001good evening welcome to our tuesday february 16th regular school board meeting in the boardroom myself elisa vichales along with board member hildy and board member donnelly are in the room and i have our superintendent dr gina bishop on zoom we have board member holloman board member mitchell board member bellamy and board member marsette as well as our student representative uh miss emily we have all board members in attendance and at this time i'd like to do the flag salute and remember donnelly if you would do that for us [Music] before we begin i would like to acknowledge with gratitude the denia 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 chin on and emily if you would please
002continue our opening statement my name is emily hicox and i am the student representative to this board i was elected to serve through the student advisory board my votes are advisory only and i offer a student voice to the body we want 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 staff school business partners and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time your talent and your tax dollars next up is the approval of the agenda i will entertain a motion i move to approve the agenda as presented is there a second i second remember bellamy thank you are there any adjustments or modifications to the agenda by board members [Music]
003seeing no objections the agenda passes as written unanimously thank you next up community engagement board conference and committee reports first we'll start with our board committees member marcet chair of finance yes we met on february 10th um basically it's to review our budget again if there were any last-minute changes another opportunity for board members to ask questions we talked a little bit about the sr2 funding and how that is helping us with our 28 million dollar deficit this year and uh just more questions and making sure that the board had a good understanding of the budget and our next meeting will be next month and i believe it's a second wednesday am i correct katie because we've changed that so i i don't have it down pat yet i believe uh march is the first
004wednesday because it's because of the spring break yeah so first uh first wednesday in march thank you thank you next up chair bellamy for communications uh yes thank you uh we have not met since our last meeting um i'm i'm trying to think here i don't think we've met since our last meeting um but our next meeting will be march 9th i think it will be on march 9th [Music] but i will oh the other part i'm sorry i do believe you met last week um and talked about legislative updates and remember donnelly's resolution last tuesday oh we did thank you i'm a little discombobulated but we did we had uh we did meet last week and here's the agenda right here sorry about that so our last meeting was um we we actually did
005we uh considered mr donnelly's uh resolution uh it did not move forward but we had some good discussion we also talked about our um legislative buddy program where we are all assigned legislative buddies and and we were going to um make sure that we contact them uh and then we set up our we talked a little bit about the meetings we were going to have with aasb their advocacy that's the alaska associate alaska school board association making sure that we were ready for our legislative meetings last week which we had out which we held last week and i think um that pretty much covered our work our business so our next meeting thank you madam president so our next meeting will be uh on the ninth of uh march at 4 30 p.m thank you
006chair of governance member hilde thank you we met on february 9th as well and um we had one discussion of our conflict of interest policy and accepting campaign donations if we're gonna then vote on a contract and um generally just went through that discussion and remember the chaos is going to check with the council of great city schools just to see if there's other policies out there from other districts but otherwise no further action at this time and then we discussed the anti-racism and equity policy discuss making it two policies an anti-racism policy and an equity policy and we'll be meeting in fact tomorrow just to focus on those two and um really working to get um you know closer to a final product and discussing also community engagement what what kind of a community
007engagement the committee like might want um so if board members have input on that they're welcome to email um as well or community members and then our next meeting um is right after or right before whatever margo just said oh no it's tomorrow yeah our next video is tomorrow i don't remember the march date but they'll there's also one in march march 9th all right thank you uh member mitch do you have your handrails was this relative to a committee report um no it's relative to a conference report outstanding that's what is coming up next is uh board conferences and we did have a couple recently um and so remember mitchell if you want to talk about yours so i attended the half day national school board association they had a little mini conference on
008equity and um you know the beauty of virtual is that it's possible to do so much more in this realm and i don't know if anybody else had an opportunity to join in on that but i was really impressed by a young black man who talked about being in college and studying english and he um was in way over his head he he picked english because he thought it would be an easy major and they were reading chaucer and shakespeare and um you know people he just he he couldn't keep up and he said he got really good at cheating and one day a professor called him in and asked him if he had written the work that he had provided for and he said oh yes that was one of my best papers what
009did you think and instead of countering him she started talking to him for about 45 minutes about his life about his background about his experiences and then she asked him again and she said you're not gonna get in trouble the bottom line is she spent the semester working with him outside of her office hours outside of anything and instead of um you know starting with sixth grade level books she gave him books by african-american authors and he said he never knew that black people were scholars he never knew that black people had written books and of course these you know the autobiography of malcolm x things that engaged him as a young black man and so he talked about equity in terms of meeting people where they are and he went on to get a
010phd in english and is very successful and it was an incredibly powerful story um to me and um i also want to tie that into a couple of people i met i i heard from this past week who one person is has been in alaska for a very long time um but is in portland temporarily because her husband's trying to reach captain level it with alaska airlines that needs to be done there and she said you know it makes me appreciate those anchorage schools that it just doesn't compare down here and then a couple of days ago i talked with a man who had lived in alaska for 20 years went to seattle for a couple of years and is now back here with two kids in high school at service and two kids in
011middle and elementary and he said they missed the schools here so much so i i'm tying those two things together because i know that the experience of that black man i know there are many many teachers within our district who understand how to make those connections and who go the extra step and i'm so appreciative of that and i also it was just really heartwarming to hear these um two people um talk about how wonderful our anchorage schools are because i think you know it's easy to focus on things we could be doing better and there are many and we are focusing on that and we're going to be making improvements um but we are doing a good job and and i guess the other thing is anyway i'm just really proud of this board
012for the guardrails that we've developed and our focus on equity and the anti-racist policy that's being developed um and i i really appreciate that so thank you for letting me share those thoughts thank you uh member hildy i had two trains this past week one was the parliamentary training that i emailed the board summary on um just reminding us not to be on the internet during our board meetings not to be communicating either passively in reading communications directed to the board or replying to emails or texts that all becomes part of the public record but also our private channels if we're talking about board business that's also part of the public record if there's something to say let's make time in the in the meeting for it so if somebody is struggling with that you
013know we always want to help make that happen and then the council of great city schools governance coach training that's still going on each month margo and i are we're both selected to do the cohort training but the cool thing that's very exciting is the council is working with some research institutions on um data collections there so i'm going to be one of the people but we're going to watch board meetings and chart and create a data pool a massive data pool for um some research institutions to use on goal monitoring and student outcomes so that they can use that for um you know better quality research on school board governance so very exciting beta testing starts this month and then we'll begin in 2019 so if other board members you have to go through
014a training and make sure you know your right liability assessment to do but more hands are good because we got a lot of hours to watch um thanks except board member bellamy turned it off thank you so uh yes dina that was a very good training i really really enjoyed that that um the training and listening to that young man's uh story well dr thomas's story i think it is i think his name was anyway i um started the uh cohort training the council of greatest city schools uh officer cohort training and i did that for two days and it it was amazing um one of the things that really stood out for me um that i think all of us could probably benefit from is looking at our behavior um attaching a benefit to
015it a cost to students to it and then just being more aware of you know how we make our decisions and do they benefit us as board members or do they benefit children and i've decided uh i've got to work in that area to make sure that everything that i do has a outcome and a benefit for students so i'm really enjoying that and i want to thank you guys the the board for supporting me in that and then my my last comment just had to do with thanking everybody for showing up with your uh for the legislative meetings last week with our legislators and i'm hoping you're calling your legislative buddies so i look forward to hearing more about those as well thank you thank you member donnelly thank you madam president um so
016having multiple high-risk factors for covid i've greatly appreciated the ability to attend by zoom and uh one of those high-risk factors related to my eligibility for social security and medicaid allowed me to be eligible to get the shots so i did get my second covid shot about 10 days ago and i might be pushing it because the cdc has been between 10 and two weeks before you're supposed to go out and be able to do things again but i'm really happy to be here um i we've got a wedding coming up in my family that's going to take some planning and effort on so there may be some time in the next couple months i might have to travel but other than that i'm going to try to be here in person now that i
017am inoculated [Music] thank you welcome glad to have you back board member merced so uh community council meetings i don't know if i don't know why but they're not asking me any questions so either i'm doing a good job of telling them what's going on um but i haven't had really any questions for community councils i did want to let everyone know that i'll be conducting a training so you want to be a school board member it's part one and part two roles and responsibilities first one is february 22nd from six to eight and we will cover superintendent and board roles and responsibilities policy open meetings act and then on march first from six to eight we'll be going over what aboard agendas look like uh robert's rules of order just a quick overview board
018ethics budget goals and guardrails very quickly and just talk about what would your first school board meeting look like if you were a school board member so i hope lots of people join us it's on our website and it has the links uh to those classes thank you and just wanted to share that we had a good weekend uh two weekends ago uh super bowl weekend but it was the aasb legislative fly-in and uh board member hildy myself uh members marsette and bellamy all attended over uh two days along with three students uh that were wonderful advocates for uh the student voice i was you know so many good things were said about uh their participation and what they had to share and so it was a good weekend there was a lot of learning
