Anchorage School Board: 8/18/26 ASD School Board Meeting

All right, good evening everyone. We'll call ourselves to order at 6:15. Today's Tuesday, August 18th, uh, ASD School Board's regular business meeting. Present in the boardroom are members Wilson, Blakeslee, Bellamy, Jacobs, McDonough, Lessons, and Higgins.

Member McDonough, would you please lead us in the flag salute and read our land acknowledgment?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice We acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of the Dena'ina people of Upper Cook Inlet. For thousands of years, the Dena'ina people have been and continue to be the stewards of this land. ASD is committed to diversity and inclusion, and it is with honor and respect that we recognize all indigenous people who live in, live and learn in our community.

Thank you. We want to welcome you to our meeting and thank you for attending and supporting the work of the Anchorage School District and this board. The board thanks students, parents, teachers, staff, school business partners, and the entire community for your investment in our district with your time, your talent, and your tax dollars. We have an agenda in front of us, but before we approve our agenda, I, I want to ask for a moment of personal privilege and open the floor to Representative Holland and his team, who I understand have a presentation for a member that the the board are deeply familiar with. So Representative Holland, if you'd like to come forward along with anyone else.

I also want to acknowledge— I see Representative Schraggy and Senator Giesel with us tonight. Welcome. Great, thank you, President Jacobs, and to the members of the school board and to the members of administration and the public that are here. I'm Kai Holland, represent House District 9. With me is Senator Kathy Giesel and Representative Calvin Schraggy.

We're here tonight to recognize Andy Polliman. There has been some, uh, thought that maybe we could put him back to work. But for the moment, we want to actually take a second to celebrate his work. Legislative citations are an opportunity that the legislature has to be able to recognize the good and the positive of what is happening in our community. We spend a lot of time working on budgets and policies, but I think it's one of the more valuable things that we get to do as a legislature is to pause and be able to recognize people that have done outstanding work.

And Andy Holloman is one of of those folks that as he retired from the school board, many of us recognized that this was worth noting and celebrating in that moment as a reflection on what we all can aspire to. I want to just read a portion of this proclamation. This is one that is reviewed by the House of Representatives and by the Senate and is voted on by both bodies representing the collective will of the legislature and recognizing this work. But in particular, you know, I want to bring out one paragraph because as I, you know, got a chance to work with Andy representing the school board in the community, I came away each time of working with him and seeing his work thinking that I want to be like Andy. And I, I, I, I mean that in all sincerity.

The engagement he had in the community made an impact on me, and it's what I look to to think about how I could do my job better. So This one paragraph I want to highlight says, "What sets Andy apart is not the breadth of his service, but the way he carried it out. Known for his dry, gentle humor, his ability to connect through conversation, Andy often reminded colleagues with a knowing smile that the work of education is demanding in ways few professionals are— professions are," excuse me. "Yet even in those moments, his humor never diminished the seriousness of the work." Instead, it created space for understanding, reflection, and progress. Whether guiding a classroom, mentoring fellow educators, or others working through complex policy decisions, Andy never stopped being a teacher.

He listens first, seeks understanding, and helps others find their way forward, often through well-timed metaphor or a quiet question. Andy's approach demonstrates that respectful engagement and steady leadership are not only effective, but they're essential in public service. So some members of the 34th Alaska State Legislature is extending their gratitude to Andy Holloman for his years of service and dedication and wish him continued fulfillment and success in the years ahead. So I appreciate this time, and I want to give a chance for Senator Giesel to offer a few words also. Sure, Andy, I just want to thank you for your service.

I will miss you, even though one of my favorite people, Rachel Blakeslee, has stepped up. I will miss you at community council meetings. You, you'll still be coming. Okay. You know, your explanations and calm presentations were just wonderful.

You, the way you answered questions that constituents had, very factual but understandable, and I will miss you. So thank you for your service. This really is one of the most difficult public service jobs, I think, serving on the school board. So thank you. Thank you, Senator Giesel.

And yeah, Andy, I just wanted to come up here and add my voice to the chorus of appreciation that our community has for you. Um, you've been in office my entire time that I've been in public service, and frankly, you've been someone I've looked up to as a public servant because you truly do serve. And I think what everyone wants from their elected officials is someone who's thoughtful and has a heart for their community, and you certainly have those, and you show up and you do the hard work through good times and bad, and we're just incredibly grateful for your service to our community, to our teachers, our faculty, the administration, and to our students. You've left a huge impression on our community, and as you've reminded us, you're not going anywhere, and we're grateful for that too. So, Andy, thank you so much.

I will say that it was about 20-some years ago that I was told by my principal I had to come to the next board meeting because I was going to get an award. And I said, well, prepare a short speech. And she said, no, you don't get to speak. They just want to give you the award and then you go sit down. And she made that very clear.

But tonight I got to grab the microphone. I do want to say, first of all, I really appreciate the 3 of you and Representative Galvin, who's also signed on the thing, as representatives that really do explain to constituents, that do the math, that do an incredible amount of hard work to try to make government work right. And I think that's a goal that crosses back and forth across party lines and ideological lines. We— and I think everyone on this board, everyone I've been associated with, even though there were times I disagreed, they wanted the district to work right. They wanted students to show up and have a good experience and come away better for it.

And how to do that exactly is tough, but I do think that's been at the heart of so many people that have served in this room. And the legislature as well. This is the first time in over 30 years I haven't had some kind of a direct relationship with the Anchorage School District, and I will say it feels a little odd, but it's also marvelous. So I—. For—.

There is a future out there for all of you where you don't think about it very much. But I will of course continue to be at community council meetings and advocating for education. Uh, we need to fix some things in the state of Alaska in order to have the kind of thing that, that has done so well by all of us here in the past. Thank you very much for the recognition. I really do appreciate it very deeply.

All right, congratulations, Member Holliman, former Member Holliman. You're welcome back anytime. And then thank you to Representatives Holland, Schraggy, and Senator Giesel. Your service to our state is appreciated. Members, we're going to move to the approval of our agenda.

For those looking at the paper agenda, I just want to flag that items 3, 4, and 8 on the consent agenda, consent agenda, that's Memorandums 4-008, and 012 have all been moved to action status at the request of members, um, and that modified agenda is already visible on the new online portal that we're using for tonight's meeting for the first time. Uh, with that said, I would ask a motion to approve the agenda as drafted.

Move to approve the agenda as drafted.

Second.

Is there any opposition to the agenda as drafted? And I'm referring to the online version that has those items moved from consent to action status.

Seeing none, we've adopted an agenda. Thank you, everyone.

Okay, we'll move on to reports. My understanding is we don't have a military report tonight. We do. Okay, uh, my understanding is we do with a new representative. Welcome.

Good evening, the floor is yours. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Thank you. Good evening. So, uh, you didn't recognize me coming in because I am the new, uh, school representative here for the military. Uh, my name is Colonel Jake Foley. I'm the 673rd Mission Support Group Commander at JB there.

And I'd like to begin just quick introduction of myself. I've been here for all of 2 months, and most of that was spent preparing for the Arctic Thunder open house, where I may have met you along with tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters out there in the greater Anchorage community. It was an amazing weekend, and I appreciate everybody's patience. And now that we're past that, we're getting into the first day of school tomorrow. Looking forward to working hand in glove with you on a lot of things that affect us.

To begin, I would really like to thank you for the accommodations you give our military families. Every summer we see the coming and going that happens in the Air Force and in the Army here as our in-transit families move in sometimes at the start of the summer, sometimes, you know, 2, 3 weeks after school has begun. And one thing that I've heard a lot of from our military families is that the Anchorage School District is outstanding at figuring out how to get them in where they're supposed to be, whether it's, you know, we think we're going to go into this house or this neighborhood and getting zoned for a school district and then having to move schools. Or figuring out busing or schedule timelines, things like that. We really appreciate the flexibility and the support that ASD has provided to the military families.

I know we have families on my block that have been here 2, 3 assignments in the past. They keep bringing their families up here, keep bringing their kids to ASD schools, in some cases keep teaching and working in ASD schools, and there's very much a reason behind that. So I appreciate you building that culture that welcomes us back in so well. Understanding that there are plenty of military families who didn't move this summer and they're still ASD families and we still see changes. I appreciate what y'all have done to try and keep those changes and the shifts, whether it's busing, whether it's programming, whether it's services or shortfalls that you're compensating for.

I appreciate you keeping us informed and working across the solutions. Because at the bottom of the line, there's no unique problems to the military community. We may see things more regularly. We may, we may have a slightly different norm. You know, my, I have a son who's gone on, he's on his 5th elementary school.

My wife is also a military child. She did 3 high schools. Both of my parents were military children. They went to far more schools than I did. We see a lot of changes as a transition.

It happens everywhere in the community as well. Um, but we don't have unique problems. What our students experience from our families are the exact same things the Anchorage School District sees, and families who have no connection with JBER whatsoever. Um, so I see a lot of synergy possible. I see a lot of things that we can do, uh, to partner alongside you and to work with the school district to make sure that all students, uh, have the same experience, and that's the best possible experience you can give them.

So from my end, we're going to continue to listen and advocate on behalf of our military families, but we're also going to make sure we look for those opportunities to solve shared concerns and those shared priorities, and especially looking forward to contributing in those meaningful and powerful ways that we've seen, whether it's with the Academies of Anchorage and providing STEM experiments and bringing out demonstrations or expertise from the community, whether it's connecting whether it's connecting graduates of ASD schools with employment opportunities on JBear or in the industries that support us, or whether it's just simply profound volunteerism. I'm going to be out well before sunrise tomorrow making sure traffic moves and school buses get onto JBear. I know we have soldiers who are going to be lined up outside Ursa Minor Elementary tomorrow to make sure everybody's got a great welcome into the school year. There's a lot of connection with the community that we're looking to foster from the JBear community. And really looking forward to working with you on that.

So if you have nothing for me, I look forward to working with you over the next several years and really excited about the opportunities we can have for all of our families together.

Thank you, Colonel Foley, and welcome. Thank you for your service to our country. We'll go to Member Lessens. You actually have a question if you have a minute to stick around. Member Lessens.

Well, you— thank you for— thank you for your service. Thank you for being here. I'm looking forward to the chance to receive updates and pepper you with questions and comments as, as opportunities arise. I guess I wanted to take the liberty of having been one of the civilians who took advantage with my family to go to Arctic Thunder this— two weekends ago and just share how professional and safe and welcoming and fundamentally inspiring it was. I mean, with my sort of school board hat on, I was like, oh, good job having registration spaces for lost parents.

They did a great job in emphasizing lost parents and minimizing lost parents at the event. Yes, ma'am. That was really, that was well done. But really just the every service member that I had the chance to speak with was there 100%. And I know that was open to the community, but I think that just the number of children and youth who were in attendance.

Um, I just hope their eyes were open to opportunities. We talk about engagement, we talk about trying to get our students to find a hook to have them look to the future, and I think you guys brought that, um, beautifully. Um, and I throw a lot of traffic cones. There was just a lot of planning that went into the whole event, so I just wanted to say that I appreciate it as a civilian, but also with my school board hat on. I appreciate that, uh, that's what you recognized instead of the wait for traffic on, especially on Saturday.

We do know we backed up the highways quite a bit with folks eager to get in there. But you're right, everywhere we walked there, there were kids with stars in their eyes and slack jaws. And whether it's because they wanted to learn how to fly a plane or they thought that the sailors out there recruiting looked amazing in their Navy whites, or they just wanted to get out there and, you know, see how fast things can go in the air, there was an awful lot of just great experiences out there. And I appreciate your kind words on that. It was awesome to get so many people onto the base who don't cross that fence line very often.

Most of us don't come from inside the military community. When we join the Air Force, we join the Army, we go to work with, with the Department of War. It is, it is really, really refreshing to get people's perspectives from off base on and be able to showcase some of what we do. So thank you, ma'am. I appreciate that.

Seeing no other comments, thank you again for attending tonight and your service to our country, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Hey, that moves us to board conference and committee reports. Is there a board committee chair who wishes to make a report at this time?

I see Member Bellamy, then we'll go to Member Blakeslee. Uh, just to announce that the Communications Committee will meet on the 27th. I think we meet at 1:30.

And so, uh, we're going to get some very good updates and share some information, uh, some of which you'll hear about later tonight. But, um, we will do some highlights and look at how well our, uh, kids got back into the groove of school and how we are communicating trying to communicate better with the public. So thank you.

Thank you. Member, Member Blakeslee. Yeah, likewise. I was just gonna say that our next Finance Committee meeting is on August 27th at 12:30, and the agenda is still being drafted, but, um, lots of meaty topics to cover, so stay tuned.

Member McDonough, as the, as the chair of the third And final standing committee. Also, we are meeting on August 27th, so I'll join in the updates on that. I believe we're third in the rotation this year, so we'll be meeting at 2:30 or 2:45.

Are we at 2:30 or 2:45? Oh, we're first in the rotation this year.

Oh, 11 o'clock. No, that works for me just fine.

Okay, we will move on. We don't have goal monitor tonight. We'll be moving that to our next meeting. That brings us to public comments. 2 Testifiers signed up this evening.

I want to read our usual greeting, which is that the board welcomes the public this evening for the opportunity to provide comment. We set aside a period at the start of our meeting to hear from each member of the public for up to 1 hour. Public comments in excess of 1 hour are typically heard at the second opportunity at the end of our meeting. Uh, during public comment, board members will not answer questions or engage in discussion. This is the public's time to speak and the board's time to listen.

We utilize Robert's Rules of Order to conduct our meetings. Typical provisions of Robert's Rules include: please do not attack a member or speaker's motives, please no profanity or foul language, please refrain from disturbing the meeting, no cheering, applause, outbursts, or waving of signs or posters. If you have handouts you wish to share with the board, please hand them to Ms. Sullivan, who's seated to my left. There's more information near the entrance of our boardroom.

That said, our first speaker tonight is William Baxter.

Welcome. You have 3 minutes. You can begin when you're ready.

I'm William Baxter, and I was at the Palmer, uh, FFA auction not too— a couple weeks ago or 2, 3 weeks ago, and they auctioned a lot of— quite a bit of stuff off. There was quite a few people from Anchorage there at the auction too.

And, you know, when you go to the auctions, like, uh, not the, uh, like the, uh, the one at the fair, you auction off animals. But at this auction, they auction off animals, they auction off the kids' art, they auction off, uh, like, uh, uh, a welding project a kid did. They did auction off, uh, like a, uh, a shed. They auction a lot of things off, and these kids These kids are just learning, and a lot of them are, you know, one kid is— a couple of them are really good welders and stuff like that. And there's a, uh, there's the auction the 5th of, uh, of September at the fair.

And, you know, when I go there, people auction off, uh, their— they, they auction off animals, but they also— you also can do add-ons You can even do add-ons, and I've done add-ons, so I never bought anything, an animal or anything, or any art, but I, I've done add-ons before. And another thing that's happening in Anchorage is we got, uh, Alaska Farm Bureau meeting coming up. This is Anchorage now. This is—. Massou had one, now we got one.

And we got this other thing I, I got here is, uh, uh, Junior Rodeo Alaska, August 24th. And I got this on that, and I gave you to her and, uh, and stuff like that. So there's a lot of things happening in agriculture. I see it all over. And I go to the Fairview, uh, Fairview, uh, uh, now in the Fairview there we got, uh, uh, we call it, uh, community gardens going on too in Fairview.

And I was at that, Dad, and the mayor was at it, and, and a lot of other things going on. So thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you for your testimony. Our second speaker tonight is Imre Menyoki.

Welcome. You have 3 minutes. Please begin when you're ready.

Hi, my name is Emery Manoki. I've been coming to these meetings since last November, and, you know, basically I've been trying to inform the people in charge of the school district of, you know, what, what the problem— not just what the problems are, but what are the problems that you guys would typically be blind to in your position. And, um, there's also been several other parents and students testifying, trying to relay similar type of information. Um, the, uh, my first proposal that I sent to the school board was about setting aside some of the elementary schools to make them laboratory schools so that we could do some experimenting and see what type of educational methods are going to be more efficient and to brainstorm new ways of doing things and not getting stuck in the past of, you know, the results that the system of the past has been producing have been, you know, mediocre in some cases, in some cases really detrimental. You know, and we don't see the— you know, you don't see the problems just in lower GPA and lower graduation rates or all that type of things.

What you see is a society that is demoralized, and, uh, you know, the homelessness, the poverty, the, the, uh, corporate shysters, you know, all this All these problems come from people not being prepared for life, not being, being taught good morals. And I just, you know, I, I don't have an agenda per se, except for I want to make some meaningful improvements in the school district and to just try something new because this is not working. You guys have a lot of time to improve the lives of these kids and to, you know, inform them on, you know, how to— how to not just be successful in a monetary sense, but to do so with good morals and ethics. And, um, so, you know, uh, Sorry, but I've been observing your practices and taking notes and just trying to figure out, you know, what's the problem management and how we can get better policies implemented in the school district. And, uh, I would like it if you guys could respond to the many emails I sent over the past 9 months.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. That completes our public testimony for this evening. Our next topic is our consent agenda.

Board members, please note that we removed 3 items, and so it's a briefer agenda than was originally drafted. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended? Uh, Mr. President, quick point of order. I've received a message from more than one person online that the audio volume being broadcast is very low today. Um, so if that can be relayed over to staff—.

It just was. Okay, okay, great. Uh, is there— yeah, with that, I move to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? A second.

Is there any discussion?

Seeing none, could we have a motion or a vote to approve the consent agenda, please?

We adopted our consent agenda by a vote of 7 to 0. That brings us to action items. The first action item we have is our student hearing. Is there a motion?

Mr. President, I move to approve the reentry incident, uh, the reentry incident number 1423778, as discussed in executive session.

Is there a second?

Second. Okay, motion was made by Member Bellamy, seconded by Member Wilson.

Seeing no discussion, could we have a vote to approve the item?

Item was approved by a vote of 7 to 0. Okay, I'm going to ask that we take a 5-minute recess before this next item, as there might be an amendment and some discussion with staff to clarify language. So we'll take a 5-minute recess. We'll be back at 6:50 PM.

Okay, we'll call ourselves back to order at 6:51 PM.

Our next item of business is Resolution 2627-01. Is there a motion?

I move to approve memorandum— excuse me, Resolution 2627-01. Is there a second? A second.

Is there discussion? Member Lessens is the maker of the motion to approve the resolution. The floor is yours. I would defer to the maker of the resolution to introduce it. Member McDonough is not in the queue, but if you would like to get in the queue, the floor is his.

