001he made sure that it was not going to disappear all right it is 302. we are going to go ahead and kick off this uh tuesday april 6 2021 work session to order i've got a couple board members still walking in but in the boardroom in person i've got board member holloman board member marsette superintendent bishop myself elisa mckayla's board member uh mitchell board member donnelly board member bellamy and on zoom we have board member hildy and we have administration both on zoom all right it is 302. we are going to go [Music] ahead [Music] we have a work session agenda we are ready to go um all board members are in attendance uh the main purpose of today's work session was to get board members and administration to come back after we have had
002the opportunity to go out and do um community council presentations community group presentations the two town halls that were well attended and that we did and any other conversations that board members have gone out and then we've all had our email boxes uh with lots of you know comments and stuff like that and we will hear public testimony more tonight as well it is on our non-agenda items this evening with uh potential action items on the 20th so for this purpose of the work session it is a chance for board members to come back together and say what have we learned from the community is there anything we want to change do we want to leave it the way it is what do we want to do what did we hear and that's how i'm
003going to kick it off and so if there are any board members i know everybody's getting seated and kind of logged in and caught up and stuff like that but are there any board members that have any thoughts from you know the last month of meetings board member bellamy [Music] i'll kick it off and um i met with several groups our ell family groups among pacific islander samoan [Music] the native advisory committee the alaska literacy project peer navigators and i was joined by several other board members with the naacp so the community comments were amazing very insightful uh they had lots of questions but they also had lots of input and what i've tried to do was kind of combine them all together so it's kind of a list but the things that came up
004words similar to the things that we all heard in the um town halls family engagement how does that play into the policies how how to best support poor families how to best support families whose child want to attend a charter or choice school um there was lots of questions and opportunities to engage around uh the definition of equity and the definition of racism as it's used in the policy um there were uh there was input on cultural cultural responsiveness cultural competence uh advice or input around uh pu discipline making it less punitive and more of a growth for some behaviors not all let's see lack of understanding between groups of people on what equity is and what it's not um they commended the board on holding everyone accountable uh let's see uh questions around how
005the the alaska native the native american alaska native black american uh and japanese filipino hmong how would the policy encourage or incorporate those uh um just discussions not necessarily curriculum but discussion and then i'll give a few more and then i'll stop because uh i think uh dina and mitchell and member marcette went to the naacp event with me okay so i will why don't i stop there and then i'll just come back to when if others if there's time after others have had a chance to speak all right so being back in the boardroom i am looking for actual physical hands not blue hands and i miss alicia i do see you on the screen so just if you got one just hands up for me and i'll watch for you uh and so
006did you uh did you want to share some comments right now on the floor to you go ahead remember uh hildy [Music] thanks um i was just you will start with that i think that's probably a smart way to do it thank you margo um some of the i just talked to community councils and went to one of the forums the first forum we had and then fielded a lot of phone calls kind of tied in with the election it came up a lot with emails and phone calls but the big one was i think how do these policies you know help us improve our academics focusing on academics um which i think is important for us to address why is one that remember bellamy has addressed before is why is this needed if we
007have an anti-discrimination policy um some a lot of concern on whether this will create racism against white people and then some concern on like just talking about race lead to more racism and and if that's what we're always talking about is that perpetuated even more um so i i'm just sharing what we had i hope we get it then we'll like kind of talk about some of these things is that does that sound right yes [Music] other board members uh member marcette [Music] okay it's been a while so um i actually did meet cap one of the town halls and um the naacp with uh margot and dina mitchell um a lot of questions around curriculum uh what is that going to look like concerns i think on both sides about what that might look
008like i i do have a recommendation tonight but i'll wait till everybody's reported on their committee meetings um with me kat they felt like the biggest barrier and and was um staff um just the moving forward and change is hard and but they they did feel that um sometimes staff can be the biggest barrier um let me see what else um you know i've received a lot of emails also and um again big concern with the curriculum uh which i think we should talk more about and um you know one of the things uh that we kind of explained is that you know we set the policy but anything to do with curriculum or anything like that would really be up to uh dr bishop and her staff into how we would incorporate this i
009mean i i envision what we might do but that's not my place to say what we will do um they were very appreciative of us being there i think margot covered most of it again with me cac it was the suspension uh policy came up again and uh about just maybe doing more kind of restorative or more ways less punitive more ways to keep our kids in school and that sort of thing so um that's probably it any other board members have thoughts member mitchell so margot covered member bellamy covered a lot of it but i was at one of the town halls i was at the naacp i was at the peer leader uh program and um you know a lot of what we heard was that well there a lot of the fears
010that member hildy talked about there seems to be a concern that um somehow if we address equity for students who aren't receiving the supports that they really need that somehow that's taking away from other students so i think that's something that we definitely need to quell those fears um and you know in an ideal world we would have an iep for every single district student in our district we would look at every student and and to a large extent the teachers do that um every individual student where they're at what they need what they need for their growth but um the piece that really i think people are concerned about you know there are the access issues with the choice programs and the optional programs and um the ap classes and the tracked things the
011um ignite all those types of things but i the piece that i heard a lot was um from from families where they are in student groups that aren't as successful was um around we need more support as a family we need to know um one woman we were talking about the kindergarten readiness program and how much happens in those first three years and she said well where can i learn about these things i have a young child where can i learn about what i can do to help my child be successful once they start their school journey so those things are not um things that people are taught and they're not things that people are often exposed to so i think it really it to the extent that we can do a lot of family
