SCHOOL BOARD MEETING
Wednesday 1/27/16
High School Library, 7:00 pm
Board Present Staff Present Others Present
Dolores Owen Jack Walsh Sabrina Ververs
Scott Brookshire Cindy Bennett
Sarah Altland Melinda Bass
Jennifer Creighton Zachary Scheidecker
Brynna Ververs Kim Brand
Brad King
Lorraine Pierce
Bob Claus: Absent Excused
M/S: Brookshire/Altland MOTION TO APPROVE THE CONSENT AGENDA
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
None.
Ms. Creighton: I sat through the interview with the third grade teacher they hired and I have been in the class with her one day. I like her. She is pretty nice. We had the swim team meet here in Craig. It went well. Jack came up and was timer for us.
Brynna Ververs: It has been a very busy month at the high school. We just had our homecoming basketball game last weekend. They played very well and we are very proud. Homecoming Court was announced and Homecoming Queen and King was Courtney King and Noah Castle. In the Junior class, officers were Isaiah Records and Skyler Burnham. In the Sophmore class, officers were Macie Taylor and Maverick Ballard. In the Freshman class, officers were Haleigh Ebbinghausen and Gabe Almenzor. Our Academic Decathlon team did very well at the meet this month. We would like to thank all of the volunteers who came and helped us with things. We are very appreciative. We’ll be heading to Anchorage for the state meet on the 21st of February. Good luck Craig.
Ms. Owen: Congratulations to you, Brynna. I just have a couple things to add. Most of you, I’m sure, have seen the announcement from the Department of Education, regarding the AMP test and the new RFP and their intention to replace the AMP we put in place this year. That is something I am going to ask Jack, if he could just tell us what is going on when we get to your report. I also just wanted to make the Board aware that I received a letter from the CEA, requesting we open negotiations as per the process. I did contact Troy Thain to let him know that tonight we will be formalizing our negotiation team and once we have that complete I will contact him about setting up that first meeting which we both agreed would be sort of organizational to set some guidelines and time frames, and get that ball rolling. That’s all I have.
Ms. Brand: Jackie couldn’t be here tonight, but she asked me to announce that the Stikine Wrestling Tournament is this weekend and will be island teams plus Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan, so there will be a lot of wrestling there on the 20th and 30th if you want to stop by. She also had some safety calendars that she will give to you at the next meeting. As far as my report, we had some questions about correspondence courses. The student we were talking about last time, we had a meeting with Mr. Walsh, Brynna, and me. The student was taking the courses at zero hour before school plus two more during the day, so he was asking if he could continue that. I told him I didn’t know at that point if we would continue that or work it into the schedule. It wasn’t really a no we can’t do this or we can’t afford this, it was more of just a miscommunication than anything. The one thing, though, we talked about, is there isn’t really a set policy for how many correspondence courses a student takes or how much the district would pay. I was talking to Bernie Sorensen about it during one our mentor meetings. She said that usually a district has some kind of policy in place and that might be something we could work on and talk to Jack about. We have a grant, so we have 20 seats that we can assign kids correspondence courses pretty freely. They are using them to enhance their program. They want to take some more advanced classes sometimes as well. Historically, it used to be if people were deficient they would try to catch up, so we have expanded that and I think we will continue to see that trend because there is so much more out there to choose from. So, I think we need to have some policy in place. Any questions? Mr. Brookshire: Are there any courses where the student can earn college credits? Ms. Brand: It depends. I think there were some kids who did earn some college credits last year. If they pass the AP test, then they can take those. The VoTech Center kids are getting college credit for their work. That is something worth pursuing. We will have to look at costs. The range is about $150 to $300 for correspondence courses kids are currently taking. For college credit courses, they might have to pay for it. Those are things we will have to explore. Ms. Altland: How many kids do we have taking correspondence courses? Ms. Brand: 15 right now, some for credit recovery because of a required class they weren’t able to pick up and they are trying to graduate. Ms. Altland: So, the grant that some of these kids are falling under, does that go through the summer as well? Ms. Brand: It could. Generally, we don’t have kids doing that because it is hard to monitor and we would like them to finish in the semester. We haven’t offered them unless there is some reason they couldn’t complete the course and then are given two or three weeks in the summer. We haven’t offered it just strictly over the summer. Ms. Owen: So most of the 15 kids are covered by the grant at this point? Ms. Brand: The majority are, yes. Ms. Owen: I don’t know how the rest of the Board feels, but I think definitely this is something that, if anything, will expand in the future and we definitely need to have policy because without policy it can become a free-for-all and wind up being something we can’t sustain. We do have a policy committee, but I don’t know exactly how you want to do this. Ms. Altland: I would like to suggest that this isn’t a new thing in the state, so there is probably already policy out there. If we could maybe get a copy of that, Jack? Could you ask AASB if they have a copy and we could get it and refine it to fit our needs? Mr. Walsh: There are policies we have that address this to a degree, and there are handbooks that say things consistent with that. We will start with our own stuff and share with you a couple of things that are in other districts as well. Ms. Altland: Ok. Mr. Walsh: If you allow us to do this, it might be helpful if, since Brynna expressed an interest in being a part of that and Ms. Brand expressed the same interest, that you leave it to the three of us to meet first and we can share with you what we reviewed in our own policy and some others, and then turn it over to that committee so that you are not doing all the leg work on it. Ms. Owen: That sounds like a good plan. Let’s shoot to have something to the policy committee this spring and get some kind of policy on the books by the end of the year or sooner. Ms. Brand: The only other thing I wanted to highlight was the SCUBA club. Earl has it going and it is going really well. They had their first pool time last Saturday. Right now, he is volunteering his time and equipment and there isn’t any cost associated with it. He said it is going great. There were nine involved and eight went to pool. They are enjoying that. We talked about a class and that is not really something we are exploring. That has been tabled for now.
