06-16-20 ASD School Board Meeting

001um president michaelis we are ready to go live all right thank you i'm going to call to order the regular school board meeting for tuesday june 16 2020. we have all board members present for this meeting and we're going to do the flag salute and i have asked board member marsette to please lead us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you at this time the board is honored to acknowledge that our community resides on the traditional land of the denia people both past and present it is with gratitude that we honor the land itself and the people who have cared for it throughout the generations we want to welcome

002you to our virtual meeting during this covid19 crisis and thank you for supporting the work of the anchorage school district the mission of this district is educating all students for success in life next up we have the approval of the agenda can i get a motion and a second to approve i move to approve the agenda as written second thank you i'm aware of one change that does need to happen and we need to remove uh memo one three zero it had a placeholder for insurance renewal under the action items and so i'd like to remove that from the agenda if all board members are in favor not hearing anybody opposing that were there any other board members that had any changes to requests to this agenda not seeing or hearing any um i'll go

003ahead and approve the agenda as amended next up we have our board conference and committee reports finance chair marsette if you could please give us a quick update on your meeting today uh we did have a meeting today uh we talked about our audits for uh the next coming year we've identified four of those audits that we'll be doing for next school year student transportation school entry security field trips internal controls and information technology backup we also went over our cares money that we received and our allocations showing that we have about one point something left of our cares money that may change depending on how things happen also out of the uh 2 million that the board had allocated out of the general fund they're they're showing just a little bit left over but

004not much there we are trying to get uh chromebooks in the hands of all of our students currently we have dispersed about ten thousand um we are looking at about thirty 000 chromebooks to be dispersed along with um wi-fi capabilities so they have connection and then we uh that was about it and i'll do a report on that and submit it and our next meeting will be july 17th the time has changed it will be three to four that's july 17th or july 21st july's what's our board meeting saturday thursday oh sorry something's going on the 17th but for the board meeting on the 22nd we will have our finance committee from three to four thank you uh board member hildy chair of the governance committee well thank you i had a written report but

005i must not have submitted it in time so i will have that out for the public for the next meeting but we review um we have an annual review cycle for board policies we're going to meet on june 22nd to go over those it's going to be like mostly silent reading and then just making a list so anybody's welcome to come but we're not going to be like discussing or making decisions it'll just be making a list to discuss at our next governance meeting so that's june by zoom 10 am uh we're working on a superintendent evaluation timeline so um members mitchell and i presented a draft of that we took some feedback and we'll pretend at the next meeting remember much said it's working on community invitation and purchase tickets policy so we should

006have that at our next meeting we'll have one on crowdfunding in the fall from the administration um and then we'll talk about the policy on recruitment after we get our board goals finalized remember bellamy will come back so that our policies in line with our board goals and wellness policy the recess and lunch that's going to continue this fall with the pilot um and then administration will review the committee draft from last year and and present it back to the governance committee in the fall so we don't have a july meeting set um if we can get it picked right now if that's possible that'd be great to just do it right now with everybody here maybe friday the 10th right before the board retreat um i know everybody wants to do fun summer things

007so i don't want to take up your extra days would that be the same time that's a friday the 10th we have board retreat from 12 to 5. i don't know if you want to do governance before then if that's too much it doesn't really matter to me i guess that works for me alicia and this is my fun summer thing okay so i'll put governance on for friday the 10th um from 11 to 12 july 10th and then i don't know when communications wants to do theirs okay thank you follow you all right well uh chair bellamy if you would like to give a quick update on the communications committee this would be an excellent time great thank you madam chair so the communications committee uh met on june 9th we had uh five

008items on our agenda we spent most of our time drafting a letter which the board will vote on tonight uh in response to it to the uh events that are happening within our nation following the death of mr floyd uh we also revised uh well we discussed revising our timeline for the strategic planning and that will be shared with you um with the with the board and the public um if not tonight then at our next meeting uh all of that has been on hold since uh kobed uh um plans are in place and then we had uh the communications department gave us our june um update community update which i sent to all of the community well i sent to the federation of community councils who will send that out to all of the

009community councils and board members may use it as they go to their community council meetings we discuss the juneteenth celebration which started last weekend and it will uh continue through uh at the northway mall um uh at various times this week and so that that is also uh on our website on the discus website so you can find more information there and we uh sent a letter of sim sympathy to um the minis uh minneapolis public school uh school board because they lost a member uh i think her name was marnie zion uh to covid and so we did a draft and send that letter note of sympathy to that board and our next board meeting since we always like to partner and follow the um governance committee we will meet as well on july

010uh i think what did you say 10th or 11th 10th i put it at the 10th we got border tree from noon to 5. okay so and i would like we always follow her so it would be the same day at 12 from 12 to 1. so we'll have to put this on a calendar and take a look at it and see how it works with the board retreat um but what i hear you both saying is you'd like to have it on the 10th before the retreat before the retreat okay retreats at noon isn't it yeah and and we'll be yeah the retreat starts at 12 what time at noon it does start at noon okay so then we will not be meeting on that time at that time on that day so i

011will um i'm not sure we even need to so i will i will advise the board at a different time um if needed i'll let you know communications does not have a july meeting thank you thank you member bellamy the other thing i would like to give an uh or receive an update on is i believe uh board member marsette has had a chance to look at the timeline for the strategic planning committee it's an ad hoc committee of the board and if you had something you wanted to update and report on that would be wonderful and i think katie can pull this up um katie can you pull it up so everybody can see it there we go so if you look at this um we've drastically changed the time just because of what's

012going on but what we're looking at in our retreat in july is to develop our goals for asd they may change given that the last time we did this has been some time and so we'll revisit the ones that we were working on and our guard rails and then after that we're going to initiate uh in a work session a initial draft and we need to present that goals and guide rails to our community that will be in september and october and with our partner organizations we will also have our first public reading and discussion in december that's when we'll get our public feedback and then the second public reading and adoption of new goals will be in january february 2021 is when we will have the action plan to achieve those goals and have

013the board review that and then um we will probably present those i would say the end of february first of march to uh to execute any questions okay thank you very much next up on our agenda is our goal monitoring portion this is uh titled preliminary survey results and at this time i'm going to hand it over to our superintendent dr deana bishop thank you madam president and i i want to share with the board that we had uh spoken about this and the board had asked questions in regard to how did the spring turn out we participated with a national survey actually research firm hanover and uh as well as other large districts similar to ourselves and so the questions were constant we can not only look at um our responses but we can

014look at our responses as compared to what uh other school districts around the country we're sharing uh the data with you uh we only have asd responses the full data set and cleanup has not been released by hanover but they did allow us to have our own data to present to you today dr stock is going to share the results and speak to really uh the the items kind of the the biggest thoughts that have come out of this in regard to parents students as well as staff uh their feelings their ideas uh their interests everything uh in reflection of the last nine weeks and of course these data are being used to assist in guiding the planning for next year with that i'll turn it over to dr stock thank you thank you dr

015bishop good evening members of the board so what we're going to do is we're going to do a real quick uh high level summary of the results and i'll hit a few of these main points and then we're going to move real quickly through some of the data screens that show some of the results and like dr bishop has mentioned hanover will be providing a more robust white paper regarding all the results and some comparisons to other districts in the nation later on this summer so this research was done between june 1 and june 12. there was a series of likert scale questions that were presented to parents students and staff the parents were by far the largest response group and looking through the demographic portion uh the respondents were very much similar to all

016our other surveys which have been for quite some time have been heavily dominated by the white middle-class females which has been typical of all of our other surveys in terms of who's been submitting responses the general view from the public from the students parents and staff was that distance learning ranged from somewhat worse to much worse than how they viewed in-person learning we'll get to some of that detail in a minute but the second one was that respondents were overwhelmingly somewhat negative to very negative about continuing distance learning in the next year based on their spring experience students parents and teachers did share a general feeling that remote learning had negatively affected their learning however it's interesting because there are some slight differences in between students and staff in regards to how they're viewing how

017negative that was the students parents and staff agreed that schools have been slightly effective to moderately effective at educating students now this is one that's we don't have to dig into because it's a little bit of an anomaly because on one hand they're saying they're feeling it's affected them negatively they weren't positive about distance learning but when asked about its effectiveness slightly effective to moderately effective so it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition of how they feel about that next slide staff felt the district was very effective to extremely effective in his communication with them this was probably overwhelmingly the most robust finding in the entire report which was that through this whole thing communication department in the superintendent's communication and through our senior leaderships in elementary and secondary and teaching and learning in sped special

018education they felt like there had been a good flow of communication parents and students were also positive about the communication that went from the school site directly to students they agreed overwhelmingly students and parents it was very overwhelming that they agreed their teachers did care about them so if there's one thing that came out of this whole pandemic thing and all the crisis was that it reaffirmed the fact that our teachers uh care about those that they work with students parents and staff did agree however that remote learning had a neutral to a somewhat negative impact on their mental and emotional health it was interesting because students felt a little bit more negative about that than their parents and teachers did so sometimes you would think of it as the opposite but here uh the

019students themselves felt like it had an impact on their mental and emotional health uh probably the greatest benefit or success of distance learning and everyone recognized it all three groups was that students who could work at their own pace that they could move ahead quickly or they could go slower depending on their their own pace of learning and that was probably the greatest success that they experienced about one-fourth of them felt that the parents were more engaged and that also held up with what the teachers felt and parents both recognized that they were more engaged with their children's learning as a result of what happened so those were the high level results and we'll go through real quickly some of the the next slides that show some of the data as you can see here

020the response rate 63 came from the parents which which we expected next slide the preliminary demographics as you can see here this just demonstrates that the female population is much more inclined to submit survey results than males and that was also true among students you can see twice as many female students submitted responses as male students and so on same way with parents um thinking about your experiences with distance learning how does it compare with in-person learning and this one as you can see students parents and staff heavily weighted towards the the negative that it's it is either somewhat worse or much worse than what we experience when we're face-to-face in an environment however there is a 10 difference between how staff felt about it at the much worse level than the students if you

021combine the two numbers together they're not as far off but if you look at just much worse you'll do see that the staff themselves were more heavily weighted that way next slide how do you feel about next year was the one of the questions and here this one i found fascinating because if you look at staff only 35 percent were very negative about it but 56 of the students were very negative about it in terms of they want to be with their friends they want to get back they want to experience the whole thing called school and for many of them they weren't perhaps looking forward to a full year of being in distance learning so that was interesting next slide how effective was your school at communication here you can see it's it's weighted

022towards the moderately effective and very effective uh weight for both students and parents felt like the school was good about communicating with them how effective has the district been this is the one about instructional staff and this one as you can see moderate and very and extremely effective very heavily weighted towards effective communication on the part of the district how effective was your school at educating and the students were asked about educating themselves parents about educating the children and then how did the staff feel about how effective were they at educating the students and you can see here not as negative it's kind of in the middle there between slightly and moderately effective or the most heavily weighted items dr stock could you go back to that question is this the one you're referring to

023mr duncan is that effective during the remote instruction or effective overall the assumption was that it was during the pandemic because the entire thing now it is very possible mr donnelly that other men we don't know how individual respondents were thinking when they answered it so that's a very good question we don't really know how they were thinking but the survey itself was intended to be focused on the experience during the pandemic but we don't know for sure that's a good point so the next slide how much do you disagree or agree with the following statements and the student says my teacher cares about me and you can see all of these heavily weighted to the end you can see a bit of a difference between how the staff feels about that they're caring for

