001I now call the Board of Education special meeting to order at 3:30 p.m. Is there a motion to approve the agenda for Monday, March 30th, 2026? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor say I. I. I. All those opposed say nay. All right. We have one public hearing for fiscal year 2027 proposed property tax notice. Board Secretary Shelly, have we received any written correspondence related to the public hearing on tonight's agenda? We have received written correspondence. There are five letters that are at your desk, and we will submit those into the formal record. Okay. So, that's at everybody's uh desk there. Um Do we have anyone who has requested to address the board this evening regarding the public hearing tonight? We do. We have five speakers. With five speakers this evening,
002you will be given up to 5 minutes for your remarks. Please respect the time limit allotted to each speaker. Board Secretary Shelly will serve as your timer and indicate when your time is expired. Board Secretary Shelly, can you call our first speaker? Yes. Our first speaker is D. Anderson. Uh oh, sorry. Do you may come up um to the the podium right here. Thank you. And there will be a timer right here that will show you how much time you have. Okay. According to an article written by Bobby Kaufmann, who's the head of the house in the state house, state dollars um school funding, Iowa public schools spent $23,711.08 per K-12 student during the 23-24 school year. The total number of students that school year was 483,698. That school had that has decreased, and meanwhile,
003funding has gone up. So, I would like to know why our taxes have to go up, especially when we've had two school bond issues fail. Thank you. But we can have no dialogue between speakers and so if you have additional comments, you still have some time left. No. Thank you. Our Our next speaker is Troy Doll. Good afternoon. Uh so from what I remember, I got in the mail last year a tax proposal to increase taxes on property from last year. Um my concern is that now we're asking to raise property taxes again. Um I've lived on Hammer Drive since 2007. And that road is like a third-world country going up to my house. But it seems like that's never taken care of. It's always taken care of somebody else. And I'm getting tired of
004my taxes being raised. Thank you. Our next speaker is Anita Miller. Okay, as far as the property tax increase, I've never done this before, but I'll do my best. So it seems like over my lifetime, there's more and more money being put into education, but our level has gone down. We had a foreign exchange student from Germany 3 years ago and he was kind of disappointed in the level of education he was getting here. And then also um we have five children. Our youngest is just starting a family and this increased cost of living with property taxes going to maybe make families want to have less children because of how much their cost of living is going up. So, I I would like you to just think of the taxpayers and the young families who
005are going to keep children in our schools instead of having the enrollment decline. Thank you. Our next speaker is Keith Smith. Hello. My name is Keith Smith. I live on Berryhill Drive in Northwest Cedar Rapids. I I'm a systems engineer and I have a little breaker living with me. So, I think I'm qualified to speak to some things that nobody's ever asked us. We did leave the district. We gave the district an opportunity to provide an education to a very bright and talented student. Our property You know, let's not look at the property taxes in the different jurisdictions that I own some property in. I noticed that this is the only jurisdiction with the property tax values going up but there's also tax rate increase. The other side reduced their tax rate. Which is I
006was party to a presentation that had information on the Department of Education. There's 5,000 students that have chosen to leave your district that you represent. I'm one of those. We took our student out of the district because our needs needs were not met. You're asking for a tax rate increase. You've been asking for. What are you doing to make sure that these students are being educated so that they can be the next small business owners, firefighters, EMTs, doctors, nurses, plumbers, electricians. You're not preparing the students. We had a great experience at elementary. We got to the middle school and it was horribly wrong. We reached out to the school district administration, the counselors. We did not get support. They don't have the tools they need. The classrooms are disruptive. Let me go through a few
007things. I'm a system engineer. I understand math. My student was coming asking for help with their math. I didn't even understand what they were teaching. Can I see the textbook? There's no textbook. Look at your student's notes. Are you kidding? Where are the kids' textbooks? And that's not just math, that's other grades as well. We reach out to the teacher, "Yeah, can you challenge our student?" Uh you know, she's doing better than any of the students in the class. I have a hard time pushing your student to do better. We spent our money getting a tutor. We went to Sylvan and we brought her up to grade level. She's the best in the class, but she's still below the national average. We have left the school district because our needs are not being met. We
008have gone to another school like the other 5,000 people that should be in the public school. And we are really happy with where we ended up. We are on the dean's list. If homework is not been done for the day, any portion of it, I've got an email and I'm having a conversation with the student. I've only gotten one of those, but the kids are held accountable. They're not dealing with kids who are inappropriately dressed to go to school. They're not there for school, they're there disrupting the class. We're not educating the kids. You've got teachers that are melting down, that are getting frustrated with the administration. What are you doing to help those teachers educate our future leaders? You're You're letting us down. You're asking for more money. What are you going to do
009with that? Where's the return on the investment for our for our kids? For our future? I'm not seeing it. That's why we left. Can you do better? I'll also say while she was attending the public school, she didn't want to go to school. Today, in the 7 months that we've left the school district, we don't have that challenge anymore. She's fully engaged. Like I said, she's on the dean's list. She's a top top performing student. She could have been on the dean's list as soon as she got out of the public schools. But she's not. She's not going to graduate from public schools like the other 5,000 students that we just talked about. I'm a taxpayer. I want to get a return on my investment. I'm not seeing it. When I walk in the door
010over here, we're not talking about what we're doing to educate the kids here. We're boasting about the number of languages that are spoken in the at the school that you're servicing, the number of countries that you have. I travel the world. I enjoy culture. That's great. But what about how many people that graduate from this school district that actually excel? They're ready to go to college. They're ready to join the trades jobs. Your numbers aren't there. I saw that in the presentation. You You've got other schools that are opening. They're doing a better job than what you're doing. That's why the kids the parents the kids are leaving. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker for this public hearing is Peter Gorrell. Thank you. We discussed a you guys were selling an elementary school. I
011think Newton offered to buy it. You said no and you sold it to somebody else for less money that Isaac Newton was going to buy it meaning we don't want competition and nothing makes education better than having competition. Second thing challenge me if I'm wrong. You have less children going into schools now because you open them up to have private education. And the population is going down. So an argument for higher taxes and and blaming it on inflation is not going to hold very well with these people and myself and uh Anyway, competition would be great for you guys. I think we watch what you're doing. We can only help our students if we give them a better education. One way to do that is watch what the heck you're spending. We've all seen what
012Dodges have done here. We've they've uncovered all kinds of insanity. So anyway, before I go any farther and say this out here, I appreciate me let me allow me to talk and and again note that the population is going down. There's less children going to school because of the competition that's out there Isaac Newton. And that's a good thing and thanks a lot. Thank you to all who chose to speak. With no further business we stand adjourned at 3:42 p.m. >> Mhm.