019uh you know for me one of the biggest sessions i um appreciated was the superintendent evaluation one that was done by an attorney very timely and then just a lot of the other good conversations and so it was a good couple of days which led us into uh good conversations you know with our legislative groups and so to echo the other previous comments thank you to the board for participating in all those that is awesome did any board members have any other community outreach i know um member marcette kind of already touched on her community councils um calling me crazy but the one thing i keep seeing at community councils says there's a lot more participation these days um i've seen some councils that have you know upwards of 60 people on a zoom call
020that you know if you're in person it never would have been so it's a very interesting thing to see um but certainly there are a lot of um you know conversations out there that are very relevant today so um uh to remember bellamy thank you for putting out their uh update to the fcc because i see that that is getting out to a lot of the councils ahead of time and so that is wonderful um so thank you for doing that and if i didn't see any other hands up for the community outreach portion we'll go ahead and move on in the agenda we have goal monitoring which is our 20 the 2020 2021 gold monitoring council we're looking at the the tail end of this year for where we're going to go thank you
021madam president uh our suggestions i have uh a plan for the rest of the year as well as bringing you additional data on grading that i shared last week that i could bring forward this week it was still being uh compiled so uh for the month of march i would like to present data on i ready as well as alex and these are two uh assessments that we receive both reading and math on in their computerized assessments uh they're the ones that we have been using uh prior to coming back into school within a school school in school rather in april we'll really have time to do the assessments that are taking place now in the month of february which is fast bridge and fastbridge is a curriculum based assessment uh if you've heard of
022dibbles or aims web it's what we've done in the past where kids actually you use the curriculum reading a real skill uh to tell whether they can read so those are curriculum-based measures uh as well as map and students are as they re-enter are taking those uh this month and then of course in may we want to share although we won't have the graduation rate we want to share the information about students uh who are in our system who did graduate those who are finishing summer school and then finish up with those grades as well so that is our plan for the rest of this year but in continuing with just practicing monitoring and outcomes and practicing uh capturing the data and discussion around it we have the asd at home secondary grades that are
023planned to be delivered tonight uh these are the students that were not included in all of the grades that we shared and the marks that we shared with you last time those were just students in our traditional high schools if you will alternative schools charter schools home schools were not included in those data so i'm delighted to share with you today if you take a look the asd at home as compared to in school and and i want to be clear that um the asd at home are these four asd in school although not everybody's in school it's still the more like the traditional program i know that our names that we select at the beginning are a little confusing now but um they are padea asd virtual family partnership and frontier charter and these
024are the count of students that are in grades 6 through 12 not the total count i'm only going to share secondary students grades 6 through 12 to match the 6 through 12 students that were in the in school set and this just gives a mind's eye the percentage of the students who are participating in an at-home model and the different programs this next shares the student count information so these are students later i will share the marks or the grades given so uh the graph or the chart rather just shares the grade level uh and then the the program and then the difference to the whole so as asd virtual is within its first year the original questions came about asd virtual and and sharing where did they sit with everything else uh there isn't
025a methodological sound longitudinal data set that we can share year after year after year because it was just a new program this year but in order to gain context and perspective on the new program what we've done is look at the enrollment demographics compared from the asd at home and all asd secondary limited to secondary levels from 6 through 12 if they were in 6th grade in a secondary school so we did not include the elementary i wanted to just be clear that all schools are included middle schools high schools charter schools online alternative virtual all of them even the four that i listed are in the larger data set and then we're going to look at them as a subset of that larger data set so asd at home as shared has about 3
026547 secondary students uh in grade 6 through 12 as compared to the whole set of all secondary students which is 22 317. the at-home students choosing and one of those four at-home programs within our district is almost 16 of all students that we had in secondary and comparing the distribution among the grade levels asd at home has a higher rate of high schools juniors and seniors and you can see that from the chart if you look at the sheer number as compared to the n of all and none of the differences by grade level though were statistically significant it's just uh sharing the larger percentage of 11th and 12th graders as compared to the rest so by the numbers we always like to ask ourselves well who are these kids if that's the total number
027uh what is the ethnicity distribution of our students who are participating in the asd home and remember asd all is every single student so comparing the student distribution all student groups except the white student group had a lower rate of representation in the asd home than all asd secondary and the difference between the rate of right students white students in asd secondary and asd at home was 15 almost 16 which actually was higher at a statistically significant level so specifically that the white students made up the larger percentage you see that that growth there it was an increase of 15. and um when we talk about statistical significance what we're running is a um a regression analysis and so you you then say this actually there's something to this so if if that would be
028an area where we would want to look more to ask why when we have differences that are not statistically significant it falls in the array of the distribution so this one is like what's going on there is what you would want to ask yourself comparing student distribution among groups of interest like we do we we always look at economically disadvantaged students with disabilities and english language learners and all three groups of interests were less represented in asd home as compared to the all sd secondary the difference between the rate of economically disadvantaged students was which is under about 15 almost 16 percent it was lower it was lower at a statistically significant level so that means it's more than just the random distribution in summary asd at home has a larger percentage or proportion of
029white and non-economically disadvantaged students than asc secondary as a whole at a significant level asd at home has higher proportions of junior and seniors in high school in a smaller proportion of english language learners and students with disabilities when considering uh the lived realities of attending asd home almost purely virtual and a digital experience this distribution is not unexpected uh generally affluent families with uh can more easily afford the technology costs associated with distance learning and older students are generally more motivated or self-directed and can handle uh the online learning more so than younger students it's important to keep this over representation though of white older non-eds and non-ell students in mind as we review the rest of the data in the set of the marks because uh again these students did have some significant
030differences [Music] so the overall secondary grade mark distribution in our asd at home so these are just the at home the total mark count is 16 857. the largest categories very similar to the asd in school was a's accounting for over uh 52 percent and uh of the marks earned the second was b's and finally f's were at the bottom one of the things that we don't have on this list uh was the rate of incompletes or not assigned n a and uh that was 5.93 percent so six percent and we did find that the majority of those were in six through eight and if you recall from the asc in school that was due to the really the program around keeping kids involved don't let them fail we're going to teach them and make
031up the gaps we are going to utilize um really the machine thinking kind of curriculum and target what they missed not have them redo a class that uh we have systems now with alex and others that can exactly pinpoint the skill that was missed teach that and allow students to to move on so it's gonna be very uh deliberate rather than redoing everything it's not about the work it is about what learning did they miss what don't they know because if we don't fill those gaps of what they don't know we're gonna have this year after year after year because we know that prior learning builds on the next year so here it is by grade level distribution and the grade level counts the n which we call the n is at the top and
032you can see the number of students in each of those categories and for all grades the majority of letter marks were a's or b's uh which is about uh 59 um grades 11 had the largest rate of f's followed by grade nine uh at uh all around 20 and 21 but grade 10 had um the least amount of of f's there when examining the data by grade level it's clear the vast majority of i's and nas again are middle school students with six through eight there was about 10 to 14 of students uh in the sixth they made up the majority of the the the the incomplete grades rather grade 12 was somewhat unique and that the rate of season d's were higher than any other grade but not at a significant level statistically and
033none of the differences between grade levels were statistically significant so uh they um kind of uh looked like each other if you will they weren't statistically significant wondering you know why why was that 10th grade f lower um and and really that's it's due to the random distribution and it would be what would be expected by the random distribution and again as we move into it the ethnicity and the student groups really show us our kids and where our gaps are for all student ethnicity groups except for native hawaiian pacific islander the majority of letter marks were a's or b's for native hawaiian pacific islander student groups the combined rate of a's and b's was less than 50 percent and we saw these in the same as asd in school certain student groups are going
034to to show the same pattern at home as well as in school the native hawaiian pacific islander student group also had the highest rate of f's followed by alaska native american indian and if you recall last board meeting if you look at the the stacked graph of alaska native american indian and alaska native pacific islander the orange is greater those are higher and that occurred as well with students in school the white student group had the lowest rate of f's and the data also evidenced in the lowest highest within the school population for white one interesting difference between student ethnicity groups to look closer at was the difference in in marks between the native hawaiian pacific islander group it was actually i don't have it on here but it was actually almost uh 25 and
035the white student group was two and a half that's significant the native hawaiian pacific and islander group had 125 grade marks in the ina category while the whites had 257 and given their total n uh by percentage-wise that's why it was um seen significant with almost 25 technically more than twice the count of native hawaiian pacific islander student group the native hawaiian island pacific islander student group had a higher rate of ion marks which was a statistic statistically significant um it means really um in that social force whether interpersonal or systemic uh it's influencing the rate of i n a so something is going on there that's when when it's statistically significant when you put in your measures for regression you're like okay it shouldn't just randomly happen that way by the current distribution something
036is going on which leads us to uh really our folks in schools our experts uh you know in leadership positions as well as teachers to say what's going on in the system that has just a certain group of people uh being affected a certain way that's when you look in the mirror instead of out the window kind of thing how we talk another interesting difference is the very high rate of a's for the white student population at 61 and a half almost this was true for whites in school as well but they were about 52 percent uh in asd in school so the white student group had the lowest rate of f's and incompletes and the rate of a's was higher at a statistically significant level indicating the grade mark distribution was significantly different than
