001yes all right i want to thank everybody for coming to our work session uh we're going to go ahead and call this to order it is july 21st of 2020. uh this is our first work session back in the boardroom and we are broadcasting on youtube as well as having uh the opportunity for folks to call in through zoom and participate as well we have um most board members here i've got member holloman member hildy member marsette superintendent bishop myself alyssa vickalis our board secretary katie grant board member bellamy we have uh board member donnelly on the line and board mitchell is joining us right now so we do have everybody in attendance thank you about a month ago we set this work session up to specifically to be a listening session for the community
002uh on our uh our systemic practices and programs and policies and how it is affecting uh folks from all of their different lenses and right now we just want to start by listening that is one of the first places to start um any good conversation is to listen to what has gone on and what has happened and so right now we are very interested in hearing from our public we do have 19 people signed up today and we have some that are telephonic and we do have some members uh here in person thank you and so we're just going to work our way down the list um it is uh just like public testimony everybody will have three minutes each we will have a timer that goes off to help um and i don't uh
003katie isn't going to go off at two seconds it's 30 seconds so you'll hear um especially for those listening online hopefully you hear like a buzzer or a alarm tone that goes off that indicates you have 30 seconds to kind of wrap up your thoughts and and and finish up and then we'll just kind of keep working our way down and we look forward to hearing what everybody has to say so thank you very much for coming and participating with us today this is the start of a conversation it is not the end and secretary are we ready yes okay our first person in the queue is danielle kim i think it's daniel daniel kim hello hello oh hello can you hear me we can hear you thank you when you are ready lord i
004was weirdos all right uh well uh it is good to hear everybody um so the two things i want to discuss at least in this first meeting is a little bit about the school of resource officers and then in equities in our school first thing about the school resource officers i'm not going to touch on too much because we have some folks who are going to testify um about that in a little bit greater detail but i just do want to say that i am definitely in favor of reducing the school resource officer presence in our schools um i believe that you know they kind of reinforce this the school the prison pipeline uh and that it has a disparate impact on our communities of color in particular our children of color um and so
005uh like i said i will defer more comment on that for uh other folks coming down the line here as far as inequity in school um i i there are several things that i would personally like to see and professionally uh as a teacher in asd um you know altered or omitted black history representation in the anchor school district curriculum is kind of an issue with me i teach music and i have to tell you i was teaching one day in class and we were it was during black history month and um we got on to a discussion as we kind of got off track and i i kind of had a a teaching moment talking about um the history of slavery in our country and there were some fifth graders in my class who
006didn't know that black people were once enslaved in our country and so that kind of troubled me uh that you know that that fifth graders would would not know um those sorts of things uh starting in at least like a third grade uh maybe even earlier than that like in the second grade uh lack of literature buying about uh black folks taught in asd k through 5 books for example homemade love i believe i can going up to like hidden figures and x for middle and high school students just a little stat for you here black folks are only three percent of alaska's population and uh you know roughly 15 percent of the u.s population yet our teachers black teachers are only one percent of all asd certified teachers so you know that is a
007disparity that needs to be addressed immediately i have some suggestions i would like to work with folks on how we can um you know plus of our black teacher population in the asd i also sent a list of over 200 questions to the board a couple weeks back nope i'm so sorry to interrupt uh the weather did go off and we have hit our few minutes for everybody testifying and if you don't get a chance to finish your thoughts we certainly do welcome uh further public testimony as we go through the process as well as written testimony as well all right all right and there's just one more thing real quick uh budget cuts definitely not equitable okay because they disproportionately affect our children of color all right especially through our primary grades k through
008five smaller class sizes improve such things as grade retention school attendance and test scores just to name a few okay daniel thank you so very much for your testimony thank you next up we have leon jaime's are you on the line with us leon i am thank you thank you very much for joining us today we're going to start the timer at three minutes for you you may begin with okay thank you um yeah so my name is leon hymas i i live in east anchorage um and you know i this is a sort of a you know an old and a new issue um for me and i submitted written testimony um and you know i am really encouraged that the school district is willing to look at uh finding alternatives to law enforcement
009um and the school resource officer program uh within the anchorage school district and when i was researching this issue um it just became very clear to me that there you know i i got you know a little bit emotional about it because it it seemed that a lot of people have been really working very hard on this for for many years now and the the data clearly shows that the you know the students um black and indigenous students of color are being you know disproportionately affected by you know by significant percentages as far as um ending up incarcerated through the school-to-prison pipeline um you know and and that the school resource officer programs are contributing to that and i i think that you know as far as the funding that that's going to be a
010challenge um and but you know i just i i really want to encourage the school board to to work on uh you know finding alternatives to law enforcement and getting counselors and and alternative resources that are you know more capable of handling on some of the issues that come up and and more equitably uh addressing the students uh students of color and i one of the arguments that i had run across um was you know that some of the school resource officers really do go above and beyond uh in their capacity as that and that you know some of them are really well um thought of and and they do a lot for the students and i don't want to discount that um but i i also think that it just highlights a need and
011you know that that there is a need there and some of the school resource officers do step up and fill that need you know however they can but um i think that it's it's something that needs to be recognized and addressed um more directly through uh appropriate resources and funding and so i'll give back about you know 30 seconds my time thank you all thank you very much next up we have megan mcbride on the telephone megan are you with us hello thank you you've got yes we can hear you and you have three minutes you can begin when you're ready my name is megan mcbride i'm a high school teacher at east high as well as a former student and graduate of asd and i'd like to speak about the sro program i think
012it's easy to look at big cities with more predatory policing practices and feel comfortable that we're not doing that in anchorage and i think it's easy to see the pride we proclaim at having some of the most diverse schools in the country and trust that asd is inclusive and equitable but we are not exempt from the national reckoning our country is going through in response to horrific police violence and brutality against black people as a white teacher i do not feel threatened by the police officers in my school but i assume that many of my students and their family members do this spring several other teachers and i shared concerns about one particular student that none of us could reach after online classes started we were worried about the student's well-being i alerted my principal
013and he sent the police to do a wellness check my heart sank the police represent different things to different people for many of my students the police are a threat not a resource as a teacher i should never be sending a threat like that to my student's doorstep i've heard from many teachers that the school resource officers are trained to work with teams they are the best apd officers to interact with youth so much better to know your sro rather than to have a random officer without that relationship but what if we didn't always call the police what if instead of funding law enforcement officers in schools anchorage funded drug and substance abuse counselors suicide and domestic violence specialists cit homeless services support staff attendant support coordinators what if we had a team of professionals
