Anchorage School Board: 06/05/2026: ASD School Board Municipality Joint Meeting

All right. Good morning, everyone. We're going to call this joint school board assembly meeting to order. Today is Friday, June 5th, at 10:11am Ms. Sullivan, could we have a roll call for our school board, please?

Member blakesley. Here. Member higgins.

Present. Member McDonough. Here. Member Wilson. Here.

Member Bellamy might be joining us later. And Member Lessons is traveling. President Jacobs. Present. Chair.

You have a form. Thank you. Chair Brawley. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll for the assembly?

Member Hand.

Here. Member Martinez. Present. Member Gerker. Here.

Member Silvers. Here. Member Prez Radia. Chair Brawley. Here.

Vice Chair Boland. Happy to be here. Member Baldwin Day. Present. Member Scout.

About to walk in here.

Member McCormick. Member Park? Here. Member Johnson. Here.

Chair. You have a quorum. Okay. We have a quorum of members. Chair Brawley, would you please lead us in the flag salute and then read our land acknowledgment?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Mr. President. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And reading the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that we gather here today on the traditional lands of the Denina people of Upper Cook Inlet. For thousands of years, the Denina 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 and learn in our community.

Thank you. Or on B1. Approval of the 3-20-26 meeting minutes.

Those minutes.

For members. Those minutes are attached to your agenda.

Going to give folks just a minute to read those and note any corrections before we move on. Consider those as adopted.

Okay. Seeing no member wishing to modify our minutes, Vice Chair Bowman. Move to adopt the minutes. Second. Motion made and seconded to adopt.

Is there any opposition to adopting the minutes of the March 2026 meeting? Okay. Those are considered adopted back to our agenda. Item C1 is approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as drafted?

Move to approve. Second motion made by Chair Brawley. Seconded by Vice Chair Voland. Is there discussion?

Member Scouts.

Someone on the right. Thank you. Through the chair, I'd like to add a. I'd like to move to amend the agenda. Can I do that while a motion is on floor? Okay.

I'd like to move to amend the agenda. Add Right sizing as a topic as under. Let's see. This looks different than the agenda I saw in advance, but I would like to add. Right sizing as a topic above the street maintenance conversation that we have planned for today.

Second,.

There's a motion to add right sizing as H2.

Motion was made by assembly member Scout and seconded by board member Higgins.

Is there objection to doing so?

Seeing none, the agenda is amended for as a housekeeping item for newer members. You can enter the queue by hitting the right button on your microphone and that will indicate that you are interested in speaking. Is there any opposite? We've adopted the amendment to the agenda. Is there any further discussion or amendments to the agenda?

Seeing none and seeing no opposition, the agenda is adopted as amended.

Moving on to public participation, item D. We have two testifiers signed up. You are welcome to approach our table here to my left. And you will have three minutes to testify. Our first speaker today is William Baxter.

Foreign.

Baxter. And I Got this Forage FFA Livestock Auction 5th September. I've been on this. I went to that auction last year and a. A turkey went for five, six hundred dollars.

And they also do add ons. Like I do a add on. And that was. That was not included the add ons. And they also do a. Palmer High School does a auction before that.

And. And they they off FFA at Palmer High School. And what was nice about that at auction, they have animals too. They auction off animals. They also auction off art and other things the kids do.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I want to note for our record that member Bellamy joined us at 10:14am Our second testifier today is James Johnston. You come forward. You can have three minutes.

Welcome.

Hi, my name is James. I have three children in ASD. I moved to Alaska in 2015 as I was lucky enough. My internship from Ireland took me here to work for Hope Community Resources. During that time, you know, I met my wife and it took seven, seven years since getting married to get my United States citizenship.

So I was very happy in 2021 to get my United States citizenship. However, I'm talking here today about the biometric scanning in the ASD schools. As grown up in England, Ireland, my education wasn't that great. I have dyslexia, I have adhd. And one of the things I consider it is to be a barrier to people with disabilities.

And also, like as I mentioned, you know, coming from Ireland, my mom comes over regularly to visit grandchildren and like, if there's things on at the schools and stuff, like, well, she doesn't have an American id, right? So how is she meant to scan in to that system? I myself, many times I forgot to bring my id If I need to like one strapping off the kids if I need to go in and whatnot. Also as I mentioned you know being from another country originally, you know I see this as a barrier to like undocumented families. You know they have kids in this school system.

They they want to be heavily participated with their kids education as the kids have the you know the right and deserve for their parents to be able to be have their parents in the system right Doing doing things. And then of course it's a, a big what you call it barrier and you know like just the fact about like having the biometric scanning and database that it could become vulnerable to subpoena or hacking and yeah basically I'd like people to the assembly and the school board to take a hard look at how data harvesting and AI systems can threaten not just privacy but equal access to families and ask the assembly modernize this code a way that never shuts the doors on our families. Thank you and thank you for your testimony. Completes our public participation list for today.

Move on to our section E Financial planning budget legislative update bond and levy. That is a school district added topic. Dr. Bryant. Thank you Mr. President. I'll hand it off to our Chief Financial Officer Mr. Andy Radliff.

All right, thank you. For the record I'm Andy Ralph. I'm the CFO for the district and just going to go through a few slides that show what really kind of happened to Juneau. What the ultimate outcome was. You know you see a lot of changes and bills happening pretty fast but this is really about how we ended the year through the legislative process.

So far they're still in special session but they're not taking up education related items at the time. First the HB 263 is the state operating budget included. 144 Million ish for in one time funding for statewide for schools from that ASD would receive approximately five and a half million dollars for energy relief. The way they calculate that energy relief is based on the amount of energy cost per their state chart of accounts proportionate to all the other districts in the state. So it's not necessarily a measure of students.

It's a measure of how much we've spent on energy. They put money into the pot and we get a share of that. The next piece that would be in there is about 32 million in one time funds but that's contingent upon the ending FY26 state revenue. And this is where it gets a little tricky. So I put the actual language in the that was in the bill on here.

But the gist of this is if the state exceeds $6.3 billion in revenue as of June 30, 2026, it'll first, the excess amount will first go to pay energy relief dividends through the permanent fund. And then the next piece of it, the 115 million goes to school districts. The kind of hang up on this is it's determined by the commissioner of revenue on August 31, 2026. So we don't know how much or if we're going to get this money until after the schools year has started. So it makes it incredibly difficult to really get high, like high quality staff in place in kind of when we already have these class sizes set.

This class is going.

There's probably other folks that can speak more eloquently to the issues that that causes. But that's one of the, one of the things we're seeing in this bill is the timing on it is we're not going to know how much money we're going to have for quite a while. The board did direct the administration and the school board president to come up with a resolution or a letter to send to the state urging, urging expediency on that calculation so we can know sooner rather than later. But this is the way that the bill is written. Is there any questions on your comments on this piece of it before we move along?

Member Baldwin, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Ratliff. One, one sort of housekeeping question. Do we have these slides available to us sometimes somewhere? I believe they're tied to board docs.

Okay, they're in board docs. Thank you. So. So you said that the timing could be potentially quite longer than much longer than we would like it to be. What is sort of the outside window that you're looking at?

What's the longest that this process could take? Honestly, this is the first time we've ever seen this type of language written into a bill. So I assume that sometime after August 31st is kind of. I don't know how long they would take them to actually notify districts. I just don't know.

Thank you, Member Blakesley. Yeah, I just going to add some additional context there that the, the deadline of August 31st essentially means that districts wouldn't get funding like likely until September, October, maybe November. And that funding would likely come in chunks. It wouldn't come all at once, which is the latest update that I have from Ledge Finance. And the only caveat that we have, sort of the hope that we have that even though The Department of Revenue doesn't have to actually tell us whether or not they have exceeded the state has exceeded the $6.3 billion oil revenue target.

They can they will likely know that information sooner because it's public data and it's based off of a year's average. So they could release that information about whether or not we've met exceeded that target prior to August 31st. But it is entirely up to the whims of the Department of Revenue and the commissioner about whether or not they would release that number prior to August 31st. And then the other, the other potential opportunity to know whether or not that number has been exceeded, you know, so that if any funds survive a potential gubernatorial veto, the alleged finance would likely have that data as well as the Department of Revenue, but again all dependent on whether or not they choose to release that information prior to the start of the school year and in a way that allows the district to even try to fill any positions which opening positions doesn't mean you can fill them.

Member McDonough, thank you. Through the President, I just want to two updates to the assembly that we discussed in finance that I think are very disheartening but important to this bill. If signed, which is still an if, then we heard from our senior director of management and budget. I think it's her title, Katie Parrott, who also serves as the president of ELASBO, the Alaska association of School Business Officials. Essentially Ms. Parrott categorized this fund as highly uncertain until it, until many conditions are met.

And her estimate of when we should be able to responsibly appropriate is as late as October and then that's giving money to the, the district to hire teachers which would then likely take another several weeks or months to even get teachers in. So this, this money is going to be very difficult to spend on our high priority targets and we are just essentially asking the community to be aware of when we are getting to appropriations of these funds. It will likely look like a priority list outside of our discussions just because spending money in October with only five months of the school year left is, is a very difficult task.

Mr. Relative, you can continue. Thank you. Good flag by members Blakesley and McDonough that this, this bill hasn't, these haven't been signed yet. Both of the bills almost discussed are still have been I believe the first, this one, I don't know if it's been transmitted to the governor yet.

I think it did. Right.

I don't know. It hasn't been transmitted yet. Okay. But that's HB 263. That's the operating budget.

HB 28 has been transmitted to the governor. It was done on the first. That contains energy rebates for FY28, which up to 100% of our energy costs which would be approximately 18 to 20 million dollars. There are a few new reporting and audit requirements that should be easy enough for us to meet. It also permits correspondent students to retain their materials that they bought through their allotments.

