Anchorage School Board: 10/20/2026: School Board Work Session

Good afternoon everyone. We'll call the Tuesday, October 20, 2026, ASD School Board work session to order. Present in the boardroom are members Wilson, Blakeslee, Jacobs, McDonough, and Lessens. Present online Don't have any members present online, but we'll note other members as they arrive. Under B1 for discussion, our first topic tonight is FY27 bond.

Dr. Bryant. Thank you, Mr. President. So our team will come to the front in just a minute, but just big picture. So today we're going to provide a work session related to the bond and the CIP, and specifically we want to spend some time with the board to review the process for how capital planning priorities are determined.

And this is leading up to the decision next month where the board will be asked to consider a finalized bond proposal. I will just share my perspective based on the information that I've reviewed today. I, I do believe that it is important, as I've shared before, that the district pursue a bond this April, but I do believe that the size of the bond should be smaller. And by smaller, I mean lower than around $60 million. And part of what our presentation will review today is some of the rationale for why.

But ultimately the final list is the decision of the board. So to summarize, one of the slides you'll see today will be a much larger list of potential projects than we'll recommend actually having on the bond proposition, and the work ahead is really going to be narrowing down that list to the final proposal that'll be before you in November. So with that said, Mr. Anderson and his team will walk us through all of these considerations.

Thanks, Dr. Bryant. So good evening. I've got to my right Rob Holland, to my left Larry Morris, who does all of our planning and design lead, and of course Tom Finisef, the Senior Director of Capital Plans.

So real quick, we've got a lot of slides, so there are some that will go a little bit faster as we work through this in order to try to have some time for you to ask questions. And then at the end, we'll talk about— we'll be scheduling with America one-on-ones or one-on-threes, one-on-twos, whatever is convenient for board members, so we can walk through some iterations of the bond to get some feedback, answer questions about specific projects, and then finalize the board memo for the follow-up, follow-on board meeting.

And today we will go not in depth, but we will do more depth than we have in the past on quite a few different projects, so you understand more the scale and scope of them. And after this briefing for Board Connect Friday, we're also going to send out a packet that goes way more in-depth on each of the schools and/or facilities that we'll be talking about today.

Larry. All right. The last meeting we went through some slides. One of them showed our deferred requirements at almost $1.5 billion.

And also had a little discussion on what are deferred requirements, what is included in them and what they are not. And so how we kind of try to shuffle that down into our highest needs, we kind of go through this sheet here, which, as I said last time, ad nauseam, is You got to protect the people, you protect the facility, try to improve education, and then see what we can do to also develop some operational cost savings.

Here is how we can say what we come up— came up with as our top 130 million of projects on here, uh, and I— we just, without putting them in any type of order, we just— except for the fact that we went with the least expensive, if you can call $1.75 million least expensive, all the way up to the most expensive with their cumulative totals.

Um, on the last board, the last time we briefed this, we did talk about Bartlett and all of the schools either immediately adjacent to or on military land were being assessed by Department of War, and they have completed their assessment. They've given us, uh, their initial reports. We'll be working through that for the next month or so. Bartlett is one of them, and they certainly have have well more than $100 million in projected costs just as a draft, and as we get final in February, you'll see that that's really going to be our main priority, and it'll be a similar grant just like Ursa Major.

Hello, tonight I get to talk to you guys about playgrounds. So the context is fun. So playgrounds, the reason we're presenting this is to let you know that, first of all, for context, playgrounds are one of our most outward-facing infrastructure components that we have in the district at our elementary schools. Of course, this is because it's not just that school community that uses that those structures every day, but also the community that surrounds that school. So they're very, very important to our community.

Um, we have a list of playgrounds in the district that we are tracking that are the old wooden structures. These were— think of them as the first generation, if you will, uh, of playgrounds. There are 22 of those left, and they are enigmatic because they're difficult to, to keep maintained. That starts with the safety checks we do as well as the maintenance. There's another thing we're tracking there that's very important for the bond, and, and also major maintenance considerations, kinds of, kind of tangential to the bond.

But these structures are made by companies that are— have notified us that they're phasing out of the business of being in Wooden structures, wooden playground structures connect and come together entirely differently than modern plastic and steel structures. So they've given us notice that in 5 years they'll stop production of most parts. 5 Years thereafter, they'll stop construction of key parts. So we have kind of a 10-year runway here to get ideally to get up to 22 wooden playground structures replaced. So that would be, you know, needing to do a minimum 2 a year.

