Alaska Legislature: Senate Education, 4/24/26, 3:30pm

Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting of the Senate Education Committee to order. It is 3:31 PM here on Friday, April 24th. We are meeting in the Belz Committee Room here in the State Capitol building, located in once again beautiful and sunny downtown Juneau. As a reminder, folks who are here in the room, if they could please mute their cell phones.

Documents for today's meetings have been distributed to members. They have been uploaded to BASIS, that's A-K-L-E-G dot gov, and of course additional copies are available for folks right there by the door. Members present today are Vice Chair President Stevens, Senator Keele, Senator Yunt, and myself, Senator Lukey Gail Tobin. Senator Bjorkman is away on other state business and hopefully will join us at a later point in time. Please let the record reflect we do have quorum to conduct business.

I want to thank Zach from the Juneau LIO for moderating today's meeting and Mary Gwen, as always, from Senate Records for joining us today and documenting today's meeting. On the agenda today, we have the second hearing for Senate Bill 228, Public Schools Opioid Awareness Program, and we will have the first hearing for Senate Bill 66, State Tribal Education Compacts. All right. On to our first item on the agenda. We have the second hearing for Senate Bill 228 sponsored by Senator George Rauscher.

Senator George Rauscher is here with us in the room. We do have a committee substitute at the request of the bill sponsor. That committee substitute has been distributed to members. That is work order draft labeled 34-LS1320/n, as in nanana.

Mr. Mike Mason is here with us today, the aide to Senate Education, and he will explain the changes. Mr. Mason. Good afternoon. Mike Mason. I am staff to Senator Lucy Gail Tobin.

So this is the summary of changes from version A to version N for Senate Bill 228. It's very simple. Version A to N, it adds an uncodified section of law that directs the Alaska Department of Health to present a proposal to the opioid settlement steering committee within 6 months of the bill's effective date, requesting that the committee approve the allocation of funds received from the National Opioid Settlement to fund the opioid awareness program and prevention curriculum. This change was based on the input of committee members who were trying to find uses for that opioid settlement money, and this seemed like a very good way to do that. The, the bill sponsor checked with the Department of Health.

This was the recommended way to go forward. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Are there any questions from committee members?

Seeing none, President Stevens. Madam Chair, I move to adopt the committee substitute for Senate Bill 228, Work Order 34-LS1320/n as our working document. Without objection, Senate Bill 228, Work Order 34-LS1320/n N as in gnome is adopted as our working document. Are there any other questions from committee members?

Senator Rauscher, any closing comments?

Thank you, Chair Tobin. Just for the record, my name is Senator George Rauscher, District 0— I'm sorry, District 0. Members of the Senate Education Committee, I thank you for hearing SB 228. SB 228 would require the Department of Education and Early Development to develop an opioid abuse awareness and prevention curricula for students in grades 6 through 12. School students would be required to teach the curricula to those during Close Red Ribbon Week.

The bill will ensure students receive accurate, age-appropriate information about opioids and fentanyl during the school years. We aim to intervene before tragedy occurs, and I do thank the committee for hearing this again. I appreciate it. Thank you, Senator Rauscher. If it is the will of the committee, I would like to move Senate Bill 228 from the committee today.

President Stevens. Madam Chair, I move to report Senate Bill 228, Work Order 34-LS1320/N, from the Senate Education Committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes. The Senate Education Committee gives legislative legal authority to make technical and conforming changes to the bill. Senator Keele. Madam Chair, only for a comment.

Comment. I want to thank the sponsor for bringing this bill forward in the first place. I want to thank him for his creative work on funding sources. The legislature has done a lot of work on the criminal penalty side of the opioid epidemic that we have. Law enforcement does a huge amount of work on trying to get at the supply, and they have had great successes.

The public health community saves a lot of lives. Our first responders save a lot of lives. This is a step in the prevention direction, and we've got to hit it from that angle too. This can make a big difference. Madam Chair, I want to thank the sponsor for bringing this forward.

Thank you. I think Senator Keehl speaks for all of us. Thank you very much for bringing this important piece of prevention policy forward to the committee for our consideration. Without objection, Senate Bill 228, Work Order 34-LS1320/n is reported from the Senate Education Committee with individual recommendations and attached zero— excuse me, attached fiscal notes. We will take a brief at ease to sign the committee report and also transition presentations.

Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record here in Senate Education. It is 3:38— excuse me, 3:39 PM here on Friday, April 24th. The next item on our agenda is the first hearing for Senate Bill 66, State Tribal Education Compact, sponsored by Governor Dunleavy. Joining us today to introduce the legislation is the Commissioner of Alaska— the Commissioner of Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development, Dena Bishop. We are also joined by the compact consultant for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, Joel Isaac, and we also have additional testifiers that will be brought up during portions of the PowerPoint presentation.

Those folks include Representative Chuck Kopp. We also have the Education and Training Director for the Ketchikan Indian Community, Sonia Skan, and we also have an Inupiaq educator, Sandra Kowalski, who is the former Director of Indigenous Programs at UAF. Commissioner Bishop, Dr. Isaac, if you would please come forward and identify yourselves for the record and begin your presentation when you are ready.

Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Dina Bishop, Commissioner of Education. To the chair, yaaglidu dakili dakashnish, flak ayis dena ina shiiji, Joel Isaac, ash tana shiiji. Chanan, for the record, my name is Joel Isaac. I appreciate the chair for the opportunity to speak with everyone today.

And I'm a compacting consultant for the Department of Education for compacting. Excellent. And just so we understand the process forward, would you like questions after each slide or would you like us to hold questions until the completion of the presentation? As we go. As we go.

Would be great. Excellent. I too am honored to be here today to present SB 66, the State Tribal Education Compacts Bill. As someone who cares deeply about the future of our children and our communities and our state, I believe this bill represents an important step forward for Alaska. It creates meaningful opportunities for families, especially those in tribal communities, to stay engaged in public education in ways that reflect their values, cultures, and needs.

Education is strongest when families feel connected to it, and SB 66 helps strengthen that connection by building the partnerships and expanding options within our public education system and not outside of it. I also want to sincerely thank those before me who brought the demonstration project forward to begin this work. The efforts behind this and the culminating bill have been thoughtful, collaborative, and inspiring. I'm grateful, just honored to be here with Dr. Isaac, the 5 demonstration tribes, and Alaska school districts, and just appreciate their effort in improving public education overall. And thank you.

We will start with the basics: mission, vision, and purpose. And this bill significantly represents each of those. We seek an excellent education for all children in Alaska. And we want that vested in their communities and their lives. So with that, as you know, you've seen this slide before as well, Alaska's priorities and Alaska's education challenge.

And interestingly enough, the challenge in number 2 really speaks to culturally relevant education and 5 speaks to tribal connections and with families and partners. But this was an outcome of number 3, closing the achievement gap by ensuring equitable educational rigor and resources. Purposes. This was a SMART goal, if you will, and an outcome for that purpose.

