House Education, 4/20/26, 8am

Good morning. I call this meeting of the House Education Committee to order. It is Monday, April 20th, 2026, and the time is 8:01 AM. Members present are Representative Elam, Representative Underwood, Representative Eischeid, and myself, Co-Chair Himschoot. We have a quorum to conduct business.

I'd like to remind members to silence their cell phones. And we're in the Betty Davis Committee Room, Room 106, in the State Capitol Building here in Juneau, Alaska. Documents for today's meeting have been uploaded to BASIS and are available on the table outside the door. I'd also like to thank our recording secretary, Kale Brown, and our moderator from the Juneau LIO, Chloe Miller. And our committee aides Ella Lubin and Tammy Smith.

Also in the room today, we have Senator Yunt and Senator Gray Jackson, who are here for bills that are on the agenda, I assume, and because they love the Education Committee also. Okay, today's agenda. We have several agenda items scheduled for today's House Education Committee meeting, including a brief presentation from Representative Elam as part of our Celebrating Excellence in Education series, followed by Senate Bill 20 and Senate Bill 143. Our first order of business is a presentation from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School district. I'd like to welcome Representative Elam to introduce the program that we're going to hear about or say any words.

And also I would like to welcome Representative Dybert, 801. So Representative Elam, do you want to say anything before we, before we meet these folks from Kenai? Thank you. I first would just start by saying I appreciate the opportunity to be able to highlight some of the good things that each of us are doing in our school districts. I think that's a great way to start out some of these weeks.

Analia is our CTE superstar there on the Kenai Peninsula, and she's done a ton of work with the kids all across our district, and she's prepared the presentation. So I would just turn it over. Yeah, turn it over and thank her for being able to present this morning. I don't know if we need to put a name on record or not, but let's go ahead and get your full name and share with us the the magic you're making happen there in Kenai.

Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I'm Analea Caron. I am the College and Career Readiness Coordinator for the Kenai Peninsula School District, and I have on the slide there just some of the programs and organizations that I supervise and oversee. So in addition to our CTE programs, which is our Perkins grant, I'm also the advisor and I'm director of our middle college program.

I do all of our dual enrollment. I work with school counselors on course credits, Alaska Performance Scholarship, and then I run our college and career fair. So it's kind of a busy day in the life here on the Kenai. I want to thank Representative Elam through the chair for the opportunity to present and just share some of the neat things that are happening in Kenai. Um, if you can hit the next slide there for me, Kendra.

Kenai Peninsula School District has a goal through our CTE program of making sure that every student is a lifelong learner who will graduate with the knowledge, skills, integrity, perseverance, and community connectedness to be successful in their post-secondary careers. So we look for every opportunity to make sure that students not only have the academic pieces that they need but are also connecting with our community through industry and different opportunities to ensure that they are successful after high school. And my contact information is on that slide as well, just so that if you want to reach out to me in the future, that's available for you as well. Some of the camps and things that we've done in the last year that I wanted to highlight on the next slide. This year we've put a huge emphasis on short courses and on camps.

As many of you might know, the Kenai Peninsula is kind of a microcosm of the entire state. So we have our two large comprehensive high schools, but we also have all of our small village schools that you have to fly to or take a boat to get to. And so because of that, building that capacity within CTE has been a challenge for us to make sure that everybody has the equipment and the supplies that they need, as well as the staffing. And so to combat that, we've offered a variety of short courses and camp-style learning to make sure that students can be immersed in their different experiences. So we partnered with the Alaska Health Consortium to offer Intro to Healthcare classes.

We've done that in 3 different locations, and students earned college credit and CTE certifications for those courses. We also partnered with AMPTT, which is the Alaska Resource Education organization, and they came down to do an intro to energy and petroleum. This year we also included maritime in that camp so that students got the experience of looking at ships and boating and all of those pieces as they relate to petroleum. And then I wanted to highlight some of our partners. Soldotna and Kenai Chamber of Commerce have run our job shadow programs for the last several years.

The Kenaitze Indian Tribe has a robust Apprenticeship Program and also started an Ed Rising group this year. And then South Peninsula and Central Peninsula Hospital have been great partners in the AHEC camps, opening their facilities, letting students do job shadows. We even had a couple of juniors and seniors who got to sit in and watch a live C-section this year, which was pretty neat for high school students. You either figure out that you love medical and want to be in that setting or realize that that is not the career for you. In that instance.

So pretty neat. On the next slide, upcoming this spring, we are doing a senior certification week, and it kind of ended up— it was going to be one week, but based on schedules has been much more robust than that and more individual site-based. So we're offering an ETT course through Kenai Peninsula College in Soldotna. That's going to be a 3-week class where they do 2 weeks of online learning and then come stay in the dorms and get to do the in-person hands-on didactic learning. Palmer is hosting a wilderness first responder course.

