ASD Muni Joint Board Meeting 2025 06 06

All right, good morning. We'll, uh, call this Friday, June 6th, 2025, Joint School Board and Anchorage Assembly meeting to order. It is 10:07 here in the ASD boardroom. We'll call— we've called ourselves to order. We'll conduct a roll call at this point.

Miss Sullivan, could you call the roll for the ASD School Board? President Jacobs. Present. Member Bellamy. Present.

Member Holloman. Present. Member Donnelly. Here. Member Higgins.

Member Lessans. Here. Member Wilson.

Chair, we have a quorum. Thank you, Miss Sullivan. Vice Chair Brawley. Thank you. Um, Miss Akers, will you call the roll for members?

Member Baldwin Day. Present. Vice Chair Brawley. Here. It's my understanding that Chair Constant is excused.

Yes, that's correct. Member Gerker. Here. Member Johnson. Here.

Member Martinez. Present. Member McCormick. Here. Member Myers.

Member Perez Verdia.

Member Rivera. Present. Member Silvers?

She is on YouTube— or on Zoom.

Member Voland? Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. Okay, Vice President Bellamy, would you please lead us in the flag salute?

To the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Member Martinez, would you please read the land acknowledgment? We acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of the Dinahna people of the Upper Cook inlet. For thousands of years, the Dinah people have been and continue to be the stewards of this land. ASD is committed to diversity and inclusion. It is with honor and respect that we recognize all indigenous people who live and learn in our community.

Thank you, sir. All right, moving on to minutes of a previous joint meeting. Members from both bodies have in front of them our March 7th, 2024 meeting minutes.

It should be 25. Thank you, Vice Chair Brawley. Um, so we'll correct that in our agenda. Please take a moment to read those, and we can note any corrections before we, uh, move to approve.

And I will move to approve the March 7th, 2025 minutes.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing and seeing none, I'm asking for unanimous consent to approve the March 7th, 2025 meeting minutes. Hearing no opposition, those meeting minutes are approved. We're now at the approval of the agenda. We have an agenda in front of us. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as drafted?

Move to approve. Second. Made by Member Baldwin-Day, second by Member Lessens. Is there any discussion or amendments before we ask for unanimous consent and approval? Okay, asking for unanimous consent to approve the agenda as drafted.

Hearing no opposition, we have an agenda. Thank you, everyone.

All right, first up is public comments. We have one member of the public who has signed up today, uh, Mr. William Baxter. I think we have an empty seat to my left if you'd like to come up to the microphone and join our table, and you will have 3 minutes once you're seated and ready to speak.

Welcome, sir.

I'm William Baxter. I represent— I volunteer for FFA, and, uh, I, uh, a lot of times I've been speaking here like 7 times, I think. Then I go over to the municipality on Tuesdays and I speak there. And I've also been speaking at, uh, at Massou School District too on FFA. And, uh, uh, I don't really don't know what I'm doing, but I just let you smart people figure it out.

But anyway, uh, I, uh, but I have a burden for FFA and 4-H and other things in the like, uh, uh, 4-H and, and then whatever else they can get, get me into. I, uh, I go to, uh, do a lot of— they have me do— I do a lot of things to help to do it. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. All right, before we begin our discussion items and business today, I just want to note housekeeping items for members that Um, your microphones can act as you entering the queue because we should have you labeled on those. So please feel free to sign up for the queue to speak or ask questions that way. With that said, we've completed Item D, public comments. We'll move on to E, financial planning, uh, budget ASD.

Uh, Dr. Bryan, I believe you'll take lead on this. Thank you, President Jacobs. So I'll go ahead and hand it off to our Chief Financial Officer, Andy Ratliff. So I will say before he gets started that this topic is going to get pretty technical, pretty in the weeds. But I don't want the people in this room to forget that we had a very close call on Monday, and there was a very high probability that right now today we would have been scrambling to find about $15 million.

So we're going to get through some technical stuff. I'm going to need a lot of your help to really understand this topic because we need to make a citywide effort to make sure that everybody understands what exactly is happening. Mr. Ratliff. All right, thank you. Um, So the first part of this, first part of this presentation is going to look astonishingly similar to one I gave to the school board about a month ago for, um, based on some add-backs that these are still kind of in flux as well, so I wanted to touch on them again.

And then we gave that presentation again to the legislative committee for the Assembly, so a lot of you guys in this room have probably seen this. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but I want to get to some of the new stuff around the disparity test and recommended changes to the local contributions limits. In your packet, you have a copy of the presentation I'm going to give as well as a couple other documents. The second attachment in there is going to be the determination from the state that this— the local changes were an emergency or deemed an emergency. And then what those changes were.

And then the third document in there is going to be the federal government's ruling on the disparity test for the state. So you'll have all those, you can read through them. The one from the federal government's kind of a hard read, but it's good information. We'll kind of try to make that a little more understandable as we go along.

So the, the board presented a budget revision that included about a $560 BSA equivalent increase above what the state had in statute. This was based on HB 57 passing out of the House and Senate with 48 out of 60 legislators voting in support. That bill increased the base student allocation by $700. And then had a 10% increase in transportation and then some CTE multipliers and other student proficiency incentives that were based on another bill passing. That's SB 113, which would be the digital tax or the tax on digital vendors, I guess.

So I'm not sure the status of that, but I thought it had been transmitted to the governor. So we do anticipate getting some more money based on this. The governor vetoed this bill originally, and then it was voted to override. So this still has a— the governor will still have another veto opportunity on the operating budget to trim out education funding out of there if he so chooses, but that's not due back until the 19th of June.

Um, so really the reasons that the board gave for increasing that was the governor's bill actually included a $560 BSA increase. Increase. One-time funding of $680 BSA was what we received this year. So really taking the calculated risk needed to help retain our staff and not have mass layoffs.

What was added back was added— we had it originally a +4 PTR increase or class size increase for all grade levels. We were able to get that down to a +1, so we still are increasing class sizes. Reversed some of the cuts to holdbacks, gifted, adding your charter funding, as well as some other items in here that the board chose to add back. About $30 million in instruct— like direct instruction to our classrooms, about 214 FTE were added, added back through this amendment. So this is really what kind of prevented us from having to do these mass layoffs.

Additionally, restored librarians, nurses, some teaching experts in teaching and learning for instructor Interventions, as well as some principals, library assistants, and counselors. Another 59 FTE just instructional support, um, for a total of about a little under $40 million.

We still do have a significant number of reductions in place even after adding those back, including the 70 FTE for the PTR adjustment of +1, or 57 FTE, sorry, and then a loss of enrollment adjustment. So as our enrollment went down, we were able to reduce the number of staff needed to keep the same class sizes. A few other things we were able to— that we kept: program-based teachers, holdback teachers are kind of an addition.

We still reduced principals, some librarians, nurses, and clerical due to the schools that we closed in Anacca Valley and Lake Hood.

We can read through the list of the reductions there for instruction. We also have some reductions still in place, about 20 FTE for special services. By and large, those are coming out of, um, mostly out between Whaley and special elementary special education as we're trying to consolidate some classrooms.

Additionally, another 30 FTE coming out of our admin pool. About 7.5 million, including, you know, more folks from accounting, purchasing, HR. You know, we continue to have declines in those, in those ranks, IT. And then some of that, the administrative added duty, services, supplies, and equipment, that's depreciation to replace heavy equipment, a lot of major maintenance funds, things like that that we have to help support our schools. But those are still going to be going away under this proposal.

Just a sign of the times, I guess.

Really, you know, the risks and benefits of it— some— if the amount— if some amount less than 560 BSA is allocated, uh, could result in hiring freezes, funding reductions, and liquidated fund balance reserves, uh, that we already have in place for other, other items. But it does allow for the placement of staff priority in a school and retaining educators, but this Again, the governor can still veto those funds.

As far as the outlook goes for FY27, with this in place, you know, we still have a significant deficit as we are using about $50 million in fund balance to be able to, to shore up this budget. So kind of the, the quick calculation on this is we take our expected revenue for FY27 or for '26, back out the one-time funding and then apply an inflationary factor to what we're planning on spending. So after we back out the one-time funding, we're at about $585 million of ongoing revenue and about $653 million of ongoing expenditures. Then we add a lot of delayed purchases for IT equipment, such as Chromebooks, and some of that fleet equipment too, and curriculum instruction, things like that that we need to— that we can't delay forever, essentially. So that gets to about a $75 million deficit that we're looking off— we're looking at for FY27.

So this conversation doesn't get fixed with HB 57 even passing the way it is. Um, so there's a lot of things we don't know still. There's unsettled labor contracts, enrollment variances, tariffs, medical costs, utility rate changes, things that are still kind of in play for next— for FY27 that aren't really built into this projection as much.

Clicking the wrong button here. Okay, so this is where we get into more of the new stuff that wasn't on the last presentation. So for those of you saw the earlier version of this, here's where we can start paying attention again, I guess. So, so, uh, also included in the operating budget for the state was a 35 reduction 35% reduction of state bond debt reimbursement for any voter-approved bond that was approved prior to January of 2015. So we still have quite a few outstanding bonds that we're paying down from that time period as we do 20-year bonds.

So this equates to about $4.5 million of funding that the state is not going to give us for next year that's going to have to be picked up by the Anchorage taxpayers. Typically, we'll float that with our cash flow and our def— our fund balance will go into a deficit in our debt service fund, and then we'll request that back the the following year since we've already made our tax request for this calendar year. But that's just one of the unfortunate things, and the governor can still veto more funds from that line item as well through the operating budget. Any questions on the bond debt? This is something we went through for several years, um, starting with Governor Walker.

