Anchorage Assembly: Worksession re Proposed Charter Amendment for electing School Board members

Here. Here. Thank you. And did I miss anyone?

Okay, I will also note, I know it's been a busy week of evening meetings too, so I know, and some folks are traveling, so I imagine they will listen to the recording. So we are going to be discussing this ordinance. It was introduced at our meeting on Tuesday. It is a public hearing on November 4th, so this is our first opportunity to hear a presentation, ask some questions, and, oh, I should say we also are joined in the room by Assembly Council, Clerk, a couple member, one member of the school board, and I think that's it right now, and Legislative Services. So we will have a discussion, and then just for folks' awareness, we do have Liz Edwards, who is our election administrator, so she's also here for questions.

We can call her up, and then otherwise I will turn to Member Handeland to do a presentation. Thank you, Chair. So, I mean, with this, I mean, the question before us is how should we elect the people who represent us on the school board? What I like about this discussion is that we all bring firsthand knowledge about it. All the members of the assembly have been elected, have ran for office, reached out to voters, and earned the opportunity to represent the people of this municipality.

And so I just wanna clarify with this thing, this is not an attack on the school board by any means. I'm not going to get in any kind of discussions of current topics before the board or any kind of votes. And so the main focus is how we structure our representation. So as everyone who's run for office here kind of knows, this is our current system that we have set up. We've got 7 members that run municipal-wide with overlapping 3-year terms.

Members are limited to 3 consecutive terms. We've got this kind of 3-year cycle where we have 3 at-large seats that are municipal-wide that run with the mayor, and then 2 seats for each of the assembly elections that come up.

And so the current system and just kind of the electorate that we have here, we see— we can see here kind of the school board versus the assembly. The number of residents there, around 290,000 people, an assembly district is around 48,000 people. This is all on average. We've got the number of registered voters, 235,000 for an average assembly district, a little under 40,000. And then these are the election returns we see for first— and these are just for the school board elections.

So we see a little bit higher of an uptick during the Mayoral election years. But it's roughly a sixth of the turnout that we see in an assembly election.

So, with the— no, I guess that didn't include nothing. So, with the geographical distribution that we have on there, there was— I'm not sure if it's on the PDFs there— having actual where it shows that we can have actual candidates or, or candidates or elected members from different areas that can get clustered. And so a school board candidate currently runs— sorry.

So the current system doesn't require school board members to come from, from different parts of the municipality. Geographic balance can happen, but there's no mechanism to guarantee it. And we lost the presentation.

Oh, that's the one we were going to do. Yeah. So before we get in the data, I just want to think— have people think like, hey, how do you— how does representing a district shape the way you approach it? For me, the first question I always look at is, how does this proposal affect my district? Think about the whole municipality, but I still am bringing intimate knowledge on how I represent my community.

And so I don't know, as you guys, if members on the phone are looking at this, I don't know if anyone noticed that the person in District 1 there has a cowboy hat, but those are the kind of things, I mean, where we saw, I mean, we had a presentation from the fire department yesterday where, hey, I was the one who was able to pick out, hey, District 2 is not actually represented on your map. And so I think that It's still important to have this Anchorage whole view, but having someone that can sit there and say, hey, this doesn't write, this doesn't fit my district and that model. And then we could also notice on there that there are actually 8 members on there. And so I didn't want to leave too many districts out, but that was just kind of a little quirk there. So we still need to have the Anchorage model, but have people who are able to sit there and have the ability to look for their district.

Oh, sorry.

So for this one, we're going to get into some of that geographic distribution. Point of information. Yes. Can I make a point of information? Yeah.

What's your name? Can you get a different microphone? Go ahead, please. Can I get a different microphone? Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, you kind of cutting in and out. Sorry about that. Okay, yeah, hopefully, uh, we'll make sure there's no static. Okay, go ahead, please. Is that better?

Yeah, I'm not hearing the static. Okay, so as we get into the, the geographic data here, um, I want everyone— I, I took off the districts of this at first because I want you to kind of think of, um, if your— where your district fell on this chart of not having someone who lived in your particular area of town, how that would make you feel. Would you feel fully represented there? And so we've seen shifts over time, and so these are some years identified. So this is over a 20-year period where we've got a district that for about 10 years did not have a member of the school board in their thing, and these are broken up.

And I want to go to, uh, kind of the middle line there, uh, where we had a, a 7-year gap. And so that was, that was a continuous gap where someone from, from that area was not represented on the, the school board or didn't have a representative, um, from their area. Not saying that they, they were not represented on the school board. And so these are the different districts. And so, I mean, you can see where, um, the political, or not the political, the geographic shifts have happened over time.

And so it can be where you feel like you've got good representation, you have someone, a school board member that lives down the street, but it might not be that way permanently.

