001e e e observing and we have I think some interesting important things in the budget so Dr thank you president hacken appreciate uh board members being here and Jason and his team we uh later this evening we will have a truth and Taxation hearing and Jason and his team have prepared a presentation um that will be given during the hearing and here in study session and then after the study session if it's okay with board like to share some highlights at the beginning of school our leadership conference our new teacher orientation uh Frank has some information on the new middle school and its status and then talk a little bit about school celebrations excellent let's do it okay ready we're ready ready thank you Dr fsor all right so uh this presentation some of you
002have seen part of it before uh some changes in order and some things uh I know there's so we're having this on August 13th we set this date for truth and Taxation to align with the board meeting we usually just reserve the date because taxing entities can't have two at the same time tonight like if somebody like a city and so we try and Reserve with the county as early as possible usually in January just in case there's a troop in taxation I believe next year if we have it we tried to move it a week earlier to be able to avoid any back to school nights so that would be in the board action now to adopt or in the board meeting to adopt the schedule for next year Mak some adjustment so tonight
003um or right now too there's the QR code to be able to to get a PDF of this presentation and so this will be available tonight so patrons won't need to take pictures of each slide it'll be available it's available now um to be able to look at that's a all right so this first slide is what is being recommended and what is the impact the some of the slides I'll go through I'll have an example of the taxation notice that every of youed try and explain that a little bit more um what the different what an INR means what the certified tax rate means um and also the different levies that are that show up for school districts so right here on the left the rate details you can see there's the basic rate
004the board rate or the board Levy the voted Levy Capital Levy Debt Service Levy and Charter Charter local Levy and so the board is considering a net increase in property tax rates for fy2 Budget of four increments to meet operational and capital needs um as Illustrated below so this is a 7% increase over the certified tax rate so on the notice it's showing a 16 plus% increase and that I'll explain a little bit it's it's having to do with less that that's included in that line item and also doesn't include the possible three increment reduction in debt service that the board could choose to do today is is that 16% um an increase on what you paid the previous year no it's not on the previous year it's on what the certified tax rate what
005the rates would be without this hearing okay so you can see the calculation right here the the final recommended tax rate of 6115 so 0.00 6115 over what the rate would be if there was no hearing tonight is 5715 so 5715 to 6115 is an increase of four increments an increment is in the fourth decimal place so from 57 to 61 and that's a 7% increase so the basic rate is set by the state legislature and that's no changes that are happening there there was it pretty much stayed the same from one year to the next the board local Levy that is where right here it shows a three increment increase from 774 to 1074 and the capital of four increment increase from 1010 to 1410 and then right here on The Debt Service a
006reduction down from 12:31 to 9:31 so essentially if this is a minus three and this is a plus three those offset each other and we're left with four increment increase and that would be in the capital Levy and then the chart of local Levy is pretty is flat from last year so one other question yeah trying to reconcile some things so um we're looking at a 7% increase but when you add in basic Levy and the charter Levy does that equal 12 chart no so the charol a 12% increase the state basic minimum and the which 12 are you asking if it is a 12% increase if you take the 7% increase that we're looking at and you add in the state minimum program and the Charter does that equal 12 cuz I've I've gotten
007this 12% increase in my head I'll show on the next slide some of the different things so when all these rates are included so that's what if you put in your calculator this 6115 which is the total of all six of these all six divided by the 5715 which is the total of all six of these comes out to 107% which is a 7% so that is the overall yeah the reason it would go to a 12 or a 16 is when it's including not the reduction of The Debt Service or also if it's not including the basic Levy in that and so the denominator smaller making the increase okay and so Jason when you're looking at your own tax notice it does not include um the capital Levy or it does it does include
008that on there when you're looking at it but it does include The Debt Service all of these are on the tax notice and I'll show how those flow into that those there okay so this is definition of a tax increment it's that fourth decimal place so it's 001 and so that whatever it is is multiplied by the taxable value of a property so in Alpine School District this year the median value of a primary home is $489,000 now that $489 if it's a primary home for somebody they get a 45% exemption by state law so they don't pay taxes on the 489 they would pay taxes on uh 45% less or 55% of the 489 at 269 about so 268 950 times one increment is $26.90 per year or $224 per month so if the