037the other student groups we should examine grading practices and policies for asd at home concerning the approval of incomplete grades of course because we have so many to see if they're somehow connected to a certain group or the student group the white student group before we widen our scope to other causal factors so we really want to look at uh you know what are we doing within our system where uh it's showing such statistically significant differences and here's the interest groups which is the last part of the data set uh that we take a look at um again the majority of the marks were a's and b's and that's the green and blue stacked graph you can easily look at stat graphs and say oh that's more than or 50 percent so that's why some
038folks like these instead of the line graphs but the economically disadvantaged from the a's to the f's if you look at the green and the orange they're none none of these groups is actually standing out as statistically significant we do have information on the the rate of incompletes for english language learners and it was higher than any other group except for the specific native hawaiian pacific islander group they might be overlapping these two groups but we need to consider a closer look into that so it's not on this chart but ell students had a large rate of eyes and this provides just time if you have questions about these data again they provide us and these are the types of data that we look at with um as we're going to share just our our
039equity audit it has us look at ourselves systematically uh is it socially how we do business that uh students who uh really should be um uh able to uh afforded the opportunity by us to achieve at different levels so we have some inconsistencies are there any board members with questions for dr bishop first one board member holloman um yes i think it would be helpful in the future if we could have a breakout of race within economically disadvantaged um because i feel like a lot of times when we're looking at disparities that's what we're really looking at um but we need to look at it both ways we we know this isn't tied directly to race um the economic disadvantage is a huge factor in it and we just need to know the proportions in
040that group as well so i unless it's right in front of you i wouldn't ask for it tonight but in future presentations that would be helpful thank you um through the president uh to member holloman we can do that and i believe that um a few years ago we did that and actually we did demonstrate that it was race not just um certainly uh the largest part of students who are represented in different ethnicity categories do make up lower ses but when you took out ses there was still a difference in some of our categories and and we did that on map about three or four years ago uh just for a certain subset but it could have changed from now so we'll we'll take a look at that next up board member bellamy yes
041i have a question about um i i guess asd virtual is in its first year and we it you know because we were trying to find a way to keep our kids with us as opposed to them going to some other correspondence type school so but this data that what you presented tonight kind of it's got all five of our options or is it four options included through the president to member bellamy they're all included and you can see the half of uh the student choices is an ast virtual but what really these data demonstrated is that they are parallel to asd in school so similar outcomes came uh the students that are in the larger set of ase in school and the asd at home have very paralleled uh data sets with who does
042well and who doesn't and so with asd virtual being new have we looked at those great i mean i i i just i'm just wondering why we didn't separate those grades out you know family partnership frontier and pa paigee hasn't been around as long as those others but i would think that their um their grades are going to probably be pretty uh well not maybe not this year but they but you know they they've been around and they've been doing the at-home thing for a while asd virtual is new and i'm wondering if we could look at what that grade data looks like through the present member belly i guess i could um do that i presented that to you in the board connect but i was wondering what the interest was we we captured
043data to ask questions so i wonder what your question is that you want to have answered no i'm just wondering how i saw in the i did not see well if the if the grade if it's in i read what's in board connect i'm just curious whether the program is doing what we need it to do for all kids and since we're looking at uh grades i would just like to see that program since it is new um i would just like to see how kids are doing if it's doing what we want it to do that's all simple sure um remember uh bellamy through the president um the data for asd virtual was placed in the board connect and we can certainly uh put that in this same presentation style if you'd like okay
044now if it's in board connect that's fine i saw what was in there but i didn't i don't remember seeing the ethnic breakdown of the grades so we could do it in this format just the grades were okay no my question has to do with the ethnic breakdown of the grades not not just just like you it's just clumped into here with all the other asd at home programs and would you like all of the programs broken down by ethnic that would be fine but i i have a sense of what's happening at frontier and family because of their history asd virtual is pretty new and i just i just i just i'm just curious as to whether it's you know how is it is it attracting kids the way we want them to be
045attracted um and you know uh because it's new and maybe we need to wait a little longer because it is new maybe we need to wait a little longer to look at uh to make that assessment but no i'm just curious as to how how the what what what are the ethnic breakdowns of the kids who are in uh of everybody in that afd program we can do that okay thank you next step board member hildy i'm just looking at our student outcome folder here and um on the who for the multi-ethnic student my understanding of why we do um breakouts for you know white black uh alaska native pacific islanders because we're looking to see if there's a discriminatory component i mean that that is my understanding of why we have these kind of
046breakouts but when there's a multi-ethnic category i don't get any information that matches it's not useful i don't know anything from that category so i understand it's the federal um the federal guideline but i know we've talked in the past there that asd does have some breakdown of it and and i don't know the answer on how to get it into a useful way and maybe it can't be this year even but still that category is not provide any information but through the president to member hilda um i i understand so that two or more races uh and and perhaps um mike fleckenstein in capturing data uh this is all of these categories are defined initially by the federal government and uh in selecting that can you share a little bit about that two or
047more races um that's so you know that is a self-selection yeah uh through through the president to uh remember hildy um you know dean is right right on in that it it is a federal um uh category that we we used to disaggregate on it is 100 self-selecting and so there's no um you get to just pick what whatever you want to there's no um there's you know no proof on any of those things and so i get um where you're at we do not break that down further from from that particular um selection but we do with all of the other categories that are available that folks self-select as well and i know that's not very much we don't have much information either but um i i would like to share with the board
048that um i think that the breakdown of uh ethnicity uh and race and perhaps student groups would really be advantageous for all of these uh because the um if we go back to the where i was actually the first um keep going uh for the schools uh if you uh take a look each of these uh almost all the programs padaya family partnership and frontier almost all doubled in school size so i think there's going to be a significant difference um remember bellamy in the data that was prior to this time as well as this so we'll provide those for all of them uh because uh uh family partnership uh increased by about 750 students um the podea school increased almost by and frontier charter i believe it was about 150. so uh very different
049student groups that they have and uh interesting there there has been uh in just anecdotally from schools when this whole system moved everyone to online different things that there was a difference between a traditional homeschool family and understanding the service and then not so they they really had to work with their families to understand the services they have and that they don't same thing with asd virtual and then asd in school it really is talking about what we can do and what we can't just because we all had to navigate so that's a good point and we'll break it down for all of those thank you thank you member holloman um the superintendent bishop when you mentioned that the different programs went up by so much are you saying these numbers aren't really accurate any
050longer that that there are a lot more in these various programs than what or i guess what i'm asking this is the follow-up beginning of fall of 2020 and they've since added a lot of students um to the uh through the president to member holloman uh from last year i think the point was being made that from from a board member that i know all those other programs because they're just the way they were but i do want to bring up that we had such an outflux of uh asd in school to asd out of school programs that from fy 20 to fy21 these programs doubled and sometimes went over doubled so their student counts increased significantly family partnership uh had a charter for 750 and they served over 1500 students this year but these
051are just the secondary students and that's true for all of these uh padea as well as frontier and family partnership significant increases just like asd virtual into the out migration into a some type of asd at-home program gotcha i've forgotten this was just secondary and that's where the numbers weren't collecting for me thank you all right last call for any other board member uh questions for dr bishop all right we're gonna go ahead and move on in our agenda next up i believe is our public testimony i will read a kind of 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 it informs our decision-making process there's a one-hour time slot at the beginning of the meeting testimony in
052excess 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 additionally it is not our practice that board members answer questions or engage in discussion with members of the public this is your time to speak an hour time to listen the board will consider all information shared by the public and when deemed necessary issues raised in testimony will be referred to the administration for follow-up so far i have i believe 10 people signed up on the list we're going to start with speaker number one on the telephone dave carter dave are you on the line with us tonight [Music] and as
053a friendly reminder it is star six to unmute can you hear me now we sure can thank you so much for joining us you have three minutes and the floor is yours good evening i am dave carter a retired attorney living in anchorage i am interested in education in civics education and keeping the public informed about how our legal system system works because members of the public only have three minutes for these comments one cannot begin to provide even a portion of the info which is relevant to you here but my telephone number is 907-349-4980 and i encourage anyone to give me a call i can refer you to relative relevant information which has been kept from you about the election and the impeachment trial there was a lot of unnecessary confusion about who won
054our 2020 presidential election some of this confusion led to people storming our seat of government our capitol building in washington dc on january six these rioters fought with capitol building police officers one officer died many were injured this should never have happened uh it should never happen again there was no confusion about our 2020 presidential election results fox news and other news organizations called joe biden the winner on november 7. 81 million 283 495 americans voted from across america for joe biden this was 7 million more votes than mr trump received it was not close and mr biden received electoral college votes when only 270 are required to win mr trump received the same 306 electoral votes in 2016 and called it a massive win so with 7 million more votes and the same 306
055electoral college votes the 2020 election was indeed a massive win for joe biden and kamala harris the only presidential candidate trying to steal the election by lying to the american people was mr trump along with his supporters in the big lie they lost some 60 court cases including at our supreme court the good news for all of us is that the liars lost and facts evidence and science and our legal system won in 2020 good government one remember those regular press briefings at the white house by a press secretary to keep americans informed science is back too dr fauci explained that president biden told him and others to let science control decisions things will be much better if we want them to be we are back to being the united states rather than the divided