Briefly, I have a question on this actually. So, and I'm not gonna mention individual names, but in looking back before 2022, did you take into account the significant shifts of the district size for District 1? And I bring it up because I can think of one specific person, uh, and, and if she may be listening, I don't know, but, uh, one specific person who, uh, used to live in West Anchorage, uh, represented, uh, that district and is now in what is District 1. And, and I actually was never on the school board, did not participate in that, but, uh, I also used to live in District 3 until the redistricting, and then that if I had stayed in that same place, I would have been in District 1 as well. Yeah, so yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

So looking at this data, I didn't actually apply it to the historical district things. And so this is using the current district map and where that person would have fell over the last 20 years here. And so I didn't try to, yeah, go back and try to parcel it with the different districts or trying to sit there and apply someone to things. So that's using our current district maps and where that person resided when they were elected. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I just want to know, and again, I'm not— we don't need to parse the data that specifically. I just want to note that because of the doubling in size of District 1, it did significantly shift, especially Districts 3, 4, and 5, I think were most affected. Thanks. Yeah, and so yeah, I mean, that kind of comes on to the distribution here. So this is counting, so there were 50 1 seats up for elections across 21 annual elections.

And so someone who ran— so if someone was in District 4 and they ran 3 times through their 3 consecutive terms, they would be counted 3 times in this. And so this is counting the, the actual elections. And so someone could be counted multiple times in here, and it just kind of shows the geographic distribution over the last 2 decades here. One of the things that I did want to— everyone, as we go on to the next slide, I want people to kind of keep an eye here at District 5. So right now it's 9 representatives, and so then this takes the same data, but we're just looking at the last 10 years.

And so you can see how there can be some shifts. And so even though District 5 right now is doing fairly well, if you look at that previous 10-year period, they would have only had one during those other 20 elections, they would have only had 1 representative during that time. And so you can definitely see some potential swings here where, I mean, in 21 seat or in the 26 seats that were elected, 21 seats or 81% of them were filled by representatives of 3 districts. And so with these kind of potential, this potential to have regional distributions not being even. Is that something that we want to have on the school board where it's a possibility, or do we want to incorporate some kind of design so that there's, that we can kind of prevent this and have some regional balance on this?

Because you can see, I mean, the difference from District 3 to District 8 there, I mean, 1 to 8, And this is, I mean, this is over a 10-year period, so this is a good amount of time here. And so then this is also looking at members from the same district serving together. And so we've got distinct periods of time where you can have a significant portion of the board living in one area. And so, I mean, there's 2009, 2012 and then '21 to '22 where, I mean, 3 of the 7 members of the school board were all represented by, were all lived in one district there. And then if you look at for multiple districts, you have some significant time periods there where you've got a good portion of the board either in 2 districts or in 3 districts that serve a majority of that make up a majority of the board there.

And so, I mean, just to kind of put this into perspective for our assembly members there, where you could have, I mean, 5 of 7, that is a supermajority on the board. So that'd be equivalent to having 2.5 or 8.5 seats on the assembly being represented by just 2 districts. And then you look at some periods here, fairly recently from '21 to '25, where, I mean, 80, what is it, 81% of the, no, 86% of the board seats are being represented by only half of the districts. And is that something that, I'm not insinuating that school board members don't represent the full district or they're not thinking about the full municipality, but are residents getting that full representation when they don't have someone who is local to their area representing them on the school board? Before we move on, a question for Mr. Martinez.

Yeah. Thank you, Chair.

Although you just described it as not insinuating, it sounds a little bit in that direction. When you— when it's described that members represent a district, but they really are living in a district and they represent citywide. And so the question I have is, is there a relationship between outcomes, as you did the analysis, that is demonstrable of bias that you would describe, or the bias that you're somewhat articulating could be there? So I didn't look at any kind of votes or how certain members aligned on the school board on any kind of like political metrics there. I really didn't want to get into that with it, and I'm not trying to insinuate that— I mean, a member from that lives here in District District 4, that's, I mean, Midtown.

And so there, there could be a lot of bleedover of, hey, if you live on the edge of that district, you might, you're not thinking, hey, I represent District 4. You're thinking, hey, I represent the entire municipality, but you're going to have a different perspective with that on this is the neighborhood that I live in. This is the neighborhood my kids reside in. There is going to be a certain amount of perspective that comes from that. And so that's really— I'm not— and sorry if I have confused people or said, hey, they're, they're from this district or thing.

This is just the district that they reside. And I'm used to, from the, the assembly side of it, saying, oh yeah, I'm from this district. And so I apologize if that's how that came off. But there is a certain amount of, I would say, perspective that someone has with living in that area. And I'm not trying to insinuate, hey, that someone doesn't care about that, that thing, that area.

But if you are not from that area, there you don't have— you might not have that perspective. If someone lives in South Anchorage, the amount of time that they spend, uh, in Chugiak is going to be drastically different than someone who lives in Eagle River or actually lives in Chugiak. Um, and so I think that, that those perspectives matter. Thank you for the answer. Yeah, I have a follow-up question.