Today we're going to share a brief background starting just on the basics on tribal— what state tribal education is, or compacting rather, progression from the Senate Bill 34, which as I spoke was the demonstration bill that moved into SB 66. I will speak specifically to this bill, cross-reference it with the legislative report to the bill and also share additional resources from the Alaska Federation of Natives and the CITC. And I'll turn it over to Dr. Isaac. So on slide 5, before we have Representative Kopp come up and speak to the work that he did with the Alaska Education Challenge, he co-chaired that committee with Lagoonai Aliz Medicine Crow. I just want to kind of very briefly, what is compacting?

Because that's— you're going to hear that word a lot today, and compacting in education. So compacting is simply put a government-to-government agreement, and it's a way of providing services that are shared, like government goals, and between two governments or two nations. The State of Alaska has state compacts, the federal government has federal-tribal, there's a lot— but it's nation-to-nation or government-to-government. That's what a compact is. There are two compacts that currently are like within the tribal world often talked about, which is the Indian Health Service or IHS, which is a federal tribal compact, and that's a whole systems approach.

It's not selected services. So what we mean by that is it's, here's a chunk of money, and you can negotiate with the federal government as a tribe if you're a cosigner, you're going to operate like you're gonna do cardiology, You're going to do the nursing staffing for the Alaska Native Medical Center. It's, it's not like you're picking and choosing, we're going to supply medical equipment here and this over here. It's a whole chunk or a whole type of field of medicine. There are allowable things that are negotiated that has changed over time.

This is often talked about in hearings when ANTHC, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, presents as a global flagship model of what's possible when tribes work with the federal government in this kind of way and the success that's possible in healthcare for the number of years, life expectancy, that has increased in healthcare. The funding mechanism is not a formula. There's a block of funding. So that's just for the IHS. Every year the federal government appropriates a certain dollar amount.

And then for the Child Welfare Services State Tribal Compact, that's maybe something you've seen in the budget line items that you are all voting on. There's a $5 million line item for child welfare services that is a state tribal, and there are specific scopes of work work that the State of Alaska has agreed to and the tribes have agreed to conduct, and then that $5 million appropriation is a state appropriation, and it is a chunk of money that then is negotiated for what are those scopes and how much goes to which tribes. Again, not a formula, it's a chunk of money. The kind of foundation for it is governance, training, and reporting are common threads throughout all things. Think about going to a doctor in an IHS facility, the doctor needs to be credentialed.

And if you think about the OCS services, there are credentials for OCS that have to be verified and certified. And then the reporting for both of those have to meet the state and federal reporting parameters. So that's in a brief, like, what is the compacting, what do we see in our state.

And then in slide 6, compacting and education, what does compacting look like in education? That we, when we're doing the negotiations with the state and the tribal partners, there was the state role, federal, which was found to be funding, accountability to the legislature, due process, and then under the State Board of Education because of the way that Title 14 and the, and the Constitution are set up. And then the tribal role in this compact agreement or proposed compact agreement is operating of a tribally compacted public school. So that's the key part. These are public schools with public funds.

Employing staff, the curriculum, local governance, thinking about the oversight of that school. Training staff, and the reporting. So those were the roles as we looked at for the negotiation.

And then for what is compacting, just a— this is the last slide before Representative Kopp comes up. It's that government-to-government agreement. So you have to be a government. One of the questions that frequently comes up is, can school districts compact? School districts are not found to be a form of government.

And where tribes are listed in the United States Constitution, as a foreign nation state and a tribe, it is at that category. And then tribes as political subdivisions might be here something that you hear, like a State of Alaska is a political subdivision of the United States of America. So that's another term that you might hear in compacting. And then the key piece is self-determination. And that is really the— it's firmly established in the federal law, which is the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, Act, which is ISDA, and that's the way I say that acronym.

Other people say it different ways, but it's listed in the name of the act that education is a self-determination. And so that's one of the things for like what is compacting, why are we even having this conversation, is because tribes are governments and the State of Alaska is a government. So this is a government-to-government agreement. All right.

Welcome, Representative Kopp. Uh, you know the drill. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. Thank you, Chair Tovin, and thank you, uh, Senate Education Committee members. My name is Chuck Kopp, representative for House District 10.

I am speaking to this issue briefly from my experience as the co-chair of the Alaska Education Challenge State and Tribal Ownership Committee, which I co-chaired with Liz Madison Crowe of Juneau here. So I come to this issue not only as a legislator and a former Education Committee member— I really admire your work on this committee— but as the son of lifelong educators here in Alaska. My dad was born in Yunnan Province, China in 1936. He passed away a number of years ago now, but he survived war, captivity, and profound cultural disruption during that time. And those experiences shaped how he understood education, and of course he shared that with us kids.

He said, you know, his experience was that education is not something that you can effectively impose on a people, but something that must grow from within the culture. So in the late 1960s and early '70s, my mom and dad were schoolteachers in the Lake Iliamna region in New Halen and then in Naknek in Bristol Bay teaching in the public schools there. And at that time, I remember my dad telling me that he observed a deep trauma-related sorrow in the region, much like he saw growing up in China during that Great Upheaval. And he said it was directly related to culture and identity being pulled away from a people. And he carried a simple belief that he shared with us, and it's my belief today, is that education must derive from the culture, and it does so much more effectively with its recipients than if it's delivered to it from the outside.

And we believe that— I believe that belief is still highly relevant today. Over the past decade here in Alaska, well, I should say over the past maybe 20 years, we've taken a real hard look at our student outcomes. We all have. And whether we look at the AMP, the PEAKS, or the Alaska STAR assessments, and we can debate the effectiveness of all those testing, absolutely. But the results, I think, have been deeply consistent and concerning to all of us in that there is too large of a percentage of our young people who are not proficient in English language arts and math.

And merely two-thirds not meeting grade level standards. So nearly a decade later today from the original Alaska Education Challenge, that was in 2017 and 2018, we have not really materially improved these outcomes. We have changed standards and tests, but not really the results. So in many rural districts, Proficiency rates, we know, still remain in the single digits. In the Northwest Arctic Borough School District, approximately 11% are proficient in English language arts and math.

In the Lower Kuskokwim, it's about 7%. These are also the districts with the highest teacher turnover. So these aren't just marginal gaps. These would indicate systemic failures. And we have other legislation in the building also working with that.

But these results mirror national assessments. Reinforcing a clear conclusion which our current system is not delivering for far too many of our kids in Alaska, and particularly in rural and predominantly Alaska Native communities. To his credit, former Commissioner Michael Johnson, and now ably carried on by Commissioner Dena Bishop, have recognized these results as a wake-up call, which I agree with. And the encouraging part is Alaska has responded And we are taking a hard look now at this. And this issue was raised through the Alaska Education Challenge.

And at that time, we had hundreds of stakeholders from across the state. There were educators, parents, tribal leaders, student government leaders, policymakers engaged, came together to identify a path forward. And 5 priorities emerged from that. And including the three I'll just briefly touch on: improving student learning, supporting excellent educators, and inspiring tribal and community ownership of education. So as I said, I had the privilege of working as the co-chair with Liz Madison Crowe of the tribal and community ownership workgroup.

