001Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the June 26th meeting of the Glenda Elementary School District governing board. Miss Dagata Jones, do we have any changes to the agenda this afternoon? Good evening, President Martinez, members of the board. No, we do not. All right, with that, is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Move to adopt the agenda. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I Miss Pimentel, how do you vote? I Miss Bartell's, how do you vote? Hi. And chair votes I. Please join me in a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance. Please rise to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands. One nation God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. All right, moving right into the first part of our agenda. Moving into our study session, uh,
002updated demographic study. Miss Sagata Jones. Yes, President Martine, members of the board. At this time, I'm going to turn it over to Rick Bremer and his staff. And Rick, welcome back. Uh we are happy uh that you're here with us to share the latest update on the demographic study. So it's all yours. Thank you very much. Um President Martinez, members of the board, Dr. Sagata Jones, it's um our pleasure to be here to present the results of the demographic study for this year and bring us up to speed on what's been going on. And so um without further ado, we'll just kind of uh jump into it. Um, just for my has everybody seen my presentation? Has have the board members all seen it? Okay, that's great because then I won't I won't dwell on
003things because then uh you know maybe it'll go a little faster here for you. Our scope of work really hasn't changed. you know, all about analyzing obviously and the all the enrollment data we can get our hands on for the district and also for alter alternative providers and now looking at of course ESA accounts you know the new thing added added onto our list of things to look at demographic characteristics of the population are very very important because without a lot of potential for new growth you have some but new housing growth it's really about the demographic change of the existing population that is the big thing driving enrollment i.e. big spoiler that you know the aging of the population and the shrinking of the school age population as a result. Um Kristen and Don
004Graves Kristen Bremer and Don Graves are both here with me tonight. Uh they're working on the residential development component of it and studying you know and there is quite a bit going on right now between the multif family projects and some of the infill single family. So um it is kind of a bright spot at the moment as as I see it. And then um we do set two sets of projections, district level and those small area grid level numbers where we divide the district up into 75 pieces. And then um you know get involved to some extent at least with helping to understand what that means in terms of facility need and what attendance areas might look like. And in order to you know to facilitate all that analysis, we do use this system
005of 75 subdist geographies. the largest of them being a quarter square mile. So four grids is one square mile for the most part. We have this data going if students come I know how many students came out of each one of these grids going back to 2002. I checked today. So we've incredible time series of data uh at this level of geography on which to base um our analyses. Um starting with the top we talked about district uh enrollment trends headcount enrollment. So not ADM, it's a little different than some of the other numbers that you'll see. And so we kind of gone through, you know, four periods in the last couple of decades. Um, kind of the last real growth uh growth spurt was in the early 2000s and all ended in with the
006Great Depression. Sorry, the great recession. Guess sort of the same thing. But in in either case, a lot of housing units became vacant in a very short period of time and a lot of people left town. And the why that was important other than in and of itself is that the houses that were then vacated, other people moved in who were different in demographic characteristics than the people who moved out. So we never got back to that original enrollment number and we got in a different sort of profile of the population. And then um since 2014 1516 we've had you know two things working against us. One is the birth rate situation and the simple shrinking of the population out there that there is to serve. And then the other has been at least until
007recently continued expansion in charter school enrollment and now more recently the impacts of ESAs which are really hard to identify exactly what that means to any particular district. But whatever it is, we know it's not adding to your enrollment. So, you know, it's just another thing for us to kind of deal with. And so, um, the rate of loss in 2425 was considerably less than it has been, you know, the few years before. And as I was sharing, um, with with Mr. Martinez uh right before the meeting is that and as I'm going to show you, birth rates in Arizona are still going down, but that it's only going down because our population is growing. The number of births in the state of Arizona and in Maricopa County actually hit its minimum in 2020 and
008it hasn't gone up a lot, but it hasn't gone down anymore. So you lag that five years to get those newborns into kindergarten and you start to see 24 25 26 as the minimum. So we're and we've seen it in several districts already where we're losing enrollment, but it's because I'm going to make up numbers, Mike. It's because you have 300 kindergarteners and 600 eighth graders. And so you every year you're you're automatically starting off going behind by 300 before anything even happens. But we're getting finally to the end of that cycle. And so, um, we're still showing some declines in enrollment, but I'm but I'm more optimistic that we might do better than this as we go forward because the times really are changing. Um, that said, we, you know, look at enrollment broken
009down into great cohorts of groups, K2, 3, five, six, eight, three grades each. And way back, you know, when you have actual growth occurring in the in the 2000s, you notice the K2 is the biggest group. And so what's happened since then, of course, is that group has with birth rates and competition has shrunk dramatically. And the other cohorts basically follow it. Um, and so we're seeing the K2, you know, again, the rate of reduction is not as great as it was before, but unfortunately it's still going down, which leads me to believe you could kind of take these curves and move over three years and you'll find the next curve. Move over three years and you'll find the next curve. And so I'm afraid that even though it's stabilizing and there's some reason for
010hope that that this is going to continue to pull us down at least for the next three or four years pretty much no matter what we do. Um again we we look at not only district level numbers but you know the grid level data which comes from individual student data. So every point on the map is a is a student who was enrolled in one of your schools this year. And we have those points on the map for places outside the district too because you do pull in students from outside the district and it's important to understand where they're coming from and what the population in those areas are doing because it is part of the part of the puzzle. Um we do the analysis as I said also at this level. So this shows
011us at least in the 2425 year how many students you actually served from each grid. And and so the there's a little number in each side. And one of the things that always amazes me about your population is you have some very very high density areas and some very low density areas. and relative to placement of schools and transportation and things like that, that makes it much more difficult than if it was all spread across like jelly on a piece of toast. That's much easier to plan than when you have high points and low points. Our most interesting, you know, from demographics is looking at the change. So like I said, I had this data going way back and this is the last five years change uh in enrollment and as you can see nearly
012every place on the map is blue which means the enrollment has has fallen in the last five years and where you see bigger numbers usually just means you had more students in those grids. So those central those central grids, you know, where you have very high losses, you also had very high student populations. And when you look at it actually on a percentage basis, there isn't really one that sticks out. You know, we're always looking to see is it this pocket or this pocket? And it really hasn't been. It's been about the same percentage all the way across the district. We uh talked about what's going on with demographics. And so even though we still have population and housing growth occurring, the share of the population that is preschool or that is uh elementary school