Okay, thank you, Mr. President and the Vice President, for ceding the floor.

So this, uh, this resolution in a nutshell what we would be voting on is to express to the public that our intention this year to close schools or not to close schools is definitely on the side of not to close schools. Um, so the, uh, and this is a discussion that the superintendent brought up as early as last April. Last year we effectively did close 3, like, full buildings of schools, but we also have consolidated a number of other programs to rezone those students to other buildings. So the total number of schools affected is either 5, 6, or 7, depending on like where you would like to draw the line. And there's just a lot of dust that hasn't settled.

And, and really my impression from the community is that there's a lot of trust that has to be rebuilt, that we are approaching school closures with the right priorities in hand. Um, now this resolution is not about our priorities for school closures. I think that is still an open discussion under the ad hoc committee that has just been created, where we are going to much more thoroughly explore what are the reasons for keeping a school open, what are the reasons for deciding a school is unviable. Really, there are two reasons in this field of debate. A school—.

The board can consider a school unviable if there's money to be saved, and the board can consider a school to be unviable if it's not a maximally effective instructional pathway. So in that case, it's not necessarily driven by dollars, but it's driven by the understanding that the students at that school are not being served the best opportunity that they should be. And it therefore may require us to condense the number of schools to put resources in every school. Um, now this is not— they're not mutually exclusive, and it's really more of like a two-dimensional spectrum. And the board has not in recent years been able to even assess where these two factors even lay.

And so this resolution gives the board Well, gives the public the clear voice of us that says we will essentially accept the superintendent's recommendation not to close any schools except in the cases of emergencies. So this resolution would not bind us from having to quickly act if there was another earthquake or anything else that, you know, knocking on wood here, we hope will not happen to the Anchorage School District this year. So that's kind of the introduction. Um, voting yes on this would shift us from resource-driven scarcity reaction mode, and it would give us the ability to open dialogue with the community, um, essentially as an olive branch. So if we don't pass this resolution, we could still open dialogues with the community, but I would have a concern that I would be inviting somebody to defend their school rather than to envision what makes an Anchorage School District experience the best possible thing.

Um, so I, I'm advocating for the olive branch version where this year we should spend the year investing in dialogues, and we will essentially decide now that the ability to save a little bit of money is not worth the opportunity lost from telling people that you need to begin defending your schools already. So with that, I will stop the discussion, but thank you again to the board leadership for presenting me the floor in this motion.

Member Less.

Thank you, Member McDonough, for drafting this resolution and offering a really helpful explanation of the intents behind it. I really appreciate that.

I opened my inbox, my email inbox, I don't know, a week or two ago to learn that on July 21st, the Anchorage Assembly unanimously, 12 to 0, passed a document called AR 2026-11.

It does a lot, but on page 3 of that document, it requests the mayor to identify two, at least two scenarios for funding levels for the municipality's local contribution to the Anchorage School District. In her preliminary 120-day budget memo, the municipality is entering its The municipality operates on a calendar year cycle. It is beginning the work of the 2027 budget. Maybe I should begin there. As part of that, the regular cadence involves the mayor preparing 120-day budget memo by August 31st.

Thereafter, there will be work sessions and introductions of the actual budget to the assembly. Um, up to and until the November 17th adoption of the 2027 municipal budget. My understanding is that that 2027 municipal budget informs to some extent the funding available for the Anchorage School District, which operates on the fiscal year cycle. So what they approve for funding in 2027 has bearing on the 27-28 school year. So I guess that's the backdrop for my, my understanding.

What I am concerned about is that in AR 2026-11, which was passed on July 21st by all 12 members of the Assembly, the Assembly requests the mayor identify essentially a ceiling and a floor for how the school district will be funded under the municipal tax cap. And that's worrisome to me because we already know that we have a projected deficit for FY28, the 27-28 school year. And two things can be true at once. The resolution and the work of the Right Sizing Committee is important. But should, through the municipality's budget development process between now August, September, October, November, should they come to determination that we will receive less than status quo funding, less than that maximum allowable level under the municipal tax cap that we have quite frankly relied upon utilized for years and years.

Should we receive a lesser amount than that, it will impact our budget profoundly. Because of my concerns about what that would do to us in February, I think that I would be interested in Offering— I would be interested in offering an amendment that basically— well, maybe it's not an olive branch, maybe it's a stick, um, would nullify the entire resolution if at the end of the municipal budget passage the 2027 municipal funding for our schools is less than we expect to receive. So with that said, at this point I would move ASDR 26-27-01 Lessons Amendment 3, which board members have not yet received. I posted Lessons Amendments 1 and 2 early, uh, 3 was crafted, uh, in response to a little bit of feedback.

So if there's a second, I will be happy to—. Well, can we, can we see it before we second it procedurally? Shall I read the entire text? Member Luster, it would be helpful if you read the full amendment. Okay, the full amendment is amend ASDR 26-27-01 by adding the following to the bottom of page 2.

And to just paraphrase, this would be at the end of all of the other resolution, you know, be it resolved points. Finally, in light of AR 2026-11, which was passed by the Anchorage Assembly 12-0 on July 21st, 2026, and which requests the mayor to identify at least 2 scenarios for funding levels for the municipality's local contribution to the Anchorage School District in the preliminary 120-day budget memo for FY 2027 by August 31st, 2026. First, the dollar amount needed to provide the maximum local contribution for school funding available for 2027, and second, the dollar amount needed below the maximum optional local contribution to avoid cuts from Muni services while staying within the tax cap for 2027. Now be it further resolved that this resolution shall become null and void If either the mayor's proposed budget for 2027, which shall be submitted to the assembly on October 2nd, 2026, or the Anchorage Assembly's November 17th, 2026 adoption of the FY 2027 general government and utility operating budget would fund the municipality's optional local contribution to the Anchorage School District for the 2027-28 school year to a lesser extent than the maximum allowed under the municipal tax cap. That's a really long paragraph— sentence.

Member Blakeslee, your microphone is on. Oh yeah, I was just going to ask that it was a long paragraph and I, uh, and I'm just seeing it for the first time. I'm wondering if we could have a minute to digest this before being able to provide feedback. And I, I don't— I see it on the screen, but I don't see it on here yet. On the— oh, you just— yeah, could we— I guess I'm not prepared.

I would like to— I would like to be able to participate in this conversation, but I don't— I need like a minute to read it. Is that— do we have that? I'll second for discussion so we can begin discussion and then go from Um, Member McDonough.

Wondering if I should begin comments while members said they're still reading. Is it helpful to request a— just a pause?

Sure, we can take a 5-minute recess. Yeah, thank you. Okay, we'll come back at 7:10.

Hey, we'll call ourselves back to order. I believe the floor was Member Blakeslee, who said she had wanted some time to digest. Member Blakeslee, do you have comments at this point? Yeah, I have a comment. I'm not an opinion quite yet, but I, I guess the first— I, I understand and appreciate the concerns about not the uncertainty now with funding from the muni, um, which compounds the uncertainty that we face with funding from the state.

And at the same time, I am hyper-aware, as we all are, of all of the public trust issues in our community and the conversations that we've had, and I think we'll also have later on tonight, about right-sizing committee and ideas around that. Um, and, and my concern is Having already stated to the community that in response to the overwhelming feedback about disapproval and the mechanisms by which the district, the board, has, has proceeded to evaluate and close schools, the community wants a strengthened process, and in response there has been public publicly stated commitments that we won't do that. Um, we will, we will not close schools for a year. We're going to have these public listening sessions, and now we're gonna work in this right-sizing committee whose very purpose is to help establish the criteria upon which the community would be informing that criteria. And we were going to be doing our due diligence if we close schools while enacting and engaging in that practice of listening to the community, I cannot help but think how that will be perceived as just genuine, um, lip service or another broke— or broken promise on our behalf if we are trying to— or telling people We're telling the public that we want to hear about how to better proceed with the process, the very fraught and emotional process of closing schools, and we value their input and we want to do it better in the future.

And then in the midst of that, we throw in school closures. I just— I, I have a hard time finding a way back from that. That, that just being another pushing us over the ledge of public trust that we, we desperately need to earn back. And that, I think that is where I— there are these contradictory efforts here of a right-sizing committee and a debate about a moratorium on school closures for one year, and they are inherently contradictory, and that concerns me. And that— those are my initial— that's my initial response to this.

Remember, Melanie, thank you. I guess I want to ask the superintendent, um, when you shared your desire or your recommendation that we not close schools during the '26-'27 school year. I mean, you were sincere about that. This is how this— the original resolution came about.

It's obviously— there are some questions, which is why I understand why Member Lessons is bringing this forward.

But can you— what, what are your thoughts? I mean, because you, you already knew you in April that we were going to be $40 million, uh, in a deficit of about $40 million, but you made that recommendation anyway. So talk a little bit about your thoughts and the path forward if we were to, um, have a moratorium on right-sizing for a year. Yeah, thank you, Member Bellamy. I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective.

As one, I truly appreciate and respect the fact that this is a board decision ultimately.

Definitely, but I do want to revisit why I made the comments that I did in April and why I stand behind the comments that I made in April. I actually echo Member McDonough's sentiment that the, the purpose of right-sizing had become lost throughout the, the past year. It was my intention that when the district engaged in right-sizing, it was about levels of academic service, particularly the last two rounds of right-sizing that the district implemented. And I worry, given the events that transpired last spring where we closed schools in the spring, which was not the administration's recommendation, in tandem with this amendment, that we're again blurring the lines in terms of the purpose of right-sizing, which in my point of view is to consolidate our resources, to add resources to students. But this amendment is coming from a well-intended place, but it's coming from financial uncertainty and anxiety, is my perception based off of off of my reading, and I wonder if there are other ways that we can recognize that there is uncertainty at the municipal and state levels and leverage other resources, whether that's reductions to the general fund for the next budget or reimagining how we use windfall funding that's coming into the district, or even just delaying this conversation until there's more visibility into the mayor's budget proposal and frankly the governor's budget proposal, which is also going to be due before the end of the year, before we make a decision or send a message that we can't take back.

So I do feel concerned that we're going back into this mindset that school closures are the optimal way to save dollars, when in my viewpoint they haven't been. Um, it's always been about levels of academic service.

We'll go to Member McDonough and then Member Higgins.

Thank you, um, Mr. President and Member Lessens, for, um, you know, trying to put forward a response that is in pursuit of being equipped to protect the services for our students in our schools from uncertainty. And so while, um, the beginning of that conversation was about the Assembly Resolution 2026-11, which, which had unanimous consent, which, you know, very rarely I see this assembly unanimously resolve And they resolved to what I would say is a tepid expression of doubt about the Anchorage School District and their, uh, their commitments to funding us. And that left me with grief and frustration, and also the assumed responsibility that I have to stop, uh, the course of action that could lead to children being hurt.

And I'll start also by saying people know me as— I kind of have one mode, which is attack. And I love the opportunity to attack people in the service of, like, children in our schools, in our public schools. But I have 3 issues with this amendment that I think Well, I like— I would like this board to have a strategy to respond to the Assembly Resolution 2026-11 and really build enthusiasm around schools, and maybe not attack. Like, I would invite someone to take a leadership point in that that's more diplomatic than I know how to be with other political figures. But I do think that while this is an amendment to a resolution that I described as an olive branch to our community that is really grieving and hurting, and I also described this amendment or this resolution as the necessary decision between the two-dimensional matrix of why do we close schools.

Is it to save money? Is it to maximize instructional pathways like the superintendent was encouraging us Um, on that note, I think this body knows, but it's always worth reminding the public that Alaska has a formula that actually funds us for operating more buildings somewhat empty. So when we close schools, we're also forfeiting permanent revenue structure for the Anchorage School District. Um, so common sense would say you close a school, you don't have to pay for heat, you don't have to pay for the plows, you don't have to pay for the principal, you don't have to pay maintenance. But Alaska law says, well then, because you don't have to pay for that, we're going to fund you less.

So what that means is when you close a school, you're actually creating less revenue and less commitments, and it basically washes itself out in 5 years. So it's not necessarily ever going to save us a lot of money to close schools. And, and I think this amendment loses sight of the priority structure that this board really needs to begin navigating, which is What are the resources we're putting in front of our children, even if it might cost a little more in that weird state formula about school facility use? How do we get a counselor into every school instead of part-time counselors spread out? How do we get a nurse back in every school?

How do we put highly trained and qualified experts in art and music back in every school? That's what I think we need to decide about building use, because these buildings are not going to fill with children even when the state fills our coffers back with adequate funding. And I think that if we put this amendment in front of our expedition forward about where do we need to go forward, I think it turns an olive branch into something with a fuse, a time bomb, and there's a condition set, and it just loses the ability for us to actually build the exploration. I'm also then thirdly concerned that this inadvertently, but not indirectly, empowers the municipal government, either the mayor or the assembly, in this like negotiation that they have to essentially decide that we're going to be closing schools, um, or at least essentially decide that we are the school board's proclamation to nullify its own moratorium is in the hands of an outside body, and that doesn't sit right with me. I don't actually want to see the mayor thinking about, do I have the power to keep schools open or closed, when, when the mayor's office is deciding how do we spread resources around Anchorage.

And I think that the mechanism here doesn't sit well with me. I, I don't support the amendment as an amendment or an ability to conditionalize this moratorium. I do support a well-developed strategy to present value to the municipal government about funding our schools, and I'd like that to be a big part of the Finance Committee meeting that we develop. I'd like that to be a part of open discussion here, but I think if, if this passes and then the resolution itself passes, what we will have done is create some weird form of like a ticking time bomb when the original intent was to create an olive branch. So that's all I have, but thank you again.

I'm— when this— if this doesn't pass, I'm going to work with you in the future to be like, well, let's, let's find the right response to this lack of enthusiasm from our partners over in the muni, because they should be investing in our schools to the fullest extent.

Member Higgins. Um, I'm, I'm not going to support this amendment, and I'm not sure if I'm even going to support the resolution right now. I believe we're trying to establish that we're not going to go out there and target neighborhood schools this year. But we're putting in here language that says if we get funding from this one source less than what we want, we get to change our mind. We, we need to use this year differently.

I would almost prefer to see this resolution to read with our commitment of what we will do. We need to look at why did we select the schools we did. I still don't know why Campbell, the only STEM program, gets cut the same year we approve a STEM high school because we want parents to better send their kids to the type of school they want. So we take away the only STEM school out there. We, we looked at the funding issue.

I remember in November when we talked about the savings we would have with closing Fire Lake and Lake Otis, and given the number of additional kids that the charter schools may have, we could lose money that year. And we knew we're not going to— we're not going to come out ahead long term on this issue. We talk about truth and transparency. We should— the superintendent make reference that we're going to look at other options in closing schools. We've got— then it came in with a presentation of how many kids need daycare.

We hear it from the assembly. I heard it, uh, this last week from assembly members and from, and from the, um, assembly and the mayor's office. We've heard it over and over again, but we didn't do that. We just went after this particular— these schools after the private meetings were held, and that's it. If we're trying to reestablish our support We put caveats in here that says we're not going to take your school this year, but maybe we will.

That's what this is saying to me. And we don't— we need to spend time. Did we really save money on closing schools? Why did we really pick Campbell? Okay, the process that was used, why did we come out with a process?

What was done preceding it that got 3 schools approval when one school, Lake Otis, had a 6-1 vote against it just shortly before that? We've got We need to reestablish trust with the public. We need to expose everything that has been going on and give them some answers to questions that they have been asking us for and we haven't been answering it. So I, I, I like the idea that we're trying to sell the public, trust us. Then we add a thing and says, but maybe not.

I don't think this is going to accomplish anything for us. I think I'll— we're going to reestablish trust. Let's talk with transparency. What did we do? How did— what these— the overcrowded schools, right?

I mean, the undercount, the utilization that we've had discussions on that, and the administration's acknowledged that those figures from the state are not good figures. I mean, you got a lot of reasons, like Otis had 5 classrooms for 32 kids because of special ed. There's no accommodation, there's no adjustment factors out there within the state. We don't even have good figures to look at. So this is an opportunity this year to focus on full disclosure of why did we close schools, what factors did we use, what was the real savings involved, not the ones that we projected, because we know we spent all this money to save nurses.

We use money that may not— we may not even have. $10,500 For every additional kid that goes to Fire Lake. It's over a million dollars was already lined up. So we spent money that we hope to get, but we have figures to saying we won't. I don't think we're going to regain the public trust by giving them a document like this unless we become totally transparent on what we did, what, what was accomplished, and that we make a real commitment that we're not going to do it again until we disclose that.

Then we've got an opportunity. But we get information from the assembly in the first quarter next year and we see we didn't get what we want, so the school board can say, okay, we can rush push forward and select more schools. Bear Valley, you're not off the list. Every school is on the list to do this. I don't think this is how you reestablish trust with the public.

They want to know that we listen to you. We want to know— they want to know that we're giving you answers to all of your questions and that we're being transparent. I don't see this as being transparent with that language. I don't trust this particular document now as a result, because we're looking for reasons that we don't need to do it. There isn't that much money involved in in the savings, and we know that because we know the real cut is going to be how much would the state would give us rather than this.

So I just don't understand what we're hoping to accomplish tonight. Now we're trying to undo the damage that this board has done, the majority control of this board has done. We're trying to undo the damage and get people off of it, and then we give them a I'm just kidding maybe type statement. I think we're making a serious mistake, and I absolutely oppose it.

I'll join the queue on the amendments. I think I appreciate Member Lessans for bringing it forward because I think it's good and transparent to consider what's going to happen in the months ahead. How that may impact our view on a process.

I hear Dr. Bryan indicating his support for a moratorium on school closures regardless as to the, the level of funding from the municipality, which is in doubt due to their current fiscal situation.

His confidence that we can utilize other sources, I think, is going to play a large part in how I vote on the amendment.

Um, and I think what I'm hearing, maybe just looking at it from the, um, starting at the end and going back to the beginning, is board members who are comfortable with, um, taking that tool out of our toolbox as we navigate our budget for FY28. I think I would regret us not considering this.

Fast-forwarding a few months, recognizing that the municipal funding is no longer a certainty. So I think this has been a good discussion, and I, I think I really would appreciate hearing from, from all members on the amendment in particular, just because of the— it speaks to our comfortability with impacting operations elsewhere in the district and a commitment to continuing the process of the committee work that the board wanted to begin pursuing. Earlier this year. I believe it was in March or April. Um, so yeah, good discussion.