We have always wanted to keep that pace anyway, to get rid of these wooden structures and replace them with much more modern structures. Of course, in doing so, they'll be replaced with structures that have the foam tiles, the high-density foam plastic-type tiles, and not the rubber mulch. So they're more accessible. They're much easier to maintain. And they'll just do the community good in so many ways.

So it's a need and a want to replace these, very much so. Another example to bring to your attention that's off-slide here, if you will, Things that we track that we have a large amount of district-wide that we are trying to think of in phases is parking lots. And I'd like you to picture in your mind's eye, we have about 300 acres of asphalt parking and drive areas. Now, this is— parking and driveways provide access to our facilities. We are structuring a plan wherein we would we would phase out larger areas, phase in larger areas of those for replacement or repair.

We do a lot of small repairs within our maintenance group. That is to say potholes and small areas where you see heaves. Most of you have seen, especially here in Anchorage where we live, areas of asphalt that can get all the little tiny cracks. We call it alligator cracks. And it has a lot to do with moisture and our freeze-thaw cycle.

Over the years, a parking lot gets older and older. It's the ground underneath, and as more moisture gets in there, more freeze-thaw cycles, that degrades and it causes that kind of that mush underneath the asphalt. It costs money, just like it does to replace playgrounds, to do large patches of asphalt or old parking lots. That's not something we have the equipment or the means to do completely in-house with our maintenance staff. So at that level, we start to contract, right?

Rate, but that we manage that within major maintenance. So that's, that's another issue that we wanted to bring to your attention. We think playgrounds, uh, of course, are the appropriate priority for tonight's discussion. One of those, uh, on the slide deck tonight for, uh, the 27 bond is the Chinook Playground.

We'll get to that. Shortly and jumping ahead. All right, one of them high up on our list has always been Roamig. It had been on the 6-year CIP for 6 years, and in fact, we had passed in a bond for some design work, and the board here had actually approved the, the master plan for it. We're in design, we're actually at 95% ready to go ahead and put it out to bid.

But what this project has is that it will actually create a new secure vestibule by rearranging the administrative area, expanding some of it. It—. The roof, as you can see this in the next sheet, it has a few leaks. It's a very old IRMAA roof. We also have some structural issues.

Uh, we're also redoing some educational space. Uh, we had moved a large bedroom downstairs, and that old space is going to be redone for new classroom or other educational space. We also have the— one of the reasons it was brought down besides getting it on the ground floor was good. The elevator needs a lot of help. It's not in good shape, and it has a set of fire sprinkler system.

It's called Posi-Lok that is not even legal anymore. I mean, it's legal to use while it's in.

However, the, uh, we need to get it replaced. So on this one and the next page, it can kind of shows you our leak diagrams for that school.

Okay, now back to playgrounds, this time focusing on the Chinook playground that is on the package for the upcoming bond. So Chinook serves a robust population of, of younger intensive needs children. The playground there had suffered damage due to a fire and was repaired enough to be safely used, of course. So it is on the bond for replacement. It'll cost about $1.8 million, and this will be fully new from the ground up.

So a playground like this— think about the Bowman Playground or Creekside— this means it will be a fully inclusive— it'll fit the model that we're using for fully inclusive playgrounds. It will have the solid tile as opposed to rubber mulch. That tile is much easier to maintain. It's much less susceptible to vandalism. For instance, the mulch can get water in it and freeze in clumps.

We have to rake. We have to put mulch on PMs. So every time we replace a playground like this or the other ones I mentioned, Picture those tiles going in and our maintenance needs and costs going down. Also, I just wanted to underline that because that's a benefit that comes with these. But this will be fully inclusive.

It will be less maintenance. It kind of just checks all the boxes for that school community. So this is, this is the one full playground replacement on the bond for '27.

Klatt. After the earthquake, we had gotten some FEMA money for doing some seismic evaluations, and Klatt had a few extra needs, and so FEMA also gave us a grant to do a full design for mitigating all of the structural requirements, seismic structural requirements, to bring it up to what would be 125%, which is, as you can see on the thing there, it, it's an existing one down in the 50s, and it now go— will go up to 125. And any of the existing finishes that goes with that will also be done.