In over 7 months, we heard a consistent message, which is the system feels distant, it feels unresponsive, and too often it feels culturally disconnected for the people it is meant to serve. And when families and communities do not see themselves reflected in the education system, then the ownership of it erodes. And when that ownership erodes, then the outcomes tend to follow. So what we consistently heard is that the Alaska Native communities want the ability to help shape how their children are educated not in opposition to the state but in partnership with it. It's not a radical concept.

I mean, we all know it's a foundational principle of self-determination. And so the proposal before you, State Tribal Education Compacts, flows directly from this work. And these compacts, as Dr. Isaac said, would be voluntary agreements between the State of Alaska and the tribes or tribally authorized organizations and they would allow participating communities to integrate cultural values, language, and locally defined measures of success into the education delivery while still meeting statewide standards. Very important. So it's not about abandoning accountability.

It's about aligning education with the lived reality of the students we're trying to reach. So it's not uncharted territory. As Dr. Isaac said, Alaska has successfully used compacting in healthcare. Tribal courts, child welfare. These models have improved outcomes because they increase local ownership and cultural relevance.

At the federal level, this is grounded in the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which recognizes that lasting progress depends on community control and participation. And Alaska is now positioned to fully apply that in education. As you know, we have over 200 federally recognized tribes. The legal framework exists. The policy foundation is in place.

And I think we recognize the need is undeniable. So the question before us, I don't think is really whether our current system is working. We know that for many it is not. The question is, are we willing to try an approach that has strong precedent and strong community support? And I would submit it's not so much of a risk as it is just a responsible response to what we see going on.

Because what we're doing today is not neutral. It is producing outcomes that we wouldn't accept anywhere else in the state. So, at its core, we're not just talking about curriculum and standards, but we're talking about relationships with kids. And for those of you that are teachers, I know you understand the most effective teacher is not simply the one who delivers information, but the one who connects, who communicates with the child that they are known, that they are valued, and that they're safe. And that connection flows most naturally through shared language, culture, and lived experience.

And for Alaska's First Peoples, whose culture spanned thousands of years, education has always been more than just formal instruction, but it is an identity, it is belonging, and it's understanding your place in this world. So I believe if we truly believe in culturally responsive education, we must just move on to the next step. Let the culture help deliver it. That is what these compacts enable. And some may ask, well, what if this doesn't work?

And I would suggest we already know what not working looks like. We have lived it for decades. And the better question is, what if it does? What if we see higher engagement, stronger attendance, and better outcomes? What if more students succeed academically?

While remaining connected to their communities and their culture. And I see that as an opportunity before us, ensuring that every kid in this state has a meaningful opportunity to succeed. It's not just an education issue, but it's a moral obligation we have. State tribal education compacts certainly offer a pathway to this goal, and I thank the committee for giving this serious consideration. I don't see it as a departure from our responsibility, but as a stronger fulfillment of it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Kopp. Are there any questions? Seeing none, please proceed.

Joel Isaac, for the record, we're on slide 8. I just— I want to express chinan chickanick for Representative Kopp for speaking to that in front because some of the back history of the Alaska Education Challenge. Part of our goal for today and thinking about the, the presentation of the bill and the overview of the how we got here is how we did this work. And it's, it's not an us versus them, it's an us, it's a we. So thinking about the Alaska Education Challenge, the thousands of public comment, that work over those months, the department, the tribes, and, uh, president Stevens for SB 34 and, and sponsoring that bill, that was the initial bill.

And throughout the presentation SB 34 is the name of that bill in that year that it passed in 2023, and it has an enrollment number, but just for the sake of today in the presentation, we're using it as SB 33 or 34. And we— in that bill, there was state-tribe negotiations which were conducted from starting in April, and there will be a slide on this, but April through December of that year. It was through the State Board of Education. There were 27 publicly noticed opportunities throughout this process that led from SB 34 to today. The, the public had a chance to call in to hear presentations that the department publicly noticed.

And then there were district consultations, which were the— with the department and the school districts, all 5 together, that were geographically where the tribes would be operating a school. And then we did them individually with each of the tribe in that geographic area. And then we also consulted with NEA Alaska for the teachers' union consultation. And then the report to the legislature was produced. And that's— Chanan for printing those.

They're also online on the department's compacting webpage. And part of that legislative report was to be able to provide a kind of an everyday person or layman's terms of what would need to be in a bill. So that the public, the tribal membership, parents, teachers could understand what is— what we're needing to have codified into law. So that was the route that the legislative report went. There are structures of that report that I'll talk about a little bit later.

Then you'll see it in the bill when we go over it later. And then there was the drafting process for SB 66, and now we're having the introduction and the hearings related to the bill.

[Speaker:MR. BOLL] So on slide 9, part of what we did, with we being the department, is put out an application. So there was funding that was provided for the tribal partners who were doing this negotiation. We needed to have partners that had the means to be able to bring their attorneys to the table and physically come together. And so the department provided a grant cycle for that. And the application for that was through the State Board of Education making the decision.

What they were looking at was centering tribal voice, tribal community, and tribal administrative support. Transform— transformational design demonstrates the capacity to carry out the work. So we're looking for partners who are ready to roll up their sleeves and do a deep dive to how to make this possible. On slide 10, it continues: presents strong expertise and understanding of what is necessary to carry out educational services within the pre-kindergarten to 12th grade arena, including program design, leadership, governance, administration. I will add that these applications were— we wanted them to be relatively short.

So they're in the 30-ish page zone of applications to be able to concisely present what is your goal, what is your mission, why does this matter to your tribe. And then the diverse representation priority, what diverse means in this context is geographic diversity. So across the state methodology. So not just all the same types of school. School size, because one of the questions that comes up is, does this work for a big school, does it work for a small school?

And then community size, same type of thing. Anchorage and Utqiagvik are different, and Ketchikan and K'nik are different, or in Matsu is different. So we wanted to have a broad spectrum of what that was. On slide 11, these are the 5 tribal partners that were selected. They all had strong applications and scored very highly.

And it's the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, or ICASST, is a regional tribe. Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is the other regional tribe in Alaska. Ketchikan Indian Community, which is located in Ketchikan. K'nik Tribe in the Mat-Su School District, but in K'nik. And then King Island Native Community did a partnership or a consortium model with the Native Village of Solomon.

Nunavut, and so those two tribes that are geographically located in Nome work together through this process. So there are five tribal partners and it's six tribes that are represented.

So on slide 12 is the timeline, and we had a virtual kickoff on April 28th. This was— the State Board has their annual meeting here in June with the legislature in March. That's when, of 2023, the State Board made that selection of the five tribal partners. And then we did a Zoom kickoff for about 2 hours for everyone to get to meet each other and then determine how are we going to make these negotiations, which we had about 10 months to do, work meaningfully and respectfully. And so we met on Zoom to figure that process out.

And then the rest of the meetings were located in Anchorage, either at the LIO office or at the Atwood downtown. And so those were the, the dates for those negotiations with the state and the tribe. And like I said previously, there was public comment every month. The State Board had a compacting committee meeting or a State Board quarterly meeting or a special meeting that there were updates on compacting throughout this process.

