I noticed that we mentioned sped percentages and poverty levels and so I went and looked up our neighboring school districts and of course Snowflake is the most comparable to us. They are 1% lower in sped kids at 14% but they are 1% higher in poverty level. Um yet their enrollment increases on the average. They're up 9% right now. and our enro our enrollment continues to decrease 17% over the last five years. Um they score almost twice as high in testing and I believe that this is due to the fact they consistently keep anywhere from 56 to 59% in their instructional learning. I know we have 66% going into the classroom but only 49% went into instruction. We are at a historical low of our annual budget percentage going into instruction in the classroom and I believe that our children are are negatively affected by this.
Um when enrollment falls, cost should follow along with it. Increased spending without corresponding improvements in student performances raises serious concerns. Our peer school districts have to classify spending the same way we have to classify spending. Yet their spending is lower than ours despite their enrollment being higher. their test scores are significantly higher, proving that more money does not equal better education. Courtney reported last um I already touched on that 49% sorry um instructional effectiveness while instructional spending has increased there's no clear evidence that these investments are translating into better outcomes for our students. That is not a funding problem that is an effectiveness problem. And this is not about criticism. It's about alignment and about asking the questions a governing board exists to ask. Are we staffing appropriately for our current enrollment? Are we prioritizing classroom impact over administrative overhead? Are we measuring whether our spending decisions are actually working?
Every every dollar spent should be tied to student outcomes and long-term financial sustainability. Your responsibility as board members is not to accept numbers at face value or the inadequate responses of uninformed staff, but to ask whether those numbers make sense and whether decisions are genuinely serving the students and community that we represent. Um, let me see. Don't be so quick to push the bond without all of the information. What are the effects this will have on M? What was the deferred maintenance cost that we just talked about about 2016? Yes, a bond does cover that M burden upfront, but then we filled those pressures at the end of the bond in that year's seven, eight, nine, and 10 after. And that is what we are facing now from our previous bond that we just passed. Every time you bring up a bond, you say that the bond or override doesn't pass, we're going to have to cut teachers.
Everyone knows that bond dollars can't pay teachers, but the override can't. If these costs are making it to where we are unable to pay our teachers, that's something we need to strongly consider when moving forward on another bond. Research needs to be done to understand the long-term effects and impact on M so our teachers are not suffering the suff the consequences of our poor decisions in passing bonds without doing our research. Long story short, people always ask, okay, well, what's the effect of bonds versus the M, right? and we don't we don't relate them even though we should relate them because basically bond dollars buy the stuff but the M now has to pay to run the stuff that you just bought. So it is greatly affected and we should do our homework. Um we are already putting our students at a disadvantage by testing them on a computer and the data supports that.
Even just the distraction of a screen or someone on a computer next to their neighbor has detrimental test outcomes. Computers are not needed for learning and testing. It actually has a negative effect. And to answer your question from earlier, Hazlewood School District versus Colemmyer in 1988 saying public schools have the power to censor. That is not a First Amendment law broken. You can restrict categories, but you cannot pick winners and losers in a debate like politics. You have a meaningful way to request access. We can censor. You can censor games. It actually specifically said that. It said, "What what is clearly allowed? Schools can generally block pornography and explicit content, malware, unsafe or illegal sites, non-educational or distracting content like games and streaming, etc. Content inconsistent with curriculum or age appropriateness. >> Excuse me, Britney, you're way over. Appreciate everything you have to say and and honestly, everybody here is agreeing with you.
Um, appreciate your wisdom. Appreciate your uh research. Um, we ask people to limit it to three minutes and basically that's what I'm going to ask you to do is just give somebody else another chance. >> Okay. Well, when I talked to the county superintendent, she didn't have a three-minute limit. She said, "This is a wonderful public open forum for your representatives to know the community's thoughts on these subjects." I had one paragraph left, but >> Okay, go ahead and finish. >> I just said we all know we need the bond. However, we haven't shown that we can be fiscally responsible and the responsibility now lies on the board to govern the administration to make changes to be more fiscally responsible before the public will be more interested in giving more money. Thank you. >> Thanks, Britney. Anybody else have any comments you'd like to add?
And honestly, we'd like to keep it to like three minutes and uh keep it less personal um so that uh it's accepted more easily by the board members. >> Thank you. >> Hi. So, Curtis Jones again. Um I had a just a couple comments. Um one thing that you know I think you guys touched on and I think is being overlooked by some is that Arizona doesn't fund schools the way they should. They've lost multiple lawsuits about it. So, I think that's something everyone should consider when they're talking about whether or not the school district is being uh responsible with the funds that we may or may not add to to the coffers. Um, additionally, when people say, "Well, Blue Ridge used to be good," that begs the question, why? Right? I was involved in the last bond and override that passed and I think that's part of it because we had support from the community.