056states but we have to honor truth transparency facts evidence and respect our legal system a good education helps and we need our elected officials to restore honesty and government please call me if you have any questions dave carter 349-4980 thank you next up speaker number two on the telephone daniel kemp daniel are you with us on the line tonight yes can you hear me we sure can you have three minutes in the floor [Music] all right uh good evening everyone my name is danielle kemp i'm a retired army combat officer teacher in the asd the parent of two asd students i'm also the co-chair of the aaa's human and civil rights committee and president of the newly formed alaska coalition of bypoc educators so i i usually call in and try to convince the school
057board to do something or another but tonight i want to speak uh directly to the people listening to this broadcast instead anchorage is a town where almost half its residents are non-white this large and broad bipark voting constituency that is not being served by the conservative members of this school board how might you ask did i come to such a startling conclusion well it's because of several of their actions inactions and unanswered questions like why they're so willing to put our bipod communities in covert danger by sending our kids and teachers back to school without all the cdc recommended protections knowing it will hurt our communities the most and when they do why do they have why have they gone out of their way to not provide equitable educational access to quarantining students who just
058want to zoom class with their teachers and classmates why aren't the first peoples and the denina recognized and acknowledged each morning at the start of each school day like they should be why have they not yet condemned white supremacy and white privilege as the root causes of the insurrection on january 6th why were they trying to sabotage the new anti-racism policy installed federally mandated external equity audits why have they done what have they done to shrink the bipart teacher gap where less than one percent of all teachers are indigenous in a city with about 23 native alaskan population that's a 22 percent gap representation matters why haven't they modernized and corrected a biased curriculum which sanitizes and whitewashes the horrors of colonization and wrongly favors education from the viewpoint of the colonizer instead of the
059colonized history looks and sounds a lot different if your people have been under the boot or knee or whip of the oppressor look you and i both know that the conservative board members are not equipped to meet the needs of our community's most marginalized populations which also happen to be almost half the whole city of anchorage there is a lack of empathy and desire for understanding from these members that should frankly disqualify them from office they hold they may disagree and look at you know uh but they may disagree but look at what they do and not what they say we need a school board we need school board members who will look out for all of the asd and not make excuses just to look after the white or wealthy if they're not willing
060or able to do that then they do not deserve your vote this coming april thank you for your time and have a good night next up speaker number three dr paula williams actually [Music] good evening i am dr paula williams co-chair for alaska black caucus education committee and i testified to the recruitment and retention for teachers of color black students comprised about 15 of all k through 12th grade students although they increasingly attend schools with at least 75 percent non-white enrollment as do hispanic and american indian students 58 60 to 30 respectively according to the national center for education statistics a report by the learning policy institute reveals that when teachers of color are with students of color that the the academic performance improves graduation rates are improved and that black students of color are
061more likely to attend college the assistant for american progress also incites into these effects noting black teachers are less likely than non-black teachers to perceive black students behavior as disruptive and all students regardless of race report feeling cared for and academically challenged to excel by teachers of color according to the learning policy institute support alaskan black caucus value the relationship we have formed with alaska's school district and along with the last school district we want to ensure equity regarding education provided to black and brown youth taking this into account what hiring policies and procedures has alaska school district put in place in order to hire more teachers of color and how will ancient school districts ensure the hiring process is a fair and just process for teachers of color thank you for this time next
062up speaker number four shelly krajisik shelly are you on the line tonight hello hi thank you hello yes you have three minutes and the floor is yours thank you very much shelly krizak from the national education association invited here today to visit with you on behalf of some of the educators in alaska in anchorage and i will tell you i almost feel like what i needed to say has been said for me i came to speak with you today about the anti-racist policy that you have been considering for a while now and i have heard tremendous commentary both from the superintendent and from board member mitchell about some of the learnings that you have engaged in you see this isn't about saying you're doing things wrong it's about doing what maya angelou said when you
063know better you do better it's about the youth in the story from board member mitchell we had you know that there are incredible educators phenomenal teachers reaching those students every day throughout anchorage but we need to make sure that those are not isolated incidences we need to make sure that their reach is systemic and that all of the students of the anchorage school district are getting access to the high quality education instead of just some some few like like the example i know that you can lead by example and that you can show what a diverse and truly representative of this nation's school district you are by leading with passing this anti-racist policy and taking tremendous steps forward i am very excited to be able to celebrate the passage of this policy i look forward
064to hearing about the successful vote thank you for leading by example thank you for honoring the struggles of the students of color of the anchorage school district and thank you for studying the data that says that they need more and that you can do more i look forward to seeing that success thank you next step speaker number five don bachelman don are you on the line with us tonight and don if you can hear us would be star six to unmute all right we will move on to speaker number six on the telephone taketa parker takeda are you on the line with us tonight [Music] takeda if you can hear us would be star six to unmute moving on to speaker number 7 antavia hamilton and tavia are you with us tonight good evening school
065board happy black history month i'm mchavey hamilton a member of the alaska black caucus education committee the abc's priorities at present are the health and safety of our students parents and community equity and curriculum and opportunity and the recruitment and retention of teachers of color on that note i'd like to thank the school board for voting unanimously in favor of renaming east anchorage high school to the betty davis east anchorage high school as a former t-bird and alaskan born african-american i'm pleased to see the continued progress towards increasing the culture of equity in the anchorage school district senator davis who wore many hats during her distinguished life has championed various causes of alaska for as long as i can remember my family and i personally are thankful for her involvement in education and i look
066forward to the school's ribbon-cutting ceremony as part of the abc education committee i'm excited to continue on the path nurture davis has so graciously pay for us all by increasing equity on all levels within the asd i thank you for your work on the anti-racist instructional equity instructional education policy and hope there will be continued development to contin and to include more community input and include more substantive wording outlining tangible steps and specific specific supports on the advancement of students who are traditionally left behind across the united states african americans make up roughly one percent of education leaders and they make up less than three percent of all teachers it's important to highlight all the positives the people who take the steps to educate our next generation are accomplishing in our schools at abc we'd
067like to see a more diverse representation of teachers in the classroom having diverse educators in the classroom is a way of breaking down the bias and systemic issues in the education system behind every successful student is an outstanding educator that being said on behalf of the alaska black caucus education committee i'm proud to announce proud to announce the black excellence and education award in celebration of black history month each winner will receive 500 the winners will have a proven track record of answering the call to inspire academic achievement and teach our future leaders nominations are open to both current and retired teachers and teaching assistants to nominate a deserving teacher or teacher assistant of color please visit www.thealaskablackcaucus.com again to nominate a deserving teacher or teacher assistant who identifies as black please visit www.thealaskablackcaucus.com nominations
068must be received by february 22nd happy black history month and thank you for your time thank you next up speaker number eight david boyle david are you on the line tonight if you can hear us it would be star six to unmute all right we'll go back up to some of the previous speakers speaker number five uh on the telephone don bachelman don are you on the line with us tonight can you hear me we sure can thank you three minutes and the floor is yours awesome thank you um so i wanted to talk about the anti-racism policy but more specifically um okay i'll start my name is don bachman um i am both a teacher and a parent of asd children i've been listening to the board meetings quite regularly and two meetings ago
069i listened to the whole thing that transpired with member donnelly bringing up the uh equity audit and bringing to our attention that it was being conducted by what is obviously a biased party um that pushes critical race theory but that was a very good question for him to bring up uh and i was kind of disturbed by the way that that was um accepted by people uh other people of the board as an attack i felt like listening to him asking that question which i feel like is a reasonable question why are we having this audit conducted by a biased party um i think it showed a lot of bias to to the opposite of that um so i before going into the racism portion of that um i did look more into critical race
070theory and i was wondering why the school district would be uh conducting such an audit with a company like that and the most that i can find is um that sorry i'm i'm a little bit nervous here um that it's the only way that the school district could justify such an audit um that would be able to come up with the measures they're looking for and i have to admit i still don't know a whole lot about it but what i do know is that it's based in the theory that our entire culture is based in white supremacy which is kind of dangerous sounding to me now going further on that um the testimony that i heard that night was also incredibly disturbing uh one in particular really got to me and it was a
071declaration from i believe it was another teacher that there's no racism against white people and i couldn't just i couldn't believe it i couldn't accept it i don't need the basis for that argument to be explained to me i know it very well and i don't accept it this theory the critical race theory and others like it asks you under ask you to understand a group or group's particular feelings and viewpoints on the matter of racism well at the same time explaining to a white person why their feelings or viewpoints are not valid that no matter what you do no matter what you say you do no matter what your experience is as a white person you are either purposefully or unknowingly racist and that gets into the whole equality um of opportunity versus equity
072discussion um and if we're going to be talking about equity i think that we need to define that very clearly because as a teacher i cannot see how it is even possible to for for a teacher that loves her students so much how it's even possible to discuss what equity of outcome looks like um hello hi there you've hit your three minutes okay all right thank you thank you so much um our next speaker on the telephone speaker number six takeda parker taketa are you on the line tonight and dakita if you can hear us it'd be star six to unmute okay and if for some reason it's not working you can go ahead and hang up and call back i do have one person in the board room to speak um [Music] i'll come
