Video Clips
Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.
Clips from Anchorage School DistrictClear
1:06
Paul McDonough
“I appreciate the board's intent in this policy where we have basically two tiers. Um, I'll make a, a note for the record that the way this reads in the Intention of Governance Committee, seems that the, the top 2 numbers are indeed the maximum compliance thresholds, and we're, we're still not in compliance with those. But the second numbers are the scientific evidence-based numbers”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:38
Kelly Lessens
“the superintendent shall ensure that key stakeholders receive this information within 1 week following the board's annual passage of the district's budget”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:53
Dora Wilson
“I understand that the legislature would like to see certain class sizes. We don't have the budget for that. I also absolutely would love to see the lower class sizes, which our students need and deserve. Again, we don't have the budget for that”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:21
Paige Brown
“is it the board's will to get the financial delta for both class size targets, both the one in the bill as well as the Pikus Avenue? I'm assuming so. I just wanted to clarify.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:47
Dora Wilson
“the repetitive nature of continuing to communicate that particular message, I think, is awesome because For many reasons, that message is not received. And so just to kind of put that, prioritize that in the messaging that needs to be in what I'll call the basic messaging. But basic messaging is really important for those legislators and for our community to understand that we cannot have smaller class sizes because we cannot afford to have that.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
1:08
Kelly Lessens
“President Jacobs said in that meeting, I want to send the legislature a bill, right? And this gives the administration space to develop its own guidelines for pushing effectively, for pushing at the bill for the delta for the class sizes that we have not been able to attain for a very, very long time and don't appear to be able to attain in the near future.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:53
Paul McDonough
“this version with its red lines does a good job at achieving what we think is the proper means of coming up with class size averages through evidence-based analysis of the science, while still also acknowledging that our main job is to comply with state statute.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:56
Paul McDonough
“one of the larger intents here is that we don't unintentionally endorse the legislative position on class sizes. Um, I think people in this room especially know Alaska has local defined in our state constitution. And I actually was a critic of the HB 165, but then it's, it's movement into other bills, uh, because the state can recommend whatever it wants, but it's up to us to actually determine what is our standard.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:47
Paul McDonough
“this policy makes it clear that the science is that they're inadequately funding our district. If we do not have the, the Pikus Oden numbers, which can be amended by a future governance committee and then a future board, if the science changes. Um, but if we don't have them in here, it makes our ability to raise a lawsuit a lot more unclear”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:17
Pat Higgins
“the goal here is you got litigation going on in regards to what is, uh, adequate funding, and we don't want to do anything inconsistent with that.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:28
Paul McDonough
“I move to approve ASD Memorandum 178, um, with the S version attached describing the board policy for 6, 1, 5, 1.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:08
Carl Jacobs
“That motion is adopted by a vote of 7 to 0.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:22
Pat Higgins
“I think this gives a, a good reflection that we're not at odds with that study, and I think that's an important issue.”Anchorage School Board: 6/13/26 ASD School Board Meeting · Jun 13, 2026
0:55
Speaker A
“us being able to conduct that community needs assessment is really important to prioritize. That is where it opens the door for the partnerships to, you know, once we have data and can share that, that will open the door to see who's interested”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:39
Speaker C
“98% of the staff who participated said they were more likely to remain in the field, which is a high—”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:54
Trevor Storrs
“if we fund ASD, that leaves us— and I'm just working off of $5 million, uh, give or take That leaves $3 million, which greatly changes how we put money out. Or we don't fund ASD, they don't have funding to fill that in. That's 8 classrooms with 100-plus, maybe 200-plus, I don't know, kids that would then lose that preschool.”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:21
Trevor Storrs
“to be honest, the philanthropy and corporate, they're also strained. There isn't some magic relationship that's going to give us $2 million to do. So us hoping, uh, we're obviously always want to do that. I absolutely agree with Kevin, but usually that is one-time funding.”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
1:00
Trevor Storrs
“asking the ASD if they could present a budget and showing if they had— because right now it's $2 million, and I'd have to give this greater thought, but you get the concept. If you received $150— $1.5 million or $1.75 million, how would that impact the budget? What would be lost”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:40
Jessica Simonson
“Is there any way if we say we can only just say, example, we can only give ASD $1 million so they can keep the other programs are important. Is there any way for that other million to come out of a different pocket”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:33
Kevin Berry
“if a teacher leaves the sector or a kid gets kicked out of pre-K, that's a pretty permanent change. And we also then don't get data on what would have happened if they'd stayed in that program”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:45
Trevor Storrs
“how are you as an administration prioritizing prevention over tertiary? The homeless work is not prevention, it's tertiary. And the work that ASD and what we're doing actually hopefully will lessen the individuals that will find themselves in mental health distress, physical distress that then leads to homelessness and other issues.”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
1:01
Speaker A
“it funded 8 different schools with a high-quality pre-K classroom. Students were selected by lottery based on the risk factors. So this is an area where we were really serving vulnerable populations”Anchorage Assembly: ACCEE Fund Board Meeting 2026 05 20 Meeting Recording · Jun 9, 2026
0:27
Kathy Bell
“Theoretically, we will implement the regional model today. If we were going to implement it Today, we'd have 31 nurses at low acuity schools who would help provide coverage at higher acuity schools. A couple examples of this is like in the east region, there's four low acuity schools and nine high acuity schools.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:57
Wilson
“I just wanted to ensure that there's additional conversations happening particularly for those UAPS in the schools that will not have a full time nurse moving forward.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:34
