Dear ASD Families,

This Thursday, we kick off the 2023-24 school year! 

I am very happy to report that ASD campuses are already buzzing with excitement. Our teachers returned to their classrooms today! Speaking of making a return, our bus transportation services will be fully operational Thursday morning to start picking up students. As I stated earlier this month, this was truly a community effort to hire and train enough bus drivers. We are incredibly grateful.

Bus service will start an hour later on Mondays as ASD starts phase one of new school start times. This year, all schools will start Mondays an hour later beginning August 21st to accommodate Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for instructional staff. If students need to be dropped off at the regular time on Mondays, staff will be there to welcome them and provide supervision until the school day begins. We are making a big shift these next two years with school start times to improve the classroom experience. PLC Mondays are one way the District will move the needle on student achievement.

This year, a major emphasis will be placed on meeting our bold board goals of improving proficiency in reading, math, and college, career & life readiness. For example, our new K-3 ELA curriculum is one way we will make progress on reading proficiency at all elementary schools. Additionally, our commitment to transforming how we prepare our students for life, college, and careers will start to take shape as we transition our high schools to the Academies Model over the next several years. More to come on that! 

You can find more information on Back-to-School preparation at our pathways to success webpage. We look forward to welcoming our students this week!

See you soon,

Jharrett Bryantt, Ed. D.
Superintendent
Anchorage School District

ASD Staff, Families, and Community,

I hope you are having a wonderful summer!

I am very excited to share that we will have full bus transportation service for the first day of school! Thanks to your help, the Anchorage School District (ASD) will have enough bus drivers to pick up and drop off our students. Our goal was to be ready to go on Thursday, August 17th and we will! No cohorts!

This was truly a community effort. We are incredibly grateful.

Our teams have been working very hard since last year to make the critically needed systematic transportation changes. For the first time, we offered summer employment to all drivers in order to retain them with us. We worked with our union partners and created a more competitive compensation package which enables us to recruit more bus drivers. ASD also transitioned to new routing system software to clean up and fix inefficiencies. These changes, along with other long-term solutions, have prevented a repeat of last year’s cohorts. 

And, the recruiting efforts are not stopping. ASD is actively recruiting for paraprofessionals and student nutrition. To learn more and about all of our job opportunities with hiring incentives, click here.

School starts in a little more than two weeks. We are getting ready for a fantastic year with you. To help you get ready, check out our back-to-school webpage and explore our pathways to academic success for our students.

We will see you soon!

Best,
Jharrett Bryantt, Ed. D.
Superintendent
Anchorage School District