Various schools are doing CPR, first aid. Alaska Business Week is coming down and offering that program at Nenilchik School. And then Alaska Safe Drivers came down just last week and did their presentation for the Young Drivers Program at Kenai Alternative, which was a fabulous opportunity for kids to get some feedback on what they can do to be safer drivers. It gives them a report based on the online test that they take, and they get to do a simulation, and then that goes to parents as well so that the parents can see tips and skills of things that they can practice with their students. So pretty neat hands-on learning opportunities.

On the next slide, some of the other programs that we have offered for a number of years We partner very closely with Kenai Peninsula College and offer a lot of dual credit opportunities. The number of years I've been in this position for 4 years, and we've had CNA all 4 of those years where we've had students at the college actively taking that CNA program, as well as EMT. EMT they can do at the college for dual credit, or they can go through the Explorer program with their local fire station. And earn that ETT, EMT, and Firefighter I certification. KPC also received a Perkins grant this year, and so they were able to fund and assist with students enrolling in a variety of CTE classes, including the EMT and CNA programs, welding, process technology, and then their Yamaha program.

We're also working with AVTEC on a variety of pieces. They're doing a big meeting here in a couple of weeks to work on some articulation agreements But right now Seward has a welding program that we're going to start in fall of 2026 with Avtech, and then they partnered with Royal Caribbean for a program called Port Partners, and students are earning both high school and college credit in that intro to business class. They get to build a business plan, and then Royal Caribbean will pick a winner that they'll actually fund a business opportunity in Seward. So pretty neat opportunity for high school students to get participate in that. The school district also has a distance online program called iChoice.

That program offers a variety of online credits to students across the district, including keyboarding, intro to education, employability, personal finance, and the Yamaha intro to small engines.

On the next slide, we made a big push the last 2 years to increase our CTSO organizations. That's the Career Technical Student Organizations. And I really appreciate at the state level that there's been a lot of support for those programs to grow. Programs like FFA have been successful in the state for a number of years. Ones like SkillsUSA are slowly coming back, and we're seeing growth in those areas.

Our district has been very lucky to have students that have stepped up into student leadership roles. So at the state level, we have Ed Rising, SkillsUSA, and FFA state officers from the Kenai Peninsula. Pretty neat to see. We're going to be taking a pretty large group this year down for the national conferences in Portland, Oregon, and in Atlanta, Georgia for Ed Rising and SkillsUSA this year. The biggest challenge with that component right now is finding teacher leaders that have time and capacity to be the chaperones and be the leaders of those organizations.

The time and travel away from school is expensive. And then for CTE funding, we have to have the classes in the building to be able to use our Perkins funding for those organizations. And so as budgets continue to constrict, what we're seeing is that if we can't offer a natural resources class it also means that we lose our FFA participation. And so those are things that we're looking at on a district level of how do we support that. Right now, SkillsUSA and Ed Rising, I run a district-wide chapter, and so I'm the advisor for those two organizations, and students across the district sign up for that program, and I meet with them individually or in small groups to have them participate in those programs.

Rather than some of the large Anchorage or Mat-Su schools where they have a teacher at each individual school running those programs. So that's one way we're kind of thinking outside the box and trying to continue programs and make things work in the state that we're in at the moment. On the next slide, I wanted to highlight a couple of our success stories. So these are two of my seniors this year, Bradley Morrison And Will Klein, um, Bradley is at Kenai Central High School in Kenai, and he is currently completing the welding program at Kenai Peninsula College. He's going to graduate in May with his occupational endorsement certificate in welding, so he will have finished that college program in addition to his high school credits.

He took 16 credits in welding, and he also took the Yamaha intro course. He also placed first in SkillsUSA across the state and will be heading to nationals to compete in that welding competition. So pretty neat to see a kid who knows what he wants to do and is passionate about it get involved and have that opportunity. And then the other student there is William Klein. He's a senior at Soldotna High School, and he is currently taking KPC classes He completed the EMT program in the fall and is planning to continue by pursuing the paramedicine program, but he's enrolled in a full set of classes at UAA already for next fall and is planning on staying in the dorms there in Anchorage.

So capturing both of these gentlemen and keeping them in Alaska is one of our successes through the CTE program. On the next slide, I did want to highlight some of the CTE-specific graduation data for you. I know data and accountability has been a huge conversation at the state level, and for CTE, it's easy to see that students who are engaged and involved in our career technical programs are widely successful. One of the ones to highlight on this slide that I think is really neat, in addition to the 97% graduation rate of our CTE students, You'll notice that 32% of those students are qualified as what would be considered economically disadvantaged. So we're reaching a wide variety of our students kind of across the board and putting specific goals in place to make sure that we're meeting those different subpopulations with the career technical programs.

I also have two highlights there of previous 2024 graduates. Zach Buckbee and Willow Patrick, again one from SoHi and one from KCHS. But these students both participated in CTE programs and also in our Middle College program and graduated high school with a significant number of college credits already completed. Willow actually received her associate's degree the week before high school graduation and was the valedictorian at the college before she got her high school diploma. So, um, pretty neat to see that.

And then Zach Buckbee, um, is currently at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and is pursuing aerospace engineering as a career. So sometimes the test scores and those things show that success, but also what students are choosing to do, um, post-secondary, I think makes that much more of a connection with individuals.