We actually got that money back eventually, and then now they're starting to cut it again. Um, just want to note for the record that Member Silver's joined us at 10:17, and then if any members with a question would signify so by turning on their microphone, which will get you in the queue, that would be great. We've got Vice Chair Brawley first. Thanks, um, and thanks for the update on school bond debt reimbursement. So just to be clear, this says prior to 2015, so this is not bonds that passed, you know, this year or any prior or Prior year in the last 10 years, is that right?

Correct. So, um, back in— it was probably May of 2015— the legislature voted to put a moratorium on bond debt reimbursement for any new projects. They did retroactively apply that to January 1st after we had actually passed a bond in April, so still don't forgive them for that. But so, but yeah, so it's anything, anything past January 1st, 2015 never had bond debt reimbursement to begin with, so they had nothing to cut. Thank you.

And then just a quick follow-up about, uh, how much, uh, bond debt is there from that time period? Because I know it drops off every year as we pay off bonds, but what is the kind of order magnitude for, um, this, what's left in this category? That is a good question that I don't know the answer to off the top of my head. But we can certainly get that to you. Yeah, follow-up is fine.

Thanks. Thank you. Member Johnson. Yeah, I think Vice Chair Brawley kind of hinted at the question, but I'm looking at the last line here. You said the governor can still veto more funds if he chooses to do so.

Do we have a sense of sort of what the ceiling is on the potential impact to Anchorage taxpayers? I want to say it was like— It's like $18 million, maybe.

Would that be like $18 million in total or $18 million above the $4.5 million? Um, in total, I think it was less than $20 million in total. Okay.

Well, I bet I don't have that in front of me either, but it was, um, because, as you know, those bonds are getting older and phasing out, so we have less of them to pay off now. Um, but we can get back with you on that too to make sure you guys have accurate numbers on that. But they could potentially veto all of it. Okay, thank you.

Uh, the kind of good news, I guess, would be that bond debt reimbursement for new propositions after July 1, 2025, uh, will have a 40 to 50% reimbursement. The legislature did try to put through another moratorium that will extend this a new, uh, few more years. But that never passed through. So right now that goes back into effect. Um, again, those funds, if they do approve them, will be subject to appropriation, and they can always put another moratorium back on when they come back into session in January.

So certainly not out of the weeds, but at this point in time, uh, after, after July 1, 2025, new propositions would be eligible for some reimbursement. Quick question from, uh, Member Brawley. Yeah, so I'm just doing the timing math. Obviously, you know, even if they say they're going to reimburse and there's no money to do that, that's a challenge. And then just a side note, if folks are wondering why are my property taxes going up for the next— the last 10 years, this is part of that, that we are paying full cost for bond.

Anyway, my question is, so thinking about we approve all bond funding by the end of January, essentially for the April 2026 ballot. So I guess my question is, I know it's speculative right now, is ASD considering— how is ASD factoring this into kind of what level of bond package that you would put forward? I know it's early, but if we're assuming that the legislature is going to put that moratorium back in place when they have the chance, that obviously impacts how much we would be paying. So I'm just curious if there's some early thinking on that.

I can answer that. We have a meeting next week to start discussing that and start running the numbers and how we might be looking at that. We've been trying to stick at under $65 million. Um, those bonds seem to have passed over the last many years, and when you go over it, it, uh, we have struggled. So, uh, we're going to go back and start working that next week.

It'll be this fall that we'll go to the board for the first time with the new CIP and the bond request. I'll jump in from the board perspective just to add clarity that, um, I, I don't think I've seen consensus from the legislature that there's the support to extend the school bond debt moratorium, which is reasonable, frankly, because public education buildings are crumbling across our state. Um, the moratorium must end, and we must find money to begin investing in schools from a capital perspective. And so if there is an interest from the legislature in extending that moratorium, I think we need pretty strong direction, because frankly, that investment's needed. And so appreciate the question.

I think some of it's, uh, still to be determined. Um, and then I see Member Lessin's in the queue. Thank you. Um, I wanted to ask the administration to maybe just loosely elaborate on the scale of the backlog of maintenance. We have a great chart.

It looks like this. And, um, what's the scale of our backlog at this point, roughly? I can answer that. If you go back to 2012, we had about $170 million in debt. Um, I'm sorry, we had $170 million in deferred maintenance, and we had about $750 million in total bond debt.

Now we're well under $500 million in total bond debt since then. Um, but with the moratorium kicking in in '15, our deferred maintenance is now well over $1.4 billion.

And just as a quick follow-up on that, that's everything from a major renovation at, say, Bartlett High School to fixing front doors that have been described as so stripped that you can't hang— you know, you can't hang them anymore. Correct. It's every major component of a building from windows and doors to heaters and boilers and roofs and everything else that have life cycles attached to them. Um, you know, at some point the number is so large that even if you had the money, there aren't enough people in Alaska and enough resources to actually do all of that maintenance. Um, So, you know, I, I don't know how you could tie it to an exact dollar amount because we haven't gone out for bids for that many projects, but that's really tied to what it costs the day we put it in to replace the exact equivalent of that item.

And of course, there's hundreds or thousands of those components within a high school that add up to the total dollar amount. Thank you, Member Lessens and Mr. Anderson. I see Member Higgins in the queue. Yeah, I'll just mention that when we look at the deferred maintenance, of course it varies as the type of maintenance and it varies by school. But when I went through Bartlett, which was recommended as the highest priority, I was shocked with the level of problems with roofs, with ventilation, with the, with the heating system.

Uh, everything about it is so severe. Um, it's, it's really shocking. The top floor, you got your buckets, you've got your cool, it's not hot during summer, it's not warm. You go downstairs and you got temperature differences between one room and another, which is dramatic temperature difference. So the severity of the deferred maintenance for some schools is extreme.

And even some of our newest schools I saw had to deal with buckets to do some roof repairs. And I know that they can't do more than so many, you know, one roof a year or two roofs a year, and it takes two years. So when you divide that up with 90-something schools, you realize if our roofs don't last 50 years, we're in trouble. And that doesn't allow for the time already that most of these roofs are so old. So we're so far behind from my perspective and looking at it, that is really a scary situation that we can't ignore and just like keep growing.

We've got to do something about it.

Member Johnson. Yeah, could you guys share that list of deferred maintenance items?

I'm getting a yes from our Chief Operating Officer, and so we will get that to both bodies. Thank you. All right. Yeah, I would just like to clarify, that's the things we know. Um, you know, there's, there's no such thing as an absolute perfect list for 91 buildings.

We've cut maintenance by 25%. Um, in the past decade plus, we're thousands of job orders behind. Um, we cut it again for our next school year. Um, so please understand that what you will be looking at is a really, really long list, but there certainly are things that just broke this morning that wouldn't be on that list, and it wouldn't be inclusive of every job order that hasn't been looked at by maintenance yet to determine what might be wrong or what might be required to fix it. So It's all in context.

It's a really long list. Thanks.

All right, so next section, we're going to focus on the impact aid deduction. This is kind of what's been going around this week and changes with local contribution. I do apologize for the wordiness of these slides, the next few slides, but I wanted to have on the record just so someone comes, reads this afterwards. A better understanding of how this impact aid, why we receive the money, and how the deduction works. So the gist of it is some but not all districts receive federal impact aid funding from the federal government, and that's due to having untaxable property in those districts.

By and large, it's military bases or tribal lands. It's kind of a payment in lieu of taxes that the federal government offers since they own the land and don't pay property taxes to the districts. The federal government allows the state to reduce state funding to districts that receive impact aid money if the state has equitable funding between districts. Essentially, it means the highest and lowest funded districts have to be funded within 25% each other through a combination of state and local contributions. That's adjusted.

There's like some weighted things that go into that or come out of it, I guess, like for, you know, there's an area cost differential between districts, so it's more expensive to do business in Bethel than it is in Anchorage type thing. So they take those weights out of this calculation, but the gist of it is on a per-student basis, they want to be within 25% to be comparable and pass this, what they call the disparity test.

Each year the federal government conducts the disparity test, and that calculates our per-student funding to ensure that the state and local funding to districts remains within that limitation.

By passing the disparity test, the state can then reduce the amount of state funding to the districts by some percentage of the amount of impact aid received, which can be up to 90% of the eligible amount. There are a few carve-outs for special education that we get impact aid money for that come out of the total amount that then 90% applies to, but it's not a big percentage of it.

The 90% can go down if a local government, if they have a local government, like REAs will get impact aid money too. So all the REAs have 90% of their impact aid taken by the state. But anyway, that can be reduced a little bit if the local government spends more than the required minimum. Like, for example, if Anchorage Assembly appropriated $200 million for education, but only $100 million of it was required. Then the state's deduction would be 50%, so $100 million divided into the total that's given.

That's a little more nuanced than that because they take in some other local revenues, but that's really the gist of how this formula works and how the, how the deduction works. In terms of dollars, Anchorage gets about $16 million a year for impact aid. The state is planning on taking about $6.5 million of that for next year as the reduction based on these formulas. So that's kind of the lay of the land of how the federal impact aid works, or how we— why we get the money, and then why the state reduces it. So on May 16th, the Federal Impact Aid Office notified the state that they failed the disparity test.

And why they failed it is the next bullet point, because the state improperly excluded transfers between the local education agency's general fund and its special revenue fund for transportation, and then improperly included transfers from the transportation fund back to the general fund as revenue. So it was really based on this coding of transfers in and out, interfund transfers versus actual receipts from the municipality. I don't want it to be lost that had the state kept up with transportation funding or made it a reimbursable expense, this— they would have passed the disparity test. Years and probably 15 or 20 years ago, the program used to be reimbursable, 100% reimbursable by the state for transportation. In 2000, I want to say '15, '16, they made it as a per-student amount based on those actual costs, inflation-proofed, or I guess in 2012 maybe, but then they inflation-proofed it for 3 years, and then since then it's been flat.