Yeah, I'd just like to point out in the box on the lower left, if you look at what a 20% would be in terms of structural stability, that would just be a basic structure. And it talks about collapse prevention. As all the board members know, the vast majority of our buildings did really well during the 2018 earthquake, really with the exception of greening in Eagle River immediately after the earthquake as part of what became an 8-year process of repairing all of our facilities. We got a lot of FEMA grants approved through capital— by capital plans to look at bringing all of our buildings, not just at collapse-proof or collapse prevention, but all the way up to 125%. And when you look at the slide, You'll see just a little bit higher, which is 150%, and that's what hospitals are built at because they have to keep operating even during an earthquake.

You would hope that you would finish a surgery or whatever thing you're doing. And so that's why theirs are even more expensive, but ours are going to be just below that. And it's going to take years and lots of major renovations to get there. But we certainly have made a lot of progress in the last 8 years.

All right, Tudor. Tudor Elementary is one of 5 elementary schools that still need to have a secure vestibule installed. One of those, you know, is also Ursa Major, which is closed right now, and eventually here we'll have a new school and it will have an SVU. Of the operating schools right now, there are 4 without secure vestibules, and Tudor is one of them. And as you look at the chart, its roof could use a lot of help.

It really does need to be replaced and the insulation upgraded to help reduce costs from energy. And this is one of the schools that we brought up last time where some of the parallel chord trusses that we have to manage the snow load to less than 25 pounds per square foot after the recent snowmageddon that we had, and the muni had put out a flyer on. So this one is very much needed, and here is photos of a couple of the trusses. And if you go back one, there on the H— yeah, on area there on the very far right at the very top, that is where some of those trusses are. It's two classrooms and two smaller rooms.

However, they're not unsafe. They just need to be managing the snow load in the wintertime.

All right, Wendler. Last time we talked about emergent needs. This was not— this was on our radar and was a project that we had out about 5 years. However, the library area again has those parallel chord top-hung trusses that, as you can see in the photos there, the structural engineer said that we had to do repairs or replacements. On top of that, in the gym, the walls need to have some structural upgrades to them.

That would help them out, and that was done, we found out here recently, in a, again, a FEMA-sponsored design to get a Tier 2 structural done. And also here recently, maintenance had come to us and said that the roof in most of the sections are very bad and they need to be fixed, and so we have moved this one up for both life safety, structural, and protection of structure for the roof. And so that has moved up into our top area.

So I'd like to point out one thing about Wendler, as there are people looking at, and we've had open conversations about maybe the EdCenter moving to another building someday. When you look at Buildings like Wendler, which we have not tried to right-size previously.

I think it will remain a priority because we can keep the snow off the roof. But this year is a 130-year high super El Niño, which is supposed to bring significant amounts of moisture and not miserably cold weather. And so Rob's team They got trained right, well, during the first year of Snowmageddon on how to measure and check for the pounds per square foot on roofing. And, you know, we'll survive it. We'll get through it this year.

And Rob's team will keep making sure— Tudor and Windler, where we have these top hung trusses— that we keep the snow load down. But I think the board knows not only have we cut everything in schools, but maintenance has been cut repeatedly over the years. And maintenance funding has been cut repeatedly over the years, and it does make sense when you're looking at such a large area like a library where we know we have to keep it clear the entire winter as much as possible, certainly below 25 pounds per square foot, that, that this really is an important project for us.

All right. One more on here is East High School. Obviously, everybody knows East High School is fairly old. Um, the electrical service is one of those that we have which ASD actually owns it from the time it leaves the main all the way onto the property and into various junction boxes.

And grab boxes and all the way into the building. It's actually owned by SD. Where you think about many buildings, Chugach State Park actually owns the service all the way to the meter and to where you have a disconnect going into the building. This one here is very old, has shown its age. And in fact, in some of the vaults that they divide the system up in a big loop around the one, basically the north side of the building, those vaults are actually in underwater a lot of the time.

So all the wires and junction boxes are all wet and flooded. So we try to keep electricity and water separated. And so if we have to work on them, we actually have to go out there and pump them out in order to work on them. So what this project will actually do, we'll replace the entire service line, bring it into the building at a point, have a meter set there and the disconnect, and from there we will put sub mains through the building to the various other points. And therefore, Chugiak Electric will actually take ownership of the service itself, and they would be responsible for it.

So we did talk about this slide a couple weeks ago, and, and I, I did comment that it really did look like bonds in the $50 million-ish range. Consistently did really well in Anchorage. And what it led us to do is Dr. Bryant wanted us to do a survey with Ivan Moore and his group. And, and so we did a survey to try to find out, you know, we've identified $136+ million worth of projects. I think we know by and large what the priorities are, but we'll be talking about that during one-on-ones.