012outreach i mean obviously this falls into the realm of um once these policies are passed how do we how do we implement these things to achieve um equity um but i heard a lot of hunger for you know i i need to know as a parent how can i be more supportive how can i help my students be more successful i want my child to have the best chances um you know one woman talked about she's an immigrant and didn't have much schooling and expressed you know i don't i don't know how things work in the u.s i look at my white friends and what their children do when they get home and the supports they have and i can't offer that kind of support to my students so how do i do that um
013so that is something that i hope that um you know i think that's beyond just asd i hope that as a community we can all kind of lean in and help with that another concern that um member hilda you may have mentioned i'm not sure um is people seem to be concerned that somehow if we're if somehow the equity policy means that we're looking at equity of outcome and therefore it's going to be inequitable and i'm not exactly sure what the logic is there but again that's another concern that i think we need to address and dispel um you know any student my children every single student in the district we can offer them opportunities as a district we can offer them opportunities as parents we can offer them opportunities as teachers as support but
014then at the end of the day it's up to that student to step up so are we going to have ideal outcomes for every student even if we can put the ideal iep in place for every student probably not um and we're never going to get equal outcomes across students because that's not the way people are so i'm not exactly sure what that concern is but i think it's something that we need to figure out and address either members holloman or remember donnelly did either one of you guys just want to share some initial i'm just feedback from the community okay um [Music] did you have some thoughts nervously well i guess my feedback would center around the potential utilization of critical race theory [Music] while these particular policies do not directly say those words
015one of them does use uh what i would call something way beyond a dog whistle his critical thinking the terminology critical thinking that's more like a fire engine the siren than a dog whistle and to raise concerns by the public and the fact that we have placed these critical race theory books on our website with no counter-balancing thought or philosophy whatsoever or criticism or critical analysis i think has duly raised public concern that that is the ultimate intent of of these policies i i'm so i i share that concern with many many members of the public that have raised it and i do think that it's uh would be appropriate that if that is not the intent of these policies that this board specifically state that in these policies that it is not authorizing critical
016race theory to be utilized in our district all right so one of the things i wanted to do is to reach out to all the members start to get some feedback um i've heard a lot of the the same things that all of you have in your you know different various areas attending both the town halls um and some community council meetings and things like that what we need to do is real quick is the board talk about process now how do we want to go about either offering potential amendments for the board to talk about we can't vote in a work session uh we don't vote to change things as non-action items so that leaves you know voting on potential changes up to april 20th is you know how it we've historically done it
017so how do we have the conversations about you know if somebody wants to bring up an idea to change uh do we want to straw pull it you know to try and get any idea of where you know folks are at um what how do we want to do this as a board or do we want to wait for all amendments to come on april 20th remember bellamy i have two comments i would like to respond to the mr donnelly's concern he is the board member that brought up the concern that's an adult concern it has nothing to do with the policies dr stock explained that to him at the town hall yet he continues to bring it up as a as an issue which is his right to do so but that has connected
018the policies to some pretty awful thinking that is not focused on kids neither is it not neither is it even healthy thinking and so i would like to com for mr donnelly to to tell us what he needs so that he can stop perpetuating that kind of thinking because that is not the ch the children's that is not our students problem that isn't a dope issue it has nothing to do with the policies did you have thoughts on process on oh that's the other thing sorry uh i think i would like to hear uh i'd like to see where people are and then i'd like to also see um hear what amendments people are thinking okay and i know you had your hand up member marcet so i i'm not going to be there on
019the 20th but hopefully someone will take this up but in our anti-racist policy the last sentence says instruction should encourage critical thinking on the history of racism in alaska america around the world in the current structural explicit and unconscious bias towards people of different races for one thing for a board it's not up to us to say what instruction would include so that's kind of um a board policy versus uh management um my personal thought is um i mean i i'd like to see i think that sentence right there um would alleviate a lot of concern critical thinking is not the same as uh critical um the crt but it does uh cause some concern but the main reason is that it really doesn't follow the guidelines for policy and i have some something to
020back that up if anyone would like to see that did anybody have any initial thoughts on sorry i didn't did you were are you making a recommendation for that change that we eliminate that line that whole the whole last sentence yeah [Music] so what are board members thoughts on and and we're not voting or anything like that just what are the initial thoughts on you know the um uh let you speak to it uh member marsett and then uh remember hildy i see your hands and really i just wanted to kind of share with this process um i had a long talk with uh sonia hunt um because i've been struggling with this um this is a very um sensitive topic for many people and we've been hearing from whoops both sides and you know
021i i kind of thought about this and i thought wouldn't it be great if we could call this the golden rule policy or the anti-bias policy that is what we want to accomplish and this is just something i wrote we all want children to grow up in a world free from bias and discrimination to reach for their dreams and feel that whatever they want to accomplish in life is possible we want them to feel loved and included and never to experience a pain of rejection or exclusion but the reality is that we do live in a world which racism and other forms of bias continue to affect us discrimination hurts and leaves scars that can last a lifetime affecting goals ambitions life choices and feelings of self-worth that's one of the reasons we're writing this
022policy is for our kids and those are the very reasons right there and with 60 of our student population being non-white there's never been a better opportunity for us to learn to live respectfully together and benefit from one another's wisdom and experiences i have been receiving many emails all the time asking where i stand on these policies race discrimination is only one bias that needs to be addressed in asd until we address all biases our children will continue to face barriers that will keep them from realizing their dreams and feel that whatever they want to accomplish in life is possible the other thing when we talk and it's not my place but i've been doing a lot of reading on curriculum and what i've seen and we do have curriculum in our school district that