014able to support the safety and well-being of our students who didn't represent a threat to anyone's life the stated goal of the sro program is mentorship and relationship building could this role be better served by someone else i think so the mayor and police chief have shared a goal to create a more holistic public safety first responder team for anchorage modeled off an arizona program that will reduce apd's scope to law enforcement and provide specialized first responders that can better respond to other public safety needs mental health homelessness school mentorship should be on this list too asd has expressed a commitment to equity to this is no small goal especially on the native denying that land our district is on today black native latino and pacific islander students in asd are disproportionately more likely to
015be suspended and less likely to graduate the reasons for this are not simple but we must do a better job of supporting these students that we have been failing for too long thank you thank you very much for your testimony megan next up i have rihanna gay are you on the line with us miss rihanna yes um thank you my name is ryan gay if you did creekside park and here's my testimony one of two because i'll be sharing more later at the end of work session just because we have not heard negative complaints does not mean that they do not exist change is a must so let us discuss the practices and policies that we need to adjust i am here to offer solutions that include partnering with educators so that students can take
016credits and classes and coursework to learn about the justice system and other career paths that an sro has to offer all for officers in the building they can build intentional relationships with students another solution is trained students in de-escalation strategies and i would like to know how hard is the position funded they are working for the student so they must make sure the officers know our students community and how to calmly intervene if crisis arise make sro's time in schools meaningful for our students and community thank you thank you very much next up on the telephone i have reagan brooks reagan are you with us reagan brooks all right i'm going to keep going down the list and if i miss anybody then we'll i'm trying to circle back around at the end um next
017up is celeste hodge with us today all right don't have celeste quite yet uh next up toya brown are you with us today hi yes i'm here so i mean the anchorage sorry go ahead it's yours okay i need the anchorage school district to target score improvement amongst bipac black indigenous and people of color asb has long known that this is a significant issue in our community and it has gone without resolution for far too long we need asd's commitment to seeing that the black community has accessibility to advance educational opportunities like honors classes i have raised the black child in the anchorage school district and i have found it has been a constant fight to force the school district's hand to give her access to advanced education opportunities regardless of the fact that her
018testing scores have overwhelmingly demonstrated that she is capable to achieve success in receiving those opportunities she has been the only one or one of very few bypass students asd system for school success report card and index numbers show disparity between white and bipac testing scores the top achieving schools had no bipark representation at all the media has spotlighted recent acts of violence towards black americans by the police and press from those events prompted asd to issue a response statement on 6 although this response is greatly appreciated action is required on the part of asb to ensure change i am asking asd take action to move towards increasing testing results amongst the bypass population increase the number of black and bipac students involved in accelerated or advanced educational opportunities like honors ap ib and target reform
019in american history taught in class if we do a better job of educating on the content taught in regards to black history like the impacts of slavery on the black family the barbarity of reconstruction the black politicians in congress after emancipation the fact that black americans have successfully rebuilt their wealth in america over and over again only to have it stolen or literally burnt down as demonstrated in events with the freedmen's bank or black wall street it will change the dynamics of race relations in this country our educational system pumps out uninformed children who often review social injustice's issues as just the way it is and the way that it will always be this is because they are denied truth and understanding and fundamental facts in american history as it relates to black america my
020daughter had to study from a history book this 2019-2020 school year which said african-american slaves looked down on poor whites poor whites formed an underclass and their plight was worse than that of the african-american slave although male slave owners had sexual relationships with female slaves white women suffered too because children were reminders of their husband's infidelity these are quotes from updated american history by alan brinkley pages one pages 301-305 the language in this textbook is deplorable not only is it inflammatory enough to discount the rape of slaves carrying the child of your rapist being locked in unending servitude whipped beaten and murdered with no consequence just like current events today but the victims are portrayed to be the people who perpetuate the violate the violation of human rights in every regard against slaves better than
021this so thank you thank you very much for your testimony next up we have on the telephone poli car are you with us yes i'm here wonderful the floor is yours you have three minutes hi there i am a mother of a nine-year-old daughter who is a student in the anchorage school district i would like to speak to the use of school resource officers in the asd i asked the school board to consider alternative solutions to support students in schools without the use of law enforcement personnel in september 2 2018 a report called we came to learn a call to action for police free schools by the advancement project and the alliance for educational justice found that since the 1999 columbine high school shooting calls to increase school safety have resulted in an increasingly punitive
022system of school discipline aimed at students of color and that school policing has failed to make students of color safer today students of color are more likely to face violence by police in schools than protection nationwide black students are three times more likely to attend school with police officers and mental health personnel all asd schools have police stationed in their buildings but they do not all have social workers support staff dedicated to homeless students or counselors that aren't burdened by standardized testing and scheduling tasks the effort to place police in schools has cost our nation millions of dollars dollars that could be divested from the militarization of our schools and invested in mental health resources and strategies that improve the quality of life and educational experience for students of color i grew up thinking of
023police as protection my twin brother is a police officer in another state and for my whole life i've believed him as i viewed him as a source of security and safety but i am white and for most of my life i have also been blind to the experience of people of color with police in the midst of such high profile police violence against people of color across our country we must be urgently conscious of the psychological and physical impacts upon students of color by police presence if students of color feel triggered traumatized or even threatened that should be enough for us to pause and rethink regardless of how kind and well-intentioned an officer may be in anchorage we pride ourselves on having a diverse student body but that is not enough a culture of inclusion
024equity safety and respect is what we need and safety does not exist when black and brown young people are forced to interact with a system of policing that views them as a threat and not a student we have to acknowledge that we live in a racist society and our communities are in pain to become anti-racist requires active intentional and constant self-monitoring unlearning and course correction our schools should be a foundation for this unlearning and healing that also means learning about true histories in our curriculum and removing curriculum that shares stories and views that hurt students of color i urge you to end the use of school resource officers and develop alternative student and parent informed strategies to help our schools feel safe for all please act with urgency and act with love thank you for