The other timeline on slide 13 is the district and teacher union consultation schedule. So I'm, I'm not going to read everything on here because I briefly touched on that before, but just to see those dates and the progression, part of where is situated is between October through November for those consultations, and then presentations that were again open to those organizations' memberships in November and December. It took until October to be able to kind of frame out what the compact would look like, to be able to show superintendents like, this is what we were talking about, so it's not a lot of hypothetical like situations for what the report was framing out to be and what were the tenets of of what the goals were. So that was part of the preparation for going into that with the tribal partners, DEED, the school districts. And then we presented at the Alaska Association of Alaska School Boards at their conference, and we have continued to present at their conferences, but either their annual conference or special, the quarterly trainings that they do throughout the year.

And ASB has put a resolution forward in favor of the SB 66 and the tribal compacting process. We also presented to the Alaska Association of School Business Officers, or AASBO, to go talk through, like, what does this look like from an existing school business officer's perspective. And then what landed in the report, and this is on slide 14, kind of the introduction of what's in SB 66, is the premise is it's a pilot transformation action. So SB 34 was a demonstration project, if you will. It says demonstration in the title, but what we're doing is a proposal to the legislature saying this is what we're proposing needs to be enacted in law.

So in order to carry out that proposal, we need a pilot, which is turning the engine on for these schools, these public schools, to move forward. So it's the transformation action, and I want to pause here for just a moment. The word transformation We've talked about this with the tribal partners. If we think about that self-determination, that concept of in Alaska in the late 1880s is when the federal government came in and illegally captured children for money. And the whole, the boarding school era that followed that was during a what was known as the termination era.

The goal was to terminate, which includes death, and/or eradicate status. Children were sold. Those contracts exist for, for children being bought for profit from schools to do work, or from the religious entities that were running the schools and getting federal money. And then that progression— now we are in the self-determination era. As we think about transformation, transformation requires time.

It's an evolution over time. So if we think about where our state was and the people, our First Peoples of the state, Alaska Native peoples, in 1880 compared to where they're at today, there has been transformation, good and bad. When we look at education, we're wanting to continue evolving forward from children dying to children graduating and being able to live worthwhile and satisfying lives under Title 14's direction. That's for the department. So I want to say, like, we are in a spectrum of transformation, but as Representative Kopp spoke to, there's still need for more transformation.

And this is— it takes time to evolve to do that. So the premise for this is public schools that are open to all students and funded through public dollars. What we experienced in the past was Native-only school. These are not that. These are open to all students.

The mechanism is that government-to-government agreement, that state-tribal, to establish tribally compacted public schools for the purpose of tribal self-governance and a funding mechanism that integrates with the deed process with the tribes functioning as school districts. So the funding mechanism is that the tribally compacted public school would function as a school district. They would go through the foundation formula. The adjusted average daily membership calculation to generate that dollar amount based on student enrollment as every other school does. And like, like as a school district for the purposes of those calculations.

That's the mechanism for the delivery of the money. The operations, these are teachers that are certified through a tribal training process that DEED verifies and issues a state license for a tribally compacted public school teacher. So this bill does not get rid of the requirements that exist in Title 14. It's saying the tribe, because they're a sovereign state or sovereign government, the nation, they need to have a voice in that process for how they meet state law. And the department has a responsibility that we showed in the role slide previously to verify, that's part of that certification process, has this teacher, did the tribe do what they said they did?

Let's see a transcript. Let's see the certification of the training protocols they went through. Yes, they did it. They passed a background check. We want students to be safe.

Following those processes. So that's the operation side. Really, that's where, like, that's the exciting part. It's where the students get to experience this teaching approach. That's really where the growth happens for the students.

The parents get to experience it in the classroom. The accountability, like I previously said, is the background checks. There's financial audits. These Tribally Compacted Public Schools would have to use the Uniform Chart of Accounts. So that's 60+ pages that you can really drill down into school finance and see where did the money go.

They have to use that same process and the assessments that are required federal and state were— part of this process also was making sure we're in compliance with federal law under the State Board of Education for the purpose of statewide regulations and maintaining one system of education in Alaska. So like all the other local school districts in our state, they're still under a state board. Tribally compacted public schools still are with the State Board of Education. And then the evaluation Tribes provide annual progress reports just like every other school district does, the academic progress report to legislature. Indeed provides a summary alongside the tribal progress report to the legislature.

So part of this as a pilot, thinking like we, the legislature, not to speak on your behalf, but from the conversations that came up through SB 34, how do you know a pilot's working? Those are like, well, those types of questions are specific that are a little bit different than that. The other academic report that every district puts together. So it's an opportunity to get more of that deep dive into this specific pilot. How efficacious is it?

And the legislature would get that report as well.

We have a question from President Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chair. This has been a long process. I really appreciate where you've taken it. I just want to make sure I understand that— will all students be tested standardized tests as students in other districts?

And will there be the certification of teachers? Will they also follow your requirements of certified teachers in other districts? Same requirements, but a different end result. I mean, they've got to be— they've got to have some training beyond certification. Could you just explain that to me and make sure I understand?

Through the chair to President Stevens. I'll answer the first question. Or sorry, Dr. Isaac, if you could identify yourself when you're speaking. Appreciate it. Joel Isaac, for the record, through the chair to President Stevens.

The schools, the students, it's open to all students.

And now I remember the second question. Testing. Testing. Thank you. I'm like, they're open to all students, which means it has to be public testing requirement.

Appreciate the lifeline on that one. So the short answer is yes. The federal— the way that the Every Student Succeeds Act is written is that there's the state requirements, that is the system the state uses, and to stay compliant, these public schools would have to take that same federal test and the same state test, the READS Act, all those things. So that's the answer to the testing. The same way that schools are required to do testing and students are required to do testing, these compacted public schools students are still doing that exact process.

And Mr. or Dr. Isaac, I have a question, a follow-up to that. As we know, the Elementary Secondary Education Act requires us to have a 95% compliance. It is a requirement that the state enforce compliance, and we do know there's a group of students who don't meet those, uh, particular stipulations. About 14% of our correspondent students currently are opting out. So with that, and having the State Board of Education and of course the department being required to ensure we have compliance, can you answer, provide some input about how you ensure you would be able to meet that 95% benchmark.

[Speaker] Through the chair, Dr. Isaac, for the record to Chair Tobin, the state has a provision that allows parents to opt out of testing, and so that is still in effect. So those— the conversations that we had during negotiations for approaches from the tribal partners to do testing is that they want their students to be assessed because the tribe is heavily vested in knowing where the students are at. So it was not a let's get out of this. It was a we need to have access to this tool and we might have our own tool as well. And both of those came up because we had a lot of data conversations and candid conversation around is the— are the assessments the perfect assessments?

And categorically, the answer is no. From those conversations. They are an assessment that gives us information. The tribes currently have a lot of issues getting that data for their citizens. And so it's like we, that we being the tribes, want that data.