Member Blakeslee, and then Member Wilson. Actually, we'll go to Member Wilson first, who hasn't spoken, then Member Blakeslee. So, um, I appreciate that the, the superintendent and the board has, um, really tried to focus on giving our community an opportunity to not only respond but weigh in on future potential school closures, and I would like to allow that process to play out. I think the amendment, although I appreciate the amendment, it's obviously valid because we have budget discussions coming up. Uh, in regards to potential school, future school closures, I think what I've heard from the community, what I've heard loud and clear, is that they want more of a consistent process and essentially a heads up on what schools are being looked at, why, so that there's an opportunity for our families to plan as well.

So for that reason, I, I will not support the current amendment, but I will support the resolution.

Go to Member Blakeslee.

Yeah, I just to echo, I wanted to just say that the point that I picked up from Dr. Bryant that I also very much appreciate is the level of education that I think that the public still needs to have about the purpose of right-sizing. And I think there are a lot of people in our community who think that closing schools— just close all a bunch of schools, close 10 schools, close 15 schools— that will solve our massive budget deficits. When really the thing that will solve our massive budget deficits are really funding from the state and, and the, the savings that we receive from school closures, I think, have been inflated in the public's mind about how much savings that actually nets us in, in the bucket of a $40 million deficit. And so, um, I, I also am not against school closures as a principle, but I do think that the ways in which we are enacting that process, that we are engaging in that process process matters a lot, and we've heard that a lot from the community. I've talked about it myself, um, and that is the process that I think we owe the public before we continue potential future school closures, is to make sure that the ways in which we are evaluating schools for potential closure is improved.

Um, and in tandem with that, there is, you know, more education that we, we help provide, not that we haven't, but continue to provide about what, what the purpose of rightsizing is.

That's it.

Member Lessans.

I just wanted to say that I appreciate the thoughtful feedback from each person who's had the microphone in response to this amendment. I value your insights. I value your passion. I value your shared commitment to our students. Um, I, I think I really appreciate Member McDonough's, uh, I don't know if it's a directive, um, what's the right word?

Uh, well, your, your articulation of, uh, your, your agreement that there needs to be a response to to the assembly's resolution. And I can count to 4, or not, but perhaps that will be a positive thing to come out of this discussion, is a, an awareness that the municipality is having real conversations about the trade-offs they're going to be making between funding schools and funding other municipal services. And that we may not come up with the full measure to which we are accustomed.

And the impetus behind this amendment was fundamentally to be able to consolidate resources to students should we have an unexpected 4, 5, 6— I don't know, however many million dollar shortfall. On top of a shortfall we already know exists.

We've had testimony at our last board meeting talking about how this year's class sizes might violate fire code. We're certainly hearing from families and educators and students and, you know, at schools and programs all right now, even with 100 additional FTE that we have been able to bring back into schools. Saying it's not enough. And 5 of the board members have done— have passed budgets before. 2 Others have been intimately involved from different perspectives.

This February is not going to be any more— any easier than previous Februarys. I'm just saying that right now it could be harder because we've already made terrible decisions. Terrible in the, in the sense of the scale of the cuts that we've had to impose. And we have fought tooth and nail, and I'm proud of that, fighting for reinstating the middle school model, nurses, busing, classroom teacher opportunities, even as the one-time levy failed. We have managed to— the levy would have brought 80 teachers back.

We see 100 new positions that we've been able to bring back, in part by digging deeply into our fund balance, as we did last week or two weeks ago. My point is that the intent of this is to lessen a potential blow to students system-wide, not by directing the administration to engage in right-sizing, but giving them a tool should they need it. This does not say charge full speed ahead with right-sizing to the last minute.

It does say this would just go away. And I can absolutely recognize board members saying that that is a violation of the trust the rest of the public. But I don't think the public's going to be happy to learn that the municipality chooses— if the municipality chooses to not fully fund our schools either, um, because the effect will be to find other ways to save $4, $5, $6 million. And you know what that looks like? It looks like student opportunities.

It looks like programs. It looks like athletics. It looks like teacher addenda. It looks like nurses. It looks like all of the myriad positions that create the ecosystem that our students live and learn in.

So anyways, I appreciate the thoughtful conversation. I appreciate the small comfort of knowing that we will likely move forward in some way with crafting some kind of a response to the Assembly's resolution, even if this amendment is not it.

So I just appreciate the conversation this evening. Thank you.

Member Higgins. I just want to say I haven't seen one example of rightsizing. It's always been downsizing, closing schools. We haven't looked at alternatives. We talk about truth and transparency.

I haven't seeing the alternatives being considered at all. We may have funding problems. We're not going to look at transparency. We're putting, uh, closures back on without looking at the options. Um, I don't see this document now at this time is going to establish any additional trust out there in the public.

We're looking at it saying, well, this is our goal unless we have to cut money. Uh, so basically what we're saying is it's not off the table. So I, I, I'm not going to support it now. I don't think there's intent here within the board to really take this off the table or to really get the superintendent to one time at least come back with real options for right-sizing, or that we get the information, find out how much we really saved, or any of those issues. And until we do, I find this particular thing is just public relations now and nothing more than that.

So I'm not going to support it.

Seeing any other comments, so we will have a vote on the first amendment to AST Resolution 2627-01. Sorry, is this is on Amendment 1, not the Amendment 3 that we just talked about? It's Amendment 3 is Amendment 1. Got it. Okay.

The resolution, uh, amendment fails by a vote of 1 to 6. We are on the underlying item. Item which has not thus far been amended. Is there additional discussion?

Member Lessens. I just wanted to point out, in addition to other—. As a—. There's always new information coming to the board, but there, I think, was a really important news story this weekend about additional investment coming into JBear. And so one benefit of, you know, in, in coming months, years, one benefit of this resolution and the entire process is that the board will have a better sense, may have a better sense of what our military students' needs look like.

There's a significant interest in Alaska from a federal level. So I think that's an important thing to keep tabs on.

Member McDonough.

Wow, that first time, I guess, that happens with a train of thought, just evaporates. I was going to address the question about like where this resolution really binds the board that I heard raised during the amendment discussion, noting that last year the board had a vote to directed Superintendent to begin closing 2 schools in November. It voted not to do that, and then in February it reintroduced those same votes. This resolution would prevent the board from even entertaining that discussion in the first place. Now, a resolution can be undone, so it's not like this is like— we're not shackling ourselves.

What we're saying is right now, for the foreseeable future, we intend not to even put it on the agenda. So it is a more substantial expression of trust than I think even last year's November no votes, where the board ultimately said not to at this time.

Right now we're saying not to at any time until the conclusion of the committee's work, which would be in May. So I just wanted to address that now. This is a little bit more substantial, although we can always undo a resolution if that is decided by the body.

I'll put myself on the queue. I intend to support the resolution. I differ from Member McDonough in that I view this as I'm committing a decision unless there truly is an emergency, which I don't view any decision by the municipality regarding their level of funding. I don't think that that qualifies. I'm in the same category as like an earthquake or an act of God.

—And I hope my colleagues who choose to vote yes on the resolution feel the same way—I want to go into the process of our operating budget adoption, recognizing that there's that uncertainty, and then also recognizing, should this resolution be adopted, that we've also committed to taking that, the tool out of the toolbox to bring about educational efficiency.

If and when it's needed.

I think the consequences of adopting this resolution, which is in, in the most technical sense non-binding, um, would be extremely problematic, um, for many reasons. And so, um, the only caution I would give to the board is that if we adopt this, I would in the strongest possible terms, I would urge us not to deviate unless it's explicitly spelled out in the resolution, which at this point lists an emergency being the sole exception. So, uh, from a governance perspective, I think that's what I would recommend, and again, I'll be voting yes on this resolution. Seeing no one else in the queue, could we have a vote on ASD Resolution 2627.01?

That resolution is adopted by a vote of 5 to 2. Move on to our next agenda item, ASD Memorandum Number 004. Is there a motion?

Mr. President, I move to approve ASD Memorandum 004, Award of Standard Building Automation Systems.

So it is the administration's recommendation that the school board approve and authorize the superintendent to approve an additional district standard per Anchorage School Board Policy BP3311, Administrative Regulation AR3311.1B for Building Automation Systems to the highest scoring proposers Alaska Integrated Services, Convergent Technologies, and Meridian Systems Incorporated. Is there a second? A second. By Lessen, seconded by Bellamy. Member Lessen, any discussion on this item?

Uh, no, I believe another member must have pulled it. This item was pulled— it was pulled by Member McDonough. The floor is yours, Member McDonough. Um, thank you, Mr. President. So I just have questions about— um, well, I'll start with the context and then some questions to the superintendent about the way this implements in the operations of a building automation system.

The intention here is to ensure that the ratchet effect that a lot of our society, and really in like the whole world, is contending with right now with automation, AI, artificial intelligence, biometric scanning. And for these systems to offer operational efficiency at the expense, though not stated, the expense of things like personal privacy and the ability for a human to actually make decisions that have high stakes. So the questions I have are more just generally, like, in definition of what this automation system, these three contracts, would be doing. And then I have some questions in the line of, um, the personal privacy protection that the board either currently has or may need to begin investing in as we go forward.

So I'll start generally. Could the administration just give us like a nutshell version of what a BAS, building automation system, is?

Mr. Anderson? Sure, I will start this piece and then I'll hand off to Mike when you get into the physical security, future implications of those components. So building automations, we have, not counting the entire University of Alaska system, we have the largest physical plant in the state at 91 facilities. Each of these buildings, you can turn heat on, you can increase it, you can turn fan systems on remotely. And in fact, Josh can do it with his phone while he's sitting at home if there's an emergency.

We actually rehearsed that when we thought Mount Spurr was going to blow because you could close off automatically all the outside levelers so the ash couldn't get inside the heating system. So we use these building automation systems to save money and create efficiencies. If you were to turn every fan on in the district at the same time, every single day, you would create this huge spike, and that spike would be your peak demand. And now your energy rates would be reset along with the peak demand that you would be building.

When you, when you go through the memo and it talks about occupancy will be trended, we're not tracking people, we're not tracking individuals. The occupancy is the times that we set the system for this is when the system will have students in the classroom or sports at night or something on the weekend. And so you can control remotely those systems to where you don't turn them on too early, but you also don't turn it on so late that everybody in school is wearing, you know, heavy boots and parkas because you want it to be warm enough for when the kids first get into the school. So that's really what these building automation systems do. The occupancy is times that you put start, stop.

Sometimes if it's a state tournament, obviously you can change that remotely to make sure the gyms are going during the middle of a cold snap while they have a basketball tournament. Occupancy does not apply toward any individual person. It's a time setting you set in the parameters of the devices. So currently we do have cameras in our, in our schools, but, but we don't have any of the software that would allow it to do some of the stuff you've read about in Flock and other cameras across the Lower 48. Mike's team controls all of the security components and pieces of how we make sure that the information that it contains, which frankly is The classrooms are 62 degrees.

It doesn't tell you how many people are in it, what their names are, anything else. We just know that classroom has a problem. When we get into the security pieces, Mike has spent— and his team— significant amounts of effort looking at the future evolution of these systems and how they might be interconnected at some point. But currently we don't have any of that connected to track individuals across our campuses.

Um, thank you. That was a, a big nutshell, but I think all that information is very important, and it also anticipates accurately where the concerns of the public are. Um, and noting that the RFP that we issued used the words occupancy shall be trended. So I appreciate your clearer definition that it's, uh, so my understanding is that's like, um, we are like one of our agents or employees is feeding into the system from our knowledge this room will have people in it at 6:00 AM, but it's not reading camera feeds to determine that this room will have people in it at 6:00 AM. You are correct.

Okay, I did have then the Tier 2 questions about data privacy, but it— I think I'll start and then just have the administration follow generally. But I think then the direction question is, is there any additional data learning, or any— like, are these new systems going to increase the yield at which ASD data protocols or data structures are feeding into an outside system at all?

And then generally, the, the privacy concerns around that.

Through the President to Mr. McDonough, I'll take a swing at sort of level-setting how we do some of our contracting on that front, because I think it's important to really get at the heart of what you're talking about. So each, each time we enter into an engagement with a software vendor, for instance, in this particular— this is both a hardware and a software vendor— we negotiate contract terms with them on every single implementation. As a part of that, we require them to sign and agree to our data privacy agreements. Those agreements are living documents that move over time based on what best practices at the given time to protect private information. We're bound by several laws in how we protect that information, things like FERPA, things like HIPAA, depending on the type of information that we're actually storing.

And so we're really tight on that. We do not allow any of our vendors that are doing what is called school official work for us under FERPA. If we were to say send them some private information, like let's, let's say that it's an online vendor that's doing some testing for us and they have some of that information. They have to sign that privacy agreement with us that says in no way can they use our data, and when we're done with them, they have to certify in writing that they've destroyed all of that data. And so, um, before we will enter into a contract, everyone has to do that.

The only exception is if ASD approves any release of that data specifically in writing. And that means even for things like aggregated data where they don't have access to the PII, but they're looking to do some sort of trending information to understand better how to adjust their system, those sorts of things. And so none of that is allowed under our data, data privacy agreement. So that happens for everyone. And each one of these, you're absolutely right to think ahead that that once we're in an engagement with a vendor, right, they're always going to be making changes to the software.

And so our teams review those changes. We actually have some alerts that are set up that tell us when any privacy agreement changes on any of the vendors that we engage with. So it doesn't require just a human going out and looking at that. We actually monitor all of their privacy statements. So if something changes, then we look at that and see if there's an issue with it.

We typically take a copy of their private privacy statements and say, this is the one after our red lines that we will agree to. And so Mr. Whiting, some of the other folks on the team will do that work in advance where we again won't sign a contract if we don't agree with their terms and conditions or any of the privacy statements that they have. So we redline all of that stuff. Stuff back and forth between us, our purchasing department, and our legal department if need be, so that we stay current on all of that stuff. I review every one of those contracts, so none of those go sort of around me in any way.

I get sort of the last eyes on it so that we're ensuring consistency across the board. And so in this instance, these particular vendors are not capturing any PII at all. And to further sort of talk about the structure that we've set up to keep some of that from happening right now, our, for instance, our camera systems and these HVAC systems, which is mostly what they are, are actually on separate virtual networks and can't even talk to each other. And we do that on purpose because some of our buildings are really old and they have really old controls. I mean, Jim's team is doing a great job at trying to modernize those things, but security threats happen fast in, in today's world, and so we can't move fast enough to react to some of those when it means replacing all the hardware in, in a school that might be old.

So we actually segregate that stuff completely so that it's not connected connected in any meaningful way to the public networks that are available. So we do several steps to try to ensure that we don't lose any of our data. We, we tell our vendors they're not allowed to use it in any way, and we have an incident response process and team available if one of our vendors has, for instance, a data breach and we need to address that. So all of those things are in place, and I hope that kind of answers your question. If you have specific ones, I'd be happy to discuss it.

Um, that was a great answer to really go all sides of where I was going to go. So just to make a sort of yes/no clarification, um, the— in your knowledge or in your estimation, do we have any risk of privacy degradation from moving forward with these contracts? I do not believe so, and we'll continue to monitor every engagement with these contractors when, you know, CP&C and Maintenance select them. So we'll actually, in the solicitation, that goes out where then these 3 companies will do kind of a mini-compete. We'll actually make sure all of those things, the data privacy agreements, all of that's upfront and in the solicitation so that they know they have to sign all of those things.

Thank you both. That was very great.

Seeing no other discussion, we can have a vote on ASTM M Random Number 004. Okay, that motion passes by a vote of 7 to 0.

Move on to our next action item. ASD, random number 008. Is there a motion, Mr. President? I move— oh, it dropped off my screen.

Um, sorry, we're all stumbling through a new software.

Yeah, I just have to read the— so I moved to— I moved the board to approve the adoption of My Perspectives, published by Savvas, as the English language arts instructional materials for grades 6 through 10.

Is there a second? Second. Lead by McDonough, second by Lessons. Member McDonough, you pulled this item.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I have questions both at the macro and micro of this. Um, I think again, I'll start— it helps to just establish the intent of where I'm inquiring. Um, I, I have been a teacher and, um, have often served on these curriculum adoption committees. When I started teaching, the practice was much more commonly for these committees to structure, engineer, reinforce, and reaffirm the academic plans, and for the decision about prescribed textbook and prescribed learning to still be housed at the school level.

So then department chairs had more authority to guide their teachers in their department And since I started teaching, now I can take a glance at what we're approving tonight, and it's, it's not that. It's not this decentralized classroom autonomy-based reinforcement activity, and it seems more like the teaching committee and the administration have forwarded to us a much more centralized curriculum for the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades. Um, so I do have generally questions, but I'd like to start with the question about what exactly does the My Perspectives require of our teachers as an operation? Like, where does this then, um, especially speaking to that classroom autonomy lens? I'll start with that question.

Thank you, Mayor McDonough, and I'll go ahead and call up our Senior Director of Teaching and Learning and our Deputy Superintendent is also available to answer quite a few questions about this product. And, um, just for the board's awareness, we also, um, left you with this document that we're happy to project and walk through, um, because we want to make sure that we have a full, robust perspective about the process. And we're really excited to get your feedback and answer questions so we leave this conversation with clarity, um, prior to the, the board making its decision. Um, so with your permission, Member McDonough, I'd love the opportunity to have the team walk through a brief PowerPoint presentation and directly address your first question, and then we can have Q&A. Yeah, I'd love that.

Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Um, so with that said, I'll hand it off to our Deputy Superintendent and team, uh, to, to begin presenting this information.

Yes, thank you. Um, so we have Sean Prince, the Senior Director of Teaching and Learning, and Nicole Somerville, the Director of Teaching and Learning, and they are going to walk through the presentation that will address the initial questions, and then we will be prepared for a discussion after that. I'm not.

Ms. Sullivan, would you like me to try to project? Okay.

All right, thank you so much for, um, your time and attention. We just wanted to kind of walk through the curriculum adoption process, specifically talking about our ELA 6 through 10. And we'd like to begin just by grounding ourselves in the work. So if we just can think about the ASD vision of educating all students for success in life through student learning, achievement, and equitable access. We can look at these slides and think about our early reading proficiency goals, our math proficiency goals, our college and career life ready goals.

And then also, if you go on to the next slide, you can see that we are focusing with our curriculum a part of our academic strategic action plan The second priority, where we actually focus on strengthening every classroom, building teachers' capacity to deliver high-quality, grade-level instruction for all students with focused support and tools to meet the needs of our most vulnerable learners.