025considering my comments thank you paulie next up on the telephone i have jerry lawton jerry are you with us hello hi thank you for joining us today you have three minutes the floor is yours [Music] hello hi yes you may continue i'm sorry good evening my name is jerry lawton i have a child in the anchorage school district today i'm calling to share testimony about the school resource officer program first i'd like to acknowledge my understanding of the specific partnership between anchorage school district and the anchorage police department is somewhat anecdotal and limited to the information available on the school district website that said tonight my primary goal is to improve my understanding of how the program is evaluated and asked at the school district seek alternative solutions that create a climate where students are
026surrounded with resources and personnel that fit more naturally in an academic setting more investments and professionals currently being replaced by law enforcement officers would provide a more effective student support counselors nurses social workers and special education teachers would be a better way to use our resources to improve the quality of education in the school district law enforcement officers are not trained as well or equipped to deal with the root cause of most issues that arise inside of school i think that having law enforcement officers in schools merely offers a polyanis illusion of safety that ignores reality and the important perspective of many children that feel less safe because of their presence armed law enforcement officers create a different environment and sends a mixed message to children matters of school safety and pool discipline can can
027become easily blurred and unless we provide a bright line for officers involved in these areas this program may be doing more harm than good on the surface the program's goals listed on the website appear to be noble pursuits but the absence of any meaningful data about how they are being tracked makes it less seem less convincing ignoring these partnerships pitfalls and not explicitly outlining measures in place to avoid them raises the alarm for many students and parents the department of education provided a safe school based enforcement through collaborative collaboration understanding and respect rubric several years ago as a framework for how to best implement these partnerships in community schools i was not surprised to learn that the state of alaska compilation of school discipline laws and regulation explicitly states that there are no laws that
028would enforce this level of accountability and actually encourage input from relevant stakeholders if the school district wants a partnership that fulfills the program's mission a secure place to start would be implementing the five action steps published in the rubric and providing that information on the website in a transparent manner the district may have already taken these steps and i'm not able to find the information still that kind of data would provide a better foundation for a theory of conversation about the input i mean the impact effectiveness and necessity of the sro program thank you very much for your time and the opportunity at this critical moment to speak on this issue thank you for your testimony next up in person i have meredith guitierrez you have three minutes the floor is yours in lead of
029the schools on trails program for the anchorage park foundation our mission is to build healthy parks and healthy people by improving access and connection to our community parks trails and green spaces the anchorage park foundation [Music] okay okay touching all the things okay uh so i'm with the park foundation and i operate the schools on trails program the anchorage park foundation schools on trails program helps teachers take classes in all subject matters outside to nearby parks or green spaces i recognize that asd is facing many challenges in how to safely provide education during this global pandemic if classes are to be held in person we encourage the district to consider supporting outdoor learning and creating outdoor classroom spaces as part of their 2020 2021 school plan repurposing outdoor spaces is a cost-effective way to reduce
030the burden on indoor classrooms while providing fresh air hands-on learning opportunities and health benefits associated with increased access to nature according to green schoolyards of america we know from history that open-air classrooms were a successful strategy in past pandemics most recently the new york times wrote an article about how during the tuberculosis outbreak in new york city during 1907 many schools adapted to outdoor learning and none of the children got sick the national archives foundation has images of lectures being held on bleachers while teachers lectured to students wrapped in jacks jackets and hats when considering adaptations for learning this next school year i would encourage you to consider offering the option of holding classes outdoors by utilizing outdoor spaces creating outdoor classrooms and accessing local parks and trails we know today that research shows the
031risk of transmission lessens greatly when outside being outside also allows for easier social distancing adapting to and normalizing outdoor learning can do more than just significantly reduce transmission of covid study after study shows the social emotional and cognitive benefits to learning outdoors teachers report better focus retention of information and improved general well-being when teaching outdoors one of my favorite quotes is from a local preschool teacher who says outside we all have space to be ourselves research also tells us that simply being outdoors can lower stress hormone levels lessen the effects of anxiety and dramatically reduce symptoms of ptsd with one of the biggest concerns of lack of school being health and well-being of students learning outside can be a place that can not only keep students healthy but help heal we at the park foundation
032in the schools on trails program are allies and want to help support the district and individual teachers who are interested in adapting learning with any subject to be taken outdoors i hope you seriously consider incorporating outdoor classrooms as part of a plan for a safe and successful academic year we are ready and willing to help thank you thank you very much next up on the telephone muhammad number 11. hello my name is mohammed hanhaas thank you for allowing us to meet with you you have three minutes i'm uh thank you i'm a local and i've been living here since i was four years old i'm also a father of four and i attend many school attended many schools in the anchorage school district and graduated by homeschooling myself it was difficult i had a tutor
033but keeping myself on task as an adolescent was really hard and i think we saw a glimpse of the difficulty that i went through at the end of last school year and asd's education online was not efficient at one point we saw the attendance rate decreased by approximately 80 percent the asynchronous model will not work in my opinion and i believe many in the community will agree when you're uploading work to an online portal and simply telling the kids to access the materials and complete them on their own you're going to run into issues community college research centers have done numerous studies that show online learning to be inferior to learning in a classroom setting there have been numerous doctors and researchers that have proven online doesn't work as well not only are you taking
034away the in-person classes which is understandable given the circumstances but now you're limiting the ability of children to attend regular class sessions online to once or maybe twice per week we as a state already had an education issue that's why the governor announced the alaska reads act so we could start an intervention i believe that asynchronous models have stepped in the opposite directions we parents understand the concern of everyone's health and safety but ultimately our children are the future and we want to provide what's best for them so for me i want to understand how you plan to provide a better education than in the past when you're utilizing an inferior method of learning also if you can provide classes in person five days a week throughout the day why can't you do so online
035teachers are even able to do this through up through their home why is there persistence in decreasing teacher student interaction even if it is through a zoom session how are you addressing the effects of all this on the children and the effects that it'll have socially and mentally and my final question will be how are you going to mitigate privacy for the children when they're attending these online courses especially in relation to the children online privacy protection act and that's i'm finished thank you very much next up on the telephone um speaker number 12 peggy finnegan are hello my name is peggy finnegan i want to thank you for the opportunity to testify and i appreciate all the comments that have gone before me um just to reiterate you know one of the questions i