023is electives that teach black history and and those type of things um it would be impossible for us to do something for 120 languages um they talk about that but what we can do is we can take our curriculum and i'm certainly not telling anybody what to do but we can take our curriculum and we can infuse black authors and history and stories and all of those things that are necessary for all students to feel a part of that process so those are just my thoughts i just wanted to share them and because i won't be voting and i won't have an opportunity to do that so thank you member hildy [Music] thanks um well on process i guess my primary concern would be that there's time for the public to read whatever changes if
024anyone has changes to make i don't i mean i guess it's just a small modification that's maybe not super stressful but um like i would hope that'd be an overriding concern that people have a time to think about if it's like a different policy um for the most part i think it we'd put a lot of work into it i mean every board meeting i offered people to offer input into it i think um the questions raised i think we have to address them but i don't see a conflict with what we're presenting versus our board goals i think the instructional equity one if like big if if we actually like honor it like we could actually advance our our board goals on reading and math i mean that's been a challenge before where we
025superintendent has presented equity choices or decisions may be rooted in that and we said no we just want to keep doing things the same way we've always done them um so we can have the policy but it's still dependent on the board to um act in line with it or agree with that value that we really want to improve our academic outcomes um i think it's really important that we address the public's concerns that have been raised because some misinformation has definitely gotten out some personal opinions that people who maybe didn't first participate very much in this process um i certainly had plenty of input so um i think everybody like this fall they could have just passed this last you know our work could have passed it last fall with the first draft you
026could have said this is it and no instead it was like an educational process i think i've learned things along the way i think our public has our boards had really good discussions on what what we are talking about what we aren't talking about so i i thank the other board members for that um so i i i guess i'm not opposed to star's suggestion of removing that last line if it's something the board is interested in but i would want to see um amendments in a time enough you know timely enough manner where it's just not like the last minute you don't have to but i think that would be you know more useful thank you and i agree if there are any major uh substantive changes uh we might consider putting it off
027for one meeting so the public can take a look at it but if they're minor tweaks or something like that then we can go ahead and keep on our path um but it's until we go down this road i don't have that exact answer or a suggestion that's my remember bellamy are we um tell me what what what do you want me to talk about i have a couple of comments uh for both so um yes um responding to so um she's put out a possible change and we're not voting on it or anything at that point but we're gonna get a sense for how people are thinking so that maybe there's we have an idea yeah moving forward and i if you want to respond to unless you can do that too yeah i
028i would like to uh i think it's it's important that the language stays in in the policy because you know critical thinking you cannot take the word critical and have it that's what we teach our kids to be critical thinkers analyzers so to take it out of the policy might cause some people comfort um we clearly defined in each policy what we were what we're talking about but we but some among us continue to associate and only see race as skin color it's systemic it's structural that is that is the beauty of this policy it is not pitting colors kids against kids it's all kids so we if we can't shift from thinking of racism as a person and not a system or a process then maybe we do have more work to do but
029the policy as it is written is not to put kids against kids adults against adults uh it is curriculum but it's so much more yes it's people but it's not any one person it's not any one color we're talking systemic giving ourselves and holding ourselves accountable to look identify and remove systemic barriers how can that not be good for kids and my other comment is i absolutely agree but remember hildy um i i don't know how many calls you guys are getting i wake up with a call i read emails all day and i talk about this all day i will not get tired because it's just that important it's important to our kids we cannot keep doing things the way we've always done them we gave everybody an opportunity to give input we gave
030everybody the opportunity to show up and speak up and you can't just undo all that if you were not part of the conversation it's going to be pretty hard to beat have the understanding thank you madam chair thank you my purpose in taking out that bottom says line is not that it's not important that we teach critical thinking probably throughout our school district i mean that's what we want our kids to do but if you look at policy and management that and and i was there for all the conversations so that's the reason we're doing this because listening to people getting feedback this is our opportunity to say you know i think maybe we missed something um it's uh maybe we didn't catch this because it is important but when i went back and looked
031at policy versus uh management this was you know questionable um and i think when we talk about um instruction and how this is going to work and what we're going to do as far as a district that really is dr bishop and her team's decision so i no other reason than that okay so could i say uh remember mitchell um so member marcel i hear what you're saying and you know there certainly is we took a lot out of the original draft that um you know we had looked at initially um however many months ago how long ago was that six months ago nine months ago nine months ago um because we did realize that a lot of that does belong in um you know the area of management but i guess first of all
032i i did not know that critical thinking was something that was a bad thing to do in education i thought that from the history of education that was one of the core things we want people to be as critical thinkers to be able to look at the situation and really understand it so i don't really understand that comment but um i i think it's important to keep this in here the school board does have jurisdiction one of the board's duties is curriculum and i think that it's virtually impossible to have something that focuses on anti-racism and dismantling systemic and institutional and you know the different types of racism without looking at where we have come from um as a country and i think that that's something that has been really come to the fore in
033the past 40 years um i know that my mother's generation in germany lived through world war ii she was born in 1931 so she was 13 when the war was over and for about oh i don't know 30 years after that there was silence in the schools nobody talked about the nazi history of germany and it was like a festering wound and my children's generation is they're open about that they are um they talk about it frankly they talk about what led to those conditions that caused um the holocaust and you know all of the horrible things that went along with that and it it's very important it's very important to acknowledge that part of their history and confront it and and make sure that they have systems in place that will never allow that