It allows school board members to be employed as substitutes in emergency circumstances and then update some school board member qualifications to involve no felonies of moral turpitude that haven't been unconditionally discharged over at least 10 years ago. There's a provision that allows for reopening of consolidated schools from. It changes the timeline of when you can reopen a school that you have consolidated from seven years to four years. So just kind of shortens that timeline. And then the biggest piece of this would be the required local contribution being capped at a 4% annual growth.

I believe this year for our 26, 27 fiscal years that was a little over 8% was the actual growth. The prior year was around 6 plus. But I'm going to walk through also how that, how we calculate that out and what changes that means for the district. And then lastly kind of creates this student loan repayment program for special education English language learners and STEM teachers not eligible for other repayment programs up to $5,000 per year. That's all managed to the state.

So the teacher would apply directly through the Department of Education or whoever they designate as the contact there to be able to get that. So it's not really an added administrative expense for the district as far as the required local contribution impact. What it would really do is for FY27, our next fiscal year, it would drop that by a little over $6 million. So our required local contribution would go down just based on how much it's gone up. And if it's capped at 4%, it's about $6.1 million different from currently.

That money could be then put into the additional discretionary contribution which we have headroom because we're well under the state cap at this point. As you recall, that 12 million dollar levy was about the way it was proposed, was about the difference in what the city's tax cap was and what the state's actual tax cap was. So then the state funding would actually go up by that 6.1 million. So it'd be a net increase to the district of about. Of that 6.1.

And really that's kind of predicated that the when the required local contribution goes up, the state's funding goes down dollar for dollar. So the inverse of that is true also in this RLC goes down, the state funding is going to go up to really how those calculations roll through. This is currently how we've proposed it. This is what was approved by the assembly in March. The ASDS tax cap portion at the top is about 248 million broken down into three categories.

This does not include debt service, but it's almost 139 million for the required local, 96 for the additional and then about 13 million for transportation is how it's broken down. About 235 million goes into our general fund. When we calculate out the state cap, the state cap for the general fund is about a little over 247 million. So the difference between that and the 235 million in general funds equals that state cap headroom that you see at the bottom, about 12 million. And again that's was kind of the impetus for the that tax levy under HB28 and the 4% cap.

Those same numbers apply that we showed on the previous slide where the required local contribution go down general, the additional goes up. And we still have the same amount of money from the city, but the state money's gone up. So that's where the additional 6.1 million comes from.

And then for the rest of that, for 27, you know, if that's was applied, the actual state cap headroom would actually go down by that 6.1 million and leaving some about 6.1 remaining.

Looking forward to how that would impact FY28. I've highlighted a couple of cells on this one because these are assumptions. I don't know the what they're actually going to be. The tax cap that's predicated on about a 3% increase in the ASD tax cap. The required local contribution is estimated at 6%.

Again, I don't have other than just kind of the trending data, I don't have a whole lot of information to back that up. But just kind of give you the context of what, what could happen if, if these numbers are relatively close.

So this is current based on our current situation. If it keeps going down that road, you know, we expect the tax cap to or the required local contribution to grow by, you know, another eight or nine million dollars there, which would reduce our capacity by about $900,000. You see kind of at the bottom there that 891,000 of our ability to collect additional local revenue. So similar to this year where the tax collection, the actual required local grew faster than our portion of the tax gap and we had to short that additional allowable contribution again. So similar situation could happen in 28 if that required local contribution goes up by about 6% under that HB28 and the RLC, the 4% cap limits that growth and it really would provide an additional.

You know, the punchline really is this kind of $2 million at the bottom would be the additional we could collect through the additional local contribution. And then our state cap headroom would go to about $4 million, which would be the delta between what we calculate as the municipal tax cap for our portion and the state's cap.

That's what I have for the RLC changes. If there's any questions on that piece of it.

All right, move on, Mr. Ratliff. Chebrali, thanks. Yeah, just a, not a question, but just to note, I know we have these two items on the agenda. I think we also have a very brief presentation from OMB which is why Ms. Brous is here. But I'll just note this is a topic that I think we need to continue discussing as we move into the budget cycle.

So this is really just informational and. Yeah. So we can, we can dig into it more today. But just to say this is not the only time you're going to hear about it. Yeah, we'll definitely bring back more information once we won.

If the bill gets signed or passes, then we'll definitely dig into this more. We did get about 20.7 million in the state capital budget. It covered our the top 33 projects that were submitted to the state for Anchorage. That includes the projects listed below. All of these projects have been completed.

Grasd when we submit for reimbursement in state, we, we always use our completed projects. Those have the most high likelihood of success. But that would be 20.7 million for capital projects for the district. And then there was some other bills for instructional programming and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those. Some of them have minimal impact on the district.

Some, some of them are still going to develop the regulations like in the curriculum, like the cpr. And then there are a couple other ones that even had kind of less extent for the district, like the definite hard of hearing education. We already do the things that are required in there. So there's a lot of things that have changed. But that's kind of the, that's a short list of them.

So kind of open that up to comments. Member McDonnell. Thank you, Mr. President. Just a quick question. On the bottom of the slide on SB214 it says there's we've been awarded under this the Senate bill 3.35 million for the replacement of the Campbell Roof.

Could administration explain that given the fact that we've we've chosen for the school to be an excise or an excess. Sure. And that's predicated that we submitted these projects that have been completed. So Campbell Roof was completed. We submitted that for reimbursement.

So because we could we did.

See no other comments, Mr. Ratliff.

All right. Well, that's the rest of mine. I am going to pull up the slides for the city next.

So we'll move on to item E2, overview of required local contribution and tax cap projections. Chair Brawley. Yeah, thank you. I will turn it to Ms. Browse for a brief presentation, but I think this was just a note. This was a request of the mayor and administration to give a picture of what the RLC and tax cap impacts look like on our side.

Through the chair. Thank you. Ona Brauss, Office of Management and Budget Director for the Municipality of Anchorage. Thanks for inviting us here to have this very quick conversation. I think we have already had some very successful side conversations in this room that will lead us to additional collaborative conversation over the next couple of months to work to improve the circumstances for the funding on the ASD side.

Can we go to the next slide?

So this is just the the overall picture of the municipal tax cap. What is the tax cap? When did it happen? Why did it happen? What's the impact of it to the ASD budget and the Muni budget?

The Anchorage tax cap is a charter mandated limit on the total amount of property tax revenue the municipality can collect each year. The tax cap is a ceiling on overall collections. It's not a limit on an individual tax bill or to an individual entity. It is the amount of taxes we can collect of a certain color on a year over year basis with very specific growth factors involved. It came into effect because of the large amounts of state funding that was coming into the municipality in the early 80s and the fluctuation of that money leaving the property taxpayers at the local level sort of on the hook for the year over year change at a magnitude that people were not comfortable with.

So this clipping on the side of the presentation is from the newspaper and it was an advertisement that was specifically to educate the public to show what the difference would be between the 1983 budget and the 1984 budget with the tax cap in place and without a tax cap. So when you look at the top line that's or the second line that says local property taxes in 1983, you see that the local property tax collection was $49 million. And before the tax cap was put into place, the property taxes collected in the following year was going to be $77.6 million. But with a tax cap in place, the collections were going to be $60 million. And you can see the sort of cascade on the other fund sources there.

The state government was going from $66 million down to $52.7 million. Federal government declined slightly and we ended in the proposal with a 1983 budget of $193.5 million versus a tax cap limited at 1-81-point million. So the point of it was to say we need to figure out how to spend smooth and sort of stabilize the impact on local property taxes and local taxes collected while these other fund sources are coming in and providing us with additional money to be part of the system historically. The next slide please. The municipal this.

Sorry, it's tiny, but this is the municipal tax cap calculation page. This is in our budget book and it has many components of different kinds of taxes and different kinds of adjustments that lever the tax cap up or down in a year over year basis taxes within the tax cap include the property taxes, real and personal property taxes, auto tax, tobacco tax, the motor vehicle rental tax, the fuel excise tax, the gas tax, the payment in lieu of taxes from the state and federal governments, and Musa and MESA which are the municipal property tax assessments on our utilities and enterprises. The other sort of more flexible numbers in our tax cap adjustments are the five year rolling cpi, the inflation average, a five year rolling average of the MOA population and that increases or decreases there voter approved bonds and ballot measures and the operations and maintenance costs associated with those new construction valuations, judgments and legal settlements and recovering the cost of those on a year over year basis. Debt service and any emergency ordinances and costs associated with emergency ordinances declared by the assembly and all of those combined can change the tax cap to the positive to the negative. It depends on what direction we're going in, but for the most part it is always up because that is how inflation works.

So when we are dealing with the smoothing impact of the 5 year rolling CPI now it's much better than pre2010 when that smoothing average did not was not in place and so there were swings up and down and they were. There were choices at the local government level between what number to start with and how we would start with that number. So 2010 sort of established this new baseline. Any questions? Next slide.

This is the detail of the component pieces that we just talked about. So this is the muni tax cap and the sort of yearly changes that we see. You see the top number is the tax limit base. Then we add the multiplier of the CPI rolling average, the multiplier of the population population rolling average and all of the dollar values of the new construction, the judgments and settlements, debt service, emergency ordinances, et cetera. Those are one time and they come in and out on an annual basis at the rates that they are determined on an annual basis.

So essentially every year you start new with last year's number and then all the other numbers are different than they were the prior year, usually. The next slide please. The school district side of the tax cap is calculated slightly differently. It is all part of the property tax total that we are allowed to collect in a year over year basis. But the ASD tax cap only comes from the property taxes within the municipality and the levers on the funding from local government on the ASD side, more limited.

So there are no other taxes as part of their their tax cap calculation. We do use the same CPI average, but it is multiplied by the ASDs prior year tax base. It is not multiplied by the MoA's prior year tax base. So it is relative to itself in its growth. You see on ASD's calculation, their CPI multiplier nets them an additional $6 million in the next year.