I think it's really important for us to ground ourselves also in some common definitions, because as we've talked we've talked in the past. It is sometimes if we talk about high-quality instructional materials, there is a debate as to what that could be. When we talk about field testing teachers, there's also what does that look like. We have curriculum advisory committees that are formed and we also have pilot schools that usually do a lot of the kicking the tires of the, the new curriculum to look at that, as well as the field test teachers also have an opportunity to a cold run at the material to decide which curriculum the committee would advise us to pursue.

When you look at the first phase is the curriculum review and selection.

When we selected the Curriculum Advisory Review Committee, We actually put out an on-the-radar announcement to all of the principals. We then sent the same information out to all of our department chairs that shared that through each of their schools where they invited educators to join the Curriculum Advisory Committee. Of the people that had asked to be a part of the Curriculum Advisory Committee, we accepted all of the applicants.

We also had a keen eye to make sure that we were not going to be excluding any of of our very specific subgroups, and it was important for us to include people on the committee from Indigenous Education, Secondary Educa— our Secondary English Language Learning Department here in the Education Center. And then we also had our Teaching and Learning ELA Curriculum Coordinator who was supervising as the facilitator for the whole process.

In the second phase, we conducted a discovery, uh, report where we actually reviewed a lot of data that we have available through the Anchorage School District and also looked at publicly available data. We then reviewed instructional artifacts as well as conducted in-person visits and observations of classrooms in 6th through 12th ELA. We also did surveys and interviews with community, staff, and other collective perspectives on our system that gave us the idea, the idea of what we have as strengths and challenges for our curriculum.

And then we synthesized a report that was given back to the Curriculum Advisory Committee for their consideration.

When we look at the summary of our discovery findings, we found some really good bright spots.

We saw a lot of strength in a safe and inclusive classroom environment. We saw there was an investment in the district to follow an academic strategic action plan, and we also see that we currently have in our PLC model a regular time for collaborative planning. We also have made some consideration considering our budgetary constraints to reallocate things like our Comprehensive Literary State Development Grant to help provide teachers and department chairs with opportunities to consider this curriculum and have professional development opportunities as well.

What we did discover through the advisory committee and our discovery report is that there were some gaps We did have some risks with trust and buy-in. We did have some areas where we saw reduced rigor due to low curriculum integrity. We also had limited student cognitive engagement in several areas, and we also saw that there was a few gaps in the curriculum and content-specific resources for educators.

When we started thinking about considering our previous— some of our older academic plans, we decided the bottom line is that the existing academic plans don't provide enough consistency, rigor, and instructional support needed to ensure equitable learning experiences for all of our students. Across our district.

So finally, like, our, our recommendation based on the discovery report is to build collective buy-in, to start clarifying what is tight versus loose expectations in the curriculum use, to develop resources to ensure curriculum integrity. To set up a plan where we can train all staff on the curriculum use and expectations, and then establish a continual improvement cycle, which we'd be happy to talk about. Um, and that's why I think it was really important for Director Somerville to be here, because she was embedded in the process for adopting CKLA and has watched that process evolve over the last 5 years. And for those of you who have seen our early learning literacy rates improving on a steady rate, she can talk about how that all came to be.

Yeah, so, um, as you know, our previous adoption— or many of you know— we had some challenges with our adoption before CKLA, and part of it was that loose and tight, and how do we make sure that teachers know what part they need to teach and what part, you know, what, what is fidelity and what is integrity to a program. And with our latest adoption, we really worked with what is integrity and how can we make sure that we are supporting our teachers. And one of the things that we've been able to do is address needs as they're coming. So now that we're in year 5, we've even been able to adjust our pacing guides to say, you know, this unit or this unit is a repetitive thing, so we can take that out and allow for a novel unit and for teachers to make those choices and say to the teachers, these are the standards that our test— testing data and your testing data— and go ahead and look, you might want to focus on when getting to this novel when you're in the upper grades. You know, we know that K-3 is pivotal for foundational skills, and because because we are so tight on time and our foundational skills are so pivotal when we get kids learning how to read, there's not as much variance and opportunity.

But even with our kindergarten through 3rd grade, we've adjusted our schedules and our pacing to allow for Picturing Anchorage, which is our 2nd grade social studies focus, and the Nest Egg, which is our 3rd grade social studies focus, to be embedded within our curriculum curriculum so that our students are really getting their social studies and getting the Alaska State Standards all met while also reading and learning. And so by giving time and adjusting as we go with the curriculum, we're able to make sure that all of the students across our district are able to get all of what they need in a consistent manner. And we have about a 90% usage rate. The teachers are all using it, and where the art comes and where the teachers get that creativity is the engagement. Yes, there is a script.

Nobody's expected to read it word for word. That script is there for teachers that are substitutes, for teachers to hang their hats on, for teachers to go, I don't understand this concept, or I didn't have a chance to really dive deep and internalize what I was supposed to do last night. So I'm gonna make sure that I'm following this script. But for those teachers that are— know what they're doing and they, they want to play with it because they know their students and their data, great.

But we also know that the student at Bear Valley, they move across to Eagle River, they're not going to be in a totally separate unit. There's going to be consistency for those kids. Units may be taught a little different, but they're not going to be in a flip-flop where all of a sudden they're going to have to repeat an entire unit that they just did because the teacher has decided to completely go off base. So we've allowed that, that loose and tight, and we've really worked to listen to the teachers and what they need.

I think we're feeling pretty comfortable for some questions. What questions might you have at this time? Member McDonough. Um, thank you. Um, so to the academic team here, that presentation was frankly one of the strongest I've seen as a very good insight into this process.

So I really appreciate the, like, the communication and the engineering and, and for being able to incorporate my questions into this report, because I sent them yesterday, so I could tell that you even had some adjustments to this report.

Um, my questions on the report and just generally the, the motion that, that's in front of us, I think I'll stay on the macro just in the interest of time. I appreciate that there are strengths and gaps that were assessed. I think that's a new part of this engineer workflow that, that's been added. Um, I like that they were assessing for safe and inclusive classrooms, and I like the thriftiness of picking a curriculum where grant funds can give a sort of tailwind. Um, my concern too is the largest— or the first, not maybe not the largest— my largest concern is also the first on the gaps assessment that says trust and buy-in are at risk.

And I would say to my colleagues, my read of that as a teacher and a, you know, former AEA member, former person serving on these committees, former teacher expert, which means I had the role coaching teachers on curriculum adoptions. I think at risk is an understatement. I think trust and buy-in are at critical— they're at a critical point. I won't say exactly what, but I've been approached by a number of teachers, both in the English discipline and not, some that I've worked with, some that I've never met, and they just, they just reached out to me. That, um, it's not that they oppose this curriculum, it's that they feel like we have now narrowed the autonomy down to, um, the process described, which I would say was expertly administered, presented them Choice A, Choice B, Choice C, and a number of teachers either helping their peers serve on this committee or the voices on the committee expressed, well, why do we have Choice A, Choice B, Choice see when what we actually want is autonomy and back to the, the decentralized academic plans.

And that I— my characterization of the reports I've received is that they were not satisfied with the answer. It was really not a clearly addressed answer, and that the committee was eventually steered in the direction of just selecting A or B or C. and now today we have A. Savvas, My Perspectives, which is by its own regard a highly merited, highly effective curriculum that should be used in a large number of our classrooms because it is a very good piece of English material. But it— I think the macro concern is how many people have come to me also actually echoing the concerns in this report that trust and buy-in are that critical point of potential failure. Now, personally, I don't know— I don't think that we, we remedy that here in this boardroom, but I pulled the memo because I think we need to begin this dialogue. And under things like the Open Meetings Act, it's very hard for my voice to reach my colleagues on the board.

Um, I am confident the process was engaged as it's been engaged, frankly better than I've seen from my days like half a decade ago. I think this, uh, you know, the process and the, the amount of information that has been developed into this decision is better than it's ever been. But I think the direction of the decision gives me a lot of pause. I will be voting no, not that this is the wrong book for the choice that we have to make tonight, but that I think we as a board need to actually honor that the teacher's ability to teach should be less confined than this process was designed to build. Um, if I had to say where this source of, like, confinement came from, I saw it re-engineered under a previous superintendent, the one right before person sitting next to me.

And that is when all of these, like, classroom autonomy decisions got shifted towards the people in this room can make all the decisions. And we never really unbuilt those pathways that narrow the choices in our classrooms. And I think this vote tonight would be a further narrowing of our high school teachers that are experts in their subject. Also, they are more readily accessible to the social studies person next to them in the hallway that they should be matching their curriculum with. So it's a no, but it's not really— I think this is like, it's a great book.

It's a— the process has been so well done that I feel good criticizing it without it being like— I think that this is the decision in front of us is the clearest I've ever seen. And it then makes me realize that we are, we're holding the wrong And that's all I have on this. But again, thank you, 3 of you, for— and, and the whole team behind you that helped get this decision in front of us.

Member Lessans.

Um, thank you for launching a thoughtful dialogue, Member McDonough. Thank you for the presentation. Um, thanks for just also the update on CKLA. Because they are all connected.

Um, I'm just going to throw some spaghetti on the wall. Um, for one, keeping in mind, so this is an ELA adoption for students in grades 6 through 12— 6 through 10, sorry, 6 through 10. Yes, this year's 6th graders, just to keep in mind, were our COVID kindergartners. We know that these 6th and 7th graders this year, many of them have recovered. Some of them are still struggling.

And I guess one of the questions that I have is, what are the tools? Maybe there's a longer answer to this. How does this curriculum— does it offer different tiers of support? Can you talk to, can you speak to the ways in which a student who is in 6th grade this year or 7th grade this year, and let's say it's just not reading on grade level, how will this curriculum support catch-up growth, accelerated growth? What tools does, you know, are embedded here to help those students catch up?

Yeah, you go ahead. So I was not on the committee for my perspectives, but I've studied a lot of the curriculum out there, and I will say all high-quality instructional materials that you find these days have the supports embedded in them for teachers, and that's one of the pros with going with high-quality instructional materials that academic plans often can't provide at a district level. So in all of the curriculum, and that's what the IMET, which is the tool we use to evaluate each of the curriculums, one of the big areas is how does each of the curriculum support diverse learners. So there's a whole bunch of questions about ELL students, a bunch of questions about students with disabilities, a bunch of students questions about our advanced learners. And so as each curriculum was evaluated, the raters had to go through and find within the curriculum, within the teacher's guide, within the support documents and books and online whatevers, how and where all of those pieces are.

So can I tell you exactly what's in there? No, because I haven't dug deep, but I know that it's there. Because that's the whole point of a high-quality instructional material, is that all of those pieces are there because we know the range is huge in our classrooms. 35 Kids, we're going to have readers 3, 4 years below, 3, 4 years above, and it's not fair to expect that our teachers can do all of that differentiation in need with no support. We know they can't, and so this allows those those teachers, it gives them ideas, it gives them things to use to help our, our learners and still allow them to participate with their grade-level, age-level peers, as opposed to just saying you're a lower-level kid, you're going into that room doing something different.

And so all of it is part of high-quality instructional materials.

Something I would add for us to consider is When you have high-quality instructional material, it's really about the what, right? It's going to give you grade-level content. It's going to give you standard alignment. It's going to have you have all of your knowledge and skill development already embedded with rigorous texts, content progressions, coherent sequencing, foundational supports, and connections across the instructional tiers. And the how is really what the educator brings to the table, right?

That's the magic. That's the facilitator. That's taking the whole show and deciding that they have in their power as the educator the power to artfully pose quality questions based on the curriculum, that they can lead quality discussions, that teachers should retain they're, they're pacing with appropriate boundaries so that when we have students that transfer from Bartlett to West, they're in the same ballpark within a couple weeks of each other. So a student who is going through the transition of moving from one school to the next isn't also going through a secondary trauma of, I don't know what the heck this teacher is doing, it's so different from what I was just doing. I now have this biggest problem to solve, right?

And when we analyze some of our most at-risk and vulnerable students, we realize that those schools primarily have a transiency rate of 25 to 30%, which is huge. So when we, when we think about what we want our teachers to really spend time on, we want them to spend time on analyzing student work, planning responses to students' misconceptions, collaborating with their colleagues, conferencing with their students, studying their instructional practices. And what we don't want them to do is the work of a curriculum developer, which is someone that's locating texts, evaluating resources, sequencing the units, writing the assignments, developing assessments, checking standards alignment, finding scaffolding, creating intervention materials, because with a higher number of class sizes, with fewer resources available. We need to take that job off the educator's plate and let them do exactly what they're really good at doing, which is teaching.

Thank you. I think the other piece of spaghetti I'd like to throw on the wall— I was on the board when we adopted the Springboard curriculum. And I recall sitting in an office here sort of thumbing through things, and one of the— something that dismayed me about the Springboard curriculum, and I remember asking about it in that meeting, was that it was clear there was an emphasis on excerpts from great books but not the great book itself. And so I guess my question, coming from a place where I believe a child should get to read an entire book cover to cover, is, will students have the opportunity with these materials to read entire— an entire book, if not multiple entire books, cover to cover? Or is there a focus on excerpts?

And I realize that there is a lot of testing and assessment which focuses on— it encourages, you know, analysis analysis based on excerpts, but I guess I, I would really love to have our students read books and practice sort of, yeah, the patience and perseverance and joy that can come from moving from start to finish and having conversations about it and engaging in the writing. And the friction is the word that's coming to mind a lot, especially as I think about ChatGPT and AI, but I don't know, can you tell us a little bit more about the content of the materials?

2 Books per grade level, hardcover books, classroom sets, not— what's that?

Novels are— they're not digital resource novels.

So one of the concerns that educators had brought up was the idea that they want to get away from screen time and return to the ability to actually read full novels. And so novels is a part of the allure of this curriculum, is that with the package it's providing 2 novels per grade, and teachers have an entire bank of things that they can choose from that aligns to all the standards. And so much like the academic plans that were referenced earlier, we can ensure that they have those materials, and it's not just in an academic plan that says these are some texts you could use or these are some films you could watch, but we can't guarantee that you're all going to have them. So when we start deciding, and, and the pilot schools are going to be able to do this work, and really kick the tires on making sure that we have what we need for a successful rollout of curriculum. Teachers have already been asked and they've been given surveys.

These are the, these are the novels that we have at our disposal, and we've already started to collect what they would like to see purchased. So there is a lot of teacher autonomy and choice, and it's, and it's all within some parameters that makes it accessible to all of our students. And puts them in a place where if they were to transfer, they would see consistency and coherence across schools.

Great, thank you so much.

Member Blakeslee.

Yeah, uh, I appreciate this presentation too. I think that in hearing all of this, it, um, some of the tensions that, um, Member McDonough referenced earlier, sort of the desire for more autonomy from teachers, which I've also heard you guys talk about as well, that that's been feedback that you've received from teachers too, and also the desire and need to have consistency in curriculum. I can, I can see both, but I'm wondering if, um, in future curriculum discussions, maybe even for this one though, after this evening, um, if we could see the like full reports from the committee themselves versus just a summary of findings. Um, I think it would be helpful, at least from my perspective, to be able to actually better understand the inherent tensions and what autonomy looks like to teachers if these— if curriculum standardized curriculum wasn't the thing that we were going to approve, which I'm not saying that, but I, I would like to better understand what it— what the alternatives ideally are for teachers that are voicing concerns, right? And yeah, yeah, that— yeah, exactly.

Um, and if there's some sort of, I don't know, intermediary solution like compromise or ways to build in more autonomy into the, um, yeah, the, the types of things that we're adopting. I don't know. Full reports is what I'm asking for. Could we see their committee reports? Are there committee reports that are made?

They're absolutely committee reports. Okay. They've taken pictures of the sticky dots that they were voting with. I mean, it's a very thorough process. Okay.

Yeah, and I, I can see it's very thorough. I'm It is, we do get emails from teachers sometimes that talk about the want and the need for autonomy, and it's a consistent theme. So I'm just trying to balance that tension. Yeah, I can totally understand and put myself back in my teaching days and knowing the difference. I think probably aging myself a little bit more, like when I was given an assignment to teach a US military history class, I was told told, well, you're a Marine, so you should be fine with this.

And that was what my department chair had told me. There was no curriculum I could go to. I had to look at social studies standards and try to figure it out myself as a fourth-year teacher. And I spent a lot of time in my other teachers' classrooms asking a ton of questions and doing a lot of work. And I had the luxury then of having some small classes, right?

I can't imagine what that would look like right now. Yeah. And I think that having a strong foundation where we can ask for some integrity but not rigid fidelity, uh, a script really is like a default. Um, I think an example that I would use is just our August 17th cross-district in-service. Across the entire district at every site, we had a video of Dr. Bryant delivering the intention for the day And it was shown at all of the sites so that everyone was receiving the same message and understanding of what our academic strategic action plan was, what our focus for the day, and how we were hoping to strengthen each classroom.

And then when I'm at West High School, and where we did our walkthroughs on Friday and we checked everything and the TVs and everything were working then 7:15, everybody's supposed to arrive at 8, and we are busy trying to get that projector to work. And at 8:03, the decision was made that I was going to punt, and I was going to do my best impersonation of Dr. Bryant and everything I could remember from watching the video several times prior to that event, so I could talk about the 4 priorities, so I could talk about the importance of what teachers are doing that day. And why they matter so much to every kid in this, in this district. Because I felt embedded in the message that Dr. Bryant had given, and that's really what curriculum is, is those foundational pieces. But during my speech, I got to tell them, like, I felt the anxiety of being a teacher again and having this great presentation and then having a piece of technology fail, or we ran out of toner and I wasn't able to make copies, so we're all going to have to handwrite some stuff.

Today, right? Or I'm gonna have to like break out an overhead projector, for those of you remember those things, and handwrite my notes instead of having them in a PowerPoint presentation. Like, that's the difference between having integrity with the situation and having rigid fidelity. Because rigid fidelity would say, we're not moving anywhere until I can get that projector so you can see exactly what Dr. Bryant said word word for word, but the intent was to cover what was most important and to get educators on with their day, with their learning.

I'm gonna jump in with a quick question to the team. Um, from my own knowledge, I appreciate that any, um, any individual could request to be part of the review committee, which, um, and they were approved. I think that's a good practice and something that I appreciate. Could you talk to me about the voting itself? Where did the vote occur in person to choose the curriculum?

And if, if there weren't folks who were able to attend who were part of the process, was there a way to collect those votes in some form or fashion, or did just not everyone get to vote? They all, they all voted. They were all present The only person that didn't vote was Dawn Wagner, the district coordinator for ELA, because she was the facilitator. So she didn't vote, but all of the teachers who were 6th through 10th grade teachers voted. They were all present.