013age under five and 5 to 13 continues to shrink as a percentage of the total. And so going back to where we started this, you know, in in 2000, 25% one in four people in the district was a preschooler or an elementary age person. And now that's down to one in five. And actually one in five is nowhere near the lowest I've seen. I mean, you still actually have a very solid family population. Your your population per household is still well above, you know, the county and the city averages. So there are still it's still a family community in some way. It's just that every community is shrinking because of the birth rate situation. And one of the things that also then helps concentrate it is, you know, we're looking for householders in two age
014categories. the 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 because those are the ones that really drive that school age population for us and and um we've been trying over the summer every year we do our research over the summer. So we we take ourselves out of production mode and we do research. And so one of the big fascinations for me is trying to figure out now the turnover associated with the baby boomers of which I am one because we're all in our houses too long and there there is a latency that I'm waiting for in terms of turnover. I'm, you know, at some point a whole bunch of us are going to try to sell our houses all at the same time. And that might give, you know, some some new owners some hope. So,
015you know, it's one of the things that we try to watch is the share of those householders in those categories. I've alluded to it a few times and this is a complicated chart. I'm just going to talk in generalities, but this is the birth rate. The red line being the birth rate in the state of Arizona. And there was this massive reduction in the birth rate due to the Great Recession. So between 2006 and 2011 the birth rate fell by 18.6%. But the more importantly the first bullet says the number of births just the number fell from 102,700 to 85,000 in just four years and then it kind of stabilized for a few years which were in what we call the recovery and then after that the opposite happened that we thought might happen is
016it continued to go down. And then what we found out is that after the great recession, a lot of people had a lot of debt. A lot of young people saw their parents suffer. And a lot of people decided that they were going to put off having kids, you know, and consciously or unconsciously. And the thing is is that a lot of them now, including one of my sons, is having children, you know, later than he probably normally would have because now they're playing catchup. But the the later you have your first child, the fewer children you will have. That's just and so we're we're dealing with that, you know, sort of vacuum right now. So I'm really anxious to see birth rates, at least the number of births stabilizing because that shows us that
017we might be at least seeing the bottom of that trend and we'll it'll catch up with itself at some point, especially as Arizona continues to have growth. By the way, the number of births last year was down to was I say 78,000 statewide. So, you know, it's down from where it was, you know, after the great recession, but not nearly at the rate that it was before. So, that is that is a little bit of hope. Um, the charter school in enrollment in the in the um in the district um is actually, you know, also falling to some extent. Um was peaked in in the 2020 year which was partially, you know, I imagine COVID driven but not totally. But since then they have been battling you know the same things you are the shrinking
018of the school age population and most recently competition from ESAs. And so interestingly I'm doing a presentation at ASGO next month and um 20242 is the first year where charter school enrollment declined statewide. Now, it doesn't mean alternative enrollment didn't go up because we know how many kids took vouchers, but it was the first time they actually lost enrollment. So, very interesting. A report that's a little bit antiquated at the bottom shows you from 2022 23 data from the Department of Education where kids living in your district actually went to school. if they went to a public school, they were funded by the public school system. It's counted here in terms of ADM. And so you can see that the number one destination of students from your district is the Poria district. And now that
019would be lots of schools. It's not really fair to compare a whole district to, you know, one individual charter school. But the fact of the matter is, you know, that gives us an idea. We've haven't had this data in the past. Everybody says, "Well, where are our kids going?" And this is the best we've had so far of determining uh where that is. And it includes district and charter schools. Um private school enrollment. You know, there's actually um 740 students in charter schools either in the district or nearby. And that's not a it's not a lot, but it's not none either. As more of a central city, you know, you have a little bit more of a presence of that than, you know, in some of the suburb areas that we're looking at. And then
020we we talked about the number of ESAs um increasing um 22 23 was the first year where they were universally available. So at that year they went you're the students living in your district with the ASAs went from 60 to 239 and then to 450 the next year. Um I looked day before yesterday they still haven't released the district level data for 2425. They've released they've list they've they've released the state numbers. I can tell you how many people are in the state program, but I don't have this data yet for 2425. We know that the first year they were made universally a available 79% of the recipients were already in a private school. So that they took it first of course because they were already paid and so the impact on uh public districts
021was slightly less. The next year it fell to 50%. So, the longer we go on, the more those are going to come, you know, from public school enrollment. So, um, all of that said, I'm going to let, um, Kristen talk to us a little bit about what's been going on with the residential development. So, looking at this graph, you can see the permanent houses over the last 10 years. And so, there were nearly 3,100 housing units. And so back to 20145 we can see that there was relatively few single family houses permitted um and likely those were single projects and starting in 201920 we could see the rise of multifamily houses and in the past two years alone that's nearly 50% of all housing units permanent in the last 10 years. So part of this
022has been from the city of Glendale focusing on affordable housing. So some of these developments have been Unity at Glendale and 67 Flats down the street and Centerline on Glendale and also the Via Manuel Leo Pñena development. And so looking at the building permits from 2024 25, the blue dots represent single family and the orange dots are multifamily. And so you can see that a lot of the multifamily development is along Glendale Avenue here. And then you have a few of these single family developments. Here is what the golf course was. And this is seasons at Trovino one and two. And then here's Legacy Place. And this part of it, of course, is in the Poria district. And then next to here we have Umbra, which is a Cavanian. And then these two are also
023Cavanian developments. And then here's Bethany Grove down here. And so um then we look at the residential potential. So the yellow is the single family and the orange is the multifamily. So we estimate that there's about 4,100 um potential housing units for development in the future. And this includes infill which could be vacant land or agricultural land uh currently and a lot of that is on the western side of the district. So the eastern the eastern side of Grand has very few left and the seasons at Trevino will likely be one of the last major developments on that side uh unless there is redevelopment. And so most of the future housing will occur on the um left or the west side of Grand. And so I'll go into that now. So um as I mentioned,
024Legacy Place, uh in the northwestern part of the district, the Peoria part of it has already began building and the Glendel west of 75th Avenue is expected to begin building in late 2025 and the east side will start building in early part or mid 2027. And so from our side of the uh legacy place, we'll have an addition of 425 housing units which will likely bring some students to the district. And then with seasons at Trevino, uh this is a a Richmond American development, which is where we will most likely see students coming from. So it's a positive thing that that is also on the east side and could drive um further students. And so um that will have a total of 173 units. and there's actually people already living there. So, that will continue
025to build out over the next year and a half. And then, um, Ombra and Bethany Grove are nearly finished developing and, um, they're in their last few houses. And then a few things that are going to be developing in the next 5 to 10 years or so. Uh, there's the villas at 79th, which will be 149 uh, build to rent town homes. And previously that had been a development that they stopped building midway through. And so it's exciting to see that they are going to continue building something on that land. And then also the G83 is this tiny piece of land right there. And that's a mixeduse development and it received design approval approximately two years ago. So we're expecting to see um some vertical development on there in the next three to five years.