036have that i look at you know our world today and we really do have a responsibility to change change how things are and one of the things that strikes me so much about the issues we have in our schools today and why do we even have police officers in our schools in the first place is the behaviors that where the behaviors stem from trauma in childhood we look at the statistics of how many children in this school district alone are homeless or in poverty don't get the right meals so what i would like to see happen is since is to not fund police office in our schools but fund actual mental health professionals not guidance counselors mental health professionals to assist um people that children to work through their problems um it looks like you
037know when i did look down the research around what's happening around the country with school police officers that the research just does not hold up that there's improvements um and especially since we are really faced with looking at um racism in this country and racism is not something that individuals are not so racist racism is is a systemic it's in the system in the in the institutions and we can look at the results in our city alone that you know as has said before the people of color um are affected at a much higher rate and we need to change that i would like to see our schools be a place where children are all welcome where children feel safe high schoolers feel safe middle schoolers feel safe teachers feel safe and i don't think
038that in this day and age that police officers help people feel safe um so i would like you to very much consider finding funding for that and you know one of my other points that i would like to make is i think one huge source of funding could be to remove uh computer education in the early grades where it has been shown by numerous studies to not increase outcomes for students the only thing that really increases outcomes for students that has been consistently shown is teacher to student ratio so we can unfund all the unnecessary computer which is mostly just edutainment it's pushing buttons it's not really helping make them make cognitive leads and fund teachers more teachers and mental health professionals and that's all i really want to make points of thank you so
039much thank you peggy um community member number 13 is not with us today so our next two will be in-person speakers the first one will be armando soria uh get up is it working i think okay uh good afternoon my name is armando soria i have three daughters that have attended or are attending the anchorage school district um and first thing i want to say is i just like to say that i'm in favor of in school uh of kids attending school in person i just came from kincaid park and i saw about 50 kids out there in the lake and no social distancing or masking pretty much going on and i've been to several asd facilities over since the covet outbreak to the fields and all that and have seen these kids interacting the
040whole time with no or little social uh distancing or mask and i think and and i don't see a huge issue with it in the community based on the numbers right so we have a ton of kids going to the hospital and you know that are sick and you know being hospitalized i think it can be done and i think it can't be done safely i can't i can't say how to be done i'm not smart enough for that but i think it can be done but that's not why i'm here i i first think i'm the main thing i'm here for is to support the sro program right i want to first thank the anchorage police department for all the good work they've done over the years i think ast for having the officers
041uh in their school i grew up in oakland california and in san leandro california and i can tell you that personally i'm glad there was sos in our school not just for safety but they were friends we got to know the guys we got to know the gals in there right they were good people right they were well trained and sometimes they had to do things they probably didn't want to do but a lot of them i think really enjoyed it they had good they had good relationships with the students right i felt safe right my family they felt safe they were glad they were there and with that said i i did some research and i wasn't here i haven't been following this totally but i found and doing some research asking for some
042files and then some internet research and i have found no complaints so far against the sol since their inception and i don't know if that's changed so if it has please correct me but i ask you to ask that question if there's been no there's been no issues so what has changed right 2018 it was so successful we you guys expanded it from what i believe correct so what's changed in two years besides what is going on currently in our climate you know i i just um do we think in this current climate with what's happening to people getting cancelled out you know lord help you if kids say the wrong thing on social media when they return to school do we think the climate's going to be better do we think when the officers
043have to be there for students that they're going to be there because the way students will be treated now differently because of their views if they're different than the majority okay has it changed um the uh was that my time up already 20 seconds okay uh so um uh i've all i've heard is positive things from about the officers in the school district so i just want to say that and then the other thing is this is the kind of stuff they're demanding for years demilitarization of the of the police force get the police out of their vehicles community policing this may be the only positive interaction that students have that with or these kids have with police officers over their time so this is the chance to do that and get them out of
044the vehicles get them in person with these people so they can actually get to meet officers and know that they're human just like the students are so i please ask you to extend the sro program i i one last thing i do agree with some of these people here that say there needs to be other outlets for students mental health things like that i do agree with that absolutely but i think the sros serve a good program and they're just not there for enforcement they're there for an outlet for students armando thank you very much thank you we appreciate it thank you next up in person i have sam spinella [Music] sam is your mic one he's high school principal i can hear myself now i hit i'm here to speak in regard to the
045value of having sros in our schools i started with the anchor school district at east high school in 2002-2000 i was the student services assistant principal that year that year we had 140 suspensions for fights there were no sros in the building the next year i continued as a student services assistant principal and we had that was the year we started with our sros in 2003 2004 we had 40 suspensions for fights the presence of the sros in the building made a major difference it was not only their presence it was the positive manner in which they interacted with the students teachers invited them to visit classes and speak with the students during passing time during lunch before school and after school the sros were out there interacting with the students it was obvious that
046they were there to build relationships with the kids and to establish a positive interaction with them they were very instrumental in breaking up the gang involvement in the schools that previous year there was evident gang activity in the school during lunch and after school it was evident it was observable to see the factions of forming against each other east is a safer place because of the involvement of our sros in the past seven years since i've been back at east as the high school principal there have been incidents that if the sros were not present a major disaster could have taken place these incidents would have resulted in calling for apd officers for assistance if we would have had to wait even a brief time for officers to arrive the results would have been devastating
047there have been times the sros have had to use some force to restrain a student from hurting him or herself and sometimes hurting another student or a staff member but i have observed this to be done with extreme caution and only absolutely when necessary the sros have become adept at de-escalating a potential volatile situation with their continued interaction with students and parents the presence of the sros continued to contribute a positive environment at east high sros continued to interact with students before school during school during lunch after school and between classes teachers continued to invite the sros to visit classes parents called to speak with the sros to seek their advice in given situations students seek out the sros in regard to legal matters the sros are a great benefit to our schools thank you