Ms. Owen: We have Jackie’s report. If anyone has questions, maybe Jack can answer.
Mr. King: Just a few notes. Some of the Social Studies and Science samples have been out to the elementary school teachers already and I am getting comments back on some of the instructional material. We did a longitudinal study of MAP scores. I have all the data collected on that, about 6,500 Excel lines of data on test scores, so it takes a little while to analyze it and figure out exactly what is going on, especially with the various tests and dates and such that are involved. We should have something to provide teachers and administration soon. Also, we did ASVAB testing and nine students took that test. They are sending someone to interpret the scores with the students and I’ll let Ms. Brand know when the person is coming. Mr. Brookshire: The dates of the meetings, specifically for social studies curriculum, are those teacher dates hard and fast? I very much want to attend some, but being that they are during my normal clinic hours, other than on a Monday, I won’t be able to. Would it be possible to have some of these dates changed to after 5, or on a Monday? Mr. King: I can work to do that. One of the reasons we had them scheduled as they were is because it is during the teacher workday. We can see what we can do to adjust those. Mr. Brookshire: Monday, during workday hours would work as well. Mr. King: We can work on that. I will let you know. Mr. Brookshire: Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Mr. Walsh: I don’t think there is anything to add. I know, again, they are doing some really good things on the accreditation now. It has picked up and is moving forward. Andy has been helping us co-facilitate the Crisis Committee. I think he highlighted a lot of the things he is involved with and I don’t have anything else to add to that. Ms. Owen: Any questions from the Board on the PACE report?
Mr. Scheidecker: It has been a busy month sports wise. The Stikine coming up proving to be real challenging with all the kids showing up. All in all, everything has been going good. Every day there is something new. We do have two new vans coming, 15 passenger vans. We are just waiting on the bill of lading and they will be on the ferry. I need to talk to Greg. He had some deal about giving one or selling one of the vans to the City for something. Greg and I have been talking regularly and he should be coming back here before too long. I’m not quite sure what his whole plans were for that.
Mr. Walsh: There have been a lot of good things going on. I don’t want to add a lot to my report. If Jackie was here, she wanted to do this. This is the calendar. I will pass it around. Be sure to check out the picture in October, because one of our students is the artist for that and he is an artist who drew his brand new house floating out to sea in a tsunami. It is Jackie’s son. We were talking about how windy it was the other day. He drew this really nice picture of the house out in the water and him running up the hill. Most years we have a student represented in that calendar. This is one of the things AML/JIA does for us to kind of encourage kids in the arts and then to make that available. Lots of other good art in there too. I didn’t mean to draw all the attention to Keegan.