But we're trying to figure out, you know, whether state bond debt reimbursement— from our perspective, we know that it's 50% of a bond— means that assuming the legislature appropriates the money, which they typically would, that the impact of property owners would, would really be, you know, improved a lot with state bond debt reimbursement. In fact, I actually thought you could make a bond much higher if you had reimbursement. And what was interesting on the survey, so there were about 1,300 people surveyed and you got one of two surveys and it was split half and half. One was with state bond debt reimbursement and it actually talked about how the cost per $100,000 would be 50% paid by the state if it was appropriated. And 50% by the taxpayers where they could really see just, just how big it was and the impact to property owners.

But if you look at when we did the survey and they did follow-on math, it really did look like without state bond debt reimbursement, about the 50%, the median was around $52 million for a bond and just a little bit more with state bond debt reimbursement. And this kind of breaks it out a little bit more. I did put down one of the two statements, the one that shows with state bond debt reimbursement.

And, and these are super voters. Ivan, Ivan sends the survey out to people on, especially during an election year, on email to those where he gets like a 90-plus percent response rate. Whereas if you were to send a text right now on any, any text that says, I'd like you to fill out a survey, there's, it's gonna be swiped and/or deleted and blocked and expunged from their phone. So we did choose to go to a survey where you have less people, but you could kind of see that the state bond debt reimbursement isn't the piece that tweaked people in their, their desire or the dollar amount that they were going to support. And we asked— there was multiple questions, and I'm not sure honestly if any of the board members received this or not, um, but we, we said, do you support $20 million?

This is what it would cost. Do you support $40 million, $60, all the way to $120? And it really did level out about where Dr. Bryant, maybe a month or so ago, said he was looking in the $56 $50 to $60 million range, and that it kind of played out. So there is— we have another survey on ASD Listens that will actually inform us on some of the other reasons why people support or don't support bonds. And I think that, that this survey for the ASD Listens one is going to help us look at how do we, how do we tailor messaging and communication to reach the types of questions that maybe we haven't really responded to in the past, or maybe we really haven't even addressed in the past.

And this is the initial survey. We're going to have multiple more, but I think we really want to know what is it people need to know to feel comfortable to vote? Because on the, on the slide here, it's really a small percentage. We're looking for about 1.5% of the total voters is the difference between passing and failing in most years. Um, so I think this particular question was informative.

And then specifically, this was MJ's question on what information do you need to consider a bond? And so we'll be going through both surveys. The Ivan Moore one, all I have right now is the draft response for the dollar amounts. It's going to take about a week or so before we have the full survey results. And of course, that will also go into BoardConnect as soon as we get it, because I think it's important, not just the one-on-ones, but when we're talking Finance Committee work sessions, school board meetings, you know, how do we reach out to the public and what is it they think we've never talked to them about?

And what do we need to talk to them about so they feel comfortable And again, you're looking for really a small percentage of people who are on the fence to say, okay, I feel like they gave me enough. I feel confident. I understand the projects. And, and I think that's— we just have to do better. It's—.

ASD Listens is all about doing better. We've got to show publicly what we come up with, and we've got to find out what it is they want, and we need to feed them. And, and their needs.

So, uh, this is the way ahead for how we're going to look at the bond and execute that. So right now, um, the next week or so, we're looking at doing one-on-one, uh, meetings with the board members to answer all your questions, specific questions about projects. And how we put together and prioritize those projects. From there, we'll go ahead and do an introduction and then approve it, and then it goes into bond council in December.

Okay, we have plenty of time for questions if any of you have them.

Member Lessens. Thanks. I'm interested in— I think one thing I've learned on the school board is that these things are dynamic. They change from year to year. But I have found prior CIPs to be interesting, informative, sort of, you know, what did we think would be prioritized and where are we?

It's clear that the priorities that were on the bond last year haven't gotten any less leaky over time. But I was looking at the CIP at the Bayshore project, and if you could just confirm that the playground project there also would include a renovation of bus and staff traffic. Was that sort of a conversation? I mean, that's explicit in the CIP. Um, yes, one of the things that we are looking at besides the playground, which we were talking about wood structures, that one is almost completely wood structured.

It has almost nothing else. But also in the back of the building along the hill back there is— we're looking at a design right now to put a turnaround back there so that the buses can go in the back there do a turnaround and then come back out so they can pick up the students on that side for the buses, and they're not mixed with the traffic, which we try to keep buses and parents' traffic separated as much as possible. So yes, it is there, and we have had the whole team over at Bay Shore multiple times, um, to look at different ways to do this and Um, they've had at least 3— that 2 that I know of, uh, with the community, nightly meetings about the types of equipment and what their desires were. There's been a lot of community engagement on this particular, uh, school. Great.