Great, thanks. Um, Member McDonough, additional comments?

Um, on the questions about the report and generally, actually both, both members are the President and Member Blakeslee's questions, I, I think my question aligning with both is, could you describe just like how the agenda is built, who chairs the committee, and then when the report is completed is the report itself presented back to the committee for affirmation as a final vote.

So one question at a time, I suppose. Who chairs these committees? So we have a facilitator, which was Dawn Wagner, who is the ELA coordinator, and she's facilitating the process. So as they were assigned as members of the advisory committee. Then they were using the IMET rubrics to look at all of the different curricula that were out and available after the field tests had come back and said, of all of these, these are the 4 we'd like to really consider.

And then they individually went through the rubric and measured them out. And We looked at all the pros and cons, which is where some of the comments that we included were a part of. And then we had the discovery report, which is where we went out into the schools and we looked at classroom practices, and we reviewed the old academic plans and, and made decisions that were then shared. Mr. Prince, I'm sorry, but I— with a lot of agenda left, who is Don Wagner?

Like, you're like the district's The position that we've actually now cut, by the way. Correct. That used to serve as the chair of the committee, because what you're describing is not the function of a chair, especially in committee work. At least the chair, like, decides when meetings are and what's on the agenda and then presents it, and then the committee itself collectively affirms the agenda. Is— it sounds more like there's an absence of a chair.

And that the facilitator is keeping the momentum, but isn't— there's no way of centralizing and like dialoguing about the decisions and the structure. She's the facilitator of the process. Yes, right. I'm, I'm asking more the facilitator of the consent, which is what the president of the board does and the chair of any other body would do, is keep things moving in the direction of eventually a consenting decision. They moved to— she facilitated them moving towards a decision.

Okay, I, I could move on to the second question. Does the body of the teachers consent to their agenda?

Do they consent to the agenda that's placed in front of them? So they come probably to the district office, the central location. No, we have to do in our meetings is we consent to what's on our business agenda. No, we have a— we have an adoption process that we follow, and it doesn't give the committee members autonomy to choose the direction or agenda of that process. Okay, so again, my concern at the beginning was classroom autonomy, teacher autonomy, and the committee itself doesn't have any autonomy.

The agenda set from a district administrator, and then the teachers are not even reviewing it and affirming it. They, they are reviewing the curriculum. They're not deciding the manner or the process by which we decide what curriculum there is. Okay. And then at the very end is the report presented back to the teachers for consensus.

That is an accurate conveyance of their voice. And what they did, but we don't ask, like, do they vote back and say we have, we have adopted this report? So at the— after it's done with the vote, it's shared with them. And I mean, they're there, it's sticky note dots, they can count. Part of the whole adoption process though then goes to you and goes through negotiations in terms of cost, because they do all of this without any look at money and cost and how that all is going to roll out.

They also don't know what approval is going to be. So this is their recommendation, and yes, they looked at their own vote. And my question was on the report that Member Blakeslee asked, that Mr. Prince said we do write, which is great. I love getting reports on the way that people came to a decision.

Do they see that report and then tell us, like, we vote yes that this is actually our, our report. So we don't write up a big report of the entire process end to end. I think there may have been a, a miss. I thought, um, we thought Miss Blakeslee— Member Blakeslee was talking about the attuned report, uh, the report that came in for the discovery, and that we have a report on. We have all of the agendas and the meeting notes, and then we have the vote and what happened every step of the way.

Did we write it in a report fashion? We have the school board memo, but, um, we don't actually write a, you know, a report.

Is there a dispute about their decision?

I, I will avoid the question respectfully. Myself, I don't I actually just don't— like, I know the manner in which this process is engineered, the inputs, the discussion, wait, like the way discussion worked, and then we're presented with an output. And along the way, the presenters identified one of the larger risks worth putting in this document. Trust and buy-in is at a risk. Also, along the way, while after that committee stopped meeting, and then when we met in, I think it was July, to appropriate into the account the funds to buy this book, teachers came forward and said we were not listened to and that our advice wasn't taken, the direction wasn't gone.

And now I'm not going to interrogate that any further, but I'm answering the question of like what's in dispute Um, I would like to go to the teachers and say there is a consensus-building process that was engaged well. Part of the consensus-building that most bodies I'm aware of, things that are called committees, is that they appoint a chair to move along the ability to consent to business, and that they consent to their own business. So they, they vote yes on the agenda And then when everything is finalized, they vote on what is being released externally. I'm missing those 3 ingredients. And so the dispute is now we have like he said, she said across like 2 different directions.

And it does identify that autonomy is not at the heart of this process. It sounds more like efficiency or perhaps rubber stamp. And, and again, that's why I'm voting no, but I think it's, it's, it's also under, I think, a larger discussion here.

I wanted to add, um, because I think what the heart of what you're getting at is the autonomy. And so the process isn't finished, and part of what we've been developing, um, through our leadership models is that feedback loop And so what's coming up next will be where the teachers are using it. They're providing that feedback, and we're able to respond and make changes, offer guidance based on real application. And so that's where we, we are driving the autonomy of how they're implementing it for their unique classrooms and being responsive to that piece. And I know that's So I know that's not directly tied to the agendas, but as far as the autonomy piece and ensuring that through the whole process, that's very intentional.

We'll go to Member Bellamy, then Member Wilson. Thank you. So I think, I think I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, I am, I think the process however we feel about it today. It's the process that we have used.

It's a process that I've been a part of as a board member. I've been a part of it as a Nana. Uh, and, um, so, but if I guess if the board wishes to see a different process when it comes to adopting curriculum, then we need to have that conversation for future adoption, perhaps. But I am supportive of the, of the motion. It is in alignment with our vision, our goals, and our guardrails.

It provides consistency across the district, and I know that might not be an important piece for some of us, but I think when our kids move within and we have a high transi— transiency rate late. They shouldn't be faced with drastically new learning or ways of learning. It's also inclusive, and it is high quality. And I also believe in continual improvement, whether that's with our processes, uh, or, you know, how— I just believe we— if we can get better, we need to try to get better. Um, I applaud the committee for just being out front and putting at the the first bullet, that trust and buy-in, that, that is— we are at risk as a board for trust and buy-in.

I mean, that's something we have to keep working on. We cannot stop doing what we're doing because we don't have— we don't— everybody's not on board now. I— so I, I'm not surprised. I've been in education for over 56 years, and I cannot come up with a single thing that I've dealt with or proposed that everybody in my school agreed with, or everybody on the committee agreed with. But to capture that in a way going forward, if that is the will of the board, to capture that in a way that will bring back a final report— uh, while I've never seen a report like that, then that, that's what we can do.

But anyway, so, um, so basically I'm not surprised that that, uh, because for years now we've asked teachers to do some things that— and, and sometimes— and the state has asked us to do some things that we pass down to our teachers, uh, in terms of what we teach and how we teach it. But at the same time, we can get better, and I— we cannot stop doing what we're doing. This, I believe, this curriculum works for our It had— it will do what we want it to do, but if we need to have a different process in the future, then let's deal with that in the future and not hold up this process any longer than we already have. Thank you.

Seeing no one else in the queue, we're gonna vote on AST Memorandum Number 008. Oh, Member Wilson. Am I good? Yep. Okay, I, I just wanted to I've heard many things today, and high quality is what I consistently hear, and autonomy is the other word I've been consistently hearing.

Um, I just wanted to get some confirmation. I know you've talked about it, but I wanted to, to have you reiterate, if you would, the support of this curriculum from the participants. Is that something that the participants all supported it? Was it like like, you know, half the participants of this committee did not support it. Just give me an idea of how excited the, the staff was that participated in this process, or not.

Are you asking if they all believed in getting high-quality instructional material?

Not just the high-quality instructional material, but if this is the curriculum curriculum that they selected because they believe it's that high-quality material to move forward with.

6-5 Vote.

HMH was the other, so it was very close, but with 11 people, they voted and we honored the vote.

May I follow up? So if— if— because I never know how this board is going to vote— if this does not follow through as a yes and we actually have a no vote from this board, what is the path moving forward?

Catastrophic.

It would cripple our ability to get materials in time to do an effective, if at all, pilot. Uh, it does a huge amount of disservice to the educators. We would then have to turn and try to create something. I do remember, remember Blakeslee saying, what's the plan if this doesn't work? And I think maybe I was misunderstood when I say we do our best, because that's what we'll always do.

We'll do our absolute best. There's not always a clear solution that everyone can agree on. There's no silver bullets to everything. There's not one curriculum that is going to solve every problem for every student. But I know that if we decide to vote this down right now, then we are putting ourselves in a serious bind in an already serious situation.

And I think just to, to zoom out, um, we would respect the will of the board in either situation. But I think what Mr. Prince is alluding to is that if the board declined to adopt this particular adoption in a process that's been executed for numerous years— I don't believe aspects of this process are new— then I would recommend that we do a wholesale deep dive into the process, which would delay the curriculum, which would mean that students wouldn't have these high-quality materials next school year. It would also deter us from being able to implement a pilot implementation in the spring. So it would be a consequential decision, but it is the, the will of the body to make that decision one way or another.

Member McDonough. Yeah, I just would like to remind board, um, what I started with, to the report I've received from— it's hard to know whose report is the most accurate because there wasn't a process of vetting that voice. But a number of teachers have approached me saying they were unhappy with having to pick between these three and immediately abandon to even enter the room abandon the ability to ask for academic plans to be brought back, where one curriculum won't solve all the learning needs of every kid across the district. And, and Mr. Prince admitted that academic plans are a flexible structure that has continual iteration and continual engineering gone into it, where one academic plan is designed to bend around the corners that kids are presenting.

Um, I think that's a discussion way outside of this vote, but I don't like hearing that that was prohibited from the committee's discussion in the first place, and that their actual advocacy has been filtered through to where we're, we're not actually presented with with what those teachers actually wanted as their first choice.

Um, and again, while trust and buy-in are the risks that we're facing across everything, I think there's an equal catastrophe at both fronts.

Um, any additional comments or clarifications by the administration?

They—. I would hate for us to end on the idea that members of the committee, all members, were not given a choice to have their voices heard, and that what you're representing is one side. And I can equally say that speaking with members on that committee, they said that they made the best choice they had available, and academic plans were not the choice that they wanted. So we could go back and forth, but when we honor the process and we go by the votes that the educators made in that chosen time, in that space, with the best information that they had available, I want to honor that. I didn't go back.

We didn't say it was a 6-5 vote. That's, that's not a big enough margin because there's no stipulation in our process to say there had to be We honored the votes that were cast.

Thank you, and thank you to administration for the presentation. We'll have a vote on ASD Memorandum Number 008.

Okay, so members should have another opportunity to vote.

This—. Members should have another opportunity to vote. If you don't have that, let me know.

Okay, so AC Memorandum Number 008 is adopted by a vote of 6 to 1.

We had a little bit of a software hiccup, but we're through that. Thank you, team.

We have one other action item tonight, ASD Memorandum Number 012. Is there a motion?

Again, for board members, we're on, uh, ASD Memorandum Number 012, our last action item. Is there a motion?

Actually, we're going to take a 5-minute recess while we address the system issue, and we'll be back at 9:05. Thank you.

Um, we're at our last action item for tonight, ASD Memorandum Number 0. 01-2. Is there a motion?

Member McDonough, you pulled this item, that you may want to make a motion regarding it.

They also pulled it, so I was going to delay until— yeah, I'm Um, okay, I'm going to have to pull up the document then in its text. I don't have, um, like amendments. I have questions, so that's all. So I can move it. I can move it.

Yeah, okay, a motion to move. So to discuss, we have to have a motion to approve. Yeah, I can read it, Mr. President, for the sake of the record, having it read and It's full text, or—. Wait, what? I'll move and then, and then invite a second.

So I move that the board approve and authorize the superintendent to approve one change order in the amount of $849,673 and a contract modification to Cornerstone General Contractors, Inc. for a total value of $849,673.

This will amend the Inlet View Elementary School replacement the current project contract for a total contract value of up to $42,744,256.

Second.

Motion made by McDonough, seconded by Higgins. Okay, discussion? Member Blakeslee? Yeah, so I, um, have a lot of questions about this this particular memo because it's a hefty price tag on top of, right, an already very expensive project. And so my questions are really aiming to get around whether or not there are opportunities to save money for the same outcome of remediation.

So, and I, full disclosure, am around a lot of geologists and engineers during the day. So, um, the environmental component of this, I, I have some technical questions. So the, the— I don't know who I should be asking the questions of, if it's you, Dr. Bryant, or someone else. But, um, I have— so the— my first question is, in the memo it states that there were tests that indicate there are PCBs in the building, and I am I'm curious about what actual materials contained PCBs. So PCBs being in the building is different than PCBs being in the slab itself.

And so was the building tested or was the slab tested specifically? Thank you, Member Blakeslee. I'll ask Mr. Jim Anderson to clarify this. So I can answer that. I'll start with a little bit of backstory.

A little over a year ago, The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation changed the disposal protocols in Alaska to a much, much higher standard. We found that out as we were getting ready to demo Ursa Major, and they had changed the standard. It's not a statute, it's just their interpretation of the standard for disposal protocols. There's 209 different types of PCBs according to the CDC, and they're all polychlorinated biphenyls, right? They were discovered or found to have really good insulating properties back in 1929.

They banned them in 1979. They can be anything from a liquid state through a solid state. So you find them for that 50-year period in paints, caulks, Everything they sealed, they sealed the walls at Ursa Major with compounds that had PCBs in it. Some of them are liquid and odorless and tasteless, although to be fair, I've never tasted it, but that's what I've read. And then some of them are solid state.

These are solid state PCBs that were put in as an insulation property. They also are used in transformers, the older transformers. Transformers all had liquid PCBs. Obviously they quit in 1979. These are all solid-state PCBs in the, in the, in the building, in the slab, and in the foundation.

But they did spray it around the foundation because one thing that PCBs do really well is they don't care if they're cold or if they're hot. They don't expand and contract. They stay stable They also don't dissolve for long, long, long periods of time, and they're carcinogenic if you were to, on a solid state, I guess, somehow consume it.

So I don't know of the 209 PCBs exactly which ones these are, although it is in the report, but it really was due to a change of the disposal that happened with ADEC a little over a year ago. That's when we found out about Ursa Major. We tested it. Again, they had a lot of PCBs. And then obviously we knew at that point, once we got the Ursa Major testing, that we also had to test Inlet View.

Now you have to do destructive testing, and in order to get to the slab and the foundation, you're boring holes through the floor of the building. So we waited until after the new Inlet View was built before we started drilling core samples into the foundation and into the walls. They call it destructive testing for a reason. You don't do it while you're having class. And then they came back and they said that at least for Inlet View, it was limited to the slab and the foundation.

So these materials, now that the new disposal protocols have changed, are not allowed to be sent to the Anchorage Landfill, where 5 years ago it probably would have just gone to the landfill. Again, they changed the standard a little over a year ago, and that changed reality for what we have to do. If you look at the total cost of— and I'm trying to answer all your follow-on questions that I think you're going to ask. If you go all, all the way back to May 21st, 2024, ASD Memorandum 153, you'll see that there are actually a number of funding sources. And a little over 2 years ago, the total project was funded at $50.6 million.

And the funding sources included 2013 bonds, 2020, 2022, 2024 state bond debt reimbursement from House Bill 281 in 2022, and then one of the follow-on board memos had 2024 B interest earnings from bond sales. I can put all of this into BoardConnect because it's going to be— I could rattle off all this stuff, I have everything, but it might become confused. But it all goes back. This whole thing is we are currently under cost. We have about $52 million for the total project, and that's from infancy at design and concept all the way up through completion.

We are currently under budget. And, however, they found PCBs and they have to go to Oregon now. For disposal. So, okay, and so then I have—. Sorry, that was amazing context, but back to the first part.

The 209— did you say it's 209 types of PCBs? Are you talking about the actual, um, standard of like the types of PCB? Are you talking about you found 209 types of PCBs? What I'm asking about specifically is that I know that federal EPA limits are for PCBs are about 50 parts per million or less. So it— what's— do you know the concentration of parts per million of the PCBs that were found?

I don't off the top of my head, but they're using a much stricter standard now, and I think it's down to like 1 or 2 parts per million, even though the federal standard is not that low. And it really is the protocol that's established by ADEQ, and they have the authority. Obviously, we are talking to attorneys and trying to find a way, um, to change this in the future, potentially. Because yeah, to be fair, the whiteboards at Chinook Elementary— we tore down 4 classrooms this year. We had to actually get the glue tested on the back of the whiteboards in every single one of those 4 classrooms because the standard at 1 part per million is almost undoable, right?

There was a 50-year period where PCBs were commonplace in so many different products. And so we are, we are working with people to try to help us overcome this in the future, but this is impacting all of Alaska right now. Yeah, and I totally appreciate that. I come from a background in having done my master's thesis in lead toxicity in the drinking water of school districts, and lead is a whole other issue with aging infrastructure. So So I get it.

With the ADEX standard, the Alaska Division of Environmental Conservation, ADEX, I know that the standard says that no PCBs can be disposed of in Alaska, or that's what the memo says. Correct. But the ADEX does state— well, I guess to me that's a broader interpretation of what— like, it— the representation of the details are a little bit more specific. So ADEC does state that Alaska has no landfills permitted to accept regulated hazardous waste, but there are potentially other options. For example, and that's where the parts per million that I'm asking about comes into play, because according to ADEC, any materials with concentrations of, for example, 1 to 10 parts per million of PCBs can be left in place or used as backfill.

If an approved engineering cap is constructed. So you could fit— you could fill it versus actually taking all that material, hauling it away to a whole other state. So while there aren't landfills to dispose of the PCBs, you could have a much cheaper option by leaving it in place, capping it, and burying it. So that's why I'm asking about the PCB levels, because that would be a significant savings in parts per million. I think at this point, actually, we're talking about $800,000 or $900,000.

If we were to stop the destruction of the concrete cap in the slab and the foundation, go back out for a new contract for design, get a new contract to tear it down, rubble it, leave it in place and get the environmental approvals, and then fill it back in, cover it, it would put the project well over a year behind schedule, knowing that we are under budget by a significant amount right now. Because if we, if we don't do something soon to, to start work on all the other stuff, the ice rink, the playfields that, that need to be landscaped, the sidewalks, other area improvements that are going to be right there, could be pushed off a year or two. And, and I got—. Well, and we don't have a contract or a plan or a design for any of that. I honestly, I don't think we would end up saving money at this point to bury it versus, versus hauling it off to a whole other state.