Whereas our multiplier would be multiplied by a different number tax base on the muni side. And then combined they are the total tax limit, but they are not, we are not one combined number that then gets split out separately each year. We can share funding if that is possible as long as we are not getting up to the limit that the state requires us to stay under. And as far as I know, I think that for the most part the municipality has always been able to fund the required local contribution and the up to the maximum of the optional contribution as well. Up until this past year when we have reached the ceiling, as we have reached the ceiling on a lot of our other funding mechanisms.

Next slide. Could we jump in? Member Brawley has a question. Yeah, do you mind flipping back to. I think it's slide 10 really quick.

I just want to underscore a real basic point that appears to be in both of the tax caps, which is that we cut the budget when we lose population. And that's not a choice. So I want to point out here, five year average, it's still, it's, it's nominally, you know, it's looks like flat and then both of them combined. So obviously inflation has been high, so it kind of comes out in the wash, so to speak. And then if you go to the slide after that, you'll notice still population, five year average negative.

So again, as we lose population, we have to cut the budget. We don't have a choice about that.

Okay, so the, the, this is the detail on the ASD tax app. We just sort of walked through the different changes. But it's, it's calculated similarly. We start with the previous year total number after debt service has been backed out because debt service comes in and goes out every single year based on what is requ to be paid for debt service that can change on an annual basis and whatever that total is is allowed to be charged to the property taxpayers because it was voter approved. So, you know, I think last year's debt Service number was 28 million or something closer, close to that.

And then this year is 34 and maybe next year is a different number. But the municipality has the same sort of pattern in its debt service as well. The, the ASD tax cap does not grow at the same amount or rate that the municipal tax cap does because it is multiplied by its own relative starting number. That does not mean again that any flavor of funding or property taxes couldn't be shared. But the practice of the year over year basis on how we have calculated these numbers is using each individual baseline as its starting point.

The MOA and the ASD use a different property valuation number than the state does. So we have a total assessed value and the state uses the full value determination, which is much larger than our actual property tax base number that we use because it includes a number of variables that we do not tax. So part of the exploration of what do all of these things mean and how can they be adjusted into the future are what is included in the full value determination? Should it be there? Should we be accepting those numbers as they are being put forward by the state?

Should it be different? And I think early investigation into that says, yeah, maybe we're looking into that to figure out exactly what that looks like. But the example of how that full value determination number versus our total assessed value number impacts the budget is I think the next slide. And Nolan can take this one. Nolan Cloud, a policy director in the mayor's office and so what you can see here, and actually the key is a little bit covered up there, but that yellow line on top is the highest one that's spiking.

At the end there is the full value determination that the required local contribution is based on. So full value determination, and it's a different number than what, what we report for our local taxable base in the municipality because the state makes some adjustments to that. They take away any optional exemptions, like your residential exemption, for example. They also add in things that we aren't taxing. Like a big category happens to be vehicles.

We don't charge a property tax on vehicles, but the state adds that to our assumed property tax base. Nobody in the state that I'm aware of actually puts a property tax on vehicles, but it's still sort of held against us. Then the required local contribution is calculated as a mil rate on that total. So it's 2.65. But when it actually gets applied to our smaller tax base, it ends up being a bigger number.

And so the, the bottom line that you see there, it is actually our local taxable base. So you can see it's always lower. And then the orange line is the total is the amount of property or amount of taxes collected, ASD and the moa. And what you can see at the end there is that, is that the full value determination, the last couple of last two years especially went up much faster than our, than the total amount of taxes collected because they are working in different ways. The full value determination really doesn't have much to do with what we are actually able to tax.

There's kind of an assumption in the formula that the higher your full value is, you must have more taxing capacity up to that point. But that's really not the case. What that full value determination is really reflecting and why it's growing a lot is because of having a constrained housing market, housing prices going up. It's not about new growth in our community because we're not growing in terms of population. And so sometimes there's an assumption behind that number going up, meaning that you're just doing better off, that you're better off overall.

But, but it, it, it. So the. So and then on the next slide just show the, the full value determination. The. That's the percent change over the year prior.

So, so you can see at the end there where it went up over 8%. That was the, for the, for. That's the 2025 full value determination, which is used for the 2627 school year. I think is how, is how it works out went up over 8%. What that for that, that dotted line there is, is the 4% required local contribution cap.

That's in HB28. You can see that, that, that would it actually most years in that period of time that's, that's. I think it's almost 18 years or so. Most years the required local contribution and the full value termination didn't grow by as much as 4%. But when it does, it creates sort of havoc in our budget.

Right. Because our tax cap works on a very smoothing kind of a basis. Right. Everything's on a five year average of population and inflation and it's last year's amount. So it moves very slowly and very gradually.

Whereas that required local contribution can really spike and create a sudden case where there's $11.2 million that is due more than last year. And when we pay that, it's not new money that helps schools. It just means that the state reduces their contribution by 11.2 million. And in fact it actually makes it harder for us to contribute optionally and locally to schools. And so that's why this became an important part of our legislative efforts was to secure some kind of, some kind of relief on the required local contribution, both for the sake of, you know, of putting our taxpayers on the hook, but also so that we could, you know, actually contribute to schools without having that required local contribution sort of cannibalize what we can put in for our optional limit.

And that's the end of these slides, I believe. There's a question from member Handlen. Could you go back to the ASD calculation there? This one here. So just wanted to clarify.

So on the population numbers here, this is the population of Anchorage for calculating. The asd, not the population of the school. Correct. Through the chair. Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. I will wrap it up by saying I think that we have started a very good conversation here that will involve a lot more collaboration over the next couple of months, but may end us in a much better position than we currently are. Chair Brawley. Yeah, just a quick question to put it. So right now there's, there's two paths.

One, this bill that includes this item. Well, I guess that's a question. So this a bill cannot be line item vetoed. Correct. It's all or nothing.

I believe that's the case. I think that's right. Okay. So yeah, so this will either stand this 4% cap or it won't. If it stands, I just want to again kind of summarize so what would be the.

If it stands and it's the 4% cap, what is the amount that we would be in excess of of our local cap Right now in terms of, you know, as we just talked about, pits one against the other, essentially. So if, if it stands, what does that number, that bottom line number? And then if it is vetoed for some reason, what is the kind of baseline number that we would be looking. At at this time through. Through the chair?

I believe Mr. Ratliff had those numbers, I think. Did you have those in your slides? Yeah, I know we saw them. I just want to again, like, underline them before we move on. Right.

So the, the 4% cap, that's about $6.1 million to us. The other piece in that specific bill was the, the funding for energy relief, subject to appropriation, of course, in 2028. We wouldn't have it for next year, but the following year, between 18 and 20 million if it's funded. Okay. No, I guess I'm asking more specifically.

If the 4% cap is in place, then you're saying that there's 6 million in excess that we would not either be able to give to schools or that we would have to cut out of city services, Is that correct? No, ma'. Am. We would just get an additional 6 million from the state under that scenario for 27. It just kind of shifts the categories that the city's already approved between the required local contribution and that additional local contribution.

Okay. And then if that bill is vetoed, then what is the impact or what would we be looking at without that cap in place? Then? It's just really what we've, what we've approved thus far. So.

Okay, thank you.

We'll go to member Scuttle. Thank you. Through the chair. I'm just. I think this actually feels germane to the current conversation, but backing up in the budget a little bit.

Item E1, we had budget, legislative update, bond and levy. Has there been a discussion in this joint group about the bond and levies that were just on the ballot,.

Dr. Bryant? Sure, through the chair. So we've not had a formal post bond and levy discussion with this group, and that's certainly something that we can do. The first step for me was to work with Alaska Survey Research to conduct a survey that was done community wide. We did share that data with the school board at our communications committee meeting.

I actually do have a copy here today, and it's something that we can continue to talk about, if not today, in future meetings. There's a lot of great insights in that data. Great. Thank you. I would love that.

Member Blakesley, Just a quick clarification. So the 6.1 million if this bill passes, and the 6.1 million that would. Come from the state,.

That is, if the state chooses to fund it or there would be required to provide it. It's not that it shifts the burden to the state. And the state can then say, we're not going to provide that funding for education. It's. They're required to provide that funding.

Correct. That's in statute. And I think that amount would actually be exact, per the statute. Okay, thank you.

Okay. Seeing no other comments, that completes. Mr. Chair, may I ask a question? Dr. Bryant may ask a clarifying question.

So I'm operating under the assumption, let's say, that the bill were to be vetoed and that there would be the possibility of the municipality approving up to about 12 million. Is that correct, Mr. Ratliff? So I guess what I need to communicate to my community is to what extent can we rely on the municipality to fund that? If it's not $12 million, what is feasible? And I only ask this if it can't be answered today.

There's an urgent need to plan for FY28, and every dollar that's not received by the district will result in additional cuts. So I need to communicate transparently and honestly for what the resources will be for the Anchorage School District. And it's highly likely this bill could be vetoed for a number of reasons.

Thank you, Dr. Bryant. Through the chair, I would say that based on the timing of how all of these dates fall down, the municipality being able to produce $12 million between now and next April is relatively limited outside of a special voter approved ballot question or additional revenue coming into the city in some way. Because we set the tax cap and collect the taxes. We set the tax cap in April and collect the taxes starting in June, which means that that process for this year is already underway. We do have a very tricky note on that, and that is that the city runs on a calendar year and the state and the school district run on a fiscal year.

And so when we do our tax collections on an annual basis, we collect the lived first half of the school district and the soon to be second half of the school district. And so there is the opportunity for additional FY26 27 funding to potentially be available in next year's collection. But that all depends on how the cap calculations work and all the other additive variables under the tax cap. Thank you. If I may Ask a follow up question, Dr. Bryant.

So again, this is a very urgent matter and for transparency. I had not seen this presentation until right now, so I'm kind of processing, processing in lifetime. But I would like to hear from the municipality whether it would be accurate to say that the mayor's office will not be recommending fully funding to the local contribution. And what would that number be so that we can transparently communicate our budget planning?

Yes, through the chair to Dr. Bryant. I think that there's a lot of variables that we don't have all the full information about. I think that it is the intent of the mayor to put as much toward education as we can. And I think that, that you know, historically we want to, we've funded up to the cap that's allowable in state statute. We would love to be at the point where we are doing that.