I wanted to highlight as well that dual credit piece. I mentioned that we have a close partnership with Kenai Peninsula College. A lot of our CTE programs students can earn college credit for, but there's a variety of different dual credit or dual enrollment opportunities. Kendra, on the next slide I have kind of a graphic that explains what dual enrollment is. I think that that term is kind of an umbrella term and people use that intermittently with any of the other vocabulary on that slide.

So in our district, we have a dual credit opportunity where students take classes in the high school. We also have our middle college where they're going to the college and taking classes. JumpStart is a Kenai Peninsula Borough-funded program that provides a discount for students. We also have CTE classes that are funded through our Perkins grant. Students can use their homeschool allotment, or a lot of students will choose to take a non-UA class through another organization and pay for those independently, whether that's through Grand Canyon University or BYU or other opportunities.

So any of those students qualify as dual enrollment, and I work with them to help them pick those classes and then also to identify how that counts on their high school transcript and towards graduation. So we are pretty flexible in our district in making sure that we can have lots of opportunities that fit the needs of all of our diverse learners.

On the next slide, I mentioned Kenai Peninsula is kind of a microcosm of the whole state. So we go all the way from Tyonek down to Nanwalek and Port Graham. It's a pretty large district. Some of those schools are on the road and several of them are not. But our Middle College operates a little bit differently than others in the state.

We are a district-wide program, so students in the entire district can choose to enroll in our Middle College. They stay enrolled at their brick-and-mortar school, and then our Middle College operates as a program, so they don't enroll in a separate school to participate. So you can see there the 2025 spring numbers. We had students from across the district students who were participating in that program earning those dual credit classes. It's a great opportunity for our small schools.

Specifically, my Seldovia and Razdolna schools might not have as many opportunities for an anatomy and physiology class or to take personal finance at their site, but they can do that through the Middle College program and utilize any of the college classes that are offered through Kenai Peninsula College. So it's pretty neat opportunity. On the next slide, just some highlights. Middle College, we had 43 seniors enrolled this year. Due to budget cuts, we reduced the enrollment, new enrollment, and so I had 20 new students this year.

We've had up to 150 students in that program at the height of its enrollment. I am the advisor, administrator, counselor, secretary, everything for that program. So we don't have any additional staffing, and that is a choice that our district made to kind of limit the funding through other means rather than reducing enrollment for students. Because it's a program and not a school designation, I'm able to work with the counselors at all of the schools and identify students that are interested in the program. The CTE courses that are included in this program include Process Technology, welding, EMT, and our CNA program.

And those receive funding through Middle College, and then we support those with our Perkins grant to buy things like scrubs for the students in CNA or the textbooks needed for EMT. So those are pretty neat opportunities for kids to take above and beyond the high school curriculum and either start on an associate's degree or to earn their high school graduation credits through college credit.

And I'm going to speed through this so that I can get the slides. I want to be very mindful of your time. On the next slide, you guys can dig into this one a little bit more, but I just pulled this data from, uh, ACPE. It is the data of where our students are going after high school, and I think the big thing to identify is that in Alaska, the majority of our students are choosing to go directly to work which includes that registered apprenticeship or on-the-job training. We have a pretty small minority that is going to a traditional 4-year college degree program, and a lot of those are choosing to do so out of state.

So when we're focusing our time and our energy on what students in high school need, my role is to focus on that work piece and the training component and really make sure that those kids who are staying here locally have the skills and the pieces that they need to be successful in the workforce or to pursue training in those individual training programs.

And on the last information slide I have, there is just kind of the tiered approach for our college and career supports. We do a lot of pieces with the career planning pieces. As a district, we adopted Naviance 2 years ago, which is part of the PowerSchool suite, and we use that as our career planning tool. In addition to the AKCIS materials that are available online, we have a variety of different career exploration curriculums. We do a lot of different events and opportunities to get kids exposed to different careers and then have our dual credit advising and career guide components.

In the post-high school pieces, students are taking regular standardized testing as well as AP courses. They're participating in Middle College and dual credit, and then we work with them closely on completion of the FAFSA, doing college tours, our college and career fair. And then we have a pretty robust work experience opportunity where students can either do on-the-job training, mentorships, or apprenticeships and earn high school credit for that. And then —some pieces that are in place to support our special populations. I work very closely with our McKinney-Vento program and our RISE students.

Those are our students that are identified as either homeless or unaccompanied youth. We also do a variety of small camps for some of our smaller schools, things like our alternative high schools, and then provide additional support for our special education students and the students that fall into those programs for post-secondary planning. How can we make sure that they have the pieces in place, whether it's completing their FAFSA or getting their driver's license, so that they can take that next step after high school and be successful? And then the industry certifications are kind of over there on the left. One of the components of the Perkins grant is that students are taking 2 or more CTE classes, and then the goal is that they're earning some type of certification in that area.