Costs have gone up considerably for transportation. The minimum wage for transportation is tied— or bus drivers is tied to 2 times the minimum wage. So we have to pay, like in 2015-16, our minimum wage was $17.50, or 2 times the minimum wage was $17.50. For next year, that's going to go up to $26. So our costs continue to escalate really fast on transportation without any additional support from the state.

But having to transfer money— districts having to transfer money in and out between those 2 funds is what caused the disparity test failure.

There is a 60-day appeal period on federal impact aid for the failure of that. I don't believe the state's filed anything yet with the feds, but they have indicated their intent to appeal the decision.

For the record, Member Wilson just joined us online at 10:35. I see a few questions in the queue. We'll go to Member Donnelly first. Andy, do we have the actual federal calculation that they came up with the conclusion of disparity, stating the disparity? Because it's always been a puzzle to me that we have a system where there's some school districts where per student they're getting 5 times as much as we are in Anchorage, and the criteria is 25%.

So that's like 20 times as much over the, the 25% disparity target, and yet they don't— that seems to pass muster while this transmuting of transportation dollars didn't. Right, and that's taken— and you're exactly right on that, but in within the disparity test calculations, they have these weighted amounts. So one of the weights that they calculate into is that district cost factor, which is one of the big reasons that school districts get considerably more, like in some of those rural areas, than we do on actual dollars per student. But once they remove those weights for the cost of living, the school size adjustment, those things, um, that's really what factors into some districts having 5 times the revenue we do, or per student anyway. So they, they remove those weights as part of the calculation, I guess.

But within the— and I think you'd probably have to go look at the version, the PDF that's online attached to the agenda. Within there, there is a link to the spreadsheet that the Feds use to calculate that out if you're interested in it. And then the narrative on the PDF also kind of walks through how some of that's done. Thank you, Member Donnelly. We'll go to Member Baldwin-Day.

Thank you. Uh, would you repeat those numbers that you, um, that you mentioned for the FIA deduction for this year? Right, so we receive about $16 million in total from federal impact aid, and the reduction is going to be about $6.5 million, maybe.

Thank you. We'll go to Member Johnson. Yeah, thank you. So you mentioned the, the district cost factor formula, which, as I understand, it's been quite some time since the state has revised that, and maybe it doesn't reflect reality. I'm seeing some nods.

But you said they, they remove those weights. When they remove those weights, do they just take the district cost factor formula and sort of use that to sort of reverse engineer the funding, or, or are they looking at, you know, the actual disparities in, in terms of the, the real costs between the districts, right? Because we're saying— I think it's been suggested that the real costs are not actually reflected in the district cost factor. I'm seeing more nods. So what, is that playing into this, that, that disparity there?

No, they— because they remove those, those weights using the district cost factor. Right, so if, like, the Anchorage has a district cost factor of 1, some districts have up to 2, so they get, you know, 100 times more funding than we do on that district cost factor. So on a purely per-student basis, they would get twice as much as us, but they, you know, they account for that, the cost of living in those communities, or even though the data is 25 years old now, they still— feds still view that as valid. Okay, so that's, that's not a factor or problem here? No, that's really not what we covered.

Thanks. Uh, Member Lessans. I just wanted to, um, retrospectively say thank you to the Assembly for your collaboration in passing the joint resolution back in early January on your side of things. Um, there was a priority in that joint resolution about updating the the district cost factor, which is dates— the data dates from 2000 to 2003. Yeah, this one's going to be hard to read, so hopefully you can see it on your PDF, but this is a potential scenario where the state had failed the disparity test and then prorates that loss because it's about an $81 million problem for the state to fail this test.

Because they deduct $81 million or so from districts that receive it. That's what that deduction comes in. It deducts it from state funding. So if they short— if they do that and have to give that money back to all the districts but don't have that $81 million within the operating budget, then they're going to apply that, most likely prorate that amount to all the districts. So on this one, you'll see For all the districts, the adding back the federal impact aid funds that were deducted, you can see Anchorage is on there about $6.6 million.

That's how much they deduct from us, and this is all the districts again. And then if they were to take that $81 million they would have to give back to districts and say now this formula is short-funded and prorate that out based on— it's essentially our adjusted average daily membership— then that prorated funding reduction would be there. So you see the addition of $81 million and then subtraction of $81 million, and then how it affects each district. So for Anchorage, they'd give us the $6.6 million back for what they've deducted, but then if we prorate out that $81 million, our share of it's about $22.5 million. So a net decrease of nearly $16 million.

Um, so that's just the problem with the disparity test. We'll get into the just problems with local contribution limitation here shortly, but really just how this affects. And so there's going to be this huge shift in where the money goes. Same pot of money, but who gets it changes dramatically. You'd see Annette Island getting a 535% increase in their state funding, um, further putting this formula more out of, uh, balance.

I think, you know, if this happens and if they don't pass that disparity test ultimately, or they lose the appeal, then the states may have to come back and try to rewrite that foundation formula pretty quickly. That's my read on it. But remember, Donnelly, I just think it's important to point out that we're the only state that is required to comply with this disparity test because we're the only state that doesn't pass through these federal funds to the districts. That's correct. We're the only state that still uses this federal impact disparity test as a mechanism to reduce state funding.

Every other state's gone away with it. I think that's probably— the feds probably have some desire to offload the program and get rid of Alaska too. So, uh, Member Martinez, thank you. Uh, just a question about shifting populations of student sizes across these various jurisdictions and the impact to the dollars in those different places. Um, is that, is that a factor at all when we're talking about the cost that goes to these different jurisdictions that seem exceptionally high and disproportionately out of whack versus our needs?

That happens some, like especially when you get in the really small communities, because there's a— within the foundation formula, there's a school size adjustment. So if you have 10 kids in a school, you get you know, multiples more money for having those 10 kids, for each kid, than you would for a kid with a student with like 400, um, a school with 400 kids. So there's kind of this economies of scale that they try to pay for. It's the inverse, essentially. The, the smaller amount of population student-wise you have, let's say from economic displacement from a rural community, as they shrink in student size the cost for running the buildings and everything else still stays the same.

So the dollars now go higher proportionate to the amount of students, even if they're lower amounts. So they get more money, essentially. They wouldn't get more money, but they would get the same amount of money. Not quite. It's not— so it's kind of a sliding scale.

So they'll get a little— they would get a little bit less for having less students. You don't ever get more for having less students, but that impact is sheltered through getting a little bit more for each student the fewer students you have in each school. Thank you.

Member Baldwin-Day, I just want to clarify what I think I heard Member Donnelly say, which was we're the only state that still uses this test, this formula, because we are the only state that does not drop federal funding directly into communities. Did I hear that correctly?

Um, yeah, I think they probably all changed their formulas around too when they're to, to make that fit if they were operating under kind of these same conditions before. But all the states have unique funding formulas, so I can't say for sure what they did to address the issue to get when they got rid of it.

Member Holloman, I was just going to add that, you know, we're, we're in a state where constitutionally the state is responsible for education funding. But a big chunk of the state doesn't contribute locally in a way that Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and other localities do. And you're required to.

But in addition, this sort of comes on top of all that. Just, it's frustrating to see the state do what they're doing.

Right, so that's our— the disparity test and then kind of the implications of failing the disparity test. Um, next, we want to get into the changing in the local contribution limits that was proposed to the State Board on Tuesday and Wednesday. And the state attempted to use that failure of the impact disparity test to try and change the local contribution regulations through an emergency action.

The state had been discussing this for probably a couple years now, wanting to change these local— the regulations surrounding that. Assured districts we'd have plenty of time and implement around FY27. Monday morning I went and looked at the State Board of Education's— just to see when the meeting was. Never looked at an agenda before for the state board. It's generally not finance stuff.

Just happened to get on there Monday morning and look at their agenda. And it had the emergency order for emergency regulation changes for local contributions that's going to have— that could have significant impacts for all districts across the state. So didn't have an advance notice that that agenda item was out there. I don't know when it was actually posted to their website, but that first I saw of it was Monday morning. None of my colleagues across the state had seen it either, um, and the intent of it was to go into effect on Wednesday after they voted on it for this fiscal year.

So these changes would have gone into effect. So we found out about it Monday morning. By Monday around, I think, 12:00 or 1:00, the state had published a new version that said they would go out for their normal 30-day comment period, and then by 4:30, I believe the superintendents got an email saying, no, it's back to an emergency. So in your packet, you do have there the state's rationale for it being an emergency, if you want to read through it. But ultimately, the State Board voted to go through the normal process with the 30-day period as well.

But if I could just add, somebody thought— because we just spent 40 minutes talking about a highly technical topic— somebody thought it was a good idea to push this through without people at this table knowing this situation, without people in every single one of our communities about this situation. So I just want to put that out there on the record.

Well, and I guess just to add clarity, which I think is appropriate and fair for transparency purposes, at the very least our Department of Education and Early Development Commissioner was one of those people. So I think it's okay to name that public process, um, as inadequate as it was. Thank you. All right, so this will get up to— I mean, and these limits would have some really far-reaching implications for us. It would have limited the additional contribution that the city is able to give us for transportation and Pre-K funding.

That's about a $15 million impact for next year. And then there's a whole host of unknown limitations. It's based on vague language changes that are— was in their proposed regulations.

Mr. Ratliff, we have a question from Vice Chair Brawley. Thanks. Um, yeah, I was trying to remember kind of the list of things that this would include because it's out. My understanding is it's outside of instruction time generally, so pre-K because it's not K-12. I know that's about $2 million in our alcohol tax funding, so these aren't all even all property taxes, it's other things.

