theory in this school district because i think that is what has happened in other districts and so if that's not the intent here let's just make it clear let's just say it in the policy that that's not our intent so with that in mind i i was going to uh i would like to proceed to offer my policy amendment number one that would
231change the language on critical thinking and i'd have to have to be adjusted to the new amendment off passed by member bellamy to replace critical thinking with provide an unbiased review so i would move amendment number one at this time is there a sentence and do all board members have copies of the paper version okay i'm not seeing a second on this one and [Music] yeah i proceed yes you may thank you um one thing that we all did here was we took an oath of office to uphold the constitution united states constitutes the state of alaska and in some school districts in pursuing uh and policies i think it's clear there's been violations of the equal protection clause in the united states constitution and of uh that we have a very strong one of
232those in alaska and so amendment number two would add the language in pursuing anti-racism the fundamental principles of the united states constitution including equal justice under law and no discrimination based on law shall always be maintained and i would think that nobody should have a problem with that because it's just what the united states constitution and the state of alaska constitution require and i think it would go a long way towards addressing a lot of the concerns we heard from the public to me so i would move amendment number two is there a second all right not seeing one um i'm not president may i proceed i'm going to hit pause for just one minute um remember hildy does have her hand raised okay um [Music] thank you i just want to clarify that this
233is a moderate uh policy i worked carefully with the other members of the governance committee as well as remember bellamy and member um mitchell in making sure any voices that were offered any critiques that were offered were incorporated into the policy um it's not a woke policy it's not advocating critical race theory i'm familiar with that don't endorse it i wrote the line on encouraging critical thinking so i'm certain of what i wrote and what it does not purport to endorse but just to clarify this is a moderate policy it it's not doing anything radical that's all thank you remember bellamy thank you man president well that uh never bellamy then i'll never die sorry i just wanted to uh just state once again as i've stated before i did not rely on critical race
234theory to create this policy nor am i pushing for c crt critical race theory in our district that is an unfortunate connection to these policies that that is it's just unfortunate um because that is not i can't control what people believe i can only state what i know and what i think so my focus remains on improving education for all students and that requires that we hold ourselves accountable and that we look at the structure of how we are delivering education and support each child so that they can reach their academic potential so we have an adult issue involving critical race theory that has nothing to do with it with the policies and uh while i understand people have been given that information it is absolutely you know not it was not a driver of
235this policy this policy actually came from the national school board association new initiative called dyer dismantling institutional racism in education began working on this policy back in october and i think that um this recent attachment to critical race theory um [Music] you know i i don't know how to get people to shift their thinking but what i can tell the board is that this is what this this is this is not a child issue this is an adult issue and it needs to be separated our job as board members we were elected to come together and do make education possible for every kid in this district we are doing it already you've heard wonderful examples just tonight we heard from the yukon the laura yukon school district look at the opportunity that we gave those
236kids they would not have had it if the equity work was not being done giving our kids what they need that's equity work our immersion programs that's what we work so it's not this is not new it's not new work it's not new ideas it's not this other thing out there that's scary and divisive and it's just not that and so to continue the work and hold ourselves accountable so that every kid has the opportunity to succeed and that we are consciously looking at and removing barriers that is what this is about and if there's a connection to me because of of whatever then that is truly unfortunate as well i mean i didn't i have not written a book to date i have not even taught a critical race theory class i have not
237even taken one and so i i just i think that when we are we need to separate these issues you know the constitution is not i mean we're not debating the importance of that we're not debating the importance of our collective and share history we need to focus on the intent of these policies the purpose of the policies and it is not it's to create processes that identify any form of racism and work to counter the impact of it and then to eliminate them if possible i mean we we we can't keep going we've got to try to do things differently in this district there is a disparity that disparity is not going to go away not by itself we know the data i'm not trying to interfere with families i want to support families
238to support their kids and so um i'll hold the rest of my comments uh but if if people are not familiar with the dire initiative i think they really should give it a uh just give it a a read because it does acknowledge institutional uh instructional and systemic racism and how it has impacted not just our history but education and it challenges school board members to do the hard work of creating more opportunities for kids and uh that's that's where these that's where the policies come from i have no idea how it got connected with critical race theory except through a question a comment one comment made in october and then that has that has just grown i'm sorry it it and at the time i didn't even think of it as any anything other
239than giving adults an opportunity to be able to uh if they chose to access a different kind of literature for their own not for curricular purposes and so it is just very disappointing that that that this critical race theory has been connected to the work of the board in this manner and it's it's it's um absolutely uh not the intent of the policy and i don't care about how much i say that at this point people are going to believe what they believe but that is how i feel that is what i was thinking so thank you thank you uh dr bishop madam president i would like to have another fight at the apple in explaining and sharing with the board when and how this was brought up there is not a critical race theory
240class in asd in student curriculum nor adult learning there are textbooks by authors in our country being read in book studies to understand our country to understand our community to understand our children that's separate the term critical race theory came up in one slide one play when we shared the work we are doing with the college board and the s.a.t and act called equal opportunity schools so everybody knows what ap courses are s-a-t-a-c-t and um in their looking at untapped student potential they took information from an idea that was one of the ideas in critical race theory that you pay attention to your student access an opportunity to high quality curriculum and instruction ensure that your schools and your classrooms are desegregated and ensure that school funding supports equitable access and opportunity to building successful
241learning environments those are four things that i believe our school district has uh as its core values that's what we work towards [Music] they are items that are there and i continue to say and i continue to answer email in regard to even a class we don't even have a critical race theory class so i just want to share once again and go on record that [Music] i'm hoping people listen and and know and ask questions and read for themselves because the literature is out there and it's wonderful to be able to read a book and think about something thank you [Music] thank you uh member mitchell i just want to add to this chorus that um in working to create the statement around the death of george floyd in working to develop um anti-racist
242policy i was not even i had never heard that term before so all i can say is you know i know that there are a lot of people who are attributing um really odd motives to the school board but it really is about creating an environment where every student can fulfill their potential and i'll leave it at that for now [Music] seeing no other hands remember donnelly well i think the superintendent's engaging a little of revisionist history here because when i specifically questioned the director of the office of uh equity and compliance regarding the utilization of critical race theory books and you know one thing i wouldn't call these books is textbooks um dr bishop they're the farthest thing from a textbook i've ever read it's pop culture you're rolled up in in a bizarre
243theory where you have to redefine commonly acknowledged and understood terms to even even begin to make any form of logic without redefining major concepts as we know them they're completely garbage as far as logic but [Music] the director of the office of of equity and compliance specifically said that these are the authors that we're going to use as as guidance for developing asd policy and defended those authors as being nationally accepted as as as the gold standard for for examining these issues so that's what really raised this problem was the defense the very aggressive defense by the director of the office of equity and compliance of the utilization of these works in developing policy now the the the specific item that you just listed through those they seem very reasonable but those weren't the ones