I am going to take a couple of minutes and talk about the AMP test. I have been around schools a long time and I have a lot of concerns about testing, probably more so because of my career. A lot of it was spent in special education classrooms with kids where testing is a very interesting thing, state testing especially. It may or may not be as useful as people want it to be. Since the AMP test came in, you think back to 2012 new standards, 2014 new tests to address those standards, and as they transition to the new test there are lots of bumps in the road. On top of that, when the results came out, there was very little that was useful for districts and for teachers in particular, but even principals to identify what kids are doing well and what kids are struggling, or where the struggles are, and identifying what we can do to make the next set of results better. There have been different letters from superintendent groups and other members of our communities. Legislators have already pre-filed bills to eliminate the test. The department has made a big investment and now have a lot of egg on their face over this whole thing. I think during the State Board meeting this week, the Matsu district said they are not sure they would have their 18,000 kids take the test. I think a number of other districts have said similar things in different ways. I think that probably the press release we saw from the commissioner in the past couple of days is the next thing. It was already rumored that we would have this year to do the test and maybe next year and then by the following year they would have a new thing in place. They are doing this test in two states, Kansas and Alaska. The state of Kansas has already pulled out of the test. We were into the test and are now having these struggles. We asked for better information, can they pull it apart and tell us how kids are doing and what they are doing on standards, they said they probably couldn’t and they would hire a new company to do that. I think we will see some better information released in the next six months, but it is at least probably that far out. Brad has been going and representing us at the test coordinator meetings and doing a good job getting the word out in the schools. We have been trying to do what we can. What Mat-Su and other people are suggesting is we already do some testing with MAP testing where we can look at kids and how they are progressing in some of those same areas and maybe we need to focus our attention on those kinds of results and look at the data we get from that. Because this was the first year of the test, and many districts have MAPs data going back 10-15 years, in our district it was kind of unique. We have had it for a while. Has it been four or five years? I’m not sure. Mr. King: 2011/2012 was the first year. Mr. Walsh: Ok, and when I got here in 2013, I discovered we only tested half the kids in the district because we didn’t do it with our correspondence program. We have been asking them to do that and it just started in the last year or so, but other districts have ten years of data to go by and they can track how kids have done regularly. Some districts are suggesting this test is of no use and that test is more useful. The hardest part for me is that I have been the one the state has asked at times, after all these different meetings, to go back to your district and tell them to get ready for a smarter balance test. Oh wait, we don’t want to do the smarter balance test, how about we do this other test. We invent another test and you tell people hey let’s charge up that hill and let’s do really good with that, and our teachers are seeing the chaos that has been involved in that. The same day I got the press release I saw something from the head of the testing department that said, oh by the way we finally have the testlets for you to start having people practice for the test and then six hours later you have an email from the commissioner saying there probably won’t be a test beyond this year. I think this has caused a lot of confusion and we are trying a new evaluation plan. Part of the evaluation was going to be relying on how kids are performing on tests and on other learning objectives we have set. So, we have focused more attention on learning objectives and less on the test. I often feel like we are standing on quicksand. I will be in a lot of different conversations this spring and probably into the summer about how this is all going to roll out. I emailed the commissioner and Margaret McKinnon(sp?), and Elizabeth who sent the email about here is the test and let’s start using them, and said what do you really want me to do? Margaret said we will use the test at least one year, so maybe you could still do that. It just happened that I will encourage people to use them but I’m not sure everyone will get in line with that. I think it will help kids on their performance this year and I think it will help us have a better measure of how kids are doing, but I also know there are enough people concerned that we haven’t been doing things that make sense for a while. Ms. Owen: What are the consequences of not taking the test? I know there are a lot of different levels to that, but let’s just start with state funding. If we say our district is not participating in AMP this year, do we get penalized? Mr. Walsh: I think that will roll out more in the next couple of weeks or months, but as it turns out, what we were told in the past was if you don’t do it you will not meet the requirements for the participation rates and the state could withhold funds. If you don’t do it and don’t have evidence to show the federal government, then you could lose federal funds. A couple of years ago we sat at these same tables and one of our board members said I don’t think we should participate. Occasionally, I wonder if we should have had that conversation out fully. The only thing I can tell you is everything I have heard, and I have only seen that press release for a day, is that at this point to go forward and take the test this spring. As a Board, I am guessing there will be more than one board across the state that decides they will not have their kids do it. It is something that most of the boards will say if the state wants us to do it then we should do it. Ms. Owen: The MAP test doesn’t make up for not doing the AMP? If we say we are not doing AMP, but we are still doing MAP so we still have a tool for measuring performance. Mr. Walsh: At this point in time, there is a requirement under statute that we participate in state testing. The state testing lists AMP as what we have to do. Again, will all that change during this legislative session? Possibly. Could the department say we want waivers on some of these things if we are going to change. I know there are some things to repeal some of the laws around the testing and so I am not confident enough to say yeah, I think it’s a smart thing not to participate. I am hoping in the next three to six months we see better results from the first test, even though they will be much later than we ever imagined, but we will know a little more about how our kids did and people will assure us the next test will be even better. We saw lower participation rates in our correspondence families and many of them don’t want to be bothered with state testing. We are required to do 95% of participation rate. We have been doing that, but I’m not sure we will be seeing those same numbers this year. Ms. Altland: The test is given in April? If we chose to not participate we would need to decide pretty quick to let the staff know. Mr. Walsh: For what it is worth, it is one of those reasons why