Kathy Bell
“I would love to say yes, that this 100 people knocking at the door, but there isn't because it's a nursing shortage right now. There's a nursing shortage in all parts of nursing.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:24
Kathy Bell
“When we're taking talking about acuity in a school, we're talking about the acuity of the students within that school. What are we placing the most weight on that when determining acuity are treatments ordered by a doctor or a medical authority. The these are scheduled and done on a day to day basis and best practices for these treatments to be performed by a nurse.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:20
Kathy Bell
“Bottom line, the school district can better meet the needs of our most medically complex students at all times, regardless of what building they're in.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:36
Kathy Bell
“Ideally, if we had all the money in the world, every school would have a nurse. But we would still keep the regional model just so that if we a couple few nurses are out and a sub isn't able to pick up those coverages for those schools, we can move somebody from a low acuity school to cover a high acuity school for a day.”Anchorage School Board: 06/02/2026: School Board Work Session · Jun 2, 2026
0:46
Dora Wilson
“I wanted to start with I appreciate the work that Lisa Miller did— Lisa Miller from our Communications Department did this evening, being able to celebrate all of the amazing work that our staff has done to help welcome our Western Alaska kids into the district.”5/19/2026: School Board Meeting · May 20, 2026
0:19
Dora Wilson
“The video didn't convey as much of what I got to feel in that room, and the video was amazing. So really appreciate the work being done with those students and welcoming them into our district.”5/19/2026: School Board Meeting · May 20, 2026
0:42
Speaker B
“I appreciate the slides on implementation, and frankly, if I was in the curriculum team, I would have a lot of heartburn having to implement something so fast. With so little backend support. And so hats off to you guys and your teams for taking on an impossible task. Um, and I, I hope the board understands we, we took money for away and, and had to replace it with something that wasn't yet built.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:52
Speaker A
“In CKLA, they're going to have 20 hours or more of deep understanding about nutrition, about nutrients, all the parts, how it works in the body, why you need all of those pieces, and it's going to be every day for several weeks.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:36
Speaker A
“in August, we will be working between mental health student supports and our PE teachers to start out with making sure our PE teachers understand where SEL is, as well as some of our environmental science and our other pieces.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
1:30
Speaker B
“Reading from the board policy 5041 and abbreviating it, we have said for health curriculum or for health education that it is not the piecemeal teaching of scientific facts and risk cautions and stuff. The word piecemeal stands out to something that we gave to the administration back in 2024.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:46
Speaker A
“Where I worry is getting the time to get in front of them to do the training with them. I feel confident that we're going to be able to do that this year because it's just the 4th and 5th grade teachers, and I think that if we offer enough training sessions both during the day and after, after school, compensated, that we'll be able to get to everybody.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:57
Speaker A
“throughout the year we'll be doing in-depth training for our grade-level teachers on, especially our 4th and 5th graders, teachers who haven't had to teach human growth and development in some time. It used to be part of grade-level instruction, and I think most teachers who have taught out of the Anchorage School District are used to teaching those topics. Anchorage School District is one of the few school districts that actually has had separate health teachers to teach those topics”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:50
Speaker A
“starting with the ELA, we have, um, really in-depth integrated health studies at our kindergarten through 3rd grade levels. In all of these grade levels, we have in-depth units that are part of our reading curriculum, and They start with the 5 senses down in kindergarten, and then they become more complex as we go on. Students will have anywhere between about 7 to 20, 25 hours of direct instruction in these topics as part of their language arts curriculum.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:28
Speaker A
“Social-emotional learning, or SEL, integration is also part of everyday life for our students. So our ASD adopted curriculum in most of our schools, it's Second Step. We also have Connected and Respected as our other approved curriculum. Those two curriculum pieces will continue within K-5. All of our teachers are being— will continue to teach a 30-minute SEL-directed block and to prioritize that within their day.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:57
Speaker B
“what are the risks of proceeding with an implementation that had to skip the core early steps. And I would list those as usually we would like to create a comprehensive task force to develop implementation goals and objectives and then pilot it at a certain number of schools and then do an intimate fidelity evaluation of those schools, then have that create a reiteration mechanic so that the scaling mechanism has a way of hearing upon itself.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:34
Speaker A
“What we found is that the way the topics are covered in CKLA is actually a deeper understanding and gets into more of the health concepts than often the touch at Great Body Shop. Because Great Body Shop, let's say nutrition, it was just a touch. It was like an hour. Within our health curriculum, students had 18 hours a year of health.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:51
Speaker A
“we're increasing the time for PE next year from 90 minutes to 100 minutes weekly. That gets us to— when we add our PE time in there, that's 50 minutes a week on average of daily physical activity, which gets us very close to that required CDC 54 minutes.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:29
Speaker A
“We know that we have some targeted units and we will continue to offer those targeted units in the 4th and 5th grade. Some of those include human growth and development as well as some of the substance abuse prevention lessons. We want to make sure that our students have what they need as they move forward into middle school. Those lessons will be the same lessons that they have always taught through the Great Body Shop.”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026
0:47
Speaker B
“this change was spurred because we, we have changed so much of the elementary specialist model by taking 27.5 art and music teachers away, and then that opened up this sort of cascade in addition to the PTR, which drove another about 20 reductions of specials that would be going to health and PE. Um, so I'm essentially acknowledging, is it correct to say this is spurred because the resources taken away, about $4 million from elementary specials, has caused the need to reorganize?”5/19/2026: School Board Work Session · May 20, 2026