244that we were told that that meeting was what we were pursuing there was a defense of the books and the theories in the books in general through the president remember donnelly those came from a slide that we presented in our hundred day review of the equity work that we were doing so we can look those up i took them from board docs as posted uh thank you for your opinion the books actually are textbooks from a professor's class and the books came about by the teachers and asd requesting that they read them thank you remember donnelly did you have uh thank you thank you madam president well if none of this has anything to do with critical race theory here's an opportunity to make it clear um why not just say that the use of
245racist theories including critical race theory is not approved by this policy let me just let's just answer that issue put it to bed once and for all just take it right off the table by just saying that's not what this policy is intended to do so i would move uh amendment number four which adds the tr adds the language the use of racist theories including critical race theory is not approved by this policy [Music] i'll second that like to offer a friendly amendment to remove um [Music] of racist theories including and just say you know the use of critical race theory is not approved i don't think it needs a label i'll i'll accept that it's a friendly amendment president mckayla i did not hear that comment [Music] okay that's fine um everybody can read
246it up on the screen but uh it's you know the sentence the use of critical race theory is not approved by this policy i mean that's the one line to be added at the end of all of it [Music] are there any questions on this amendment candy if you please do a roll call though emily um yes remember mitchell no [Music] never held him nope remember holloman no remember donnelly yes vice president bellamy no president michaelis yes [Music] and that amendment uh fails two years to four days remember did you have any others did you oh okay so then that was the amendment to the amendment well i offered it as a friendly matter though no i accepted it okay yeah okay so now we're just back to the main with the one amendment um
247i remember bellamy um yeah mr donald thank you madam president uh i was ready to drop the remaining ones that we would have passed that one because it would just remove the issue completely um but be that as it may it's not understandable how it had nothing to do with critical race theory we can't just see that but i i read attractive um [Music] of the best parts of this policy as written now is the statement that the board rejects all forms of racism that makes this an incredibly valuable statement and worthy of support i think it would be enhancing that statement to further state that anti-racism is not discriminating in favor of persons of one race to improve the state of persons of another and so i think that would really clarify this board's
248position that we're rejecting all forms of racism and i would offer that language as amendment number three to add after the board rejects all forms of racism the statement anti-racism is not discriminating to favor persons of one race to improve the state of persons of another [Music] of order i'll try to make this more clear roberts is clear that you either address the motion on the floor or offer an amendment and then wait for a second and then if the second speak to it so what we're getting is you're speaking to the amendments you're about to make and it's just it's not proper i would ask that we honor that and uh make our amendments in a way per second and when their second speak to them at length there's a motion on the floor
249uh is there a second and this would be remember donnelly's number three amendment for those that are tracking on paper i don't see a second are there any others numbered only amendments that you would like to make yeah thank you madam president um [Music] i would move to amend the policy as currently amended to add at the end of the policy the statement that the district administration is not authorized to adopt regulations based on this policy if additional guidance is needed the administration shall propose such guidance to the board for adoption as board policy i will second because i have a question um to the administration what would you know a sentence like that at the end of it do um would you still be able to do the other work in the policy without
250ars [Music] madam president uh no you've said it yourself um you want you know there's different ideas about what this is and so administration administrative regulations speaks to what will occur because of this and so if it's not administrative regulation which can change you know that by needs then it's policy which is what's adopted by the board so you're just i mean if you want to direct it create more policy i guess my question in the third paragraph where it says the board will work with the superintendent to identify and redesign any racially inequitable policies and procedures that limit academic opportunities um does that need an ar to do that if it's already explicit in the policy well i would just share madam president that this is the in my five years here this is
251one policy that has had more um public comment than any other if your intention is to just leave this and you know what does it look like is what regulation so that's what people are asking what does this look like in schools and i believe this amendment by mr donnelly says the school board should adopt policy to see what it looks like in schools not administrative regulation and so i believe it would cause [Music] more concerns if you had nothing that directs this if you did there are policies without regulation but my experience tonight demonstrated that there's ambiguity because people don't understand thank you and any uh remember bellamy and just to clarify uh [Music] the work on the policy had at its heart of that work was to make sure that the policy would
252be able to be there would be ars that would define the work and so i could not support the amendment uh remember donnelly well matt apparent president that's the scary part the ars i mean that's that's the uh the other shoe that drops after this is adopted and if the district would adjust alone put countervailing thoughts on the website and not use the website to only push one version of what's of a philosophy and no counter nothing to balance it out i'd have a lot more faith that they could adopt administrative regulations that made sense and were fair but since they're continuing to fail to do that i don't think they have the credibility to be entrusted with administrative regulations and this clearly allows for pursuing this policy by simply having the the the superintendent
253can come back to us and say hey this is what we think we should do and would the board do it as a policy and we could do that all right i'm going to let um dr bishop answer member donnelly and then um our student representative would like to weigh in on the conversation through the charity member donnelly i understand your concerns about the website and i've shared that though the books in it those two plus however many more are on there are for self-understanding about equity and anti-racism there to and understand and learn more and if there's additional topics that understand that it wasn't a place for a debate on something so we are looking at additional resources that are suggestions that share information about what for self-understanding of what equity and anti-racism and
254information about the two topics what they are so it wasn't to have a just listed of things that are debating it was just about what is the literature saying about those two topics [Music] miss emily [Music] i would add so the biggest and like the most feedback that we received when we talked as students about this policy was the fact that it didn't have any action in it and the biggest thing that students asked for and if you read through mr ace read the student advisory board's testimony is submitted in written testimony and the biggest thing that is in there is that we want to see action this policy is great and everything that like the whole movement behind this is great but we need action and we need something to actually change in our
255schools so that it's real so that this is actually affecting us and creating change and so i think that it's essential that the administration is allowed to give us that action that we want we want to see that [Music] thank you uh so we have an amendment on the floor if there are no other comments on this specific amendment we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote [Music] emily [Music] no remember mitchell no remember holloman no remember hildy no remember donnelly yes vice president bellamy no president michaelis no [Music] and the amendment uh fails one year to five days now we're there any other comments questions or amendments yep um can i call for the question uh remember donald has one more amendment and then i think you only have one more yeah thank
256you very much i appreciate it uh madam president um i would move to amend the main motion to add the following language at the beginning of the resolution or of the policy forgive me [Music] the anchorage school board acknowledges that since 1945 the united states of america has made tremendous progress towards racial equality the united states is recognized as one of the worldwide leaders in anti-racist policies americans are statistically one of the least racist populations in the world is there a second [Music] not seeing one so we're back to our main motion uh main memorandum uh with one amendment [Music] do board members have any comments or questions point of information this is on the amendment right now there was no second on the original so it's the original member bellamy the original policy [Music]
257thank you for the clarification remember donnelly thank you uh on the main motion i strongly support this language that says the board rejects all forms of racism i think although i have concerns with the administrative in this administration and how they're going to implement this that alone makes this a valuable valuable statement to our community i greatly appreciate the public testimony tonight i learned a lot from it and i'm really excited about pursuing some of the things that i heard and i just think that that one part of this makes it incredibly valuable and worthy of support although i obviously would have liked my amendments to pass because i think they would have made it much much better i appreciate the board's leeway and letting me propose those amendments and i'm going to vote in