Um, the other question that I had just from looking at, uh, the last year's— the most recent CIP and, and the cost estimates here is The bulk of these don't look like they've changed in price or in cost. I guess I'm— but inflation is real. So what is the sense of— I mean, are the projected costs here what we're banking on? The costs are escalated. So—.

Oh, they are escalated here.

Okay. From what we saw in the prior Correct. Okay.

Go to Member McDonough, then Member Blakeslee. Thank you. Um, the first, uh, the first question that comes to mind is, well, it— everything here is around the maximum, like maximizing the public's impression of these proposals. Um, the board has this year expressed that our— we need to begin re-engineering the right-sizing criteria. We have a committee for that now, um, and yet the public is still very understandably uncertain about which schools will close and why.

And really, the board hasn't given you clear guidance on that, so it's hard to answer, but How did— how does this list, like, how do the schools on this list, um, how can we express that they are resistant to any efforts of school closures? Like, um, without knowing exactly what the board is going to choose as like the criteria, uh, I'm looking at this list and I understand intuitively these are schools that are really unlikely to close, but I think it would be important to explain how we came to that analysis, if that makes sense. So is there, um, has that been a part of your factoring? And then if so, how has that manifested in these schools coming forward? That, that is a good question.

I think we can— we'll, we'll get the team back together and get with Dr. Bryan on how we would message it. But, you know, specifically, we looked at schools that had a huge amount of community response, like CLAT, when it was first brought up to close. It serves one of the highest needy areas in town at Diamond Estates, and that community is, is, uh, you know, for a school with a high economic need, um, there were just a lot of great things about that program and how that community operates. When you look at a playground, a playground, whether it became a charter school— which we're not talking about closing Chinook, but obviously even if it were to become a charter school, playgrounds don't really just support the school, they support the whole community. Um, we don't know what the right-sizing committee is going to come up with, and that's a fair comment.

But if you look at Wendler Middle School, um, the top hung trusses Either way, we need to fix that. You know, Rob's team during Snowmageddon had pretty high after the first couple weeks because it didn't matter what their specialty were, they were now a roof cleaner. And until they got hurt and they couldn't do it anymore. And if you recall trying to find someone to do your own house during Snowmageddon, there wasn't a contractor in Anchorage that wasn't completely consumed if you got in late. In the game.

So for long term, we don't know what the new normal is for snow. Um, we don't even know what it'll be tomorrow, frankly. But a school like Wendler, we would, we would definitely want to fix an area that's so large as a library and, and make that a priority. But I think you're right, we have to address that. That's a good comment.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I think that that's really the only question at this point. But I would, I would, I look forward to that sort of one-on-one or small group with us because I think the messaging strategy, I think the public really needs to be put at ease of like we're gonna ask them to bond schools that have a very high likelihood of staying Anchorage for various reasons. Um, middle schools are a really clear candidate right now because we have added 50% more enrollment to every middle school with their 6th grade transition.

Um, and then the, the elementary schools that we have are especially ones that serve special high needs programs that are very disruptive to move. Um, so for me there's like an intuition, but the the less informed public would need like a headline that says we're being very cautious and very reserved with these planning decisions. Thank you. Okay, I want to note for a record that, um, Member Bellamy joined us online at 3:30 and Member Higgins joined us, uh, here in the room at roughly 3:56. We'll go to Member Blakeslee.

Yeah, thank you. Um, can you speak to— I'm gonna ask a playground question about the, um, sort sort of assessment of wooden playground structures, and I get the rationale for that, sort of they're being phased out, it seems like, and the companies that service them aren't going to be doing that. But how maybe the priority of wooden playground structures compares to the priority of other playground structures that exist, and are there any playground structures that are not wooden but might, might be in more disrepair? Just maybe are not wooden, in terms of sort of the prioritization between the two. Thank you, great question.

The wooden playgrounds as a group, we're thinking at the enterprise level, you know, holistically, we know they have to be replaced. Um, basically the difference in a nutshell is this: the more modern playgrounds can be repaired infinitely compared to the wooden playgrounds. So if we have some failures of certain systems or components at one of those playgrounds, we're not looking at a complete replacement. We could— we have the option to do de minimis repairs or partial repairs, kind of like the example that you may be familiar with from Tudor this summer. And we, we did a project there for that community, and we're kind of doing it in steps.