Again, we are not at a stage where we have all the information to be able to say definitively that we. Can do that last follow up. So can we definitively say it will not be $12 million.

Through, through the chair to Dr. Bryant? I, I am not confident as confident in those, in those numbers. I don't, I don't know what the exact dollar amount is. Is going to be. You know, I defer to, you know, the numbers that Mr. Ratliff had shared.

But I, so I don't know. Thank you. And I'll just close by saying that there's an urgent need for the district to understand the full picture of a revenue. Every dollar that's not received will be a painful reduction that will need to be imposed upon the community. I'd also like to transparently share that ASD anticipates a $40 million structural deficit on top of the $90 million that were already reduced.

And once we get through that $40 million structural deficit, we'll have another $30 million to reduce from our budgets. From there, every dollar truly matters. And it's going to take the collective teamwork of this group to determine a way to fund our schools adequately. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bryant.

I saw Member McDonough. Then we'll go to Chair Brawley. Yeah, I just through the President and for the. On the uncertainty of the governor signing this omnibus bill that would establish the 4% RLC cap, we were briefed in committee, in Finance Committee that this bill received 51 affirmative votes and nine negative votes. So at least if that vote count were to continue into a special session for an override, that's way over the threshold of an override I, I don't many days wonder if the governor knows how to sign a piece of paper.

But even if he chooses not to, I, I do have some confidence that this particular omnibus bill and the provision for RLC was almost universally supported by Anchorage's community and that our legislatures will step up and be able to perform that override that just changes our timelines in a very uncertain way.

Chair Brawlia yeah, thanks. I know the question from the superintendent was really directed at the mayor's office who is the, the folks who write the first draft of the budget. But I will also say I certainly cannot speak on behalf of the Assembly. We have not taken up this item but we have two opportunities up front. I will note in the past the assembly has passed basically budget guidance resolutions so those are not binding to the mayor.

But it is a way to communicate what our priorities are are up front. We have not had that conversation. We typically have it in the summer. It comes through the Budget and Finance Committee. My intent is to bring that up in, in our June meeting which is coming up I believe next, no, two weeks from now.

And then also the other opportunity is that we are the final say on the budget. And so you know, when we vote in November, starting with the mayor's draft budget. And so I to the question about the municipality, I can't make commitments at this time. I am not empowered to do that until we take a position. But I do know that this is going to be certainly a topic of discussion.

So just for members to think about on on our side of the fence whether we want to weigh in on in on that or not and then ultimately that will be our decision in. The end in November. I'll enter the queue and appreciate the comments by the assembly chair just to urge consideration for the assembly to weigh in on fully funding ASD in FY28 and FY27.

Knowing where the assembly stands on continuing to invest to the local maximum contribution I think would be a good and helpful indicator for our board as we enter our budget process this fall. With that said, I think we've completed E1 and E2. E3 is a 02673. I believe this is an assembly driven item. Chair Brawley thank you.

This item is on our agenda for Tuesday, June 9th. So I will also remind members the public hearing has not been opened or closed and so we are not here to debate. Typically these meetings we don't debate so we treat this more like a work session. So I requested that this item be placed on the agenda since it does have to do with school bonds from prior years. So the intent was just to ask for a really brief informational presentation.

So I don't know if that's coming from Mr. Ratliff. And again, just so we understand, because I think two things are true. One, this is on our agenda and refers to prior year bonds and we did not pass a bond this year. So to be clear for the public, you know, what is this for? And that it is not obviously something that was on the ballot this year.

Thank you. Through the president, Member Brawley. I don't have a presentation. I wasn't really aware I needed to do one for this. But the impetus behind this is really that when we go out and, you know, the voters approve bonds, we sell those incrementally over time.

So this is really the sale of what the board or the voters have already approved. Some of these bonds go back to 2012 and 13. And I think that may have triggered some of this conversation, which I'd like to explain that a little bit more because that's getting pretty old. Prior to 2015, there was a state bond debt reimbursement program where they would pay 60 to 70% of the bond debt. So once these programs are closed out, we can go back and reallocate that money, which it's about a million and a half in total between the two, or about a little less than a percent and a half of the total value of those propositions.

So we can go and actually get DEED to approve us to use those funds on projects that would still be compliant with the original intent of those propositions or under the same criteria. And that's we can get tax or state reimbursement instead of putting that full value to the Anchorage taxpayers. The state will still reimburse 60 to 70% on these two projects. But really this is just selling the authorization that's already given to us by the voters.

Chair Brawley. Yeah. Thank you. Just a quick follow up then. So essentially some of these were before the 10 year moratorium on school bond debt reimbursement.

And I think what I'm hearing you say is even if the funding is not utilized. Well, I guess that's the question. Is this funding for a project that was completed and then some of that bond capacity was not used, or is it that maybe the project itself is moot and so it's being reallocated to a different use, but still within the bounds that it could be reimbursed? Just trying to understand. Yeah, I believe all the projects on the original propositions were completed and this is the remaining money that can be reallocated.

Kind of the delay is figuring out or finding a project actually fits in that criteria for that 60 to 70% reimbursement so we can maximize their value to our taxpayers.

Believe that completes E3 of chair brilliant. Mr. President, I would like to move to change the order of the day. I'll explain two things. One is to move up the winter maintenance item H2 before the new item that we added. Right sizing H3.

And then the other one is to amend the item H3, right sizing and to add the phrase and results of 2026 bond and levy. And I can explain.

Second. Second by member Bell one day chair. Bralia yeah, two different things. One is moving up the winter maintenance. I think that one is a brief informational item and the intent is to start that conversation and then move it to another venue.

So I think we can get, get done with that one pretty quickly. The other one is I think there, there is some interest in discussing this bonded levy. And I believe, I think probably in a broad sense those items are related. So I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to talk about those.

Is there any opposition to moving H2 which is right sizing to H3 and then adding bond and levy to that item?

Seeing none, the agenda is amended and we'll move on to H1 student voter registration. Chair Brawley, thank you. This is also a brief one. It was on our march agenda for folks who were not here in March. So this was an effort, joint effort between the school district and the municipality and also our three former youth representatives to really prioritize youth voter folks who are turning 18 within the school district voter registration.

And so there was a push in March. I know we, I don't remember how many folks were registered, but it was successful. And of course there's not school in session right now, but wanting to make sure that we are continuing this effort into the fall. As we know, you know, there'll be a crop of folks turning 18 before our November election. So.

So I don't know if anybody from the school district would like to comment. I know our youth, prior youth members are very interested in that and made a recommendation. We don't have any youth members right now, but just again wanting to make sure that that conversation continues.

Dr. Bryant, any comments from administration? I don't have any comments. Mr. Tim, do you have any comments? We look forward to continuing the collaboration. Excellent.

Okay, that completes item H1. We'll go to H2 winter maintenance and snow Plowing coordination. Chair Brawley. Thank you. Yeah.

This item was added at the request of the administration and so I will turn it to, I believe, Muni manager Wynt Pearson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Chair, I actually do have some slides that because I'm less familiar with this system, I'm not sure where they are living virtually and how I access them.

Oh, perfect. Thank you. Apologies. This is my first, my first slide presentation here, so I had to learn a new system.

While we're waiting for them, I can just tee up a little bit of what I'm going to talk about today. This is a relatively brief update. I know the weather today definitely doesn't make it feel like the time when we should be thinking about snow removal. But this is actually for us at the municipality, the perfect time to start thinking operationally about any kinds of changes, alterations, tweaks or improvements we'd like to make for the next snow season. So we're looking ahead to 2026 and 2027 at this point to the next snow season and thinking about whether there's any kinds of changes we want to, we want to make.

And so my goal today is threefold. I want to give just a really quick update on The Snow Season 2025, 26, the framework of talking about the many things that we have been trying to improve at the municipality with respect to our snow removal operations since the administration came into office in 2024. For those members of the assembly who were at the last transportation committee, much of this will be a rerun from that presentation. From there, I want to segue into a quick preview of what we can all expect from additional changes from the municipality to our overall snow program, including how we plow, who does it, how we communicate about it. And then I want to tee up a few opportunities for collaboration with the school district, most of which we've already discussed and are actively discussing with the school district's leadership.

I just want to service them here for these, this joint bodies visibility and that. I actually have two new ideas on there that I was was hopeful we could continue to workshop in concert with the school district around our shared goal of keeping kids in school as often as possible, even in a winter city when we experience weather events. So the slide that's up on the screen right now is just that quick recap from 2025, 2026 and as a refresher, when the LaFrance administration came into office, we were charged with the question of how can we improve our snow Removal operations. Can we get back to the 72 hour standard that the municipality met for snow plow events when we had. When we were differently resourced about 15 years ago.

And so we've been working to pull every lever that we can to make more snow storage available, to get more people employed, to work as operators and to have more equipment available in the. All in pursuit of the goal and also to find other efficiencies in our operations. All with the goal of improving that plow of time, which again has an intersection here with this joint body because of its impact impact on schools being able to be open. So a few numbers from 25, 2026, we were able to purchase 11 new pieces of heavy snow removal equipment. That's as a result of the fleet levy that passed on the ballot in the spring of 2025.

We have 14 acres of new snow dump site available. Because of the new snow dump that was completed in the last year, we had a max 4% vacancy rate in our operators, which is a huge victory. That percentage vacancy rate was up at 3, 26% at its height in the last administration. We were able to do that through a combination of wage changes and also creative thinking in our department about how to structure those positions and a growth path within that career trajectory at the municipality. The next numbers are just to highlight that this was actually quite a severe winter.

So these benchmarks were met not simply in a. In a very slow. In a snow, sorry, slow snow winter, but in a very heavy snow winter. And that we had record breaking snow in January and we actually moved 700 million pounds of snow out of the municipality, hauled that much snow this winter. In that context, we did, for the first time in many years, achieve a sub 84 hour plow.