You think we would not save any money to just leave it in place and bury it? We, we don't know because we haven't, we haven't started the process to get the environmental approvals. We don't have a design or a contract in which to do it. Right now we have a contractor currently on site doing demolition. That's a lot cheaper than having someone stop what they're doing for a new contract or a, or a scope change.

It's certainly possible. It will put the project behind. And we are currently about $9 million under budget.

So that's, that's what you're looking at, right? It's, do we finish this so we can get the ice rink and the playfields and all those things done in the sidewalks and the other area improvements and postpone for a year for a new contract? Potentially, if we get—. Potentially, yes, potentially a year, you're saying? Well, I don't, I don't know.

We don't have a plan, right, to stop. Yes, at this point. And I, and I guess I will, I'll yield my time. I have more questions, but I also know it's late and I want other people to be able to ask questions. I guess in my mind, we just deliberated in our $6.8 million, right, allocation for FTE.

We deliberated extensively over like a $600,000 portion of that funding just for for transportation and other services. So, while $800,000 plus, almost $900,000 doesn't seem maybe significant in the grand scheme of things in some ways, in other ways I would argue that it feels very significant in a resource-scarce environment like the one that we're in. So that's why, like, I'm asking these questions with an intent to try to save money, address the problem at the same time, not trying to delay a project, not like indefinitely. Um, but also recognizing that this, I mean, this project itself, I think I, I'm hearing that it's under budget, but I, I think my other interpretation was that it, we have exceeded the budget, has gone up over time. But, um, maybe there's, maybe that's a wrong interpretation.

Um, but I, those are my concerns. I feel like it's a lot of money, but, um, so I was looking for creative solutions, but I will yield my time for other people to ask questions.

Um, I'm going to jump in the queue just to clarify something. I didn't— what I— Mr. Anderson, what I didn't hear you say was $900,000 isn't a lot of money, just that you're not sure that we're going to be able to realize those savings if we swap processes at this point in the project. That's correct. We have no cost estimate to do a change order. We, we don't know is really the answer.

I don't know that it will save money if— I just don't know. We have not talked to a designer. We haven't gone out for the permits. We haven't— I mean, everything— time is money. And if a contractor is going to demobilize on site and leave and come back next spring and mobilize again, Um, there's a lot of cost to that.

Okay, just clarifying for our record here. Um, Member McDonough, see you're in the queue. You're the other member that pulled this. Uh, please proceed. Uh, thank you.

Um, so we're— this is a change order to increase the contract amount, but it— you, you mentioned we're under budget, so could you help us understand understand exactly where the dollars are in this, and is this increasing our overall investment into the inlet loop project from its original targets?

It is. I think you'll find over the next several years that there are no large projects that don't have a change order of some for Inlet View, when they started building the new school and they found out there was a lot of loose dirt underneath, um, where they thought it was solid, that was a change order. When they found contaminated soil, we had to dig it up, um, and, and dispose of that. There's— I, I don't know of any large, really tens of millions of dollars project where absolutely everything goes according to plan. And 15 months ago, when— well, longer than that— when we had the design done for the building and they checked some soil samples and everything else, and then after the fact when ADEQ changed the protocol for being able to get rid of it— prior to that, if it was a solid PCB, you could take it to a landfill, and then they changed that.

And so when we learned that for Ursa Major, obviously we had to go through and get the testing and validate exactly how in-depth it was. And it's all over the outside envelope of that building. So it's a much more expensive disposal by having to barge all that down to Oregon.

I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what happened. This is really not something, you know, when we plan costing and try to do an estimate for a project, we look at historical costs. Now, to be fair, we haven't torn down a building in a long, long time. But when we finally started getting ready to tear down Ursa Major, or talked about it, and then the environmental compliance piece came out, out. We knew for sure we had to check in with you because you've got that 50-year period where PCBs were used in all sorts of different things.

So the testing is pretty— it's pretty significant. I mean, they're boring through walls, roofs, foundations, and this really has been something new for us in the last year and a half or So thank you, and I appreciate the nature of large projects. Friend of mine is in construction project management, and he says, whatever you quote, you just add 20% because the quote doesn't know what regulations are going to change and what particular cost markets might have a spike during the year. You have to do all of your procurement Um, did— so most of this was funded by a municipal bond, is that right? Um, well, it is from the 2013, 2020, 2024 bonds.

We had a significant amount of this come from the state bond debt reimbursement in July, August of 2022, and then about 2.5 to $2.7 million from interest earnings from a 2024B bond sale. So are we going to have to fund any of this type of change order with BSA-derived funds? Is it coming downstream of those? This is— it's a completely separate— okay, not tied to the BSA, and we're not backfilling. Like, I'm wondering, like, when we bid in or when we basically we propose those bonds, are we putting in this 20% buffer so that we don't have to react in the end?

And we did put in a contingency, as your— as your friend talked to you about, for all of the unknowns that are unknown. Okay, thank you.

Go to Member Lessens and Member Higgins. Um, thanks. I think we had the phrase time is money just a little bit ago, time is also in the life of a child, um, a season of accessing a playground. So I guess my question is, if we proceed and approve this memo this evening, when will students at Inlet View, which include the students who are brought over from Government Hill, um, when will they see a full access to the playground? Do we have a sense of— it's realistically the demo.

If you, if you looked at Inla View as we did the demo, it took a week to demo it. We're now down to the foundation. So when I talk about demobilizing, it's demobilizing the project.

And so we probably would finish the demo, maybe, I don't know. Assuming that we finish, then next spring we'll be planting grass. Because it might be too late this year to plant grass and get everything going. But I can definitely get that information for Friday's PC.

Yeah, and if there's any, you know, the rest of the sort of the playground equipment, what the timeline for, you know, would that be installed? I'll be happy to get that for you. Yeah, thanks.

Member Higgins. Yeah, thank you. I've just been through so many of these processes in the past. That at one time the budget that was being proposed for construction was underfunded because of inflationary factors. Then they started coming back with proposals that were too large and carried money over because they didn't want to go back and get a bond again.

And that was back in the '90s. Then we had the issue of inflation factors in here. I know University talked about it recently, and all of these are normal contingency issues that I don't want to budget things until we need them. I don't have a problem with this particular issue. I've been too many businesses where you, you go into the wall and you find asbestos.

Okay, Conical Building had to be closed down, the second building, because of that. So I think this is real common. I think doing it as quickly as possible is the most efficient way of doing it. We're trying to get the school done and it's within the budget parameters that we had established for it. So I don't— from my standpoint, I find this— I'm comfortable with this approach, and I recognize I don't want to budget something and to contract something on a contingency basis.

So we, we have to expect this type of stuff on a regular basis, I believe, on any large construction in my experience. So I will support it. Thank you.

Member Blakeslee. Okay, um, so I hear that this school won't have an actual functional playground until the spring, so close to the end of the school year anyway. But then earlier we're sort of also deliberating if we look for a different method that might save money, that that would delay the process potentially by a year. But it sounds like the school also isn't going to have a playground for the better part of the school year anyway. Actually, I, I don't know the answer on the playground, but I will put that in BoardConnect.

There might— I, I just don't know. I did not look at the playground this morning when I was prepping, um, on what components might be up. I think it's probably the spring, but I do need to go verify that before I locked down an answer. So I guess from my perspective, and I can also count, uh, votes, but I just, from my perspective, I— this is sort of one of those points where I, I don't think that I can support it while there is still financial information that we're not aware of. If I don't know when the playground is going to be put in place, or that approving this funding is going to guarantee these kids a playground this school year is something that it sounds like we can't— we don't know.

And if we don't know that, then I feel like my preference would be to try to pursue the option where we could save some money. Again, I'm thinking about how I know we're under budget, um, for this project, but, uh, if we can't guarantee that spending this amount of money right now is going to net an immediate impact that's positive for kids kids this school year and that the timeline would essentially be the same, but we could save money, I feel like that's what it would be in favor of. Um, though, if there was sort of a clear path or evidence that, yeah, if we, if we pass this right now, that these kids are going to be able to use their playground this year, that would change the calculus. But without that information, then then I'm unlikely to support it.

Jump in with a question for administration. Um, I think I'm tracking Member Blakely's comments to say that if we pursued the alternative disposal method for PCBs, effectively either way, the building would be ready to go and the project would be complete. By next fall. And so in essence, there's no difference. Is that the case, that there's no difference for either method?

I, I don't know because we didn't talk about rubbling the foundation in place and burying it, and I don't know. I—. It was not a plan. Normally we wouldn't like come up with a construction plan in a board meeting. Um, I, I just don't know.

We didn't look at— that I'm aware of— we, we didn't look at rubbling it. We didn't look at getting the, the, uh, the approvals from the municipality and ADEC to be able to do that. I, I couldn't tell you how long— I couldn't tell you how long that might take. And then ultimately You know, I don't know if this would be a cost savings or not. I know to mobilize and demobilize a site is pricey.

A follow-up, I guess, would you like time to get that information?

I can.

You know, once the first snowfall comes, we're probably not going to work on it this winter. I think anyone who's been watching the, what they're now calling the super El Niño, that's building out in the Pacific and it's about, I mean, it's supposed to be the largest El Niño since 2015 and some estimates take it back the last 50 years, the largest So we don't know what the weather is going to be this winter. We know what it is now. We know that there are trucks ready to work now. I couldn't tell you what all the impacts are to include whether we realize a cost savings at this point or what the timeline might be.

Okay. Yeah, I'll just— I'll say that for my part, I would be interested in hearing the board deliberate on a postponement makes sense to get the information. Um, absent the choice to postpone to get the information, I probably will support the underlying recommendation coming from administration. Thank you.

Um, I remember Blakesland is the last person in the queue. Okay, I will stop with questions on this one after this, but my last question or comment is I don't, uh, I think that you can bury this slab slab without putting it, like, making it rubble, like demolishing it, the slab, and then burying it. I think there is a method that you can just bury the slab if it falls within that parts per million of PCB concentration. So I don't know if that— if I explained that.

I know what you mean, I just don't know the answer. Yeah, I don't know if it's even possible or what the timeline is. I mean, it sounds like you're a PCB, probably more of an expert than I am. I'm not. I just couldn't tell you.

I mean, we've had this plan for quite a while that we were going to demo, and we have landscaping that we have to meet for code, community code. We have other requirements like the sidewalks and the other things that we have to do. We just did not You know, possibly when we demo the next building, we certainly will take lessons learned every time we do something and look at other alternative options. I mean, this is a learning organization. Until a year and a half ago, we didn't know that we couldn't bury rubble if it had PCBs in it.

I mean, it is an imperfect world where ADEQ can unilaterally, um, determine what the disposal protocols are and, and what you can do.

Um, yeah, to the administration, to the superintendent, I'm, uh, kind of of the same mind as the president where I'm leaning closer to yes, but I'm also So between yes, no, and postpone, I think postponement until unresolved questions can be presented. Is there any risk to the project if we postpone 2 weeks and put this in front of the board? If we could take a 5-minute break, I can make some calls and come back.

I don't know what the risk is. I know you're asking, can I bury it? I don't know. I mean, the risk to like, are we upsetting the whole timetable to come back to you in 2 weeks? 2 Weeks with an answer.

Like, if I, if I ask the body to see if it consents on a 2-week postponement, if I can make a call to see if they're going to demobilize, that would—. I just, I don't know. We didn't have a plan to demob the site until after it was done, so I don't, I don't think I can answer your question. So I would, to the board, I would propose that we don't necessarily need to sit around and wait for Mr. Anderson to do that research, I think we can continue on with the rest of our agenda and come back to this item. And so I would propose that we postpone this item until after we, um, take up non-action item G1, which is my intent to do.

So if there's a motion and a second, we will rearrange our— or the our order of the day, our agenda, to address those two items. So moved. Second. Okay, so the motion is to discuss ASD Memorandum Number 012 after, uh, non-action item G1. Is there any opposition?

Seeing none, we've adopted that motion. So we're going to discuss Item G1, the Assembly School Board Joint Committee. This came up for just a minute of foundation setting in the conversation at the last Assembly School Board Joint Meeting. A topic was added to the agenda at the start of the meeting. A motion was made at the very end of the meeting.

There was about about 12 minutes of discussion, um, there was a motion that directed Chair Brawley and I to draft a proposal on creating a school board and assembly joint committee on the topic of right-sizing. Um, due to the lack of discussion and the, um, the amount of the amount of uncertainty I had regarding the exactly what was expected of me. I approached the board at our retreat in June, um, to ask for direction as I didn't feel comfortable drafting a proposal without feedback from this group. The feedback that I received essentially was that a majority of the board felt uncomfortable with having a truly joint committee with Assembly and School Board members having voting authority over the creation of either a rubric or certainly site selection of how right-sizing would be conducted in the future.

With that said, since the— since the retreat that occurred in June, the charter for a committee that the board had considered and chosen to proceed with with dating back to prior to the election of members McDonough and Blakeslee was created and is now in existence and functional. And I wanted to circle back prior to any other discussion or action at a future joint committee to make sure that if there was any additional thought processes regarding the potential role of a joint committee on this topic that I received that feedback from the board to make an adequate report at the next Joint Committee regarding how and why we came to the decision we came to. And so at our last meeting, I asked the board to be prepared for this discussion. I think the feedback that would help me— and I think I'm going to just go board member by board member. I'm not interested in a debate.

I'm not asking for a vote or direction from the board at this point. I'm asking for direction from from each board member. Some questions that would provide that direction to me is, by answering the following: Do you see a lane for a separate joint committee aside from the ad hoc committee that was created regarding the topic of rightsizing?

Do you— and then do you support the idea of Assembly members voting on either site selection for potential future school closures or voting on the creation of recommended criteria to which choose future schools for site selection for a potential closure or right-sizing. And then, um, and lastly, if, if not, what do you see the, uh, the purpose of a joint committee fulfilling, um, either inside or outside of our committee process. I would appreciate any feedback on that. And then, um, in the interest of time, I'm going to ask members to be brief. A minute or two would be ideal, and I can take that feedback and go forward from there.

So I'll start to my left. Member Wilson, um, if you could get us kicked off. Mr. President, just a quick point of information. If you could clarify, when you said a majority of the board during our retreat expressed, um, Do you have like a vote tally to refresh my memory on that? There wasn't a vote.

There wasn't a vote. Okay, thank you. No, I was just going purely off of remarks and I—. An informal majority, at least, at best. No, it was—.

I mean, it was a literal majority because folks made remarks. I know, I believe you were at a personal event, so I think you were the only member not present. I think we heard from everyone else. I'm just going off purely off of memory. Okay, I apologize.

I, uh, I was told that, um, Anyway, that's fine. I just would— I don't recall a vote, but thank you. Yeah, there was not a vote. No, I asked for feedback from the board and the remarks were clear, and I recapped the consensus that we achieved through discussion, and there wasn't any dissenting opinions from the board that were present that I recall. Okay, so Member Wilson, if you could start us off to my left regarding your feedback on the potential role of a joint committee and your thought process and any feedback you have on Assemblymember involvement in this particular topic, I would appreciate it.

So I'm— I guess based on all of our conversations, what I envisioned was that we move forward with the ad hoc committee with the Assembly's participation in the ad hoc but no voting, um, voting rights, so to speak. Um, my understanding, and I'll go back to what I envisioned based on the conversations, was the ad hoc committee would have discussions with inclusion of community members, um, that were discussed, assembly, school board, to have those discussions but not actually any voting abilities. So the— our board members would come back with recommendations and we could build from those recommendations. Yeah, you just clarify, Member Wilson, that is the intent behind the current structure of the ad hoc committee and the charter was created. My question to you is, do you see value— my question to all board members is, do you see value in an additional joint committee or— and/or assembly members having the ability to vote regarding the items that are to be addressed in the charter, which include recommended criteria for potential future site selection for right-sizing proposals in the future.

So I, I don't see the need for a separate joint committee with the Assembly. I feel like that would be a duplication of efforts and would exclude the community members that are intended to participate in the ad hoc committee. I also don't see an avenue necessarily for the assembly to vote on which schools would be selected to close or not close.

Okay, and the, our charter for the ad hoc committee specifically asked the committee to make recommendations regarding selection criteria. Is your thought on that the same? It is correct. Okay, just appreciate the clarity. Member Blakeslee, if you could provide any feedback you'd like as I try to consider how to approach accommodating the, the motion.

Sure. So I was trying to write down your questions really fast, and if I miss any, let me know, or if I misinterpret them, let me know. Okay, the do I see value for a separate joint committee, I would say I agree with Wilson, that if we had a separate joint committee and we had an ad hoc rightsizing committee, I, I would be really— I don't know how those efforts would feel duplicative. Um, I think I would like clarity about which effort we're moving forward with, but I don't see a world— and if, if there were a world where both existed, I would want to know how they were distinct. Distinct and the work was distinct from each other.

But if the joint committee is for the purpose of right-sizing and it would house members from the school board on it who are also on a potential ad hoc right-sizing committee, that does feel inherently redundant. Um, so I'm not in favor of having two separate committees doing the same work. Do I see value in having a joint committee at all?

Yes, provided that it's structured in a way that retains local control for the school board to make decisions about school-based operations. So the way I would envision, or I think the way that we talked about what a joint committee would do during our retreat, and then going back and watching the recording of the really quick conversation conversation we had in our joint meeting with the Assembly, which seems like forever ago. I— it— there just seems like a lack of clarity about the purpose of that joint committee. But the, the purpose of the joint committee to me would feel valuable as an exercise to listen to the public, incorporate public input, and bring all of that into a synthesized sort of condensed, uh, list of values that the broader community cares about that then could be given to the school board when we deliberate potential future right-sizing efforts as a component of many criteria, right? It would be a collaborative discussion, listening type of effort.

Um, not a committee in which they are— I do not support a world in which the assembly is choosing what schools are being closed. Um, I think that was your one of your questions. I support for site selection of potential school closures. I don't— I would not support the assembly choosing potential future school closures, the specific schools schools. Um, but I would— I am interested in trying to strengthen our relationship with, with the assembly, and I do see a world in which there is an avenue that we could collaborate through a joint committee.

Not one where it is creating— is actually making decisions on what schools, but it is a committee that is helping listen, do that public listening effort. I do see value in that. Um, did I answer all of your questions? Yeah, just a clarification question. Does your opinion change if the Assembly is purely involved in voting on criteria and recommending criteria by which future sites are selected?