009board decides to go with the proposed um changes tonight that would be four a net four incr increase so the impact on the on the median home would be $175 or or about $9 per mon month now if somebody's home is worth less than that that's going to be less instead of the $9 or if somebody's has a million doll home it's going to be about twice that so I think it's important that this is the median value not the average value right okay so some Basics here we already went through the market value taxable value it's it's the 45% reduction mainly this slide is to talk about this box right here so when we're looking at the certified tax rate that is U calculated each year by the county auditor the assessed value of
010everyone's home on a rotation you know they go through they can't do everything in one year but they kind of take different areas so the county assessor does that and then the County Treasurer figures out the tax revenue needed so uh this next slide is going to show the certified tax rate in essence it's down here on this this uh illustration as assessed values go up the certified tax rate goes down to match the same Revenue so taxing entities are have a revenue neutrality principle so the certified tax rate is prior Year's expected tax revenue so what we expect to bring in in tax revenue the previous uh the pre the prior year and then it takes the total of last year's property so there was a certain amount of property last year there was
011growth now there's more this year but it looks at just what was their last last year and now what is that property that was there last year what is it worth if it went up and this with the same Revenue that rate's going to go down and that's what this is showing some years very rare it happens where assess value in the whole District or whole County goes down then the rate would go up to compensate for that so that each a city a county a water district school district they are guaranteed the same Revenue as the year before now if there's new growth then whatever that rate that's set that new growth comes on that rate and so there is a little bit more Revenue but it doesn't keep up with inflation and it's
012mainly used to then now educate the new children that come with that growth so it doesn't that new growth doesn't provide enough to be able to keep up with the costs that are increasing um in wages mainly most of our most of our expenses for school district are in paying our teachers and our employees um and to be able to have them move from steps and also to get cost of living adjustments um there's some changes that happened there the other note down here uh business administrators throughout the state have been trying to work with state legislators to be able to change the certified tax rate a little bit to be able to say okay set that rate with just some type of inflation value in that so saying here was the revenue last year
013NE the revenue next year needs to be that plus a little bit of inflation to set that rate um then taxing entities would have to go through truth and Taxation less often to be able to keep up with inflationary costs okay so this is an example of what your tax notice may look like if your if your full market value of your home is right at the median the 489 this is what it would look like um so everything in the white is what shows up on your tax note this the things that are in yellow are added here to be able to provide more detail and explanation um for what is happening here so your individual tax no will say what your full market value is hopefully you have that residential exemption and then
014the total taxable value but over here on the left of course there's more on your tax notice than just these three lines there's one for Alpine School District there's one that says State Charter School Alpine and Statewide School basic l these dot dot dot dots indicate you'll also have your city the county your water Conservatory District those things will show up there but just looking at alpines everything that goes in with educating students in Alpine School District um this is what shows up so the rate isn't shown in last year's just the amount that came in so last year if you had the the the median home value you paid about 148 for in property taxes that went to these things the other thing that's been added here is Alpine School District line that shows
015on your tax notice includes all four of these levies so the board voted capital and debt so all four of those are in this and that's why this 448 or the this bottom line if you look along here matches exactly to this Top Line because it's just showing the detail how to get to these values so so what we're looking at here is last year the tax rate for all all six of these these one two and then these four was 5518 if nothing was happening tonight that would have still gone up to 5715 last year when we're looking at the previous year to the other one it went down a little bit because The Debt Service went from about 17 increments to 13 increments lost about four increments in one year this year if