258favor of this are there other board comments or questions uh remember holland um yes i want to just emphasize to all the folks that took time to talk and and all of the testimony and we've gotten a lot of emails that i've been on both sides of them but i do want to emphasize this is not about anything that's going to be taught in the classroom at least not in the short run and this policy doesn't impact what will be taught in the classroom it's not a policy proposing critical race theory it is about what our staff will come to understand about our students about our community and the people around us it's about our institution and our policies and our actions as adults um and so a lot of people's objections i think focused
259on something that this policy won't cause to happen it's not enough to be neutral when it comes to being fair or when it comes to being racist to be clear this will not end racism and personally i'm not sure it ever will be i had the feeling as a young person that we just had to wait and it would go away i'm getting up there and it doesn't appear to be going anywhere as long as it exists we have to confront the fact that we either practice racism or we oppose racism or we're complicit with racism i choose to put asd on the record as saying we are against it and we will spend years going forward finding the ways that we are going to actively keep it from being part of our district so
260i support the motion [Music] number bellamy nope all right i'm going to just oh remember mitchell [Music] i i would just like to thank this board for um following through on the commitment that we made when we issued the statement on june 16th and i look forward to um to work within the district to put this into action and um and i just want to reiterate that looking at our systems in a very um intentional way and finding things that we may not perceive as barriers but recognizing you know gaining awareness that there are barriers and trying to end them is something that benefits everybody and it doesn't bring any students down to bring other students up and i'm just very proud of this board for the work i appreciate all the discussion i appreciate
261the process and um thank you [Music] i'm gonna just take a minute to to speak on this one so call it everybody else you know speak um this last year has been a learning lesson um for me in so many ways you know as a mom as you know a board member as a community member as you know just somebody in our society um and i've had to dig deep like a lot of other people and just try and understand and i've done a lot of reading to do that uh there's a lot of emotion with this uh and i hear all of the sides i'm [Music] not uh i don't take kindly to a lot of the name calling and the labels that came out of some of the um speakers tonight i think
262while they might believe it was well intended um it does not serve a purpose and it just leads me back to um adults being the that are having the issue i think we have an amazing you know student body that is living [Music] examples of what we want you know our community to be i do believe this issue is lying squarely with adults right now um but i think one of the things i like to learn and read so besides books on the outside i look at books on the inside in our own book our policies um a positive attitude toward responsible citizenship uh the concept of self-worth and the ability to exercise self-discipline skills to think logically and critically an awareness of and understanding of our country's history and ideals and its diverse ethnic
263racial and cultural heritage an awareness and understanding of the heritage ideals and contributions of other cultures races and countries an ability to adapt and participate constructively in a changing society an understanding of the relationship of people and his or her environment moral and ethical values based on the rights and responsibilities of individuals and their relationships to each other those are just a few of the goals for our student learning that we have in our board policy 210 so if we're having to do something like this to i mean we got other policies that aren't maybe working and that you know we as adults can work on that and i have high hopes i'll leave with that um i'm going to go ahead and ask katie to do a roll call emily yes remember hildy yes
264remember holloman yeah [Music] remember donnelly yes member mitchell yes vice president bellamy yes president michaelis yes asd memorandum number 108 passes with 68's and zero nays next up [Music] i move to approve memorandum number 109 and pass passport policy instructional equity i have a first and second and i have a list of public testimony and speakers to be heard we will see who's on the line and who is still here and we're again going to keep to our two minutes the first speaker is uh danielle kemp uh are you on the line with us tonight can you hear me yes you can you've got two minutes [Music] all right um thank you to the board once again uh for the opportunity to speak i'm not going to go through the holy spirit of who i
265am all right that's on record for tonight i want to say thank you and congratulations to the board and congratulations to the entire anchorage school district for passing this long overdue policy thank you to the board um you've heard me testified in favor of this policy the instructional equity policy and you've heard others testify in fayette vervet who are way more eloquent than i these policies are long overdue it's past time only thing i have left to say on the matter is let's get it done tonight without delay and without dilution from those who would uh in another era um you know um i would say i'm just going to keep that thought for myself all i want to say is thanks in advance for uh voting for this long overdue policy have a good
266night thank you next step speaker number two rosalind grady rosman are you on the line tonight hello hi we can hear you you have two minutes and the floor is yours [Music] thank you i basically want to say thank you about the anti-racism policy and now let's talk about the instructional policy and my opinion um this is also not teaching critical race theory it is about offering all educational opportunities to all students no matter the income are race it is about improving the design for our education system it is about practices in and out of the classroom and it is about improving resourcing for equity in education plays an important role in determining how we live our lives those without the skills to participate socially and economically generate higher costs for health income support child
267welfare and social security systems so who wouldn't want a fair and inclusive system that makes everything about education available to everyone especially knowing that would make society more equitable when i hear people say this policy is going to be devastating to their children i hear people want their children to be better than the other fairness and inclusion is the focus here fairness meaning making sure that that personal and social circumstances should not be an obstacle to achieving educational potential inclusion meaning ensuring the basic minimum standard of education for all all children should be able to read write and do simple math it is amazing to me that i've heard others opposed to this instructional policy because they are here to educate as well make sure all children really receive the same level of education as
268the child down the street around the corner are the ones that live on the mountain as we know through data achieving the necessary reading and math skills is often really difficult for immigrants and minorities who often lose out on both friends lower performance and low socio-economic background approaches to overcoming these hurdles include strengthening early childhood education care and not streaming immigrants into special education improving language training and strengthening teachers professional development to deal with multiculturalism the instructional policy will allow i'm so sorry two minutes or if i know you were trying though um thank you though um i do not see um all right so speaker number three is not here uh speaker number four didn't show up the first time around oh number four she's here oh wait oh i just didn't get your
269name checked off earlier i'm so sorry taylor mitchell come on up i am so sorry i'm looking back at his name's like i'm so sorry and it's here and the floor is yours all right so taylor mitchell uh here again with the alaska black caucus i am testifying in support of the instructional equity policy equity is not a free handout as some would suggest it's not lowering expectations the policy in question is less about the curriculum in the classroom but more about holding the board to higher and more appropriate standards and ensuring no student is left behind the career academy partnership mentioned for rural areas rural areas earlier today is a perfect positive example of equity in action and most of you were extremely supportive with head dogs of approval some of the reason that
270students within the asd are struggling to be better in reading writing science and math is due to certain inequities of various kinds less students of color get into accelerated programs ap classes and honors classes and we have to look at why equity is helping those who have barriers by giving them tools to overcome them in a way to reach the same opportunity as someone who has little to no barriers it's giving the student in a wheelchair a ramp to be able to roll up and enjoy a football game outside on the bleachers myself as a person who can walk up the steps to the bleachers i don't need extra help i lost out on absolutely nothing by being provided a rape myself and the person in the wheelchair can both see the game that's equity