073back i'll give him a chance since he's here um sir if you want to come up to the podium we have a microphone for you yep this is edgar blatchford and so for those listening in i will try speaker number eight after this and so edgar we have a timer that will show up on the on the screen right down below here you'll you'll see a timer and so um when you're ready you have three minutes and the floor is yours thank you very much for allowing me to be here i'll be very very quick i understand the importance of time it's gonna be much better we're gonna be able to hear every everybody will be to hear you better if you're able to hold it thank you thank you very much for allowing me
074to be here you know this reminds me very much of sewer city council meetings and they were started about the same time you start and end about the same time you end but i want to talk about diversity and i'll keep it short the importance of diversity i teach at the university of alaska anchorage i've been there since 1995. and one thing i have seen in the classroom is that the importance of students to have a role model and when i look back in history and i was looking at some of the very important people in alaska history some of whom have been forgotten or erased and i'll just bring three of them up quickly and uh david you might remember willard bowman you know it was probably one of the most respected legislators we
075had starting in the 1960s into the 1970s he was african-american chairman of house finance he went into a room great deal of respect and when he left the room a great deal of admiration the other person was the gigero water sometimes when we think about the iditarod trail we think the iditarod trail starts here in anchorage it really starts in sewer the sewage gnome trail the reason you had the iditarod trail was because one of the new year new york banking firms the airmen bank was interested in building a bank on the coast and the sewer chamber of commerce decided to be the first to build a winter route to the gnome gold fields and it just happened to go through iditarod and the trail became known as the iditarod trail the bank is still
076there you can go to the safe right now and you can go find old or your utility bills if that's what you're interested in the third person is a person i knew and i was cecil barnes uh he's no longer with us but he was the founder of chugach's alaska corporation very influential and he made the sacrifice of leading the native corporation before it was a native corporation but it was a native association made up of local people who were not paid very much if at all but i think it's important to have diversity in the classroom that's all i wanted to say and thank you very much for allowing me to speak [Music] thank you thank you would like to give speaker number eight david boyle another opportunity david boyle are you on the
077line tonight if you are and you can hear us it's star six to unmute all right no response i'm gonna go ahead and move on in the agenda um so just a friendly reminder to everybody that we do have our written uh public testimony attached to our um board docs agenda online for board members to read and members of the public to read wanted to highlight one of them that is out there the aea president has submitted the aea letter requesting to begin negotiations uh in accordance with board policy 4143 and he asked for it to be attached to his written testimony tonight so we have attached it for everybody to read and with that in place um that allows us to um authorize the superintendent and her team to begin negotiations so and public
078testimony is out there for everybody next up on the agenda is our superintendent update and at this time i'd like to turn it back over to dr bishop thank you madam president and i have a very brief update and i wanted to touch on just two items that i had some questions from board members uh in regard to really i think our constituency and our customers out in anchorage uh asking uh for clarity so wanted to present those here tonight one is on health services and our update with vaccine as well as uh our travel and the second is uh the asd just a a small update on asd sports and really where we are right now so with that health services update i'd like to turn it over to our chief operating officer tom
079raw thank you dr bishop uh through the board president i'm actually going to pass to our director of the health services miss jennifer patrandis to provide this evening's update and then we're happy to entertain any questions at the end of the superintendent's update coveted vaccines we are very excited that last week the state announced that all educators including support staff were eligible to get the copic vaccine and we had a great response from our staff and staff from the private institutions as well as the colleges around with that asd has given a lot of doses 15 000 total which includes first and second doses and those were clinics that were open to the community travel guidance as a lot of you have seen the travel guidance for the state of alaska has now switched to
080recommendations the recommendations are now you need a negative test but there is no more strict social distancing for five days it is now strict social distancing until your test results are back however the municipality of anchorage is not going to change to this new guidance they want to keep it more strict and keep the old guidance so asd will follow suit but the continuation of a negative test plus five days of strict social distancing before returning to school and or work additionally the cdc came out with new guidance last week as well on february 12th those eight key indicators that we have been talking about since about july have now changed over to two new indicators which is the case rate for the past seven days as well as the percentage of positive cases in
081the last seven days in our community and as you can see we're in the red for the case rate and in the blue for the percentage of positive cases the key thing that the cdc says that we need to be looking at is that k through 12 schools should really be the last thing to close in the community if our mitigation measures in the community are not working and we're having a lot of cases and they should be the first to reopen as soon as we have those mitigation measures in place [Music] thank you and if there's any questions we'll just finish this part up very quickly i'm just going to run through some just very quick uh pictures and uh to let you know that we did as you know back from january have
082sports starting in our schools uh that they were postponed basketball and those things that started before christmas uh they just started locally only at high schools but then competitions began you can go ahead and just flip through the pictures um and uh but we have since moved into competitions in regard to uh when we had our emergency ordinances change uh their guidance is still uh very uh strict if you will uh to the city of anchorage and there's some concerns coming up uh in which the board i i want you to be uh informed uh because the uh criticisms of it are coming criticisms of you of principles of administration of coaches and the criticisms really are a result of the emergency order uh 18 and so i've asked our secondary senior director dr kirsten
083johnson to really share some of those updates so that we we really understand we are thrilled our kids are out there they're out there with masks on i am so happy for this our kids need an outlet and i'm a strong supporter of activities um whether they any kind of co-curricular sports and and others clubs uh likewise just for our young people and uh just wanted to share where we are and the discussions around eo18 [Music] all right thank you dr bishop through the president to the board um i just wanted to to let you know um that our kids are having a great time um in their athletics and it's one of the few connectors right now that kids have um in our secondary schools that isn't through a digital computer device and um
084i'm just really happy that we're able to continue that opportunity for them right now we have nordic ski girls and boys basketball cheerleading for our basketball teams girls hockey bowling drama debate forensics and esports all happening in our high schools and i'm happy to report um just as in the fall that we have really strong mitigation plans our mitigation plans are working we still have no um team to team transmission through our athletic events um and um like any other event that we're hosting in the district we do have kids that are individually quarantining um but those mitigation efforts are working and they're working really well and actually we've become a model for the entire state of alaska and and are are advising many other districts that way so um as a reminder we have
085an individual mitigation plan for every athletic um sport that's going on and for every one of our activities as well so just a few highlights around our winter sports thus far our girls hockey program um just concluded um they part of their mitigation efforts were having an outdoor season so our girls in the heart of winter that were playing hockey were out playing like old school style hockey um outside on the ice rink and um so this picture you see here is of the state or the regional championship for girls hockey and the south bartlett team defeated shuyac eagle river in overtime and it was a really great game so their season just concluded about 10 days ago our nordic skiers are about ready to compete in the state championship this coming weekend um due
086to complications with eo 18 the championship was originally slated to take place at kincaid it has been moved out to the matsu valley um at government government peak is where they're hosting the event so our kids will travel out there and compete this weekend um part of the mitigation efforts for state championships are um certain races happening on certain days so they're staggered um as opposed to all of the cross-country skiers showing up at the event all at once and so that's um one way we're trying to to make it safe for our kids and and control uh the numbers that are there so the uh cheerleaders and our basketball players are now competing as dr bishop explained originally they started out um in a practice only stance in january when the eo was uh
087updated they were able to continue on with their their games and so now they're in the full uh competitive season at this point their state championship is coming up in march um there is a likelihood that the state championship that was originally slated for here in anchorage will also be moved to the matsu valley in the near future and then just of note our our wrestling programs and our boys hockey programs that typically take place in the winter are postponed until the fourth quarter and most of that has to do with um the contact level of those sports um and then lastly our middle school sports um which have not been operating thus far in school year will resume fourth quarter when we're back in person um and those will be limited to intramural activities
088at the school level but kids will still have the opportunity fourth quarter to get involved at the middle school level so yeah and thank you dr kirsten specifically to emergency order 18 uh the if the tournament for basketball state tournament is moved to the valley emergency order 18 does not allow um or says that we should not send students out to the valley and so we're in discussion uh understanding that we want that opportunity for our students if that event is out there uh that's specifically stated in the indoor attachment uh if you will not the outdoor attachment so we did have uh the ability to go to government peak uh with our cross-country uh but consequently i think um many people and many teams that are traveling into south central will stay and reside
089in anchorage and then drive out there and then come back because we have the hotel we have the infrastructure for the people but yet they're running the race so um that was part of our argument of just keeping them here as well uh under the strict guidelines that anchorage has but um our kids are traveling they've already made that decision for saturday uh we are still advocating to keep the tournament local uh however if it is moved then we will advocate for our children to be allowed to travel thank you anything else dr johnson no that concludes my update thank you dr bishop thank you glad they're back glad they're back at it do any board members have any questions for dr bishop um on her superintendent report [Music] member mitchell i do want to
090just say thank you for that explanation about the relocation of our our sports that was helpful all right moving on in the agenda uh next up uh vice president bellamy with the consent agenda thank you i moved to approve the consent agenda consisting of memorandum number 82 which is the personnel report uh regular session minutes for december 15 and regular session minutes for uh our regular session minutes for january 5th 2021. second i have a first and a second are there any board members with any comments or questions on the consent i agenda my zoom in just one quick second i know what i'm looking for all right um katie if you could please do a roll call vote um emily [Music] yes okay thank you uh member mitchell yes remember merced yes remember holloman