And then also with having the self-governance over the school, the decision-making of like, can we do additional types of assessment? Might be a portfolio review, might be something that you do oratory, especially for our oral languages in Alaska, native languages. Because there's no— the oratory skills aren't screened in a standardized test. So those are the kinds of conversations that we had around that. And I'll pause there for Commissioner Bishop if she would like to add.

Thank you for the question, Chair Toba. My name is Dina Bishop, for the record, and I can address in just general what the department is doing because we too like to know how students, you know, when we teach, we want to gauge how are we doing. And in conversations with superintendents, there is some, some struggles with getting kids assessed. And prior to, uh, moving to electronic testing, when paper and pencil, that was quite easy to bring people together. A lot of times they utilize schools, um, uh, and other large spaces to bring people together to be able to test in the different areas for which kids are located, especially in the statewide correspondence programs.

Um, that dramatically fell off, uh, during COVID when we, uh, didn't want really to mix peoples is what happened. And so a lot of those agreements fell apart at that time. And then, as you know, we didn't even teach for one of those sessions. It was excused actually by the federal government, and we are rebuilding that. So the, the, some of the feedback we're getting is the logistics, because now it is a computer and it can't be, um, the, the personal computer is not appropriate.

It has to be the computers that have gone through these systems of checks to ensure that the the, the test meets it. So there is a technical— in addition to the ability to choose not to test, which is state law, there's this added issue in regard to having accessibility to a place to test and then actually having a device that is a school device that you can test on. And what we're doing to mitigate some of those things, we have requested in the past additional funding for correspondence schools so they actually have those funds to create some of those spaces. They do rent space where they can from school districts, things like that, and share, but at the scale, that's not happening. We are also working because you can take your LSAT, you can take other quite rigorous courses for certifications, things like that, being proctored, and we are working with a company to be able to see if we we could open up if that would be a barrier that we could overcome by having an at-home proctored, but it would have to be with the agreement of the camera on, things like that.

If you've ever participated in one of those without a human right there. So we're trying to mitigate some of those things, but it isn't— we might think it's just we don't want to do it, but when homeschool kids, they do take MAP, they've taken MAP Growth at upwards of 65 to 70%. And so we know that they value, and parents value, and schools value, and teachers value these results, but we are struggling when all the additional protocols are placed on state testing. So those are what we're gonna do. We are interested in it to increase it.

It is just working through the barriers that our community tells us and our schools share. And those are some of the things that they've shared. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bishop. And I know there's a question about certification, teacher certification as well.

Sure, thank you. Through the chair to President Stevens, that's a great question. And present— my— Deena Bishop, for the record. The certification actually has come a long way, and we have certified that the tribe and the school would outline the certification requirements, and they would meet state law requirements for safety and other things. But we already have certification in process.

I'm not sure if you notice Type Is that are already in service for language in our state. And Type Is are there, Type Ms, which all of those definitions and setting up the goals for teacher certification would remain. Certainly for tribal schools, we, we may add additional certifications and acknowledgments of those. But we have presently many certifications that will work today, and we look to expand that with the tribal— tribally compacted schools. Thank you, Dr. Bishop.

If you could just help, for the public's edification and also for new committee members, there's a Type A certification, Type Bs, and then of course principal and superintendent. And then we do have Type Ms and Type Is. And if you could help explain those different types. Sure. Thank you, Chair Tobin.

That's a great question. For the record, this is Dina Bishop, and I'll try to go from memory. A Type A is a general teaching certificate, and you could have a secondary certificate, you can have a primary, early childhood. Type B is, um, Type B is for administrators and leaders, so I have a Type B. Type C is for counseling that we have.

A Type M are for, they are for language, they could be for language Type Ms or other skills They could be for teacher certification for skills that you wouldn't necessarily have. So we have a lot of Auto Shop, language. I'm trying to remember— military. So just different subjects that we teach that you wouldn't necessarily— so, and those recommendations aren't— those are really for skilled people in their craft, and they may not necessarily have other certifications, but they can gain that Type M. Type I came in most recently with the language school in Western Alaska. And Type I is actually for our paraprofessionals, and it was a way to really build capacity at the time for paraprofessionals who do the teaching and the community members who do the teaching in those schools for the language and all subjects to be certified.

And so the idea behind that is that once school districts recognize the value, as such a tribally compacted school would, the value in their contracts their collective bargaining to pay at that equal price so that teachers are certified in Alaska. 'Cause you need a certification to give a grade. There's lots of things in law in regard to the value of that certification in being able to do those things. So Type I was one of the newest ones that the State Board passed initially for that and then expanded it when there was a request from school districts. Thank you.

[Speaker:JOEL ISAC] Joel Isaac for the record. On slide 15, this is an opportunity— I'm going to speak briefly and then if Sonya Skan is on, this is the spot in the presentation for her testimony if she's able to do that. So as she's coming on, so the SB 66 tribal education compacts and Representative Kopp touched on this, to inspire tribal and community ownership of educational excellence. Excellence. And as we're— I think it's very fortuitous that we're talking about some of the success data pieces and the assessments.

And Sonya is one of the tribal partners, or Ketchikan is, and she's the lead negotiator for their tribe. And they operate a school within a school model, their Tribal Scholars Program. And so one of the things that is exciting for this process, and like when we're looking at the proposals for the grant award, is partners that are ready to do the work, and Ketchikan is doing the work. And so there's a lot of experience for like the why, the urgency for the need for compacting, how are students able to be met through that tribal pedagogical approach. So I'm, I'm going to pause there and, uh, for Sonja to be able to, to provide some of her prepared—.

And Ms. Skan, if you can hear us, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready. Thank you. Can you hear me? We can. Okay, my name is Sonya Skan for the record, and I'd just like to thank you, Chair Tobin, Vice Chair Stevens, and the members of the 34th Legislature Education Committee.

I work, as Joel said, I work at Ketchikan Indian Community as the educate— Ketchikan Indian Community as the Education and Training Director. Where for the last 14 years we have had our Tribal Scholars Program, which I have to tell you, like, I get excited every year when we went to talk about the kids. So we have 26 kids this year, which is way more than we've ever had before, and I know that we want to do more, but we're limited in capacity. So It's, uh, this program started with a grant and it's in partnership with our school district. So one of the things that we look at, and one of the reasons that I support tribal compacting and the passage of SB 66, is because when we work together, we can do more than when we're off doing it on our own.

I'm allowed this small scope of what I can do, and after this many years, we have 100% graduation rate. I have, um, I'm sure Joel has the numbers that he could share with you for our math and our reading, um, just in a few months, how greatly that, uh, growth is. We have kids that come in and they're at a third or below a 6th grade reading level most of the time, and to see them grow into themselves and become someone who is able to read at grade level or above, you see their entire way they walk down the road change. You see them reaching out to people that they've never talked to before. I support this because it works.