But my question is on school resource officers, because I know that is something that periodically becomes a fight, but I know that, that is another contribution. I'm wondering about how much that is, and is this within the known issue, or is it in this kind of unknown limitations area? So SROs are definitely kind of an unknown situation. I mean, we've always taken the view that they're doing police work in our schools. They're not doing any sort of instructional work there.

That's— they're actually doing police services, if at least, you know, some sort of community service there, not related to the, to the school. I think I want to say probably maybe $4 or $4.5 million cost. I don't know. I mean, the city pays that bill, so you guys just provide the resources of officers to us when they're staffed. But it would be, if the state were to consider that as part of a local contribution, then it becomes a pretty big, another big hit to us.

No follow-up from Member Brawley? Yeah, so just, just play this out. I know this is, it's going through this process. If, if it comes to pass that they do this, kind of how, how does this impact the budget? I mean, it, in, in my mind, it essentially means we're choosing SROs or some of these teachers.

In general, but kind of what would be, as you said, $15 million, can you put some kind of scale on that, like the number of positions or something like that? Sure, for $15 million, that's probably 120-ish FTE.

You know, it's a few more kids in every classroom. It's, but really, and that's just kind of what we do know about. There's a whole host of unknowns, and I kind of want to get into the actual language that that, um, that would trigger these unknowns, and then the stuff we do know. Like the first part up here at the top, this is the language they're proposing, um, adding a new section to read the local contribution limited to appropriations that are consistent with 20 U.S.C. 7713.

Um, if you're not going to go read that, it does include transportation and food service as a cost that would be included in there, which right now we have that exclusion for transportation transportation. So that, and probably Pre-K, would be— just by changing it and making it more consistent with the federal guidance for expenditures— would, would limit us for collecting the transportation and Pre-K outside the cap. And those are kind of the known things based on that section. This bottom section is where the real unknowns get to. They've removed the definition appropriations to mean money appropriated to a district's operating fund by the city or borough.

So what essentially what happens is in states, this is the administrative code in state statute they have that ties back to this. It ultimately goes back to reference a city or borough school district instead of a city or borough providing the funds. So that school district probably makes it where any local contributions districts get, not just from the city or borough, would go into this overall cap that the district can collect from local sources. We don't know exactly what would be included in that list. We have a list of some things that might be, but it sounded like the state would make one-off determinations for each district individually.

So really, we wouldn't know until they would make a determination. We wouldn't have known until they made a determination. That's really important. We have no idea what the magnitude of this would have been, and if this would have passed on Monday, there would have been nothing we could do about it. Continue.

All right, so that's the first thing that's more problematic, is instead of defining that local contribution just from what comes to the city or borough, removing that definition. The second piece would be the value of in-kind services, and this would be more where you're speaking to the SROs or something like that, but it's Before, it was narrowly defined as insurance, utilities, energy, audits, and maintenance. This would open it up to a whole host of other things that we do for— with the city, and the city does for us. Even sitting in this meeting, is this— would this be considered an in-kind service, you guys coming here and giving guidance and us meeting? We don't know.

That's— that becomes an issue. So some of the things that we receive outside those muni appropriations interest earnings, school fundraisers, food sales, activity fees, jury duty, P-card rebates, any other local donations, PTA donations, any grants received for charter schools, even school volunteers. Would that be any sort of a service? We just don't know. And this is what's really concerning about the change in that language and how vague it is.

And somebody thought it was a good idea to push this through without the public knowing what's going on. Quick question from Member Hallman. And I was going to make the point, I've always advocated that perhaps the city could provide pool time to us for swim classes, just because I think as a community we all have an interest in our kids learning how to swim. Uh, we had to cancel that about 10 years ago because it was the most expensive elective that we had. Um, but under this regulation, if you did that, we'd lose state funding.

If you just provided a pool for us to hold instruction in. It, it really hamstrings creativity or cooperation, you know, or, or a willingness as a board and an assembly together to do something for the public good.

And then for the in-kind district donations, we made a short list there too of things we just think of offhand with, you know, street maintenance leading to schools for snow plowing, The bus passes you provide our secondary students, guest instructors. If there's a Health Department employee that came and talked to a health class, would that be an in-kind contribution that would lower the amount of cash the city could give us through their appropriations? Coordination with emergency operations and then use of municipal facilities or equipment. You know, we have a stream right down the street that's going to be able to use Nanaka Valley Park and the Russian Jack Trail system. Does that count?

I mean, there's— There's just so much unknown with the— how vague they wrote this language. Member Baldwin-Day.

So my, my mind immediately goes to, you know, what's the intervention? What's—. What is the— what is the process by which we as a legislative body engage in appropriate and pointed pushback. And remember, there's two issues here. We have the technical issue of the impact aid, but I need to know who was that person that thought that this was okay to push forward without anybody knowing.

So there's two problems we have to solve.

Um, for Ms. Baldwin-Day's question, there's a 30-day comment period that will be to the State Board And hopefully, Deed will be answering our questions as well.

So we're getting together a list of questions that we can ask Deed of what these regulations mean. This is just our interpretation of it based on the vague language that we have. So letters of support or, you know, against the changes from the Assembly, whether it's as a group or individuals, I'm sure that would be appreciated. But that's, I think, our mechanism at this point. Member Martinez.

Thank you. I just wanted to put an additional layer on that, uh, who made this decision, who looked the other way. What we do know is it wasn't a local decision. What we do know is that in this, in this place where we think all politics is local and better decisions are made at a hyperlocal level where the children are, where the district is, where the communities are, that some anonymous, to this point, faceless, from my vantage point, bureaucratic entity, person, far away from our community making decisions. That's what I hear here.

And I see, and I hear theft through formula. And it's disconcerting at bare minimum, and that's very diplomatic. I fully, wholeheartedly support the stance of this school district to get to the bottom of these fundamental questions, because I really appreciate the point that if you didn't catch it beforehand, we'd be just ringing the too late bell at this date. Thank you, Dr. Bryant. Thank you, Member Martinez.

Member Lessings. Thank you. Just to ask for clarification, do we know whether that 30-day comment period officially opened yesterday? As a result of the State Board's decision, I mean, when, when is our 30-day window open and closed? Do we know that yet?

I don't know that it's opened yet, but we're going to look into that and we'll get back to you to make sure you guys are on the same page too. Thank you. And then this is just a proposition. Would there be interest in our bodies creating a joint letter signed by any and all individuals within that 30-day period, great. Um, I'd be happy to work collaboratively, perhaps as we've done in previous joint resolutions, with 2 or 3 members from each body, if that's an appropriate, um, way to move forward.

We're going to go to Vice Chair Brawley. Yeah, thank you. Just for timing purposes, I think, you know, we generally, as we take an action as a body through resolution, so unfortunately we can't do the thing where we just pass the letter around and everybody sign it, but we do have an opportunity, especially given the timeliness of this. If folks are interested, your two opportunities on our end, other than a special meeting, are Tuesday's June 10th meeting, uh, we can certainly lay something like this on the table if necessary as a resolution. Um, the other opportunity would be our June 24th regular meeting, uh, which is still within that window and give some more time for drafting.

Um, so I'm sorry, I'm not going to personally volunteer to help with this, but I know it's in good hands. But that's your options.

Then we have Member Silvers.

I'm just going to be a little bit less diplomatic. And I'm going to say that this is deliberate because public schools are under fire by people who want them to fail. So it's not that anybody thought this was a good idea. This was deliberate, and we need to name that.

Um, I'll just— speaking for myself, I'm happy to coordinate with, you know, um, our Treasurer Member Lessens, Vice President Bellamy, and then the Assembly leadership team to potentially draft something, um, and take it from there. Um, but agreed, sending a joint message together has value. Uh, Member Ballwunde. I am very happy to help draft.

Member Donnelly. Thank you, um, Andy, my understanding is the specific problem that the federal Department of Education identified was that some districts had taken transportation funding and transmuted those into general fund funding that when they had leftover transportation money. And it seems like that was the only problem they identified as creating the disparity. So to fix that you could narrowly craft a regulation that just prohibited districts from taking transportation, leftover transportation funding, and moving to their general funds, and that would seem to solve the federal concern without creating all this other problem. Yeah, that's— that could potentially solve it too.

But then, I mean, if you run into the issue of then accumulating big balances of fund balance, it's not really probably a good management strategy for them, for those districts to have just this pool of money just keep growing if they're not spending at all. Um, but going back to a reimbursable system where the state would pay for the cost of transportation 100% like they used to, um, just the actual cost, that would have solved it as well. And that's probably what I would advocate for.

Member Johnson. Yeah, thanks. I just also want to volunteer with assist with drafting resolution.

So hearing Member Baldwin-Day, Member Johnson, is there a third assembly member who's interested? Okay, Member Silver is great. And then from our side, school board, any objection to myself, Member Lessens, and Vice President Bellamy? Hearing and seeing none, I think we have 6. Great.

All right, so I've boiled down my frustrating week into 45 minutes for you guys. And you have any other questions, certainly address them.

Anything else on this item then before we move on? This, I think, is what I'm hearing. We're done with financial planning after this. Is this correct? Okay.

Uh, Member Lessans. I just— could you just very briefly highlight what the next 8 or 10 months looks like on our end from our budget preparation timeline? Outrage first.

Once we're done with the outrage, um, hopefully on by the 19th, we should have the actual amount of money known for next year. That's when the governor's due date is for getting the vetoes back. Potentially, you know, depending on what happens, there is the potential for the legislature to come back and override at some point, but they'd have to call themselves back into session, which would be— it's probably a difficult task. Otherwise, they could potentially do it in January, but that would be, you know, well after the fact, well after we've had to start making adjustments to our own budgets based on any vetoed funding. Aside from that, we'll probably start in August again talking about what our actual deficit is going to be, and then going through, and I'd like to do more deep dives into like different areas of our budget.