So that they can be a CTE concentrator. In our district, it's been hard to identify ones that are meaningful after high school. You can pay for an OSHA 10 class, and everybody knows what that means, but if you're going to the slope, they're probably going to need the OSHA 30 or the OSHA 40. And so is that a meaningful use of our funding and a good use of students' time to take that certification? The Perkins funding wants that and uses that as a tracking measure of our program success, and so we do offer those opportunities, but we really push students to complete ones that are going to be meaningful for them.

Things like the CNA or the EMT certification have a direct relation to their employment. Things like food service worker cards are embedded in our curriculum in those nutrition and foods classes, And so those ones have been easy, but we're looking for other opportunities to find certifications that can be meaningful for students in that way. And then I will cede my time back to the chair, and if you have any questions or anything else that you'd like from me, I would be happy to share. That is incredible. You're wearing so many hats.

I think we should limit it to maybe one question per— if folks do have questions. I, of course, have three. Questions, but if we could kind of get through questions quickly and move on with our agenda for today. Who has a burning question? Because if you're not going to ask, I'll ask all 3 of mine.

Um, Co-Chair Storey. Thank you, Co-Chair Himchute. Through the chair again, yes, I agree, impressive how many things you are doing. Thank you, Ms. Karen. And I would— my question was on the second to the last slide.

It was on the APS The small print under number 1 where people are picking college— you had it right the first time, Kendra, there you go— it said, I can't quite read, well, 836 students statewide use the APS scholarship. Could you explain that a little bit more, please? Yeah, so according to the Alaska Postsecondary Education Commission report for 2025, these are the 2025 numbers, 800 students used the Alaska Performance Scholarship in-state. So the, the program was updated and there's now more students who qualify for that funding. However, previous to last year, only 22% of students who qualified were actually using those funds, and so there was a discrepancy in the number of kids who stay in-state versus choosing to go out of state.

State, um, even if they have that additional funding available. And I'm expecting to see for 2026 that number to jump up significantly, um, because that dollar amount increased and also the number of students who qualify for Alaska Performance Scholarship has increased significantly. And then I did include in there also, um, the WUE program is a very popular program for Alaska students. Western Undergraduate Exchange allows students to go to other western states for in-state tuition plus about 10%, and in 2025 we had 1,300 students who utilized that funding. So that would be to go to states like Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Idaho.

So just the trend of where students are enrolling. Quick follow-up. Follow-up through the chair. So that explains when your first statement there in-state Alaska has seen an increase in state institution enrollments and that you're basing that on more kids deciding to stay in because of the increase in the amount of scholarship to the APS program.

Thank you. Yes, through the chair. Other questions from the committee? Okay, Representative Eichheit. Thank you, Co-Chair Himschoot.

More of a comment. I'm totally impressed by this presentation. I'm totally impressed by what's happening down in the Kenai. You know, the one thing that I think is always true is when we think of schools, we think of, well, maybe a building, you know, this local building, maybe we go vote there. But when we actually peel away the onion skin, so to speak, and go into the buildings and see what's going on, it's oftentimes amazing things.

And I just want to commend the Kenai Borough School District doing fantastic things. I hope we can continue to support you to do your fantastic things because kids matter. And I suspect Representative Elam is incredibly proud of the presentation today. Good job. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions? Representative Dibert. Thank you. Through the co-chair to Ms. Caron, thank you so much for your presentation.

Good morning. I'm trying to learn more about the Ed Rising Future Educators. Can you tell me, are these teachers like already have a full load of teaching and then they're also doing this? Is it like an after-school program or is it another class on top of the teacher's load? Thank you so much.

Ms. Caron. Yes, Representative Dilbert, through the chair. In our district, the Ed Rising program is a district-wide program, so I'm the teacher advisor for that class. I teach the college dual credit Ed Rising or Ed 111 class through UAF, and then students across the district are completing the online curriculum, and then I go to the different sites to to meet with that group of students. Across the state, most schools have a teacher leader.

Sometimes it's a class built within the day. Several schools have an intro to ed class built into their schedule and utilize that component. A number of schools also do it as an after-school club or organization, and some of the teachers in some districts also receive an additional stipend for that as well. But the Ed Rising program, it's a national student organization, and here in Alaska we're very lucky that University of Alaska Fairbanks has a grant that supports that. And so they actually have an Ed Rising team that is based in the K-12 outreach program at UAF.

And so they support statewide implementation of that as well as curriculum, provide professional development for the teachers that choose to participate in the program. And then also financially support the state conference. And students who place first at state use that grant funding to help them attend nationals as well. And you can find out more about that if you do just a quick Google search for Ed Rising Alaska. It'll give you their website that has kind of all of those components.

Thank you, Miss Kelly. Okay, and I'm just going to go ahead and take all three of my questions and make them into One, uh, I'm interested in dual enrollment. I know how we do it in Sitka School District, so I guess all of the questions wrapped into one. Is it locally determined how the costs of dual enrollment are shared out? Because in my home district, it's a third to the university, a third to the family, and a third is paid by the school district.

And we're starting to find kids are using it so much that it's becoming a serious budget item. Plus, I worry about the equity a free public education when a family has to put in some, you know, some money for essentially a course. So can you tell me if that's locally determined and if you do it the same way?