024the students and how the students agree on the strongly agree you'll see there's a very difference there at some levels but the staff themselves feel that way but over overwhelmingly weighted to the positive what kind of impact has this move had on the following so when we asked students about how's this affected your personal learning you'll see that there's some 30 percent that said it was neutral but you'll see that most of the responses in all three parts are skewed towards the negative it wasn't particularly positive for any of the groups what impact has the move had on the following your mental health so the students were asked about their mental health parents about the child's mental health and it's interesting you see a difference there between the students view of their mental health and

025perhaps how their parents are seeing it a little bit and definitely different in terms of how the staff viewed it in that somewhat negative uh category next slide which of the following successes have there been and this is where you can see 57 percent of of the student responses said that i can work at my own pace that's the that's the highest level of success that they could experience the next highest was the fact that they can learn the material and which of them as far as more successes you can see that the child working at the same pace when we look at how did parents feel about that parents are saying that the number one success was their children learning at their own pace and then the 28 percent that one of the positives

026was that the parents are acknowledging that i was more engaged with my child's learning because of necessity eventually essentially and um a few more from the staff these come from our our teachers each of my students can work at their own pace 52 so that was the biggest success uh and the parents being engaged 25 and just less degrees the others and one of our last questions was about how much time do you spend on school work each day and uh this one was kind of interesting at least to me look down there students say they 29 of them say they're spending four more hours but the parents are going yeah 14 say that uh so maybe they don't get to see what what they're all doing most of them agreed around the two-hour mark

027as you see 26 and 24 there so that was the the responses from our folks regarding the the hanover survey will clean hanover will be cleaning and scrubbing the survey for anomalies and taking out things that didn't make sense and then they will be doing a full white paper for the board here this summer and we will provide the full resort uh re results to you at that time thank you dr stock i see that board member mitchell has her hand raised in the queue yeah i was just curious dr stock how many teachers completed the survey i couldn't remember what you put up at the beginning uh let's go back i think it was in the thousands let's see how many we got there uh staff hundred response is eight so that that would

028be in the area of a third roughly okay one of them i think they were all teachers uh i don't know for sure okay i mean they would be the primary ones yes okay yeah thank you you're welcome next up in the queue is board member bellamy yes thank you madam chair uh thanks dr stock uh for the uh information i have two questions the first one has to do with the demo well they both have to do with demographics uh it's very obvious that surveys are not working for our ethnic families and i don't know what to do about that but i was wondering what your thoughts were on that and then the second question also a demographic question has to do with what was the breakdown of the demographics for the students we

029have that information i can get that for you and abort connect with all the details um just for the sake of brevity tonight we didn't break it out in all those pieces but i have that data and we will be able to provide that for you okay and your thoughts on uh how to get more input from families other than through this um through the survey process very good question so we've been struggling with that for years around our district around how best to do that some of the other ways of doing it that we use a mix of qualitative methods like we did with the wellness piece where we had somebody interviewing and talking the problem there is that um you know who has time to come in during the middle of a day

030and do that when they're working so we still get some some yeah and i think it was right along um dr stocks it's really in regard to that that family engagement uh not necessarily through a survey but um if we're engaged with our different student groups and community groups and communicate the need for the data they understand us they see us they trust us because we did dr stock and his team did have this translated it was available in home languages that that wasn't um the roadblock we don't believe uh it's probably that front-end family engagement i would share one other piece to it that comes in that's probably less of an ethnicity and more of a poverty issue and that is that they're over one given a voluntary survey about the income in the

031home and people don't have to fill it out they can mark i prefer not to respond but uh for those that fill it out overwhelmingly the income levels when you get to 70 and 80 000 and up they dominate the surveys below 70 80 000 the the families in poverty are not either accessing it or getting them or filling them out okay so we do need to look at some other methods we've learned that um building relationships and avenues for those two-way communication is going to be essential to to gain the knowledge that we need to meet student and family needs thank you you're welcome thank you next up in the queue i have board member donnelly chair i think we need to exercise a lot of caution in interpreting this survey especially the questions

032about satisfaction with the remote learning because there's no comparison involved here if we had questions that compared what the school district what asd did versus another district or even what those parents that used asd versus those parents that were using the florida virtual school which was available through the state website then we'd have a much more accurate ability to judge it but just on its own it's difficult to know whether it's a it's an opinion about what just asd did and not on the actual potential of remote learning well uh through the president to mr donnelly the only the only thing i would add to that would be that that's actually a limitation of all surveys is that we don't always know what context people read their questions into um so it was a national

033survey and i think that's part of the limitation you're referring to mr donnelly is that it wasn't an asd survey it was a national survey so the questions are somewhat generic in that response and um through the uh president as well through uh to add to dr stock not necessarily to answer your specific question he answered that in regard to the survey however part of asd's plan is for a k-12 virtual experience where students are tied to their schools more robust and rigorous uh using curriculum this summer we've offered many different options to parents some of them are redundant uh just trying to see where parents and students engage and what they what kind of feedback they're giving us uh this summer uh an experience with florida virtual with apex we're all available to students

034and so part of our planning for next year not only includes as the task force had shared um a blended learning where we need to be prepared to be in school and out but also a very robust uh program with individualized plans for students uh on distance learning or what used to be correspondence learning so that that's actually part of the bigger picture of our plans for next year i'm really glad to hear that i think that's it's going to be a mandatory element that wasn't present in what happened right during the crisis here thank you next up in the queue i have board member holloman um i was just going to make a comment that um i think these numbers are surprisingly good in terms of reaction by my parents and students as we

035go into fall if we're not able to resume in school everybody's going to have a much tougher hill to climb we had a huge advantage and that this happened at the end where three quarters of the school year had gone by students knew their classmates they knew their teachers teachers knew them especially for our younger students in the fall if we have to start remotely it's going to be real difficult to create that connection and partly just being aware that we won't be able to just pick up where we left off we will be starting a very new experience and and these numbers will be hard to match actually um if we have to start that way i'm sure that uh staff and teachers recognize that if we get to start back with students physically

036present there's a danger that the year gets interrupted and i think building in making those connections will be key to uh to what we do first if we if we're able to start back in a way that we normally like of course dr bishop sure that's uh a very good point that the relationships do matter and one of the key features of our blended as well as uh the virtual school that we're going to establish is is one of the um the niche the niche however you want to say it but that ast has is that connection to the home school and so we will build capacity for the rigorous uh at-home program but still be able to be connected to asd in an asd school and actually even a neighborhood school because we do

037understand that students like to be connected to those school activities the school work the teachers there so that's in the bigger plan additionally madam president to answer uh additional information from our team mark and i just received information in regard to our ell families in regard to the participation when they did look into after understanding that um there weren't very many ell responses uh they looked into it and and some of the things that they found that they shared with us that they they know um the reading levels of some of our ell parents are not at a level that this uh survey was written even in their home language and additionally when asked how best to meet needs they would prefer a phone call from our liaisons in regard to giving feedback rather than

038doing it with uh on a computer or even a paper pencil just to want to add that that information we received thank you for all of that um one more opportunity for board members if you have any more questions or comments on this preliminary survey information i'll go ahead and raise your little blue hand uh board member hildy sorry do you do you have data on ages i'm just wondering if younger parents are more inclined to use the survey results and older ones less or if it's really making a difference at all through the president to member hilda that i'm not aware of i'll have to go dig into the details of the questions the demographic questions that came back in the summary printouts for us to give you a report did not indicate that

039we had a great age level or a grade level on it but i will research that if we do i'll provide it in a board connect thank you all right not seeing any other hands in the queue we will go ahead and move on to our next item in our agenda which is public testimony on non-agenda and non-action items and it's been a little while since i've had to read this statement so bear with me for just one moment with the ongoing covid19 outbreak the school board and district staff are taking necessary steps to allow remote testimony while continuing to broadcast and record meetings in accordance with the open meetings act the board welcomes public comment on non-agenda and non-action items we value public comment as it ensures that we remain aware of public thoughts

040ideas and concerns and informs our decision-making process the school board encourages anyone wishing to provide public testimony to sign up in advance for telephonic testimony or to email written comments by 2 pm the day of the meeting these comments will become part of the meeting record there is a one-hour time slot at the beginning of the meeting testimony in excess of one hour will be heard at the end of the meeting or may be submitted in writing if you have signed up in advance or telephonic testimony the board secretary will call you at the number you have provided and you have three minutes to testify when 30 seconds remain the board secretary will inform you so that you can finish your sentence additionally it is not our practice that board members answer questions or engage

041in discussion with members of the public this is your time to speak and our 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 tonight we do have three requests for telephonic testimony and it will take katie just a moment to call on them one at a time which she will be doing now so be just a brief pause thank you madam president i will get um our first testifier on the line thank you ms hodge can you hear me hello hi uh celeste this is katie grant i'm the school board secretary calling you from our school board meeting president i have miss celeste hodge on the phone thank you and as such you have three

042minutes and you may start whenever you are ready good evening members of the anchorage school board my name is celeste hodge groudon for those that don't know me i served as president of the national association for the advancement of colored people the naacp the largest and oldest civil rights organization in the world a position i held for nearly a decade more recently i served as the executive director for shiloh community development a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of people of color the disadvantage and youth in the areas of education health justice and economics i held the position for seven years today i serve as the president and ceo of the alaska black caucus a nonpartisan organization that fights for the rights of black people this organization originated in the 70s and reestablished late

043last year the events of the last few months have reminded us of the need to be more vigilant than ever in using our voice to demand continued work toward true equality and equity for black people in this country in this state in the city and yes even in the anchorage school district today i'm here to talk about the letter written by superintendent bishop that was emailed to families and staff no my kids are no longer in the anchorage school district however the letter was emailed to me by a parent who was greatly disturbed after reading the letter i too was frustrated the superintendent's letter states sros develop a professional but human connection with both the students and staff connections which are critical to building a foundation of mutual trust that sentence right there troubles me

044because we know historically that just isn't the case with our students of color i know because that's the community that i work with daily and that information is discussed in various settings i'd like to know i'd really like to know the racial and gender breakdown of the students she she's referring to that have this wonderful relationship that builds a foundation of trust and to suggest sros should continue in the schools after a conversation with the police chief not families of color within our community or the students is a top-down approach that continues the disenfranchisement of our students we must demand more and expect more from our school district if we are truly to embrace our diversity we must make changes that promote true equity as it relates to placing students on the anchorage police relations

045task force as someone who served on that task force for many years i strongly disagree that school-aged children serve in that capacity where they would be viewing evidence from murders and other gruesome details instead how about having the students on the tab instead of the task force maybe they should be in classes learning the history of african americans including the history of african peoples before the political conflict that led to the development of slavery the passage to america the enslavement experience and the contributions that african-americans make to society the superintendent's letter was also flawed and perpetuates the kind of discrimination and disparity students of color experience within this language school district you know the language places the blame on students of color she writes it has been evident for some time that our outcomes are

046not equitable for our black and brown students collectively they do not achieve what our white students achieve she fails to acknowledge the historical and continued disproportionate impacts of discipline on students of color as indicated by the district's own data there's much more i could say but after the death of george floyd we all know the knee in his neck by the police officer killed him and now the more recent death of another unarmed black man richard brooks we can no longer wait for equity and equality in education we must demand the need be removed from our next yes even in education so thank you very much i'll be happy to answer any questions ms hodge thank you for your testimony katie i believe we are ready for our next person thank you madam president i