Um I think also um comparing Snowflake to here is tough because I don't think Snowflake has the the snowbird population that we do to overcome. So I don't think that's a a fair comparison. Um, and then I guess the one other thing that I wanted to say, but I wanted to get that out of the way first in case I ran out of time, was that, you know, for most of you guys, this is this is a problem from your predecessors, but I think the biggest problem is going to be overcoming a lack of trust in the community with you guys, right? Like I voted for my first bond when I was 18 when I was living in Tucson and the only bond I had never voted for I hadn't vote I've voted against was the last one for the school was because the bad taste I had in my mouth from the lack of maintenance that you guys were talking about when you talked about oh the money's got to go to a certain poss room instead of some of these other things that could gone to um and then I just think some things in the classroom like punishing the whole class for a couple kids um you know acting out um not punishing behavior for certain people because who their parents were um attendance which is an issue with school funding right you guys are going to lose $100 if kid X isn't in a chair today he gets 100% I mean gets uh straight A's, but he's gonna maybe not get credit because he didn't he didn't go to class enough days.
Um and then the one last thing is instructional instructional hours at the from my experience when my kids were going here after the last tests were done the last week and a half, they were just goofing off, which is not okay, right? If they're going to be in class, they should be learning. And so I think those are those are some of the trust issues that you guys have to overcome and ensure to the assure the the public that um their money is going to be spent the way they expect it to be spent and that when the kids are in class they're going to be learning, not goofing off because it's the end of the year. Thanks. And thank you. And typically in a board meeting, we don't respond to public comments, but since this is study session, we're not voting. Um, you know, I as someone who's new here and who sees um some of the things that have been wrong, I I can't always unpack how we like all the finer details of how we got to here, but I have been in places where we've been very successful doing and to speak to both of the last two comments, doing more with less.
And you know when you when you peel back the onion, what it's about is just excellent teachers in the classroom doing excellent things with kids. And um I think both of the last two comments coming back to them once again coming back to support this so our community can support so our teachers can go in the classroom and just do amazing things with kids. We can work through and hopefully through this year I'm I'm I'm trying to build this back up. We have almost a complete new administrative team here, minus Nathan and Mary who've who've been around uh a couple election cycles. But I'm hoping that we get that opportunity because like I said, my goal and I hope is aligned with the goal of this whole community, our governing board, our administration, our teachers and the community members is to have the best Bluridge is yet to come.
And once again, that comes back to excellence in the classroom, personal relationships, and high level of expectation and academics with our students. And so, we we just want to fix the cooling towers and AC units so that our teachers can teach kids at a high level and do some amazing things. I would love for you guys to see through my eyes the amazing teachers we have and how much they're doing with our kids. But if the cooling tower goes down, if the pump house goes down, it's an interruption to education. And we just want to we and I know our test scores haven't been what they need to be in the past, but I I can tell you we had a professional development here on Friday and our teachers were locked in. We have great professionals in our district and they were working hard and they're they're rolling up their sleeves because they know we can do better with our kids.
So, we appreciate both those comments. come on up. State your name and your business. >> Good evening. My name is Bridget Cobb and my business is Blige Unified. Uh I am new to the community and I am new to Blige as an employee. I'm a former business person of 30 years in a different state, but I also served for 12 years on the school board in my hometown. And we did m we had much of the same issues where we were a small district. We had a lot of part-time, summer residents, homeowners, me being one, and now I'm a homeowner up here. So, I recognize uh some of the challenges. First and foremost, I have to say that I'm incredibly impressed by the turnout tonight. It shows how much the people in this town care. I've gotten to know quite a few people so far in my short tenure here.
It's an amazing community. every day I spend in the classroom. I I'm actually very thankful that I'm semi-retired from my business and am now on the educator side. I love it. The kids are wonderful. They want to learn and I and I'm impressed with the board. I was in a similar situation where we had a brand new administration and a relatively new board, myself being one of them, and we had not passed a bond in 20 years. And the one thing that made our bond successful, and that was back in 2016 where I was from, is that we made sure that we were very specific, very transparent, and communicated every moment we had and were always open door policy on exactly what we plan to do with that money, where it is going. And I just want to reiterate that Arizona is just like the state where I came from where you cannot pass by law a bond that doesn't exactly do exactly what you said it was going to do.