091yes remember hildy yes remember donnelly yes remember bellamy yes and president michaelis no [Music] oh let me share this right i almost forgot to put it back up and the consent agenda passes with six years and one day uh next up is our action items and i will read a brief uh statement because we do have public testimony [Music] before some of our items the procedures for agenda item testimony are as follows an action 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 three minutes to testify when 30 seconds remain a time 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
092finally calling for the official vote the voting results will be displayed on the screen and madam vice president if you could please begin our first item i moved to approve asd memorandum number 077 the attached anchorage school district six-year capital improvement plan for july 1st 2021 to june 30th 2027. okay all right i have a first and a second i have one speaker on memo077 uh mr nyle williams i'm saying that right uh niall are you on the line with us uh yes madam president thank you for joining us you have three minutes and the floor is yours on this one memo item yes through the president my name is niall sherwood williams i'm also running for school board ce um with regards to m07 i would like to oppose this item being passed this
093evening on a number of grounds first the listing of attachment b lists three meetings the september 29 october 6th and october 12th meetings none of these meetings were properly posted to the public as in accordance with the alaskan open meetings act which has been discussed three times during this meeting tonight whenever there's a meeting with three or more board members that's going to affect the public interest you have to have it be posted in a standard location so that the public can be able to testify on these items a capital improvement plan with a backlog of 780 million dollars absolutely affects the public interest next i would like to drill a little bit further down as to why we are so far backlogged it says within the documents that asd has over 91 facilities that
094have a total value of two billion dollars how can there be a backlog of work of 780 million on two billion dollars in property are they really falling apart that much i would say they're probably not how about we take and we sell half of the facilities and improve the other half with the revenue from the sales it's time that we stop putting our children into schools that look like jails we wonder why we have such poor education results it's not because we're not throwing enough money at it through the president to every single member on that board there in person or over the computer screen it's time that we start holding ourselves accountable you have an unbalanced budget and a huge backlog of work we need to sell some of these district buildings and
095refund the money to the taxpayers and to the students families so that they can properly educate their their students we have over half of the students at home right now doing remote learning to some degree if you were to refund the total amount of around twelve thousand dollars per student to the families for each student for this past school year it would more than pay for electronic connectivity and for charter school payments for these students it's time that we stop educating our children in jail and then expecting them to have ivy league results that's all thank you madam president and school board thank you all right i'm going to open the floor for board discussion are there any board members with comments or questions on asd memorandum zero seven seven uh member donnelly and then
096mr holloman thank you madam president madam president i had a question about the percent of program capacity data um it's so radically different between 2020 and 2019 and i was just wondering is is that the covid impact revealing itself in that data um madam president may i just request that our chief of operations can you quote the specific pages we're looking at and we can comment on them page 55 on the elementary aspects for 2019 versus page 49 on the elementary aspects for 2020. [Music] through the uh through the president to uh member donnelly at first if if i can't if i can have uh mr fenesef and mr vichales brought over from attendees to panelists so i to to remember donnelly's point i mean i i can only offer an opinion but i i
097do believe and the numbers are significant and it's not just it's not an equal difference among school or regions from 2019 to 2020 as an example if you were to look at the elementary schools in the eagle river two gac area they're down 900 kids in the elementary schools alone that's significant i believe that is absolutely influenced by the the impact of coven 19 on the district yeah thank you that's what i suspected but i wasn't sure how the years were measured what the time periods were yes i do if you're uh we'll go ahead and give you one more and then we'll move on to the next one two okay one more i just want to continue my concern with this six-year plan that i've expressed many times here that there's 70 million dollars
098here for two new schools in a time when our schools are we're losing students and just a just a quick review and i'm going to go back to the not use the 2020 numbers because as we just identified those are influenced by the pandemic but going back to the 2019 numbers we've got elementary schools and once again i'm just going to look at in the core anchorage area and not on you know outliers you know where there some have special geographical isolation factors like hood 67 percent uh trail site 71 consume 75 occupancy um these numbers seem to cry out for consolidation and and alternatives to building new schools and fairview 64 north star 73 russian jack 67 where we have other schools where there there is or we are over the standardized optimum capacity
099uh i'm really glad to see on the agenda [Music] a much more robust process of considering boundaries because that's certainly these numbers are indicating that really needs to be done thank you [Music] bishop uh through the president to member donnelly uh thank you and i just wanted to share that uh we do have recommendations and have had recommendations uh for about 18 months in regard to boundary changes that would take place over time and we did uh pull that off of our discussion with the pandemic hit last year and so i too am happy to see that there is a set review every 10 years to ensure that we right size our boundaries it always is going to be a personal emotional move but it's certainly for the whole of anchorage and our taxpayers i
100do agree that uh right-sizing our schools is the right thing to do next up board member holloman [Music] um yeah i just want to say that i think it's important to say the public that adopting this plan doesn't commit us to anything it's a document that's all that we've been up for amendment and changes things changed through a year it's a plan but it's a plan that can be scrutinized and altered as we move ahead um also i've been careful to assert to every community council over the last uh three or four weeks no bonds this spring and when we entered the two-year cycle a lot of people said oh you're just going to say that now and you're going to be back with more bonds in the spring we're truly not and i can't
101imagine that anybody's unhappy about that that we do have longer to look at our plans and see if they need to be tweaked and altered uh as well as next year we do get to spend that time and prepare a package that we think the public will accept so uh you know in voting on this it matters and it matters how it is but it doesn't mean it's cast in stone and we can continue to look at the details of it all through the coming year thank you thank you next up is member marsette yeah i just want to echo what mr holliman said having been on that committee for several years that committee does i mean it kind of looks a new at the new information new guidelines and i suspect that the board
102will have some tough decisions uh next year when they look at a bond um hopefully the capacity study will be done before that time i don't know if it will or not but i think it'll have a huge impact especially with the influx of housing that's being built we're seeing new construction in the uh sand lake area which we all know that those schools are overcrowded so you know things change i mean it's a plan um it's a plan that gets re-looked at every year so thank you member hildy thank you and um you know i to remember donald's plan on needing to revisit this you know i think we all agree that the pandemic has created a lot of changes within our school population demographics on number of students the the memorandum for you
103know school boundary reconsideration that's going to go to that as well but also when we talk about long-term planning you know when we have a six-year capital plan coupled with multi-year bonds it's common practice in lower 48 to get to three-year and five-year bonds when we get to these more stability um plans we don't have so much of um i guess the stress in our community of knowing what's coming is it going to change this year because it's true this could just change next year and that's not maybe the optimal way to um plan for our capitol buildings if we can get to a three year even a five-year cycle which is it growing and you know we can plan out well and use our resources in a different way um so that we can
104promote stability around the whole district [Music] all right i'm not seeing any other board member oh remember dudley go ahead there yep go ahead i just wanted to say something for the public's education um well one of the two schools that's on this bond for 30 million dollars or in this plan for a 30 million dollar new school is inlet view and it shows and i'm once again i'm going back to the 2019 data because i don't want to be influenced by the covet impact you know not the 2020. i'm looking at the 2019 um as being a 147 percent um occupancy but we know from the debate we had on this that only two to three years before that it didn't show that it was overcrowded anywhere that significant and it was only after
105the school district amended how it measured the crowding you know the capacity that it went up that high and if you look to the immediate schools in that right a budding next to it that zone turning is at 81 north stars at 73 um denali montessori is at 84 fairview is one school away and they're at 64 so it seems like there's just a lot of other options involved there to me and there was strong support from the neighborhood in fact for just doing a major remodel and not a full teardown and rebuild of that school also we know that a huge percentage of that capacity and i'm forgetting the exact number but i think it's over 20 percent is driven by the administration's choice to allow people to opt into that particular school there's
106a large population i think much more than a typical school of folks who are taking their children there that don't live in that neighborhood so i think that's a very very significant factor also when we're going to be investing 30 million dollars thank you all right now oh member healthy yeah and just to clarify and let the inlet view a little bit they did say they stopped taking zone exemptions once they hit the over capacity and it was just for siblings so they addressed that and there was a lot of support to rebuild inlet view as the oldest building in our community a high demand area um so not not that that's 100 of either but you know we heard both and we need to be fair and what the board decided is what the
107board decided to put on the bond thank you remember donnelly and i knows that in i'm very supportive of doing a remodel there because that school does need to be upgraded i agree with that all right at this time katie if you could please do a roll call vote [Music] emily yes remember donnelly no remember holloman yes remember hildy yes member mitchell yes vice president bellamy yes remember merced yes president michaelis yes asd memorandum zero seven seven passes with six years and one day next up i move to approve asd memorandum number 084 and pass recommended revisions to board policy 5116 school attendance boundaries [Music] thank you i have a first in a second i have one person signed up for public testimony uh niall williams are you back on the line with us yes
108madam president you have three minutes and the floor is yours thank you for your time madam president niall sherwood williams looking to be the victorious member for school board ce is speaking to m084 with regards to the school attendance boundaries it states within the document that we shall take into account racial and ethnic balance i would like to make a motion through the president to the members of the board right now to amend this document to strike the words take into account racial and ethnic balance and substitute them for take into account economic disparities when speaking to disparities economic disparities more often affect a child's outcome when it comes to education when you have lower income homes the likelihood that parents are working at night increases therefore creating a environment which is not as studious