271none of you would take away a ramp from a disabled person so your real problem isn't equity some people's problem is color or who they perceive will receive the help white students will not be discriminated against or given less opportunity and if they need opportunities for equity it will be provided the policy is not meant to put in place place teaching about white fragility or that white people are all racist or for white people to feel bad about being white so not voting in favor of this policy invalidates the experiences of those experiencing inequity in the asd and i think we need to address these robots for our students i would hope and urge that the board vote in support of this policy thank you thank you next step is speaker number five on the
272telephone poly car paulie are you on the line with us still hi this is polly can you hear me we sure can two minutes and the floor is yours all right thank you again so much for your work to introduce and pass the anti-racism policy tonight i would like to go on the record as enthusiastically supporting the asd instructional equity policy this policy aims at increasing fairness and justice within procedures processes and allocation of resources within the afd district and its systems so students won't thrive until all students thrive um and on the note of equity i wanted to take part of my time here to speak to what i think were some inequitable testimony procedures this evening the school board should want to hear from our community on important policies and tonight we knew
273that two important policies were going to be heard but people were not able to engage until well after an hour into the meeting signed up to testify but then found out much later that they had to testify separately on each policy and we're told only right before providing testimony that testimony had to be cut down from three minutes to two minutes and i think that information could have been provided more clearly at the very start of the meeting so people knew what to expect could prepare and could make plans for feeding kids or tackling other tasks i think this is important to mention in this testimony because we are talking about equity i know you all have been sitting here for several hours this evening and i thank you for your commitment i'm sorry that
274you had to wade through what appeared to be some splitting of hairs over several details and confusing of the definition and intent of the word critical critical thinking skills are critical for education and so is equity i hope the board will consider supporting this policy thank you thank you i do not see speaker number six i will watch for them if they call in speaker number seven on the telephone chelsea foster chelsea are you online with us yes thank you so much for the opportunity to speak ford uh for the record chelsea foster i also want to thank you guys um for passing the anti-racism policy that is essential for growth um within the anchorage school district and was essential as a time saver i will echo the same concerns and sediments given by taylor
275mitchell and rosin welch and i strongly support the instructional equity policy please please also pass us thank you all for your time this evening thank you next up that i see on the line is uh speaker number 10 aiden weitzner aiden are you hello hi there thank you for joining us still you have two minutes and the floor is yours hi yes thank you once again for the opportunity to speak encourage school board and for passing the anti-racism policy my name is aiden weitzner and as mentioned previously i'm a member of the alaska black caucus education working group and also here today to strongly encourage the adoption of the instructional equity policy we must take action to disrupt inequitable practices at all levels interpersonal institutional and structural the hard truth is our schools have consistently
276underserved certain populations these factors are not outside of our control while individuals in the district may be consistently striving to address this institutional effort is needed to build up a shared vision of equity through support of this policy we can begin establishing concrete steps to further support our students and families of color historically marginalized groups need more support in order to establish equity but that does not mean that white people will be at a disadvantage we must acknowledge the institutional discrimination that has been woven into our lives and take action to make change thank you so much for your time thank you uh next up on the telephone speaker number 11 jedediah pollard are you still with us tonight well if you guys hear me there we sure can thank you for hanging on the
277line you have two minutes and the floor is yours all right my name is jedediah pollard i'm 19 years old and a graduate of bartlett high school i'm a current college attendee at uaa i want to show my support for the instructional equity policy i believe is essential for all kids to have an equal opportunity to learn and pursue their dreams i think it's important to vote it for adoption and thank you thank you next up speaker number 12 celeste hodge groudon celeste are you still in line with us tonight i am still here thank you you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you yes i am still here i'm celeste hodge groudon president ceo of alaska black caucus we're a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of black people in
278the areas of health justice economics and in this case education first of all i shared earlier today is on a historical historical day we heard earlier of the guilty verdict and and now we have the anti-racism policy here in in anchorage alaska at our anchorage school district it's it's really an exciting time and i am so thankful thankful thankful for that passing i am now asking for something that we should have already had on the books but it's never too late for the instructional equity policy equity policy and i i talked a little bit earlier about the need for the instructional policy and so i won't go into that again but just know that the alaska black caucus stands in support of the policy i do have to agree with paulie about the reduction of
279the two minutes to two minutes of testimony unfortunately many of us didn't know and so we ran shorter time earlier and it would have been great to know in advance but again i just want to thank you for the work that you are doing i know it's hard work not everybody agrees with eradicating discrimination eradicating racism but i believe a majority of the people do and i again am so proud of the work that you are doing remain steadfast and just remember we cannot grow weary and doing good so thank you again thank you next up on the phone speaker number 13 megan holton megan are you still on the line with us tonight [Music] yes i am can you hear me you sure can thank you for joining us [Music] thanks uh my name
280is megan holton and thanks again for the opportunity to speak and for passing anti-racism policy i just wanted to echo others in that i support this instructional equity policy and i urge the school board to pass it the town halls this last month and then the discussion tonight showed me that the school board members teachers and community members and principals are already doing good work on multiple levels to reduce racism and its impact in our schools but the anti-racism policy can't stand alone we talked a little bit about that with the need for the for action items to make that happen but the instructional equity policy and yearly report will allow the district to measure and track progress and gas and student achievement so then we're able to hopefully see those outcomes that other districts
281across the country have seen when they enact anti-racism policies thanks and good night thank you next up speaker number 14 dr paulo williams dr williams are you still on the line tonight dr williams it is star six to unmute if you can hear us all right we're going to move on um i don't see speaker 15 uh i'm guessing uh student [Music] is that dr williams dr paula williams try one more time and mute can you hear me now yes thank you so much you have two minutes one of them is yours okay great i'm still here i'm dr um paula williams i am a definitely a proud member of alaska black caucus and one of the co-chairs of our education committee and i want to thank you um asb school board so much for
282voting in favor of the anti-racism policy and for we as a community we truly believe that you want what is best for our students but as it relates to the instructional equity policy if asd sincerely intend to partner with our community then you must vote in favor for this instructional equity policy and again i want to thank all of the students for speaking on this evening you definitely are why we testify and i also want to say thank you so much to our president celeste hodge grodden of the alaska black caucus for your steadfast commitment to empowering black brown white and black as well as our families and communities for a better future and i want to say thank you for allowing me this time thank you um is cory still in the room nope
283head nodding um all right i believe our other student madison is not here either let's go to speaker number 20 on the phone marlo sully marlo are you still on the line with us tonight yeah i'm here beautiful two minutes yours [Music] great thanks yeah i just wanted to bring up i think a lot of people really resonated with a lot of the concerns around action items with um the anti-racist policy and i wanted to bring up that the instructional equity policy specifically the annual reports seemed like a great way to ensure that there are some very immediate next steps that are well informed and effective um so yeah thank you guys for passing that anti-racist policy and i look forward to your vote on this instructional activity policy thanks so much for your time
284have a great night thank you uh looks like the next person that i see up in the queue speaker number 24 heidi brooke heidi are you still with us tonight heidi brooke if you can hear us it is star six to unmute thank you hello all i might not be able to make this work because i got baby okay i'm sorry i think [Music] okay uh poor little guy i agree and speaker number 26 antivia hamilton antivia are you on the line with us tonight hello hi thank you for joining us you have two minutes and the floor is yours thank you good evening i'm antavia hamilton member of the alaska black caucus education committee thank you for voting in favor of the anti-racism policy i'm here tonight in support of the instructional equity policy