I think the, I think the answer went a little further than what I was trying to get at, which is essentially outcomes. It would be interesting, for example, if historically, based on the analysis that is somewhat being presented today, there were areas of town that had demonstrable unrepresentation or underfunding or inequities that would otherwise be highlighted. So I just wanted to flag that. And then also a follow-up question would be, what was the genesis of the choices that people made in the past to shape the— what the system that we have today in terms of electing board members? I think a little historical analysis is helpful.

It's been presented that these questions almost haven't been thought about historically, and almost we just have what we have today. But I, I would wonder about the historical reasoning about why citywide school boards made sense to the folks that designed what we've inherited. Thank you. So yeah, I don't have any, I guess, why the system was put in place. I know that Chris Birch had put forward a proposal to do something similar to have the school board elected by district, but that was back when District 1 was smaller, and so it couldn't align with the assembly districts.

And so it was, I believe his proposal was to have it where you would have 7 districts for school board. And part of this proposal, as we get into it, is that I didn't want to have it where we are sitting there and trying to confuse voters by having different districts than the assembly ones, because I could imagine just the amount of confusion where it's like, oh, hey, I've got— out in Eagle River where it's like, okay, you've got most of one, but then, hey, there's going to be a little bit chunk because obviously they would have to be a little bit smaller there. To create that confusion. But yeah, yeah, there has been talk in the past on that. And as far as the outcomes portion, that's something that's a lot harder to quantify on for representation there.

And then it's starting to kind of get down into the weeds of someone's voting decision— was this right or wrong? And that's something that we I guess, can't really qualify because, I mean, out in Eagle River, they might think that, hey, I'm doing a good job representing them, but someone from downtown might disagree.

Yeah, Chair, just, I think that's the answer to end, but just for clarification, I don't think that the question was completely understood. I mean historical analysis, for example, to say the way the school board is designed now has led to 20 years of underfunding in one particular area or another area, but particular students versus particular schools. And especially, it would seem important to articulate that through the lens of the regional question that is being presented before the body. I think that's the clarity I wanted to offer. Thank you, Chair.

Thanks. And I have myself in the queue for an additional question. I guess, and again, I dig into the data also, but I'm thinking, I wonder how this data looks when we take into account longevity of folks serving. And so on the Assembly side, we did the calculation earlier this year that 27 people have served on the Assembly since January 2023, and that includes interim members, that includes includes people who served and termed out 9 years, it includes people who served 1 year, and so, and so there's a range, and I'm less familiar with the school board, but I know there's been, you know, for example, this past cycle we had 2 members that had served 9 years term out, and so I think because we're looking obviously time spans, but between, you know, '21, '22, '25, etc., you know, that was at least multiple people who again are in 3 terms. Oh yeah.

And so I think, so, and I, again, I don't want to go back and parse all this data, but I think it is important just to note that the length of service means that that district has quote unquote more representation, but it's one person versus, you know, when those seats turn over and there's 7 of them, so there's fewer. And again, I think we've seen a trend, just anecdotally, I think that people are serving less time in these roles, period. You know, they choose not to run, et cetera. But I just want, and I'm sure back in the day there were folks who only served one term or whatever that looks like, but I just I just wanted to note that too as another thing just to think about as we interpret this data. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, the previous one was showing, was totally numb.

This one was actually looking at each individual year of, hey, how does that school board look at that time during that time period? And I always used the one after that election. And so during this time period, the '21 to '25, it's looking at the actual members on it. And so Districts 4, 5, and 6 during those time period had 6 of the 7 members.

And so just going on to here, how other districts elect them. The Matsu already has something similar where they're electing their school board by district. Each member then is representing around 16,000 people. Kenai Peninsula also follows something similar where they use their assembly districts, and that's around 7,000 people per district. Bering Strait and Lower Kuskokwim School Districts, they also use geographic boundaries.

So the proposed structure— we don't need to show the map on this— would— it was similar map, just showed one in every single district and then one person floating out there in the inlet that would be the at-large. And so this is getting to the actual proposal. So the idea is to have each assembly district would have a dedicated resident that would be elected by their voters. Because one of the other, I guess, components of this that was not— that I didn't want to kind of go down the rabbit hole of looking in— you can have someone who lives in that area that wasn't— maybe lost that district. And so when we're talking about representation, Does that— what does that look like?

Does— hey, just because you have someone living in your area, but those voters didn't have confidence in that person, is that person giving that full representation? And one of the things with this, because I went and looked back historically of the last time that we had a charter change regarding elections and watched some of the testimony and some of the news coverage around District 1. And my good friend Chris Constant was sitting there saying they're like, hey, they felt that having only one member in that district was what they were not getting, that full representation. And so even though it was a smaller district, it was proportionately the same number of voters, that that wasn't something that that district felt like they were getting that full representation. And I think that, I mean, it was good that it, I mean, Assembly expanded to have that so that we have those equal districts, and I really value having the dual-member districts.