every once in a while I try to listen to these conversations where they talk about how some of these things will be impacted by ESSA, the new reauthorization, and it is why we will go to meetings with the board or with superintendents just to hear what the department people are saying at those meetings and the message they are giving. I think we will see things roll out. What I would caution against is to make the decision today to not participate. What I would tell you is that by the time you meet next in February, we will have had lots of other information come forward and if even at that time you want me to send a letter to the commissioner, or you want me to do it now, saying our district is not participating at all and can you please tell me the consequences, I could push that button and see how he responds. What I have asked him privately, he has given me the same answers I have given you. He said well you know, Jack, you could lose this fund and you could lose that. Every once in a while I want to push him to say well what is the will. Don’t tell me what might happen, tell me what will happen. He is not comfortable doing that. Ms. Altland: Mat-Su is for sure pulling out and they have 18,000 kids? Mr. Walsh: They are not for sure pulling out. They say they don’t support the test in any way and they think they have better test results. I will forward you the email Dena sent. She had a prepared statement she made. I haven’t read it yet. I only talked to her briefly and a few other superintendents. She said the district has been struggling with this for a while and thinks there are much better things. The district pushed years ago that we get rid of the Terra Nova test because they felt they didn’t need to compare themselves to anybody outside the state of Alaska. They were doing good in the state of Alaska and didn’t want to be wrapped into other comparisons. Ms. Owen: It’s hard to imagine that having almost no usable information from last year and having announced that we are going to scrap the test, that there is going to be a whole lot of effort put into making usable results. That is a little frustrating, however I think it is too much of a gamble, especially today to say we are not going to participate and potentially be penalized for that, so I think it is something we should keep an eye on and revisit at the February meeting when we have more information. Mr. Walsh: As you are asking me a question I can’t answer, I will probably contact the department and say this is the question posed at my meeting, how would you expect me to respond. I have been a skeptic of state testing for a long time in different states, but it is something that this has been one of the worst roll-outs that anybody has experienced and that is one of the hardest things about it. Some people want to find people to blame over it. I think once in a while we are trying to make something out of this mess. They said the test would take five years to get it right, but no one imagined it would be this far behind. Ms. Altland: Can I ask a question to you and Brad too? When is the study that you are doing on the MAP results going to be done. Mr. King: It will take a little while longer, but it should be done shortly. I have all the data collected. It is just a matter of comparing. One of the things about the data that will make it a little more difficult is that early on the early administrations of the test they did a small survey version, and then they did the test. They were clearly two different instruments. One is considerably shorter. They are considerably comparing apples to oranges, but that is what is taking up some of the time. Ms. Altland: And that will be useful information for the teachers? Mr. Walsh: I think when I am meeting with principals I am asking them to dig into their own data and come up with that. Between what Brad is helping us with and what they are doing on their own, I want to be able to show you what that is telling us before I have you decide to just get rid of this other test. I want to make sure we can be coherent and articulate what it is saying about our kids. That is one of the things that comes up every once in a while with my administrators is it may be helpful for them to have some additional training on the MAPS. It is a company out of Portland and before MAPS they had something called levels testing in the early 90’s and we used that in places like Kodiak. Again, it was expensive, but it was helpful. I think people found MAPS to be much more helpful than the other options that existed for that kind of information. Ms. Creighton: I was curious about the financial burden of really having, like what did we pay into this testing for getting nothing out of? It looks like that is continuing because the budget is such at the forefront of what we can and cannot do. Mr. Walsh: That is one of the other things that I would be careful. That is a bigger issue. This test costs us 25 million dollars, a five year contract to get this test up and running and have it useful. If after a year you are willing to say I don’t know that it was a great investment, the next test will cost 25 million or more. Then you have to invest the time and energy because that is what the state is paying, then they have to train everyone and we have to train everyone, and there are all of those rollouts. One of the things the state did a decade ago was say we want to make sure everybody is doing tests that will show the growth of students. A decade ago they said you should go and do the MAPS tests, AIMSweb, and go do some of these more popular tests that allow us to compare kids with how they performed this fall, how they perform in the winter and the spring, and year to year. Once those things are already in place, then the question comes up, why have another test? That was something we were all asked to do and most people got it started somewhere in that last decade. Maybe we don’t need to spend 25 million on testing at all. Ms. Creighton: And being that the 25 million has already been spent, I don’t know if they consider it an all-out fail. Do you somehow recover any of that, or if you don’t go the full five years, I guess the whole financial picture of that would make a huge difference, for me anyways, on whether or not you continued doing that. Mr. Brookshire: Is that 25 million for the five years, or per year? Mr. Walsh: It was about 5 million a year. What I learned, only recently, in November or December, the contract was written in a way that we can get out of it at any one of those years. If it is 5 million or 8 million at start-up and the rest of the 25 to be spread out over the next four years. When I was at the meeting in November or December, I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths, but I think I heard people say pretty clearly that they were so disappointed they didn’t know if they shouldn’t sue the company for the failure to meet the contract. Everyone of their people who analyzed the contract said you didn’t write a very good contract, they gave you exactly what you asked for and you didn’t ask for the right stuff. That is one of the other parts of the problem, that ultimately if a group of people at the department wrapped around other people that could help with this and they went and got this RFP and got this test, they are going to make the same mistake again. They are scrambling to figure out what to do next. It does look, from that press release, there will be another RFP to do something in the next couple months with the legislators and boards, and groups around the state who work on this. It may be a very different conversation that just says let’s cut our losses and move on.