We have data, we have our students and parents that will talk to every one of you and tell you that without our program, their kids would have dropped out, or they, uh, or worse. We have, um, we know, and I can talk forever about like all the ways that the school is not working right now, or that our education in the state of Alaska because like how we're doing it doesn't work for everybody and it really, really fails our Native children. And in turn, it fails a lot more than them. So I always say what's good for our kids, what's good for our Native kids is good for all kids. And I strive to push that forward and lift up the kids that we have always.

And we know the achievement gap gaps in the educational outcomes for our American— Alaska Native students have existed for decades. The conversation that always comes up is we need more Native teachers, we need more language, we need more culture in the schools. Well, we can't do that without the tribes being in the schools. And I know that our tribe has worked very hard at being in the school. Anytime that we're asked, we will go into the school and a unit.

Or right now we have 4 teachers in the high school, 2 doing language and 2 doing art, both of them teaching history and culture along with those. Um, but we also know that we need that systemic change in how programs are administered, and we need to know that the tribe has a voice in that. The tribes have not had a voice in those things. We're supposed to be having consultation, that doesn't happen. Um, and we know that as much as we want to be in the schools, as much as we want to help, there is a limit to that.

I know that having our program, there's a limit to what the district will and will not do depending on who's in charge. And being that I've been since the groundwork of starting this program until now, I have seen 5 different administrators at our school, superintendents, and I know that the differences change and how we're able to do things changes with each administrator. So having control gives us the ability to stay consistent. It doesn't mean that we would want to work any less with the district. It means that we want to have that control of what it looks like without having to change it each year.

And we believe that by allowing education compacting between the tribes and the state, the positive outcomes will be more far-reaching than what we can do now. All tribes are limited in the scope of what we can do, not because of because of these policies, but because of many, many other reasons. We—. When I did homeschool my children, I did do that, but we did all mandated testing. I took them to the schools to test.

I did what needed to be done, and I believe in that. I believe that we have a good system. I just think that we need to work in a way that it works for everyone. And in the last 14 years in the Tribal Scholars Program, we've seen changes happen because we do place-based learning, we include family, we include our tribal values, and most of all, our youth, youth are learning who they are at the core of their being, and they become proud of who they are because their classmates are learning about them as well. And when we know, and I think everyone knows that it is a proven fact that when you have a firm sense of belonging, when you have a firm sense of knowing who you are, then you're able to accomplish anything.

And I— that goes for our youth and that goes for our adults. And I support this wholeheartedly, even if we were a tribe who did not I would still be supporting what it's doing because it's giving us the opportunity to have that voice that has been quieted for too long. And I just want to thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Director Skaan.

Are there any questions?

Seeing none, I want to thank you again for your testimony. We're going to take a brief at ease, brief We're back on the record here in Senate Education. It is 4:29 PM and it is Friday, April April 24th. We are joined by Dr. Isaac and Dr. Bishop here presenting on Senate Bill 66. Please proceed.

Uh, chinan. Joel Isaac, for the record, through the chair, the committee. Moving on to slide 16, I'm going to go fairly quickly through these slides because we do have a deeper dive on Monday to actually go through the sectional. This is the legislative report that is available on the table by the door but also online. The link is included.

And it— I'm going to briefly talk through the sections of this report just to kind of show how we captured the information from these negotiations of Senate Bill 34. So like I previously talked about transformation, this was the introduction. So we're looking at a practical plan that positions the tribally compacted public schools for success. And so it includes the following sections in the report. So again, practical plan for success.

Is the key piece of what we were trying to frame. On slide 18, the way that we captured this was in section 2 of the report, which is the findings. So it's the considerations for establishing pilot tribally compacted public schools in Alaska. And I want to briefly pause on what's possible. This is one of the hunts that Iyaprun, that Yup'ik Immersion Charter School does in Bethel area.

And the other— this is one of the banners for our language summit that the department puts on. Our language is our strength. Kognuzik savgnat katwit, which is— I do not pronounce Anupiak well, but I want to give that space for that language on the record, and I can have Maddie give me help in teasing later. So the finding, slide 16, is governance, as I previously talked about. It's the tribally compacted public schools functioning as a school district for the purposes of engaging with Title 14.

On slide 20, the funding mechanism is the funds— it's funded per the foundation formula and as if the school were a regional education attendance area. Tribes do not have empowered taxation authority, and REAs also do not have taxation authority, so it's that marrying those two processes together. Is a little bit about the funding, and we can talk further on Monday about the funding mechanism, but that's the key piece, as if they were an REAA, public dollars, public school foundation formula.

Slide 21, the, the teaching and school personnel. This is really where the magic happens, the exciting part, like the kids learning. And we talked about previously, these would be DEED-licensed teachers, and this slide explains a little bit further of that process. This. A key piece is this slide at the bottom.

I mean, the last part says, "but are not required to join." That's from the legislative report. The bill language does require the teachers to join the retirement system. So I just wanted to highlight that it's not an error. It was a recommendation from the report. And so the teachers— what we found when we talked to Washington State's compacting schools is that when the teachers couldn't move back and forth between a a compact school and a pre-existing public school, it was difficult because the retirement system.

So we remedied that with, with the proposed bill. And then on slide 22 is the Section 4 statutory framework. And what we did going into that framework, and you can see on slide 23, is these three areas— governance, funding, teachers and school personnel— provided a cross-reference between report and the, um, the bill itself. And that was something— I know it's not this body— that was on the request of, of House Education. So I'm not going to go into all of that, but that, just so that we're— everyone's aware that document exists, because there's a 76-page report and there's a multi-page bill.

How do you know where this comes from? Both. So we put that together for everybody. Yeah. Um, so for the record, my name is Dina Bishop.

I would just like to add that, um, The scope of SB 34 is tremendous, and it went through all Title 14 and how would it operate. And at the summation of that and working through bill language and what could be possible was uncodified law to be able to begin this with SB 66. So it is definitely a shortened version. It definitely, as he mentioned, there are some differences, but I think the But the interest and the intent is essentially the same. [Speaker:JOE ISAAC] Joe Isaac for the record.

Department of Education. On slide 23, Commissioner Bishop mentioned the uncodified law process. And as we go into that, that mechanism, what it does is the tribes, the state's attorney with the tribal— the Department of Ed, we met every Tuesday, Thursday for hours and reviewed all of Title 14 with our attorneys present and had the discussions about those pieces. And then that's what this report is, a summary of that, and they're synthesizing it. And then it went through the Department of Law twice, through the Attorney General to review it, and before it went to the State Board for their confirmation and then transmitted to the legislature.

So that's what got sent to Ledge Legal for drafting purposes, was that foundational framework, and that's what we're going to be deep driving later on. And Miss— or excuse me, Dr. Isaac, just so we can, uh, have clarity, because I know I've had this question from before and I'd like to put it on the public record, uh, because this is, uh, in uncodified law, it does not exempt these public schools from meeting the stipulations under Title 24. It just puts a pilot program into a different section of where our statutes exist. And I know that we've talked about that before, and I just want to make sure that we make that in the public record. Uh, thank you.