But I think that having a similar structure where we are able to have it so that each person can sit there and say, hey, this is my dedicated person on the school board, this is the person that I can go and have a more intimate relationship rather than having that collective of— yes, you have 7 members on the school board, but if you don't have one person who is going to sit there that you can go to and say, hey, this is a cause that I need you to champion, this is someone that I would like you to bring something before the dais, I think that has a certain amount of value to it. Thanks. A point of information for Mr. Martinez.

Yeah, Chair, it was more of a just clarifying question, so I didn't want to use the POI, um, but just to confirm, when you described the legislative item and hearing, including the testimony from Chair Constant, just to confirm, you were describing the legislative debate about adding the additional member to the downtown or North Anchorage district. Is that correct? To the assembly representation, not to school board discussions? Correct. Okay, just wanted to confirm that Mr.

Constant's comments were specifically about the equity in the one-member district versus all other districts in the community being two-member districts. It was not with respect to the same value proposition to a different body. It was specifically about making sure that that district had equal representation in the standard of every other district being two members. I just wanted to, for the record, make sure that Mr. Constance's testimony was clearly related to that, and it was not related to a school board discussion at all. That is correct.

Mr. Constant was talking about how the school, the downtown district, having less representation was, uh, yeah, was it was something that they wanted to change, and that was one of the things that I believe him, Austin Quinn Davidson, and Forrest Dunbar sponsored there to have it so that there was equal representation. So yep, I wasn't trying to—. Well, now it's a point of information check. Yeah, so just to clarify, or point— make sure we're saying technically the same thing.

The assembly body is made up of 6 districts and The downtown member had been a one-member district in that body of the assemblies, two-member districts. So when the chair described the call for equal representation for his district, it was with reference to the Assembly's operating framework. The school board are citywide elected officials, and there are fewer of them, so it's an apples-to-oranges comparison from my vantage point. But just for the clarity, I think that was important. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, don't have anyone else in queue. Please proceed. Okay, thank you. And so, I mean, the idea behind this proposal is to have it so that we never have a no-member district. And so that was, I guess, kind of the point I'm making of, if, as the last time we were looking at kind of some different district shakeups and stuff, that members thought that a single-member district, that that wasn't full representation, that looking at this future proposal, we will guarantee that no district would have a no, would— that every single district would have at least one member in it.

And we still keep that at-large seat there. And this is due to state law. We've got to have at least 7 members on our school board. And so the size of the school board doesn't change there.

So on here to some of the, the kind of advantages and stuff that I see with this. So a dedicated school board member gives residents some direct accountability to their community, creates the opportunity to build strong relationships with the community councils, local schools, and the people that, who rely on them. It also gives smaller campaign areas, so it can make running for office more manageable for people with jobs, families, limited campaign resources. And so this is one of the things that, as I was campaigning, really kind of kicked off of This wasn't an initial proposal that I was thinking about, but as I was thinking about it, like, hey, how hard it was to just run in a district, and would someone like me, would I ever run for school board? And it's like, you're not.

And I mean, over a 6-month period, I was able to get a huge chunk of that. It makes it virtually impossible to try to do that for school board. So in my view, I think having the smaller electorate removes that time and resources needed to reach voters. I think that As we're seeing the elections that's currently going on with the number of mailers, phone calls, there can be an overabundance of information that people are getting. But there can also be an underabundance with that, where if we have it where people are the soccer mom who wants to sit there and try to run municipal-wide, the ability to try to get out there, communicate your vision to voters is somewhat hampered by the large electorate that you have to run into.

And so I think this makes it easier for people to run for school board. And so I think that this is, from an equity perspective, there actually opens up more, more opportunity for, for people to run. And another thing that I didn't really dive in here with the slides here, but was just kind of thinking of different areas of the municipality vote different. I think the downtown district, or North Anchorage now, is, has some of the lowest voter turnout, and South Anchorage I think is one of the highest, and it's almost 2 to 1 in terms of the number of votes that are cast. And so this also guarantees the ability of, we all represent our constituency on the assembly, they're all roughly the same size, but we don't get any more power or more influence depending on the number of people that vote.

And so you can see it when we have these municipal-wide, like, the areas of town that come out and vote more will have more influence on those elections and on the school board. And you could see that, I mean, from an equity perspective of, are more marginalized people less likely to vote? And so are we shifting representation away from those communities?

And so yeah, I mean, I think that there's certainly some advantages to having district-wide, and I understand the perspectives that people have been bringing up of, hey, we need to be thinking about the city collectively for the school district. But I think that members of the assembly, we are still looking at the city collectively. I'm not sitting here looking at, hey, how does this project, uh, something that happens in the Anchorage Bowl that doesn't, uh, impact Eagle River— I'm not looking at and saying, hey, I can zone out, I don't have to, uh, pay attention to this, because, um, I still care. But we're bringing that perspective of, uh, my district, my constituents, this is their idea.