026And so that will be approximately 88 units. And now I'll turn it back over to Rick to describe what this might mean for future enrollment. Thank you. Back up one. So um of that potential we are looking at the absorption of probably about 1,200 units or so over the next uh 10 years. If you look at the at the distribution here of new units, the single family, you see those projects all online right now, it's kind of a, you know, maybe the last harrah of of any kind of largecale single family development because once these projects are complete that she was just describing, there is very very very little land left. Not there won't be redevelopment, there will, but um but we see a heyday here the next four or five years where we're going
027to have some single family development. And um it does give us some hope for some for some school age population particularly out of those units. I do have a typo on this slide. Um the second bullet it says about 65% of which will be single family, not multifamily. I got that one wrong. So that's Rick's bad. Um but you know the uh multifamily development we've gone through this incredible run of it. You can see the last five years how many units have been built and right now there aren't currently any projects. There's projects that are building but there's not new ones that we know of coming up in the pipeline in the very very short term and we are seeing softening of the rental housing market both in terms of occupancy and in terms of
028prices. So, you know, it may be that we have a gap here where people back off the multifamily just a little bit and that's kind of what we're trying to anticipate here because we've gone through such an incredible run of it. But still adding about 1150 housing units which would result in about 940 new households which is an occupied housing unit. And what we do behind the scenes in the model, one of the things that Kristen does is we stratify those by those age groups that we were showing and by renter versus owner because then when we go to the next slide that gives us a basis for um estimating and projecting school age population. So in this table we have the number of households in the district and then we have school age population
029which is all persons aged five to 13 living in the district whether they go to your school or any school at all and some don't. Um and particularly like the 2020 number that's census number the other ones you know we do estimates but um we're very much on track with that. Um and you so you can see over the last 10 years the school age population the potential universe you could have educated has fallen by about 1,700 uh persons but what we're struggling with is enrollment has dropped by 5,000. So enrollment has dropped by you know more than the school age population has. And every district I work for with the well exception of two or three where there's actually affordable housing being built is in this exact same boat where they're getting the double
030whammy. They're getting the shrinking of the school age population and they're continuing to get impacts from choice. And so it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make it any easier, but it also shouldn't make you feel picked on because it's this is happening to everyone across the board. And so the biggest wild card actually in doing our projections these days is this concept of how what percent are you going to serve because to be honest Don's housing unit and housing unit projections in the past and now Christians and the demographics we've done in the past projecting school age population have been very very close. What you can't model effectively is the choices that every parent makes at the dinner table or the breakfast table. And that's the one that's really been messing with us. And we
031we express it kind of as this enrollment to population ratio. And if you see clear back if you go clear back to 201920, so the year before COVID hit, you guys were still serving 70%. Which was a very very very respectable number across the metropolitan area. And then you know you could see the hits that you know that size actually 76% I'm sorry 1920 I wrote I misread that and then it fell to 70% and so it's been on a new trajectory since then but the 76.2 2 number that's what I was thinking of is was a very very respectable capture rate and it's just been a paradigm shift since co of all the choice and all the money that was put into choices and so again there you know it doesn't make it easier
032but that's generally what's causing it. So my quandry and doing projections is how much more of that are we going to see and we already see in the statewide numbers for 2425 the ESA program it's had substantial growth but as a percentage much less than it did the year before. So we may be seeing already some saturation in that program even without it being capped. There is going to be a maximum number of people at least we hope for whom it will benefit. Uh and it looks like that's already happening. But it's it's sort of how far how fast kind of a thing. And so the projections you see on this slide show the enrollment to population ratio uh continuing to fall down to about 50%. Which would result um in enrollment falling by around
0331,800 more students. But the school age population we're projecting to only only fall by about 1,400. So that, you know, there's a there's a difference in there. And with the housing that's going on as well, we end up doing a range of projections because, you know, the red might be sort of the most likely. That's what I was just showing you. But the fact of the matter is that because there's a lot of students out there that were not serving, there's the potential to get them back. We know these housing units are coming in. There's projection. there's potential to capture those. And so I don't want to be too awful gloom and doom about something that I can't accurately predict anyway. Does that make sense? I mean, I hate to even say it, but that's
034where we're at. We can project households and school age population. It's how many students are you going to get? And so, you know, the decline over the next 10 years could be as few as 700 or as many as 2700. And I'm obviously, you know, pulling for the 700 side, but I think we need to be able, you know, go into it with our eyes open and and at least understand, you know, kind of the kind of the range of possibilities. Um, we always look at, and this is just I probably you guys are old hats at this. One of the things I continue to monitor is the relationship with our district students of where they live versus where they go to school. And this is real important obviously too as we look at you
035know facility options and so forth. Um so we just have the ability to see uh school by school you know what you know sort of their own interior service rate is and so forth. And like I said I usually have to explain this one because you haven't seen it but I think you guys all get the concept of kids don't all go to school where they live. And for some schools it's a big difference. So at at Landmark, you know, the the difference between who attends there and who resides there is only 63, which is, you know, it's a substantial number, but it's it's not like at Jack where they have 238 more attending than who live there. And so these patterns are another thing that make um doing our our planning work for schools
036difficult is just kind of the level of movement that we see between schools. And yours isn't any higher than anyone else's. And in fact, it's lower than than than many of them. But it's just another factor that we need to kind of throw into the mix when we're taking our projections, which we do demographically, which are really based on where people live, but we need to know the projections by school, which is what this is showing. And again, we're not going to, you know, recite any numbers. We've got five years worth of actual change. and over the last five years a total change of uh 3,94 um students from these but there are a few ups American bicesentennial south challenger there's a few places where we're seeing the population stabilizing and we're seeing the enrollment
037stabilize and those are our hopes that we see that you know spreading to more of the um more of the communities uh as we go forward um staying with this somewhat conservative projection. We don't see a whole lot of that. Um, but the next 10 years, even under this scenario, the minus 1,800 is a lot less than the minus 3,000 we've endured over the last five. So, and like I said, I hope it's not that much, but I think it's important to at least be thinking about, you know, what you might do in that case. Um, so we'll wrap it up. um the school age population of the district has been falling and but the enrollment in charter schools has been flat. So that's not really the cause of your declines either. But it's like