034to happen again and i think similarly it's important for us to acknowledge what has happened um in our history and not whitewash it and we're realizing more and more that history is written by the people you know the history we teach is the perspective of the people who write it and we have many many many voices that have so much to say about their take on our history and we are now allowing some of those voices to be heard and i i think that's really critically important for us to you know there's so many things about um the evolution of america that we have to be proud of and yet there are also many many things we need to understand and come to grips with and and address and and fix as much as we
035can in order to be a healthy society where everybody really truly is equal um you know i was just reading a book about the gettysburg address and how president lincoln's address changed the whole focus of the country and made the declaration of independence the primary um thing that we uphold and the equality of everybody and i think that's really critical we i i think it belongs in this policy and as you know we've had nine months to talk about it i think it's i personally i think it's important to keep it there i'm gonna go to dr bishop who hasn't had an opportunity to speak yet and then i got member hildy with her hand up and then coming back into the room thank you and i i can share that um i've had a
036discussion about this as well and it actually came up not during the discussions uh that the board had over time at the governance it actually occurred when we were preparing for the town hall we went back to and just really trying to support the board and sharing uh policy uh administrative regulation when we went back to the council of great city schools documents that they shared with us this was a technical error on here when um basically if you wanted to go by that guideline which we've been doing that um the policy basically is the 30 000 foot view and um sharing about what instruction will be well that isn't a different policy when a board has a process for adoption of curriculum and so uh essentially the technical correction for this in accordance with
037the documents that we've been creating policy uh and the board has uh it actually doesn't fall into that it falls into more of reaching into um saying this is what will happen with instruction and the board has a different series um in its policy that speaks to how curriculum uh is done and so i think it is a technical change uh more so than any kind of a value judgment uh but i too learned about it later when we went back to talk about what's policy what policy is not um so uh and that came from the uh you know being asked are we teaching critical race theorem i couldn't understand why and then you know someone pointed to that and then um when we really dove into it more we looked back at the
038original documents of policy and it was a technical change but again it's the board's policy however like the board would like to adopt it [Music] uh member hildy [Music] thanks um so three points on uh i agree with dr bishop and starr's reasoning on the the part on it being um policy versus uh you know instructional and maybe it goes in a different policy component um what was the other one oh i don't agree that the last sentence could remotely get anyone thinking that we're talking about critical race theory at no point has this this policy process included critical race theory the board has never discussed it this is not anything to do that our board is weighing or part of this process in any ways that's just somebody else's choice to add to this
039but it's not that that is not an accurate representation of this process and that people in our community are under that impression i understand but it is not correct what has happened whereas in this policies um and then what from the beginning when we were talking about what we heard from people i failed to mention what i heard from children which is really important to me in sharing their stories of experiencing racism and not feeling like they could speak up and that was i mean that just is very compelling to me like i i'm a minimalist when it comes to policies if i had my way we would only have enough policies that we can review in one year and there'd be like seven pages of them but when i hear a child saying i'm
040not sure if i can speak up about racism i'm experiencing if this is something that's going to say in asd we don't support racism that's an easy one for me i don't i don't understand that part um so that's where i'm on those thank you i think remember bellamy you had your hand raised and then uh member marcy did you have your hand oh i saw her late so remember bellamy [Music] so i appreciate the um the clarification member marsett and dr bishop um i guess because i still i still struggle with with how to formulate policy right i mean i do i struggle because what i want to say that's why this document went from 22 pages to two it took nine months but it worked it worked um so i'm wondering if uh
041dr bishop uh and member marcette your your thoughts if we that sentence if we just put in the beginning of the sentence the board believes that instruction should i i would say that that's um you know how you go ahead and i and i'm guilty of this i'll say it where i say i'm giving advice but you're really not supposed to do that either i mean you can express concerns and that sort of thing but even if i walk into dr bishop's office and i said you know this is what i think i'm not telling you to do it but this is what i think that really is um again kind of infringing on her responsibility and taking me out of my lane i'm not saying i don't do it sorry um but it is
042and dr bishop um through the president to remember bellamy it it like technically you just have to decide do we want to stick with how policy policies written and you know um uniform it actually is from um aj's work and so uh and that's later that's how we picked up on you know that oh this doesn't exactly match um because i was through that so i mean just it depends if if you want to keep it in you keep it in but if for the um uniformity of how we do policy versus regulation it's in the wrong spot there we could go to curriculum uh statements and and maybe it it's in tied to that but um saying that in this kind of policy your instruction will be this in the district uh it doesn't
043fit with the definition of policy [Music] and see when i read it it to me it means that we will give kids the opportunity to think critically about history and you're saying that policy can't can't stipulate that that we can't the board can't have a belief or recognition that critical thinking about history is important our desire for children to think critically rather than instruction will be on critical thinking our desire as a board what are your values the word instruction needs to we desire children to think critically yeah okay i'll think about that one thank you all right uh member mitchell and then uh remember donnelly are you trying to get into the conversation yes okay cause i saw a look but i need something a little bit more than that so do you remember
044mitchell member donnelly donnelly and member hilly so i'm just looking at the 6000 series um where we do talk about students must learn to respect and work cooperatively with persons of all backgrounds instructions should help students realize the value of individual differences as well as the human dignity and worth common to all people um perhaps this would fit into this particular policy i mean we and we also are pretty explicit about you know science instruction environmental education i mean perhaps we could put it into the six thousands um if you feel that it doesn't belong in i don't even what is the policy number we have on this um i kept looking at zero four hundred okay okay so yeah maybe it belongs in the six thousands [Music] and member donnelly you're up next thank