Ms. Owen: Jack, did you want to add anything else to your report. Mr. Walsh: I did not. I just saw a lot of good things going on in the schools in the last weeks and after the holidays it is amazing everybody walks in the first days and talks about the things to do to get ready and now we are all going a hundred miles an hour again and it is just good to see the kids and the staff doing so many good things.
Ms. Owen: This is a second reading. Is there a motion?
M/S: Altland/Creighton MOTION TO APPROVE THE SECOND READING OF AR 0200 AS WRITTEN
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
Mr. Walsh: These are the goals you have for the district and people have asked if we could get those up on the website as quickly as we can. We have sent them to AASB and they will be up there pretty soon. It is not up there yet, but we wanted to wait until this meeting was over too.
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to approve the second reading of AR 0200 as written.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
M/S: Brookshire/Altland MOTION TO APPROVE THE PERSONNEL REPORT AS PRESENTED
Mr. Walsh: One quick comment. Michael Tipton is listed as resigning. He is joining the armed services and will probably be in the Army now. He was originally thinking the Navy, but he is going to be around for a while. He is going to work with us until the date that he and his recruiter work out to start. I just wanted you to know he will be here for a while and if you get a chance to thank him, he is one of our very talented people who has helped us a lot at the elementary and middle school. Ms. Altland:. That is good to know. I saw him this week in the elementary. Ms. Owen: Any questions or comments?
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to approve the personnel report as presented.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
Mr. Walsh: I will start, and if Cindy has anything to add. There are two reasons why this is on the agenda. One is that we want to make sure in a public meeting that we talk about the audit and allow people to ask questions. Our audit shows that we are in good financial state and that we had no findings or anything we have to worry about, so I want to thank Cindy and the different people that help make that happen. I think we have a good auditor in Christine who advises us on things we can do and keeps us out of trouble. It has been a complicated year. The state and federal government have changed a lot of things in terms of TERS and PERS and regulations about how government entities do. You will see a couple addendums possibly in the next couple months maybe when we figure out all the things about PERS and TERS that were left unsaid or not figured out. The other part is there was still a question about how do we account for all the money the PACE kids may not spend. There is still an issue about the accounting of that. We had a special meeting right after it came out. It has been approved and accepted by the Board, but this was just the time to make sure if there were other questions people would ask them. Ms. Owen: Any questions or comments?
Ms. Owen: I want to add my congratulations. I know what a project these audits are and it is a reflection on your entire year of work. We already accepted this at our last meeting, so it is just a formality. There is no motion on that tonight.