And so I think that what I'm hearing and and the sentiment that I've been learning as I'm talking to people in this community uh is that some of the mistrust that came from the failed bond measure was that they didn't feel as though they were communicated to. They didn't understand the message. The message wasn't clear. And what happened was is that then in the absence of clear communication, you invent things of what exactly is going to happen with that money. And as a homeowner, I'm with you. I don't want to pay more taxes unless I know exactly what it's going to because we pay enough taxes without knowing what it's going to already. So, I want to thank you for what you're doing. I appreciate President Merrill making it clear that this bond doesn't go for anything but exactly what is put in that ballot language.
So, thank you very much. I love it here. Your children are wonderful, and I'm very happy to not be in insurance anymore. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bridget. >> Is it good? Okay. Hi. This is way out of my comfort zone. So, you know, I'm serious when I'm up here. I want I want to tell you a story of what happened to me today when I was volunteering at the junior high track team. Um, I had to run some papers up to the announcer who was a guest in her school and he said, "Look at me. Look how I'm holding this microphone. I can't even It doesn't even work. I have to hold it with two hands. can you go get so and so and have him help me fix it? And I was embarrassed, but I'm like, of course, I'll go get some help.
So, I go say to the person he's, "Hey, the microphone's not working." I know it's broken. It's not my problem. Go talk to so- and so. So, then I go talk to so- and so. I know, not my problem. Go talk to so and so. And that has been my theme of what has happened to me in Blige. I've only been in this district for a year and a half, and I've had positive experiences and a lot of negative ones, too. But there does seem to be a theme of lack of communication, lack of organization, lack of leadership, and a divide between the parents and the school board. The best school district I was ever in was in Texas. And one thing they did to make it outstanding was before the school board voted on anything, they would send a per parent survey and they would ask the parents and then they would publish those results to the parents and then they would vote on it.
And guess what? 80% of the time the parents usually agreed. It was 80% overwhelming majority on all these issues and I would ask you guys to consider maybe doing that with your parents because it bridges that gap that seems to be here. Thanks. I'll address that. That's an excellent idea and I think that's something lack of communication is what we've struggled with in the past. People not understanding what the bond was for or even if they were even in the school district. I had a lady tell me the other day, she said, "I would have voted for the bond last time, but I didn't think I lived in a school district because she lived in in White Pinetop Country Club." So, you know, that type of communication needs to be corrected, and thank you so much for that. Um, you know, there's a there's a couple of things that I think we as a board would like to do, and that's communicate with the the people that elected us and represent them for what they want done.
What I've what I've on the years that I've been on the board, what I've u experienced is most people that come to the come to the board with a problem is a personal problem and they want their personal problem uh satisfied for everybody in the district even though it doesn't really satisfy everybody in the district and take care of that. It was a personal problem for them and so they felt like it was the most important thing for them to be uh recognized for their personal problem. Um, sometimes you have to make a tough decision and I'm glad I don't have to make those decisions as a superintendent. Um, we uh we have struggled with a declining enrollment in our community and I've lived in this community for 50 years and I've seen where we were and where we are and why we are where we are.
Um, simply because of economics. Um, Pinetop Lakeside is a little community that's stuck between the White Mount Apache Indian Reservation and Forest Service on the other side. There's not a lot of devel developable property and the property that is developable is not developed because people want so much money for it. Xolo, Snowflake have property that's been developed and families can afford to locate down there. So, they're growing. Um, Snowflake has, to answer Britney's question, Snowflake has a poverty level because they have a lot of east uh of Snowflake, a lot of poverty in that part of town. Um, their demographics is completely different. I think, and if somebody could correct me from the city, I think um maybe a third of the homes in our school district are occupied year round, their second homes. And so that the the disconnect from those folks to what's actually going on in the school district is is huge.
Whereas in when my kids were going to school here, that wasn't the case. It was just the opposite of that. There was a lot of yearround professional individuals that lived in this community and they supported the community. Some of those people are still here, but it's changed. We don't have that demographic anymore like Xolo and Snowflake do. So that's one of the things we have to deal with. you know, it costs just as much money to teach a class of 20 kids as it does a class of 30 kids because the teacher has to get paid the same. So, those are some of the things that small declining school districts have to deal with and that's where we are and hopefully we can stop the flood, uh, crack the, you know, fix the cracks in the dam and let things move forward. I've also noticed in years past that there's a lot of apathy in this community.