Through the chair, Jill basic. Yes, the, and the bill has specific sections of Title 14 that are explicitly called out, and then that key piece is functioning as a school district. So when there's school district definitions or, and the sections of law in Title 14, it makes sure that it interfaces with that mechanism. And what that does is it produces a very, like, fireproof wall where this pilot can't amend anything in Title 14. So it really functions as a pilot to test and know what you're existing.

So that's part of that determination, as Commissioner Bishop stated, was some of the whys and practicality. And for the committee's awareness, we will be going through a sectional analysis with more in-depth discussion on Monday. This is to provide an oversight and overview of the process of how SB 66 was drafted. Thank you to the chair. Joliza, for the record, on slide 24, there's a conclusion, and that's part of the report.

And this is a form— I'm going to paraphrase what President Peterson has on the slide for his public testimony for SB 34— was, uh, it's a— it supports as local control, and it's the epitome of local control, but it also has the potential to enhance education delivery. The way that I often talk about it is education is like flying an airplane. Airplane, and we are wanting to add an engine to that airplane while it's flying. We're not trying to kick off other things. We are trying to add an engine to make that plane be able to move more efficiently or more powerfully and carry more because we're missing a partner from the work in education.

The appendix— and so I want to pause for a sec— tuna for Sandy Kowalski. There's some appendices that are in the report And then part of that is that we partnered, we've been, the department partnered with the Alaska Federation of Natives and created this website, had them create the website. And this was when we were doing presentations on SB 34 and Senate education. These resources were coming online back then, and then this website is the culmination of that work. And Salakduna was the a state board member who chaired the compacting committee during this SB 34 process and led up to what we did for the legislative report.

So I very much appreciate— she has a lot of background in education as a superintendent, a teacher, being working in the classroom, Nakia Jewett for immersion, working for her corporation up at Nana, working at UAF. So she's been in pre-K through college, tribal, public school, corporation, all those different things. So kind of wanted to have her hit home at the end for any— all those pieces, uh, and I'll turn it over to, to the chair for her. And may I add, this is Dina Bishop, an excellent teacher. She's superb.

And Director, uh, former Director Kowalski, uh, we see that you are here joining us on Teams. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready. Thank you. I'm Sandra Kawalski. Thank you for this opportunity today to share my perspective on SB 66 with the committee.

I think you all can appreciate that tribal compacting has kind of gained a little bit more traction and a little bit more support throughout Alaska through the Alaska Education Challenge. That's just under 10 years underway here. But tribal compacting and self-determination in education has been around Alaska for a lot longer than that. A little bit of personal perspective here on this. I have 4 sons, 2 of which were of the age to be able to attend a tribally operated Inupiaq language immersion school, a preschool in Kotzebue back in the '90s, and they were there when the school opened.

That school still exists today. They attended Nigaychot, Elisa Alvate. There was a time where a director left the immersion school, and I wanted to make sure my kids had that opportunity, so I left public education and worked at the immersion school until a new director could be brought in. And so I have experience operating that tribally operated school as well, but I think my most important reflection on that is what it is for my family and my sons in particular. They developed literacy in Inupiaq first.

For an English-speaking household, the only place that I could give them that strong opportunity to learn Inupiaq was in that tribally operated environment where the tribe selected hired its teachers and made sure that the curriculum was what the tribe had wanted taught to students, and it was a seasonal curriculum. Most importantly, I think, in their experience is they were taught by elders and by fluent speakers about our Inupiaq Alitqasaat, which is our value system. And then I continued to work on my master's degree and I got my certification to become an administrator. I ended up being principal in the same community that N'Gageot is in, of a much larger school. N'Gageot had 20 students.

June Nelson Elementary had 500 students. I got to see those N'Gageot students age into June Nelson Elementary in first and second grade. Some kids stayed at N'Gageot until second grade and see how they did in the larger school system. And a lot of our teachers didn't know who came from N'kei Tjot'. They just had their students every year.

I knew who had attended N'kei Tjot' over the years, and as a principal, I saw some really strong outcomes for those students who had attended N'kei Tjot'. Good academic skills, and our teachers would hold— we held quarterly awards. Honestly, I'm not exaggerating, when the citizenship awards came out, teachers not knowing they were recognizing students who had been through a program, a school that really taught from the Inupiaq value system. Those students were being recognized for their citizenship in the school over and over again. So, you know, fast forward, these two sons are doing really well in their adult life.

They are grounded and successful. I believe that if you can ground our Indigenous youth in their identity, they're going to be more successful. I'm a product of a mom who always made sure that I knew my brown hair was Black. I didn't know I had brown hair until I was in high school because my mom raised me knowing who I am. And so that's an important piece that I wanted to share with you I'm a strong proponent of public education, and I really do believe that allowing schools— allowing the state and tribes to enter into tribal compacting is a stronger form of public education that we can provide for Alaskans.

Dr. Isaac said that this would be a public school for all children. The way I see this is if you are living in a village, if you're living in Northwest Alaska and you are you are in Shungnak, Alaska, and you're Alaska Native, or maybe you are a teacher's child, knowing the area, knowing the community, the sense of history, the pride, the practices that exist in that community for all children strengthens everyone. And so this is not— tribal compacting is not an attempt to to cordon off a school system for Alaska Native children. It is an endeavor to make sure that we have the best education in our communities for all children. And I do know people who would love to send their children to a culturally grounded environment in our rural communities.

So I just wanted to also mention that.

You know, I think I really appreciated Senator Dr. Fox's testimony about the importance of identity and the struggles that a lack of identity can create kind of on a broader scale than just the individual. And our schools are, our schools are a part of a mechanism that either supports that type of disenfranchisement from one's strongest sense of identity, it helps develop that strong sense of identity. There's no, there's no getting around the fact that schools play a key role in a person's identity. We're not getting away from that. And when you are an indigenous Alaska Native, you are living in Alaska, and you attend a school that the curriculum is just like it is in Alabama, it's just like it is in Seattle, It doesn't matter.

The curriculum is just like that, but you are indigenous in Alaska. There is a strong disconnect and that starts to occur that we don't need to have all of our youth go through. So if we can have tribal compacting where Alaska Native communities develop a sense of— develop the curriculum and develop their teachers to provide a strong curriculum that's locally grounded, culturally grounded, We're not going to have that sense of disconnect in identity that our students have. I would even argue a student could have high academic skills in a rural community, but if they are not culturally grounded in that community that they are coming out of, it's an impediment that they didn't need to have. We should be grounding our children in their sense of place, in their culture.

So that's one of the things I wanted to share as well.

One of the experiences I've had in coming down this path towards tribal compacting on the State Board of Education was board members asking— we were so excited about the Alaska Education Challenge and the opportunities this would open open up for our students across Alaska. And a lot of the state board members would ask me, why don't we just flip the switch? Why don't we just turn it on? We just need to make tribal compacting a thing. Let's just tell people they can open up tribal schools and it'll be like a charter school.

And my answer to that was, no, it can't be a charter school. This is about— this is as much about self-determination as it is about education. And I say that with respect to everyone in the room.

When I say that school systems form a sense of identity, you can't get around that. They're a part of what creates the youth that go into adulthood.

