ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – All the agenda items that went up for a vote were approved at Tuesday night’s Anchorage School Board meeting. That agenda included the redirection of as much as $4 million from completed bond propositions, and the allocation of the Capital Improvement Major Maintenance Grant award funds to support construction for the Spring Hill Elementary Roof Replacement Project.
The approved agenda also included a personnel report, a sale of “surplus property,” and a contract in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to Rain Proof Roofing for “roofing repair services at various ASD locations.” The board also recommended Anchorage School District Superintendent Dr. Jharrett Bryantt accept grant funds of $2,701,370 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education.
The board also recommended the approval of a $326,827 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the ASD project Gui Kima, which is designed to use Indigenous practices and knowledge for students to express themselves, engage in school and prepare Indigenous students for college, with an emphasis in educational fields.
There were also several parents who spoke at Tuesday night’s board meeting who expressed concern about the district’s Moving to Middle School Project, which is in the planning phase of transitioning most district sixth graders from elementary schools to middle schools.
“My main concerns with that is that the current middle schools are not adequately structured to bring on another group of children,” said Sarah Falkoff, a parent of a fifth and seventh grader in the district. “That their social, emotional needs will not be met. That their academic performances will decline as much research has shown this is true.”
Bryantt talked extensively about the various benefits of transitioning sixth graders from elementary into middle schools.
“Including, access to advanced coursework, but also, all students having access to a greater variety of extracurricular activities and other resources,” Bryantt said. “It is a shift for our community. But I do want to underscore that nationally sixth to eighth is a tried and true model. It’s a model that’s also worked here.”
Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.