048for your time thank you very much next up i have speaker number 16. on the telephone shelly morgan shelly are you with us i am hi can you hear me we sure can three minutes you have the right thank you my name is shelly morgan i'm a parent ptso president and i work with students across alaska we live in one of the most diverse communities in the u.s yet that diversity is represented in some not all of anchorage schools the most diverse schools in our district are located in the communities plagued with the highest rates of poverty and with poverty we frequently find trauma poverty is not a result of the people but the systems in place that were built to create and maintain inequities so that some people would prosper at the expense of
049others inequities have been built into every system in this country yet many struggled to bridge the connections between history and the way communities were designed through redlining and banking practices designed to limit certain groups of people from having access to wealth mortgages and fair loans the fact that our lowest income families attend schools with the least amount of funding resources and programs is the result of a system designed to purposely segregate neighborhoods under roosevelt's housing authority we must teach our students the true history so that by understanding the connections between history and today students can develop social emotional skills required to bring about the systemic changes that will restore equity to our communities we must train our educators to recognize trauma and ensure our schools have the skills and resources to help students develop their
050own agency by providing more interventions and supports in the schools with greater need we must ensure families of english language learners have the ability to understand materials shared with families not only do we need to ensure equitable access to resources and supports we also need to teach curriculum that actively supports diversity and inclusion the historical roots of racism how to identify implicit bias and social justice principles so that we are educating our students to have the tools to end deep-rooted cycles of inequity we teach we need to teach and celebrate diversity and inclusion from learning about different cultures through art music food holidays for our youngest to teaching about the struggles triumphs and social justice and tackling the complex issues as students get older and develop critical thinking skills secondary students should be reading how
051to be an anti-racist they should be able to fully understand redlining able to fully understand the not so distant history of boarding schools and the development of the national medical association why it was formed and how it still plays a critical role in society with medical inequities by providing age-appropriate resources to teach anti-racism social justice and cultural diversity appreciation combined with ensuring our teachers have trauma informed skills and equitable access to critical resource supports to help students process trauma develop agency learn and grow we can truly deliver equitable education to our students we need to ship funding towards trauma sel and mental health supports rather than funding school resource officers thank you so much thank you very much next up speaker number 17 hi is this a charity are you with us yes i am
052all right you have three minutes the floor is yours thank you welcome hello everyone my name is i am a rising sophomore at columbia university and recently graduated from service high school in 2019. um so i just want to talk about a few things but also talk about um the things that was said before me um when we talk about the elimination of the anchorage school resource officers um and people are saying quote unquote i feel safe ask yourself who feels things um more times than not black and alaska students are targeted um by these sros black students are suspended at a rate nearly three times out of white peers and alaska native students are suspended twice as often as white students um and i'm i like i'm calling on the school board to like
053adopt a plan for the district to eliminate the sros and fund resources like mental health to fund resources um for native students to run resources for black students um and some of my experiences i'm so frustrated that the issues i faced um to get you know to the college that i am right now are issues that my brother may continue to face when he has high school and that's something that i don't want to see let's talk about how when we learn curriculum in our education we learn that malcolm x is violent but we learned that christopher columbus discovered america even though he raped afro-indigenous girls and colonized and stole native american land let's talk about how i was not exposed to the writing and work of audrey lord of malcolm x of kimberly crenshaw
054until i got to columbia university and was told by my white teachers that there weren't any black indigenous or brown scholars um right now and so it's the fact that i do not want my younger siblings to have to go through what i did to get where i am let's talk about how when we enter higher education classes or when we enter um classes about to pursue college there's not a lot of black conditions crc representation um and that when we learn about um curriculum when we learn about slavery and genocide um that's all we learn there's more to our history um than slavery and genocide and as someone who is used against the woman i want my siblings to have a better experience in the education they learn now in terms of the school
055resource officers they need to be eliminated like when people say somehow they felt safe again you have to ask yourself which group felt safe um i used to be pride of self on diversity being bishop claims to stand for students of color yet when it comes to the classroom students of color are exposed to some of the most violent rhetoric um having to defend andrew jackson in a activity or um having non-black teachers and your white peers say the n-word was reading a play um things didn't change and these are things that i don't want my younger brother to have to face who is a good grade when he enters high school charity thank you very much for your testimony [Music] thank you next up on the list is speaker number 18 on the telephone
056chanel afghan thank you thank you sherry for your comment it was very powerful to hear uh my name is chanel afcam my indigenous name is govangsah i'm yupik and i'm calling in from the lands of the denia students and youth go to school to learn and be nurtured yet the aclu school discipline report called cops and no counselors reported that 39 of students at schools in alaska during the 2015-16 school year reported the presence of police but no psychologist nurse social worker or counselor at their school i think this is a direct reflection of the criminalization of nonviolent misbehavior for especially black indigenous students of color regular populations who are likely underserved due to many systems of racism and inequity and these are students without access to the same resources their white peers have so
057i'm asking today the school board to remove law enforcement officers from classrooms from schools redirect that funding to bring in mental health professionals who can help meet that disparity of trauma care instead of widen it to create more trauma within classrooms within schools within our minds and i thank you so much for your consideration and that's all from me thank you very much chanel next up in person i have gardner cobb thank you for joining us you've got three minutes thank you good afternoon my name is gardner-comm in the previous life i work with the anchorage police department for 23 years was here ground zero when we put the sro program together i worked closely with the superintendent como at that time and got approval from the apd command staff and approval from ladies and
058gentlemen sitting in your seat to go with this program after my career at apd i worked two years here as the director of security and emergency preparedness and then i worked as a consultant and did a district-wide site survey review of policies and procedures after sandy hook which formed the basis for an 8.6 million grant request and a 6 million dollar grant award now i've sit here and i've listened to a lot of the comments and i acknowledge um as far as the mentoring and things like that there's room that maybe we could do better that's an sro program i haven't been with the anchorage police department now for 10 years but i think there's probably room where there could be some work there however we during my time there and what i'm aware of