047am calling her now miss reynolds can you hear me hello hi ms reynolds um uh this is katie grant calling you from the uh the school board meeting um president michaelas we have ms andrea reynolds on the phone um and ms reynolds when there's 30 seconds left i will um interrupt and just let you know that there's 30 seconds left so that you can finish your sentence okay thank you um i just wanted to address dina bishop's email that she sent out to the school and um i wanted to point out a couple of things that were important to me as a parent that has a child my second child going through asd um it seems like it was a very whitewashed type of statement that she made she discusses race but she doesn't really

048talk about culture um if i want to know why the school board has known that it's been evident so long for black and brown students to be not as adequate as white in their experience why that there hasn't been something implemented to even that out far before the statement um she talked about her sro program that is involved in the schools and that there's never been a complaint but i'm actually a victim of the sro program my first child was a graduate of south high school about six years ago where there was a white male that was going to come to school and shoot the black student and my that was my son and the way that the sro handled it was not in a matter of being safe it was a matter of dismissal

049and i find that relevant still today i'm worried about the safety of my students excuse me i'm worried about the safety of my child moving forward with asd not only with the virus but with the very evident um racist stance that people are not holding each other accountable for um and moving forward what you guys are going to be implementing to make sure that my kid can go to school safe because it seems like adults are some of the problems here um connections make people safe and moving forward you guys are going to be implementing you know what that looks like in asd and i'm in favor of defunding the police i think having them in the police and i think him having the police in with the school is still setting off the same

050tone and you were not there to police kids i always thought that they were there to protect them and that doesn't seem to be the case from the uh from the email that she has sent out in the statement of asd so i am very much of supporting of defunding the police department as it is in the asd but i also am here to suggest what that might look like moving forward um as far as safety what would make me feel safer as a mom having my black son go to your school my mix and go to your school what that would look like and um and definitely uh would like to have more resources i would like my kids to have resources and at the end of this i want to say that i

051didn't need a poem from her i need a plan so please keep in mind of the safety of our kids and i don't think that the police are really making anybody feel safe right now and i don't need to make her feel better about her recognizing race when she's not even identifying with culture thank you thank you mrs reynolds we have one more person who is in the list for public testimony katie if you could please give her a call i am calling her now miss starks can you hear me ms starks can you hear me i can hear you thank you um um madam president i have um ms amelia starks on the phone to testify and miss darks uh when you have seconds left i'll um kind of intervene and just let you

052know that so you can have time to finish up your sentence okay thank you ms starks please continue when you're ready thank you thank you okay um hello superintendent uh bishop and members of the school board i am responding to the email that was sent out last week also i joined this meeting to inform you that as an african-american woman moving to anchorage alaska as a young parent having also raised seven children within the anchorage school district several of my grandchildren are now attending school i did not raise my children to see the world of people as a color i raised my children to be of good character moral standing and a responsible member of the community it wasn't until they became high school students that i had to begin to teach them that because

053of the color of their skin society expects less of them and therefore that they must work twice as hard be twice as good to even be considered the same privilege as others like yourself just for basic consideration of jobs i'm sure that this is not a conversation that your parents had to have with you i can only hope that your words were meant that your recognition of color means you will do all you can do to ensure children are treated equally i'm truly concerned about older children having witnessed the abuse of power by police all over our country killing of our people and that it will have an emotional toll on them they may no longer feel safe and may even ask questions are you here to kill me because social media has taught them

054more often than not some police do not protect and serve the motion is to just kill i'm asking the school board to hire more school counselors and advisors or support personnel to help children find their academic and civic passions so that they may thrive let's invest in preventing harmful or dangerous youth behaviors the time is now for positive change black lives matter my children's children's lives matter i'm speaking today because what i have to say it also matters thank you thank you very much thank you i wanted to just take a very quick moment um one of the last things that uh i said in the introduction to the public testimony uh that is truly their time to speak in our time to listen and that we will consider all information shared by the public

055and when deemed necessary issues raised in testament will be referred to the administration for follow-up um all three of these uh folks that testified uh were all on the same thing um which you know the highlight of being sros in our schools so i wanted to let the board know and let the community know at the same time that uh we are working with the administration to set up a community discussion on sros that goes outside of the board and outside of the administration to have these conversations that are very timely and relevant and need to happen and right now it is scheduled for july 21st it will be a work session starting at 4 o'clock um it will be the board the administration sros members of the community and anybody that you know wishes

056to you know participate and join the conversation um and we are looking forward to having this discussion uh very much we want to do this with um data you know to answer these questions that you know people have called and asked about or written and asked about and so we're going to take the time to get that information with the administration so that we can have the meaningful discussions that need to happen um and so i am very much looking forward to that uh and i hope that our community you know will join us wholeheartedly in that conversation as well we do have next up is the written public testimony just to let folks know that we did have uh one person miss reagan brooks she submitted a written testimony it is submitted for the

057record and it is part of board docs and can be read by the public as well as all board members moving on in the agenda we have the superintendent update and at this time i will hand it over to dr deana bishop thank you madam president and i'll wait to the uh just very brief a few slides today um wanted to start uh there we go we have sports extended year uh planning for school start and then i'll just make a statement um in regard to my communications um to start uh sports of course i have started we have had uh some policies out uh you might see students uh with coaches out on our fields under a very um discrete set of uh disciplined circumstances uh utilizing uh cobia 19 questionnaires hand washing station

058other sanitation protocols as well as temperature checks so those are going on now but i wanted to share that kirsten uh dr johnson stumpler as uh working with the state and specifically some other stakeholders um uh mr nurland as well as mr winchester working with uh the department the commissioner of health and human services commissioner crum to really uh work also with dr zinc to create some changes so that we can uh really engage our students in a safe way but to maximize their participation again in that safe way perhaps by maybe not using number of cases but percentage of cases in communities as well as structures for stands and addressing really the the spectators uh in so far as limiting those but having some competitions among schools uh addressing travel restrictions and and travel

059as well keeping communities within communities uh specifically uh the desire and the work for this uh the direction for this new work uh are three-fold um that dr johnson is sharing specifically that we are becoming increasingly worried about the long-term public health uh risks associated with students actually not participating in activities um we're concerned about the depression or suicide or child abuse and other trauma-based health concerns that will have long-term effect in the state of alaska we know that kids seek this connection not only in bush alaska but here in anchorage the connection with other people the connection with safe adults and safe spaces uh to participate in a sport it is an outlet for many children uh of course we want to have them consider travel as well as um of things that go

060along with that in state championships so we've had a few questions uh you know here and there in regard to that but want to let you know that asd is taking a lead with the state and uh dr johnson can answer any of your questions that that may come through but uh quite proud of that work and wanted to share that that will continue uh we've had uh many many uh happy responses that uh from parents that their children are able to participate with their friends given these measures we put in place and we're working to expand them the second item was in request a response rather to member bellamy's question we did share a huge increase in summer opportunities and again we established summer opportunities and really open them wide up because we predicted

061that we perhaps would uh really multiply that summer slide that we see just having three months off uh the lack of connection and we really could could see some of those things or understand some of those ideas from the survey that we shared in regard to really needing that face-to-face connection and missing that and that most likely uh would affect uh we shared with the people who actually responded to the survey it affected them and we can imagine others as well that same trend would carry on for those that didn't um but the question specifically was uh those that are extending uh the school year one of those options was to not shut off the end of the school year but extended to june 30th for the courses that kids were already in in fourth

062quarter and the question was how many of those are seniors and if you take a look 440 seniors actually did receive an f uh that last um on that semester grade and 98 of those seniors are back to actually make up that grade to not have the f uh our assumption uh we haven't dug down into each of these 98 students transcript but our assumption is that they need that um they want to change that grade and they need that f uh to pass or to do whatever it is that they want to do later on if they received an app and it's not good for um a work study or a college or a military application or whatever it is or even to graduate uh that they would need that other students uh just

063having an f there's plenty of coursework over time and a student's um uh education that if it's not one of the specific courses that we have listed that they have to pass they could pass uh school and still graduate with an f on their transcript so wanted to to share that but those are the data that were requested about uh 22 percent of the kids seniors specifically are still engaged um remember melanie that was your question and then i wanted to share also push for for plans for next year and we're going to have a more detailed report from the school task force it is in the non-action items but i wanted to share that our goal for today is really to get a response and a look for direction from the board not an

064official vote but uh more so in a straw poll if you will that we're moving in the right direction uh we our task force course uh working groups if you will uh for teachers are are basically um established um you know working but they're at a standstill to understand how to prep uh the shells for the the courses that teachers can utilize for next year and we'll share a little bit more about that the task force did review many many and again dr stock will talk about the membership of the 36 members who are on this task force that the information fed up uh to from the working groups and from other planners around the district uh in the different constructs from safety from cleanliness sanitation uh instructional programs both at the elementary and middle

065level and they uh juxtaposed those against uh and reviewed the relevant asd requirements as well as they prioritize the models to maximize that face-to-face time with students throughout the school year understanding what we knew uh from the the survey understanding what we know from the aspen report uh that learning is both social emotional and academic and cognitive and that those two pieces will bring the the biggest bang for our buck and return on our investment with students it doesn't mean that connections can't be made online it's just that a whole system actually isn't prepped and and prepared and trained in that type of engagement uh that we need for the for that type of learning um ubiquitously we prioritize models that were more consistent and reliable throughout the school year for parents students and staff

066taking the feedback from parents if you recall from the end of the year the aea and uh had some members as well as working with administration and specifically in teaching and learning to really decide on a platform to use for next year and and that was based off of the feedback from students and parents saying um you know the the different platforms that teachers were using were great oven in themselves one by one but when i had to use six or seven was difficult and we can liken this uh to if you say you went on amazon and you needed to order something if you had to order women's clothes you'd use one platform if you had to order men's clothes you use another if you wanted to order home goods you'd have to use

067a different platform it just doesn't make sense parents want to use a platform and be able to get to those different subjects if you will easily more easily and so we came together and chose canvas as that shell but i wanted to share that the many many different models that we looked at before we share some of the ideas about the direction we're going today we're am and pm models one day models for all students two day models for all students uh two day models at fifty percent four days at fifty percent models week on week off models partial day models uh only online models only having k3 in school having everyone else online only having 712 online everybody else in school and various and combinations of all that i had discussed there were very

068very many that went to the task force and the task force has made some determination and wanted to get back to the board before they continue the work and so again these are for medium risk which we believe by those designations that asd will most likely find ourselves in unless something drastically changes this summer either for the good or drastically changes and certainly the state may may have uh call a high risk and we we wouldn't be able to go to schools at all um but again wanted to wet the the whistle if you will in regard to those plans and let the board know that we are really looking for a straw poll and want to share the direction that the task force and its members are thinking about so that we can then

069provide more guidance to the working groups of the educators uh that are working to prepare for next year so uh with that i just want to end and share a little bit of context uh uh with you and the community i appreciate all the feedback that i've i've received and and certainly uh the dialogue um in our country and in our state in our city is is emotional and heartfelt um and again it's really i i want to relate it back to the many responses from thank you for your letter to um it whitewashed it to um you know you're a racist because you use terms like black and brown um those those are those are uh how people took it because um essentially that was the crux of the letter that we're all ex

070we experience things differently because of of who we are and and and how we learned and my uh understanding when this came out i just wanted to share a little bit that during the last two weeks and really since the george floyd killing i had been uh reading uh some some literature especially i i the the most recent one i read um was white fragility but reading on institutional and systemic racism uh as well as listening to many podcasts um and uh i did actually uh participate in the national black caucus a couple fridays ago and the dialogue uh there uh helped me understand that the first thing we have to do is to understand where we are as a district and i shared the outcomes uh specifically with the sentence that said it's time