You know, we hear over and over the concern that administration is too high. I want to deep dive into some of those departments. The ones I run have been cut massively over the last decade, so I don't think that that's— just to educate folks on what is administration, how we spend our money, to try to get some buy-in from the public as we go ask for additional BSA money, because, you know, it's been stated they took care of about 40% of the problem with HB 57, even less so on transportation, but We're going to have to get out and do some more advocacy this year. I have Member Higgins. Yeah, I appreciate the comment about motivation, what the goal is, a great deal.

And I still refer to 10 years ago when in Senator Dunleavy's office he told me his goal was to cut the Anchorage School District $10 million, $100 million. And because he supports private schools and homeschools, look at his motions in regards to trying to get your charter schools under the state. He believes in providing funds with religious or private institutions. He supports that. And then allowing districts in different locations that would be under his control to be able to operate in Anchorage.

There's an awful lot out here, and this is just consistent with that of switching away funds from the public school system into private or charter schools run like private schools. And that's where my concern's at. So I I think motivation is the critical issue, and look at all the different things that have been pushed out there by the governor, uh, and when you put them all together and you see the listing, it's consistent, and this is consistent with that. So I'm very happy with the superintendent taking a strong position on this, and— but I saw it throughout the whole state in opposition to this, and I appreciate that as well. But I don't think there's any question in regards to motivation here.

It is undermining public sector education and exclusion. So you got your charter schools being run like private schools if the state had control of it, and then being able to operate throughout the whole state. And so it's just totally undermining the public sector education system for kids that would be left behind if Governor Dunleavy had to do it. And then we just say this, anything done by a commissioner or anyone else in the state, we've seen how controlling the state, the governor is. Does is either done at his direction or with his consent.

Uh, so to— we can look at the blame, we can place it every place else and who in that group did it, but it still falls back to the governor. He's the one that controls and directs people what they do. And if he doesn't do it, is he doing it by consent? Thank you, Member Higgins. Member Holloman.

Um, I just wanted to re-emphasize something that Representative Holland made clear at a HEWA meeting last night. The $700 BSA increase, which is historic, if it's fully funded in the budget bill, means that we'll be funded next year at about the same level we are this year. And, and the way this has all come about over the past decade or more, it sounds like a huge increase, and, and it is to the BSA, but it actually sustains us at about where we are. So if people see that we got a $700 per student increase and are waiting to see what great things we do with it, it will be that we do about what we're doing this year and the class sizes stay about the same as they are this year. Um, it brings it into line with what the one-time funding from various sources has been over the past decade or so.

So it, it creates a public relations problem Um, and, and we get to escape a little bit of it next year as we start to build our budget. We're, we're not going to be starting from such a low number, um, which I think is what happened in December when the governor announced, of course we'll fund education, we're going to fund the BSA, we always have. But the BSA was about 80% of our budget. Um, this way it will come closer to being 100% of our budget. As we go forward in the next year.

But I do hope everyone will keep that in mind as we plan for the fall. We're, we're maintaining with, with this historic increase, which doesn't make verbal sense to anybody. Thank you, Member Holloman. We'll go to Member Dunlap. The fact that this disparity problem was caused by some districts having more transportation funding than they needed when this district is— puts millions and millions of more dollars into transportation than the current formula of the state provides us really seems to indicate that formula is broken, and it hasn't been updated in over a decade.

And as an additional priority as a community, we ought to be demanding that there be a new, uh, analysis, a new study of what the appropriate formula should be in statute.

Thank you, Member Donnelly. We'll go to Member Baldwin-Day. I think I was thinking along the same lines as Member Donnelly. There needs to be a long-term, a long-view fix to the, the analysis that's done for the disparity test. That's very, very clear, and, and I'm not, I'm not sure, you know, where the confluence is of the legislative work that would need to be done on our end and versus yours to, to move on that issue and to make that happen.

But that seems very, very salient for next session.

Member Lessens, um, two things. One, I wanted to point out that again, in that joint resolution that both bodies passed, we did talk about transportation funding. And I don't remember the figure offhand, but it was in the hundreds of dollars that we needed to bring it up to par for I'd want to say the 21st century, but we're well underway. And then the second thing, I just, you know, to build off of what Member Holliman is saying, I think it's very true that we are going— that's a $700 BSA is not so different from a $680 one-time dose that we've received for this current fiscal year. The big difference, I just wanted to keep at the forefront of everyone's mind is that we have spent our fund balance down to this 5% level.

We could have it up to a max of about 10%. Um, 8% is our board policy, board minimum, but, but we've, we've gone for broke, right? There is nothing left in the reserves if there's an emergency, and that also means that we cannot tap that sort of Hail Mary cushion to help balance our budget next year, right? It's, it's done. So this $74-75 million deficit, um, that is real, that is big.

And I think we talked about briefly in a Finance Committee meeting, you could close every single school, elementary school in the district to save money and still have a deficit left over. So we are not going to be closing every single elementary school, obviously, but just the scale, the magnitude of that deficit is, uh, challenging at best to wrap your mind around.

Thank you. And I think I can close out our conversation just by expressing appreciation for our assembly, for your support on this matter. And then it sounds like we have a path forward on partnership to ensure that the Alaska Department of Education Early Development, as well as the State Board of Education, pursues any potential amendment to regulations regarding local contributions, impact aid, and the federal disparity test through a competent legal and transparent process. That is a bar that they have failed to meet with in dramatic fashion thus far. Member—.

Sorry, Mr. Ratliff, I had one quick follow-up with the amount of bond debt reimbursement that we have that's subject to the state still having to reimburse. It was a little over $14 million, about $14.2 is what's the maximum exposure would be if they were to veto the entire line item.

All right, not seeing any other members in the queue. We will go to— now that we've completed our item E, um, we will skip over F and G and move on to H, other matters of mutual concern. Under number 1, we have Academies of Anchorage. Dr. Bryant. Thank you, Mr. President.

So I'll give the team a moment to pull up the PowerPoint.

So I'll go ahead and walk us through a few slides. So I do know that we have several new members here today. First of all, welcome. This is quite a time to be a public official in the Anchorage community. Um, but I do want to remind everyone that the ASD board and I are laser focused on 3 goals.

One's on reading, one's on math, and the third goal is on college, career, and life readiness. Here in ASD, we have a goal to increase our graduation rates from 80% to close to 90% over the next several years, and this is one strategy that we want to move this work forward. With that said, this is really a short update that I just wanted to just clarify some misinformation and hopefully get this group excited that, one, this is going to help us increase the number of kids that graduate from, you college or the number of students that are in incredible careers here in the Anchorage community or beyond. That's what this is about. And if there's one thing I want you to remember about academies and how it's going down right now is that we're going to go slow to go far.

I think that there was a lot of consternation, a lot of thoughts about the program, a lot of questions. And I think that those questions were good. And I want to spend the next few years really trying to understand what are the concerns and what are ways that this program can evolve to meet the needs of Anchorage today. Next slide, please. So let's start off by looking at a video that demonstrates all the success that we've achieved this year despite our smaller model.

It's been over a year since we started this journey together to launch the Academies of Anchorage. We've convened, we've listened, we've imagined something better. And built something bold. It's been a year of big questions, but even bigger possibilities. This year, students across the Anchorage School District engaged in nearly 1 million career-connected learning touchpoints through networking, mentoring, and hiring events, industry showcases, and more.

As part of Freshman Academy, each 9th grader had the opportunity to tour a university campus and attend a career expo to meet face-to-face with more than 100 Alaska businesses and employers.

All before the start of sophomore year.

We're already seeing progress with a 5% uptick in GPA GPA among 9th graders.

Next year, things really begin. Each comprehensive high school in the district will launch at least 2 career pathways, from hospitality to biomedical science, engineering to education. We're excited to bring these programs that are proven to increase engagement and graduation graduation rates to every student in the district.

Our students are discovering their passions and seeing what's possible for their futures right here in Alaska. The Academies of Anchorage— it's been a year of momentum, and we're just getting started. We're preparing students for college, careers, and life. Investing in our students today Helps build the Alaska of tomorrow.

I think this sounds like a very exciting initiative.

Encore, encore.

So let's go to the next slide because here's the thing. This is really exciting stuff, but I think people have really overcomplicated what the model is and what it isn't. So let me just be very clear about what the Academies of Anchorage is. So, uh, in 9th grade, it's ASD's vision that every single freshman will be enrolling in a class called College Career Exploration with Personal Finance. Why?

Because I think all of us have been tuning into legislative sessions for many, many years, and we know that, uh, personal finance is a critical skill for students. In ASD, every single 9th grader is going to understand personal finance, and we're going to make sure that they understand what are the great colleges out there all across the country? What are the options here at UAA? What's dual credit? What's an internship?

What are ways that I can engage in the workforce? I think it's important to remember that we serve primarily students of poverty here in ASD, so we need to give them opportunities, whether it's to go directly into college or whether it's to make sure that they have the technical skills they need to get a high-demand, high-wage job here in Anchorage right now today. But when you look at this model, it's very simple. No one's being asked to take anything that they don't want to take, aside from learning fundamentals of personal finance and some other common sense that I think every 9th grader in the district needs to know. Number 2, in 10th to 12th grade, all we're asking is for students to opt in, right?

So they have their schedule, and we want to make the pitch that through this course, through that 9th grade course, you gain the inspiration. Right? You start thinking about, huh, like, how much does a new car cost? What type of job do I need to have to get that new car? And they can use those skills and apply them to ways that they can contribute to the community, whether it's in healthcare, whether it's in community engagement, whether it's in public service.