285i hope the school board will approve this policy that increases successful outcomes for all students thank you thank you uh next up in person judy ellage speaker number 28. all right two minutes in the floor is yours uh as my testimony earlier i further object to the definition of systematic racism that states any educational professional or societal outcome why aren't where minorities are underrepresented is evidence of such racism or of white supremacy and oppression unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which this institution claims to stand furthermore i questioned this board's off-stated assertions that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversation regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies for example as a recent town hall meeting anyone opposing these policies
286referred to as having negative comments tonight i've been called a white supremist i objected the idea that minorities are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites instructional equity yes a term found in critical race theory is advocating viewpoint that minorities should forever be regarded as helpless victims and incapable of success regardless of their skills talents or hard work what are what you are teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism i object to the inappropriate use of words such as equity diversity and inclusiveness if the administration was generally serious about diversity it wouldn't not insist on the indoctrination of students and their families to a single mindset instead the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and openness and freedom of thought he really
287cared about inclusiveness the school would return to the concept of true unity instead of teaching the extraordinary divisive idea that there are only and always two groups in this country victims and oppressors last i reject what strong as cinnamon is possible that schools have begun to teach what to think instead of how to think i object that the school is now fostering an environment where our students teachers and parents are afraid to speak their minds for fear of consequences thank you [Music] next up on the telephone sarah osborne hi can you hear me sure can two minutes and the floor is yours thank you um my name is sarah osborne and again i'm a middle school title one educator with the district a parent of two and a white woman um i want to thank
288you for passing the anti-racism policy and to express my strong support of the proposed instructional equity policy um i'll also note that the time is now nearly 11 pm um and i've been on this call for about five hours since 6 pm in order for me to do that my partner fed and put my children to bed and i'll wake up in a few hours to attend my school staff meeting and being with students um and so given the current model of the board meeting is really only with a tremendous amount of privilege and hardship that i am afforded the opportunity to have my voice heard tonight so in addition to passing this instructional equity policy i strongly encourage the board to examine its current practices with regard to public testimony and input from the
289community in order to make its policies more equitable so that the meetings can be acceptable for all thank you i'm gonna go back up to speaker number 24 uh heidi brooke and guest heidi are you on back on the line thank you can you hear me we sure can you've got two minutes go ahead wonderful i'm just here this is heidi northrop again here to voice my strong support of the instructional equity policy i'm here to support it because i've seen it work in classrooms across alaska like i mentioned last time i testified my graduate studies looked at the data of over 800 students in the juno school district groups that incorporated alaska native ways of knowing with the help of a cultural specialist showed greater academic improvement this is just a simple example of
290how equity work benefits all it's about changing the design or method and providing education that makes learning outcomes available to all students which is what we want i also quickly wanted to emphasize the extent at which equity efforts are needed in asc an obvious example is that some schools in our district less than five percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged while other schools included where i work have 95 of students included economically disadvantaged it's not okay it's not okay that some students have opportunities depended on their zip codes my students would be the same wonderful little people with a more equitable school system and the instructional equity policy to start so thank you so much for passing the anti-racism policy and this is my strong support of the instructional equity policy thank you thank
291you and thank you for calling back in uh next up on the phone speaker number 35 carrie brown carrie are you on the line with us tonight hi this is carrie brown i'm testifying in strong support of this memorandum and once again i can't articulate this any better than the people who have spoken before me i glad that you brought this up please vote for it and i am just going to let you go thank you so much thank you in person speaker number 36 kim paulson [Music] hello again hi there two minutes and the floor is yours thank you um i'm just going to name a couple of amazing people and their accomplishments joshua bath invented the cataract laser probe mae jefferson medical doctor and astronaut was the first black woman in space percy
292julian developed the anti-glaucoma drug i'm not going to say the name of it because i can't james west invented the microphone ernest just pioneered research into cell development and fertilization what we need to do is hold all of our students to a high standard we should not expect less of them um when less is expected you do less i know from personal experience when i was put into foster care i was automatically put into all remedial courses it wasn't until i was a senior in high school they didn't put the seniors in their remedial courses they for english they put us in general education the uh english department the head of the english department was my teacher i made high bees low a's in her class and she was like why were you in those
293classes it was because little was expected of me so they put me in classes um clearly this is going to be past this policy [Music] there's no doubt but our students no matter what their race no matter what their background they need to be told that they can achieve better they can do better and they should be expected of them and they will meet that expectation so thank you i appreciate actually you guys do this every month i appreciate your work thank you thank you um i don't know if andy massey is still here i know she is she okay [Music] um you and when you're ready two minutes sorry for the delay uh my name is annie massey and i spoke earlier on presenting a petition at 400 and sorry 447. people in our
294community signed opposing both of these policies and the reason they're opposing these policies because it doesn't seem that this board understands what theories are [Music] these theories are not based in knowledge and now you've approved policies that are not based in knowledge [Music] they haven't gone undergone strict scrutiny it's a theory it's not knowledge so now we have the instructional equity policy that's based in something called social equity theory [Music] it's an idea and when ideas come up in scott in in academia you guys are educators when these ideas and theories come up in academia it requires strict scrutiny the scientific method reason logic in order to gain knowledge that is why i asked you all to research these things and that's all i have to say [Music] thank you i've got two more speakers
295but it is five minutes to 11 and by board policy uh we need a motion to extend uh if we are complaining till what time from the coming second is there anybody opposed all right it is unanimously approved to go until midnight only if we need to go that way but absolutely no later um [Music] i don't see a two more speakers on the phone uh first one speaker number 39 elise galvin elise are you still with us tonight i see it's unmuted but i don't hear her yet [Music] all right i see you i see you trying um so let's switch from elise galvin to pat gelling and see if maybe he can connect galvan if you can hear us star six time mute can you hear me now yes we sure can uh
296two minutes in the floor thanks and i'll turn it over to elise uh she's her struggling with her phone it seems not to be working um thank you i'll be really quick um i just want to thank you for your actions tonight and just as you debate um this motion similar to what i heard on the earlier resolution i want to encourage you to focus on the actual language of the policy and not chase the shadows of those who want to imagine different things in the policy that don't exist and i appreciate the work that you do i'm sorry it has to be so late but um i think you're doing very good things that will be beneficial for this generation and those to come so thank you thank you and then elise are you
297going to be on the same [Music] i think i i switched over to can you hear me now we sure can we're going to reset the timer in two minutes and the floor is yours okay thank you so much madam chair i appreciate it um i want to encourage you to pass this instructional equity policy as well again reflecting back on the notes that you wrote in june of 2020 that this was your intention to follow through with this step it's a step in the right direction i want to complement all of you for the many pieces of this and as we heard gosh i think it was hours ago from conrad of kca the career academy the work that you've done is so innovative and it has you've got bits and pieces that has