So with this, this would be the anticipated transition for, so for the 2027, so this is assuming that voters approve this. And so the main, I guess, message to my colleagues is that this is not our decision. Ultimately, this is going to be the voters that decide. And is this a proposal where we should be sending to the voters of, are you happy with the way that we elect our school board, or should we give them the choice to make a change? And so I didn't wanna get into any details and stuff with my ordinance of, hey, which districts start falling into what seat?

And so if this were to pass, there would be a separate implementing ordinance that the assembly would pass. And so this would be kind of, preliminary and kind of just anticipated. So for the 2027 election, everything would stay the same. We would elect it— this, this would be on the ballot during that time. If this were to pass, then in '28, the two at-large seats, two districts would— those would shift over to district seats, and they would serve a 3-year term.

The following year, two additional district seats would be elected. And then in 2030, so when the seats that we're going to be electing this next April come up, one would remain at-large and then two would become district seats. The, one of the district seats would only be elected for a one-year term and one would be elected for a two-year term, just so that we would align here with the ongoing cycle. And so the idea is to have where you would have during an assembly election year, you would have— everyone would be running in a district. You would have half the, uh, district seats up for school board up and, uh, half the assembly up.

And so across the municipality, you would have, um, uh, half the districts would have a school board seat and an assembly seat. Half of them would only have an assembly seat, and everyone would be on a 3-year term. And then when we get to the mayoral election year, that's where it would align with the at-large seat. And so on the mayoral ballot, there would be an at-large seat that is run municipal-wide, and also the mayor would be running municipal-wide at the time. So that's just to kind of align it so that we would have kind of distinct district elections and assembly elections.

And so just to kind of—. Sorry, before we move on, I have a question on that. So just to be clear, so it would— because right now we have the 2, 2, and 3 because there's 7. So essentially, this would also change kind of the cadence of all of those elections as well. And then are you assuming that the—.

Actually, never mind. I answered my other question. But so just to be clear, so this would also change the cycle of those seats? Yes, correct.

And so, I mean, the key points and goal, I mean, it's to have that geographic balance and so that you can't have baked into the system them the potential for any kind of regional bias. I mean, you can have it where members of the school board are elected and could completely ignore a particular area of Anchorage, and there's really nothing that that area can do. They don't have a voice on the school board. I'm not suggesting that that is happening by any means. But it's looking forward of, hey, how do we want to elect our members?

And I think having that dedicated local member really gives that perspective and the ability to champion causes that maybe, maybe don't pass, but someone sits there and can feel, hey, I've got a voice on the school board there. I know that I really enjoy being able to bring perspectives and stuff, even though, even if it's going to get completely shut down of, hey, this is how my, my people people of Chugiak/Eagle River/J-Bear feel. And even if it's something that, hey, we just want to kind of vent a little bit, get that out there, that those discussions can happen. I think having more accessible campaigns, and that's one of the things where it's like, hey, when talking with people about running for office, trying to encourage people, hey, run for school board, they look at the electorate that you need to run in and It is very off-putting and it's very, I mean, you essentially have to have a professional campaign to try to go and do that. I mean, the only offices that you can run for that have more constituency is if you run for governor or one of our Congress seats.

And this is for our local school board. And then as you look kind of down back to, kind of with the ability to have those kind of community relationships. As far as I've been able to find, and maybe the member of the school board could correct me on this, I mean, Assemblymembers, we've got staff, we've got a lot of ability to have either aides to kind of help us with that, and we are in a district, and sometimes I feel overloaded with, I mean, the amount of communication and going around to community councils, that trying to filter that and do that, I mean, where school board members are essentially doing that and it's gonna be 6 times that district there without having kind of dedicated staff for that. I think that this could make it so that it is more manageable for individuals. Representing this distinct area.

And then I also think that, I mean, having that local voice where you are building those relationships with those, those school boards or with your community councils where it's like, hey, this is my school board member, I can sit there and have the same person for a 3-year period of time where it's like, hey, I'm building those relationships with it. And so That's all I've got. I'm happy to answer any more questions, but the main thing is just to kind of get this out, hear some feedback from my colleagues on this. Thanks. We have one person in the queue, but actually I did want to ask, so we have one of our school board members here, and I was, so my purpose, I'd like to call up Miss Lessons, and it's not to ask for opinion on this, and I know it's tricky, you know, obviously the school board probably has not taken a opinion on this, but my specific question for Miss Lessens, and we'll go to Miss Silvers who's in the queue, is I just want to understand a little bit about how your job looks at constituent relations, and because it's interesting, I'm reflecting on kind of what is the theory of a school board and what is the theory of a legislative body, and I think, you know, our system in the U.S. has legislative representation, we have districts, and the idea being this is your person, you contact your person, and then they're all sitting at the table working together.