That's our current benchmark again, up from the 72 hours that it was about 15 years ago. And that bodes well for our ability to continue to shave away at that and make improvements in that number going forward. We also were particularly proud that we halved the amount of time it takes to plow sidewalks. The municipality. It's always an issue.

We don't plow all sidewalks in the municipality. We have a limited number that we plow. It had been taking us a projected 110 hours to meet that goal. Largely through looking at the map and more efficiently dividing the responsibility for that work between our street maintenance team and our parks and rec team, we've been able to have that amount. So that opens the question of are there more sidewalks we can do?

What should we do? Now that we have created some more capacity in our, in our sidewalk plowing team still to come. Oh, next slide please. Whoever is controlling those. Okay, so still to come, some things to expect in the next year.

We have a consultant team working on a non motorized snowmoval study right now which looks specifically at how we address sidewalks and non motorized pathways and what the part of that question is what would it cost for us to add certain high priority sidewalks to our portfolio of sidewalks that we plow? And the intersection here is that one of those major high priorities is if we could address all safe routes to school. The made the bulk of the safe routes to school that we are not currently plowing are in the Mountain View and Fairview neighborhoods. And so a real question is, is there a way for us to add more of those to our, to our portfolio of sidewalks? What would that the impact of that have on the potential to keep schools open in a snow event?

How much would that cost and how would again, whether that's something we could ever address. The second thing we expect to roll out in the next year is the addition of GPS trackers to our sanding fleet. We've found a lot of gotten a lot of really strong positive feedback on the visibility provided from our new tool that allows the public to track the progress of our plow fleet in real time. We find that even if we're not doing things perfectly, showing exactly what we're doing to the public and where and why and when has really helped with people's feelings of trust and the idea that something is being done. And so we want to add that also with our sanders, especially as we experience more ice events, we receive a lot of questions about is anyone sanding?

When are the sanders coming? Why are you not sanding in advance? And generally the answer is we are doing all of those things. But this will allow the public to see it in real time to see where we sand and when we sand and have that visibility. The final thing is we are working on and we'll be bringing to the assembly probably this summer a proposal to move some non labor funding to labor dollars.

We had our public works team do a comprehensive forward looking analysis of what it would take in capital and operating funds to move back to that 72 hour standard. The good news is we now have the capital funds available in the form of the proceeds from that heavy equipment levy. And this move would be to add more funds to the labor column to add more permanent operator positions and be able to move closer to that 72 hour target next Slide, please.

Okay, so my questions sort of our request for collaboration and again, these are things that we're already actively workshopping with ASD staff and we're thankful for the collaboration on this front. I just want to surface them for this joint body as we think about next snow season. The first question was can we create a set of designated snow routes to keep buses running on major roads, on arterials and collectors, or a set of major priority roads during a snow event? Scaling back the bus system to still provide busing, but not necessarily to have buses on every neighborhood street during a snow event. We understand from the district that there are some questions and concerns about whether regulations around special education busing would permit this.

But we're continuing to workshop the question. This is what we do with the people mover bus system when there is a snow event. We'll sometimes change routes in order to keep routes open and running, keep people able to access the system, even if we, even if there are limitations to the system's ability to operate. We've also started talking about that. We've also started a discussion about whether or not the district could close in zones.

And the district already does that with respect to the Girdwood school districts around the state do that, especially larger districts that are where they're, you know, schools may be in very, very different communities, very, very different weather systems. And so we workshopping the question of whether this might be something that works, acknowledging that our, our district is, our municipality is larger than the state of Rhode Island. So it's not. We aren't always experiencing the same weather in every portion of the municipality. Then there's this question of whether adding more seafronts to school to our plowing inventory would help keep schools open.

And we look forward, once we have the results of our study to talking with the school district about which sidewalks might be a priority. Could we change what we do in order to help keep those sidewalks clear and help keep kids with access to schools? And then finally we have some additional consulting resources. I've noted we have a consultant working on this Safe Routes to School and non motorized pathway project. We also could dedicate some of that consulting resource to looking specifically at the intersection between school districts and municipalities.

An idea we had of can we look at, you know, we have a very good sense of what other US Cities that are operating under the same legal frameworks we're all under operating under which of those those cities have the similar amount of days of weather pattern below zero degrees and a similar number of inches of snow and that's what we look at for comparables for a lot of our street maintenance items. We could also look to those cities to see if they're doing anything innovative in terms of the collaboration between. Between the school district and the municipality in aligning resources or in, you know, coordination of resources, all with a goal of how to keep, you know, keeping schools open whenever possible. So that's all I have. It's really just a surfacing of where we are update for this team and what we're talking about as we move toward our next snow season.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Chair. I see member Brawley or Chair Brawley in the queue. First,.

Thanks. First, just to note for the record that we were joined online by Assemblymember McCormick at about 1104 for our attendance purposes. And my just informational question. So does the Muni have designated snow routes? Now?

Because I. This. That phrase looks familiar to me, but it just occurred to me that maybe that's other cities I've lived in and I've seen those signs on the street, but I don't know if we have that. To the. To the chair.

Actually, that's a really good question. And you may be remembering the conversation we had. We actually amended, I think, a provision of total title 25 since, in the time that we've been in office to address. There is a. There is a previous provision in municipal code that addressed actually designated snow routes.

And in the 1980s, we signed snow routes. There's still some of the signs up around town. They're blue, they have a little snowflake on them. And at that time, municipality municipal code connected, had a set of designated snow routes where in the event of an emergency, the mayor could declare certain restrictions on those routes. And that was designed to provide, you know, access out of the city or home in the event of a very severe weather event.

That signage system kind of disintegrated since the 80s. It's not actually current. We have updated codes. So we do use the term snow route. So perhaps we should use a different term for this because we do use.

Use the term snow routes in school right now. Snow routes in code right now. And there I believe it's the reframing is that now the mayor can designate certain roads with certain amounts of publicity in advance. If there's a severe weather event, she has the power to declare via an emergency declaration, these routes are now snow routes. You can't park on these routes or you can't do certain things on them.

In the event of a very severe weather emergency. But it's a slightly different context that's really. We've reached the point of having to keep roads clear for urgent public safety reasons in the event of a very severe weather event. Very good question,. Vice Chair, volume.

Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate this conversation and its focus on increased opportunities for partnership between the school district and the municipality. And definitely would love to take this up further in the transportation committee that meets quarterly. And once we find a time and set that in stone, certainly the school district would be welcome to participate. We would love to have you.

I guess I just want to put a further stamp on the conversation around safe routes to schools in Mountain View and Fairview. Those are communities that I represent as part of North Anchorage District 1. They are underserved communities in many ways. They are also communities that have the. Some of the highest proportion of folks who don't own a vehicle.

And so families do use these sidewalks to commute to school. So anything we can do to enhance that and make those routes to school safer, certainly want to be supportive of. I would also flag another street in my district, which is Fireweed, and that connects residential neighborhoods to five schools. Granted, they are not all ASD schools, but I think those who have maybe driven along that street in the wintertime have seen the condition of those sidewalks and then the compounding factor of snow. And then lastly, I think the conversation around school closures by zones is very interesting, or even individual schools.

I remember as a kid growing up in Washington, Washington state, we would all watch the news, we would turn it on. We wake up early in the morning and we watch the ticker and it would show each school, you know, are they going to open late or are they going to be closed? And as a kid, you're watching hoping that your school will be chosen for a snow day. Right. Parent might feel differently, but so, yeah, certainly think that that's maybe a novel approach.

I think we've all maybe seen frustration on social media that happens when we have these, these snow closures. But also realizing these school districts, their, I guess, prerogative to maintain, maintain student safety is. Is equally important. Thank you, Mr. President. Dr. Bryant, thank you.

And I appreciate the presentation from the municipality. I just wanted to actually applaud the mayor's efforts for snow removal. I think this year was actually one of the lightest in terms of snow days this past year. My team just shared with me that we had four snow days this year and they were largely due to ice that had occurred in conditions that were slightly above and below freezing. That's one of the more hazardous scenarios that you can have.

I think the snow grater in my neighborhood is Darth Grader. And I'm very thankful for all of the efforts that the mayor's office has put into making sure that this process is transparent for our community. And Mr. Voland is correct that every time that schools are closed, it's because safety is of the utmost importance for our community. And. And I'd also just like to share two things for us to think about over the coming months as we continue to have these discussions.

And these are all things that I've shared with the mayor privately and I'd like to raise them here as well. So I think some of the ideas raised are certainly worth looking into. Like, I too was very intrigued by the idea of snow routes, for example. The problem with snow routes, and this is an issue that we can continue to troubleshoot, is that there are students with individual education plans that say they must be picked up door to door every day that school is in operation. By definition, a snow route would preclude those special education students from receiving a fair and public education.

So that's a huge concern with which we've consulted our legal teams. And there is no easy path forward. But my commitment is to ensure that when schools are open that it's accessible by every subpopulation of student in the community, especially our most vulnerable populations. There are dozens of students that require require door to door transportation. And that's one of the huge factors that we have to iron out as we figure out ways to make snow days less frequent.

And the last thing that I'd like for the assembly and the public to remember is that ASD has one of the most robust school choice systems in the entire country. So in the sense that you can attend any school that has space, and we also have dozens of schools and programs that don't have boundaries. Think about Rocco Shula. Think about a language immersion program. Think about a program like Polaris, that's an alternative program within K12.

Those students and staff members live and reside across the entire municipality. So when there's a weather event, we not only have to consider the condition of the specific neighborhood, but the condition of the roads that facilitate that transit between a student's home and their school or a staff member's home and their school. So these are just some of the factors that we consider when making the difficult decision whether or not school should be closed. And with that said, again, I applaud the mayor's office for ensuring that we were able to hold school all but four days due to weather. And I will say though, as superintendent, Mr. Anderson and I were probably up at about 4 or 3:30 in the morning, probably about 25 plus times.