038I said, it's the double whammy. Both things happening at the same time. Housing construction activity um has accelerated and we're really, you know, pretty pretty psyched about what we see coming over the next five years. These are all real active projects in the midst of development. It's not something that might happen. It's really going to happen. And I don't have to tell uh Miss Saga, Mrs. Sagata Jones about uh because I know she already does this about going out and beating on the doors at new communities to make sure that they know about your schools. And I know she does this and uh it's something that's going to hopefully pay some dividends for us. Um and I guess I got them out of order. the amount of construction, you know, has just changed in type
039and it swung way one way and now for the next five years it's going to swing back a little bit the other way towards uh towards uh the single family world. Um so the impact, you know, is is really unknown and it all comes down, you know, to that choice issue. Um not all of it. We know we're going to have some declines over the next 10 years just based on demographics. Um it's just the amount of that that remains to be seen. So um sorry I got those out of order. I'll take any questions though. Um I was looking at um I was driving uh to the outskirts of um Phoenix and noticed that there's a lot of development on towards Tonapa and uh you know of course you have Verona and and that
040Hoya. So there's a lot of land there and that's a lot of affordable housing you know Aenddale Goodyear Buckeye and then further west. Um and so um how how many families I mean do you see a lot of families moving out that way because I know affordable housing is probably outside of charters is probably the number one uh reason for a lot of young families not moving into the areas. Definitely. Um, and it's interesting you get out on the west side a little bit like Goodyear and Aenddale are kind of almost losing their affordability edge in some ways. I mean, they're not starter homes and especially if you get south in Goodyear down in the Australia area. There's, you know, those are become quite affluent, but and out in Buckeye, it's interesting because we they
041are affordable for the most part, but we don't get as many students as we would think. And I and it's because a small house so far away from town also appeals to retirees. So the price point and the need not to get to a work every day and all that kind of stuff has made it a real biodal market out there. So you get half families and half empty nesters. And it's we don't see that nearly as much down in Maricopa. Maricopa seems to be the superstar right now. Oh my gosh. We just cannot cannot build houses fast enough in Maricopa right now. And their birth rate is actually going up because they have affordability. So if you went back to that chart, if you noticed, the Panal County birth rate has been going up
042since 2020 because they have affordable housing. So we're kind of back to drive till you qualify, which was, you know, not necessarily our our best our best look. Thank you, Rick. and Chris and Don. Um, Rick, you're only person I know that can give not so great information in the most positive upbeat tone I have ever met. So, I got to hand it to you. Thank you so much. It's very detailed. I'm It's It's clear. I don't know that anything is a surprise to us because we've been following that as you said and you've been really good uh helping us with that. But um very clear that um we have this thing we did last year with Miss Haidigan that I believe know your number and the know your number for me is 44 and
043that's 44% of our students are not here um that we serve and they're here but we're not serving them and so um we and then it's going to drop to 50% from so we're going to lose another 6%. So that's where we really need to focus and as you said um it is about choice and and I believe in parents choice uh but I believe I'm the better choice and and I need to get that message out there and so that's the work that is ahead of us and we know that um yeah we what is I guess hopeful as you said in here in Glendale we don't use hope as a strategy but um we can be hopeful that it is going to flatline at some time um and so then that that will
044be good. Uh but great information. We know what our next steps are. Um we I think as board member um Wilson said, we know attainable housing is critical for us and we've been trying to uh work with some of our partnerships um about what that looks like as far as lease of property and long-term leases and so that we can put attainable housing um in the area because as you said that's why in Maricopa, you know, people can now have a child or you know if they choose because they can afford support uh to one raise a child in a house. And so that's something that is very well needed here in Glendale, especially in downtown Glendale. And so um we're going to do what we can as far as a public school to bring
045in attainable housing here for our families as well. But again, thank you for your presentation. Thank you very much, Superintendent Saga Jones, members of the board. Just want to point out uh if you look at applied economics's full report, I just want to maybe touch on the three documents uh that I probably rely on heavily for budgeting and projections. Uh that's going to be page 37 of the full report, page 42, and page 51. I share that with you because as the superintendent mentioned, the enrollment population ratio or what I generally uh call the capture rate is very important. In conversations that we've had with, you know, with some of our school leaders or with just the general public, they see an apartment complex and they see 300 units. And so they assume that we're
046going to generate well over 300 students. But what I want to take want you to take away from this is think of and this is um Mike Bergan's very simplistic calculation. I believe applied economics might uh get a little more technical but for every apartment complex uh affordable housing whatever you might see assume that there's a 0.5 school age student for every uh for every apartment so to speak and then you multiply that by whatever that capture rate is or what we call uh or what's the enrollment population ratio that is potentially what the district or the school depending on where that apartment complex might be could potentially increase in enrollment. And so that's that's important. So, you know, we speak to a lot of community members and they say, you know, if you look
047at the entire district, they're building a thousand new apartments. That doesn't mean that we're getting over a thousand students. And so, I think that's a big misconception. Uh, and the other misconception is that people forget that we're 16 square miles. So, while the West Glendale, West Gate area is growing and perhaps north uh Glendale is growing, that doesn't translate to the 16 square miles that is our district boundaries. Uh the second point that I'd like to make is uh page 42 of the full report is what we use to build our budget. So, if you look at whatever the rationale was for tonight's board meeting or any future projections, we take the ADM the 100th day ADM and apply the percentage that apply economics has projected. That's the information that we have. That is the
048best information that we have in an attempt to project that future ADM. Uh and then the third piece is that page 51 of the full report is what does the enrollment look like in 10 years from now? And we have to be responsible and account for those potential declines. Applied economics has done three different scenarios low, mid and high. The 1900 that I have shared with you through the board memos and or in communications has really been around that mid level. If it's greater than everything that we've talked about increases that much more. So any projected decrease in revenue would be greater because it's only taking that mid analysis into consideration. So, I just wanted to share that with you to give you some insight on how we analyze and maybe react to the information
049that's been presented tonight. Could I just add one little thing to that? One is that um with the apartments is that we um some of the research we did this summer I was talking about was we found out that you get a lot more kids out of old apartments than you do out of new apartments. The new apartments, they're they're not being built necessarily for families. They've got weight rooms and is they don't have, you know, playgrounds and swimming pools. And so, um, you end up, you know, with more kids per unit out of old apartments. So, it's something that we were we talked I just wrote myself and Rick, I need you to tell us about the old apartments. But yeah, because that was interesting to us just because of just because of affordability