We're managing it because it lends itself to that approach. So next summer my team will be installing another piece of equipment there in that kind of— if you can picture it— kind of the void between the new piece we just installed and the swing sets. There's room there, and that's going to be actually an inclusive piece with a ramp from the sidewalk. So we can bite those off in chunks, but the clock's really ticking on the wooden structures. Okay, that makes sense.

And I guess that is sort of the other inherent assumption is that anything that isn't wooden is inherently more modern? Because I feel like I've seen playgrounds out in the world that are very old but are not wooden and they're made of other materials. But is that sort of the assumption in ASD, is that if they're not wooden they are more modern? Yes, the wooden playgrounds, in addition to parts availability and, and the notice we've been given, they just— the earth starts to reclaim them over time, literally. Yeah.

And if you look at playgrounds like Abbott Loop, with the exception of the pre-K playground, some of the parts even on that metal structure are no longer available.

So companies go out of business. I mean, all the time. So there's no guarantee just because it's metal that every single part can be done. When we looked at Chinook, it was a combination of other factors though. It was a significant increase in the number of intensive needs that really needed a playground that allowed more mobility on the surface.

It was a pretty good-sized fire. It did melt some stuff, but it also didn't have pre-K, and they need pre-K there. So it wasn't just one factor. We do playgrounds, we pay for them either through bonds, major maintenance grant money, and/or grant money that we go after for playgrounds that's separate from that. And for the playground repair, we also use Rob's maintenance budget to do that.

So there's a lot of different ways to fund playgrounds. And you look at Tudor, it was smaller than Bowman, and Bowman was much smaller than Creekside Park, which was a full-blown dig up, pour the concrete, you know, do the whole superstructure, everything. So there's definitely varying degrees of how much money it takes to get a playground better than it currently is to keep it running. Thank you. And then I have a follow-up question, kind of not related to playgrounds.

Um, can I— I didn't totally track the correlation between whatever the sort of side commentary or sort of point that you raised around right-sizing Ed Center, moving conversation in tandem with Wendler. It wasn't just Wendler specific. When we talked about I don't know, 5 years ago, 4 years ago, on—. There was a lot of public discussion about Move the Ed Center, and we talked about whether it would fit in an elementary school because a lot of people thought it would fit in Abbott Loop. But when you look at the amount of parking at an elementary school, it wouldn't support professional development.

You'd have to have another elementary school. To, to be able to fit the Ed Center somewhere, you either need a large structure about the size of a middle school, and you would still need to do renovations on that building. I was just bringing it up as an example because every time we did right-sizing, one of the community things was just close the school and move the Ed Center. And of course, we had not looked at closing middle schools right after we moved 6th grade to middle school from elementary. But the comment is out there, and it's in community council meetings, and school board members hear it.

I know, I know Member Lessens has heard it several times, really, in the past 6 or 8 months or so. So it is a common discussion out there, but it does take— and I didn't mean that Wendler would be anything, right? I mean, we—. What I do know about Wendler is we need to fix the roof over the library and the roof over everything else on that building, regardless whether it had in the future some optional use. Okay, that's helpful.

And yeah, I, I have also heard and have raised the comment about moving the Ed Center, and I'm sure it will come up and will continue to come up. So that's helpful context. And then I have one more question. Can I have one more question? Is that okay?

Yeah. Okay. My last question is, is Is the Oceans Academy going into East High School?

My understanding is, at least for the initial standup, they would go into the Benson Wing at East High School. It'll start small. As it grows, depending on other right-sizing actions, depending on how big that school becomes, that could change. But It's certainly when they first start, it's probably going to be very small and access to cafeterias and all those other things. Plus, if you, if you look at the STREAM students, the bulk of them live in the Bartlett East corridor already and are already— I mean, that's probably the population they're going to most try to recruit is those coming out of STREAM or or those who would have gone to Stream but couldn't get transportation.

Okay, that's helpful. And my question isn't so much about where they should go or why they're going to be in one school, but more about a broader question that hopefully maybe you can clarify around, um, like bond debt reimbursement. And not the component from the state, but the— isn't there a grant reimbursement? I, I don't remember what it was. There's another, another reimbursement that I, I thought that that if you— that charter schools did not receive the same level of reimbursement or weren't eligible in ways.