You know, I'm really excited about this, but I want to be very clear that nobody is being asked to take anything that they don't want to. What we're trying to do is offer students as many choices possible because my vision is that every single student in ASD is going to graduate ready for colleges, universities, apprenticeships, enlistment in the military if that's their dream, and beyond. This is not a college versus career paradigm. I want to let the new members of the assembly know that I actually, before becoming superintendent, spent nearly a decade being a national expert on the topic of college career readiness. I'm very excited excited about this.

I would not be putting my name behind it if I didn't truly believe that this is going to set more students up to be successful in colleges, careers, or whatever they want to do. That's what the Academy is about. It's about taking those little steps because again, we have so many students who are in poverty and don't necessarily have access to the information that they need to be successful in college and beyond. So I'm really passionate about this and again, we really pride ourselves on the diversity of course offerings that we have in ASD. We have advanced placement classes.

We have incredible programs like the Biomedical Science program. We have so many opportunities that students may not even know where they're going to take that credential or that experience or that inspiration. And that's okay. That's called life readiness. You have options and you're going to pursue the option that's best for you.

So here's my north star on this initiative. The data for ASD— again, this is not some national statistic. This is about ASD students who complete just two, just two CTE classes in the same area. They graduate at 98%. So let me remind everyone that the graduation rates for all students in ASD is around 81%.

If you really dig beneath the surface of that statistic, if you're a student of color in ASD, if you're a student who's from a low-income background, those graduation rates are in the 70s depending on what depending on the specific subpopulation we're looking at, those graduation rates could be in the 50s. So the fact that 98% of ASD students that completed a CTE class graduate on time in 4 years, that's incredible. And I looked at the statistic on that 98%, and you know, half of those students are students who are low income. So it's incredible. Do you know that the national rate for students who are low income graduating from college is in the single digits when you look at community colleges, and sometimes it's in the low double digits when when you look at 4-year universities.

And again, I happen to know this because I spent nearly a decade becoming a national expert in this topic throughout the, the earlier part of my career. So I'm really excited to bring this to light. So the model is simple. People are opting in to courses that are available at their school, but here's where the business community gets involved. So next slide, please.

We're going so slow to go so far. Because we briefed everybody that there is no money in ASD. In fact, there are some people trying to pull some maneuvers to rob us of even more money. And despite every single headwind that's been faced by us, we've added 23 new pathways in ASD despite that, right? We're able to do that in a way that is essentially cost neutral, and there may have been grants that were involved to make some of this programming move forward, but [Speaker:JOHN] I think that when our low-income students start graduating at rates of 90% and above, that investment is going to be worth it.

So even today, even despite the deficit, even despite all the political maneuvers, we're going to have 59 pathways in CTE in the Anchorage School District next year. And I'm really proud of that because that was despite a lot of noise and a lot of misinformation that I am laser-focused on correcting over the next 12 to 24 months. Because the stakes are too high when we're looking at the graduation rates of students. And I know for a fact that if you're an ASD student that completes these two CTE classes, that you're going to graduate at 90%. Why would we not be investing in opportunities that really help our students succeed?

Why am I not hearing from legislators and our commissioner and others about ways to invest in CTE programs so we can continue to do programs like this? I'm so excited that we were able to just pull this off despite the $110 million deficit. That we've been facing all year, and we're going to keep on going. You can believe that. Next slide, please.

So here are the fine details that frequently get misunderstood. So these are the ASD CTE pathways that we plan to offer for the '25-'26 school year. The very first thing I want to say as you look at this slide is the next slide is about King Tech because I want to make another thing really clear to the public, really clear to everybody in this room. I love the King Tech High School program. I think it's one of the most successful programs that ASD has launched in its history, and the reason why academies formed is because we want to take those best practices and put it in front of the kid who may want to just stay on the football team at East High School and have the opportunity to stay on the east side and take some classes at their school instead of going to King Tech.

But you're also going to have some students that want to take advantages of the King Tech program, and they want to really have a citywide access point no matter where they live. They'll have an opportunity to take really high-impact programs no matter where they live. So academies and King Tech High School go hand in hand. Let's go to the next slide, please. These are the King Tech CTE programs of study that were offered to students.

Again, AOA and King Tech go hand in hand. They complement each other. We have thousands of graduates every year in the Anchorage School District. There's so much CTE and college prep and dual credit and AP and International Baccalaureate to go around. I'm not worried about students having choice.

I want to give them direction so they can get to the finish line at the end of the day. So these are the King Tech CTE programs, and again, this is accessible to everybody in the community. So I really want to make sure that you all can help me champion this message to the public that all we're saying is that, wow, if you want to take advantage of these programs that aren't at my school, I can probably arrange some transportation to get to King Tech, but if I want to stay on the East High School football team, I'm going to stay at my school and choose my pathway at my school. It's that simple. So what I'm going to be doing over the next 12 to 24 months is hammering this message through to every single person because there are zero reasons why every single person in ASD shouldn't be behind getting more kids exposed to dual credit, CTE, and beyond.

I am so excited for this. Next slide, please.

And thank you, a sincere thank you, because we could not have pulled this off without the support of the mayor and the assembly. We can't afford the Denina Center, and you all comp that for us so we could bring thousands of students. Thank you. Can we clap for that? Thousands of students got to experience careers.

And here's the cool thing about the 9th grade career expo. We galvanized hundreds of school business partners across the city, and they stepped up. They volunteered their time, and a lot of you were there, and a lot of you, you know, encouraged people to come. Member Wilson was instrumental in making sure that IBEW and a lot of school business partners that she's on the board of were present here. Hundreds of expos were there, but here's the coolest part, is that the career expo was geared towards students that are in 9th grade.

Right? Sometimes when you go to a job fair, career fair, it's geared towards people who are going into the workforce. But when I walked into the Adina Center, that was caught by the assembly, I saw students that were in front of the green screen, you know what I mean? Like where they're trying to pretend they're the weather person. I think that's so neat.

And I got to see, I'm thinking about Alaska Premier Auctions, I got to see some students really learn what it means to be an auctioneer for the first time. I mean, I might have gotten Jen Matoyka and some other people, some future employees. I think that's a really cool thing, and I'm sure that there are students that were at that, um, career expo and saw the talented physicians and really saw their future in a medical school out of state so they can maybe one day come back and help contribute to the medical crisis in Alaska so we can have more doctors in our low-income and rural communities and make a difference. All that inspiration really starts for every single 9th grader through the Freshman Academy course that they'll take their 9th grade year. That's the career expo.

That's thanks to the city. I just really wanted to express my sentiment, but I also don't want to let people off the hook. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do this career expo again because I don't know if the Denina Center being comped will count towards this impact date or what have you. So I just want you to take a moment to think about what it's like to be a superintendent in these crazy times, because all I want to do is just talk about these programs and get kids into to school. But here I am having to look at statutes, you know, 44-62-250 to, you know, try to make a political point.

But this is the work, and this is why we're working so hard, and this is what I need you to help me get the message across on this issue that we talked about this morning. Because again, I don't know if we can pull this off because the state hasn't told me if the city can even help me get the Denaina Center for free. They might want to deduct our funding instead. That's crazy to me. So next slide.

Dr. Bryan, can I interrupt? Sure. First to say agree. Second of all, Vice Chair Brawley has a question or comment. Uh, yeah, I also agree, and I wanted to note that our next joint meeting is also Friday, September 26th.

And so what a great thing that we could make potentially a school day where we have our meeting in the morning and then we all head over to the DeNyon Center. So I will—. I'm putting a note on my calendar right now. Thanks. That's really cool.

This has been the longest week for me, and that really warms my heart. All right, so I think we have one more slide. Oh, that's the last slide. What questions can you answer? I think I saw, uh, Member Higgins, and then we'll go to members first.

Yeah, I was going to mention to the superintendent, don't mention donations, uh, here a little bit with everything going on with the state. I'll just mention this. I, I like the numbers. I'm always big on numbers. Those statistics out here, graduations and the like, is something I always like to hear.

The biggest challenge from my standpoint in supporting this is really trying to expand it to 7 or 8 classes because there's so many optional programs and then having enough teachers to do it. When you lose a teacher, you lose what they teach. You need to have other supports out there. And when you go from 6 to 7 classes or 6 to 8, that's a third more students— number of students taking classes. And we were losing teachers and we're not getting them refilled.

And we're running into that type of nightmare. So I support moving forward with this. I just want to be out there. We're being hurt by the state with funding when we can't fill these teacher jobs when they're losing them and they're not being replaced, trying to retain them. I know we got a committee that's looked at the retention issue because that impacts us quite a bit when you have high turnover in the first 5 years.

But we really, um, just laying that out, ideally I wish we could support the 7 and 8 schedule, but you got to have more teachers and we just can't seem to— we're going to have a nightmare with that, with our salaries behind and no defined benefit, which the state continues to oppose. The only state in the country without defined benefit option for teachers. Another detriment that's coming directly from the state with opposition that way, and that's— and that would make a difference right there for low cost.

Go to Member Baldwin-Day.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I would, I would just love to get, um, this PowerPoint if possible. Yeah, I'd love to be able to dig into especially the slide of what's going to be offered at which schools. That'd be really fascinating to take a closer look. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Member Silvers.

Um, yeah, I have a question. You said that, um, some of the career pathways have been paid for by grants. And my question is, would those grants also be under threat by these new proposed regulations? It's possible, but here's the way that I think about it, Member Silvers. We can't tell our students that— I, I'm sorry, the, the state is trying to take $18 million from us.