050because so many of the new ones, a two-bedroom is starting at what 16,800 or more. So it's just not for young families a lot of it. No. So there's, you know, I have an audience behind you and in front of me. And so it's great. We always want to take the new donuts to the new art the new apartment complexes. You all need to take your donuts to the old complex apartment complexes is what I'm hearing. So because it is we do we want to we see new ones come up. we want to introduce ourselves, which we'll continue to do, but then we forget about um sustaining those that we have in the older areas. And so that's a good point. Thank you, Rick. Any more questions from the board? the second presentation. We had
051we do have another presentation and um that is my PowerPoint there. I'm going to switch mics real quick. So what I do want to want to share with with everyone in the governing board is really we have from applied economics and Rick's incredible team the demographic studies and findings and now we need to look at really what is that strategic direction we need to go in as as GESV. um some of the things you need to pay attention to and it's a lot of information in there but this is a a key point when we talked about you see where all the students are in grids currently you look at the school size for 2025 where we're ending two schools at 500 plus five at 600 two at 700 three at 800 we move to
052where we see it start to flatline at 2035 okay so you'd move you got one school sitting at 300 four schools sitting at 400 four at 500 00 two at 600 and one at 800. When you add that up, you see the schools on each side. You come over here and you you you know, yeah, we'd all like to be a principal at a 300 size school. That's not reality. You know, it just isn't reality. Not with what we have, right? So, you're looking over here, we have 12 schools. You come over here, it really should be five schools by 2035. That's the reality. You know, that's where we're at. That's what we see and what we've taken from those presentations. If you go to I want to talk about really our next steps and
053which is critical for that financial solveny is really I want to outline this multi-phase stage to ensure immediate because it has to be immediate and long-term financial solveny by aligning facilities and resources with the projected enrollment trends current and projected. That's what we have to do because we need to plan ahead. It just can't be well let's see what happens this year and then let's see what happens next year. We we don't have the financial capacity to do that. So we need to align staffing and operational expenditures with enrollment and service demands. So, we currently have not um gone back and realigned any of our resources in the last couple of years with the decline of student enrollment. We've maintained a lot of those same resources. The last time we did an alignment was when
054we shut the five schools. Okay? And that's when we came and identified large schools, medium schools, and small schools. So by doing that we the expected outcome would be streamlined staffing structures budgetary relief and reallocation of studentf facing resources and greater operational efficiencies across the organization. That's what we want to be able to do. We talk about some different things that have to happen when we talk about facility optimization of school closures. We need to restructure the district's physical footprint to reflect the enrollment trends and reduce long-term operational costs. We can't continue to operate with a decrease of students with the same amount of resources we're providing and in the same number of buildings. So, we need to look at reducing facility and overhead utilities, optimize student teacher ratios, optimize department staffing resources and services,
055and continue to assess specialized programs. so that we are u meeting those needs. We need to look at a lease or repurpose vacant properties. Is that the right one? Are you on the right side? Is that okay? I want to make sure that reads different to me. So, we want to make sure we maximize district revenues and community benefit through strategic use of closed or underutilized properties. you've heard us talk about with uh we've met with RORI and we've looked at we've been approached um by some agencies that would like to uh do some lease agreements or sell or or purchase some of our properties and we have been meeting with um ROI about that. By doing that, we're hoping that we'll have new and recurring lease revenue. We'll have properties remain active contributing to
056the community value and safety and then avoid long-term vacancies, costs, and liabilities if we're able to lease these properties. When we talk about leasing these properties, we talk about that because we need immediate cash. So, if we're able to do a 99-year lease, then each month we're getting revenue. If we do a sale, it's a one-time sale. That money comes in. we need to have money immediately. And so if we do that by long-term leasing, that means we would get that money each month coming in to help offset, you know, our budget deficits. So that is something that's uh pretty common happening across school districts looking at that is going into long-term lease agreements. You ask for a huge or a large uh cash amount up front and then you each um you go into
057a lease agreement where you're getting revenue. um on an ongoing basis. Next, we want to go into a marketing plan. Again, we really want to reverse declining enrollment through targeted outreach, brand revitalization, look at again through staff and family engagement, community partnerships. We did launch when we first started um a strong campaign, marketing campaign, and now with this new information that we have, we want to be even more strategic. We know from the demographic study, we know where the pockets of students are. We know where they also they are not. If you saw on there, and I'm sure you did, 758 students attend Peoria school. We need to get those kids back. Um, charter, they're they're spread across charter schools. They're spread across other some other districts, but 750 students in Poria is one school
058for us. That's an entire school for us. So, we need to really um start to market a different approach to marketing which we're working on. With that, we'll strengthen the messaging. We'll expand outreach and retention. We'll expand marketing to showcase our successes. We'll increase visibility and engagement. And then we'll sustain the growth and deepen the impact. So, phase one, we'll start with school and department efficiencies. and we've begun to do that already. Conduct an audit of staffing by department and school from July 2025 through February 26. We'll look at what the staffing is. We'll try to take care of some of that through attrition um and make some decisions about what needs to be done. Again, we haven't gone into since we did the closure of the five schools and looked at the different sizes
059of school, what supports they get. Let me just give a a small example. For example, if you were a large school, we would allocate so many um AA so many cells, so many behavior uh specialists that has to be readjusted now. So many office staff, you know, debate depending on how many uh students you had. We haven't made those. We we've made those adjustments yearly. You know, if you were a 700 school and you went down below the 700, we made those adjustments, but we're at a point now because our student population has changed. We need to adjust and determine what constitutes a large school, a medium school, and a small school. That has to be redone. We've continued to do those things since the closure, but we have not adjusted the size of what
060we consider uh large, medium, small schools. We need to streamline services and enhance efficiencies meet student needs. That will begin through the 26 and determine uh through January 26, determine what those services and what supports we can still provide. uh we need to work with human resource for potential uh reassignments and reductions in force from July to February of 2026. We believe um that through 25 26 school year a lot of the reductions in force would come through attrition because we already have many positions not filled. Okay. And as you know each year we're still anywhere at 120 or more when we talk I'll just use teachers for example that we are still re um we lose every year and then we have to hire and then some are with contracted service. We also have
061lots of vacancies with support staff as well. So we're hoping that goes through by um attrition. We'll adjust departments and school site support based on direct services alignment, making sure that um we're making those necessary uh cuts at all levels. What we're doing um currently in departments, you've seen that as we've lost a position, we've either downsized um that department or um we've done a reorg to um not fill positions and we've already be we've been very good about doing that, but right now that has been the focus. any position now that's open, we'll go through a process of whether or not we're going to fill that or we're going to do a re reorg of what that position is. When we get to the facility and optimization of school closures, we'll conduct as you've