059the officers now we're pretty selective in a group of offices we selected one of our best is sitting right there dwayne jones he and mark wells we're the ottoman at diamond high school with principal guyan forming a team in providing a good police service i would just say from the beginning the police are into schools primarily not to be mentors so we encourage that they're there for school safety and better police service it was the rash of police active attackers in the schools bethel high school mountain view elementary columbine jones and the superintendent asd and the police department were looking for ways to address and mitigate this horrible problem and one of the things that came our way was the cops grant program that allowed us to put officers in the school now i don't
060have much time i submitted a four-page written testimony that i would hope you would review but i would just say a couple things here attacks at elementary schools are privately carried out by mentally ill adults that's outside the purview of anything the anchorage school district and primarily the anchorage police department can do that's a mental health issue that our community at large needs to face however what we can do and i think the district has done a very good job it's harden our facilities limit interest and access i'm running out of time here uh just talk real quickly about an issue that we had with uh a gang-related shooting in uh anchorage and uh some of the suspects were at two of our high schools and we had information came in i think it came
061from this officer right here that people from the outside were going to come up and avenge that killing we end up moving several officers for several days into a school to prevent that and unfortunately i'm out of time thank you thank you very much for your testimony i'd like to circle back around to a couple of the callers um that we weren't able to connect with earlier number five reagan brooks were you able to join us today all right still not hearing from reagan caller number six celeste hodge are you able to connect with us today i am wonderful you've got three minutes the floor is yours thank you good afternoon my name is celeste hodge groudon and i am speaking on behalf of the alaska black caucus as its president and ceo the alaska
062black caucus is a non-partisan local organization that fights for the rights of black people in the areas of health education justice and economics i have three items to bring to your attention the first former state senator and anchorage school district board member betty davis crossed over to the other side in october 2018. summits were held in her honor on february 16 2019 and again on february 29 2020 betty first arrived in alaska in 1972 a short 13 years after alaska became the 49th state to join the union her volunteer service to a host of organizations and elective offices worthy of her being called an alaskan pioneer as referenced two annual summits have been held in her honor during the inaugural summit it was suggested a public place be named after her at the conclusion of
063the summit on february 16 2019 nearly a year and a half ago during the closing plenary session there was universal support for recommending to the asd that a school or administrative facility be named in her honor by the time the second summit was held six months ago recommendations had been narrowed to three schools namely airport heights elementary school east high and fairview elementary school summit participants were asked to cast advisory votes as to which of the schools they preferred to be named in her honor the percentage of the breakout votes cast were east high school 59 airport heights 28 and fairview 13 the results of the advisory vote was transmitted to the anchor school district to the attention of a superintendent in a letter four months ago in early march now we are in the
064month of july and the community is still waiting on a response these last few months have nearly drained my organization as we continue to fight the good fight against racism we know that racism exists and it didn't just start with the death of george floyd racism has deep roots and unfortunately it's everywhere even in education just look at your own statistics not mine you know where it shares that shows that four percent of white students were suspended in 2019 to 2020 school year compared to 12 percent of black students that's just one statistic but it's similar throughout your statistics why is it when you look at your own statistics the numbers paint a story of systemic racism but in order to fight racism we must move past denial we must first recognize we have a
065problem again i ask you to look at your own statistics and everything very much um but we do welcome uh written testimony because um we are out of time but we would love to hear the rest of you have what he had to say um if you would be willing to submit it in writing [Music] um we already because we have the list yeah we've got observers yeah um because we kept it and so we had people that were willing to um able to come and serve oh yeah yeah all right so unless i have um reagan brooks on the line who is uh the one we're trying to connect with but i don't hear her um and so we have worked all the way through the list of public speakers that signed up to
066testify which we very much appreciate as one of the speakers mentioned if you look on board docs under public testimony there is a item that has attachments to it for all of the written testimony that we received and you know certainly encourage the community as well as the board members make sure we um have gone through all of them and read them and we we thank them very much for submitting that at this time what i want to do is open the floor up for board comments uh you know to be made just you know recognizing that this is the beginning of a conversation uh this is going to be something that we will continue to work on and to continue to learn and dig and you know work to find solutions and so this
067is not a one-time topic um kind of work session and so do any board members have any comments that they would like to make this afternoon i would remember bellamy i actually would um like to thank everyone that testified today but i'd also like to um request uh i guess i need at some point more information uh and i'm glad that we at least had it sounds like we had one maybe two student voices today because i think that's the voice that's missing as a former principal assistant principal principal uh central office administrator i was around when the school resource program began [Music] um i at that time we kind of had a choice as to whether they we you know whether or not we uh included them we processed this discipline uh according to
068our policies if there was a criminal aspect to it that would have been the only reason why we would have engaged our students with the police things have changed from the way they used to be uh and i agree with mr uh with uh mr cobb he has been around a long time probably longer than me but i and i remember when the program started i remember the response to columbine i remember i remember i remember that was a different time a different day and i think what we have to do is shift our view from the view of the adults to trying to understand the feelings of our kids i find it hard to believe in this day and age i don't know a single black family in this town whose family including my
069own have not been adversely impacted by uh apd and that's not always a bad thing but at the same time it's different the view that our kids bring to our schools is not a majority view it's not an adult view it is a view of having have had the talk you stay away from the police our kids are captive audience i don't have the answer i know kids are captive audience they do what we say when we say how we say we and i want to hear their voices i respect everybody who has testified i respect every the work that our assistant principles and principles do but now is the time to look in the mirror look at what we've been doing for decades and decide based on the view and input from our kids
070whether or not it's the right thing to do i i we have to do that we can't just go status quo the intent of what we do is totally different than the impact thank you thank you member bellamy i want to take a moment just real quick and make some space for uh board member donnelly who is on the phone um dave did you want to chime in with any board comments at this time [Music] i just managed to unmute it can you hear me yes we can thank you i have i have no comments at this time okay thank you so much i saw um board member holloman's hand and the next board member marsett thank you [Music] um i do think it's important that we find a way to hear from the people
071that won't come testify i mean this this is the great unknown about the sro program is how it impacts students that don't speak up about it uh don't react to it and and it's a difficult thing to get their reactions i i think it's going to take some work and uh just obviously it's not something we can do by just holding a meeting and inviting people to come speak that that won't get it we're going to have to find the right people to find students and sit down and talk to them find parents to sit down and talk to them and bring those reactions back as well and then the the difficult part if there is adverse impact is balancing that against the positives um because the positives are there and we can find those