016we look at debt it actually is going up from 10.2 increments to 12.3 now the reason that is is cuz last year the board decided to reduce this debt service down from 13.2 to 102 to offset like were like is being proposed this year that was able to take place because in debt service we had at the end of FY 23 we had a fund balance of about $46 million just in Debt Service and that can only be used to pay for General obligation bonds that that fund balance grew I think because the rate was set on certain Revenue needed to pay off principal and interest but the growth that's happened brought in a little bit more each year to that fund so the only thing that can be used for is to pay off
017bonds early or in this case to lower the rate each year or decided on a certain year to be able to bring in less um Revenue but still be able to pay everything that's owed so the amount that's owed in principal and interest in this coming year we pay that in September and in March um we'll still be able to pay all of that but we'll we use some of that fund balance so this last year at the end of FY 23 that fund balance was about 46 million um at the end of FY 24 it's going to be about 29 million because we use three increments of fund balance to pay for that if we do that again that fund balance will go down to about 11 or 12 million which is still a
018a great level because it can only be used for this purpose did you say October and March September September thank you yeah and I believe the the principal is just in March and there's interest in both September and March okay so we're looking here most people have seen this the 1652 on the property tax increase now that's just on these line items that are down here so $1 18827 increase and so the 1652 is calculated by the 188 divided by what taxes would be if there was no change it's $139 but because it's proposed to be able to reduce that down three increments in debt service that would really be $107 change or a 9 9.44% increase but if you include the basic Levy which provides money to Alpine School District just it comes in
019and then the state um the wpu and the minimum school program there's some calculations there but it's still benefits locally if you include all those things then it's a 7% increase so this 10758 divided by the 1537 um is this 7% increase I've also shown down here like the previous slide with the yellow and the green there's the 3% or three increment increase in the board the four in the capital and then the -3 change in the de service now that's a lot of information in one slid what questions do you have on so could you just remind us so the the state why School basic Levy is somewhat conditional upon us meeting certain condition I mean certain rates for other uh ear levies right no the the basic Levy comes into fund the wpu
020so when they when the wpu comes in and then you're calculated how many students you have times the wpu value and then there's a local effort so with this the basic comes in and so if let's say it's just for a small District a million dollars you're guaranteed in the wpu but this the basic Levy brings in 500,000 the state would bring in 500,000 to guarantee at that amount but the part you're you're looking at is the state guarantee on the board and voted which has some minimum amounts that I'll get to on a future slide on that but the the place that that funding comes in from if you meet the requirements on the board and voted is another line not that not the basic one I have a question so when we um
021if the board approves it and we approved a 3% increase in board and a 4% in capital can we ever move that say we wanted to put seven in capital or seven in board can we do that or does that have to be done tonight so it's not a percent by the increments but the four and the three so what was set um on the tax no is it can only go up the maximum rate that can be set in capital is that 1410 and the maximum in the board is 1074 because that was what was declared in the tax system so we couldn't as a board tonight decide we wanted to instead of splitting it do all seven in capital it cannot all go in capital so Jason just to clarify you talked about
022how right the debt can only pay go bonds uhuh and then Capital needs to be capital projects but then the board and and voted Levy there's a little bit there's a lot more flexibility right it's like we could decide to put that in M or we could decide to put that in but just has a high level of flexibility versus capital and debt which are for very specific very specific purposes okay I guess I have one more question the reason the debt service Levy is not on this notice is because it is influenced by what we do it is on the notice it's part of that Top Line the Alpine School District so this line right here where it's the 4938 M it's in that right there 4938 cuz it's the sum of all four
023of those things so the death service is in that but our action which is to reduce it wasn't on the notice can't be currently it can't be on the notice is that correct right it wasn't put because it's something that has to be decided here uh we want to put when we put in cuz what the county asks for is how much do you how much revenue do you need to pay your principal and interest and that's they set the rate from that that's it yeah but we can decide to go less than that we can't go more than that but we can go less than that rate because we have that fund balance or if like um said here we could pay debt off with the operational funds if we wanted to too okay