Yes, so it is a local determination. There's a couple of components that play into place. So the university system has articulation agreements. That's something that each of the university systems decides their cost. So if you go through University of Alaska Anchorage, for example, they have one cost for that tuition.

UAF and UAS have a different cost associated with that, that course. If it's offered through the high school, so if you have a high school teacher who is qualified, has the master's degree, and is willing to teach it during the high school day, Through UAA, that's a $25 per credit cost to students, so they can teach a Biology 111 class, for example, in the high school, and students get to elect whether they want the college credit or not. In that case, they would pay that $25 per credit. In our district, if students are economically disadvantaged, if they're part of a special program, if they have an economic barrier the district kind of comes in and is willing to cover that cost. So we do it on a case-by-case basis.

Middle College is completely covered by the school district. We use our 100s fund for that amount, and we pay full tuition rate to the college for Middle College. The JumpStart program in our district is borough funded, and so the borough allocates funding, and students apply for that and use that, and it's a discounted tuition rate. So in our district, the borough covers two-thirds of the cost, and students then have one-third of the cost for those, those classes. So it comes out to about $300 per class that students take, and they use that in a variety of ways.

Some students self-pay that. If they're through homeschool, they'll use their homeschool allotment to pay for that. And then if they're in a program like our Migrant Ed program Migrant Ed comes in and pays that cost for those students. Okay, and we have one last very quick question from Co-chair Storey. Thank you, Co-chair Himshoot, through the chair.

On the slide in front of us, number 3, 51% of our students are going off to work. Can you tell me what employment they are obtaining?

Yes, go ahead. Yes, Miss Karen. Thank you, Representative Story. Through the chair, I would have to look further into the ACPE report. Department of Labor has some really good information on which labor areas employment is happening in.

It's pretty wide variety. We have a lot of students that are going to service industry, you know, directly into employment working at our local grocery stores and restaurants and things like that. The ones that are in the work sector is pretty widely spread from those entry-level kind of lower-paying service jobs, or students who are graduating with a welding certificate and going directly to work in the petroleum field. So there's a pretty wide, wide breadth there. Thank you.

And just to be clear, this slide that talks about where kids are going, this is for all of Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, not just CTE concentrators? This is—.

Yes, um, through the chair, sorry, this is, uh, this is statewide data from the ACPE report. So, okay, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you, Rep. Elam, who has a Comment? Just a comment, yes.

I wanted to thank— well, thank you for putting the presentation together, but then also for all the hard work you do in all of our communities. Every time I go anywhere, I mean, you guys know we travel a lot in this particular gig, and I run into Analeah everywhere. And so anytime I've ever needed a question or had something about, you know, any of these subjects, she's been a wealth of knowledge in addition to all the work she's done. So thank you so much for for everything you've done in our community. Yep, we're really grateful for your time this morning and for all of the work that you're putting in at home.

And I don't know when retirement is for you, but you're going to be hard to replace, so I hope it's a long way off. Yes. Okay, thank you so much for— elam— for bringing us this presentation. And we're going to move on in our agenda now. Our next order of business is Senate Bill 20, entitled An Act Relating to Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Education in Public Schools and Relating to the Duties of the Department of Education and Early Development.

We have previously heard invited and public testimony on this bill, and we have received 3 amendments. I would like to invite Senator Gray Jackson to come forward, introduce yourself, and provide a short recap of the bill. Good morning. Thank you for being here. Thank you.

I have to start off by saying how impressive that presentation was. It really was, and how timely that CPR is already being taught to some extent in that school district. Sen. Elvie Gray Jackson representing District G in Anchorage. I am honored to be here and thank you co-chairs and the committee for hearing this bill. I think this is the fourth time.

So we're here to basically discuss three amendments that you have which we view as friendly amendments to Senate Bill 20 CPR curriculum. The amendments, they don't change the bill's intent, but they do provide flexibility and reassurance for implementation. In more remote and rural communities that may have fewer resources than urban areas. We also have a representative from the Department of Health's Rural Health Transformation Program here today, and she can speak to the availability of small grants that non-government entities may apply to, to help cover any unforeseen costs associated with this bill. It's never been our intention ever to place a burden on Alaska's educators, and this funding opportunity may help address the concerns that some of you may have.

Additionally, the American Heart Association, they plan to provide free CPR kits to all Alaska communities with 20 or more residents by 2030. As a result, grant support would likely only be needed for a limited period, approximately 3 years until those kits are distributed statewide. So we're here and happy to answer any questions and again appreciate committee's committee. And again, for the record, we view these amendments as friendly amendments. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Senator Gray Jackson.

Thank you for those comments and kind of framing what's coming next. So I'd like to go ahead and move Amendment Number 1, also known as 34-LS02531\I.

3. And I will object for purposes of discussion. And would you like to speak to your objection? Ah, yes. I believe members have the amendment in front of you, and it's also posted to BASIS.