No, wasn't there a grant that we get, like a grant reimbursement that's not the state bond debt reimbursement? The major maintenance—. The major maintenance grant money. Yeah, if we own the building, um, it's the projects that get approved for state reimbursement, not the school name. I mean, if you were to put one, that's another hour-long briefing.

But okay, on major maintenance grants, we put in projects that we've already completed in order to score highly. And so that way, when the committee sees them, they know that our cost estimate is dead on because we've already paid for it. We're the business manager of the buildings. So whether Oceans was part of East or not wouldn't impact whether we get major maintenance grant. That was— that's the question that I'm leading to, is if this project in particular that's on here would be impacted if it was going to be submitted for major maintenance grant, if it would be impacted because it would now house a charter school, because there's different eligibility requirements for that, right?

It should have no impact. No impact. Okay, okay, thank you.

Um, I'm gonna jump in the queue for more of a 30,000-foot question. Um, the last time that Anchorage passed a bond of more than $100 million was, um, the early 2000s, I think I remember from a previous work session. Um, and during that time, the Anchorage budget and revenue Um, revenue diversification mix looked a lot different. Um, with the municipal budget so heavily dependent on property tax, um, I'm wondering how the group of professionals in front of us right now would envision us trying to meaningfully address deferred maintenance backlog of the scale we currently have with a bond tolerance that we currently have, when realistically we should be bonding more than double.

How do we, how do we get caught up? Right-sizing isn't a solution.

We need to make these investments. And I know we're not the only entity here, even here locally, grappling with deferred maintenance. But have you folks had those discussions? And what do those conversations look like? You know, Larry can talk about a lot of discussions that's been held up at the state.

I think the state recognizes that districts all over have untenable deferred maintenance requirements. And there are a lot of discussions about, you know, over the last 8 years we didn't even know if we were going to get major maintenance grant money because it kept getting vetoed or, or dropped down to some really small amount. But there certainly are people talking about making that a much, much higher number because the state has to get ahead of this. It's certainly not just an Anchorage problem. I think, I think in Anchorage, you know, we have a lot of board meetings and I really— it feels like a lot anyway.

But I don't think no matter how much we brief this, the Anchorage population understands the state bond debt reimbursement piece. And I, I think we have to get people to understand that the value of a $55 million bond today is not the value of the $55 million bond in April 2013 that passed. It's 13 years later. It's, you know, we're not getting everything that, that, that you got back in 2013 for this kind of money. Also for us though, when we look at things like SVUs and roofs and everything else, Southcentral, there's a shortage of labor force, and that's only going to be compounded very quickly with competition on Jay Bear.

So even if we had more money, I think we would struggle with somehow Alaska and Anchorage, and it's part of the 10,000 homes being built, right? Because we have a housing problem that doesn't help us draw in new workforces. But all of those are, all of those are really padding down how much that we're able to bond for.

We used to do 6 SVUs in one year. We barely can finish 3, and we're doing final touches in, in October, November. So it's, it is real. Okay, thank you. Uh, Member McDonough.

So I would like to make sure I'm correct in some— like, pushing together some knowledge about school closures and the Ed Center moving. Um, from my time before serving on the board, I recall hearing if we close a school and then no longer use it for student instruction, then we we have no choice but to give it back to the municipality. Is that correct? Oh, that's not correct. Now we could, um, you know, it really goes back to bonding.

So when we took over the Ed Center years ago, it was a shopping mall, um, and there was a multi-year plan to do renovations to a shopping mall and convert it to what we see now walking through every day. So to convert a building into an EdCenter does take a 2 or 3 year lead time. You can't just put HR with 1,000 outlets with no private rooms into an elementary classroom or a middle school classroom or anything else. All those renovations have to be done. And I think we've struggled with— well, we do, we struggle with coming up with a multi-year facility plan that allows you to start planning 2 or 3 years out.

And I'm hopeful that the right-sizing committee informed by community members who also have voices that can reach out to people that maybe we're not reaching out to can, can help us with that. As long as we're on a 12-month cycle, it's tough to talk about moving the Ed Center when you know it takes a bond possibly for renovations, which is, is 2 years out. Out, and you have to knowingly close the school and leave it vacant for a period of time until you have the money to do renovations. So it's, it's just a— it's just been challenging for us.

Okay, I think that actually answers the second and third questions I had, which is largely that there, there is no free lunch scenario. Even though the public— it can be easy to think that, like, hey, let's zero out this expense.

I don't know how to diffuse the public sentiment of if we move the Ed Center, then we'll suddenly have a windfall of $3 to $6 million.