109where the students ability to learn is lessened those lower income families are also less likely to have electronic connectivity computers and the like which during this past year with the bioterrorist weapon of the covid19 virus and how that's affected our children and their learning it is greater affected those of lower income brackets next i would like to speak to attendance as related to the school board according to sir that's not on the that's not part of this agenda item so we can't have discussion on that this is only on uh asd memorandum 084 through the president to the members of the board i'd like to make a motion to amend this to reiterate the fact that board members have to be physically present at meetings 75 percent of the time over a two-year rolling period
110there are currently there are currently four members of the board all right mr williams thank you um for your testimony on zero eight four um we're going to go ahead and open the floor up for board member discussion at this time member hildy thank you well this is one that i am very excited about um when i started on the board everybody was talking about school boundaries and when are we gonna look at capacity studies and all these things and the big issue is it's very hard to do and it's very stressful because we love that our families love their schools and we love they're invested and generations there and those are all wonderful things that we want to continue um but we still do have to do boundary reviews as part of managing our
111capital um investments so the solution that we hope will work and that i am so glad that our board is supporting is to start this next fall with a boundary review right after you finish the census then there'll be a 10-year cycle um it doesn't solve the stress of doing a boundary review that's still going to be a hard process for our community but it is something that we can put put into a regular cycle to um help people anticipate in making their housing purchases um if there's a you know school they really want to get to they might not choose to be on a borderline or they might you know look into zone exemptions because we have wonderful choices for that as well in our district so i'm very excited it still gives the
112superintendent flexibility if there was a bubble in one area or new housing you know smaller changes to recommend to the board in between but a comprehensive so this is coming if you know the board approves this in 2022 we will start a comprehensive boundary review for our entire school district to look at our capacity to address some of overcrowding or undercrowding it could include consolidation or closure those are things that we'll have to work through but um a good use of our um public dollars so um i'm excited thank you next up is board member marsette uh yes i'm madam president i just want to do a point of order with the last speaker i felt like he was campaigning when he said something about being a school board member that's not allowed and so
113i know that he signed up to testify again and um so i just want to point that out understood member donnelly yeah this is starting to remind me a little bit about being in the state senate when you're you're working on an issue and then somebody brings up something that's not what you'd even thought about before um and i realized i really support this i think there's good work done on this but i'm reading the paragraph that the the testimony was about and it does seem to not include economic disparities and we do know that economic disparity is one of the if not the most critical factor in students success or failure in school [Music] and it doesn't seem to address that now i know that isn't what this is all about and i acknowledge
114that but it does seem kind of unless it's someplace else that i don't see it it's kind of glaring that that isn't mentioned there because i do think that that's such an important everybody seems to agree that that's a big factor that it ought to be part of the consideration for these districts and you can imagine you know we have a you know um there's certainly uh is a history of you know especially not so much in anchorage but you know uh where districts have drafted uh so that all the rich people are in one school and and people who are not so rich or in other schools and i don't want that to happen and i think it's a legitimate factor in considering boundaries is try to balance things out as much as possible
115um i'm not being critical at all the work the committee did because the committee did great work on what they were doing assigned to do and trying to do here i have no problem with the proposed change but i'm just wondering if it's appropriate this time to consider that issue also [Music] remember hildy um i i agree with remember donnelly's point i don't know that i want like i haven't thought about it i guess is what i would say i mean i thought of it like the general idea i agree with what you're saying and i know that's a practice in historical and perhaps in other districts so i i share the general concern um how it would fit into this policy editing today i don't feel like i would want to like amend that
116on the fly but i'm we can amend this and then keep it in governance and you know even this summer because it's not going to start until 2022 so you know we can look at it this summer and check that language if that's something you're comfortable with um let me go to member holloman and then over to member donnelly um number one i do think it's important we emphasize for people that pick up on this this doesn't mean we're changing any boundaries um and i think when we talk to community councils we want to mention that because the idea that we are will generate a lot of interest this makes sure that we look at it and we and we look for issues secondly asd boundaries are drawn to try to get a mix of
117economic backgrounds into schools i don't know that it's ever been written in policy but if you look at the boundaries and you know the neighborhoods in the city it it jumps out at you and there are there are complications from it because at some point in some situations it's clear the district drew some lines pretty far away from a school in order to create a diversity mix an economic diversity mix for certain buildings and it's a plus in certain ways and it is a hardship in other ways uh we we have schools that some kids have a 45-minute bus ride to when they're a 10-minute bike ride from a school that's closer to them um so it's it's going to be a really tough issue when we address it i assume with our history that
118when the plan is developed that will be part of it that we would be looking for ways to have mixes in our schools we always have uh i hope that's part of the culture we may want to put those words in i i personally wouldn't want to try to mess with the language tonight but i do think the larger memorandum um establishing the review is important enough that we should pass it tonight thank you member donnelly and then member marcet yeah i don't disagree with that but i do think that i am concerned of the lack of uh economic disparity in that paragraph and i would like if remember hildy's willing to put that on the agenda for the governance committee i i think it's appropriate to to discuss that and to work it through
119the committee process got thumbs up in the boardroom uh member marsette yeah i would i would agree with that there wow when um just talking about that one topic is going to raise all kinds of questions and it's really going to be um probably several meetings to come up with some type of verbage or whatever but um i think tonight's important to move ahead on the motion that we have dr bishop madam president i would just like to point out uh what remember hildy started this with is that this topic is quite emotional and perhaps even a little political and uh just coming up with a policy it's going to cause time and think about the actual issue of looking at them and so uh we take this very seriously and they are driven by
120uh data sets that and communicated well so again it doesn't mean that anything will be done but that we will consider we do have success in changing boundaries uh with schools in eagle river already uh not only with the um earthquake but prior to that time uh with busing and so we have had some success uh when you transition over time so there's an expectation so look forward to all this new work excuse me thank you not seeing any other hands raised we will go ahead and katie do it please do a roll call [Music] emily yes remember donnelly yes remember holloman yes vice president bellamy yes thank you remember mitchell yes remember merced yes remember hildy yes president michaelis yes isd memorandum number zero eight four passes with seven yays and zero nays next
121item please next item i move to approve asc memorandum number 085 and pass the recommended revision to board policy 6114 crisis response plan i think you have a first and a second i have one person signed up for uh public comment niall williams niall are you online with us tonight yes madam president thank you all right just a reminder you have three minutes and your comments need to be specific to memo085 the floor is yours [Music] thank you madam president and school board members in response to m085 i think especially during this past year this has become a trigger point for many members in the community speaking to the overreach of government control in this document here we allow for all asd buildings which i discussed in my earlier testimony is 91 buildings plus that
122they can be taken over by public agencies including the american red cross i mean you only give one example of what it may be but really as though we're in a fema state of control right now federal emergency management act control right now we're allowing for asd school buildings to be used by fema which is federal control police state mass vaccinations force vaccinations which are a bioterrorist weapon from communist china so we cannot allow for our public school buildings to be used for forced vaccinating the public and through the president through the school board we need to add an amendment to this since we're talking about emergencies here and the covid 19 bioterrorist weapon vaccination we need to add an amendment to this that no member of either the teachers union or of the staff
123or especially of the students will be discriminated against for their refusal whether it be medically religiously or otherwise in their refusal to take that covid19 shot that changes your entire genetic makeup of your body and it's a bio terrorist weapon that kills you so we need to make sure that the public knows that we're not going to mandate these vaccinations against the will of the people the sovereignty of one's body and what's put in it is the choice of the individual and especially the choice of the parent and as well i think that it's uh each time you want to talk about the vaccine at any point during the meeting you should have to say that it's a choice for each person individual choice individual freedom individual liberty vote nile sherwood williams school board ce
124i'll never close down the schools again thank you inappropriate he needs to be banned all right thank you board member conversation on asd memorandum 085 member hildy thank you well as governance chair i'm happy to introduce this member mitchell caught this grammar error during our regular review of our 6000 series so it's for parallel structure that we have plural emergencies disasters and now crises and that is the extent of the um the change thank you any other board member comments or questions on memo085 seeing none katie if you could please do a roll call vote emily yes remember hildy yes remember marsette yes remember holloman yes remember donnelly yes vice president bellamy yes remember holloman i would be voting twice oh i it didn't it didn't show up on my my thing thank you for
125confirming remember mitchell and president michaelis yes all right asd memorandum number zero eight five passes with seven years and zero nays and our last item please [Music] i moved to approve asd memorandum number the fiscal year 2020 2021 to 2022 preliminary budget and authorized an upper limit spending authority of 841 million three hundred eighteen thousand five hundred and twenty one dollars i have a first and a second and i do not have any public testimony at this time so i would like to open up the floor to board member comments or questions on them random086 remember marsette i just want to thank everyone this has been such a different experience from last year when we were looking at the budget and um i think we have we have done a good job as a board
126at uh seven board members to put forth our goals and our guard rails and as people say put our our our money where our our whatever is i'm not good at those sayings anyway um but i just want to thank um [Music] mr um anderson and mr ratliff and their team and just everyone within asd that has helped us put this budget together it really does focus where our focus needs to be and thank you board members for doing what's necessary for us to do to pass this budget thank you any other board member comments or questions board member bellamy yeah i'd just like to say i appreciate the time that was not just that that we all spent together but uh it was very clear that uh people were really um focused on um