062seen that's been happening. We did the the comprehensive um demographic study. We're in that process. You've seen all the information today. We'll look at identify underenrolled schools and initiate strategic marketing plans where we see those drops in our student populations and then target those schools and what we can do to attract our students back. We'll continue to realign the resources and optimize our efficiencies. We'll implement the attrition based adjustments through February and then we'll present school closures and consolidation to andor consolidation recommendations by January 2026. We will come with you with what we and just so you know the key numbers again the 40 we'll use the 40th day count to see where we are with our student enrollment and then the 100th day count doesn't come until the end of January but we will
063have a good idea where enrollment is and then we will come up with what we believe uh may have to occur at that time. Phase one with the lease and repurpose of vacant properties. We are already have been working on the inventory of all vacant underutilized properties working with ROI. Uh we will continue to look at the market analysis through end of July. Our goal is to issue RFPs for property lease by December of 2025 and then finalize lease agreements June of 2026 and continue to do that each year. Then we get to phase two of facility optimization of school closures. We'll implement new boundaries staffing align transportation needs to match the new facility plan by July of 2027 and implement closure andor consolidation of select campuses of August of 2027. As far as a
064lease and repurpose vacant part of that phase, we'll continue to finalize lease agreements and that will just be an ongoing um process each year. We will provide you as a governing board quarterly updates. We'll be transparent about our communication with the staff and community so they know what is happening. We'll do an annual review and adjustments based on economic and enrollment shifts. So, if we start to see any type of shift, we're going to pivot and go a different direction. you know, we need to do that. Um, because I think we heard very clear from Rick was you can't predict the parents choice. They could all of a sudden be tired of the choice they made and come back. So, because we can't predict that, we will always go back and make shifts as needed.
065Here's what I just want everyone to know and I think you do know that that you know we've done this given you the the you know the demographic study. We've I've just shared with you what that financial solveny plan looks like. I just want you to know that we are committed to really doing what's best for this community. We will proactively address this the challenges we're faced with. We'll look at the immediate concerns and the goal is to really make it a stability initiative for us for this district and to maintain you know our student enrollment but maintain what we currently have but at the same time increase you know we can't afford to go below and drop to the 50%. We've got to get We're at 56. We need to get back. And I
066think the chart at the top was what at the highest was ever 83% Rick. Is that what we had? So, you know, we need to be able to do that. We know the work's not easy to do. You know that it's going to have to be done. We're making uh as I hope you understand, strategic decisions. They're all based on data. And all of it is really to strengthen the quality of education for every student we serve in this district. We will never lose sight of that. You know, we are allin for all kids and that will always be what we will preserve in this district. We will continue to engage transparently and monitor progress closely and adjust strategies as needed. As I said, if we need to go in a different direction because we
067see that there is an increase in enrollment and that our marketing plan is working, then we're going to make those adjustments. And it's only going to be with unity and purpose that we're going to be able to sustain our educational excellence. And we will do that. We will manage our resources financially as we have always done. We'll continue to do that. And we will always continue to inspire the common in GSC's future. that's at, you know, the forefront of everything we do is um to have quality education for our students and to provide those programs and services that not only our students need, but also that our community and our families need and we're not going to move from that. We do just have challenges. I know you've all always been so supportive. You've trust
068in us, trusted in the administration. youth trusted in this community and the staff and we'll continue to work you know to it's a difficult time for us right now again face but we can you know work through this we will work through this we have to work through this because we have students we don't have as many as we'd like to have but our goal is to capture those students and bring them back um now more than ever and we will begin um having those conversations with our marketing firm again about what we think. We're going to be very strategic about that and where we start to um look at the capture rates where Rick shared with us and really target those areas and try to get those those students back. With that, do you
069have any questions for I'm going to ask a question because most of that we've already unfortunately had to go through. Um, when it comes to the the lease or sale of property, I know that we're looking at an influx. Is that does do those funds then go towards our debts or how would we be able to utilize those? Yeah, good questions. Um, board Mike, do you want to respond to Yeah, Mr. President, members of the board, Superintendent Sagata Jones, it's a great question. uh one of the things that we have maybe evolved and pivoted uh as far as looking at what's the most um beneficial approach. So you heard the superintendent briefly talk about if we sell land um it's a one-time deal, right? The way that the statutes read um is if you sell
070the land, you have to use those funds to reduce the district's tax rate slash a debt. However, if you lease that and you do, as the superintendent mentioned, a long-term lease, that gives the district uh more flexibility to use to then assist us in managing that decline. And so, we've initially were thinking selling properties and then as we met with legal counsel, um there was an opportunity to maybe go the lease approach. So, you do a long-term lease and it gives you the ability to use that for what I would say is the maintenance and operation uh of the district. And so, uh our recommendation and the way that we've approached it at this point in time is really through long-term leases. You get the flexibility and you get the immediate cash. No. And I
071like the fact that like you pointed out having somebody utilizing those spaces even if we can't physically at this time having somebody in there it still keeps a sense of you know there there it's not a vacant area for somebody to do something they shouldn't do. Any other questions? Oh well thank you sir. Thank you all of you for all of the great well all of the good information. Um it's not it's not inherently bad. It's not inherently good. It just is. Um and then there's there's certain things that there's a lot of things that we just don't have any control over. I can't control how many babies are in an apartment complex. Um I can't we can control how good our schools are and what kind of a product that we put out there
072for parents to make an informed choice to make the best choice to come to one of our schools. Uh, but we do not have the ability to just drag someone kicking and screaming into a school of ours. So, um, thank you for all the information. Thank you, Miss Sigata Jones, uh, the rest of your administrative team. Um, we again find ourselves in a tough spot. Uh, and we will work through it just like we did last time and we will make the decisions in the best interest of the community and the students that we serve here. So, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay. At this moment, uh, it is recommended for the governing board to recess the regular meeting in order to convene to executive session for the following purpose. In accordance with
073ARS 38431 03 A3 and Arizona Revised Statute 3843103A4 for discussion and consultation with the attorneys of the public body to obtain legal advice and to consider its position and instruct its attorneys regarding the public body's position relating to pending litigation. 23F001 ADM CV 202423145 1 CAS SA25023 and 2 CACB 2025 007. Is there a motion to adjurnn? I'll move to go into executive session for the reasons stated above. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I Miss Pimentel, how do you vote? I Miss Bartell's, how do you vote? I And chair votes I. We're now in executive session. Is there a motion to reconvene to regular session? I'll move to reconvene to regular session. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I. Miss Pimementel, how do you vote? I. Miss Bartell's, how do you vote?