298happened for many students and this just ties in a more systemic approach that will allow for more of these partnerships with um every single child in mind as the decisions are made primarily by the administration um this will kind of cement in that way of thinking as you give the direction to the administration and i so much appreciate that i also wanted to comment that almost in a foreshadowing conrad quote saying nothing changes if nothing changes is true i just want to comment that that just is really something that we need to all keep in mind as we're looking to have opportunities for every single child in a way that makes sure um that we've done our very best and i think by the end of tonight you're going to feel that you've gotten one
299step closer to doing your very best and i want to thank the leadership there particularly margot bellamy for staying consistent and true to what she knows will bring the change that we've been looking for for quite some time with regard to acknowledging uh what's going on and looking for now ways to ensure that we're all listening and learning thank you appreciate it is there anybody in the building that um i wanted to give testimony to or an opportunity and there's one person on the list of phone calls that does not have a name attached to it uh was that person online wishing to give public testimony and if you are calling in and wanting to give public testimony star six to unmute all right i wanted to just give the opportunity um thank you so
300much for everybody's patience we have asd memorandum 109 on the floor uh board member hildy thank you president michaelis i'll be brief um i support this memorandum policy um i think this is one that's poised to actually make a dramatic difference in student outcomes um certainly the board could have been doing this work a lot all along and the administration has supported improving instructional equity and access and opportunity for students so that you know who's able to access ap courses who's able to be considered for a gifted education that those numbers are reflective of our student body and not predictive based on other factors um that our children who are in foster care aren't lumped into remedial courses that's something that's going to come out through this work that all children are going to have
301the opportunity but that's also a resource allocation and that's where the real challenge is and i'm not convinced it's going to i think perhaps it's considered to be easier said than done um but the purpose of inserting that annual report um is one to hold the board accountable at each of our meetings or the board's future meetings um that we're reporting and hearing on how students are learning and but also to present to our community the end of the year a full picture of where that is in hopes of changing how we talk about education in anchorage that we really do start to mean all means all and really seeing the disparities that happen in our district whether in our charter school programs or advanced courseworks so that's all thanks [Music] other board members with
302comments or questions member holloman um yes for a lot of people that wrote in with concerns i do want to emphasize also this is not about equity of outcomes looking at the outcomes points to where you need to look on your inputs but but that's not a goal equity i don't think equity of outcomes will ever happen and it's not the goal of any of this we do need to meet all of our students where they are at we do that for a lot of students we don't do it for some others the purpose of this policy to me is to make sure that that's our stated purpose that that's one of our goals is to provide the kind of instruction that students need to advance um regardless of where how they show up and
303where they're coming from so i will be voting in support thank you other board members with comments or questions remember mitchell so i was actually going to address what andy addressed um we got a lot of letters that talked about that this is um equity means equality of outcomes and equity absolutely does not mean that i mean i think we all understand that you know for those of us who have more than one child we don't treat them equally we treat them equitably if i have a child with special needs which i have a nephew who has special needs um i might put together a special needs trust for that child to to take care of them for the rest of their life because they aren't able to do that themselves whereas if i have
304a normally developing child i wouldn't do that so equity absolutely does not mean equality it's not the same thing and i think the policy very very clearly states that i i absolutely echo what member uh hildy said about that this has the possibility to really be a game changer and i appreciate the superintendent and the district's focus on equity i remember going to a conference with dr bishop back in the days when we went to conferences and i said which strand are you attending she said i'm doing equity you know that that has been her focus since i have joined this board and i really look forward to seeing the changes that this will bring and again i appreciate the board's work on all of this um so i just would i hope the people
305are not the the bottom line is raising every child to their potential and we all have different potentials in different areas we will never achieve equality and it's not the goal other board members comments remember donnelly you know i i really appreciate the remarks of the the two members that just spoke um unfortunately i don't think that's what the people pushing this this or many of the people are anticipating to come from an equity policy i mean we've heard repeatedly that proof of racism is what the outcomes are because a particular race is not doing as well as another that that is proof of systemic racism and we've heard that over and over again and if that's the basis then this is all about outcomes it is not just equal or equity and opportunity and
306that's really very very unfortunate um i think every american should be guaranteed the same rights the identical opportunity for an excellent education to work and live i fully recognize some people need more help than others but the united states constitution mandates equality equality goes with freedom equity doesn't equity means equal trust equality means equal treatment unbiased competition and impartial judged outcomes equity when it's misapplied can mean equal outcomes achieved if necessary by unequal treatment bias competition and preferential judging the elements those elements of such policies are a fundamental attack on the principles that made this country great the people should be treated equally and judged as individuals and not members of groups i have a quote from a former chairman of general motors and i'm not really a fan of you know big corporate executives
307but this made sense to me the government can't measure equality of opportunity but it can measure equality of results if the results are not equal then they assume unequal opportunity [Music] ingenuity inventiveness entrepreneurial skill determination and most important effort are extremely difficult to measure but those are usually the key factors in creating the results until the government figures out how to measure those factors equity will never be properly measured equity is a mandate to improperly discriminate against some two students to try to achieve equal outcomes for others equality means equal treatment unbiased competition and impartial judged outcomes or you know we talk about look at what's happening in other states oregon and washington are eliminating examinations in public schools why are they doing it they're doing in the name of equity you know no country
308that penalizes hard work and intelligence is going to last very long folks and if we dumb down our schools to achieve equity that's that's the worst thing we can possibly do and i know people don't want to acknowledge that but these these factors could also lead to the end of charter and alternative schools and that's exactly what happened in washington dc and other districts around the nation in the name of equity they eliminated charter schools and alternative schools now most other districts don't have immersion but i heard a lot about how immersion was good for equity but they are very similar to charter schools and they're going to have to go in the name of equity also if you carry it to his logical conclusion and and and i think anchorage school districts options of
309charter and alternative and immersion schools are one of the greatest things we have anywhere it's a super thing to be proud of in this district and i i think it's overwhelmingly supported by the public but the logical result of a strict imposed equity policy is the potential elimination of those wonderful alternatives for our students and our parents uh i don't think i don't know if our nation can survive another generation of poorly educated leadership i mean our schools are failing our district's failing i mean look at the numbers compared to when i went to school here uh it's just dramatic we had you know west high diamond high east they were well known nationally for their academic prowess it's just things have gone wrong over the last 15 years equity is not the solution hard
310work equality equal opportunity equal justice under the law not social justice that discriminates against victims of crime not social justice that causes people to be let off and commit crimes and there's no accountability encouraging further criminal activity or malfeasance we need to get back to the basics that made this a great school district and and and restore that and do that job for our kids in in just saying we're gonna make everything fine by having an equity policy is not going to do that you know laws have no meaning if they are not applied equally when they're not applied equally they're not even laws they are just authoritative dictates to benefit some over others and become purely tools of persecution and equity sets us up for that kind of situation folks you know the communist