Mr. Walsh: We are kicking off in January the budget process and typically I want to try to give you a little bit of a forecast. Cindy has been working closely with the department with different people about where we might be. I want to make sure people recognize we are walking into this again and the kind of information we have. We are expecting a decline in enrollment that may be somewhere in the ballpark of 5%, although while we did that last year the actual number was 8%. It is something that as I get together with principals over the next month or so we will probably fine tune our prediction of where we will be numbers-wise and what that will do. You asked me the last time we were at this meeting about where those losses and numbers are coming from. They are coming pretty evenly across the board. About half the kids are leaving our correspondence program and about half the kids are leaving this part of our district, but there are some spikes in different years. While I would love to see that trend start to reverse, the declining enrollment has been a trend that has been going on for a while. Things like the SEARHC Hospital or any of those other things might bring in more families or business and members to the community, but right at this point in time I don’t know how far out those things are. When people talk about what mining might do, I think we have to keep predicting that our numbers are going to go down slightly for a while. Of course, the other part of the budget is revenues and besides the revenues we generate with students, you know where is the state going to be and nothing makes me feel good and warm about that. We are going to be arguing, advocating, and lobbying. There were promises made several years ago to have the $50 increase to the student allocation continue. When Cindy and I were looking at some numbers in the last couple of days, and when you do the simple math of $50 a kid times 550 kids or so, you will come up with a number that is a little less than $30,000.00, so if you don’t get that you might think that is where we will be, but the reality is because of the formula and all the ways those numbers go through our system, it is actually about a $72,000.00 difference. It is something fairly significant and we want to keep in mind that we want to say to Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins to Senator Stedman, and other people that we really do need that, and we have been counting on it and planning for it. I believe that when Cindy and I were talking today, if we did a 5% decrease in enrollment, we would probably see a loss of about $70,000.00, $66,000.00 I think was the number in state foundation formula. I have to be careful because the other thing we have seen regularly in the last number of years is the decrease in federal funds. That is another hole we have been trying to backfill and do things with. Your memo tonight is just telling you that what we predicted we have in our schools this year and what we had in October was a difference of enough students that it was about $107,000.00 difference to our budget. There is a part of me that feels as a starting point I need to look at the possibility that the next 5% will be another $100,000.000 plus and I may need to start by saying to you we may be cutting $200,000.00 out of our budget. I am hoping it is nowhere near that. If the numbers go up, or if other things happen in the legislative session that the number increases, then I want to make sure everybody knew we will deal with that, but it may be more painful. One of the things we recognize is that when you have a budget that is in the high 60% to high 70% of your budget is in personnel, it will be impacted and that is something we want to be cautious about. I tried to do something slightly different this year. I took a page and a half and listed a number of options out there. I put in real ballpark estimates of what that might cost. Not only do I have to look at what we might change or might do differently, I wanted to make sure that I could sort of assign to these things which things have the greatest impact on kids and staff and which ones have a lesser impact. You will see I used a simple 1, 2, 3, and 4 measure. I am not expecting everyone to agree with me about how I put that number in, but if it has a number 1 in the priority level, what I am saying is these are changes that have little impact on the students and our instructional program, although each will impact it in some way. The level 2 ones will change or limit what we have been doing, but at least the programs will continue to exist. In terms of sports travel, if we reduce the numbers of kids that travel on a team on a weekend by one or two kids from the high school, we might have some savings there that are real and could help us with a small amount of money. There are other things about it where if I had reduced something in the administrative staffing levels or if we reduce some of the travel commitments or professional development commitments we have made there are other savings there, but every one of those has a cost too. Part of the cost would be extra loads that it shifts onto adults. It also makes it a little tougher on the kids who were the 10th, 11th, or 12th player to travel with their team. The 3 and 4 are the ones that eliminate programs that serve students or staff, and 4 eliminates a staffing position. Right at this point you will see very little 3’s and 4’s, but over time that is something we will probably have to get to. If the numbers are really bad, we will have to think about what positions we can cut. Conversations for the next couple months are not all that easy, but I encourage all community members to feel free to give me a call or email me with their concerns about the things I am suggesting, or ideas they have that might be different than what I am suggesting. We will have public hearings on this. We do have board meetings every month and the budget will be on every agenda until April. Our budget is due to the City at the end of April and then they have a month to approve it. My guess is I will be going back to the City and saying I would still like you to consider giving me that $550,000.00 you give me every year, but the reality may be they are in some of the same binds we are. They may say they have to do something different. I want to do things like fix the gym floor down at the middle school this summer and in order for that to happen, I may be sent to the City and say you had a reserve for some projects like this and is this something we can get your help with and ask for additional funding to help with that. Even in these darkest times, when no one is sure what the barrel of oil will be, or how much money will be coming in, the reality is that some things just can’t wait. They have to be done. I better stop there. Otherwise, I will just depress everybody.
Ms. Altland: Can we schedule a meeting with the community? Ms. Owen: We usually do that in March? Cindy Bennett: Next month is the first revision for this year, and then the preliminary budget is next. Ms. Owen: We will actually see some numbers next month in the packet with the preliminary, right? Based on that we will do our public hearing and do our meeting with the city, then come back in March. I encourage Board members over the next month or two to be talking to the people in the community you normally talk to about school issues and just try to get feedback. Not everybody will come to meetings and part of our job is to outreach. Brynna, that goes for you to talk to students and see what is important to them. Some of the things we have on here directly affect programs and students. Your feedback will be helpful too. Mr. Walsh: I should have said this earlier. One other thing is we are going to enter into negotiations. There are teachers who will be saying we have to do what we can to provide for them too and to help them, and we do have all sorts of mixed messages floating around, but we did see a study that the legislators asked to go out and find out what can we do about teacher pay. They said in our district specifically that we have probably been paying people a lot less than we should. That study also said it may not be something you can fix this year in these kinds of times. I hope everyone recognizes that I have never heard anything from this Board other than they want to do things to treat people fairly and make sure we recognize that is another obligation we need to think seriously about. I didn’t want to leave that out of the conversation. It is certainly something that I will probably hear about at our March in-service. As we pick a negotiating team and you start these conversations, that will be something you guys will be thinking about. Ms. Owen: I should have mentioned staff as well. I’m sure in your meetings you will be talking to staff about what is important so I expect to get that feedback through you, but it is something everybody should be talking about.