071for us to look in the mirror and that's what we would do first that um uh specifically it was mentioned about uh blame of students but really it's it's truly about looking at ourselves first to see how are our students doing because then we would reflect on our system um racism and systemic racism isn't uh poking at anyone calling them a racist um it is actually and it's not apologizing for being any race uh it is actually looking and saying you know how are kids doing who come from many different backgrounds and we could say cultures and and a lot of our cultures uh interestingly enough are influenced by our race and those are the types of research that i've been looking into and and first part of it is addressing it and and looking

072at it and and perhaps my letter was was was didn't communicate um my intent as well as i would like but uh during one of those black caucus meetings um uh when i was listening i heard about the college in portland uh not calling for their police department anymore and so this was about two weeks ago when i immediately just contacted our equity senior director as well as um our chief of operations because he was connected to the sro program through our safety program and just asked oh i had never heard of any negative reports that i've had to deal with since i've been here for four years and i wanted to know were there any out there where do we stand we didn't have that information we didn't have anything logged we didn't have

073any uh incidents that we had responded to in regard to uh negative or inappropriate actions of sros with students so uh i then decided well let's see if the city has any and um i just knowing that our sros were on vacation students on vacation everyone is out right now there hadn't been a message to me about sros or a complaint i i actually um took the initiative to go uh talk to the chief and ask him he did not have any in his tenure as chief um but the interesting enough deputy mccoy was the one who shared the community um task force with me and uh sharing that there there was an incident in anchorage years ago in the 80s that prompted that to be started and that at the time i'm not sure

074if he's still the chair uh reverend green was involved um i asked about student voice in in in that in in understanding and being able to participate uh to share their interactions and uh not necessarily that um they would participate uh in the function of how it traditionally was he said we could revitalize it to really add student voice and to talk about sros as well and so that was my intent not having any negative feedback was to engage the people who were directly affected students and staff and parents that go to our high schools and specifically middle schools um i uh left it there and and wanted folks to know that we would continue to look into it uh with that i'd with just understanding that it's a bigger conversation than i can have

075and and that wasn't uh well received or well communicated um but to the idea of looking at our students and and those gaps that we have seen um we did address this and started talking about it four years ago and the board and uh presented with the data we made it public so our dashboard shares publicly um we have to know it to grow it is the understanding that we have to know where we want to be and we have to know where we are to get there uh the reading program was a deliberate effort to ensure equity for all that all students have high quality instruction in reading our reset zones in schools took a look at the discrepancy of students uh in different student groups who were being disciplined than others and um

076that was a pilot so the reset zones were about the discipline and those are are working and looking to get additional funding uh those work for alternative to suspension programs if you weren't familiar with reset zones um over the last four years we paid our senior director of equity we we reestablished the eeo officer to ensure that we have someone looking at equity uh being able to look at um our our curriculum and bias in our curriculum uh in addition um we're looking at uh we're working with the equity in schools uh for ap courses in the college board to ensure that that high quality look is for all and that all students groups depending on our ratios in our school are represented in those choice courses and choice programs all high achieving we need

077to shoot high for everybody all votes uh need to to to rise there and then uh in regard to hiring we do know that we don't have um teachers and staff uh specifically certificated people in front of children in our classrooms and that are are people of color that represent and the biggest discrepancy is actually in um pacific islander uh our district has a large um uh population of the um hawaiian pacific islander and that is probably the the least amount of certificated staff that we have and so we established uh the grow your own program and we look to extend that to where we encourage people and our own students to engage and learn about being an educator and then we actually pay for their education through the middle college as well as a

078plan to pay for their last two years of college if they would come back and teach for asd so these are just a few of the things that we're looking at for equity we continue to interface with our community groups our special education feedback group our ell indian education parent advisory as well as meecak to learn about what we need to do to make effective change and so i wanted to share a backdrop um at this point it um you know it there aren't any excuses if i didn't communicate well and it didn't uh sit well with folks but um it just demonstrates that probably because of the emotions that it's something that we we should be addressing in asd and i'm willing to do so so with that uh we will continue to look

079in the mirror as opposed to looking out the window and seeing what's wrong with others we look at our systemic um institutionalized uh process and policy first and that's what we're charged to do and we're happy to do it for the children of the anchorage school district madam president that concludes my report thank you dr bishop i do have one hand raised in the queue board member hildy thank you well it sounded like you're asking for feedback on fans for next year so awesome one of my concerns is stability for our family especially change is very very hard and creates like i slept on the hallway floor for three weeks when school closed down change is very hard for a lot of children in our district so i was so pleased to hear concerns on

080what is going to offer the most stability for children um so i would um support plans that are going to be that um i i heard like one day two-day kind of options just from a parent perspective it is very hard to manage multiple children's different schedules which day school is happening here and i know that is exhausting for parents on top of the stress of economic hardship and just a whole lot of other stresses that families are experiencing and then sanitation in between i don't know if there's any challenge if you have to sanitize more like if kids go week on week off you just have to clean the building once a week versus if it's every other day are you you know five times the amount of cleaning um so i just minimal

081disruption um when schools have to increase up or down i don't want to say i week on week off is what i think i trust the committee's good judgment and their process but stability is a big one for my concerns thank you board member hilda i know we are going to talk about this more under the non-action item as well right now i'm not seeing any other hands raised in the queue so we will go ahead and move on to our next agenda item which is our consent agenda and vice president bellamy thank you i moved to approve the consent agenda asd memorandum number 129 personnel report um and the regular session minutes from april 7 2020 second i have a first and a second on the consent agenda just as a clarification is that

082asd memorandum number 135 for the personnel report by chance which is what is listed on our board docs okay on my on my note is katie can you provide clarity yes that is was my error in your sheet member bellamy it should be um number 135. thank you president michaelis thank you perfect i have a first and i have a second at this time we will go ahead and vote katie if you will please call roll call member of achaelis yes remember bellamy yes remember donnelly yes remember hildy yes remember holloman remember marsette yes i remember mitchell yes the consent and just agenda passes with seven yays and zero nays next up we have our action items and just to confirm with our board secretary that there is no public testimony on action items um

083that is correct there are no one sign up for action item testimony thank you and remember bellamy if you would please start us off yes madam president i moved to approve asd memorandum 122 and authorize the superintendent to award a contract for the multi-site security vestibule upgrade group one season one project to sr bales construction incorporated for a total award amount of seven hundred eighty four thousand nine hundred and forty one dollars second thank you i have a first and a second are there any questions from the board members on asd memorandum number 122 not seeing any katie would you please call do roll call remember hildy yes member donnelly yes remember bellamy yes president michaelis yes member mitchell yes remember marsette yes remember holloman yes asd memorandum number one two two passes with seven

084yays and zero nays and board member bellamy yes we don't hear you remember bellamy are you with us still pull your mic out and plug it back in marco or turn your video off looks like she might have a frozen connection yeah she looks for them i just texted her that she's frozen maybe somebody else can read it andy you are our clerk why don't you go ahead and uh go ahead and uh read item number three if you would be so willing um yes i would move uh for the board to adopt asd memorandum number 132 revision to school board policy 3110 transfer of funds and do i have a second this is strong i'll second that thank you are there any board member questions on memorandum number one three two not hearing any

085katie if you would kindly do roll call for us please remember holloman yes remember merced yes ever mitchell yes remember hildy yes remember donnelly yes president michaelis yes and do we have member bellamy back online i see her but don't hear her um if you see her can she give a thumbs up or a thumbs down i am not seeing her video um it is currently a dark window um i don't believe she's with us still would you like me to put her um not present at vote uh yes for now an asd memorandum passes number 132 passes with six yays zero nays and one not present at vote we do understand technical issues andy if you could please read the next one for me for the board yes move to adopt asd memorandum number

086revision the school board policy 344.1 fixed assets capitalization do i have a second there's star i'll second it thank you do any board members have any questions on asd memorandum number one three three there's margo not seeing any katie if you could please do roll call remember marcette yes president michaelis yes remember bellamy i'll come back to her member donnelly yes remember mitchell yes remember hildy yes remember holloman yes remember bellamy okay thank you asd memorandum number one three three passes with 68 zero nays and one not present at vote and president michaelis um ms bellamy i remember bellamy just texted me and uh uh indicated that hers was a guest vote so i'll make sure that that's changed thank you in the minutes madam chair yes i would just like the record to recognize

087that and go back and allow member bellamy to vote in any of the ones where she was electronically cut off on i i would be okay with that i know that technical issues are are prevailing right now yeah i i just don't want the record to show that she wasn't present when she actually was yeah absolutely sure so i i will um if it's okay i'll go back to memorandum 133 and redo the votes i showed that everyone was ea and that member bellamy sent me a vote of va perfect so uh one through three passes with seven years and zero knees and andy if you could yeah thank you um move to adopt asd memorandum 136 revisions to the 20 20 21 school calendar and do i have a second please this is star

088ii thank you are there any board members that have questions on all right member donnelly do i have the mute off i hope you can hear me yes you're good thank you good thank you um i'm still an advocate that the in-service day during february of 2021 be changed to the last friday in the month of february because that is the first day of for rendezvous and having grown up here partly growing up here it was one of the high points of the year that the kids all got that friday off to be able to go the the first day of the sled dog races and since it's only two weeks difference between the in-service day that's currently on this proposal versus going to the last friday that i would like to see that so

089at this time i would move that the in-service day in february be changed to the last friday of the month of february two thousand twenty one is there a second to that amendment this is dinah mitchell i'll second that and president michael is just as a uh point of clarification um i was reaching out to member bellamy and i would uh it would be helpful if that could be repeated um remember dominic could you please uh restate your amendment to item number 136 yes madam chair i move that the in-service day on the in the on the friday in the month of february 2021 be changed to the last friday of the month of february 2021 you are there i know i've got some hands in the queue and we are um at this time

090speaking only to the amendment being offered by mr donnelly uh board member marcette you had your hand raised first so i'm guess i'm just wondering is there any um consequences or is there any reason that shouldn't be moved dr bishop i see your hand now uh thank you madam president uh to um remember marsette's question i would like to request that uh jenny knutson uh be moved into the queue i believe that she worked on the original calendar with the um inclusive group of stakeholders from asd and and can share that it has come up before uh the change that we're requesting of course now is is totally different from that and i could speak to that but uh the original calendar uh was made for a different reason and is that something um missed

091that uh dr knutson that you could speak to um if that uh as well as i believe dr kirsten johnson also worked on the calendar committee uh yes through the president um we the original calendar that we have in place now the reason why that in-service day is scheduled for the 12th of february is related to our parent teacher conferences and so um we have some flex time in there where um have half days for um of school and then parent-teacher conferences and then that friday is when we do a half day of pd and then have the afternoon where teachers are off because of working later on the first two days for parent-teacher conferences and i know dr johnson struggler and dan barker have also been part of the calendar committee as far as

092how it relates to elementary and secondary and parent-teacher conferences but that's the general gist of what the conversation was in the original calendar committee i do um have additional information if we did amend it to an in-service day uh rather than making up for that parent teacher conference day because the parent-teacher conference day is actually considered a school day uh we would have too many in-service days uh and that's in regard to the person that keeps count of the statutory requirements for our calendar uh just notified me of that so we'd we'd have to um because that one and that friday is typically as dr knutson said uh four parent-teacher conferences um and a makeup for working in the evening uh the days before um i believe that we would uh not have the recommended