And for those four times that we declared a snow day, there were dozens of times where we were up early consulting with our drivers who are on the roads, ensuring whether or not the sidewalks and the roads are safe for kids before we made those calls. So thank you to the mayor's office for ensuring that we were able to keep schools open for those dozens of days during which Mr. Anderson and I were thoroughly reviewing the condition of roads to ensure student safety. Thank you. Member Baldwin Day yeah, thank you. I'm.

I'm curious about how safe routes to schools function when maintenance responsibility is a shared situation between the municipality and the state. Does, does the safe routes to school designation give us additional flexibility in terms of putting our resources to work in those areas or are we still constrained. By state ownership through the chair? To Member Baldwin Day, that's a really good question and actually something that I think we should consider. Water would be great.

Yes, please.

My, my first blush answer would be I don't think there's an automatic hook where we, we just changes the structure for, you know, our ability to do maintenance on state roads or state sidewalks because of the safe routes to school designation. That said, generally the state has not declined when we have offered to maintain things that they own. So I think this, if that was the fr. If we're thinking like, would the state allow us to maintain sidewalks on if that are designated as safe routes to school even though we don't own them? I think our general relationship with the state is such that I can't imagine they would say no if we were offering to do it if we had the resources to do it.

Again, I don't believe there is an automatic kind of hook that changes the paradigm, but I'll certainly look into it and grid it up. That's a very good question. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I'm just aware that because we have this sort of shared responsibility for winter road mains maintenance, you know, we can certainly do our part to make the.

Make routes to school as safe as possible. But that, you know, I think that would be really appreciative of the fact that there's collaboration happening between the Muni and asd. I wonder if there's an opportunity to pull the state into that conversation as well, to inform their priorities when we do have a weather event. So yeah, I. Throwing that out as something to Consider as we're thinking about how we can keep schools open.

Seeing no other comments say that completes item H2. We'll move on to H3. Right sizing bond levy. This was in addition to the agenda by Member Scout.

Yeah, thank you. I would like to bring up a conversation about right sizing and appreciate the addition of the results of the 2026 bond and levy.

In the spirit of both, I would just like to learn more from the assembly side about the right sizing conversations happening at ASD and within the school board. This is a topic that, while I'm also very sensitive to the role of the assembly in this conversation and in your work, I would like to learn more and like to explore opportunities for collaboration and joint work together in these conversations. I think we all despite not seeing a presentation, we know the results of the bonds and the levies and know that there is a real issue of trust in our communities right now and a need for more investment in the school district. So hoping to find opportunities to work together on rebuilding that trust with our constituents and in having meaningful conversation with our communities about the school closures that are in place already and the additional adjustments that may need to be made in the future.

Thank you, Member Scout. I can answer your question from the board perspective and I'll open the floor to Dr. Bryant. If he has any other comments. I I can share that the commitments we've made thus far as Dr. Bryant indicated his intent is not to administratively recommend closures for the upcoming school year. At in addition, at the most recent school board meeting, I publicly declared my intent to create an ad hoc under our board policy to focus on the topic of school closures and right sizing and ways to improve our process, selection criteria and how to better engage the community in that process.

Recognizing that our community has repeatedly said a few things. Number one, that they broadly support school closures in the face of declining enrollment, inadequate funding from the state and and now potentially fiscal challenges at the municipality. In addition, what we've heard repeatedly is that no local community wishes to see their neighborhood school close. And so, recognizing that you will never achieve consensus in this conversation, I think the board should look internally with the help of district administration to identify how we can better improve our process. I anticipate that that work will begin in earnest mid July.

And the committee members who I've connected with prior to today's meeting are Member McDonough, Member Bellamy and Member Blakesley.

I intend to connect with Chair Brawley and offer a liaison position to this ad hoc committee to a member of the assembly, if they would like to be involved in the process. Recognizing that our public meetings are open to anyone, I think it would potentially be beneficial if the assembly deems it appropriate to designate a liaison to bring information back to your various committees. But I'm certainly open to the to feedback on that. Those are the latest updates that I have. Dr. Bryant, would you like to add any other context?

Sure. I'll add a couple of data points, especially since we have new members in the conversation. So first of all, you know. Right. Sizing the district through school consolidations is one of the most emotionally devastating conversations you can have with the community.

And it's something that we've taken with great care over the past several years. The school board, at least since I've been here, has gone through a consolidation process in three separate rounds. In fact, one year, we even took a year off from consolidation just so we could hear from the community on specific areas. And it was actually the school board that in collaboration with the administration, saw through a rubric that we used to determine which schools would be most appropriate to close. But with that said, we still aren't fully meeting the needs of the community.

So that's where we need to collectively provide input so we can continue to improve that process. I think one of the things that most people fail to realize is that ASD has lost nearly 7,000 students over the past 15 years, and that's the equivalent of 14 completely full elementary schools. And when that happens over time, what you see is that especially title one and under resourced neighborhoods end up having under enrolled schools and potentially have fewer services to offer students. So we've taken a lot of care to figure out a way to have a difficult conversation and to elevate levels of academic service, given that state funding is stagnant. And as recently as this morning, I'm hearing that we may not have the full require local contribution to keep our schools thriving.

So what I see is another 12 months of difficult conversations, and I'm going to truly lean on this group to help advise the district for how we can better work with the community to create a plan that we can get behind. With that said, I think a crucial part of community engagement is actually asking the community, do we even support closing schools in the first place? That was the first question that I sought to understand. So just for some perspective, four years ago, the school board was considering closing six elementary schools, and we held town halls at all of those elementary schools. And we actually asked the people, the parents of those schools, whether or not ASD should pursue closing schools at all.

And I think one of the most shocking data points that I found from those surveys was that consistently at every single town hall, the parents whose schools were being closed said that ASD had too many schools. We surveyed those families specifically, and that was the data point where I didn't even fully believe it at the time. It's like, why? Why would a parent being impacted by a decision to consolidate schools be supportive of school closures? But this is a question that we've asked them again in various ways over the year, and I'd just like to share with the assembly some additional data points.

So the ASD school board had a very difficult decision when it came to essentially closing a $90 million structural deficit gap. Just for perspective, $90 million is the equivalent of a $700 base student allocation cut. And just for perspective, 95 cents on every dollar in ASD general fund goes towards instruction, special education, school maintenance and operations. So that's only 5 cents on every dollar that's going towards district administration. So by definition, $90 million is going to have a huge impact either on the buildings, on special education services, on instruction, or support services like nurses activities and so forth.

So we took great care in helping engage the community on how can ASD even go about balancing this budget? We did this in numerous ways over the past several years. We've held dozens of community conversations and other town halls and gatherings, etc. But I'd like the assembly to pay particular note to what happened in December of 2025, because again, closing a $95 million structural deficit required immense care and community feedback. So we asked the community to help us balance the budget.

We imported our budget into this tool called balancing act. And we asked them a series of questions. To what extent should the district reduce administration? Of course, 100% of the community says, yes, we need to reduce administration. But unfortunately, the district only spends about 5% of its budget on district administration, which means that you could fire every single person in this building, myself and every school board member, and we would have still had 60 plus more million dollars to find in our budget.

So we had to go a step deeper. And one of the questions that we asked the community when they helped us balance our budget was, would you be supportive of closing two schools to close the operational shortfall? And 85% of people who helped us balance the survey said, close two schools to close the budget shortfall? And an additional 3% said close one, not two. And again, that was a very illuminating data point.

That I wanted to handle with great care. Which is why we partnered with Alaska Survey Research to ask the community at least one more time, is this a path that we even want to go down? And we saw it again. We saw over 65% of the community that participated in that survey said the ASD has too many schools. But we need to have a strong process.

And that's where I need the help and guidance of the people in this room. Fast forward to just a couple of months ago, we worked with Alaska Survey Research again to do another survey. And we asked the question once again, do you support closing schools in the Anchorage School District? Actually, the question I'll read it for you is I support ASD reducing expenses by consolidating to use fewer schools. And this is as of last month, 62% of the community said that they support consolidating schools when asked that question.

And the most fascinating thing to me is that when you break that subpopulation down by parents, parents are even more supportive of closing schools, according to the survey. And of course, we have to take this with great care. There's more outreach to be done. But I can't have a good faith conversation about this topic without talking through all of the ways in which the Anchorage School District has asked the community whether or not we should even pursue this in the first place. And I have to be candid that every single time, there does seem to be a strong majority of families and community members that feel that we need to have these conversations, but we're going about it the wrong way.

So given everything that's happened over the past four years, the difficult work ahead is going to be working with our assembly partners, working with the municipality, our community councils, families and more to understand if it's the will of the community for ASC to have fewer schools. And again, we've lost the equivalent of 14 elementary schools. How can we do so with care and compassion and keeping the needs especially of our vulnerable populations in mind? And if that were an easy question, I guarantee you other communities would be doing it. It is the hard work that will result in that outcome, which is why I'm thankful to be surrounded by colleagues that are ready to roll up their sleeves, move beyond the rhetoric, and start asking the difficult questions that will make us better as a community.

Thank you. I saw member Blakesley. Then we'll go to member Silvers. Yeah, this is a tough subject and we're going to keep talking about this tough subject. I anticipate for a while in listening to the budget conversations earlier and specifically around the required local contribution and the cap and the potential financial hardships that the Muni is facing.

And sort of there's no guarantee that ASD is going to get any certain amount of funding one way or the other. One thing that I am concerned about and thinking about when we, as we continue this conversation in the future is that as we close potentially more schools in the future and declare those buildings in excess and thus transfer ownership just back over to the Muni right to deal with, I wonder about how that then would impact the ability of the municipality to fund schools if a significant amount of resources are then poured into dealing with, let's say, the demolition of a building that might cost significantly more than the short or long term savings of a school closure. So if we know that each school closure is about $900,000 of one time savings and then it diminishes right over a certain number of years. But then if you think about the cost of demolishing a building if it's not able to be used for as a community asset, I could see a lot of potential problems that, that might dig a hole into the finances and of the Muni and thus sort of in a feedback loop hurt the district and our ability to then receive financial resources from the Muni upon which we depend. So that is something that I maybe is kind of a comment and a question for representatives who are here about sort of if those are concerns that you're thinking about from a financial perspective, since we're all very resource constrained at this time.

