Anchorage School District adopts a single English curriculum for grades 6 through 10

Anchorage middle and high school students will move to a single districtwide English curriculum after the Anchorage School Board voted 6 to 1 Tuesday to adopt My Perspectives, published by Savvas, for grades 6 through 10.

The program replaces the district's current core materials, including SpringBoard by College Board in grades 6 through 8. Pilot schools test the materials this spring, ahead of full use the following year.

Administrators said common materials give students consistency when they transfer between schools, provide grade-level rigor with embedded support for students who are struggling and those who are ahead, and spare teachers the work of building units from scratch, while leaving latitude in how they teach.

Board member Paul McDonough cast the lone no vote, and said the book itself was not the problem. He told colleagues the board should honor teachers' ability to teach with fewer constraints than the selection process was built around.

McDonough said teachers had contacted him saying they were not listened to, and that the committee never elected a chair or affirmed its own agenda. The process, he said, sounded "more like efficiency or perhaps rubber stamp."

A district administrator said all committee applicants were accepted and all 11 voting members took part, choosing My Perspectives over HMH by a 6-5 vote the district honored as cast. Asked what would follow a no vote, the administrator answered, "Catastrophic."

Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said he would recommend a full review of the process, which would delay the curriculum, keep the materials out of students' hands next school year and prevent the spring pilot.

Board member Margo Bellamy voted yes and credited the committee for naming trust and buy-in as the first risk in its own findings, saying the board is at risk on both. Board member Rachel Blakeslee asked for full committee reports, not summaries, in future curriculum decisions.

The vote does not revisit the funding fight from July 7, when the board applied $11.6 million in new state funding to the 2026-27 budget and removed a $2.79 million curriculum line item, redirecting it to classroom teacher positions and other uses amid a projected $40 million shortfall.