093days um this would uh what they said is uh that changing that day would make 11 in-service days rather than 10 and one would have to be a non-in-service session day so we would just have to take another one and and change it to a session and then we could exchange the and in service day as uh the motion passed uh member donnelly on the calendar i thought it was indicated as an in-service day the friday the 12th of february that is the previously scheduled um in service day and so the changing of it it moves that to november third which would be the general election day we wouldn't be in school on the general election so we had already moved that we would need another one so under the proposal that's before us the

094main motion the friday the 12th the kids would be in school that day correct correct okay so we'd have to find another day so from what i understand at this time your amendment is technically not doable because it would violate our minimum number of student contact days yeah madam chair i hadn't counted that that day had been deleted as an in-service baby because i was looking at the old calendar and not the new one so um i think you're correct my motion would would create a different problem although i'd really like to have an in-service day on the last friday of february and it seems like this is a very unique situation where we're shifting it to election day i'd have to reconsider what other possible in-service day we could switch i understand the conundrum

095at this time would you be willing to rescind your amendment as it is a not doable one as written yes all right thank you so we are back to our original motion which is um the esd memorandum number and do any other board members have questions regarding the main motion as is mr donnelly thank you this is a question for the superintendent if you were going to shift another in-service day to the friday bef the last friday in february to 2021 which day would have the least negative impact to switch um that's a great question through the board president to member donnelly i would uh really have to go back to the greater the bigger team it was um very inclusive of parents and teachers and it's all around the professional development uh specifically that's

096uh delivered as well as you could see how this one was connected to parent-teacher conferences so rather than um off the cuff i could bring that information back for another time if you wanted to make a calendar change but i i wouldn't um i i would hate to miss something uh tonight not understanding the depth of each day and how they are utilized by teachers and and staff in the in the professional pla development plan for the district i um yeah and and honestly your uh idea i mean you were spot on and just saying it's it's a unique um year in that we already um when we had the request by um our lieutenant governor to not have school on the 18th we we pre-looked at the next uh election to and made those

097changes so it is quite unique in any other given year it would be much easier to do as you suggested um with that bringing it back um the purpose of this is to this evening i think the importance of it is to get the first day of school um noticed uh for for all to plan uh and for our teachers to understand that they'll have days to plan and prepare and prep but our families really need to know publicly and for sure about the first day and i believe they're they're uh it would be appropriate either this year for next year to change or even bring it back um and discuss uh the latter days uh later on in the year um and you know the the next meeting if you will with that information

098um next up in the queue i have board member mitchell yeah and i i totally understand what member donnelly i i appreciate his request and i think that that is um it is a very very big winter event i guess i would say with all of the calendar changes it is it is difficult to change this maybe it's something we look at for a year from now versus this coming school year and i know that the current the calendar committee the calendar that we most recently approved was last year's this year as the next years or is this the first year of the three-year cycle well this is second second of three year okay so that would be changing the last year of that calendar committee and i i just don't know how complicated that

099is but i i do appreciate his request so i just think it might be a little tight for this year thank you next up in the queue i have board member holloman and i was just going to add that having been on the calendar committee before everything is connected to everything and it is really difficult to change anything at this stage i do think that probably member donnelly and other people in the public want to know that they can make suggestions that really will go into a queue and be looked at and i'm not sure who manages that queue the calendar committee is in the past has been chaired or i'm going to say facilitated by the hr director it might be good to have a list and it could even be a public list

100on the website uh where people can make a suggestion and say i'd like for the friday before at the start for randy to be an in-service day and then that way it can come into play during the calendar committee which has a lot of different representatives from a lot of different uh parts of the community the different departments the different levels in the school district as well as parent groups and and other groups throughout the community that are heavily affected by the calendar and it might be possible but it will only be possible through other adjustments and those adjustments have a consequence so i don't know that we do that but just something the superintendent could do in her spare time thank you i have next up in thecube board member hildy oh thank you

101um yeah i i like the idea of the they offer for ronnie um i just know that the calendar committee keeps in mind board goals attendance goals and i know that's a big time the current days off with the conferences is a big travel time for a lot of families they plan on that for their family vacations um so just keeping in mind attendance goals and maybe there's another way to do it where you can do both things i don't know but um that's just one of the factors i know they consider as member halvin said lots of lots of factors and next step in the queue is board member bellamy thank you madam president i i'm just having all kind of technical difficulties but i think the only reason that we're voting on this

102tonight i miss most of the discussion um but the only reason we're voting is because of the impact of cobid relative to not wanting to have our kids and staff um in the building you know because they use our buildings for voting correct so we would not be having uh this wouldn't even be an item i think if it hadn't been for that uh and i just did oh what andy said uh i do i also think uh going forward and i also get what dina said regarding um um the amendment to the uh the failed amendment because that if that's important to people then uh the committee should know that and uh but i don't know that we need to uh that will be able to uh beyond manipulate the beginning of the year

103without dominoing something else throughout the year so um anyway i just wanted to make that comment thank you and dr bishop i see your hand raised madam president i i do want to share that if the board wanted to take an innovative step and i'm going out on a limb here we do understand after this last year that learning can be done at home and that day could be designated as an at-home learning day uh online learning day if the board so desired to be out of the box and i know uh from conversations i've had uh with the commissioner even given that uh the movement that we've done with the in-services does create we used to keep 172 days in our year so that we'd have two flex days for snow and not have

104to make up uh because that you know um is additional um hit on our budget uh that i already have permission that any snow days we can call um uh learning days from home uh because we our students are gonna be one to one we are training staff we're having a blended learning model that really if we wanted to problem solve we could say that date is an online learning day school day because you can do it anytime anyplace anywhere remember don lee you have your hand raised although you might still be on mute though thank you madam chair sorry about that i would move that if the district can get permission from the department of education that the last friday in february can be designated a remote learning day that we allow that that

105we designated so on the calendar is there a second two member donnelly's amendment i'll second it this star thank you is there anybody that wishes to speak to the amendment offered by member donnelly board member hildy um i really like the idea i think it's a cool solution i am concerned one when we get into the spring and one i don't know if we're even going to have school every day like who knows what the schedule is going to be happening then or if they'll even be for rondy if we can be in a group i don't know but you get to like these real short week after short week after short week and then it's like april and may never end um and it's just really long like all of you parents know it's

106uh this really so that's kind of just one hesitation of mine one will there even be for randy and two like is this where if we're gonna have one day is this where we like the optimal place for it um but i really like the idea of it and i like for ronnie thank you next up in the queue i have board member holloman um my biggest concern is a real core part of what we do in our school district is teach kids the meaning of words and that they matter and while i like the idea of kids being out for for rundy i think we need to add a day on to the end of the year we're supposed to have them in class a certain amount of time my biggest problem is calling

107it an at-home morning opportunity but kind of giving a wink and a nod and going but really we know you're going to go to fort roddy um i i think it's a horrible example if we want to let them have that day off to be a furundi which i'm in favor of we need to find another day to be in school to meet our obligation um and not not offer an at-home morning day when we don't really expect them to be at home morning if i i'm going to vote against it just on the definition of words thank you thank you board member bellamy i have a question for the superintendent uh dr bishop can we so instead of a day we don't call it that um at the university level we call it a

108synchronous learning or an asynchronous class um does that count against us as a day or does it um or can we just designate asynchronous classes if we are you know throughout the year if we needed to through the president remember bellamy that's what i tried to explain uh that uh with our days off that can learning can continue and and uh what we found out this time is that um throughout the day there are students that don't get on our system and they don't get it on until 10 o'clock at night uh during this spring so i wasn't doing a you know trying to be sly in my suggestion what i'm saying is that there's many more possibilities than what we used to do and asynchronous learning uh continuation of learning does happen outside the

109classroom specifically when we have the tools to do so absolutely thank you thank you uh next up uh member donnelly thank you madam chair remember hildy raised a possible concern with the scheduling where some people take advantage with the timing of spring break but next year spring break doesn't happen until after iditarod weekend so that timing is not a problem for those families this coming year in 2021 board member hildy um i i mean i think this is uh i i disagree that it's like a wink and a nod like i can teach my kids in the morning and help them and then we can go to ferrandi so that's not a missed day of school for me we can do both um i think for randy is wildly educational that's why i take my

110kids it's fun and it's lots of puppies um but i also think this is like a fun way to kind of take a step you know forward in what we're doing and how we engage with students and parents and teachers and try new things and um so i'm kind of intrigued and it's one day we can see how it goes um i i guess it doesn't i don't know i think i think it could be a cool thing for people to get a chance to say we value alaska history and i don't know our community but i don't know how to work out because we're in the middle of a pandemic but that doesn't mean we can't try new things board member bellamy i'm not sure of the process but could we instead of just

111the online learning day since we're talking about language as an asynchronous um because that's the correct term is that correct doctor bishop it i i'm just trying to figure out how does the how does uh the department of ed refer to um sessions that learning that takes place other than face to face through the president to remember bellamy they really haven't yet it's just through discussions and the flexibility uh that they're offering understanding that we could stand up uh viable systems and uh for learning and engagement and so i will suggest asynchronous to them um as well okay thank you all right so we have an amendment to memorandum number 136 it is the amendment reads i remember donnelly i moved with approval from deed that the last friday in february be designated an online

112learning day and so at this time seeing no other board members comments i'm going to ask katie to please call roll call on the amendment only president michaelis no remember bellamy yes remember donnelly yes remember marsette yes remember mitchell yes and then um remember hildy and remember holloman i i see and appreciate that you voted online um i believe that when we're doing a remote meeting i am kind of required to do a roll call so i'll go ahead and ask you to confirm your votes um remember hildy yes remember holloman no thank you that amendment passes with five yays and two nays which brings us back to our main motion which is the revision to the 2021 2020 to 2021 school calendar as amended are there any board member comments on the main motion

113as amended seeing then katie if you could please do roll call for us remember mitchell yes member holloman yes member marsette yes remember bellamy yes remember donnelly yes member hildy yes president michaelis yes thank you this time asd memorandum number 136 passes with seven yays and zero nays as amended next up board member bellamy if you could read the motion for asd memorandum number 137 yes madam president i move uh i move to approve asd memorandum 137 the attached letter in response to recent events of racial injustice and inequity as a statement from the anchorage school board thank you are there any board member questions on asd memorandum number 137 not seeing any katie if you could please do a roll call vote remember holloman yes remember donnelly yes remember marsette yes remember bellamy yes

114president michaelis yes remember hildy yes and remember mitchell yes and asd memorandum number 137 passes with seven yays and zero nays that brings us to the end of our action items next up is our non-action and the only item on it which i will go ahead and pull because i know there will be discussion and presentation is the asd school start 2021 task force and at this time i will turn it over to dr bishop and her team thank you madam president and school board uh as i stated during the superintendent update we just went through a plethora of ideas and examples studying from other countries who have sent students back to school their successes their failures their challenges and the team wants to share some of those ideas uh with you uh in order

115to move forward again at the end of this we we it is for you to receive the information but also to to in some kind of straw poll say yes looks like um you're moving in the right direction uh and we we do encourage the the type of feedback that we receive during the superintendent report in regard to um the structure and the stability of the program so understanding uh bigger needs that's what we're meeting i believe tomorrow with uh the community group uh tom ross we'll talk about that but uh we'd like to share with you before this goes out uh to greater feedback audiences so with that i'm going to turn it over to the chairs of each of the committees starting with mark stock for the focus group again as a review