045you madam president um can you turn your back on [Music] it's on um can you hear me no it's green right can you hear me now [Music] is it back yes okay all right um to explain the question posed by member hildy why would people think that there was some linkage to critical race theory with these proposed policies i'd go back to also a response to uh what i think was an accurate statement by by member uh bellamy and that no member of this board initially raised critical race theory it was in fact first raised before this board by the director of the office of equity and compliance when she came before us and explained that she was in the process of recommending policies developing policies the anchorage school district based on authors of critical
046race theory and she specifically cited those offers one of them was the author of this book how to be an anti-racist that's a direct link initially raised by the administration [Music] and when i subsequently questioned the utilization of critical race theory and those authors in developing policy that utilization was defended by the director of the office of equity and compliance saying that this was something that we shouldn't worry about because of being used by universities and other institutions and other other organizations and then when i discovered that we had posted exclusively pro critical race theory books on our website that the administration had done that and i raised concern about that um and requested that we have a balanced approach which is you know under our it's under our instructional policy that we should have
047a balanced approach to these kinds of uh controversial issues um there was no no accommodation for any other point of view no other books were posted no other critical thought to critical race 3 was posted no academic articles critical or critical race theory were posted and i acknowledge that this is not curriculum what's on the website of our office of equity and compliance but it is on our website and when my 13 year old daughter heard the justification that it was on our website was really only for adults and not for our children her response was daddy they spent two months teaching us how to use their website how can it not be for kids to look at their website i thought that was pretty telling i really did and the fact that we still
048haven't put any counter balance forward to this but we are the only one side of this particular radical philosophy being presented raises concern very legitimate concern among the public this is started as how we're going to what we're going to use to adopt policy then the policy comes and it's in and we've exhibited a clear bias towards this particular philosophy on our website and then the policies come and so i think that's a very legitimate i mean two and two is four folks i mean it's pretty obvious what's going on there it's very very practical to consider that as as a danger that's why i think that it's most appropriate for this board that if that's not the intent why not just say that why not just say right in the policy this policy is
049not an endorsement of critical race theory this part of c does not authorize the adoption of any administrative regulations that utilize critical race theory and i think the issue would be pacified if that's not the intent here let's just say it let's be honest and say that but if it is the intent that's super concerning and at this point with the bias that's been exhibited by the administration it's really hard to just trust them with carte blanche to adopt policies around this um without those kind of sideboards and and and controls and thank you thank you and we are going to have a book discussion a little bit later next up in the queue i have board member hildy thank you i'm i think i've got lost my train of thought there a little bit
050um we were talking about um that sentence on the board leads instruction it could also just be the board values critical thinking about these topics so we can do a um something where the board values critical thinking a value statement um when it i just want to say it again what people perceive is not accurate i participate in this percep process critical race theory was not a part of this process that it's on a tiny little book list is not concerning to me i've read the book mentioned it's not scary to me books books don't scare me i can manage to read things without being brainwashed it's not a part of these policies they're completely separate these were board directed policies brought before the governance committee went through the public process lots of opportunity for
051public input regular monthly updates to our community in the board governance report so the process here has been open and has not had any direct link to anything beyond a board member just as any board member can bring a concern forward we don't have to say this isn't for critical race theory in the same way we don't have to list all the things it's not for we just say what the policy is we don't have to say things that aren't remotely part of this process that doesn't make any sense at all um and what then you'd have to list every single thing it's not um so that's a that's a bit illogical to me um thanks remember bellamy if i might i have a point of privilege to my co-maker of the policy member mitchell
052uh was critical race theory a thought in your mind when we collaborated on these policies i've learned a little bit about critical race theory over the last few months i had never heard of it before it absolutely was not part of it what we based as as we all know what we based this on was the commitment that we made and i can read this to you all if you would like um all seven of us worked together on our statement in response to george floyd's death and um we we worked on putting the wording of this together we all every single one of the board members voted in favor of this and in that statement we committed to developing anti-racism policy that will translate into programs and practices that will eradicate injustice and discrimination
053in our schools given that we all signed on to this i assume that we all believe that some of this does exist in our schools we said this will include an ongoing review of our current policies and educational approaches to ensure all students have opportunities to learn about each other to respect each other to value each other and to create a more equitable and kinder world we also committed to monitoring our instructional outcomes and systems of support to identify opportunities and remove any barriers that intentionally or unintentionally impact the opportunities of students based on the color of their skin that requires a lot of self-reflection we committed to listening to community voices to understand their concerns and hopes for just an equitable education with these voices in mind we will work together toward progress that
054will promote our mutual and interdependent goal to educate all students for success in life we want committed to pushing back against hatred discrimination and violence and we said that we would make certain that the most vulnerable and underrepresented in our care learn and thrive in an environment that is just free of fear and filled with opportunities and systems designed to lift them up this is what member bellamy and i had in our hearts and the charge we've received from our other five board members in developing the policy that we've spent eight months working on or nine months working on uh it i i was not familiar with the concept of critical race theory and thank you member mitchell may i continue uh the only i like member hildy's um amendment i think i can support