072we need to make sure we're aware of all those as well uh and look at it and i think it'll help guide the program i think it will help guide us as we make a decision about it thank you board member marissa did you have some comments it's been so long since i turned this on i gotta remember how um i too agree that i i however we do it and i don't think it's gonna be easy but i do believe student voices are important in this decision because ultimately those are the individuals that we're talking about you know are they experiencing trauma what are they seeing through their eyes and um i think and i think the sor program really has a lot of does a lot of good um but i don't know
073how everyone feels about it and so i think it's important that we do get that information and one thing i do want to say because there's been a lot of talk about funding and sro program is not funded by asd when we talk about using those funds for something else we don't have funds to use for something else unless the municipality wants to do that we have been talking about mental health um professionals and if many of you have followed our budget um the money's not there and i think it's going to get even worse so for all the things that we need for our students i know the education legislative education committee is meeting on thursday i believe that would be a good time to reach out and let them know or send emails
074or whatever that trauma is something that we face every day in our schools and with the coveted 19 and other things it has escalated and i think we're going to see a lot more behavioral a lot more family crisis and mental health professionals are very important our schools the other thing i want to say is i've been following suspension rates since well i guess my son was in ninth grade and he's now 22 a couple days ago so um i can tell you can look at the statistics but i can tell you when you break it down by schools which i have broken it down by schools just recently there are improvements in our black suspension rates if you look at individual schools uh our rates are for hawaiian pacific years have gone up disability
075has not gone anywhere it's right where it was which is very high there's there are improvements i will say and so we need to look to see what's happening in those schools and find a way but everything we do costs money and change is hard and i've been fighting this for a long time as i know others have and what we have to do is just we have to make it happen somehow so thank you thank you um board member mitchell so i um i echo what everyone has said um i really really appreciate all the testimony and there are so many voices we haven't heard from i don't remember if it was at a board meeting or with a couple of other board members when we were talking about you know i i was
076raised viewing police officers largely as friends and most of my spirit your support and and somebody who you can always turn to for help that has largely been my experience not always and yet if i see a police officer in my mirror or on the side of the road my blood pressure goes up and i get a little bit tense am i doing everything right am i you know did i do did i use my turn signal and i changed lanes and my uh you know my life experience with police officers largely has been very very positive so i know many of the sros i've had long conversations with them i've gone bike riding with them in the summer when they're on the trails and they are absolutely wonderful people they are they get extra
077training to work with young people they are committed they build strong relationships with students they do there are many benefits of having them in the school buildings um and i echo what um board member marcette said that the resources we really need unfortunately you know our resources are limited and they have we are cutting things every year so it's hard to provide all the support we need but i do believe that much of the benefit that the sros provide can probably be provided in a more if we have social workers and mental health professionals in the buildings in similar roles who really have you know six to eight years of extensive training with students um in develop you know i really understand their developmental stages in a deep way that no matter how much training
078an sro gets they probably will never have that deep training i think we'll see that benefit and more i i echo what many of our um callers said that you know our children act out because of trauma in their lives they're not it's not their natural state of being so we need to support that we need a restorative justice approach we need to help nurture that child we don't need a school-to-prison pipeline and i'm not saying that that's the sro's focus but in you know statistically that is what happens across the country schools that have um safety resources office safety resource officers in them have more arrests and it is disproportionately students of color so i think it's critical that we um get groups of students or do one-on-ones with students and ask them if
079five percent of our students or 10 of our students feel unsafe and uncomfortable at the at the best and traumatized at the worst by the presence of police officers in our schools that that's not okay so thank you you um i want to i'm not seeing any other um a board member hildy thank you i really appreciate the testimony from everyone today because um i i think it created a lot more questions for me and then we start getting better answers so that's really good um i've only been on the board two years and it's kind of a weird moment for me because we've also had discussions where everybody's like more sros more sros morris rose very intense community support for that too and um that doesn't that's not a conclusion that's just something i've
080experienced um so i would say i have more questions some of the testimony i heard was compelling i think we're doing a great job in our elementary schools that we've heard hardening because we don't keep sros in our schools but i love that our police are so proactive when working with the district so i think that's going great i would want more actual information on what happens we heard suspension rates but my understanding is sros aren't involved in suspensions they'd only be involved in criminals so that's more like principle and what's happening in that school and some of those restorative justice practices and you know i'm a big fan of cool down rooms it's my life right like it's my daily life um so so i guess i i just these questions and testimony have
081created more questions and i would want more concrete information so yes student testimony is important i'll also say that sometimes my kids don't want things that i think that keep them safe like i don't want gangs in our high school if that's a real thing that sros are improving that's really important to me and i might be willing for them to not feel as comfortable i don't you know i don't know that answer i don't have enough information but those are things i'm balancing and um i thought a lot of the testimony was really good i i really appreciate um talking about the roles that we say sros are billing well some of those are mental health roles and so that makes a lot of sense that we'd want the best people doing those um
082which is just to say thank you for uh this opportunity i don't i know more um but i have more questions i think remember bellamy says that a lot now like i i've heard you say that about other issues like now i have more questions so um so i thank you because i think this could help us get some better results for children and that's ultimately the goal um remember marsette so i always have this saying i don't like to throw the baby out with the bathwater um uh that's an old southern sign i'm sure but um i do want to hear from the kids but i do think that given i mean we're not a big city we're not facing the same type of things as uh detroit minneapolis and that sort of thing
083and i think that our sros do meet a need in our school but maybe there's maybe we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater maybe we'd look at everything and see how we can make it better how can we create a relationship so that our children can begin to trust police officers and have that um you know it's about it's about bridging um those things and maybe i'm totally wrong but i always believe that um it's always better to sit down and talk with individuals and try to come up with a plan than just to say you know whenever you come with a solution it's like you go to one extreme or the other so i would hope that we would have those type of conversations with all those involved thank you and for