M/S: Brookshire/Altland MOTION TO ACCEPT THE DISTRICT JOB DESCRIPTIONS AS PRESENTED
Ms. Owen: One clarification I want to make is to acknowledge the job descriptions and I think this is the first time we have had them in the packet. In my interpretation of acknowledge, it means that we have a copy and you indicated it is still a work in progress and some groups are still finding some things. My question is I am comfortable with acknowledging them and are we going to have these back at a later time when they are in a final form and we are accepting and adopting. Mr. Walsh: In December, you had one that had draft written across it. They are not changed a lot, but there will be some more changes. There is no description for Brad’s job. There are a couple of others I am still working on. The job description for the superintendent is something you will later provide us. There were things like that. I used the words acknowledge and accept only because Board policy says I am responsible for these. As we went through the process I wanted to make sure you were getting feedback, our staff was giving feedback, and maybe the best thing to do is come back in a couple of months and say we are completely done and then accept them. I wanted to make sure we acknowledge they are here and have been presented on today’s date so that people would recognize when we talk about them people will know I am close to being done, but I know there is still some formatting and if I am using the wrong words, I am sorry. I can bring them back so that you can approve them or whatever, I am more than willing to do that. Ms. Altland: I would like to see the ones that are not in here. The highlighted ones? Mr. Walsh: There are two of them that are not in there. I didn’t highlight the superintendent one because I knew we would replace it. The ones that are not there is Brad’s and someone suggested maybe the summer grounds supervisor to maybe have something together for that. There are two technology positions in here, but they want three separate job descriptions. Also, there is a maintenance supervisor in there, but nothing really that aligns with Zach’s job. Ms. Owen: Do you want to stick with the current motion to acknowledge these and when they are complete and final we will see them again? Mr. Walsh: Sounds good.
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to acknowledge the district job descriptions as presented.
Voice Vote: All in Favor.
Motion Carried: Unanimous.
M/S: ALTLAND/BROOKSHIRE MOTION TO ACCEPT THE SUPERINTENDENT EVALUATION
AS PRESENTED
Ms. Owen: At our December meeting we finalized the evaluation review with Jack and came up with some goals. Since that time, we signed off on what was agreed upon at that meeting which will become part of your personnel folder. It is not in this packet, but is certainly available to any Board member. It is basically the sheet we agreed on at the meeting that is signed by us. Any questions?
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to accept the superintendent evaluation as presented.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
Ms. Owen: Next we have review of the AASB Sample Transgender Policy and ASAA’s Draft Policy. This is an informational item so we don’t need a motion. It was brought up through public comments at our last meeting which as it happened shortly after the meeting ASAA came up with their updates this year for their policies and this was one that was included. I think it is presented here informationally, but I’m sure this will be going to the policy committee for review and there are different options available, but we are also free to edit this policy in any way the policy committee would recommend. Ms. Altland: This is also just an AR, not policy. I would suggest we do send it to the policy committee for review at the next meeting. Ms. Owen: Maybe it’s just the AR that’s new? Do we have policy regarding this? Mr. Walsh: We don’t address this in the way this is addressed, but we do have things about non-discriminating for various reasons. I want to point out that this is the piece from ASAA and we were trying to get that from them. I think there will be some enormous changes over time, but as an example the ASAA one is not what they will put out. This was in front of their Board at the December meeting. I just want to share one piece of it. It was withdrawn at their December meeting and they didn’t vote on it. They decided to deal with transgender issues however each district individually does it. In their language, they said they will go with whatever the district says, but if a young person tells us they are in this transgender situation then they will be locked in for the four years they are in high school for that. They are getting advised by attorneys who said that is probably not good language to use. That is the ASAA policy. Ms. Altland: I thought the AASB one said that too. Do they say you can change every year? Ms. Owen: I don’t recall reading that in the AASB one. Mr. Walsh: I was in different conversations where AASB was saying they were going to allow the kinds of changes that were more commonly happening across the country, but it is something that I think they have a lot of different optional things and again, one of the bits of advice that some of the attorneys are giving is let’s make sure we are careful and never to exceed what is laid out in Title 9 or any of those other federal and state guidance and laws that affect his. There will be people who say we never have to deal with this and we won’t be addressing this, but we are already having students bringing issues forward from our school and others, and we are trying to deal with it in the best and most sensitive ways we can. It has been interesting to watch what is happening across the country in this area. Ms. Owen: This will go to the policy committee. If February suits you to bring this to us, otherwise take whatever time you need. It is a challenging issue and I think you will want to get feedback from different people. If anyone has strong opinions, Board members in particular, contact Sarah, Jack or Bob and we will be seeing this again soon.