This is just the wrong time to pursue our goals and guardrails. I need to make sure that our eye is focused on improving student outcomes no matter what. And yet there are some funds that are being funded by federal impact aid. We did receive a grant from the federal government, and you need to understand that I, 24 hours a day, am constantly under fear that some sort of grant's going to be pulled or some sort of maneuver is going to be pulled or some sort of rug's going to be pulled from under me. So I wish that I could tell you exactly what I'll do when there's a crisis, but what I want to communicate to you right now is I know the crises are coming and I'm the guy you want to have in a crisis.

Uh, Member— Vice President Bellamy. Yes, thank you. Um, Dr. Bryant, thank you for doing the overview for the academies. We, we really need to be crystal clear in our, in our messaging, what it is and what it's not. There still are parents and community members who see the academies as, I don't know, some kind of tracking system.

It is not that. It is a system to create opportunities It is not— every kid won't want to, um, it won't fit every single kid. But when we look at the statistics, you've got like, you know, only 30% of our kids really go on to college. What happens to the other 60%? We want them to be life and career ready too, life, college, and career ready as well.

And so we are If we believe, I think we do, every kid every day, no matter what it takes, we've got to create these opportunities for all kids. And I think, you know, my own personal story really started with a program called DECA. I would never have even thought about going to college. I never would have, because I never would have thought I had any kind of skill. Except I learned how to do something.

And, and, and I found I was good at it and it paid for me to go to college. It helped me to be where I am today. So anyway, I, I am 100% behind the academies. I just think we need to make sure that we are clear, and we are, that, you know, it's not graduation or the academies, it's not college. Or, you know, or an apprenticeship.

It can be both or all of the above. And then parents get to choose the path, the ultimate path for their kids, but we've got to look out for all kids. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President Bellamy. Flagging two things.

First, the slideshow for the AOA presentation is attached to our agenda today on BoardDocs. And then Following up on Vice Chair Brawley's comment, sounds like that we have a potential collaborative time that can occur after our next joint meeting in the fall, a field trip of sorts to Staple On. We can potentially take up a good chunk of your, your day if you'd like. So we'll examine how we can do that and get an invite out.

With that said, if there's no other comments regarding H1 Academies of Anchorage—. President. Jacobs, I had my hand up. I wasn't sure if you caught that. Apologies.

Thank you, Member Wilson. The floor is yours. Awesome. I just wanted to kind of elaborate a little bit on what Member Bellamy was stating in that the academy's programs aren't just for students that don't want to go to college, just like King Tech is not just for students that don't want to go to college. You look at the biomedical program at Service High School.

Most of those students are tracking to go into a healthcare field that would take a— that would need a post-secondary education, whether it be a certificate, an AA, a BA, or doctorates. You look at the programs at King Tech, and they do an amazing job incorporating the Alaska Middle College with the students at King Tech. So Some of those students are taking the trades program that's available, but they're also taking classes at UAA. So there's this great combination. There's no— the intention is to provide limitless opportunities for our students, but to provide the exposure is incredibly important because many of our students are not exposed to different programs, whether it be trades or college or whatever programs, be, you know, being an esthetician or whatever they choose.

But I just, I think there is, I've heard the same kind of confusion from our families, from our community members, that it is that the academies are focused on students who are not choosing to go to college, and that by no means the case. It's really focused on expanding their opportunities and expanding their exposure. So I just, I appreciate that that's being said more and said more loudly, and our, our business people have been, our business community has been wonderful about being involved in this process, which is amazing because those are more opportunities for our kids and more connections for our kids in our community. So it's— I do believe that the Academies is just trying to bring a louder, a larger platform to some of the programs that the school district has had for many years, and the community didn't realize that that is a program that exists, and many of our students maybe didn't know some of the programs that exist. So it's incredibly important that all of our kids know what opportunities are out there and the engagement with our business community continue to grow.

I did want to ask a quick question to Dr. Bryant, or maybe a comment more than a question, because there, there is going to be a change in leadership at King Tech, and so maybe share about that process so the community understands that there is going to be a change in leadership, but the— as you stated earlier, your excitement about the programs that exist at King Tech will continue to exist. So if you could elaborate a little bit on that, that'd be great. Yeah, thank you, Member Wilson. So we're in the advanced stages of finalizing the, the who will be selected for King Tech High School. I'm so excited about it.

What I can share about it right now is I've been telling every finalist that I personally interviewed myself. My priority is to expand the number of kids who are in King Tech. It's not lost on me that there are a lot of teachers out there that may be, you know, reading things online or on Twitter or maybe, you know, phoning a friend, but I'm going to make sure that they hear from me. I want to invest in King Tech. I want more students enrolled in that school.

I want a vision for more full-time kids in King Tech too. You know, I had heard a stat from, I believe it was Andy Ratliff, that if we add more full-time students into King Tech. There's even a pathway for that program to be even more cost sustainable. So I really want the public to understand I have immense urgency for financial reasons, um, where we can generate some dollars for the district, but also our board goals. So I don't have any specifics to share as to who will be selected and why were they selected quite yet, but I've made it crystal clear they need to grow enrollment at that school because this is a board goal and I need more kids to graduate from high school employers.

Thank you, Member Wilson. We'll go to Vice Chair Brawley. Yeah, thank you. Um, uh, very happy to see King Tech continuing and have appreciated— I think it's in December, uh, the hosting of kind of the update and, and, and getting served lunch by the students. So thank you for that.

Um, but also I noted, um, in the programs that are on that list, early childhood education and child care. Things related to housing construction, and then of course a lot of other workforce, uh, needs in our community. So I think there's a direct straight line with our assembly priorities as well and the municipality's priorities and making sure that we have folks who can do those jobs. And I think they're good jobs, so I hope that people pursue those careers. And if I may, um, you know, this is an initiative that can directly benefit ASD too.

It's not lost on me that you can create CT pathways in in the field of education. I think we need more amazing educators than ever before in this day and age. And given that ASD is one of the most diverse school systems in the country, I think it would be really great to accelerate the pipeline of students that are ready to give back and pay it forward. So one of my priorities will be to expand the number of education pathways too. We need to grow our own people, whether they're the people building houses, whether they're the people in the hospitals, whether they're the teachers in your child's classroom.

I really think that this could help our state a lot. Thank you. We'll go to Member Lessels. Um, I wanted to say a couple of things that I've appreciated recently. One is that the administration has shared that it's going to really be working to engage with families more deeply in part of this going slow to go farther path, and that we can also anticipate a revised master plan.

There's been a lot of changes since June of, uh, just last year, um, and so that's something that is— sounds like is also in the pipeline. Um, and I would just like to share, and I mentioned this the other day at our board meeting, um, one of the wonderful things that I had heard for some time is that King Tech has a summer program for students who are entering 9th grade. My own kiddo is there right now in the 2-week session And there's a new 2-week session coming next week, and it's a strength. So it's just, it's a great deep dive into some of the hands-on opportunities, and they get to earn a half credit, which is also fabulous. So it's something that I hope can expand outward.

You know, that said, I did want to just share, you know, I've had questions certainly about the academies for, for at different times, and I think that it has never been about tracking but about the question to which, um, I guess one question is, you know, how, how do the academies at the end of the day improve student graduation rates by helping students not fail courses if they can't read on grade level and if they can't do math on grade level? Because to me that's one of the biggest reasons that kids don't graduate, and I don't see that being fixed. I see engagement, you know, likely increasing, but I don't see the academies yet fixing a core problem of kids who are behind on grade level in those core skills. Member Lessons, if I may, I think that's a great question. To be direct, the academies are not designed to help every child learn to read in high that's not what they're designed for.

But we can design our high schools to facilitate that change. And I would be— there's another misconception that I want to be clear about because I was attempting to gather community feedback on changing the high school schedule. The reason why I wanted to change the high school schedule was so that I can give students more classes in their schedules so that if you're behind in, let's say, English 1, you can take a remedial English course that's maybe focused on more of the fundamentals that you might have missed in middle school. The same thing is directly applicable to math. This is a strategy that I saw personally when I was a high school teacher in a 6-12 school teaching math.

And there are various ways that you can structure with the 7-period day, because right now I think what the public needs to understand is if we want to keep the 6-period day, we can keep the 6-period day. But the problem is that there are a lot of students in other states that are taking 7 and 8 classes. They're able to take more Advanced Placement classes than our students in a Alaska. They're able to take more dual credit. They have more room in their schedules to take internships.

And my fundamental belief as an educator that really understands the nuts and bolts of master schedules and all of that thing, I actually think changing the schedule is the bigger lever to helping students to read than the academies themselves. Because really what I'm trying to do is add more opportunities for students to have access to more incredible educators, to get the remedial courses that they need. Because here's the thing, if you only have 6 classes, and you failed, you know, let's say, you know, English from the year before, you only have so many blocks in your schedule to where you can even graduate on time within 4 years. So I've paused that schedule conversation only because we can't afford it. But the minute that we can afford it, I want to talk about it again.

I know that there's division on it and there's two sides to the issue, but we didn't even have the chance to have that debate because we were so short word on money that we needed to make a decision based on money and not based on kids. So I want to come back to that schedule conversation when we figure out this money situation.

But a member, Silvers, just a side note before I ask my question, um, over 30 years ago I took early childhood education and carpentry courses from— it was called King Career Center back then, um, and I actually used those carpentry skills, uh, in my previous career as an environmental scientist. So it's just kind of a side note. My question is, uh, what is the graduation rate at King Tech?

I will ask my technical experts. I think the problem with King Tech is you have students enrolled in a homeschool and then also in King Tech part-time, full-time, so we may not have that, but I hope it's high. We don't have it. Can I get that back to you, Member Silvers? Thank you.

Board member McCormick. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to echo the same kind of concerns of that the Academy is great. Uh, I did King Career Center as well, uh, when I went through ASD. Great program, loved it, had a lot of friends go through it.