055that addition to that last sentence and my final comment is uh i don't think in my knowledge that our senior directors as wonderful as they are i don't think they write policy they might write procedures guidelines they don't write policy unless i'm wrong and we did have uh miss hunt our senior director involved in the process in terms of interviewing students and she shared that information with the governance committee so i i i don't quite know how um how how how the comments of a senior director can infiltrate the work of the board i just don't get that piece but thank you [Music] dr bishop thank you madam president to the board i i do want to share and i want to share this publicly how the word came up when we provided the board
056a report on some of our equity work in our district we shared the work that we're doing with the college board so we did what's called the college board equity audit they make um the sat they uh have ap courses and what they what their goal was was to look at our students um abilities and achievement and then look at which students are in your ap classes and hence it's looking at who are the untapped students that have the ability and they were all all kids you know all kids it didn't matter their their race their student group their ethnicity um these are the kids who were not tapping to be if your goal was to ensure that all kids have the opportunity and that was the goal equitable access and opportunities were keys to
057the success in asd through this process and it was uh an understanding and it was brought up that in the critical race theory what they talk about were these four things curriculum instruction desegregation and school funding all have something to do with systemic systems that might impact so she brought up that term in learning that through how to affect stu schools the next time and that was back september or something october that was a way long time ago then we moved through this process lots of things in history have happened in our world we're trying to understand it our teachers reach out and other educators to say boy we need to self-educate because we're going to have kids back in our buildings who have been at home in the pandemic and watching tv and watching
058all these things happen we need to have a greater understanding ourselves of what's going on in the world and how do we understand all the ideas out there so they had suggested book studies to to personally look at books study they can earn college credit they continue to go on those that are interested the board hasn't been invited to sit in those now that there's as a new one starts you're invited to join that cohort we have not had a board member join um we did add uh additional information to the website in regard to additional books to expand the ideas and the books that uh have been suggested after we had read them and put them on so we're not against that but for taking something off i was um interested that i don't
059think the board would be interested in censoring educators you know books actually books in general so uh we continue to learn we continue to understand uh what this is about because the kids of i think our city deserve for us to to to be as educated as we can to understand just the different views and the different um issues that are out there the different understandings and so i want to go on record that those are how those two items were brought up so that it wasn't um brought in a manner that said we should put this in a classroom or we're going to do this and this is the curriculum absolutely not it was simply shared that the four components in getting to that equity of outcome are curriculum instruction desegregation and school funding
060all the things that the board works on as well as administration to run the anchorage school district and so i question the integrity but i will uh i have always been as transparent will continue to be transparent and will continue to teach kids in asd all kids to be successful in their lives and it consequently it comes from figuring things out and and you know getting good courses and absolutely the best instruction and the best teachers we can get are going to bring our kids learning through fruition thank you [Music] thank you dr bishop i'm just going to take a quick moment and just share the thought or two of my own real quick um i appreciate remember mitchell rereading that statement that we all made and we all signed on to um there's nothing
061about that for me that has changed but that doesn't mean i don't get to take a look at what we have in front of us and everything that you know we're learning and you know from the community or from each other or anything like that um that doesn't take that away um but and so my commitment to it in its original intent has not labored in any sense i just want to make that very clear on that asking questions does not change that outcome um and i the other thing is um i did go back it's on the october 6th it's on equal opportunity schools um and board members want to go look it up october 6th and it's it's one of those and so it's one of those um things where [Music] powerpoint comes
062to bite where you have such a high level view and so when you read the words on a powerpoint it can be interpreted unless you listen to the whole conversation um and so you know i i see where um you know that's coming from but i want to go back and find that for myself and go back and see it um so right now um member marsette has you know proposed a change and we've gotten some board feedback um we can continue to talk about this one sentence or if there are other board members that have other thoughts that we want to also talk about you know i just want to i'm trying to make the space um then we can get we can get stuck in one sentence or we can talk about all
063board members changes um if there happened to be a lot of suggested changes then i would like to see them in writing and as soon as possible for you know all board members to have you know in consideration um because that's one thing i have not seen by anybody yet um remember hildy you are up next things i don't have any other changes to recommend um but just in at the beginning of this process we share the community's concerns and i want to make sure we have an opportunity i mean i would think the appropriate time is during non-action this evening to make sure we're very intentional in uh bringing those concerns out or or the praises as well like the support i don't think it's you know sometimes you think about two sides i
064don't think there's two sides i think people have very wide diversity of views about equity and racism and i think we can we can reflect that in the conversations we've had with our community over these last few months um so i i just want to make sure that that is the time that we are planning to address some you know some of those things is during the non-action time tonight heard uh member marcet so um i actually wanted to kind of what miss hildy said you know there have been um you know with with any change or people are fearful fearful of what they don't know um and what their assumptions are and what they think and so i do think it's important as a board um to address the concerns of those that are
065concerned about this policy um and i'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it but that's our job as a board is to address all concerns when presented to us from the community so i would hope that we would be able to do that not action whenever but probably non-action would be better because we have more people watching um but uh i think that's important that we do that so i guess my question after listening to you member marcet and to member hildy is it enough to just have a conversation at non-action that is you know considered on a record that you know you know where we lay out are in our intent and understanding behind this or is it making the words match the intent and making sure because and how do we do
