The Ketchikan School District seal on display at the superintendent’s office. (KRBD file photo by Leila Kheiry)
Ketchikan’s school district is looking to update its math curriculum. District officials are asking the school board to approve spending nearly $350,000 on textbooks, workbooks and digital course materials.
Most of the materials come from education company Savvas. Teachers and school board members who reviewed the materials as part of the school district’s curriculum committee recommend the school district stick with the company’s Envision series for elementary and middle-school students. That’s the same curriculum the district’s K-8 students currently learn from, but the district says the books and other materials have reached the end of their six-year projected life.
Most high school math materials would also come from Savvas with the exception of trigonometry and statistics books from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The district says Ketchikan High School math textbooks haven’t been updated in 12 years.
Ketchikan’s school board will be asked to approve the new materials on Wednesday. They’ll be available for public review before and during the board’s meeting.
In other business, the school board will consider creating a new assistant superintendent position. Board President Stephen Bradford says in a statement attached to the agenda that the school board has “long contemplated” creating a No. 2 position to assist at the head of school district administration. The statement says interim Superintendent Melissa Johnson would be considered for the job.
The duties of the assistant superintendent would be determined by the district’s new superintendent. The board voted last month to hire Michael Robbins, a principal in the Y-K Delta, as its next top administrator. He’s due to start work later this year.
The new administrative post is estimated to cost about $160,000 per year in salary in benefits.
Also Wednesday, the school board is set to consider asking the governor and Legislature to increase state per-student funding for school districts. A proposed resolution notes that the so-called “base student allocation” hasn’t increased in seven years — and because of inflation, that means state funding doesn’t pay for as many teachers or textbooks as it used to.
Ketchikan’s school board meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the borough’s White Cliff Building. Members of the public have a chance to weigh in at the beginning of the meeting. The meeting is broadcast on local cable channels and live-streamed at the borough’s website.