116and we always will keep this online for anyone who accesses this on the internet uh or our website rather that there is a planning document to understand the strategy uh with this that is tied to the state of alaska with that dr stock thank you thank you dr bishop and to members of the board and community so the school start task force as dr bishop has said has been meeting and i would like to kind of explain a little bit of our process so many of those models that we had looked at in senior leadership there was a smaller executive leadership team of of our academic service folks who've looked at a wide variety of options uh everything from week on week off multiple day models am pm all kinds of different ways that schools

117are trying to envision this work and then we we called that down to about four medium risk options those were the ones that went to the school start task force and then we have since then have called that down to two ideas and that internal planning group consists of about 36 folks total there were members of various groups there we've had four meetings we reviewed the state's low medium and high risk scenarios and then we focused in on the medium risk piece and there are two areas that are really important tonight and the straw poll kind of a thing thumbs up thumbs down from you all is really only needed tonight on one of them and that is just as i explained the curriculum and instruction model the what we're calling the cohort quarter model

118it's important for us to make sure that you're okay with that part because the working teams starting tomorrow are often running on trying to organize curriculum so we want to make sure that that it still uh meets your need the scheduling pieces where a lot of the talk and the i think the debate will come in is starting around the cup the notion of how much face-to-face contact can we do and what's the health conditions at the time school starts and so there will be ongoing discussions throughout the summer as these health conditions are regularly monitored we don't intend to bring you a detailed plan until mid july at which point we're getting closer to being able to say this is this is the model so we will bring those back to you in july

119next slide so i want to start with this concept because this is the critical part for tonight what is a cohort quarter model this is our term can't find it in the literature it's just something we coined it's two things one elementary cohorts of students and staff are self-contained in a medium risk level wherever possible and think of it as the old school self-contained or one-room school house or one grade level if you will where students are are tried to be restricted as far as their travel in this cohort model in an elementary the specialists become somewhat more of a generalist and they are assigned to cohort teams so that they don't travel every single day in a normal school you'll see classes going into art music and pe all day long and the travel

120in the school is extraordinary and in a cohort uh model we're trying to limit that due to covet so that the risk of exposure or a risk of someone catching covet if there was someone positive is reduced greatly so in this model our specialists are moved to various grade levels at designated time so they might spend an art teacher might work with kindergarten for a number of weeks and then if everything is going well then could transfer to it and work with another group of students and the goal is to reduce the time that they travel so that's the elementary piece of a cohort model the quarter model in the elementary is based around trying to spread those specials throughout the year with the people assigned to the team so that the kids are getting

121multiple experiences in art music and pe spread throughout the school year but it can't be done on a day-to-day basis it's done in chunks of time to stop spread at the middle school and high school our courses and subjects are taught in blocks of nine weeks and in this scenario students would take two 90-minute classes they would focus on ela math science and social studies so nine weeks one they would take say an ela in a science class english language arts and science second nine weeks they would take a math class into social studies and every one of those times they would take two 45-minute electives what this does is it's sort of like the elementary cohort model in that it reduces the amount of travel greatly the other thing it does is it reduces

122the number of courses at the secondary level for which students and teachers are responsible this was the big complaint about the spring when kids were trying in high school to take six classes online or in the middle school multiple classes online became tough to manage so the cohort quarter concept is simply trying to reduce the amount of travel and reduce the amount of subjects students take at one time next slide so why so the big question is why the the issues of trying to be consistent and meet student needs so some countries called it the bubble model that was a term that you'll find we just use the word cohort but what it does is there's less passing periods less travel of the students and staff more self-containment schools will have to develop some unique

123pieces to their schedules based on the number of specialists they have available to help assign to different teams in elementary the face-to-face time will be spent priority on english language arts and math and one of the caveats to this is we would have to have a slightly shorter student day during those blocks of time and the reason is that in order to meet the contract requirements for teachers preparation time that depends on specialists and if students aren't leaving every day going to a special then teachers prep time is affected so in this model teachers will get all their prep time after the students have left for the day so they would have extra time there in the i'm sorry go back i was just turning off my mic to cough there sorry um so in

124the quarter nine week blocks it reduces the number of courses that they're responsible for and like i mentioned before it was a major concern this was probably the criticism from the spring so anything we can do in an online or blended environment that will help our students be successful this is probably the one big key for us and the reason we want to come to you tonight and kind of give us the thumbs up on the cohort piece is because we got to start designing the content and then we know what subjects to do first and so on next slide so this one is probably where there's going to be some discussion because this there are if there's 20 people in the room you have 20 opinions on this if you put 50 in a

125room you have 50 opinions so it just doesn't matter but well i'll like all i can tell you is the level of conversations we had to get to this point so what we did was we tried to create something as as i think was member hildy mentioned about consistency for families one thing about what we're proposing is that it's it's scalable so that it doesn't uh it can go up or down a little bit so in a low risk level environment based on the state's definition all our students would go to school five days a week full student days we would only cancel if i mean we would only if there was an e-learning day it would only be because school was canceled maybe a snow day or maybe a ferrandi day or something you

126know you never know but those e-learning would be the only time where that would apply switch over to high risk on the red the red code there in the red box is who goes in a high risk environment no one they're all online in a blended format like happened this spring with a couple of huge exceptions one of them is that we're going to have more rigorous and more aligned curriculum and content we're going to have a robust opportunity for our elementary students we're going to have a lot of changes to what happened in the spring but the concept is in a high risk environment our students are are in online off out of the brick and mortar altogether as far as how many days do they do this and how long are they in

127a day that's not necessarily applicable because it's like dr bishop said anytime anyplace any day they can be learning so in this high risk environment that's not really an issue all the days are learning days so then let's talk about the medium risk because this is where there's lots of opinions if we started in a in a cautious approach what you would do is you would assign all the students into an alphabet based cohort and you would have half of the students coming two days a week so you might have and then the families of course would have different names and last names they'll have to all get it worked out so the families can be together as as one board member mentioned so the concept here is that they would go two days a

128week five hours a day and they would stay with their alphabet based cohort through this time period wednesdays would be e-learning days and professional development part of that is because of the blended and online components teachers need time to work on those other online areas and and put some content there and no matter what we build this summer teachers are still going to have options and they're going to have some flexibility in the blended platforms and so everything isn't provided for them in a blended environment they still have you know much they can do they also have to kind of check in and monitor some of the work the students are doing so what the concept would be is if we chose to start cautiously you would begin the year with the preset schedule like

129this one in what we would call the medium high risk environment and if things go well then the thought would be you could move to medium low risk which is you could go from 50 cohort to all the students coming in still have to be a shortened day teachers would still need that preparation period wednesdays would still be e-learning and pd days so the those are the concepts and this these are scalable they're fairly simple they're fairly easy to understand and we think that um now i will say this there's still conversation is this you know optimistic or aggressive or is this cautious i think it depends on your point of view uh we have some folks who who legitimately believe that that that's too too too much face to face right off the bat

130and some want to ease in and see how it goes but this is the model that we're we're considering uh community input tomorrow with the larger community group will go through and you'll they'll get the chance to hear not only what what we've presented but also what your conversations are tonight and the community also will have a large group weighing in with mr roth's team tomorrow so i'll stop with that that's the the model that we've called this all this work down to and and then really we just have to wait and see how the summer goes with regards to cobit thank you are you taking questions at this time or moving on to a different presenter well i could maybe refer to you and or to dr bishop if they would rather go through

131the rest of them and then do questions for everyone or whether they want to do them piece by piece um that's a great thing let's go ahead and go through them and then uh because maybe some of the questions might be answered by other groups okay thank you this time we'll move to um i did have a summary slide there i forgot about that we'll work through the details bring you the schedules in july and uh the work the thumbs up piece when we're all done with all the reports is just to see if if the board has any heartburn over the concept of a cohort or the quarter system concept because that our design team's got to get to work and start looking at the courses and scheduling and they can start planning whether

132it's one day a week two days a week four days a week all that's another issue but just to get the design work done so and now we'll go to dr knutson thank you dr stock and good evening um today i'm going to quickly give you an update on the working groups and i appreciate dr stock's presentation before this because a lot of the work that our curriculum working groups are doing is dependent on the cohort quarter decision as we move forward so just to refresh your memory the purpose of our working groups is really to support the successful implementation of teaching and learning so we can really easy easily and smoothly pivot between our low medium and high risk situations as we move through the year as needed so our timeline has been as

133you recall in may we adopted a district-wide digital platform for blended and online classes and that is canvas so that we have some consistency because we know consistency and some predictability will help us in in times like this where there is some uncertainty and so as much predictability as we can have we want to have for families so that they can get used to things and know how to navigate between these new systems as well as our teaching staff as well so that they can have familiarity and navigate between um a consistent system so that was that was chosen in may since the end of may we have worked on establishing priorities working teams digital workflows and course design parameters and and that's really what's happening right now and um a lot of the work

134that's going to happen with the working groups in july and august is really dependent on if we go to quarter a quarter system because then we prioritize certain courses at that point in time at secondary um we're going to how we construct the classes and work with those teams will look different than if we were doing our traditional model and the same thing for elementary with cohorts how we organize the content and be able to put it out to folks is going to look different in a cohort model than in a traditional model so that information is really going to inform the work of our working teams then july and august we're going to be developing those courses and the training for both teachers students and families because that is one of the piece of

135feedback we had was um if we go to straight online um especially with elementary our our caregivers and families are um you know helping especially our little ones um access some of this content online so we want to make sure we keep that in mind as we're planning for professional development and then finally the feedback loop that um we're setting up is there's a project leadership team and this is senior leadership who's really decision making try you know clearing the pathway for our working groups to be able to do their work and making decisions as needed they cascade that up when they need some support and big big part of all of this is our content leads these are curriculum coordinators our directors in teaching learning special ed ell indian ed all of those areas

136so that they can really help lead the working groups through the work through all the courses and everything that needs to be put on canvas so they're a critical piece and they have been working very hard in june to to do that work and then our working groups our teachers and our staff and practitioners in the schools who are going to help us put um the courses together and again really using using our district curriculum but really looking at how we provide a rigorous guaranteed and viable curriculum for our students as they move forward into into the school year and then finally we have an advisory team that is going to meet a couple of times this summer and the purpose of the advisory group for the curriculum area and instruction is really it's made

137up of practitioners from the schools teachers librarians counselors all of those kind of folks and um it's to present what we're doing and for them to share back considerations that the work group should be thinking about as they're doing the work so one example i want to give you when we met the first time for the online platform is a consideration that the team rose up to us was that a canvas platform has to look very different for k2 than it does for even the upper grades in elementary middle and high and so how are we going to look at that very intentionally to make it um fit with the learning teaching learning needs at that level so that's an example they would raise those considerations to us so we can really think about that

138as the working groups are doing that and that's going to be co-led by corey ace the incoming aea president and myself um and um people will be kind of like in our board meeting allowed to come and observe and hear what's happening but um we want it to be really practitioner based so that we can hear hear those considerations from people who are going to be doing this in the schools and so that's the structure of what we're doing and we're stand ready to move forward as we know some some of those key things tonight that dr stock presented we'll be able to move forward and continue that work so that concludes my report and i'm going to turn it over to mr tom roth thank you dr knutson through the board president so this