066that when we know there are a lot of sides you know to this and i don't know that there's a lot of sides to you know anti-racism racism i think it's just some of the other minor nuances i think we can all say you know this board rejects all forms of racism you know unequivocally you know um it's so i'm just trying to find where the board thinks you know is it a conversation non-action or is it actually changing parts and pieces or components um i'll go myself and then mitchell so you know with the media with everything that's going on people hear things they don't know what's truth and what's not truth i mean we're inundated with all kinds of information i mean somebody sent us an email email that said my child is
067not going to apologize for being white um i mean these are things that we're getting because people think based on what they're hearing in the media what they think is happening um you know i i certainly don't think anybody's that's not in our policy but these are concerns that individuals have and um we just have to assure our community that we are doing what's best for children and that we're not pitting anyone against anyone else it's about all kids agreed um remember mitchell and then andy you're awful quiet down there and you're not normally this quiet so i am after after member mitchell speaks i am coming to you [Music] well i i appreciate um president mikayla's you wanting to get this you know respond to the everybody i think all the board members want
068to respond to what we've heard in the community i personally still think that what we wrote is appropriate i think that the concerns that people have raised are not things that these policies state so i think we need to explain that and i do agree so i guess i'm saying yes to all of what you said i think it's important to during the non-action time explain why we like the way that this that this has turned out after eight months and the concerns we've heard and how um you know what whether we think this needs to be changed accordingly but i also agree or i guess i should say and i also agree that if there are board members who think there should be significant changes we should discuss that tonight i i personally don't
069want to be blindsided with amendments that make major changes when this is an action item in two weeks remember holloman [Music] well i don't have too much to say but it does mirror a little bit of what number mitchell said we're not pouring concrete or building a building with this as we all know the board comes out with wonderful ideas and routinely we have to wait until the administration screws it up and we have to go back in and correct them and tell them what they're doing wrong and i foresee that this will happen in a similar way we are stating our intention very clearly about why we feel like passing this i have a lot of confidence that the administration won't screw it up i keep forgetting that the masked obscure humor sometimes i
070apologize for that that was said tongue-in-cheek but no one can see it but it may not go exactly like we want just like everything else in life um but i do think it's worth saying why we are passing this policy and why it matters so much and uh it does worry some people and i i totally get it but uh it's it's long overdue and it's time we move in this direction thank you any other board members have any you know final thoughts to share and did is that where everybody is on this particular policy or were their thoughts on the instructional equity policy um also remember bellamy thank you madam president i'd like to capture uh member hildy's um amendment her edit for that last sentence i just said the board values versus uh
071the instructions should include okay yeah instead of instruction should encourage you would just say the board okay thank you uh member uh marsette uh you're i know you wanted to strike the whole thing with that okay with that okay thank you that's all madame chair thank you remember donnelly just uh just wanted to clarify that um i worked really hard on written amendments to this policy submitted those to the governance committee extensive written amendments in technical form even and so i participated extensively in the process of the development of this and put it in writing what my concerns were months ago [Music] did any other board members have any oh member healthy thank you and i would thank member donnelly for his uh participation and clarified that we were very intentional in including those in
072the meetings where we discussed it um so not always able to attend but certainly submitting things in writing is very helpful and i appreciate that and we were very intentional and uh trying to reflect what you your concerns were so thank you all right any other board members comments on either the anti-racism or the instructional equity policy can i just share one thing that came up uh there are actually a couple of things um relative to barriers from the community um one was language the other was opportunity um and the other had to do with uh mental mental health services but they didn't like the mental part that was that really went that really was part of the golden guard rail discussion i'm just just sharing because i said i would and uh the other
073had to do with um so yeah and my only other comment was that i did not meet with of the 10 groups i met with uh and probably that i went face-to-face with i had no objections they they only had questions um and then um you know those who are opposed um you know it breaks my heart when a parent tells me that um or a parent writes that their child will not uh apologize for being white well i can remember when my child came home and she didn't want to be black but we worked with what we had i gave her all the input and support that i could to make her understand that her skin color black white brown that is not what's going to define her and so as parents i absolutely
074understand how that goes that is not the intent of this policy it is not the intent it is not to divide our community it's not to divide our it's not to to stigmatize our staff it is for us to do the best we can for all of our kids and giving them opportunities if there are barriers this gives us the permission and the accountability to to to look and see and then dismantle if there are barriers for every kid regular special little kids big kids so so i am sensitive to those kinds of comments from any parent the other question that came up was a from a parent from several parents are you is this policy gonna you know give my kids some kind of crutch well absolutely not that is not the intent so
075i just think as a board our job is to govern and we do that through listening and then we and explaining and then we do what's best for kids thank you [Music] thank you um member donnelly thank you madam president i just wanted to clarify my my two primary concerns with the bp 0400 the way it's drafted now are the last sentence and the utilization of the term critical thinking and the term identify and redesign any racially inequitable policies my concern with that is i think a lot of people good will think that that is an appropriate term to use there the problem is how it inequity has been misused around the united states lately as we know harvard university uses the term equity to discriminate against asian students being admitted to harvard they admitted