Versus what? Actually picking sites themselves. So they'd be picking the criteria, the measuring stick by which the result would happen versus the result itself. I think that providing a set of criteria and saying this is the criteria that our community values is different than saying, school board, this is the criteria that you're going to use. I think a recommendation to me is not something that is binding on our end.

I think that that is a valuable input that I would find valuable as as these are the criteria that we have determined from our conversations that people care about, like a list of values, a list of criteria, but it doesn't have to be exclusive to that set of criteria as the only criteria that we might be factoring in. Does that—.

That helps provide me the direction, um, on the topics I think I need. Thank you. Member Bellamy.

Okay, so, um, I am not in favor of a separate joint assembly committee. We have a process already in place where— I mean, we've had joint safety, student safety committees where, uh, we've, you know, we've had a couple of school board members, couple of assembly members that would meet before before our joint meeting, or what— whenever we would meet. So we, we have a history of having joint meetings, but with right-sizing, to me, that takes on a whole different, um, process and, and, and responsibility for the school board. Uh, so, uh, I do not support assembly members voting on whether or not to close schools. I think we, we should continue to work closely with the Assembly to let them know, uh, how the process of our chart of the ad hoc committee.

And, um, I, I think, uh, if they would like more reports from how what's happening with that committee, I know there is at least one, um, Assembly person on a spot held for the assembly on the charter, uh, or the ad hoc committee charter as it exists now. And I think we, we need to, uh, implement the charter as the board has approved and, um, um, get the work done. I mean, let's just— I, I don't, I don't understand all of this, but I'm trying to, I, and I'm trying to But I don't think that— I think our, our roles as board members are different than assembly members. And while we want to have good relationships with them, and we have had a good relationship with them, I don't know where this sense of us not having a good relationship with the assembly— we've managed to work through some things that, uh, now and in the past, and I could— I think we're going to continue to do that. So I hope I answered all your questions.

Um, yep, I think so. I will go to Member McDonough. Uh, thank you. So do I see a lane for this? Uh, as the first question, yes, I, I see a need to, um, in addition to everything we talked about earlier when approving the resolution about strengthening the axes that we even understand school closures, I don't actually see Elaine of pulling the assembly into that, but what I do see is we, we govern the same people.

Um, if I'm a family affected by this uncertainty and I look at these two bodies that have tremendous power over my children in my school, uh, and so I'm now hurting and I want solutions, I want advocacy, I want people to stand up for me I'm gonna remember, well, I voted for everybody on this body and 2 people on that body, and I'm going to go to both— or actually all 9. I'm going to approach all 9 of those people and say, I want you to be able to help me with this. And I want the assembly to say, we, we back this process up. Like, we, we support the— without, without forfeiting autonomy, we support the direction the school district is going. And we want to make this work for you.

And I think right now we don't have the ability for there to be advocates on both sides of this process. And, and this body knows it closed some schools, and some of the assembly members that were approached in that really felt blindsided and empty-handed at being able to respond to those concerns. Um, I think relationship building and trust building I do not support site selection. I also don't think that this board should ever, like, propose a site to close. I think that level of analysis only exists in the administration.

And so I wouldn't even have this board say, uh, here's a school that we've picked, now we want to close it. We should say we've understood we need to reduce X number of schools and then let the analysts in the administration actually tackle that problem. And present recommendations in front of us. So I don't want any site selection to occur on any form of board work. Um, and I also really don't think the assembly needs to tell us the criteria that makes for a viable school.

But I think then, what do I see the purpose is? What comes after a school gets closed? And we need awareness of that problem, and they need to be able to see it through our lens so that they can present the problem of managing a city's resources, um, through these, uh, basically unforeseen circumstances. Um, the, the population of children in Anchorage won't be growing significantly anytime soon, so there, there will have to be a handoff of some number of schools in the future. I would suggest that instead of this— like, I don't like parallel streams.

I think, uh, our bandwidth is limited already, and for this to take on two different streams would be— I think both would fail. Um, I'd rather actually see that, uh, the, the chair and like the chair of the assembly and the president, as we directed during our last joint session, has a dialogue with myself as the ad hoc committee chair, and we can come up with a more nested, like vertically integrated process where the levels of decisions that should only be the school board we make ourselves at the beginning and end of a process, but that then dovetails into an invitation for more discourse and more ownership over, over processes that we think that the committee has decided and released to invite more people inside of it. So essentially a nested design, and it's very complicated. I won't explain it over like this meeting because it just will take us another hour, but I'd like to be able to present an idea to invite voices halfway through— or not halfway through, but partially through the business of the committee— and then to thank and release those voices before the committee finally concludes its report. And so there's still protection of our autonomy while we have created the avenues inside of our own committee opportunity for them to be involved.

Thank you, Member McDonough. Member Lessans. I'll try to be really brief, although I appreciated very much Member McDonough's language about sort of the nested model. No, I don't see a lane for a separate joint committee. No, I don't support the idea of the Assembly voting on site selection.

I do fundamentally agree, and this is perhaps within that tested model that assembly members' ideas, questions, concerns, insights should be a part of conversations, should ultimately inform board members' recommendations. That's what I've got.

Okay, it's helpful. Thank you. Member Higgins.

Um, I don't think this is going to prove to be successful because I don't think we're even going in the right path. We need— I'm not opposed to closing schools. I, I am not. I— if there is good justification for it, we need to do it. Remember, we—.

I, I really want to, in the interest of time, I'll end my discussion right now to make it easier for you, Mr. But if you don't have any feedback on the committee, understood. Helpful. Um, that's the feedback I was hoping to get. I'm going to watch this again later this week, make sure I've captured the sentiment of the board members, and then approach the assembly chair, um, and ask for her opinion as to how to proceed and what conversation has transpired on the assembly side.

And then I will try to find a path forward. Um, I think this conversation has highlighted that there's a variety of opinions as to how to best proceed with this work. So we'll go back to the agenda item that we had moved on from, AST Memorandum Number 012. We'd suspended when asking Mr. Anderson for information. Mr. Anderson.

Okay, so I have some answers. Um, fortunately the contractor, the PM, and apparently all of Capital Plans have been watching the board meeting. So the playground, if it stays on track, will be ready to occupy mid to late October.

Um, they went back and validated that, uh, anything 10 parts per million is over the ADEC limit, which would be what's in the current slab. The water level in the area, um, right at the slab is between 3 and 5 feet. Which means 3 to 5 feet below the ground, there's active groundwater that can go into subsurface drainages. So they feel somewhat doubtful that now that we have raised it and we know that it has PCBs, that they would allow us to bury it and leave it in contact with the groundwater. Um, they're, they're extremely doubtful that we would be able to knowingly put PCB contaminated and just cover it and bury it and pretend it wasn't there.

Um, they have to get some of the slab out either way, um, because they have to build a sidewalk over it and they need to move the slab. So there's stuff that sticks above the ground. So either way, part of the demo will need to get done. Um, if there was a 2-week delay and we could get permits and approvals and environmental Everything else, if you could get that in a 2-week period, um, you might still have a playground in November. Anything past 2 weeks pushes it into next spring, summer.

I think that answers everything I could answer in a 5-minute phone call. It was quite the phone call, sounds like. Mr. Anderson, thank you. Um, we're back on discussion. We'll go to Member Blakeslee.

Um, thank you. That— you got an incredible amount of information in a very short amount of time, and, uh, I really appreciate it because that answers a lot of my questions. So thank you for the additional context, because I don't think I would have been able to vote for this without that context. But with the context, I think I— well, I will be voting for it. So I appreciate that.

I like having the ability to make an informed vote. So thank you for making that phone call. Thank you. Seeing no other discussion, members can vote on AST Memorandum Number 012.

AC Memorandum Number 012 passes by a vote of 7 to 0. We have a few more non-action items. Is there a board member who wishes to discuss a non-action item at this time, an additional non-action item, recognizing that they'll be back back before us in 2 weeks.

Seeing none, we'll move on to the superintendent update. Dr. Bryant. Thank you, Mr. President. I know we've had a long night, but we do have the first day of school tomorrow, so I did want to take a moment to share with the board what I've been sharing with our leadership teams in terms of the priorities, the focus, and to share some additional insights on some initiatives I've been communicating to you via BoardConnect. So our team will be displaying a PowerPoint PowerPoint in just a moment, and I'll try to be as expedient as possible, but I hope you find this information helpful.

So for the public's sake, we all know that school's about to start tomorrow, and with that new school year comes a real sense of optimism, preparation, and possibility. So first, I want to thank our educators, our building leaders, and our teams who have really been working tirelessly to make sure that tomorrow we can open our schools confidently and to have a strong strong start. So I personally look forward to getting up really early in the morning so I can get on my way to greet as many families and students as possible and to thank our educators for everything that they do. And we're going to have a great year. We have our challenges, but I think that we have the tools in our toolbox to make a positive difference.

So as I've shared with the board in writing and as I've shared with our leaders, we have 3 priorities from my lane going into next school year. The first is a focus on student achievement. The second is on responsible stewardship, and the third is on stronger community engagement. So before I get into the three priorities and what that means for ASD, I do want to start a little bit with, uh, what's happening with school start tomorrow. So next slide, please.

So again, I'll try to be as expedient as possible, but tomorrow we'll be welcoming back our elementary school students as well as our 6th graders and our 9th graders, and I just want to take a moment to remind the community that we intentionally put forward these staggered starts because we recognize that the 6th grade and 9th grade milestones in particular are really delicate times for students. And I say this as a former college counselor and 9th grade teacher. We have an opportunity to really change a student's trajectory for the positive if we make the most of that transition to 6th grade and the transition to 9th grade. We've been doing this for several years now, and while while it's difficult in the realm of education to affix causation to anything that we do for numerous reasons, I am pleased that after 3 years of implementation, we've been able to see positive growth in the number of 9th graders that are earning credits, um, the percent of 9th graders that are having positive GPAs, and then in the big picture, the fact that our graduation rates have rebounded since before the pandemic. Is that entirely related to Staggered Start?

Likely no, but through the work of the academies and the work of our teams, we've been able to really move forward on that board goal for college, career, and life readiness. And last thing on this slide, you'll also notice that we have a similar opportunity for our preschool and kindergarten students so they have a confident start to their entire educational journey. Next slide. And I want to remind us that, you know, we had a unique year last year for a lot of reasons, but we have an ongoing responsibility and commitment to serve the students from Lower Kuskokwim who are here in our buildings beginning tomorrow. Last year we took on about 150 evacuees from Typhoon Halong, and many of those students remain with us, and we're going to honor our commitment to support these students for as long as they're in our care within the Anchorage School District, and I'm thankful that through the leadership of our principals that have been housing these students, that our schools have really become places of stability, belonging, and support during a truly incredible, incredibly difficult time.

So that commitment continues. Next slide. So now I want to talk about the 3 major priorities. So the first one is academic achievement. We are an educational institution, and we need to make sure that our limited resources are moving the needle forward on student achievement.

Students. So priority one will be a thoughtful rollout of the Academic Strategic Action Plan, also known as the Academic Strategic Plan, but now we have the ASAP acronym. That's a positive. But here's the thing, I know that an academic strategic plan can feel intimidating to, let's say, a teacher or a building staff member because they might be wondering, does this mean more initiatives? Does Does this mean I'm going to be more burnt out?

And I want to provide some assurance that that is not the intent of this academic strategic plan. And just to ground us in, in the why I believe that's the case is because we've, we have seen some positive successes over the past few years in Anchorage, in the Anchorage School District. And I want to highlight what some of those things are. I just referenced that we've had our graduation rates rebound to pre-pandemic academic levels. This time last year, we reported out that we saw a 5% increase in math proficiency.

And when you dig deeper, we're starting to see that we're starting to accelerate growth in our student subpopulations on multiple metrics. And fast forward to even just a few weeks ago, we shared with the board some promising data where 50% of our eligible 3rd graders demonstrated catch-up growth in reading. That's an increase of 10 percentage points from where we were at a year ago. That's huge. And we haven't talked a whole lot about catch-up growth with our, our new board, but essentially that means that those students are growing at a rate of 1.0 times the expected growth.

And I'm just so proud and thankful that we have wonderful educators that have made that opportunity happen. But I say all of that because we have wonderful staff members and educators and principals. We know what works well. This this academic plan is not intended to be something else on their plate. It's really intended to build upon what we know is working based on the data and to create coherence and consistency across all of our buildings, because the goal is to achieve excellence for all of our students in whatever way that looks like.

And this academic strategic plan holds me and our staff accountable to not adding things that veer from this plan as much as we possibly can. Crises happen, certain things are out of our control, but as much as it's within our ability and capacity as a leadership team, we really want to keep this focus on the academic strategic plan. Next slide, please. So here are the three— sorry, the four strategic pillars of the academic strategic plan. Leading for Achievement, that's investing in the leadership capacity of our principals principals, strengthening every classroom.

We have to make sure that we're providing teachers the supports that they need that are conducive to them doing what they do best, which is being a great educator and leader in our classrooms. But we can't do this without strong systems that support our schools. I, as an individual, can't be in 100 buildings at once. I'd love to. I wish I had that superpower.

But that means it's incumbent upon us as a large system, the largest school district in and the state of Alaska to have systems that work in favor of our students' progress and support our leaders and our teachers. And the last thing is, you can have the most wonderful plan in the world, but if you're not communicating what's important and what the major things are, your plan is at risk of failure. So communication internally, particularly to our buildings, has to be a key part of this plan, and that's on us as district leaders to help make that communication as seamless as possible. So all of that to say, you'll notice that nothing on here is rocket science. This is what we know works well for kids, and we're doing a lot of this work already.

It's just really investing and doubled down, or rather doubling down on what we know works well so that we can continue to see the progress we've already been making. We're not intending to add something new. We have a lot of tools in our toolbox that we need to commit to and show discipline and restraint when it comes to keeping the focus on the main thing, which are these 4 strategic pillars. So that's priority 1. And the last thing I'll say on this academic strategic action plan is if you're a parent sitting at home, you might be wondering, well, what am I going to notice right away?

And the honest answer is you might not notice a whole lot because some of these things come down to high-quality instructional materials that you might not notice until you start taking a look at the materials that your children are bringing home. Some of this work is ensuring fidelity of our implementation of professional learning communities, as an example, something that we've already been doing, but now we have to make sure that we're executing this valuable time with fidelity in service of accelerating our students' growth. So there, you may not notice these things right away, but my goal is that over the next 6 months, year, 2 years, 3 years, that we're going to continue to make these gains, particularly when it comes to accelerating the growth of our students. That's how we're going to get to our board goal. So I want to move on to our next topic, which is responsible stewardship.

And this slide, I just want to start off by thanking our legislators and thanking our school board who have been working really hard to to try to make the most of what could have been a really, really difficult year. But through the help of the legislature, we were able to pass House Bill 263 and other measures that unlocked additional funding for our schools that we sorely needed because we just balanced a $90 million structural shortfall. And thanks to the leadership of this board, we've been able to restore about 100 positions, and we've been able to allocate those to schools principals across the district. Our teams have been working with principals to assess need and across the system of nearly 100 buildings, trying to decide how to allocate a very small amount of resources. There's still work to be done.

I'm told we've allocated about 91 positions so far, and of course we're getting more feedback from schools and parents and others that may impact what we'll be allocating in the coming weeks. Coming days. All I ask is you for— is for a little patience as we make sure that we're distributing these valuable resources equitably and fairly to meet the needs of our students across the greater context of ASD. And we'll be sure to share additional information with the board so you know exactly what your commitment has made possible for our students. So, um, with that said, in addition to restoring positions, we were also able to restore some transportation and other support services thanks to the leadership of this board.

I thank you for that. It wasn't easy. We have very limited resources. We had to do some interesting maneuvers 2 weeks ago to make this possible for our students, but I was just at a school yesterday and the principal told me that she was actually able to staff every position that you were able to allocate to her school. So we're making a difference.

It may not seem like it now, and Yeah, we have a huge headwind of trying to hire teachers in the middle of school start. That is not ideal, but we're rolling up our sleeves and trying to make it happen because that's how we're going to make a difference for our kids, and that's what they deserve. So the bottom line is that we've had a rough year. We did have to make big reductions, but our leaders in this community have unlocked possibilities that are making a difference. As I noted, these resources came very late.

This is not ideal. Ideally, you're trying to hire top talent February, March, and we're trying to hire the day before school starts. Not ideal. I've shared my two cents with the legislators and the powers that be, so I won't belabor that point, but we know we're going uphill when it comes to making these positions come to fruition as an educator in a classroom. So I thank you for your grace as we try to make that possible and deliver your vision for adding these resources to schools.

So, um, with that said, let's go ahead and move on to the last priority, which is on responsible stewardship. So we did receive those limited one-time funds. They're making a big difference, but I want to be very clear with the public that they do not erase the structural challenges that lie ahead. The good news is that more aid is likely on the way because per House Bill 263, August 31st is around the corner, and that's when the State Revenue Commissioner will determine the extent to which we have a surplus to allocate to schools. That could unlock more opportunities to help in the short term.

And as I go into buildings, I'm personally trying to figure out what are the highest impact ways we can make a difference if these funds become available. But that said, um, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in a later slide, I do hear loud and clear that the public truly doesn't understand the way that decisions are made when it comes to allocating resources. So yes, there are strong desires for resources now, but I'm hearing from dozens of families, including the many that filled out our— that participated in our post-bond levy survey, that they feel our deficits are going in the wrong direction, and they truly don't understand how we can receive funding from the state, and yet our structural deficits are going in the wrong direction. Deficits continue to rise. They don't understand why they see us every meeting trying to give resources to schools, but then at the end of the day, they don't understand why we're still having to create reductions on top of reductions on top of reductions.

Our community is fatigued. Our educators are fatigued. When I asked teachers personally yesterday at a community event, what can we do to wave a magic wand, it would be to minimize those displacements that happen every year. And the reason those displacements displacements happen is because we have to pass a balanced budget by February, and that triggers a very difficult displacement and layoff process that doesn't impact student achievement. If there are a universe where we could stabilize our teacher workforce, we could minimize that.

And I have to be clear-eyed in saying what's at the bottom of this slide, which is that this very budget, this terrible budget that none of us wanted to pass because it's $90 million fewer resources than we had is going to grow by $45 million. Many people in the public that I'm talking to think this is because we're adding $45 million worth of stuff, but one educator is going to be a sizable percentage more expensive next year. Multiply that times the thousands of teachers in our classrooms. Same thing for almost all of the employees in our organization. We all know that our energy bills are going up.