311chinese tried this back in the nineteen sixties with a great cultural resolution and it was a complete disaster that put that country back for decades that was all about equity oh that's what that was all the foundation of that was equity they know better than this they've learned their lesson in china now they they they reward individual effort and and they promote you know self-achievement and and they learned a lesson from the great cultural revolution we ought to be observing that and learn a lesson too thank you um let's go ahead and take an opportunity to weigh in real quick um much like the previous policy this one i think is also very much centered around adult behaviors uh things that adults can do one member already said it's a drop in the bucket in
312terms of what it can actually do because the district's resources are limited if we could have been doing some of the things that you know we know need to be done and that we have incorporated into our goals and guard rails it would already have been done if you know we could have afforded it you know there are a lot of changes that we're gonna have to make and i think that's probably where you remember donnelly's concern comes from is if you can't fund how to get there then you just have to close it and that's a problem so there's still a lot of work to be done um i think one of my biggest challenges with both of these policies is there are things that we can do as a district as a board
313as an administration but it takes more than us to do it it takes our community and our society this is not something we're going to change just because we passed two policies it takes more than us and you know i i support their intents and stuff like that and you know with questions but still support them um it is we can't do this alone and so one of the things that everybody needs to be mindful of is that we are working with our community we are working with our partners we are working with our parents because that's the only way any of this is going to you know be functional and succeed in the ways that you know we all you know want and talk about it to do that's my two cents for what
314it's worth remember hildy thanks i just wanted to clarify um you know throughout this process the only intent has been to expand opportunities for children uh to increase their ability to go to a choice school parent parent involvement and what their children get to learn and whatever program we have in our district that children have that opportunity to do that so i i don't have anything that i'm afraid about hearing that happen that's only good for kids to have that opportunity that what they choose to do with that opportunity will be up to them but certainly want to make sure doors are open for children remember bellamy just like to follow up with member hildy this policy is about access and opportunity it's about eliminating identifying and eliminating barriers that have prevented the full participation
315of some of our students that's what it's about we define what it is at the beginning of the policy and i know as with anything else we bring our own personal lens and our own personal um experience to anything that we do but the concept of equity goes beyond equality it is not we can't treat our kids the same same size does not fit all we have high expectations for all of our kids we are not going to close charter schools or any other school we are going to have access to them and within the within our ability to do that this is not going to be an overnight fix it will take time i agree with president michaelis we've got to engage with our partners in ways that will help us to realize help
316our families and kids realize their greatest potential so i i believe we have a we have to hold ourselves accountable and we have to change we have to change what the data is telling us there are great disparities i don't know what they do in china i've never lived there i have i'm not well read on china i know kids and i know education and i will be supporting this policy member holloman i do want to comment back on what member donnelly said i'll agree on on any policy we create there are people that can take it in a bad direction equality for me when i was in high school would mean sitting in fairly low-level math and english classes with a bunch of people who aspired to work on the factory floor and r.j
317reynolds or pull tobacco on their parents floor i grew up out in the woods and and that's what 80 of the student body at my school was fired to but they did ship about 30 of us off every day into pound to take ap classes and honors classes and i made a's and those i made c's and the others so equality i might be pulling tobacco today except that industry kind of went away also but um equity for me was placing me in a spot where i was challenged i was interested i felt like i had something to actually step up to so i see all of our different programs and it's whether or not you're talking about the ib program that we heard about tonight or save mclaughlin is about equity it's about delivering
318education the kids aren't going to get it any other way the programs we have within the residential hospitals the programs the remedial programs we have and the sped programs and in all honesty it's the case where the federal government had to step in and make equity the law because we didn't have sped when i was a kid and you and i went to high school about the same time i don't know how many sped kids there were in diamond but our averages were higher because those kids didn't get to go to school if they went to school they were in a room off by themselves somewhere they didn't mess up our other classrooms so we've been working on this for decades and we've got some decades to go it's about providing what makes people succeed
319rather than just making everybody take what most people need and that unfortunately it's what we still do in education today to a large degree we put 30 kids in the classroom they're kind of close together we ring the bell and we move them around making it more equitable will make it look less like that and it will take effort and unfortunately it takes money but the end result is more and more kids that move as far as they possibly can and they're not going to wind up in the same spot but again if you look year after year and you can differentiate the outcomes on the basis of race or nationality or other things there are two explanations there's something holding those kids back or they organically are incapable of doing as well as some
320of the other kids you can pick which one you believe i believe when we do our jobs right those differences will be less and less identifiable and it's not just school unfortunately everybody has to do their job right the world has to be a little bit more equitable so i believe if we read the policy we're passing we're not talking about all those things [Music] we we have a three paragraph statement that's pretty clear it doesn't go into to a lot of those things a lot of people are frightened about and i think they've been misled and in what we're suggesting is our policy tonight any other final comments on asd memorandum number one zero nine [Music] remember donnelly i just move about number two to clarify that the use of critical race theory is
321not approved by this policy is there a second [Music] not seeing one we still have the main motion on the floor any other comments or questions by board members k.d if you would please do a roll call vote [Music] remember hildy yes remember holloman yes remember mitchell yes remember donnelly no vice president bellamy yes president michaelis yes [Music] asd memorandum number 109 passes with five yays and one nay [Music] yes i move to approve asd memorandum number one two zero statement in response to anti-asian american pacific islander violence and acts of hate [Music] uh board comments and questions uh can i speak to this yeah i'll let member bellamy speak to it first and then member hildy so we have in our district we have 17 of our students and 10 of our staff identify
322as asian american pacific islanders and uh the intent of this very brief uh uh response statement is to basically let them know let our families know that we are here for them and that we understand um that the events in the world while not uh that have happened um we have not they have not gone unnoticed and affirmed the fact that we will continue to provide safe environments for all of our kids so this is a special [Music] effort and the reason um it is late is because of our meeting schedule uh had we um i think our last meeting was we it needed to go through our communications committee and that committee met last week so um that is in keeping with our process that's why it's late and that is why i asked
323to put it on the on tonight thank you member hildy thank you certainly i uh appreciate the sentiment of it but um it i don't think is appropriate on the agenda tonight and i don't want to support a process i don't agree with um so uh i won't be i haven't read it i got the policy right before the board meeting started or not policy but the statement so i might agree with it i just don't know i don't want to vote for something i haven't thoughtfully considered nor has the public had an opportunity to reflect on it or weigh in on it so i don't think it's appropriate to be an action item this evening [Music] yeah i totally agree with member hildy about that i mean this hasn't even been read i haven't
324had time to even read this because we've been listening to public testimony all night and i wanted to focus on public testimony and not be reading this it's two pages long single spaced and i'm a fast reader but i haven't got through it in the last 60 seconds i mean this is completely inappropriate to bring this up in this manner in fact i don't really even think this is consistent with our rules i was i was almost positive that our rules stated there had to be an emergency situation to fail to give notice and provide this information by at least a prior friday and i would ask for a ruling of the chair on that because i think that is the rule there has to be an emergency some existential situation to not follow the