074I chair votes I. We're now back in public section session. Uh, Mr. Jones, do we have any calls to the public this afternoon? President Martinez, no, we do not. Oh, my mistake. It's evening now. How about that? All right, moving on to the next part of our agenda, the consent agenda. Any comments or questions on the consent agenda items? With that, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I. Miss Fmentel, how do you vote? I. Miss Bartell, how do you vote? I. And chair votes I. Thank you. Moving on to our action items 9A policy revisions second reading. Miss Sagata Jones. Yes, President Martinez, members of the board, you have two for the second reading basic instructional program. That
075is where we need to include the 911 curriculum and then the sex offender is just uh going and changing um the reporting of that and letting schools know. Any questions or comments on the policies? Is there a motion to approve the second reading? I move to approve the second reading of policies IHA and JL if second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I. Miss Pimentel, how do you vote? I. Miss Bartell, how do you vote? I. And chair votes I. Thank you. Moving on to action item 9B, the proposed expenditure budget. Mr. Gata Jones. Yes. At this time, I will let uh Mr. Bargain present. Uh, Mr. President, members of the board, uh, we will be presenting the proposed budget. Uh, I've shortened the presentation. I think it's seven slides. Um, but I do want
076to walk you through some of the changes that you're going to see for next year. What we wanted to do with the first slide is really show you how just the budget process has evolved. So if you look at 24 the adopted, you'll look at the ADM on top and where it was when we f we when we completed the final revision for that year. So, if you'll focus on the 8173 this last year that it's about to end, it was 8,034. For the purpose of this next year's budget, the ADM is at 7,7372. And just to give you um put it in perspective, the demographics that was presented to you today, we took data from that of about 3.9 projected uh decline uh from the 8034. So, just to kind of give you an
077idea how that information is all used, we wanted to show you what is technically this year's budget that you approved in May. We used about $2.1 million from the revenue control limit and have always budgeted in capital at least during the 13 almost 13 years that I've been here as well as the district additional assistance has been always budgeted in capital. So that's how it was approved by this board in May for this current revision. This is where it's going to look different. The monies that historically were budgeted in what's called column B have to remain in column A. That's where we're going to have some of those financial pressures to an extent that we haven't seen before. So, we wanted to highlight that so that we're very clear with you and all the other
078stakeholders on how we're going to get through this year or this next year. This is the a little bit more detail on the M budget as a in its entirety. The revised number three was 79.3 million. This next year is going to be about 77.3 77.4 million. Prior to the updated demographic study, we were anticipating a 1.9% decrease in ADM. As you can see, it's almost 4%. And so you can see where it says um the DAA is used in its entirety and now in MO that 4.4 million, the 2.1 figure has been used under that RCL. That's how what we need to do in order to try to continue continuity of services to the best that we possibly can. And we wanted to highlight that the RCLDA is no longer budgeting capital. 100% of
079that is now budgeted in M. But you can see the change. You're going from 10 point uh excuse me 14.8 million to just under 11 million for this next year. When you when we're looking at trying to project the tax rate for this new school year, we believe it's going to be at about eight to maybe n cents lower than the current year. And you can see how that breaks down by the different categories. I'm just going to give you a minute to to read this. I think it's probably best if you read it to yourselves. Uh, Mr. President, members of the board, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have regarding the budget. Any questions or comments? Well, I think I can speak for four of us because we were at the
080summer leadership institute and everything that you repeatedly present to us when we have budgets coming forward, it is to keep us out of receiverhip and I appreciate that. Yeah, I I would like to point out that a lot of those numbers that we that we've seen today, um that's what organizations like the auditor general's office looks when they determine a risk assessment for school districts. Uh, and we our our district has been on there before for and those numbers continue to trend because we have to make adjustments and we have to move money and pull out of reserves and we have to move money into M to cover expenses um because we're we're working to keep the district afloat, but you can only tighten the belt and use one ply toilet paper for so long
081until you have to make some adjustments. So, uh, thank you for your work that you're putting in on that, sir. I would just add it's a collective effort. It's a collaboration and so while I'm here presenting uh obviously the priorities of the board of the superintendent uh but the real work really is really my team. You know I just get the opportunity to present uh and I just don't want to lose sight of the people that it takes uh to really ensure that we don't fall into receiverhip. So I do appreciate those comments. Is there a motion to approve the proposed expenditure budget? I move to approve the proposed expenditure budget for fiscal year 2025 2026 as presented. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I. Miss Pimentel, how do you vote? I. Miss Bartell's,
082how do you vote? I. And chair votes I. Thank you. Moving on to action item 9C, the superintendent's performance pay criteria. Uh, Miss Sagata Jones, do you have anything? Uh, yes. Uh, President Martinez, as you see, um, the criteria for the superintendent is there. It's based off the performance evaluation instrument. 100%'s awarded if it's highly effective or effective. And the other half of the performance is based on the superintendent's goal aligned to the strategic plan. 100% is paid if it's highly effective or effective. Any questions or comments? Is there a motion to approve the sup uh superintendent's performance pay criteria? I move to approve the criteria for the superintendent's performance pay for the 2025 2026 school year as presented. Second. Miss Wilson, how do you vote? I. Miss Fmentel, how do you vote? I. Miss