And if it is a concern, I would, I would definitely hope we include that in future conversations with the right sizing committee and with members of the assembly. And I don't. I guess I'll pause there. I have one more follow up question. I don't know if anybody wants to answer that from the uni side to the chair.

I'm happy to answer that question or take a stab at it. And it's a very good question. And the answer is absolutely it's a concern and it's absolutely something we're trying to work through in a kind of small form right now. Thinking about the properties that the board has currently already voted to access, the Campbell STEM and Abbott Loop. You're absolutely correct.

The cost of tearing down those buildings is very high. And it is particularly high for our older buildings that are strong candidates for, you know, being removed from the system because they are so old. They frequently have a quantity of chemicals located in the construction that make the them unable to be disposed of in Alaska and have to do this, we have to ship some of the material out of state or to tear them down. There's a real open question that we don't have a lot of precedent for what we do in an instance when a school is accessed there. I think there's one example that I can think of in the municipal portfolio which is the old Woodland Elementary School that is currently owned by the municipality and operated by the Boys and Girls Club.

But we don't otherwise have a lot of precedent for what is supposed to happen there. Code tells us that when, when a school district property or when any subdivision of the municipality, this paradigm applies to the school district and also equally to every other subdivision of the municipality that has management authority over municipal properties. So we do the same process, for instance, if we're reallocating property from parks to AWU or from solid waste services to the health department. So that is at the discretion of the mayor. And the mayor is not compelled to make any kind of determination about moving a piece of property from one management authority of one subdivision to another.

And so as part of this conversation right now we've been talking about what happens when we add for this. The request now is for the mayor to take those properties and reallocate them to some other municipal subdivision. And there isn't clear instruction on who's accountable. Is it the municipalities, the school district? Neither of us have significant resources laying around with which to do multimillion dollar tear downs of aged facilities that cannot be repurposed.

The buildings are also expensive to operate. One of the challenges, the reason that we have reached this agreement with Woodland, with the Boys and Girls Club is that, you know, historically the Muni has covered some of the expenses of that facility and the Boys and Girls Club has covered other expenses. And so finding a tenant, a community organization tenant that can sustain the cost of operating a school building is also a significant ask. So there is a short answer, it's a long diatribe just to say the short answer is yes, it's absolutely a concern. It is a very real expense.

There is no one waiting in the wings with that money in a bag ready to help repurpose productively school buildings or tear them down and prepare the sites for housing. So it's something that we're grappling with right now on a small scale with the school properties that are currently at play and that will continue to grapple with if there are additional schools that are are closed. Thank you. You have a follow up member? Blasely, I do Have a follow up.

And this is just another comment. But I also think that just when we're talking about right sizing, especially going forward, both as a group and externally to the public, it's really important that we clarify what the goal of right sizing is. And I think that the survey research, that the results that we've seen is interesting. I think it would be great to make sure that that data is shared publicly. But additionally, I think that understanding or making sure that the community or the public understands what the actual implications are for a budget, how, how far, you know, a closure of a building actually goes to closing a really large deficit, when you're talking about a $90 million deficit or a $40 million deficit.

And it goes on from there. If you're talking about closing buildings where you reap $900,000 of savings per building, it's not to me, from my understanding, so much of a mechanism to address, address major budget deficits, but really about efficiency of resources for the students and staff in the building. So addressing class size bubbles or not having enough teachers in a school. So it's really about making sure that those students have the best learning outcomes possible. But I, it doesn't appear clear, at least to the public and maybe even not to myself, about what specific amount of savings we actually reap when we're talking about a long term budget deficit that we're, a structural deficit that we're facing.

And so having better education and sort of community conversation around what the true intent is of right sizing and how it specifically helps us financially or how it helps in terms of student outcomes is a very, I think, required conversation when we're, when we're talking about future school closures. Okay, that's all. Just a note from member Blakesley. The slides which covered the data are attached to our most recent comms committee meeting. And I think it's our intent to send the most recent data from Alaska Survey research to assembly members today.

Member Silvers,.

Thank you. You know, I think for right sizing, I think it is important to right size the district. I do think that you need to make a long term plan. I think the plan needs to not be correlated to the budget. I think you need to stick to the plan.

You probably shouldn't close any schools in the first year or two of the plan. You know, the way that it's been done, this, this, start again, stop again, start again, stop of it again. Close this school, don't close it. It's really damaged public trust and it's, it's you know, it, it's, it's not the right way to do things. And I do want to talk about public trust and how ASD is going to rebuild public trust because your bonds can't keep failing.

You know, I know that we're in a time of low support for public education. I know that you've got stiff political headwinds. And I want to say that I believe that defunding schools under any political excuse or propaganda cover is shameful. Our kids are in crisis and they're missing out on a quality education that's going to create a deficit for them, some of them, for the rest of their lives.

You know, I, I also want to say Anchorage is not an anti education city. We regularly elect pro education policy levels, policymakers at both the state and the city level. The majority of Republican voting districts consistently elect pro education coalition leaders despite a push to defund education coming from within their ranks. So we really must confront the reasons our school levy and school bonds failed twice in recent years.

And I think that you really are going to have to look inward.

You're in a multi year crisis. I can see good people doing the best they can in an atmosphere that's designed to destroy public schools and privatize education. However, out of this crisis, ASD has developed a culture of disregard. You see this in the first failed bond. The district proposed a $31 million bond to build a school while placing others on the chopping block.

When voters rejected the bond, ASD disregarded the public will and built it anyway. You paid for half of it out of your savings and then demanded the. Public cover the rest. You can see it in the instability that's forced on teachers, parents and kids. Each year the district issues annual threats to close specific programs, weaponizes parents to fight funding battles.

You must offer stability and a dependable long term plan. Invest your time in creating consistency for families rather than manufacturing chaos.

There's a culture of disregard in the decision to close down a school that parents and educators spent nearly a decade building with four days notice. You did this to pay for other programs that you had already decided to shut down down.

This short sighted move displayed, displayed such incredible disregard. It cost our schools and our kids nearly 80 million at the ballot box before voters rejected the funding. A progressive majority assembly almost rejected even putting it on the ballot by a 7 to 5 vote. You followed this up with a last minute calendar change after families had already finalized summer plans, paid for camps and bought plane tickets. To add insult to injury on this, the new calendar when Published in mid April, was dated for March 2, but it was withheld from the public for a month and a half nearly.

I heard the negotiations kind of blamed for this, as if the negotiators didn't make the choice to disregard the public in their negotiations. You see the culture of disregard percolating down to the school level with administrators who refuse to address parent concerns and systemic issues within their own buildings. Voters are not rejecting public education. They're rejecting the culture of disregard. You cannot expect the public to hand over bond money when the district operates with zero predictability, transparency or respect for the community.

To pass future bonds, you must rebuild the public trust that you have squandered. So I guess, you know, we really need to have this conversation and I'd like to ask, what are you doing to restore public trust? Thank you.

We'll go to member Volens.

Well, thank you. Yeah. So I do think that the assembly has demonstrated that we want to be a good partner with the school district. And I think that that is indicated by the approval of ASD's budget. I also think that the majority voting to put the special levy before voters is a show of our support.

It was an idea brought forward by the mayor, which we supported, I guess, to respond to some of the takeaways from Dr. Bryant. I'm a little bit less surprised by those types of results. To me, you know, that. That macro micro, those things sort of being in conflict, it reminds me of a lot of the conversations that the assembly has had around. Around housing.

Broadly, yes, we support the construction of new housing. Oh, but not in my neighborhood. So build a house over here, not over here. Close the school over there, not my school. I think that's something that we.

We often see. Would love to have further insights, those shared and discussed maybe at a future meeting. I think that is important because we want to know how we can be a good partner. And I think that would. Part of the partnership does extend to Member Silver's remarks in terms of how do we work together to restore that level of public trust.

So, yeah, I think I will just leave it there for now. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to. We have eight minutes left.

We'll go to member Baldwin Day. I've entered the queue. Then we have the Member Higgins. Thank you, President Jacobs. So I don't think there's much in the way of disagreement in the community around the need to.

Right size, the need to close schools. And I think that there is, despite the procedural missteps that happened over the course of this last year, a real desire on the part of Anchorage to see our schools thrive. I believe that that commitment exists. I think, you know, when it comes to this body, you know, the. The assembly and the school board or even the muni in the school district, our.

Our futures, our fiscal futures, our. Our. Our capital projects are inextricably linked with each other. They are not separate things. And.

And I think because of that, because we. I. I'll speak for myself, but I think members would agree. We. We have a vested interest in what happens when a building is declared excess and there's a property transfer that needs to happen. We have a vested interest in neighborhood impacts when schools are moved or closed or a charter school is moved into a building where it didn't formerly exist.

We have a deep concern about public trust, about our constituents, about the kind of public engagement that happens in the way that these processes unfold, like we all share those values. And I think because of that, this. I think this merits more, a more robust and a more collaborative conversation than simply an ad hoc school board committee. I think there needs to be something that signals to the community that we are all collectively on the same team and that we have a shared interest in doing this work and doing it really well and doing it with transparency and doing it in a way that invites the public to participate. So I would love for us to consider and maybe put a group of people together to have a conversation about this between now and our next joint meeting.

But I would love for there to be additional conversation about putting together a truly joint working group or a joint task force. I believe we've done this before for safe routes to schools, to develop more of a clear proposal for this body or this joint body to consider about how we are going to move this work forward. Because I do believe it is our shared work. I do not believe this is something we just outsource to the school board and say, good luck. Have a nice time.