And I know that that's not how our school board works now, but I'm curious kind of how much, from the perspective of current school board, how much are you hearing from folks in your district? How much do you get those kinds of questions? And I'm sure you're hearing on a number of different issues. Maybe just describing like how much of that is a geographic kind of, set of contacts or responses you're getting versus the types of work that you're doing? Thank you for the question.

For the record, this is Kelly Lessens. I am a member of the school board, came here as one individual community member, not speaking on behalf of the board today, but I appreciate the question. So just very briefly, we have 7 school board members. We have an entire community as our constituency. I think the one word that has been missing from me in this entire conversation is students.

The school board is here to ensure that all students have the education that they need to succeed in life. Those are our primary concerns and our primary focus of our attention. Now, serving students requires an ecosystem of people, of staff, in the district, really strong parent relations with, with their families, and it requires understanding the communities in which our students are living and learning. So on an annual basis, the board reorganizes itself when 2 members or 3 members are elected, and the board establishes— we have 7 geographic regions that we divide more or less by our high schools. Chugiak and Eagle River do get lumped together, but areas of service are rotated on an annual basis.

So I've been a member of the school board for about 5 and a half years, and so it has been my privilege to have been rotating through the schools— so the high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools that are sort of connected in each region— and the community councils on an annual basis for service for South, for Diamond, for Bartlett, and West, and this year is East for me. So I haven't yet had the Chugiak/Eagle River rotation, but we do rotate that on an annual basis to make sure we understand sort of boots on the ground. What does, what does school look like in, in any of those schools on a day-to-day basis? We're at those community council meetings. On weekly or however, you know, whatever the frequency is.

I think that the other thing that is really important, I think Member Martinez asked earlier about the history.

School board member service was written into the Anchorage Municipal Charter intentionally. My understanding is that there has been a school board since 1915. There have been 7 members on the board since at least 1961, and it was intentionally written into the Anchorage Municipal Charter to have board members serve the district as a whole because we must look at the district as a whole. We must budget for the district as a whole. We must focus on student outcomes for the district as a whole.

So yeah, and I know I want to make sure we're not getting into any kind of debate, but more specifically, I guess, how much are you hearing? And I appreciate your point about going to community councils. I know you've gone through the West rotation. We've been at meetings together. Can you clarify what district you live in?

Currently, Assembly District?

I live on the Anchorage Hillside, so I believe I'm a South Anchorage constituent. Okay, yeah, that'd be District 6. So I'm just curious how much you are hearing again from— are folks contacting you because you live in that part of town, or folks contacting you more, I guess, are you fielding, you know, we get requests like, you know, fix a road and the things that are in our purview. I'm wondering, do you get those kind of localized requests, or are they more about things like the budget or, you know, these larger issues? I would say 99.9% of the emails we receive are about broader budget issues.

I have been contacted by one neighbor up the street when bus transportation was ended and was able to speak to that neighbor about what the community I'm seeing what the district could or could not do to resolve that transportation issue. But that was just because somebody happened to know me as a board member. But our purpose is to serve students as a whole. Okay, thank you. And so I think that concludes my questions.

I have Ms. Silver in the queue. I know you have some questions. Please go ahead.

Yeah, I have several questions. Okay, so I'm going to start with this one. Have you looked at the difference in the power structure between the school board chair and the assembly chair and how that power structure combined with regional elections could lead to inequity. And so some of the differences that I'm speaking of is that the school board chair holds more power to set the agenda. And so it's not so much like the assembly where anybody can send their agenda items to the clerk and anybody can bring what they want.

The school board chair holds more power to set the agenda, and then the school board chair also holds more power to coordinate with the administration. And so I think that there could be some real inequities in there. And so I'm just wondering if you've like looked at that or considered that, or did you realize the differences in power structure? Could you just speak to that a little bit, please? No, I didn't really look into, yeah, I guess any kind of power structure on that.

I mean, I think that it's the power structure that the, the school board has, I think, is set in their, their own policies there. I don't think I don't think that that's something that's written into code as far as anything that I'm aware.

Okay. All right. So I think that's something that probably would have to be considered. The other question that I have is— let's see. Boy, there's a huge echo.

Is somebody not muted?

Is that better? Okay. Yeah, that's better. Thanks.

So the Anchorage School District, it is one district. And so I'm wondering, is there any evidence that you have gathered or that you have looked at that would indicate that having a regional focus rather than a student focus would lead to better outcomes for our one district, one school district?