M/S: ALTLAND/BROOKSHIRE MOTION TO APPROVE DOLORES OWEN AND SCOTT BROOKSHIRE TO SERVICE OUR NEGOTIATIONS TEAM
Ms. Owen: We had preliminary discussion at our retreat and I said I would take on the lead role on the negotiations. Scott is also very interested. Generally, we go with two people because if we have three then we have a quorum and that makes it not impossible, we would just have to advertise meetings. I know Jen also expressed interest in being part of that process. We will be having meetings in executive session to set goals and sort of parameters for the negotiating team. Ms. Creighton: I’m set with whatever. Ms. Owen: Any other questions or discussion?
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to approve Dolores Owen and Scott Brookshire to serve as our negotiations team.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carries: Unanimous
Ms. Owen: We have two sessions coming up in Juneau for lobbying efforts. I sent an email to everyone, but haven’t heard back on availability. The dates are February 19th through the 24th and the third week of March. Bob and Sarah are not available either of those dates. If you haven’t determined that yet and if you can take a look at your calendar. Ms. Creighton: What is the responsibility of the person going up there. I don’t know what to expect. Ms. Owen: Both activities are coordinated by AASB. Generally, what happens is it is a coordinated lobbying effort and AASB kind of sets the priorities and makes appointments and we just go around and talk to legislators and/or staff about why it is important to continue and increase funding for education. It will be a tough sale this year, but it is coordinated and you are given materials and talking points. That is at the AASB level. We also, as a district, have our own priorities that we like to talk to our representatives about. That is something Jack puts together and generally he and one or two Board members will talk to representatives about what is important to us and our challenges and goals for the coming year. It’s not always as easy or successful as we would like, but it is very important to advocate for the district. Ms. Creighton: I would be interested. I just don’t want to go by myself because I am kind of in the dark. Ms. Owen: We wouldn’t do that. I would really encourage you to go as a new Board member and start gaining that experience because it is very important. Mr. Walsh: The first AASB one is February 6th to the 9th. Because this would be new to Jennifer, Saturday and Sunday you are in Juneau and there are presenters and they are talking about things common to districts. They have a youth leadership event at that fly-in. On Monday and Tuesday you go up on the hill and meet in either larger groups, go to committee meetings, or meet in small groups. We set up appointments to try to do that stuff. It is a pretty good commitment. The others are in March 19th – 22nd. Ms. Creighton: I will get back to you quickly.
Ms. Owen: Our next meeting then, the normally scheduled date would be February 24th. Any conflicts? Mr. Brookshire: I will be taking my staff to Chicago for a conference . Ms. Owen: I believe Bob will be gone as well. Ms. Altland: I think he will be back. Ms. Owen: Does anyone else have a conflict? Brynna Ververs: I will be in Anchorage for Academic Decathlon. Ms. Owen: Let’s go ahead and set for February 24th. Scott will be excused. Brynna, if you could find a substitute, maybe the Vice President on Student Council can fill in? Brynna Ververs: Not the Vice President. I will find someone on student council who isn’t also in Academic Decathlon. Ms. Owen: Thank you very much.
Ms. Owen: February 24th for the next meeting. We now have executive session.
M/S: ALTLAND/BROOKSHIRE MOTION TO GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION TO DISCUSS NEGOTIATIONS
Ms. Owen: It has been moved and seconded to go into executive session to discuss negotiations at 8:25 pm.
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carried: Unanimous
M/S: BROOKSHIRE/CREIGHTON MOTION TO MOVE OUT OF EXECUTIVE SESSION AT 9:34 PM
No action taken.
VOICE VOTE: All in Favor
MOTION CARRIES: Unanimous
M/S: BROOKSHIRE/CREIGHTON MOTION TO ADJOURN AT 9:35 PM
Voice Vote: All in Favor
Motion Carries: Unanimous
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