076it the trump administration brought a lawsuit against them on that fact of course the biden administration subsequently dismissed it but the basis of that racial discrimination intentional admitted against asian students was equity saying that too many asian students were going to get into harvard if we didn't discriminate against them based on race so that's why all across america people are concerned when they see the terminology that's different than our traditional terminology of equality being replaced with the term equity because we see how it's been misused by institutions as as as you know respected and historically you know prominent as harvard university and so i think that most of you know 90 of this proposal i'm very supportive of i particularly am grateful for the addition here of the the board rejects all forms of racism
077because i think that is consistent exactly with where i'm going but i'm just trying to explain why the public would be concerned with the use of the terminology equitable any other board members with comments on policies before we move on to our next topic of our work session [Music] all right not seeing any number two adult resources for self-understanding this is uh brought on from a conversation that was started at the last uh school board meeting and it is talking specifically about um the books for self-understanding it's come up at our town hall uh the bergami has referenced it several times so just wanted to circle back around to give ourselves the space the time to have the conversation here um if there's any questions if the administration had anything they wanted to talk about
078uh but just have the conversation real quick um did you want to go first or just yeah i think we've already had this conversation dr bishop laid out the book list the amendment to it uh it's just adults reading books it's not i i think we've already had this conversation um lots of times in fact um so i'm ready for us to move on to maybe math and reading and other things to talk about but it's my two cents thank you member merced so i actually testified when my kids were in elementary school about a book that they wanted the parents wanted banned uh that they were using in third grade and i don't believe in banning any books i do believe that you read books for understanding uh to to understand a different way
079of thinking so that you maybe you don't agree with that thinking but it educates you um it makes you more knowledgeable but i do have to agree on one point with mr donnelly and that is if we're looking at books to and it's not like i want to promote white supremacy or anything um but i you know and i guess maybe because of the topic and what we're we're looking at they're appropriate but in the back of my mind i'm thinking should we have not had a more rounded list i guess um that would be my only uh concern with that is that maybe we should have a more rounded list because um well i'll just leave it there [Music] dr bishop did you want to weigh in sure um i think katie grant is
080just going to pull it up uh some suggestions by martin luther king were added others by lyndon bates-johnson as well as alaska native books were added to the list to have a broader sense these were also suggested books this site wasn't meant to have a dissertation of arguments on either side um it was really simply meant for again self-education i paused on i was asked to remove it and i paused on that i was asked to put the the link which is appropriate it's on the bottom there that this is not uh asd curriculum it is you know simply requested um at this point in time uh and especially when we were receiving such communication that uh the idea of censoring books that people asked to read and to share i wouldn't um and these
081are simply just books to read and [Music] i mean i mean that's where they are i'm not exactly sure um this this isn't a to have a battle on a site or a debate remember donnelly so in debate when you have a subject and it's specific but somebody tries to oppose you in the debate by creating an argument you never made and attacking that argument that's called a straw man i have never advocated for censoring or banning these books what i've stated is that their presence without any counter academic thought whatsoever no counter no balance is inappropriate i continue to feel that i think it's evidence on its face i mean there are very strong and i've provided to this board very influential authors african-american columbia university professor being one of them they're highly critical
082of the content of some of these books and the public deserves to be aware of that just as they apparently deserve to be aware of these books i think we need to have count a full academic a fair approach to this subject if we're going to have it on our website and we need to pub we need to put up there the opposing points of view that's what i've been driving for since the first time i observed this it's a very different thing to say well these are just for people to read if they want versus using a taxpayer website to put only one political philosophy resources on it that's just not what we do with government in this country that's not right and there are some very clear very reputable counter opinions to these
083books that belong to be there in the interest of basic fairness and by the way none of them have anything to do with white supremacy they have to do with equality i mean equal justice under the law the actual academic uh viability or or efficacy would be the correct word of some of these publications which are fraught with logical errors misrepresentations of history and radical partisan bias in direct attacks against one political party in a complete vacuum for any recognition of of the comparable culpability of other parties that's just not what we do in america with our government websites so i think we need to put something up that's availa that's available by very respected authors that is directly critical of this these books remember hildy i would make two points one i think this
084issue is moot the website has been updated to change it to be more views to this is not under the board's authority the superintendent could put a list of her favorite beach reads up on the website like that she gets to decide what goes on the you know on the website that's not the board's management authority but we also this has been resolved so i don't understand this continued time spent on this very extensive ongoing time remember bellamy you know i i have tried to understand the concern with giving employees what they asked for giving them the opportunity and trying to not just provide to give them space for their own continued understanding how can that be there is no counterbalance i mean in political how does it become political when you put when you
085give people what they're asking for adult people this is not curriculum so i agree with member healthy it is not curriculum it's not our jurisdiction we the best we should do is to seek to understand why the list exists and i don't know how dr bishop can explain it anymore i just don't i mean as an adult i should be able to choose or not choose a book off the list if i want it if i'm interested in those subjects and if you don't like the book don't read it for me it's just that simple i i just we're just wasting time here remember marzip just for clarification because i do tend to say things out of contents i don't that was an example i mean not even a good example but when i talked
086about well-rounded i didn't mean books on white supremacy so i just want to say that [Music] all right so i'm not seeing any other hands raised or any other comments uh to come up and be presented it is 4 30. i know that we have an executive session that we can transition into uh with emotion i move that we transition into executive session for the purpose of negotiating negotiations and legal updates and legal updates update i have a first and a second uh thank you everybody for attending the work session look forward to the continued meeting tonight and we are now in executive session