139evening i'd like to provide a brief update on the community advisory group some some quick details 20 members the first meeting first session is tomorrow uh the second session is scheduled for the 24th of june in addition to the 20 community uh participants there will also be district staff who were were logged into the meeting as non-participants they're prepared to answer questions as subject matter experts or or if there are questions uh that that need to be answered so what i'd like to briefly talk about uh is the agenda uh for tomorrow quickly talk through through the purpose and and some of the methods uh for the community advisory group and then then address several several questions that have been presented to panel members to to facilitate uh their contribution to uh the discussion tomorrow

140and on the 24th so first the the agenda they're really five primary uh segments or components of of tomorrow's meetings uh after after uh administrative notes and introductions what what we're focused on really is is to ensure that all members understand um a number of of different informations that that are you know key to um the the decisions for for august so it's tomorrow i anticipate it's going to be very heavy in the delivery of information so the first is to review the state guidance the state's smart start 2020 in in detail really kind of along the lines of the the low uh medium and high risk criteria and guidelines that they have provided to all districts in the state from that we're going to transition into a review of the options for low medium

141and high risk the topic that dr stock uh presented to the board this evening uh is is what uh you know dr dr stop will be presenting to the panel members uh for both these work for all these sessions you know that we're going to build in question and answer time to make sure that uh any anything that's unclear uh can be uh addressed uh to ensure that there is clarity from that uh dr knutson is going to review the the curriculum planning again the thinking as as we understand it now uh and then we'll transition into a discussion of some other contributing factors for the panel members to understand uh you know what other things are are contributing to this plan and and how the district will support um you know examples of that

142uh would include things such as transportation nutrition uh distribution of computers students with special needs how we are looking to address those additional factors in the planning once once we've gone through the information we'll then transition into uh discussions focused discussions uh from the group we we believe in and dr stock did did address the the most likely scenario that we're going to find ourselves in is in the medium risk we anticipate spending a majority of the the discussion time looking at uh and talking about the medium risk options so real quick from that transition into a discussion of purpose and and methods so the we think the fundamental purpose of the community advisory group really is to educate district leaders and planners in the school start task force and uh by their provision of

143candid and informed analysis observations uh and the presumed impacts uh with the resumption of school in either a low medium or high risk environment our method to achieve this is one to again to provide information and ensure that there is clarity and understanding of of the environment the conditions of the state and then understanding the the options uh that the district is considering um it will be clear that that this is not decisional um but but we want to make sure that we're able to provide enough information so again members have understanding so from that knowledge we look for the advisor group members to provide their analysis observations and the presumed presumed impacts based on some guiding questions which i'll cover here momentarily so that's the primary method that the second is from the members

144to receive input from i'll call their constituencies uh and and that can be either individuals or groups depending on um the members on the panel and then in the second session that they will relay the same the input that they received from their constituents will can convey and discuss on the second session on the 24th of june so to real quick quickly discuss the the questions that have been presented to the panel members again this is intended really as a tool to help shape uh their thinking and their thoughts going into uh tomorrow so the first question that was presented is how will a low medium risk option impact or affect your respective constituency that's question one question two how will a low medium or high risk option impact or affect you and your family

145so there's a personal component to it the third question is how will a low medium or high risk option impact anchorage life so understanding their belief or presumed effect of a low medium or high risk option on the city and then lastly we know we've got a lot of very informed capable and competent professionals that are working on this very complex matter um but we're not we're not presumptive to believe we know everything so the last question is you know what are we not considering what are we not thinking about that could affect you or your respective communities again we we we're hoping that that these members will all participate and help us think through uh again this very very complex matter so that's a quick summary where we are uh we're starting tomorrow morning

146at 10 30. the first meeting is a two-hour block and we look forward to it so this time that's my update i think i'll open it up back to dr bishop dr stock for board member questions and comments all right and i i would like to add as well there's another um uh standing committee that's running alongside of this uh uh and it's steered by um uh mike fleckenstein and kathy moffat in regard to uh k-12 virtual school that's asd connected to our schools so that option will also be available if parents just don't want a blended model in and out that we want to give them a connection to their school in a robust program uh utilizing courses from apex florida virtual just different uh vendors of of uh resources uh with an individualized

147plan so that's another uh topic that we will present but that's that group is running alongside the smart start for our blended learning so wanted to to share that option will be available to parents and we'd like to keep them connected to asd uh and in the future we'll we'll update you uh but with that uh this is um what we have and we're welcome for your feedback uh as we move forward again uh we just we totally understand the complexities totally understand that not all questions are answered uh but at this time it would uh benefit us as well as you heard the planning teams uh to to to know that we're moving in the right direction thank you dr bishop and if board members can use the raised hand feature if they have

148questions and comments and certainly the opportunity to weigh in as they are kind of looking for a kind of a straw poll vote from board members and the first one i do have up in the queue is board member hildy thank you so thank you so much for this presentation as a mom who is uh trying that panic for the fall trying to be cool because i feel much calmer seeing all this excellent work that's done um so i just had a few questions one i want to say that those community groups sound terrific we just talked about surveys giving limited perspective so i i love that that's already being addressed and going out to people to getting feedback um i did have that question about the sanitizing costs and schedule for the various considerations

149if it's week on week off is that easier to clean or does it not really make a difference um as far as the the cohort my only concern is on math i i see how it could work for the other subjects i am concerned about students having a break in math um being able to meet their academic uh goals you know continuous learning and then my last question is what risk level would you say we're at today just for a perspective parents understanding what the school year might start at might look at um to be able to start planning for you know their child care and things like that i'll take the the last question and mark can share i would say that our community is in medium high risk right now given the parameters

150that deed has shared and uh through the president to remember hildy is the question about math is interesting because it's also the same question that music teachers ask folks who like to be in subjects and courses that need repetition they need daily work the scope and sequence is really critical i mean i would put our elementary reading in that same category as well i mean the issue is you need as much as you can get the quarter system what i'm going to say though is that i know math teachers say that but there are thousands of math teachers in this in this country that are teaching in trimester schedules right now that have the same issues and so it is definitely something that can be worked through there are other ways you can do it

151you can schedule in things like math tutoring sessions on one of those elective slots there are ways to carry that forward in your off uh you know on the off uh quarter and i don't know if if dr johnson would like to chime in if there or if that answers your question in enough detail but it is a concern and it will be a concern of math teachers but it is happening all over the country right now and there are ways to work through that so doctor um oh sorry i'm sorry go ahead kirsten um i was just going to say um dr stock alluded to it but um there are ways for us to carry forward um especially for our struggling math students um a particular elective where they could get that routine practice

152so that they don't regress and continue their skills and so we could definitely address um that that piece wouldn't they don't have a math class scheduled for that particular quarter so through the president i might just very quickly respond to uh remember hildy's question concerning costs of cleaning and and disinfection so if i might not not so much focus on cost but just to just to to address a couple of things first uh daily cleaning uh will will go on um as as we we have always done in schools uh and and to some extent that that cleaning also involves disinfection of of fixtures and fixtures and other high contact items and that's inclusive of school buses and buildings we we have procured uh but are waiting to take receipt of a number of electrostatic

153sprayers and those are the devices that allow us to do a very quick disinfection of schools so if if we have those systems on hand at the start of the school year then it's absolutely feasible that we could also not just clean but do a complete disinfection of all school buildings on a daily basis now if we don't and i think folks understand that we we are competing for resources like everybody else we think we're going to get them but i'm not going to count my chickens until i have them so if if we do have to do a a hand disinfection to schools uh on a single day that that is not feasible um but uh it probably is not necessary either uh what is important if we do have any any outbreaks that

154we can respond locally in an immediate way to address those circumstances and that is absolutely feasible and planned um i i will say that that as far as a a continuing need inside of classrooms i i think any way you look at it there will be a demand on teachers in classrooms to to maintain some level of cleaning and disinfecting during the school day particularly i think in the elementary schools and we are looking to provide resources to teachers to enable them to do that so again that's my bid on cleaning and and uh to add to that uh um through the president we uh to remember hildy we do have schools that eat lunch in their classrooms and have those set protocols with with safe cleaning materials and and uh really kids take responsibility

155for that and and given probably the information about this it's gonna be a good teaching tool routines as well to ensure um all those safe practices of social distancing covering coughs wearing masks cleaning are all going to be a part of our lives for a while thank you thank you next up in the queue i have board member bellamy oh i actually my i had a question about the math as well uh that's been answered pretty good to my satisfaction my other question has to do with does the the point this plan covers pre-k through 12 correct all every all kids all grades yes okay thank you thank you next up in the queue i have board member marsette so i guess my question is what does a day back at school look like i

156mean um are they going to be six feet apart um i mean what what does it look like and how do we know where to start given that most of our students haven't especially our elementary students probably haven't advanced and maybe lost something so uh to the president to to member marsette so one of the things that we'll be working through is every single division in operations and in food service they've already begun planning and once we uh you know get settled on on these sort of range of options uh operations has already started well into that so the answer to that some of it depends and so for example the the things that are coming out of the state are are guidelines they're not laws statutes or rules so we have to work through

157they all understand that we have certain things that are going to be flexible if you've attended a elementary school you're pretty sure that if you have all the students in there maintaining six feet of space is virtually impossible in a six foot of a virtual environment i mean i think we have to acknowledge that part of it that's very challenging i'm not saying it can't be done in parts of the school but it's very difficult and but if you look at an alphabet based cohort model of 50 and you have half you get a lot closer and with the right kind of precautions and with masks and with all the other things that we put in place with as much less travel as we can get we've done the things that we can do with

158the schedule and the system and then we have to lay in all the ppe and all the health considerations and it won't look like school's going to look different when students are in there and we'll work with our health department and work through all of those there will be protocols that will have to be taught so i mean it's it's certainly a guideline and something we will try to aspire to but for example low risk and medium risk there's they're very challenging to to do transportation with one student per seat every other seat you couldn't deliver all the students to the school given that kind of spacing on a school bus so we will have to work through things like ppe and other things or looking at the medium high risk environment where you're cutting

159half of the students in on the bus by just virtue of an alphabet-based cohort so we still have lots of work to do on some of those details but that's the kind of environment the whole country is facing right now so just a quick follow-up are are we saying that our students will wear masks or no or do we not know that yet well yeah we're in the continuum well it's interesting because the state's guidelines have not used the word masks in the actual guidelines but when you asked dr zinke when i pitched the question to her in the chat box on the smart start webinar dr zink for the state indicated the great benefits of masks and went into great detail so even though they don't mention it those are guidelines that we ourselves

160can implement and we are we are looking into those details and buying the purchases doing the things we need to do to be prepared to do that thank you next up i have board member hildy thank you i just um had one more question about computers we talked about one to one ratio for third through twelfth getting computers to all the kids but what is how would the k through second do online learning with computer you know how does that work if they don't have one to one so um i'll i'll handle the first part and then we can refer to to mike if we need to so the the fact that at the uh k through two levels um the students who need those in a blended environment will have them one-to-one means that

161every kid has purchased their own that doesn't mean that that we won't be able to get kids k through to some of those but we have other options so we use the paper packets we use the other combinations of things that they come into play we have multiple if we have students coming in two days a week or four days a week there's much that can be done to provide students with hard copies of things in those lower grades so we'll have to do a combination of all of those things thank you do any other board members have um questions or comments at this juncture board member mitchell um yeah i just i think the options that you've explored are all very interesting and i think that the um for the secondary levels i really