But, you know, I think a single analysis that we could point to and talk about and say that analysis has been completed, and here it is, you can make up your mind for yourself. I don't know if that's an expensive ask of the department, but it would certainly help because I do hear it probably on a weekly or month— at least monthly basis, like, why don't you move the Ed Center? And there are a lot of reasons that Economic and Development, but largely, if I could just say like, here's an analysis we've completed that backs up this position. It's not that it can't be done. I'm hearing it, it just needs like different planning mechanisms and cost analysis that don't currently exist within our operations.

Is that right? It's true. We would need to find the facility that we need to get a design for. And have that designer work with us and all of our departments to figure out the needs and then start looking at that facility because every facility— well, not every facility is different, but many facilities are significantly different and the cost to renovate them would be different than others. So you really do need that 2 to 3 year glide slope to realistically say this is the year that the Ed Center moves.

Just like when we're building Ursa Major, and Inlet View where we said, well, we're going to build Inlet View and then we built it and the old building was still standing. Then we had to demo it and now finally next summer we'll finish all the grass and landscaping. All of those projects, they're just multi-year projects and it's tough when people think, well, everyone just pack up your laptop and that's where they work tomorrow. It's just not that simple. I mean, if you're finance, you got to have extra security systems to make sure that the cash cage and everything else is secured.

There's privacy concerns for HR and other offices and record. I mean, it's, it is so much bigger than here's a warehouse, you all bring a folding table in and you can operate it. It's the power requirements. Everything about it's got to be looked at.

Go to Member Lessens. Thanks. I just wanted to refresh my memory. It was about 3 or 4 years ago that the district renegotiated the Ed Center lease, and my recollection is that we're saving something like $7 million over the period of the Ed Center lease from that renegotiation. Okay, with Dave Whiting again, I don't recall that number, certainly, because I remember what the first year was.

I don't remember all the others. Oh, thank you.

So receiving $14 million is what we just heard because we renegotiated the Ed Center a few years back. Thank you. Thanks, Dave.

Got 2 minutes left. Um, just remember, Blakeslee still in the queue. Yeah, um, just because we're talking about the Ed Center moving topic, I would say that having more concrete answers and data to back up what is and is not possible would definitely be helpful from the perspective of a board member. I speak for myself, but I think one of the arguments is it's not— it's— it is super nuanced. But when you frame it even in terms of like how the district operated during COVID for example, and there, you know, many staff ended up having to work remotely.

So I think there are a lot of questions about, okay, well, what is the actual need of the, the size of a space, what innovations can or cannot be made to allow some staff to work remotely, or how much needs to happen in person. And I think that I also have a lack of understanding of those sort of ability to have creative solutions or not, and having more concrete answers to be able to speak to members of the public around what is and is not possible and why, especially comparing it to a time like COVID when there was a lot of telework, would be incredibly helpful. Sure, we can start those discussions. It's certainly going to take a little while to pull something like that together. If you recall, during COVID nobody came to work.

The schools were closed, everything was closed. So it was much different than— we didn't have professional development where this room is completely full. Of training. In fact, every single conference room in this building for professional development and meetings like the SEAC and all those other types of meetings, none of those happened because schools were closed. So it, it is so much different when people come to the Ed Center and they're really hoping to talk to a human being and not having to schedule a Zoom appointment.

I mean, but we, we should. I agree. I think we, we owe some clarity about, you know, I don't know that we can get to by position and this position could be a Zoom position, but I think we could better clarify what happens at the Ed Center and why we need, why we need the space. I mean, you can picture if I need something from Sean Prince, frankly, I'm not going to understand what he's talking about because I'm not an educator. But all I have to do is walk downstairs go to his office, and it's so much easier than saying, hey, Tuesday next week, can I get a Zoom meeting?

So the fact that Zoom was able to work during COVID didn't mean it was optimal ever. And I think for, for those of us who had to operate in the Ed Center during COVID I would never want to go back, even though we made it work, whatever that means. Yep. And I hear you. And I— maybe that's something that we could bring to the Finance Committee meeting, sort of like fits in that bucket, um, to have that sort of analysis.

But I think, yes, answering some of those key questions— why, um, specific departments can't be split up or, or could exist in different facilities, or there could be a hybrid of remote or, or not remote— and, and sort of beyond just what is or is not optimal, especially when we're talking about gutting schools and so many things that have been cut from schools. I think the argument of it being suboptimal is not quite— won't quite hit the nail on the head for the community. If it's like a real financial.