127not just giving us the information but us using it to uh ask those questions uh and and uh really understand uh where we are this year and where we are likely to be in another year or two years so um i just want to say thank you to everyone the staff and my fellow board members next up is board member holloman and i just want to add thanks to the staff as well this is a budget that keeps our labor force intact that basically uh doesn't disrupt the district during a very disruptive time uh we'll come out on the other side in the fall and and see what things are like in a postcoded world and what what kind of what kind of shape and what kind of organization we want the district to have
128going into the future but uh i much appreciate the work they've done bringing us forward and how little controversy and disruption it represents assuming the legislature uh does fund us in a reasonable way and we could go forward so again to the superintendent and her team thank you very much next up is board member hildy thank you and i echo everyone's um gratitude and uh i think remember i had to step out so i don't know if remember marsha mentioned it but um you know i'm thankful for the coveted money to cover our deficit this year but still really looking out in the long term we have a fiscal cliff that's looming ahead and um just looking at the math of it we really have to start looking at innovative solutions for it and and
129bringing people into that that reality of how do we deliver education um in a way that meets all the needs of our students achieves our board goals and um i i would love to hear more people sharing their ideas for that just um encouraging when we go to community council meetings to start sharing um that that long-term need thank you [Music] next step board member mitchell um yeah i want to echo what everybody else said and thank the administration and our financial group and the curriculu you know everybody for this budget i am incredibly grateful that we are able to maintain um what we have for this coming year because there's going to be so much work to do i'm also grateful for the work the administration is doing to come up with some really
130robust summer programs and i'm also as member holloman mentioned earlier um grateful to all the work that was done last year in the area of bonds and getting our two-year bond passed and it's something i have brought up in all of our community council meetings as well thanking everybody for passing the two years worth of bonds because i think it really we this has just been a really unique challenging year in so many ways and it was wonderful aside from the efficiency and the savings and you know all of those things that come with having a two-year bond who could have guessed that we you know not having to spend the time on that would free us up to do what needed to be done this year so um i i echo what member hildy
131just said i'm so grateful that we have we can start out um you know looking at next year as a very um you know we're academically in really good shape to um have a great year and then beyond that is um very concerning so good to start those conversations thank you [Music] any other board member comments um i guess i'll just share my same gratitude to the administration and jim and his rockstar team that is awesome i know something of this magnitude is not easy i also echo some of the sentiments of board members that we are able to use federal funds and while it concerns me to use one-time money on a recurrent resource of all years to do that which is the whole purpose of this money this is the year to do
132it um we know our kids are going to need um you know some normalcy and some structure and um some much lower ptr numbers you know going into the classroom uh you know in august and so you know we've got work to do and it's going to you know take extra help to do it so um that's the one thing that offsets the use of one-time funds for me so i just appreciate all the hard work because none of this is easy so thank you seeing no more comments katie if you could please do a roll call though emily yes remember merced emphatic yes remember holloman yes remember hildy yes remember donnelly remember mitchell yes vice president bellamy margaret uh you are mute i think i'm sorry yes thank you and president michaelis yes asd
133memorandum number 086 passes with seven yays and zero days all right next up we only have one non-action item on the list it's the school start task force uh so if anybody wants to pull that item they sure can we did kind of do a back to school update uh before in the work session to catch folks up uh all right not seeing anybody jumping pull that our second public testimony we do not have any additional folks on the line we had one person from the earlier testimony he will be submitting his testimony in the written form since he was not able to join it the right way next up is school board administration comments i want to take i guess a little point of privilege on this particular one and give emily the opportunity
134to do the sab report uh which got missed uh on our agenda earlier and so we would love to hear from you miss emily on what you guys are up to and so if you would please have the floor [Music] yeah um we haven't met um as our sab group since our last board meeting so there's not a ton to catch you up on but we are about we're gonna have our meeting on thursday um we're gonna have some elections so that we can have more of an executive board um and then with that we'll be able to start discussions about what we want to see when we go back to school and i think that's one of our big goals is looking at the return to school and how that is affecting us and
135all those sort of big ideas of what we can do as students what we'd like to see from our administrations um so yeah really excited for our next meeting again it's on thursday if any board members ever want to attend one of our meetings um please let me know we'd love to have you guys there um if you can make it so i think that's it for sav thank you so much emily i'm so sorry i missed you earlier in the lineup but i'm so glad that you're here and you are voting with us i believe i am your school board rep and so i would love to be there on thursday if you can send me the information that would be wonderful are there any other school board or administration comments remember marsette so
136madam president i don't know if this is appropriate but um our last speaker neil williams i'm not sure i don't have his name in front of me but um i think we should um make sure this is not a platform for school board candidates um and i want to make sure that we set that very straight uh so that this isn't a repeat and i think if he were to sign up again we need to make it very clear to him and if he violates that i do think he should not be allowed to testify so we will have to take a look at how our policy is written because there are specific things i people that cannot be directly addressed but as for the rest of it and from what i've learned from many
137different trainings they get to say whatever they want whether we like it or not whether we agree with it or not and so i have strictly to go on what our policy says if that's something that we want to change then we can take a look at that um but right now that's i i do believe not that no one's allowed to campaign during a school board meeting am i incorrect i know there's not like not on school grounds per se so i'll have to see in other parts i'm speaking specifically to public testimony in meetings in that part of the policy where the rest of campaigning applies more towards employees and other stuff like that that are um governed by our board policies well i i yeah i would appreciate us looking into that
138place absolutely happy to do that um next up member mitchell yeah i um just wanted to um i'm sorry i lost my train of thought with that discussion i wanted to thank the administration for prioritizing teachers with the vaccinations i am very grateful that we are getting teachers vaccinated as quickly as possible and i'd also like to um you know as always thank our our principals our teachers our staff for not only you know doing yeoman's work all year but really doing an amazing job of getting people back in the buildings and keeping us all as safe as possible and transitioning from the virtual world to the in-person world which i know we all you know just very very much prefer so uh i just wanted to express my gratitude for all of that thank
139you next up is dr bishop uh thank you and i uh through the board president member mitchell i i just want to clarify for the public record that the school district could not prioritize teachers we advocated to the state for the prioritizing teachers um because we don't control the vaccination tears however what we did do was immediately when we knew that uh we had communication ready to go out immediately when the tears move to the next tier and we let individually our employees know to please hurry up and sign up for an open clinic so some signed up for hours some signed up for others but our ability to run the clinic was to fit as many people in the tier as possible through and so i would say that they're connected but just to
140be clear uh especially to the state we we could not prioritize teachers because the priority is given at the state level and i i i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt but i want i should have made that very clear that i meant i i am very thankful to the state administration to the governor the health you know the the people who make those decisions um that they are the ones who prioritized our teachers because obviously if we could have made that decision we would have made it long ago i didn't care thank you for clarifying that member hildy i just wanted to um just a special attention to our specialists you know i've gotten to go back into the schools and one of the highlights of always visiting schools to see the music room
141for me and you know i'm so thankful for everybody doing their work but you know that that's a hard part of all of this we've had um everybody just you know our specialists really going um above and beyond just to be all hands on deck um and i just can't help but imagine you know if i had to go teach an art class or you know we all took those general ed teaching classes and of course they're all unqualified but you know that's a big change and um a big lift and everyone i have talked to has done it with grace and joy and just a willingness to say what you need done um fit me in here and there and i'm just really impressed and thankful and i'm so excited for when we do
142get to have music again and art and pe and all those wonderful things um so something to look forward to as well remember holloman [Music] um i did want to say first of all you know a huge thank you to uh everyone that participated in putting on the clinics uh it's had a huge impact on public perception and of course the number of doses have been given out uh it has put the state in the forefront in terms of vaccinating people and and helping us get ahead i also wanted to just give a shout out to all staff across the district that have made the return to school happen in their buildings um not everybody's happy about it not everybody's unhappy about it but everything i've heard from people that are in the buildings is
143you can't tell that while while school is in session you can talk to people in the evenings after and get opinions but everybody is putting on a very positive face and making a great experience for the kids who are back and lastly one thing i did want to say to the public in general we have had a a great experience with public testimony not everybody that comes is happy with us and a lot of people express that unhappiness very clearly which is their right and one of the the great things about public testimony i also tune in to a lot of the administration or i'm sorry the assembly meetings and and they've really had some serious issues with people who have shown up to abuse the assembly uh people have come here to talk to
144us and they've made their their feelings quite clear but they've done it within the boundaries and then sat down i really appreciate that we do listen we do want to hear it uh we won't always enjoy it but uh i i do think that folks that have testified by and large have have done so in the right way and been respectful about it and i hope that that's something that we can continue thank you amber merced one last thought yeah one last thought i just i i visited many schools over the last several weeks but i want to give a shout out to whaley i went and saw them and they have a school store and their kids um you know they earn points and a lot of them it's uh you know things they
145don't get like a watch or jewelry or things like that that they can earn or um i in the past have given tons of donations to that group but they are still doing their online school store and delivering those products that students are purchasing to their homes and i just think that's amazing in a time where students are isolated and many of those students possibly need those items or look forward to those items so i just want to give a shout out thank you not seeing any other hands uh raised for public testimony i would entertain a motion to adjourn remember hildy i moved to adjourn awesome everybody have a wonderful night