083Bartell's, how do you vote? I. And the chair votes I. Now to the first item of good news on the agenda today, the future meetings and agenda requests. Uh, Miss Sagetta Jones, what do we have ahead of us? And July 10th will be the next meeting. We will have the 2026 expenditure budget. Uh, extracurricular fee schedule and then facility use schedule agreements um should be coming. Um, during that meeting, Mr. Bergen will run that meeting. I will not be present for that meeting. I will be telephonic. Any comments from the board? Moving to the summary of current events. Miss Sagetta Jones. Yes, President Martinez, members of the board. Um, lots of things still, even though it's summer, we're ending the year and trying to start the same year, but a couple things happened the last
084couple of days. We celebrated the 623 day. I'm not really sure what that is, but I celebrated it. But, um, you go, it's it has to do with the area code. I know that it has to do with the area code and you shop local. So, we uh went down and visited our local merchants who we absolutely adored, their partnerships, and presented them with our chocolate before it melted. So, it was great to be out and and do that. We also started a water drive partnership with Salvation Army. We've said take your cases to the Salvation Army um and did the campaign GST hydrate. So, if you haven't taken your cases and you're in jeans tonight, you shouldn't be okay. Those were the rules, remember? Uh so, doing that. Also, happy birthday to Miss Pimementel
085and Mr. Martinez. You had birthdays, so happy birthday. You don't look a day older, so thank you. happy birthday. And with that, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Lewis Lefit. This will be the last board meeting that he attends under GSD. He's moving to Littleton as their um next amazing superintendent. Thank you for your service, your commitment, and everything that you have done to help GSD move forward. Lewis, I wish you only the best. [Applause] All right, thank you. We'll start down at the end of the end of the DAS. Uh, Miss Wilson, what do you have to share with us? Well, we've had some uh some not so good news today uh at the meeting and uh I know that uh we've got some difficult decisions to make. Um I do
086know for one thing that um whatever decisions are made are going to be made in the best interest of the district and keeping our kids um you know at the forefront. Um, I also want to say that, you know, when it comes to uh charters and um other choices that parents might want to make, I think we have to stop and think about um what do we have that's different than what they do? And I think we need to focus on that when you're talking to your your friends or, you know, other parents that might be sending their kids to a charter, you know, and bring up those points of how we do differ uh from the charter, you know, the good things that we do. Um, and you know, and of course teachers are
087number one. You know, we've got the best teachers, much better than what they have over there. And, uh, so, um, you know, I I think that's kind of important. Um, outside of that, there really isn't a whole lot of going on. I think we've had wonderful weather, so I hear there's going to be rain on the 4th of July, but I don't really expect that to be a big downpour. Um, so, um, enjoy your summer and, um, have a happy Fourth of July. All right, Miss Pimementel, how do you follow that up? Uh, stay cool. It is, uh, warming up. I would like to thank Dr. Lefit also. You have been here a short time, but you've made a significant impact to our district, and we appreciate your footprint here. Um, happy 50th birthday to
088our board president, Martinez. Welcome. And, um, you have to say it so loud, though. I have to Hey, I'm way past it. So, welcome to 50th. Um I'm like I said heading into another number with a zero pretty quick. Um there it was. Yeah, you are. Um there were there was some information and I'd like to reiterate I I'd like to thank everybody for everything you do to ensure the success of our children of our communities and uh these decisions are never easy. Just thinking about it isn't easy. And uh I'm sure that we're going to have some sleepless nights, but uh any direction we go in, it's definitely going to be with our students um education in mind first. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Miss Bartell's. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Um, it's never
089easy to hear about what we knew was coming based on our declining enrollment. I mean, you you can't operate the same way when your revenues don't match what your expenditures are. Um, we just have to do it on a bigger scale than the rest of our community. You know, we have so many that are facing the same challenges, but it's just a household, not an entire district. Um, but I I just hope everybody, you know, can know that there's not a single one of us up here that doesn't take that seriously. Um, and with students front and center as our goal is as to who and why we're here and why we're making the decisions that we have to make. So, um, otherwise, you know, hopefully it's a nice Fourth of July for everybody and,
090uh, stay safe. All right. Um, first of all, I'd like to say, um, Dr. Lefit, it's been an honor having you here at GESD with with us. Uh, this is the second district that I got to work with you at. Uh, and you're moving to another district that I also work with you. So, uh, while I see you in one capacity capacity today, uh, in a couple weeks, I will see you in an entirely different capacity. Um, so good luck with that, sir. I I we will treat you well. We will treat you well. Um, and for those of for those of you that celebrate, uh, next Tuesday is fiscal new year. So, happy fiscal New Year's to everybody. Um, I know we make a big deal of it at my office. Uh, which is
091I say it's just another day, but it is a it is a big day and it means a lot to a lot of people. So, happy fiscal New Year's to everybody. Well, we'll put that on um Instagram and you can wear jeans that day. Yes, that's that sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. Um we we had a lot of a lot of news today and and I stand by I stand by what I said earlier. It's not intrinsically good. It's not intrinsically bad. It just is. Um there districts all across the state that are going through the same thing. Uh what we can feel good about is we feel good about that we know we are working with a team and administration that has already had to make tough decisions before in the best interest of
092the district and we've been we've been successful with that. Uh we continue to deliver what I believe a very successful product uh in the education of the kids. That's why every single one of us are is up here. And if you ever run into a board member that doesn't believe that um you should vote them out next time. But have a great uh summer. Enjoy your fiscal New Year's. Feel free to set off some fireworks. I hear they're on sale for fiscal New Year's. So, um make sure you you take the care of that. Remember, not the ones that go up into the air. They have to stay on the ground. And I hope you all have the same amount of fingers next time we see you in a few weeks. With that, is there
093a motion to uh adjurnn? Move to adjurnn. Second. All those in favor? I I