And as you see on page 2, line 7, it deletes "each" and inserts an "a." And on page 2, line 9, following instruction, it inserts "if practicable." And these amendments is minor, and it mainly reduces how the bill is applied without changing its core content. Replacing each with an a does weaken the sense of a universal requirement, making it less absolute. Adding "if practical" introduces a feasibility standard, allowing schools to opt out based on limitations like staffing or resources. So in practice, the school This amendment gives schools more discretion and reduces enforceability, but it does not remove the expectation of CPR instruction. That is very clear.

There is that expectation of it, but it just softens to allow some adjustments for mostly rural, smaller schools who may have trouble implementing this. So this allows for for that.

Okay. Fantastic. Do you maintain your objection? I remove my objection. Are there any other objections on this amendment?

Okay. Seeing none, Amendment 34-LS0253/i.3 has been adopted. And now I am going to move Amendment Number 2, also known as 34-LS0253/i.2.

X/I.4. Ah, yes, I will object for purposes of discussion. And would you like to speak to your objection? Ah, yes. This amendment on page 2, line 10, it deletes a 1 in parentheses, and on page 2, line 11, it deletes a semicolon and inserts parentheses, and then on page 2, lines 12 through 15, it deletes all material.

Again, this amendment does not change the bill's core purpose but adjusts how CPR training can be delivered. The requirement for CPR education remains, but it adds flexibility, especially for schools with limited resources. It has two main effects. First, it allows alternatives to hands-on training such as virtual or blended simulations for schools without proper equipment or instructors. This makes the mandate more accessible.

Adaptable. Second, it defines hands-on practice as simulated CPR using mannequins or similar tools aligned with national guidelines while still allowing alternatives where needed. In practice, this lowers implementation barriers, particularly in rural or under-resourced schools. It may reduce rigor— training rigor in some cases, but it makes compliance more realistic and Overall, it is a moderate implementation change, not a major policy shift. And the bill sponsor has accepted it as friendly, so do you maintain your objection?

I remove my objection. Are there any other objections to Amendment 2? Okay, seeing no other objections, Amendment 2, also known as 34-LS0253\I.4, has been adopted. Accepted. And I now move Amendment 3, also known as 34-LS0253/i.5.

Object. And would you like to speak to your objection? We also have Leah Van Kirk here with the Department of Health who can provide some more context for this amendment. Rep. Eichcheid, would you like to speak to your objection? Yes, Co-Chair Hemschute.

So this basically creates an effective date that is July 1st, 2027. Well over a year in the future if this bill is passed, becomes law. And one of the main reasons for that is this will allow the state to apply for a Rural Health Transformation grant of up to $100,000 for the purposes of CPR training and such to support the intent of this bill. So it just slows it down, allows us to potentially access some money And the great thing about CPR training of instructors is once you have instructors trained, they can keep instructing the future health providers of our great state. Sounds like it would extend the reach of the bill.

Could we go ahead and ask Ms. Van Kirk to come forward and talk to us a little bit about Amendment Number 3 and how it would work?

Good morning. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Leah Van Kirk, Healthcare Policy Advisor for the Department of Health.

So the Rural Health Transformation Program will be accepting year 2 applications probably late July, early August, and so the American Heart Association could submit an application requesting funds to support CPR education.

Any questions for Ms. Van Kirk? Okay. Fantastic. Thank you for being here this morning. Representative Eichai, do you maintain your objection?

No, I remove my objection. Are there any other objections?

Okay. Seeing none, Amendment 3, also known as 34-LS0253, I.5 has been adopted, and I will now accept a motion on this bill. I move Senate Bill 20, also known as 34.LS0253/I, as amended with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. Are there any objections?

Seeing no objections, Senate Bill 20, also known as 34-LS0253/I, I moves from committee as amended with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. I authorize legislative legal to make any conforming changes, and we're going to take a brief at ease to sign the committee report. I also failed to mention I wanted to welcome our committee members. They came in shortly after 8, and I forgot to mention that Co-Chair Story and Representative Schwanke both came in in the first 5 minutes of our meeting, so they've been with us the entire time. And I wanted to thank Ms. Van Kirk for making the effort to be here this morning and and helping to explain how this bill could have an even broader scope.

So, okay, we will take a quick at ease for the paperwork. Thank you, Senator Gray Jackson. Thank you.

Okay, we're back on record, and we're going to move to our next agenda item. Our final order of business today is Senate Bill 140. Be entitled An Act Relating to the Terms of Office of Municipal School Board Members, Relating to the Size of the City Council in Second Class Cities, and Providing for an Effective Date. We have previously heard invited and public testimony on this bill. No amendments were received.

I want the committee to know that Director Sandra Muller and Lynn Keneally are on the phone from the Department of Commerce and Economic Development to answer several questions that arose during this bill's last hearing. I don't have a list of those questions, so I guess we'll just take a quick at ease and figure out what we're doing next.

Okay, we're back on record. So what I'd like to do right now is invite Senator Yunt to come forward and give us a brief recap of the bill, and then we will go online to Director Muller with the Division of Community and Regional Affairs to get their input on the bill, and then we'll see what happens after that. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning.

