Anchorage School Board shares new 5-year goals, guardrails

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - On Thursday night, the Anchorage School Board held a virtual town hall meeting to discuss and share with community members and stakeholders the strategic plan over the next five years.

“I think what we learned this time in putting forth our goals and some of them are the same with reading and math, we haven’t reached that,” School Board member Starr Marsett said. “We know we have a ways to go and an achievement gap to be conscious on.”

The school board presented three new goals they hope to achieve by 2026 and four guardrails.

The goals are lofty ones starting with third graders doubling their reading proficiency percentage on state Performance Evaluation for Alaska’s Schools tests from 40% to 80% by May of 2026.

“These goals are long-term goals and these are goals we want for our students,” Marsett said. “Not just now but in the years to come. This is not something that is going to happen overnight, to get to where we want to be.”

Community members asked questions and voiced some of their concerns moving forward.

“I’m just wondering what other resources are going to be provided for teachers so that they are able to make these amazing gains,” community member Alison Arians said. “Smaller class sizes? What will ... I love what this is looking like but just curious as how you will plan to achieve them?”

Marsett said the plan first is to finalize the goals of the school board. Once that is done, Superintendent Deena Bishop will announce how the district plans to proceed to reach the goals.

“It’s going to take us several years to get there and it’s going to take a lot of teamwork, a lot of strategy,” Marsett said. “We are determined to get our students reading, to bring them up in math a prepare them for life, college or career readiness.”

Community members have until Dec. 10 to add their input and concerns. The link can be found online, as well as ASD’s list of goals and guardrails — an operational action, or class of actions, which are usually strategic — for the next five years.