I mean, the problem with trying to do anything like that is it gets very into— I mean, you're talking to an engineer here, so it's like, I'm going to be very data and try to be, uh, have things, I guess, as analytical as possible there. And so to try to decipher, hey, results or anything like that starts to get kind of more into a kind of a fuzzy territory. But, um, I mean, I guess what it boils down to, for me, I guess, looking at this of like, would you prefer to have, I guess, a member of the school board living in your district? And like school board member Lessens had said, where it's like, hey, having that accessibility of, hey, seeing someone on the street, someone seeing someone around town, even in the places you're shopping. I mean, the number of times that I get stopped at Fred Meyer or something of, oh, hey, someone wants to sit there and talk about that.

Gets to access to our elected officials there that I think is beneficial there. And just saying that we, I guess, elect someone district-wide or area-wide versus district-wide doesn't guarantee that that's how they're going to, I guess, operate there. And so this proposal isn't, yeah, casting any doubt on, I guess, any particular policy, because I don't think that amending the charter should be a very reactionary step. It's just to ensure that there is that balance, and you can never have it where essentially multiple members of the school board live on in the same district, the same street. Like, these are things that are currently codified into our laws that could become an issue in the future there.

And so someone, even if you're elected area-wide, you could still sit there and have that regional bias. And the point is you could have multiple people that have that. And I don't want to get into school closures or any, any kind of some of the hot topics for the school board. I'm trying, trying to avoid that. But as people are, I guess, looking at some, some of those issues, having that feeling of, would you feel better having more or less people living in your district?

And I would tend to say that people would probably prefer to have, have that. And so rather than making it sure that everybody has that, it's split up and we're sharing all that, those good vibes of having someone that's on the school board that lives near you, having that codified there.

Okay, I guess that kind of leads me into my final question, and that is, are there any kind of unintended consequences, or has there been any consideration placed on to kind of the reverse of this, which is that you would have elected officials making district-wide decisions for your most vulnerable members of society, your children, but only accountable to a regional, regional portion of the Anchorage School District. And so what I'm saying is that I, as a parent of kids in the Anchorage School District, would only have 2 members making decisions for my kids that are directly responsible or accountable to me. And so I, I guess I'm trying not to get into any debate, but I guess what I'm asking is, have you kind of looked at that reverse of having actually less school board members that are directly accountable to you? That you have voted for making decisions on a district-wide basis? Have you kind of considered any unintended consequences that could come with that?

Yeah, I mean, that was, I mean, that's kind of, I mean, the two competing, I guess, views here. I mean, the central thing of, yeah, I mean, the at-large versus district, and if we look at the assembly, I like, which is somewhat what this is structured off of with the districts. I mean, you can kind of, I guess, any of the criticisms there of the, I guess, electing the school board by, or the pros for electing school board by district or by area-wide would cut against us having, I guess, assembly districts by district, or not? Why? Like, I guess my— like, as I was kind of, yeah, thinking about this, of like, well, why, why, why are we— why, why do we have two different systems for essentially similar governance here?

And I don't think— like, I mean, we're about to get into budget season, and like, we're not sitting here being like, oh hey, uh, West Anchorage is gonna have more representation because the chair is from West Anchorage. We're not sitting here looking and I guess casting dispersions of like, we're all gonna get into some kind of fight here and like, we're not gonna get anything done because everyone's just focused on what is going on in their own area. And so I don't think that that's gonna happen at the school board level. 'Cause I think, I mean, ultimately no one's gonna be looking at the lines there and being like, okay, here's the line in the sand, I don't care about kids that live on that side of the street, but I care about the kids that live on this side of the street.

So I definitely get that. But I mean, it almost gets down to like, I mean, the kind of some of the arguments under like gerrymandering or something. Like, you look at an electorate, and if you are in a thing where it's like you love all the members on the school board, you could sit there and say like, hey, yes, I've got 7 members, and But you could look at the reverse of if someone is on a side where it's like, hey, they're voting for someone else, or they don't like the representation, they want to make, they want to make a change, they're looking at, I potentially have no members. And so I mean, I can see, see, see the different views on it. But I think that under this proposal, what it's trying to kind of strike that balance with is Everybody has a dedicated member, and we still have that at-large that people can have that view.

But if you want to, if you don't like the school board, you don't like your individual members, you have a greater ability to go and change. Because I remember with some of the discussion around the budget where people were kind of upset with that, where it was suggested like, oh, well, hey, people should go and run for school board. Like, that's a tough thing for someone to go and try to do.

But yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't view it. I have one more question I wonder if I can ask real quickly because I think we're running out of time. Yeah, thanks. And, and before you do this, so I'll say, because we did start a few minutes late, um, uh, we can go a few minutes extra minutes, we have some time, but I wanted to also note, uh, on just to respond briefly on the point about the chair. I think, um, it's interesting there has been less discussion about this in recent years, but I think the, the perception of having two members from the same district, for example, as chair and vice chair.