For the record, Senator Yunt from the Meadow Lakes, North Lakes, and beautiful Wasilla area of of Alaska. Briefly, I'd like to comment on the earlier presentation by Rep. Elam. What a lot of awesome things you guys got going down there. I just want to put this on record though. It's pretty discouraging when a program that used to put 150 kids into it can now only afford to do 20 of our best and brightest minds into the career college program there.

And so hopefully our two bodies can work well together to shore up education funding this year so you guys can get back to helping 150 kids a year again. So, um, back to SB 143. This is nothing more than a local control issue. Very simple. It seems like a small deal to many, but to my community and to others around Alaska, this could be a big deal.

So there was an amendment brought to us by AML for smaller communities. With less than 1,000 residents in them who are having a very difficult time finding 7 members to serve on some of their local bodies. So if this were to become law, this would allow them to go down to having, you know, 3 or 5, and I'm not sure if it could be 4 or 6. I don't remember that, to be honest with you, but it would allow them— yeah, so either way, it would allow them to shrink the size of their body to better meet their community's capability of filling it out. There are many councils and boards around the state, I guess, in these small communities that can't find 7 members to serve.

So we thought that was an excellent amendment and offered it with— or welcomed it with open arms. School board length of terms, it's an odd deal, and I've asked a lot of people this. And nobody's been able to answer it if it was done intentionally or not, but in all of our boroughs and cities and municipalities, mayors and assembly members are allowed to serve 3 or 4-year terms, but school board's only allowed to do 3. And so if you take a community such as ours where we now have assembly seats and mayor seats that are 4 years long, then what it leads to is odd-year elections. Elections, very expensive elections just for 2 seats at a time, possibly 3 every third one.

And it's just not the most efficient way to use tax dollars. I would rather see that money going into education and roads. And so this would be an opportunity to allow that to be changed in any community in Alaska should they choose. So thanks for having us here. Again, I got my chief of staff, Ryan McKee, here with us.

Us today, so for any questions that you may have. Are there any questions right now for the Senator or staff, or can we go to— let's go to the Division of Community and Regional Affairs. And Director Mueller, if you're available, could you unmute yourself, put yourself on record, and share your comments with us this morning?

Sure. Thank you. This is Sandra Moller. I'm Director of Division of Community Regional Affairs, and I, I wanted to thank the Senator for bringing this forward, as there are challenges across the state for both school boards and municipalities. For reference, the last committee hearing, there were questions regarding if there were any examples of communities, particularly the MAP-2 that are having trouble filling the city municipal seats.

And what we found is there are no examples in the MAP-2 because those are typically larger communities. However, we do have many examples across the state— state has difficulty filling 7 city council seats, and those are typically with populations under 250. and I have some examples of a number of communities from ADAC, Clark's Point, Kaufman Cove, Calpays, Fort Hyden, Pilot Point, Chignik. All of those are under 250, and they've had trouble filling their seats for that, the city council. Another question was, are there other states that allow a smaller community have less number of representation based on their body? And yes, there are.

For example, Washington State has communities fewer than 5,000, the city council minimum is 5. And there's also other examples, um, basically based on population. So just wanted to provide that information for the committee as you go forward. I do support and do think that having flexibility, having the local government ability to determine what their city— their representation is should be allowed. And I believe this bill allows that to be an option.

And our staff is fully prepared to help cities understand any of these changes. And while we prefer 5 to 7, 3 could be usable. Typically in a second-class city, the mayor is selected from the council. So if you have 3 members, one of those would be the mayor, and they are not— there could be a problem with doing some of our rules because the mayor is not allowed to make a motion or second motion typically. But we think this is a positive going in the right direction.

Direction and really appreciate your time to hear this bill. And if I can answer any questions, I'd be happy to. Thank you, Director Mohler. Does anyone have questions? Representative Eichide.

Yeah, through— thank you, Co-Chair Hamschute. Through the co-chair, I heard, taking my notes, that Washington State allows down to 5 on a council. I did not hear whether any entities allow down to 3. Did you state that and I lost it, or any history you can provide on that, please? Director Muller.

Yeah, for the record, through the Chair, this is Sandra Muller, DCRA Director. To Representative Aishad, we have not found many, but we do believe there are a few examples that allow us to go down to 3, possibly North Dakota, which has very small cities. Of course, we haven't done an exhaustive search, but again, most of what we found was based on population, so representative per population, and the locals were able to determine that themselves. Okay. Other questions?

[Speaker:JAIN] Of course, our committee is focused on the school board side of this part of this bill, but my question, Director Mohler, is it's not addressed in the bill. So if a community decided to downsize from 5 to 3, how do you cycle out? So if somebody's serving and they're a beloved council member and the community wants them back, is it locally determined how to go from 5 to 3? Does that need to be addressed by the state, or would that be something you do in regulation, or how do we functionally go from a council of 5 to a council of 3? Thank [Speaker:SANDRA_MOLLER] you, Co-chair Himschoot.