084remember bellamy did you have your i think andy had his andy okay so you're way out there i apologize for remember holland i did have one other comment to make and that is police are going to be in our schools and they're there whether we have sros or not they're they're going to be called because things happen at school that require their presence when when a crime is committed we have an obligation to do that and and so one of the things the sro program does do is the officers that show up have a familiarity they have an understanding of what the school can do it's it's different than an officer that isn't familiar with staff isn't familiar with protocols isn't necessarily aligned with our objectives they're doing their job as a as police work
085so there absolutely is a benefit from that standpoint that that we're going to have officers there and we have officers that are familiar that that share the goal of keeping kids out of jail and i do think that's a goal of the officers here in anchorage as opposed to some programs in other states and much like our charter schools our sro program is not necessarily like what we see in other states and other locations so it's not an either or there will be officers in the school for various reasons the question is what what kind of mindset do they arrive with how well do they know the student body how well can they interact with them there absolutely is a gain from this program in all those areas [Music] thank you and i want to
086make some space for dr bishop to make some comments as well uh thank you madam president i'm not going to actually speak to an opinion i just wanted to share that the basis of arrests are based on not only law but also presumptive sanctions about in our policies uh we have that you will call law enforcement when a law is broken and so if we go back to policy a lot of these issues or if we have concerns we should review the policy because our administrators and our teachers are following through with policy that's been set and whether it's um a threat we've seen many of those this last year a threat to harm others uh dealing drugs uh you know bringing a weapon those are all things that have occurred in our school with
087presumptive sanctions and so it's just it's a bigger um issue than discipline it's literally back to policy and what is required by law to do when a a crime has occurred so uh i just wanted to to bring that piece of it into that there there's a a law enforcement policy built into our policy thank you thank you and board member bellamy yes thank you um and i appreciate that dr bishop because you're absolutely correct and those policies are uh probably likely most likely what our staff are uh following at least we hope however we are at a time and space where we have the opportunity as a board as a community to really look at what we're doing and and not just what we're doing but how we're doing it i mean that's the
088equity piece that's what that's that's the piece that we have got to that we got to grapple with because if we are being equitable if we are giving kids what they need the resources the funding when we get it when we can get it the um the supports that they need to be successful if that is our goal we need to not just be checking sros we need to be checking everything which includes the policy that ties the sros to the criminalities in our schools so that's a systemic piece that we have got to get a hold of you can't just look at this about i mean you can look adults are happy with the sros that's perfectly clear all i'm saying is is the sro how do we how do we process it just
089like we process our discipline policies just like we would process our school choice options for kids and families and who's asking ourselves those questions who's missing who's here who's most impacted why do we need it to do it that way why do we do it that way so to me this is much deeper than just a get rid of a program or not get rid of a program this is a systemic response to are we doing the best we can for every single kid who walks through the door and you cannot tell me people you can't tell me that our little brown and blackface kids don't have some feelings around the experience they may have brought to school the school is not responsible for their dad getting arrested or they're seeing violence in the community
090where people are and family members are mistreated all police officers aren't bad this is what i tell my grandkids you need help you go to an adult if it's a policeman that it's a policeman because the importance is to get the help but at the same time this is a moment this is a moment and either we're going to grab it and be systemic about our practice be systemic about putting putting our uh our money where our mouth is or we just shut up and just just let it let just stay with the status quo and for my time on the board i'm i don't want to stay with the status quo we can do better so whether it's sros whether it's how we're spending our money whether it is uh who who what what
091is the face of our gifted program who gets the opportunity to go here and go there that's the tough part and yes we will i believe if we do it right we're going to change some processes some policies and some procedures and we're going to do it for the right reason thank you thank you i do want to take just a quick point of privilege to go back up to the public testimony we do have reagan brooks um a caller on the telephone with us and reagan are you able to join us thank you so much i just got unmuted thank you perfect three minutes the floor is yours thank you hello members of the school board and superintendent bishop thank you all for your hard work supporting students and educators and thank you for
092taking the time to listen today my name is regan brooks i'm the mother of two children in the anchorage school district a member of the alaska black caucus allies for change group a former public school science teacher and a volunteer in the anchorage school district since 2013. i'm testifying today to urge you to consider alternatives to the school resource officer program here in anchorage the young people in our schools many of them still children deserve support that effectively meets their needs does not amplify harm and does not involve the use of law enforcement personnel many of the current police and school programs in the united states were established in the immediate post-columbine era and at the time stationing police in schools was seen as a solution to the ruptured sense of safety felt by many
093however in the years since columbine numerous studies have found that the presence of police and schools can actually decrease safety and opportunities to learn in other words research now tells us that police in schools regardless of their good intentions tend to amplify negative outcomes for students particularly black indigenous and latinx students police and school programs are not just neutral they're harmful i know that you the leaders of our school district all care deeply about reducing harm to the young people in your charge i know you care about making choices that are healthy and strategic and supportive i know you're also aware of the harmful effects of racism particularly on black indigenous and other young people of color and i suspect you are aware of the abundance of public health and education education research suggesting that
094other more effective evidence-based options for supporting young people do exist the sro program is not your only option you've got other better options to choose from please support the young people and the educators and staff in our schools by making the choice to work with the assembly to find healthy evidence-based alternatives to the sro programs work with the assembly to redirect the funds spent on the srl program on programs that will invest in the success of young people not criminalize them and amplify the school-to-prison pipeline please work with the assembly to find creative ways to invest in evidence-based solutions that are known to help young people thrive say goodbye to police officers and hello to more counselors and to teachers or other support staff and remember that investing in evidence-based approaches will protect individual students
095their classmates their teachers and our whole community it's an investment in safety moving away from the sro program will be a big change it may even be uncomfortable for some but positive change does not grow in comfort zones please embrace a growth mindset and step out of your comfort zone to invest in long-term positive change the time is now thank you very much for joining us reagan and for being patient while we got back to you so i want to say thank you to the community for all of their participation in today's work session i want to thank board members uh for everything i want to thank the administration for coming as well um and thank you for the grace and the patience as we went through our first uh in-person board meeting um combining
096as much uh telephonic opportunity as we were able to so i just wanna say thank you to everybody um we do have an executive session and so i would entertain a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of negotiations i still move do i have a second all right i have a first in a second we are now in executive session