The— how do I want to phrase this? This here. So when we create charter schools that can do things like we think a tribal school should, that is not true self-determination for the tribe. It is not true involvement from the tribal community. It's not really bringing together the strong partnerships.

It's a missed opportunity. Education when we try to go down the path of, you know, cultural teaching through charter school. That doesn't do it for me. And again, I'm a proponent of public education, and I think tribal schools are like public education on steroids for our rural communities.

So I wanted to share that as well.

I think, I think I'll leave it there. I did have a written statement, and after listening to the two other individuals and Dr. Isaac and Dr. Andina, I didn't need to say all of that anymore, except that I really hope that SB 66 is given some strong consideration. It's in a— in being a pilot— this is— I think I lost the train of thought earlier. In being a pilot, it makes sure that tribal compacting can be successful. It's not a test to see if it fails.

This approach to SB 66 is to make sure that the pieces are thoughtful as we move forward in tribal compacting. It's not a rush. So when the state early on, way early, way early, when the state board members used to ask me, why don't we just flip a switch and turn all this on? You're so excited about it. I was worried that if we don't do this slowly, thoughtfully, carefully, we're going to miss the point and we're going to have more charter schools and not really a strong educational system of, for, and by the people that it serves.

So, um, so the SB 66 is, I think, the right size step. I do think that there's some improvement that can be considered in it. I would like to offer a suggestion for consideration. Currently, SB 66 includes a requirement for a limited waiver of sovereign immunity, and I would request that this be reconsidered. Because if we align this bill more closely with what we already know is successful, the tribal health compacting model where sovereignty is preserved, you're going to get broader participation and you're going to strengthen the trust with local communities and tribes, and it's going to better reflect the principles of self-determination that underpin what makes this have the strong— what underpin the potential that compacting can provide.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kowalski. Are there any questions from committee members? Seeing none, I want to thank you again for joining us here in Senate Education.

Please proceed with the rest of your presentation. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Joel Isaac for the record on slide 27. I just want to reemphasize one of the things that, that has stuck with me from working with Sandy on this topic is the go slow to go far. And I want to couch that with we are at the stage to move, and Sandy said like we're at the right, this is the right size step for the next step. The go slow to go far, this conversation started in the early 1990s, late '80s for education.

So we've been going about almost 40 years in that go slow, and then in the last 10 years has been taking the time to carefully consider. We talked about some of the legal reviews, those types of things. I can speak more to the sovereign immunity, the wavering process that's in the bill that Sandy kind of ended on for those conversations that we had. And what I wanted to on this slide really anchor and kind of wrap up with is how do we know what's working? And Sandy also talked about that.

It's not, not if it fails, it's how do we make How do we make this work? And then how do we know that it's working? So part of what the department also did was work with CAITC, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, for visioning what does tribal education look like. And so one of the big questions from that year-long, over-year-long process is, what if our learning systems were reflective of our community and culture? And so I mentioned previously the number of those like 27 publicly noticed meetings.

There's been the hearings in the legislature. The, like, nearly 16 hearings for SB 34, and then the updates since then that have been happening over the last almost 5 years. This work went through large portions of the state, and you can read and add to— it's an interactive website on ourfutureancestors.com— to answers to this question. There's not an easy way for me to download this and put this on the public record, but this is— that's one of the ways the department wanted to be pride to the legislature. What does this look like?

And how do we know it's working? And then there's another video that's linked on this slide, which is Our Future Ancestors: A Story of Education in Alaska. And in that video, it challenges those of us who, and I include us at the dais as well, who sit in these positions of power or decision-making spaces. What will we do? To make this happen.

And that's a paraphrasing of the way that that video ends, but it covers some of the things we talked about from the kind of the dismal presentation of like education's awful for Native people if we look back at the boarding school era to what if our learning system reflected our community and culture. And we heard a little bit from Sonya for what that looks like, the amount of growth that happens for English reading, for Native reading, those things are a lot of those what-ifs. And so it's an important thing for the department wanted to do, to not have just one voice say this is what's possible. Traveled around at conferences in communities with tribal councils to like, what's the possibility? So that's that evaluation process.

And then one of the things that people often ask is like, how do I get updates about this? There's tools on the legislative webpage for signing up for text alerts. Alerts, but also the department has a compacting webpage, and then on that webpage you can sign up for the Tribal Affairs Office newsletter, and a lot of the emails are blasted out on there. And then, um, Commissioner Bishop, if there's anything that you'd like to add. No, so that's—.

Appreciate the time. It's exciting. Chanan, um, for the time today. And then also in the partnership, these are the tribal Tribal compacting partners who negotiated with the state. Their applications are on the state's Board of— or the State Department of Education's website.

They're also— should be on BASIS, or we can transfer them to your office, that they're easy to find in both places. So that these processes were done in the public. You can look at them for what the applications were. So, and actually, Madam Chair and the board, I would like to I wanted to just share the partnerships that— and the experiences of the tribe. They are already doing this work.

They're already educating children successfully. Every single one of those has education program that they've run and are solid. And, you know, I've heard some of the feedback about the risks of this.

It's minimal. It, to me, it is minimal, and there is just success ahead of us. And so I just, I just want to share that this isn't— I don't know how we can say this isn't new. This is just moving to the next level, um, to expand, to have more really sovereignty, if you will, as the entity that can, um, determine more, um, inputs and for, for youth. So appreciate it.

And Dr. Bishop, may I ask for you to identify yourself? My name My name is Dena Bishop. For the record, I apologize. It's all right. We're getting toward the end of session and you won't have to do that again for a little while.

Any additional questions for our folks here today? President Stevens. Not a question, just I can't tell you how impressed I am at what you have done. You know, when we started this project from the meetings we had a long time ago and then through Senate Bill 34, Honestly, we were afraid it was going to fail and that would be the end of it. And I know you mentioned it, you talked about the not looking at failure, but still success is what counts.

And the fact that you have these 5 tribes out there working together, you know, I believe what Sandra said, it's not a race that You got to do it right, and you do it slow and make sure it's right. And you have done that, and I really appreciate where you've taken this whole thing, Commissioner, and your work as well. It's very, very impressive. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you, President Stevens. As I know, this weekend we are celebrating your impending retirement, but for all the work that you've done on education, especially on this issue, we thank you.

Are there any additional questions? Any other questions? Seeing none, I am going to hold Senate Bill 66 until Monday Senate Education Committee, where at that time we will receive a detailed sectional analysis of the legislation and also review the fiscal notes. This concludes our agenda for today. The next meeting of the Senate Education Committee will be on Monday, April 27th, where we will have the second hearing of Senate Bill 66.

Bill hearing for Senate Bill 232, sponsored by our very own Senator Yunt, on personal collection of certain fossils. The Senate Education Committee will not be meeting on Wednesday. However, the Task Force on Education Funding will be meeting on Wednesday at 3:30 PM. That meeting will be held in the Davis Committee Room, and we will cover the topics of federal funding and local contributions to public education. As there is no other business before us today, I will adjourn the Senate Education Committee at 4:57 PM.