But it seems like we're— the city is facing the same problem that seems like the Anchorage School District is, which we keep trying to do nice and cool and great things, but we're failing the core fundamental of our students can't read, they can't pass standardized math tests. Our proficiency rates have tanked over the last 10 years, 15 years since I graduated. The academy is great, it's cool, but we're still trending down on proficiency rates. I appreciate that comment, Member McCormick, but I want to make sure that the public understands that if we keep on doing the same thing over and over again, we're going to keep on getting the same and same results? And let me remind you that every year that passes by is not a status quo situation.

It was just shared earlier today that $700 BSA is essentially a funding cut from what it was the year before. So the reality is that every single year school districts are operating with less and less and less. And frankly there is no way that we can protect all of our programs if this funding situation does not turn around for FY27. ASD is looking at a $70 million deficit so there's way to maintain every single program that every single community member loves that we're currently doing because we won't be able to afford them. So the thing about academies is not only is it linked to higher increases in graduation rates, but it's actually one of the most cost-effective interventions that the district can do because in the original model of the academies, the goal was for every single student to be participating in the program.

That meant the cost per student would have, you know, for example, a language immersion program is probably a couple extra thousand dollars per student. The academies would have been less than $100 per student because the only cost would have been teachers. Really, the only cost to ASD was more teachers so we could have more classes offered so kids could have more opportunities to pass their classes. That's what got lost in the sauce, and that's the part that I'm going to keep on hammering home. We really were on a path to transforming our system.

We had to pause because there are some financial headwinds, there were some questions, and unlike certain people people. When I sense that there are a lot of questions and misinformation, I pause and I reach out to people and say, hey, let's cool down the temperature. Let's figure out what are your concerns about the schedule. Let's figure out what are your concerns about what program might be eliminated if we invest in academies. But at the end of the day, I need to be very clear that ASD students graduate at 96% when they take 2 of these career and technical education classes.

That's data that's local to ASD. Half of those students are low income. That's happening right now. Here's the crazy thing. The academies are not even fully built out.

The only data that I'm sharing with you are the graduation rates based off of the classes that this most recent year seniors took. Imagine in 5 years when this program is fully built out and we go from having 500 students graduate in CTE to close to 3,000 students graduating. Graduating from high school in 4 years. That will literally transform our workforce because we'll have more students that have taken the courses, gotten the credential, have entered the workforce, and we'll just have so many opportunities to staff our hospitals, staff our schools, and to make our city a better place. So I'm sorry if I get very passionate about this, but I have to again remind everyone that I've been in this field for a decade, and I know that we're on the right track to move things in the right direction.

We make smart, cost-effective academic interventions like the academies. We'll go to Member Holloman. Um, I do want to add, when, when we look at proficiency, there's always a tendency as adults to really try to narrow in and focus on those basics and drill remedial classes, more intensive reading lessons and whatnot. Um, as an educator, I've always said We're really not going to progress that way unless we can get kids into a mortgage and a truck payment that's over their head. And then you can threaten them with, you know, the loss of overtime and make them work like we do when, when we're in that situation.

The truth is, we have to make school more interesting. We have to make kids want to be there. A kid that realizes they can do something they want to do if they can read. They're going to learn to read. But a kid that really doesn't feel it— because while everybody wants to read, not everybody wants to do the work it takes to read.

But if they begin to realize that this is, this is what, what I've got to do to do the thing I want to do, that's when we really start to see kids take off. Um, so unfortunately, I think when we narrow it, we're, we're doing the adult thing of of where you got chores, you try to push everything else aside and just focus on that and grind through it. But they're not adults and they don't have that internal motivation. They don't see the future. It's, it's an abstraction to them.

And, and that's why for a core group of students, you can just do basic classes. They're going to show up, they're going to study, they're going to learn, they're going to go off and do great things. But for the kids that aren't like that, you have to do something that's more time-consuming and frustrating and difficult to get them hooked and get them engaged, and then they'll start rolling. The—. I had a bright kid, and as a 4 or 5-year-old, I was trying to teach him math.

It really wasn't going very well. We started playing Monopoly. We never talked about math again. He knew I landed on his property. He knew exactly how much money I owed him.

And that's kind of the thing is like we were giving up the time to play Monopoly in school in order to drill and drill. Just a painful slog when you're trying to push spaghetti up a hill. So the, the answer, unfortunately, is more electives, more interesting things. Um, I see all the advantages the superintendent talks about from the academies, but I don't want to shorten our periods. I want longer days.

I, I would like the ability for students to be able to choose and say, well, actually I need a 7th period, but we could still transport them home. We need more time with the students that aren't doing well, and ideally the students that are doing well can be done and be off doing the other things they do because most of them are very busy with all kinds of cool stuff, but we're nowhere near the level of funding that would let us do something like that, that I think would be a lot more creative, would let us engage the right way with, with the students that need it in the way they need it. We're, we're far from that. Our, our decisions unfortunately really revolve around the institution staying within a budget, staying within a lot of constraints. It's not what is really student-centered at all, unfortunately.

But you raise a valid point. The other thing I do want to say is when kids show up as not proficient on these tests, it doesn't mean they can't read at all. They're just not at the level that the cut score on that test. And the Alaska Standards are pretty high. It's not a standard every kid will ever meet, but it's good to have high standards.

So there's sort of that dichotomy. I think it was like Bob McGowan had the slogan, we'll have high standards and every kid will meet them. And that's not real, you know, that's faulty logic on that part of it. There's so much more we could do, and unfortunately a lot of what the board's had to spend time on is what can we cut that does the least damage to the smallest number of kids? And it's not innovative, it's not, it's not exciting, but we want to be there.

Thank you, Member Hallman. I just wanted to note we have 7 minutes left in our scheduled time today, 2 agenda items as well as member comments. And so I'm certainly not trying to curtail conversation. We gave a ton of time, rightfully so, to the budget and financials talk, um, but wanted to flag that. With that said, is there a motion to extend by 10 minutes?

I understand both the Assembly and the board have extra meetings today, so I don't want to go much further. Move to extend 10 minutes. Second. Made by Member Higgins, seconded by Member Silvers. Is there any opposition to extending our meeting until 12:10 PM?

The question was, is there any opposition? Yeah. Yes. Okay, uh, so we'll vote then. Um, I believe you'll have the votes to extend, right?

You do now. Yeah. So, um, Miss Sullivan, can we call a voice vote to extend until 12:10?

Member Lessoms. Yes. Member Wilson? Yes.

Member Donnelly? Yes. Member Higgins? Yes.

Member Bellamy is gone. And President Jacobs? Yes.

Vice Chair Burley? Thank you, uh, Madam Clerk, will you call the roll for the assembly or call for votes?

Member McCormick? No.

Member Martinez? No. Member Baldwin-Day? Yes. Member Johnson?

Yes. Vice Chair Brawley? Yes. Member Silvers? Yes.

Member Rivera? Yes. Member Gerker? No.

That fails.

5, 2, 3.

Can the clerk advise us what this means? You stop at 12.

Through the chair, you'll have to give me a minute.

A brief at ease while we check procedure.

Point of information, Mr. 3 and a half minutes just ticked off the clock. Agreed.

Point well taken. Yeah.

Through the chair, the clerk said it did not pass. No, it's, uh, we will adjourn at 12. With that said, I see Member Gerker in the queue. Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to circle back to something, Dr. Bryant, you'd said And I just wanted to give you a chance to maybe clarify.

You said that this historic BSA increase is actually a cut. Can you— is that correct? Did I hear that right?

Yes. I think functionally when inflation's 30% and the increase to the BSA is about, you know, less than 2%, that would be a cut. That was the rough math. But, Mr. Ratliff, would you like to clarify the actual calculations?

Uh, yeah, so effectively going from a $680 BSA equivalent to a $700 BSA equivalent would provide about $1.4 million maybe in new revenue. Our inflation on a $630 million budget is going to be $18 to $20, $25 million. I mean, so that's really where the cut is. If we're not getting enough new revenue to make up for that inflationary cost drivers of our salaries and benefits going up, then it's in other contracts, utilities, then that's really where we have to start making cuts. And that's been happening year after year, and that's why our structural deficit is built up now to, you know, $110, $120 million.

Yeah, I guess I would just say that that's kind of an outrageous, you know, situation that we're in. And especially when you're talking to people, we just, you know, this, this BSA increase is expensive on every single man, woman, and child in this state. And to hear this body say, well, it's not going to actually have any that much of a functional difference for us, don't expect outcomes to improve, don't expect any of this to improve, that's frankly outrageous and I find truly unacceptable. Available. Thank you.

Go to Member Higgins. Thank you, and I'll do it real quick. You made reference to outcomes, and of course that's important, and we've heard it from the governor. We've had the Pica-Solom study out there showing the average class— classroom sizes in the majority of states, and what's considered adequate funding, is 1 to 15 K through 3 and 1 to 25 above that, and that's been accepted by court systems. We're over 30 in, in the lower grades.

So we're twice the size and we've been increasing it in the last 10 years. And the governor's response is, when the academics improve, then we'll give you more money and allow it to end up with growing even larger classroom sizes. When you look at the outcome for teachers and you look at where they start in kindergarten, so many academically not— I mean, they're not prepared for kindergarten, over half of them. And our academic growth between those first 4 years is— puts us in a whole different category when you do a comparison. So I just want to make that point that inadequate funding does not address the academic issues that are out there.

And with regards to the 7th, 8th grade, when that came up 20 years ago or 10 years ago, that was an issue that was reviewed publicly and got to be an issue of 6 to 7 schedules. All the academics are positive. Member Higgins, I'm going to have to interrupt you to say that we are adjourned. It's 12 PM. Thank you, everyone.