325rule of providing notice in on on the prior friday [Music] you have to give me a minute to read the policy real quick [Music] are there any other board members that wish to speak on it while i'm doing this i'm sorry i remember holloman i'm gonna say this is the case we're not talking about policy we're not talking about action of the school district we're taking a position on a on a current topic that is actually a matter of safety for for individuals um so i i think there are circumstances that call for a more rapid response than normal um i think it's reasonable to say that our students that are impacted by this kind of violence need to hear from us i would want them to hear from us it's not changing [Music] any
326curriculum it's not changing any policy it's not changing the action of any staff member so to that degree i don't know that it warrants the same kind of review as as a an appropriation or uh reorganization or or a change in rules we're just emphasizing something that i think we all agree on to begin with [Music] madam chair yes member bellamy if i'm not mistaken we use the same process with the george floyd situation the exact same process because of the timing it came right from committee to an action item the committee meetings uh i think there were three board members including me who attended the it was on the agenda it has been available to the the public and the board um so there was ample time to have input um however i'll go
327on your ruling madam president okay um and actually this wasn't put on the public agenda on friday so nobody has had a chance to read it until tonight in terms of it was on the communications communication so item number 44 of our board bylaw 9271 code of conduct no item will be placed on the regular board meeting agenda less than nine days prior to a regular board meeting unless delay in acting or discussing the added item could seriously affect the operation of the asd no item should ever be placed on the board meeting agenda less than 72 hours in advance of the meeting unless an emergency or urgent public necessity exists that is exempt exempted under the alaska oma [Music] so that's where that's at um remember mitchell so i i'm having a hard time
328hearing you down here but you said it has to be on the agenda 72 hours ahead of time uh it's a no item should ever be placed on the board meeting agenda less than 72 hours in advance of the meeting unless an emergency or urgent public necessity exists that it is exempted under the alaska oma okay well it i i see it as being urgent i agree with what member holloman said and i also just want to point out that the draft was provided last wednesday for inclusion on the agenda yeah um all right so i think at this time um we did vote at the beginning of the meeting as a body to put it on the agenda and and we let it pass so i'm gonna go ahead and call for a vote
329at this time [Music] remember mitchell oh you're oh sorry you're not even gonna let us read it assumed you already had your i'm working on it you know remember hilda point of preference old privilege ought to be able to read the resolution before we vote on it it's not a resolution member hilda are you taking a vote or am i talking i saw your hand oh okay my point yeah i have not read the statement and for the george floyd statement we didn't uh it went on with notice the public and i in fact had opportunity not every board member is required to attend every committee meeting um so not going to a committee meeting is not unexpected it would be appropriate for it to be on at the next board meeting as an action
330item that's fine that provides public notice that meets all the requirements for people to have input um but this one does not and i'm not inclined to just race through something with one minute of reading and then vote on it even i i would expect i would agree with it but i don't think that's a good practice [Music] remember donnelly well i've had the opportunity to read it now and i you know i'm not opposed to the content of this resolution i think it's completely inappropriate but he brought less than 72 hours this is not some sort of operational emergency and that's clearly what the policy anticipates uh but you know it's the rule of the majority around here um you know if we really wanted to do something we would have passed a ban
331on critical race theory because that's one of the most damaging things to asian americans that's happening in america today this critical race theory getting kicking them out of colleges that they deserve to be in because they're being discriminated against because of their race [Music] seeing no other comments katie if you could please do a roll call vote [Music] remember mitchell yes remember holding [Music] no remember holloman yes remember donnelly i choose not to vote at this time i think you have to have a reason to abstain i believe this is a violation of the policy can i choose not to vote in violation of the policy thanks to vote i'm good on those lists please remember bellamy yes [Music] i'm just reading the obligations of members um under 9 200 not abstaining for compelling reasons
332um so i don't want to violate that process either where public testimony to be offered here for all action items so now i've created another conundrum so pause the vote please is there anybody wishing to offer public testimony on [Music] this item [Music] i don't i might have to hit the red i don't know if there's a button there that makes it turn red for thank you all right two minutes please annie massey i recall back when schools were closed and we wanted to open schools that we had to call a special session because there was an emergency because we couldn't add something to the agenda okay because there wasn't enough time and so now you all have added something to the agenda correct me if i'm wrong [Music] you're the leaders if those are
333the rules why are we not following them that's all i have to say thanks for your time thank you any other members wish to speak on this memorandum [Music] so what is the will of the board we can take a vote or we can remove it and have it be on an action item table it until the following meeting you know according to you know our go to conduct [Music] you know it could be argued that it falls outside of it [Music] as as the uh maker of the [Music] motion i guess [Music] this is not policy [Music] it's a simple statement of support for our asian and pacific islander students and staff [Music] um but if the if the will of the body is to to um [Music] delay it and bring it back
334that's fine i mean i i'm i just think it's important that we send this message to the families so whether it's today or tomorrow or next week or two weeks uh i i'm fine so i will leave it up to you madam president member hilda you have your hand raised um i mean i i agree it's important and we want to make sure students feel cared for about volume process and procedure is also important um and and adhering to the same process we used um in george floyd's murder it was it was compliant with our board policy and notice requirements so i would move to table this to the next board meeting as an action item is there a second second i have a first and a second to table this until the may third
335meeting any questions from board members on this action is there anybody opposed to this action seeing none opposed it passes by unanimous vote it is tabled until the may 3rd meeting that is the last of our action items there is one more opportunity for public testimony and there's one item considered not a non-action [Music] that will come up for action next time did any board members wish to talk about that at all a modification to an attendance policy modification modification to the attendance policy i think it's running around on a piece of paper or is emailed to account for board member participation if they are remote during a pandemic actually the specific languages during any declared federal state or local emergency yes to allow board participation remotely counts as their physical experience be counted towards
336that account against your in-person attendance during a state federal or local emergency so you would add something to existing policy yes so then that should go to governance correct this is what we added um as a non-action item under non-action today to go to action next time it's been through governance it never made it because of the transition between the boards um okay it did not get fully discussed and out of governance um more due to time and so at the next meeting i would suggest that the board make their decision and determination at that point on whether they want to either kick it to governance or be able to read this one sentence and decide whether to add it to existing policy it's not a big overhaul or change um but that will be
337up to the next board to decide oh i see you alicia go ahead remember he'll leave me thank you i i disagree that it didn't have time and governance i don't have a policy proposed before me in governance um so if somebody had something they wanted that's fine um but that didn't come before governance i don't have a copy of anything being discussed so i i don't really care for having a non-action item without having the document being public either all right um do we noted i we are at the school board and administration comments section it is 11 40. we are all mindful of time i'm going to apologize as board president for any miscommunications or you know concerns about public testimony tonight had no idea until it got uh later into the day
338that it was going to expand the way that it did appreciative that our community uh you know participated in the process in the way that they did uh learned earlier tonight that you know from the attorney that no we couldn't combine things the way we were hoping to um yet to maybe try and do it in a more efficient manner so i will also pass this note to the next board to consider how public testimony is done um so that it does not you know cause you know inconveniences or anything like that to our public because we do want them to be able to uh be always a part of our process but i will take ownership of that one as president i want to just take a minute and congratulate one of our fellow
339board members board member hildy who i know is tired and exhausted she was nominated and got you know the award for the 40 under 40 with the alaska journal of commerce and you don't get that you know by being nothing so thank you and congratulations and so um our next meeting is may 3rd um i'm going to ask the question because i any last comment