It's Sandra Moller with DCRA again. I think that would require some interaction with our staff and the community. It would be something we would have to work through. Typically, a city council charter would not state, you know, anything that said, okay, we're going to change the membership, so here's how we do it. So we would— since we're the path and the community wanted to go from 7 to 3, we would work with them.

Our local government specialist would be working with them, which we typically do, to help them get to that. As far as the member that was there, we probably look first to the term of that council member and help the community define when they wanted the change. So hopefully that would provide as little disruption as possible.

Thank you for that. And of course Yeah, it's, um, often hard to find the 5 in these really small towns, so it may just naturally work. But Representative Elam, um, thank you. Uh, during my time on the Borough Assembly, we had a number of these conversations, and, uh, the way that we were going to handle it at the local municipality level of the Kenai Peninsula Borough was through the redistricting process. So when you redraw the map The person serves out their term, the map gets voted on, and then the person runs just like they normally would.

And so if they, you know, depending on the redistricting process, so they still have the opportunity, but then we would never like unelect somebody, you know, because something changed. It would go through that process and then they would be able to recampaign for their seat again. [Speaker:KATIE] And in my borough assembly, we all serve everybody. There is no map. We are, I guess, all at large or whatever.

So, okay, interesting. But just to be clear, Senator Yunt, the bill started as the school board part and then you added in the friendly amendment from AML to expand the scope of it. Okay, Co-Chair Storey. Ah, yes, thank you, Co-Chair Himschuh. Welcome, Senator Yunt.

And both are good to have both of you here. And I was able to listen to the— watch the recording of your first hearing, so I found that helpful and good questions asked by the body here. And I was listening to that, it was good to me to know that this needed to be approved by the voters because I always think, you know, what's so great about democracy and representative democracy is the more people we have have in the community weighing in on the decisions and knowledgeable about the background behind the decisions is really helpful. So I think the ideal is we would want to staff as many citizens as we could. So in such important roles as, uh, school education in their community and in their governing of their municipalities, we're very grateful to these people who step up.

What's been hard on the school board arena and municipalities is been, as we've had to be cutting our budgets, no one runs to cut. They— well, that's not true. Everybody runs to cut out administration and have as most go to the classroom as possible. But I mean, they're looking to things that they have identified that they want changed and strengthened. Usually has been my experience.

But one comment I wanted to make is, and again, it's approved by the voters. I think the beauty in having an election in an off a national federal election year is you do get staggered terms and you get some continuity on there. Not saying that, you know, everyone's running every— on the federal election years. I just think when they have that off year, it does allow for a natural staggering of history and knowledge on the background. And also new people that come in.

But having— I just wanted to make those comments, and I am grateful for how the bill has been set up with flexibility and local control. Thank you. Thank you, Kōtairi Sori. Based on that comment, the terms could still be staggered, but they would be staggered in the one-year presidential and then two years later non-presidential year. Okay, thank you.

Okay, um, oh, Rep. Zinchewocki. Thank you, Co-Chair Himschuh. Thank you, Senator Yandrum, for being here. I'm just kind of have an initial comment that I appreciate the bill. I think that it's really important that all of our municipalities have local control opportunities in this manner.

I have a question as to whether or not this has brought up some more difficult conversations that we should probably have about the reality that sometimes some of these governments are very small, and we should be considering how to mesh some of our small municipal school districts with surrounding larger school districts, potentially REAAs. And so I was just curious if you'd had any thoughts on that, and and not necessarily amending this bill, but if any comments like that had come up or your thoughts on future. Senator Yunt. Yeah, through the record, through the chair— for the record, through the chair, Senator Yunt to Representative Schwanke. That's not came up.

That hasn't came up yet. I've put no thought into it. I know there are a lot of smaller districts in the state, and I'm We're pretty fortunate in the fact that ours is, you know, rather large with a lot of people that want to participate, but I can't say that that came into consideration with this piece of legislation. I hope we can work on that in future years.

Okay, seeing no other questions from the committee, I would entertain a motion.

I move 34.LS0781/i from committee with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. Are there objections?

Seeing no objections, Senate Bill 143, also known as 34-LS0781/i, moves from committee with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. I ask that members stick around after we adjourn to sign the committee report. Thank you, Senator Yunt, for being here this morning and for bringing us this legislation. Announcements for the committee: our next meeting is this Wednesday, April 22nd, at 8:30. 8:30 AM, a little late start there.

Here in the Betty Davis Room, number 106, we will hear about Regional Education Attendance Areas, commonly referred to as REAAs, from the Department of Education and Early Development, as well as two former deed commissioners, Marshall Lind and Jerry Covey. We will have an introductory hearing on House Bill 237 sponsored by Representative Underwood, and we had a closing comment— I'm sorry, I didn't ask you for that. Senator Yant, would you like to provide a comment? Yeah, through the chair, Senator Yant, for the record, just thanks to everybody for the input and the help designing this bill. I'm sorry Ryan had to go.

We've got another bill up in Senate Resources right now, so he had to go, but thanks again. Okay, keep on swimming. Okay, seeing no further business before the committee, we will adjourn at 9:06 Please stick around for the paperwork.