We all know no no matter who your employer is, that your healthcare premiums are going up. So we have to have conversations about how to solve the emergency now and how to set us up for long-term success, and that's stabilization. So we have some very difficult conversations to have. I would say our conversation in September amongst how we're going to use this windfall— the waterfall funding is going to be one of the most consequential decisions that this school board will make this year. We have a couple options.

We have multiple options. All of them have pros and cons. And really, my role here is to advise you on the pros and cons so that we can make an informed decision. I know that every single dollar is counting. We had a long conversation today about what are we going to do if the city can't even fulfill its potential to fully invest in ASD.

I know for a fact that even if we had the most supportive governor in the state of Alaska, Alaska that they're not going to inherit a different revenue picture than exists today, and they have to prepare a budget in December. So we have to think about the short and long term here, and I'm not prescribing a solution, but I want you to know what I'm thinking because I need to show my work as I prepare that proposal for the board's review. So all I ask is that we truly consider our long-term outlook. Look at FY29, that same number of teachers that we have right now today is going to cost us $35 million in 2 years. That's not adding things, that's salary growth, healthcare, and the fact, especially as it pertains to FY28, that we're consistently, consistently balancing our budget with one-time funds, which kicks the can, and that can grows larger and larger as these costs compound over time.

Again, we have a huge decision to make within the next few weeks weeks, that's going to be the most consequential decision that we'll probably be making this year, and I look forward to having that conversation with you and also with the input of the community helping guide us along the way. So let's go ahead and transition to the last piece of this, which should be our new community engagement plan that I'm really excited to talk a little bit more about tonight, called ASD Listens. So here's the Last year in the spring, we saw the disappointing news that our bond and levy propositions were not successful, and that could have been a moment to point fingers. It could have been a moment to throw our hands up and say it was out of our hands, but from my perspective, it was an opportunity to reflect, refocus, and hear what the community is saying. So that's one of the reasons why our team partnered with Alaska Survey Research to produce a pretty robust report that's filled with hundreds of comments from individual community members as to why they voted the way that they did and what they think the district can do better.

And for me, it raised huge questions. Are we listening early enough? Are we explaining difficult trade-offs clearly enough? Are there even enough opportunities for the public to meaningfully enter the conversation on some of the biggest topics that face us. So that's why over the summer I've been literally reading every single comment and trying to figure out how are we going to take a bite out of this apple and to begin strengthening trust and support for our schools.

And that was the genesis of ASD Listens, which I want to share just a tiny bit about because I could probably talk about this until midnight and then we'll have to end. Yeah, we're not going to do that tonight. I have to get up early. Um, but ASD Listens is going to be a piece of how I'm going to fulfill that commitment that I made back in April, that the proposition results itself told us what the public said, and now we have to do the hard work of understanding why do they feel the way that they feel and what is within our locus of control to strengthen that trust and support in public education in Anchorage. So just a little bit about how ASD Listens works is on the next slide.

So I want to thank everyone. I've probably spoken to dozens of community members and community leaders about ASD Listens just to get a gut reaction as to, do you think this would work? How can we make it better? And the first piece of feedback that I've received I want to address directly. A lot of people say, well, this, this looks nice, but at the end of the day, isn't this a survey?

Or isn't this like a town hall? Haven't we done these things things before. And that in and of itself prompted some really good reflection on my part, because my intent is for ASD Listens not to be a tactical band-aid on really deep-rooted problems. It's not intended to just be a survey. It's intended to catalyze and improve feedback loops on some of the most pressing issues that face the Anchorage School District.

It's 4 simple steps: we need to listen, what people are hearing and seeing and feeling. We need to learn not just listen to respond, but listen to understand, even if we don't fully understand it on the first go. We may need to ask a couple times. And we need to act. I think that's the missing part.

The community needs to see how are we responding to what they're saying, even if it's not necessarily a yes. It's a, hey, let me provide this context and invite you back on my conversation. That's a feedback loop that's within reach with this type of community engagement. And the last piece is the reporting back. A lot of community members have let me know, well, you know, I am excited about this general idea, but what assurance will I have that you're even going to do anything with this information?

Many people have taken a survey and they never received the results. And that really helped me iron my commitment to report back on what we're hearing in numerous ways. So it could happen at this meeting, it could happen on some of the tactics we'll talk about in a moment. But the bottom line is how ASD Listens works is that it's going to focus on these themes that we heard upon the post-bond levy survey so we can improve our practice and strengthen that trust. And for that reason, I really want to narrow the focus of ASD Listens on the themes that are in this.

And I would boil down the themes in the post-bond levy survey as around financial decisions, facilities planning, and strengthening our schools and our programs, if I had to bucket it into 3 themes. So what does this look like? Next slide, please.

This is really changing the way that we engage on these top pressing issues. The first one is a survey. I think it really is a important to build a survey that is laser aligned to the themes that were brought up in this initial survey we did post-BON. It's going to dive deeper, it's going to include some questions that will help push our assumptions as to what the community is thinking or feeling, so that way we can then engage in different ways. So in addition to that survey, I do want to bring back community conversations, but rather than conversations focused on right-sizing.

I want them to be broader and focused on trust and facilities and major decisions, to have that two-way dialogue and to try to diagnose any misconceptions and to own any practices that we can improve. I think both can happen and more. Pulse polls I'm really excited about, and this is where I could probably talk a little bit too much, but I'm really excited to leverage the practices that were done by Alaska Survey Research and really build an in-house survey panel that will allow us to get just quick pulses from the community on key topics. These are ways that we can keep the community engaged on a monthly basis on the topics that matter the most. Something else I want to launch is called a Demystifying ASD series.

What I hear is that a lot of people just want to get the, the inside scoop, the nitty-gritty, no jargon. How do these things work and how can I plug myself in? Demystifying is part of that feedback loop. When people tell us something that demonstrates that they don't feel they're being heard, by demystifying ASD, we can own things that we can improve, and we can also explain things that are really difficult and may have context that an average community member might not understand, or maybe they they did understand a piece, but there's just one additional part of the context that, that they weren't aware of. And then lastly, this commitment to share what we're learning throughout in these meetings, in reports, in these community conversations, and throughout, so that they know that this isn't going into some sort of a Google Sheets somewhere.

These survey responses, just like the post-bond levy survey, are going directly to me. And the things that I'm asking about are the things that I know that we as a team of 8 have to solve this school year, or at least within the next 2 to 3 years. So the last thing I want to say on ASD Listens is that we want to give multiple ways to listen and engage with our community. And by the way, we want to make sure that these surveys and opportunities are provided in multiple modalities, in languages. Locations so that we're as inclusive as possible.

But ASD Listens is not intended to be a vote. I want to be very clear on that. We're not trying to have the community, or we're not trying to outsource our governance to the community. We're trying to understand how to integrate their voices and feedback into the decision-making that's happening here. And that's why, again, I want to stress so I can manage expectations that ASD Listens for this year I want to be narrowly focused on some of the major themes from the post-bond levy survey, not because the bond is the end-all be-all, but because the amount of feedback we received in this area is so robust.

We need to dig deep in a few areas rather than overextend. I'll just leave it at that. And then just a couple more slides. So, uh, next steps, we'll be launching a survey on September 1st. September 8th.

This is something that you'll see disseminated across the district in various ways through mailers, our website. I'm going to see if MJ can print me off something to keep in my wallet so I can have this QR code with me at all times so that I can get as many people to fill out the survey as possible. For those of you listening at home, the survey is not open yet. We have to wait until September 8th because we need more time to make sure this is translated and accessible to all of our community. So I need a little bit more time.

Time, but many of the questions are done and I'm excited to unveil those to the community. So with that said, our focus, just to recap, student achievement is number one. We have some big decisions to make when it comes to our stewardship, both in the short term and the long term, and it's time to really own some of the, the cool feedback we've received and take it in stride and do something with it with better community engagement that I hope you'll see throughout the year in different ways. And then last slide, I believe, or actually that might be the last slide. Yeah, that, that is our last slide.

So those are our 3 priorities that will guide our work throughout the year, and they're laser-focused, centered on our mission of educating all students for success in life. Tomorrow our doors open back up and another year of possibilities begin. I want to welcome back the ASD community. Let's make this a great year. And the last thing I want to close with is I want to recognize something special that happened yesterday.

Bowman Elementary officially opened its new inclusive playground to provide a welcoming and accessible space where children of all abilities can play and feel that they belong. It was an honor to be there for the ribbon cutting for that event yesterday, and this project was made possible through the support of our families, community partners, and many others who came together to deliver this opportunity for our kids. So there's a, a short positive video I want to share because this will be one of what I hope will be dozens of similar videos in buildings across the district.

Having an inclusive playground means so much to Bowman for a lot of reasons, right? We know that with our structured learning program, with our developmental preschool program, um, with all of our students here at Bowman, we know that having an inclusive playground means a lot to our community and it means access for all. And I know that sounds like a pretty simple sentence, but when we actually have access for all kids, I mean, this is what public education is.

Tommy! So you're looking at the full renovation of the Bowman Elementary School playground. We started on the project probably about a year, year and a half ago with a good playground that had a lot of loose rubber surfacing. The school district has been trying to get rid of the rubber surfacing and putting in unitary surfacing or the solid surfacing. I think what I appreciate with what the school district is doing is moving toward inclusive play on the playgrounds.

The Municipality of Anchorage Parks and Recreation has been doing a really good job of accessible playgrounds. And as a space, the principal said at the beginning of this that it's good for kids with accessibility needs, development and everything. But it's also for the parents and the caregivers. So this is a space that a parent that doesn't have accessibility, if their kid falls over, they can go to them to help them rather than rely upon another parent. So it's really kids having fun, parents having fun, caregivers having fun.

It's inclusivity, it's all ages, all abilities. Yeah! Yeah!

¡Ah! It's a place for everybody. It's a place where everybody can grow and thrive no matter their disabilities or abilities. And it's important to remember that, that public schools are a pillar of support for all communities, and we are here, um, and we're ready. And this playground represents more than just an awesome new playground.

It represents access. It represents a place a place and a home for people no matter what they can or can't do.

So just in closing, it's been a very long and turbulent 12 months for the Anchorage School District, but I say this with all sincerity that I have quite a bit hope and optimism for what is possible this year. And I hope that this will be one of hopefully dozens, if not hundreds, of positive instances of how ASD can improve for the better. So I'll end my remarks there. Thank you, Dr. Bryant. I'm going to ask a quick follow-up question regarding one of the items you touched on, which was staffing.

Um, the board received today a significant number of emails from a particular elementary school, I think was Ingleview Elementary. But I know that there's interest around the community regarding regarding the progress of our hiring, and then when the remaining positions that the board approved are going to be allocated. Is there any update on that? We can definitely provide an update on the hiring. I may not be able to provide updates on individual schools without having to go into details across all the different buildings that are involved in these positions.

But, um, Mr. Lang, do you happen to have an update on the hiring piece? Or actually, or Dr. Aguilar, can as well. I can start. Um, yeah, so as you referenced earlier, there were 91 of the holdback positions that have been allocated. The teams here have been very busy since the last school board meeting 2 weeks ago when those additional holdbacks were added to the pool.

We got those out to principals after doing some back and forth through the instructional division to find out what the unique needs were at the, the different sites and to prioritize prioritize those and make sure they were going to sort of the highest need situations across all of our schools. Of those 91, some principals, especially at the secondary level, opted not to post new positions, but they may have fragmented that FTE and had folks pick up additional sections during their planning time. Of the 91 that were allocated thus far, 66 have been posted as new positions through talent management. Of those 66 positions that are posted, 45 have currently been filled. So that's going back to the beginning of the summer, and they've been filled in a variety of ways.

So there are to date 14 of those positions that were filled with new hires or folks who are for one reason or another returning to the district but hadn't retired previously. There was one part-time person who was recalled from layoff status. There are 2 retire rehires that we've welcomed back to the district here into those positions. 12 Resulted in transfers from one building to another. 3 Resulted in FTE changes, so somebody who was working part-time in a building was able to move to full-time or more full-time status.

16 Of those positions have currently been filled with long-term subs for the start of the school, and I know those principals will be continuing to look for permanent hires for those those positions, but they didn't feel like there was an adequate pool, so they've started with a committed long-term sub for those positions. And so 21 of those original 66 positions are still unfilled, and principals are working to find a solution for those.

And then I would just add that we strategically have a few positions, FTEs, that are still available, and the strategy was once enrollment is in and slows down, that we'd be able to look at PTR and reassess the needs of the individual schools with those remaining FTE available. So we do still have some, and we do anticipate— it's a daily review of enrollment, and that's— school starts tomorrow, and so as parents are back in-person and at the schools, we'll get those numbers updated and then release those as quickly as possible based on individual need. Okay, just a quick follow-up question. I'm sure the administration has been tracking the emails from Inlet View. Do we know at this point if an allocation is going to be made to that particular building?

So currently, with the current enrollment, they are hovering right around the target PTR, and so we are still monitoring that, and we are doing a deep dive into any special education services students' needs and looking at scheduling and timing and the minutes and those plans. And so that is one that we are monitoring very closely. Okay, thank you. All right, um, we are now on school board and administration comments. We've heard from the administration, we'll now hear from board members.

We'll start to my right, Member Higgins.

I'll see if I can contribute discussions that I didn't get a chance to contribute. My problem with the school right now is that we need to focus on what our goal is, and the goal can't be just closing schools. It has to be something more than that. We need to have the honesty and transparency. I think the last semester, last, uh, this year, um, after January, with everything that took place, uh, I don't think that we listened to the public.

I don't think they believe we listen to them, and we can do as many surveys as we want, it won't change how they reacted. And we saw the election results, and the savings were not there. Um, we have got a lot of serious issues, and we need to be more transparent is what I'm shooting for. I have submitted a number of FOIA requests. I'll make those available completely to the public.

I paid for the cost, $700-something. And so it would be easy to get copies of that. I'll show you how to do that. Um, I, I am just, um, I'm frustrated and I'm going to be— remain frustrated, I guess, because, uh, there's control being done, uh, of trying to get things done without hearing the public. I don't see that happening.

I don't think they want to see that happening. Um, the motion that passed, uh, saying we're not going to do this but we might, uh, doesn't really, um, address the public's concerns in my opinion. But on a positive note, I appreciate what's going to be taking place. The principals, the, the teachers, uh, the students, the staff— we have to remain focused on helping them be successful. That can't get sidetracked completely with all these issues, uh, at all.

We— the finances are going to be there other issues. But in the classroom, it's the success of the students, it's the success achieved by the teachers and the principals. They are critical, and all the support staff with it. And special ed is a big issue. Every kid counts.

We need to have every child advance a full year academically, not just a group, not just a target group. So we have some, some big challenges ahead of every school district does and every large district, it just makes it that much more difficult. But, um, uh, remaining focused on the kids' issue, wishing them the best, knowing if there's issues coming up that we respond to it properly and, and include into the, uh, process, uh, feed-in from the people who have the best knowledge of it, and that's the principals and the teachers as well, and making sure that their voices for it. Um, and that's going to be another discussion later, and I'll close it at that.

Member Lessens. Be very brief. Um, really excited about the school year. Um, kiddos starting tomorrow. Good luck, everyone.

Um, thank you to the board members for really thoughtful extended dialogue today. Um, you guys always bring good questions and ideas, and I value your insights and the deliberative nature of this body. So I appreciate that. And then finally, I just wanted to say, um, a special, uh, sort of extension of gratitude to the administration for addressing some safety concerns in a couple of areas that I brought to their attention over the past couple of weeks. So really appreciate the hard work.

Thanks.

Member McDonough. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, It is very, very hard to reconcile that tomorrow the school's open, like kids are going to be in the hallways, um, and that myself, the last time I unlocked my classroom for students was about 6 years ago now. Um, so as much as this, um, new journey and the board governance is its own task, um, my heart will be with the kids tomorrow. My appreciation to the administration for really looking more closely at, at that listening aspect of our responsibility of running a district for so many thousands of people.

And so I'll, I'll end on also Member Lesson's use of the word extended dialogue, but to make this condensed, I appreciated the administration saying that here's how we're going to listen. Um, I also caught that the, the superintendent said, um, you know, this won't involve like more decision-making power, and, and ultimately that's because it's not his to prescribe. I would encourage those of us as we visit schools, as we look at, um, these communities that we serve, we examine how we have consolidated power And as this listening effort undergoes, that we also consider where can we let go and actually assign power back to the schools, because they are starving for agency and they are starving for the ability to respond. And I think that the dialogues that are going to emerge to the superintendent are going to be very impassioned, and, and it's going to then be our duty to hear people and say we don't need to take control of that anymore. It could be something that we let go of.

But again, my heart will be in schools tomorrow. I hope to be able to pop into, um, you know, the schools close to me. And thank you all for a long and very spirited evening today. Member Bellamy.

Just have a very good first day of school tomorrow, everybody. Member Blakeslee. Yes, yes, likewise. Um, happy first day of school tomorrow. That's crazy.

And, um, thank you to the entire administration who's stayed here very late with us answering a lot of questions. I do really appreciate all of your hard work, so thank you. Member Wilson, welcome back to our, our staff, our students, our families. Oh, and, and that's all I've got. I know everybody was ready to go home.

We have an early day. I'll close our comments tonight by echoing the excitement for tomorrow and thanking our students, families, and educators in advance for what I'm sure is going to be a successful and probably if we're honest, hectic and crazy first day. But before I close my comments tonight, we have someone else to celebrate. Steve, if you would just come forward just a little bit, um, maybe to where the prior celebration was, just so you're on camera. Um, I can't let you go without it.

Steve Brown is retiring at the end of this month after more than 22 years with the Anchorage School District, which means tonight is his final school board meeting unless someone wants to schedule a special meeting.

If you know Steve, he's the guy you call when something needs to be done, and chances are he already knows about the problem before you call him. Since 2004, Steve has helped make our schools safer and better prepared. He built strong partnerships with law enforcement and emergency responders, strengthened emergency preparedness across our our schools, helped launch STOP-IT, and raised the bar for school resource officers. Beyond all that, Steve has simply been someone we could count on. For more than two decades, he has answered the call, solved problems, and taken care of Team ASD.

Steve, 22 years is an incredible legacy of service. We're grateful for you. We're going to miss you, and we hope retirement includes a lot fewer phone calls. Congratulations and thank you for everything. Or if you would join me in a round of applause, Please.

All right, please, board members, please check your emails for that upcoming daily special meeting until the end of the month. Um, with that said, is there a motion to adjourn? Move adjourn. Second. Made by Wilson, seconded by McDonough.

Seeing no opposition, we are adjourned at 10:42. Thank you, everyone. Requesting.