We'll check in later. And so I would really like for us to collectively consider that and maybe make a commitment today to empower a smaller group of us to create a plan, to create a proposal for a joint working group or a task force. And while I hate the idea of meetings to prepare a proposal for another meeting, I think this is one of those scenarios where that might be a reasonable next step. So I want to throw that out as something for us to consider committing to today and then empowering the president and the chair to do the work of convening that intermediate group to put together something that we can all consider at our next joint meeting and perhaps make a more fulsome decision about how we're going to participate jointly in this process. Open to thoughts, comments, concerns and otherwise.

Thank you. I'm going to join the queue and then share a couple comments. I appreciate the the constructive criticism coming from our assembly colleagues in the same way that I appreciated the hundreds of conversations I've had with community members since the bond and levy results have more finalized. I think ASD has work to do. It's clear, and I'm committed and ready to engage in that work, and I see the assembly as a vital partner in that work.

What form it takes for me begins with an ad hoc committee, but I certainly am open to a conversation with the Chair about forming a second group with more assembly members. The remarks I think I don't appreciate actually come from Member Silvers. Your I just took a couple quick notes. Your choice to characterize and potentially distort ASD's budget development process weren't well received by me. ASD didn't choose to adopt school closures after it chose to cut programs.

The board was provided a draft budget and it chose to restore proposed cuts and didn't actually adopt any cuts which were then reversed. So it's either a fundamental misunderstanding of our budget process or at best, I'll stop there. You know, characterizing past choices of a prior board years ago to build a new school, I'm assuming you're referring to in the View elementary omits a pretty critical omission that we chose to utilize federal funding to commit to rebuilding Ursa Major on base for our military families and students. I don't hear any criticism from you on that choice, and that seems like a political argument on its face.

And then speaking of a long term plan, it is extremely hard to develop a long term plan when our legislature can't do the same regarding funding at the same time as when our municipality, who we've counted on as a steadfast partner, is indicating to us that they're in fiscal trouble and they're facing significant headwater. You are correct to state that you have folks here doing the best we can can and we absolutely can't do better. And I think we will. But I don't think what appears to have been a written speech like that does any good. So with that said, we are at 12 o'.

Clock. Yeah, sure. Point of order. Just call point of order for the time. Yep, we're at 12 o'.

Clock. We're adjourned. Unless There's a motion to extend. Move to extend 10 minutes. Second.

Second. Sarah. Opposition hearing. None were extent till 12:10. I have member Higgins, then member Scout.

Thank you. There's a lot of issues here when it comes to credibility. When we ask people whether to cut schools or not to be able to close the budget gap. If you tell them that in five years you're going to be saving $51,000 per school, how many people are going to raise their hand? Probably not a lot.

So you've got a question that's designed to give you the results that you want. That's what this is about. You've got a process here before February 9th where there's meetings with the superintendent and board and board president in regards to other school board members. That leads up to a process to reverse and to speed forward closing schools. Public's out there saying, no, they're going to.

They're going to cut the budget. They're going to. They approve things, but it gets pushed through anyway. The process of establishing why Campbell. I don't know why Campbell was selected over other schools.

I still don't. I don't believe it was appropriate. I think it was wrong. I think the public didn't get a chance to be able to speak as much as they want. And they're mad, and I don't blame them.

I joined that. You want the boy to do his job. We don't have multiple days looking at the budget. We used to do that. If you're familiar with the school board, we used to do it a lot.

We don't do that now. We don't have the oversight audits of the operations with the administration. We did one with purchasing. We got a results that was limited from the Council of Great City Schools. A lot of this is due to the Council of Great City Schools.

They don't want to do anything except what the superintendent wants. So issues we had for the auditors, we never got that information. So we don't have the kind of oversight of the administration today that we used to have. We don't have the budget involvement with the. With this school board the way it used to be.

We're not doing that. We're not talking to different departments on what their budget's like, what's included, what they're trying to accomplish, what they would like to do with additional money or what with the impact of cuts. We don't do that oversight at all at this point in time. It's awful. I'm sorry.

I've never been in a school board not been on now this 15th year. This is unbelievable compared to what's done in the past. I remember when I came in with Carol Culmore, you had to learn departments. I get stopped from talking to staff here. We don't get the oversight we want.

So today I'm submitting four year requests, Freedom of Information act requests for information to make sure that I get it done. It doesn't go through and it doesn't get selected because some of the answers don't answer the questions I want. I am frustrated. I do think we need to work with the assembly. We need some audits.

We can't get them done this way. We need oversight on the budget that the board should be doing. But we're going to have to have a public committee do the job that we should do. Maybe there can be changes next year, but right now we've got a limited time to be able to do this. It's unbelievably difficult for me at this point in time after so many years to have to go aggressively challenging what this board and what this administration is doing and misleading stuff.

$51,000 Per kid that's coming from the admin. But when we looked at closing five Lake there was acknowledgement we may lose money because the number amount of money that's going to be transferred to a charter school in regards to it is 10,500 per kid. That's expanded. Their school had 100 people on the waiting list. Do the math.

It's going to. It's going to result in a net deficit. I want to. I think the public. I would say I'm not opposed to closing schools.

I'm opposing closing schools without following a process that shows its best. I haven't seen right sizing from this administration we've talked to about. We can put. We need preschool. Hear it from the legislature, hear it from the mayor, hear it from everyone that we need the preschool for the economy.

We need that. But we're not looking at that option. We're just going to close the schools and we're doing it in private. As far as I'm concerned, we've lost the public trust. We asked for money from for Lake Otis to help the local school.

But what are we doing with it? We closed the school, we switched it from a different one so we didn't do it. We did the same thing with Campbell. So we're going to establish a second STEM program by putting in a greenhouse. Give me a break.

Only one third of those kids could go there. And then you got the question of how many can be there. So we've taken away that right. My concern now is what are we going to do with Campbell now? We can't use it for so many years again once you close it with these provisions, but you can establish it for charter school.

So maybe we can get something done if we work with the assembly and we work with. Work with the administration, the minority on the board anyway in regards to this and next year in April, maybe we'll see some changes. We got a new governor. We're going to have next year. We got legislative changes.

We've got three school board seats up. Maybe we'll get something done. But right now I know that we're limited on what we can do. I'm sorry about that, but I'm asking the assembly. Thank you for volunteering to do this, but we need your help for audits because we can't get it done.

We need your help for some of the oversight and what we're doing with these schools and to stop this nonsense that's going on within the Anchor school board and the administration. Thank you. Member Scout. Yeah. I'd like to introduce a motion to request that the assembly chair and ASD Board president form and appoint a joint right sizing committee with equal representation from the assembly and school board within the next 30 days.

Second.

Motion made by Member Scout and seconded by Member Gawker. Is there to Gerker. Apologies. Thanks. Chair Brawley, is he in the queue?

Thanks. Yeah. I was going to ask just as a next step, because we're going to run out of time pretty soon, so just to be clear on your motion, I'm certainly willing to do that. Is the. Would it be acceptable to the mover and seconder if one outcome is there's a joint committee, another outcome could be some, some other, I guess, structure or version of it, but accomplishing the same.

Goal or is it specifically saying joint committee only? I think the goal. Accomplishing the goal is acceptable. Okay. Thank you.

So to Chair Brawley, does that mean. Do we need to modify that motion to include that flexibility? I guess I am satisfied to understand the intent. And just for a brief procedural note, I did speak with the clerk. We don't vote in on items such as, you know, resolutions or things in these meetings.

We can take a motion. So we can either either do what we've done in the past, generally have discussion about this item, or we can. We can take a roll call vote establishing in our minutes that this motion,. Whether it's supported or not, so that's. Kind of the directions we can go.

Okay, I see. Vice ver. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm interested in the motion. I'm interested in the idea.

I think, for my part, I'd like to learn a little bit more about what the proposed scope of that type of task force or joint committee would look like. I do have concerns, I'll be frank, about putting the. The assembly in the line of fire for some of these decisions. And I want to make sure that, you know, my colleagues, I know that we respect the role of the school district and their authority as elected officials and what they're charged to do, and that we want to be supportive of them and also expand the community conversation to member Baldwin Day's points to bring more people into that process. So I don't know if I would be prepared to vote on this motion now without seeing sort of some outline of what that proposed scope would look like.

Thank you.

I see. Member Baldwin. Yes, I. I would like to amend the motion on the floor to request that the chair and the board president collaborate with respective members to develop a proposal for said joint body,. Whatever it. Might be, whatever form it might take.

I'll second that. Thank you.

So that amendment was made by member Baldwin Day, seconded by vice chair Voland as their objection to the amendment or discussion on the amendment. Seeing on the amendments adopted, we're at 1209. Do we want to extend or is there no further discussion on this item?

Just call the question on the item.

Okay. See? No objection. The question has been called. Is there any objection to the amended motion, which would be for the vice chair of the chair of the assembly and myself to bring forward a proposal assumedly at the next joint school board assembly meeting.

The language I had in the original motion was within the next 30 days.

I'm not. From a functional standpoint, I'm not sure how the chair and I can bring forward a proposal without a special joint meeting. And we're also at time. So we. Do we have a motion to extend another five minutes.

So moved. Second. Okay. Any objection? Right.

We're extended for five more minutes. So from a functional standpoint, I'm not sure how a proposal could be brought forward without another gathering of these two bodies. So my suggestion is, I think that we on our side could bring a proposal either to a committee. I mean, essentially that we won't have a space for our bodies to jointly discuss it. But I think we have those separate discussions with the intent of bringing forward an item to our joint meeting.

And that's something we've done before. We've done joint resolutions for discussion that we both pass at our respective bodies. Okay. So hearing that, the proposal will be developed and then distributed to assembly and school board committees and then addressed at the next joint meeting. Okay.

That's a process that makes sense to me. Is there any additional discussion? Is there any opposition?

Seeing none. We've adopted a motion through the joint meeting. All right. That's. We have four minutes for member comments.

Unless there's a motion to adjourn, we will not be able to get through. Everyone on this week's time. Second, move to adjourn. Second is there any opposition to adjourning? Okay.

We are adjourned at 12:11pm thank you, everyone.