That used to be a thing back in the day, and I know Dick Traini and Elvie Gray Jackson were a great example of that where I think people felt like it worked well. But I've also heard folks say we would not want, for example, myself and Mr. Perez Verdia to be the chair and vice chair because people perceive that as having one region having too much power. And historically, really, the quote-unquote downtown district was also there was some reluctance to say we don't want to have, you know, more representation for that area because downtown was perceived as a seat of power, even though it also has had the most underrepresented neighborhoods historically as well. So I just wanted to note that that it's a changing perception over time, but I think the chairship— and I'm not saying that the chair is the same as the school board president, um, but that, that is actually— that has been a thing historically, so it does shift over time. Uh, go ahead, Miss Silvers, and I'll say we'll go to 11:35.

Thanks. Is Member Lessen still in the room? Yes, she's sitting in the back and can come back up. Okay, yeah, because my question is actually for her, if she wouldn't mind answering. Yeah, go ahead.

She's just sitting down, she can hear you.

Okay, so on the Assembly, we make muni-wide decisions, of course, but also we advocate regionally for things like roads, you know, or specific things within our district. Is the school board the same? Do you make district-wide decisions but also advocate for regional things like, I don't know, a better plowing of a particular school, or like, is there anything kind of regionally that you guys are making decisions, or are you making more the broad decisions that govern the entire district? Thanks. We do make broad decisions that govern the entire district.

This past spring, I actually raised the potential that I would have a conflict of interest because part of the right-sizing conversation would re-boundary my home for all 3 schools. And in fact, it did. Our president said that wasn't a problem, but I actually wanted to raise that as a potential conflict of interest.

I don't know if that's helpful, but we do make decisions for the community as a whole.

And if I just may—. Okay, thank you. Especially important in a community where school choice is highly valued, and 35 or maybe up to 40% of our students, I don't know the exact percentage, attend a school outside of their neighborhood boundary. So I looked into it last year at Eagle River Elementary in the sponsor's district.

40% Of the students who were zoned for Eagle River Elementary chose to attend one of 22 other schools. Across the municipality. So I would be concerned about what representation looks like for the families on a street in your district if they are attending schools across town to take advantage of choice, but don't have a board member assigned to them across town. Well, that's actually, I guess, I guess a good point, I think, in this. Where you would not necessarily have some of those regional bias because the, the areas are based on the voters that reside, right, in the thing.

So if someone's got, they would still be representing those voters, but they've got to have students that are, I guess, going across the kind of district boundaries and stuff. That would, I guess, be helpful so that we wouldn't have any kind of regional things. So, I mean, member elected out of Eagle River and stuff would still care about schools and stuff throughout the municipality there because they would have students that they're chosen to represent would be residing in schools essentially throughout the entire municipality. So I do appreciate that.

Okay, Miss Silvers, do you have further questions? Okay, thank you. That's all my questions. Good conversation. Thanks.

Oh, great. Okay. Uh, so one more person in the queue, Mr. Martinez, and then we'll wrap up. Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. I wanted to just, uh, ask a question to square some language off, and it's been described as not reactionary but facing future problems, but, but there's no real issue today, but this could be an issue. And I wanted to square that off with what a school board member, Les, said, if the sponsor could, how do you square that the charter intentionally includes the language we've inherited?

How do you square that off with a future problem that doesn't exist today but that could be? So like, how do you square off the, the historical analysis that was done by the framers of the charter versus the moment. Yeah, I mean, the framers of the charter also instituted that there was gonna be 11 members on the assembly and that one district was gonna be smaller. And so we changed this. This is our living document here.

And so part of the analysis I was kind of trying to show with the school board shifts and stuff over time there was not necessarily to say, oh hey, this time was bad, this time was good, but that things change and is what is the system that we feel is most fair to the people that we represent municipal-wide. Do we want to sit there and say that? Yes, so just for clarification, because we're at time, I think the question I have is the why. Why was— things changed, certainly. Gerrymandering is an interesting term that was flagged, especially considering Muldoon's position to fighting gerrymandering.

But nevertheless, I'm asking the rationale of the original decision, how do you square that with the, the current, uh, yeah, item.

Um, yeah, I wasn't around 50 years, so, so I, I, I don't know the, the original, I guess, rationale behind that. Um, and so I'm looking at, I guess, the future of, I guess, what, what's the most fair system for for electing members to represent us. Okay, just for clarification, this is all subjective, but I think the historical perspective is pretty important, and perhaps there are some folks that have that history in the community with a little looking.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And with that, we are at time. So I'll note again, this is AO-2026-130. This will be up for public hearing on our agenda on November 4th.

And, and I guess I'll also just briefly note, in the past there have been questions on various items such as the municipal attorney. So if a member is interested, I would recommend following up with Assembly Counsel. They can do some legislative research on the Charter Commission. There's a whole transcript, and so I don't know what, what if anything was discussed on this item. I'm sure there might be some.

So just to flag that for folks, if you are interested, you can request that research. So with that, we will be adjourned from this work session. We'll be back at 11:45 for our next meeting. Thank you.