162like that idea of the cohort um quarter option so you know the biggest concern for everybody i'm sure is if we do have to go to a couple of days a week or no days a week it makes it really difficult for parents and child care and work and that's just i think the way it is i don't know if there's any um is there anything we can do around that in terms of um i mean i guess if we go to that it's because we can't have more people in the building at a time so there probably isn't much we can do to help in that regard but i just wanted to put that out there uh dr know bishop and that just uh reminded me that there would be certain student populations that

163may be already self-contained uh that could be brought in every day um i don't think this answers your question um member mitchell but it brought me to an additional thought on other students with high needs they may already have a self-contained classroom and and already have a space on their busing so we will take a look at individual ieps so what we're looking at are really for the general education larger groups and um you were correct in stating that a lot of those possibilities to support childcare and other things are are aren't possible because of the same reasons why we wouldn't have them in school we would work for partners with that uh given staff similar to how we are now but even that is is very limited uh due to the um daycare and

164day camp precautions that they have thank you i'm not seeing any other hands in the queue i'm going to go ahead and ask a couple of mine i don't know if it is too early at this point but and i know that there have been different discussions on using hard numbers versus say percentages do we have definitions for what low risk versus medium low medium high and high risk is at this point uh yes madam president the smart start actually has done that i believe in um last meeting that it was hot off the press right after last meeting we sent it out it's about a 10-page document we can resent to that that to the board this week in the bore connect it's also on the state website so they uh very distinctly defined

165uh those and and really low risk is zero cases for 14 days uh the same is true for the activities and that's why we're we're making a push uh not only with the activities but also with this to really broaden that definition of low risk to allow some more flexibility given communities like anchorage that have are a hub and that possibly uh the the virus will be here anyway but if it's uh one or two cases and 350 000 people uh that's very different than one or two cases and a hundred people and so uh to your message about uh percentages we continue to provide feedback to dr zinc as well as uh to commissioner crum and commissioner johnson in regard to uh strategies to communicate this and they're they're open uh to those discussions

166uh because they they want that boots on the ground feedback from people who are actually living in those communities uh again uh dr stock stated that these are um guidelines they're not statute they're not policy um they're not regulation even they're their guidelines so we do have some flexibility given to us but we have to really um wrap our heads around safety and and best practices with with that flexibility as well yeah and well i think i know the answer to my next question i want to go ahead and just ask it for clarification um looking at the chart that is on our screen right now is this say a category description that will be applied to the district as a whole or will individual schools shift between green yellow and red you want me

167to tackle that one or you jump in so uh the answer to that is probably yes uh as far as but we'll have to wait and see how things things go uh when we come when we ask the commissioner you know how does the state define the word community like when you're talking about you know a village you know you think of a community when you think of anchorage what does a community if there's one coveted case in this city and does that automatically mean that we're low risk so in that definition if you take that strictly it's hard to imagine a low risk anywhere during the year here in the next near future so but we we could we will have that as an internal option to be able to have some schools in

168face-to-face and some not but we haven't worked through how those details are going to work we'll have a decision-making screen and a team that would would pull in that data and make those decisions if we if it gets to that but we could that is an option yes thank you um that answers my questions for right now do any other board members have any other questions or comments all right so i'm not seeing any hands raised in the queue and the administration has asked us for some straw poll type guidance on whether they should continue with this cohort quarter um you know model um you know in you know to help guide their work you know over the next little bit so i am going to ask each board member to um weigh in on

169you know their support or um not support um you know either way uh just so that they have an idea of what um we're looking at as a board going forward and so um i'm just gonna go kind of down my my list over here on participants in no particular order board member mars set yes board member hildy yes board member yes holloman support it board member mitchell yes i support it board member bellamy if you said something that would be yes okay thank you and uh board member donnelly yes okay and myself i too am also a yes as well um dr bishop did that um adequately give you the guidance you're looking for madam president yes and we will continue to update the board keep you informed uh tomorrow will be a big

170day we will share with the community group as well as the members of the board that are on the community group can weigh in about this discussion and and add that detail as the experts from boards and uh and in school districts and we just look forward to engaging uh more and more people um uh in the in the process uh you know it's just scary not having answers but it's uh work that uh by the end we will have um contingencies worked out and and hopefully that our our communities uh kids employees families feel feel that we're going in with the best knowledge we have uh and and and putting our best foot forward you um you know i kind of liken this to the uh how do you eat an elephant um is

171one bite at a time and we have to start somewhere and so i'm appreciative that we're starting with this you know first one bite on how to tackle this you know right now and we'll continue to get guidance and uh continue to make decisions as a community uh going forward so um thank you very very much for all the work that you guys have put in so far and we do look forward to you know updates as it progresses next up on the agenda is uh public testimony we had three people that testified earlier and we did not max out that time so i'm not aware of any others at this time which brings us to school board and administration comments and i have a few hands in the queue we'll start with uh board

172member marcet please so the comment i want to make is you know we are um looking at equity and um a lot of this that comes to the forefront with what's happened in the nation is our african-american or boys of color and that sort of thing but when you look at our school suspension statistics and i've gone through them quite intensively in our elementary schools our number one student that is expelled more than anyone else is students with disabilities and it's not that to put a a light or to take away from our other students but i hope that when we look at the inequity of our students that we focus um of course on our boys of color because their suspension rates are higher not always in all cases our hawaiian pacific nurse and

173are definitely um sometimes higher than our african-american and some of our others but disability is never lower it just seems to always stay where it is and um i that's been weighing on me pretty heavy and i want to make sure that when we look at our inequities we look at all students that are being suspended at a high rate so those are my comments thank you next step in the queue i have board member mitchell um well i really appreciate that um member marsette and i appreciate when dr bishop says all means all and hopefully we will focus on all but i have to say i'm very proud of our board for the letter that was um just approved and it was not read and if you will all indulge me i'd like to

174read it to put it on the record if that is okay with everybody okay statement in response to the death of george floyd dear asd community the anchorage school board joins with those in our community and our nation who are saddened and outraged by the incomprehensible death of george floyd in minneapolis minnesota he is one of many deaths of other black americans who have died as a result of excessive police force these acts of violence have become all too common and are fueled by systemic racism and reckless disregard for human life these deaths have been devastating to witness and we remain concerned for the lasting impact that they may have on all of us most importantly our young people the anchorage school board remains committed to the health and safety of all of our students

175however this moment in our national consciousness compels us to reassure our black and brown students and families that their lives and experiences matter collectively we condemn the long history of racism injustice and inequities in our community and across our country dr martin luther king jr wrote in his letter from a birmingham jail injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly this situation requires that we speak out stand up and take action against any form of racism injustice or abuse of power that threatens the success and safety of any student more than reactively condemning these repeated tragedy tragedies we will do all we can to prevent the next one we are prepared to

176push back against hatred discrimination and violence the equity work in our district must boldly continue within our schools and take further actions to ensure justice and better outcomes for all students to this end we commit to developing anti-racism policy that will translate into programs and practices that will eradicate injustice and discrimination in our schools this will include on an ongoing review of our current policies and educational approaches to ensure all students have opportunities to learn about each other to respect each other to value each other and to create a more equitable and kinder world we commit to drafting and enacting an equity policy that represents collective goals and guides our district's equity work we commit to ensuring that our students have safe learning environments and systems of support that are equitable and free of racial

177and other forms of discrimination we commit to monitoring our instructional outcomes and systems of support to identify opportunities and remove any barriers that intentionally or unintentionally impact the opportunities of students based on the color of their skin we commit to listening to community voices to understand concerns and hopes for just an equitable education with these voices in mind we will then work together toward progress that will promote our mutual and interdependent goal to educate all students for success in life we could put commit to pushing back against hatred discrimination and violence we commit to making certain that the most vulnerable and unre underrepresented in our care learn and thrive in an environment that is just free of fear and filled with opportunities and systems designed to lift them up finally we extend care and empathy

178to all who are experiencing anger heartbreak fear and trauma as they process mr floyd's death we know that many are mourning with a sorrowful truth that it could one day be their own loved one who is killed we commit to listening and learning from those who experience racism and will take responsibility for our own actions and inactions in allowing racial injustice in our learning community but we cannot do it alone we invite the community to partner with us as we work to improve our educational system there is a way forward a path filled with hope and together we can press on toward a more peaceful and just future and it's signed by the seven board members of the school district thank you for indulging me thank you member mitchell next step in the queue i

179have board member bellamy yes thank you uh madam president and thank you for reading that uh member mitchell um i just want to uh share just a few comments about of our focus um it is so easy to make this about uh one group or pit one group against the other at this moment we're talking about the things that we consider status quo that benefit one group of kids one group of people over better and lesser than others so we've got to i just want us to make sure we stay focused that this moment in our history is looking at institutional racism and how it manifests itself in our practice and in our program so it's not just one program it's not just discipline if we look at discipline just discipline we're going to miss

180a whole lot of other other barriers that are that are uh that are there if we just look at sros we're going to miss other opportunities this is to we need to look systemically at everything that i all of our policies all of our practices because what we mean and what we intend is just we just gotta ask ourselves what is the impact to all kids so i don't want this community thinking that this is a black thing this is a human thing that at this moment in our history is most disproportionately impacting the lives of black men in particular and as the mother wife and grandmother of african-american males who have some of whom have gone through our system and struggled this gives us a renewed me a renewed opportunity as a citizen and

181as a board member to just take a look a deeper look so if we don't want so please i just don't want us to trivialize and start jostling for uh i mean we we gotta look at this and we've got to face what we find ask the deep questions and move forward and but most importantly it's not just up to us it's not just up to the superintendent it is up to this community to help us understand the impact to you to help us understand what what your hopes and dreams are because those are important more important to me than the data but the data helps me understand what we're doing and how we're doing it so i thank the board for your partnership in the letter i appreciate your comments dr bishop uh and

182i'm gonna quote you again when we know better we do better and anchorage we have got to do better we've got to do better for all of our kids at this moment we've got to do better for our children who are our children of color it's not just black kids it's asian kids it's uh pacific islanders it's our hispanic kids it's all of our kids and we just can't keep doing things the way we've always done them and expect to get this marvelous thing called uh uh academic achievement for all kids and and that's all i want to say i mean i i do appreciate the indulgence um and and i do know that uh that i think all of our intents are well and we just gotta we just gotta do what we gotta

183do uh and do it in a very transparent open way where people can know that we hear them and not just guess at what they need but try to understand it and we're not going to meet every need but at least we can try to understand it so everything in that letter uh really is is is very very important and it will be on the website for everybody to see and no we're not going to always all agree uh but please don't trivialize it down into just being about the sros that's a piece of it it's discipline is a piece of it what do we do instructionally that that is also a piece of it how are our staff engaging with our students that's another piece of it what happens when parents come to school

184that's another piece of it so let's not let's not try this is not going to be an easy fix but it will take all of us and i know we'll do it so thank you thank you board member hildy your next step in the queue i'll just add one more thing to uh member balinese and how the board chooses to spend money and which where it goes and who gets it and how we uh prioritize that so um i look forward to making those hard choices on behalf of all of our students and uh seeing seeing children thrive that's the goal that's why we're here so thank you all thank you just a couple of quick ending notes and comments um we had an executive session that we are probably not going to get to

185finish up tonight and so i will get an invite out to board members for sometime next week where we also need to do our insurance renewal approval as well so i'll try and couple those things up together and then following that we don't have anything on our calendar with the exception of uh committee meetings and you know our own individual council meetings and stuff like that until our board retreat in july so um at this time i want to thank everybody for their time tonight for you know bringing their hearts and minds to do the hard work for our children and at this time uh not seeing anything else i'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting and bid everybody a wonderful good night thank you night