024okay I'll go to the next slide so why truth in taxation this year the following are a few of the reasons the board's considering it so um board member Clement was saying on that that the 20 qualifying increments so in board and voted there's certain levies there that the the voted can be a maximum of 16 increments and each year once we've set it at 16 if if values go up the rates going to go down but the what the state does is look and says what's the highest it's been in the last 5 years that's what we're going to guarantee you get so right now if we go back the voted is is Fallen to 1223 it's below the 16 but within the last 5 years we've been at the 16 so we still
025get the benefit of the 16 that the state kicks in same thing with the board it needs to be at least four so the two together are 16 and four is the 20 increments but the this one has to be at least four to get the uh State guarantee of that amount yes so because it's at 12 how many years till we have to be at 16 again there one more year so that means next year we have to go to truth in taxation again to get it to 12 not to 16 not necessarily be because um the board one is that if it's set at 1074 tonight and then it falls maybe to 10 or 9 and A2 next year that's still uh 5 and a half increments above the four that needs to
026be so you can say I want to change the four down to four and the vote it up to 16 as long as you're saying I'm going to take four from here and put four here and the net is zero there's no truthful taxation you can also do that with capital you can say Okay capital is at 1410 I want to go to 1210 and put two increments in the voted you can do that also without but if you say I want to move two here and put it there but I also want to increase this one by one if there's a net increase at all then you have the truth Tex but we would have to do that as a motion in a public meeting to adjust that next year so we would have
027to still have a the motion on an agenda but not necessarily a truth and tax clarification okay so that's the 20 qualifying tax increments um so the operational Investments we're going to get to a slide that shows all the things for Capital and um operations um but targeted class size reduction FTE to be able to help with um areas where class sizes because of especially in elementary as um just one grade and just having to have a full-time teacher avoiding splits some reduction FTE there PA of professional support um for special ed uh subay increases that's propose and a teacher Mentor program for the first three years that teachers are areach um there's been significant inflationary pressures especially in building of schools uh looking at this maintaining and the investment timelines as we have to
028with technology or fysical facilities as things get deferred then we may have to do some Band-Aid fixes without the necessary capital and then later do them where it will cost more so in the end it ends up costing more if we don't have those and then the last bullet point is to continue to build up the school building fund last year two and a quarter increments were put in to be able to help with land and building and this would add four more to that uh to be able to have every year that Revenue coming in I'll get to a slide later that shows how much that can save or the significant savings from interest that can happen as less bonding is need there still may need to be some bonding but if you're paying
029with cash as a go it's it saves on that yes could you just explain maybe for a public why sub pay increase is so important sure yeah the sub pay increase right now the sub the average is is it 85 per day can we can help address that want to talk to that well to be competitive with the districts around us we do need to increase our sub P yeah and even with this this increase that's proposed is still be significantly less than some of the the bordering districts but still conservative but we're trying to keep competitive it's still extremely conservative compared to districts around us this will be a huge help hoping that that at least that increase makes it so it's not soly look at it and say well I don't need to
030drive 20 extra miles to be able to get this extra that that kind of upsets we have Subs that are very loyal to Alpine School District I think this is a way to recognize that and try and build that up a littleit we also need to know it's just a step right it's a $50 difference between us and canyons and $60 with Jordan so we'll have to continue to make that effort to actually be competitive okay this is some of the we won't go into a lot here this is the details of uses for new Revenue so of course in that top there's the two sections Capital operations so four increments in capital would all go to that building fund uh the value of one increment this year is estimated to be about 5 6
031million so for the building fund adding four increments would add 22.4 million um so we've shown this in millions and then in dollars here so three years worth of that four increments brings in about $ 67.2 million so as we looked at the new high school and we were looking in March time frame for maybe doing a leas revenue bond for the full 175 before new law went in May 1st um that could have happened but then we discussed that doing it this way with three years of four increments and then being able to do 866 million in lease Revenue Bond would save about would save about the district and taxpayers about $45 million in interest and so that brings that here the 67.2 plus the 86 million with some other things um it's already
032been funded $20 million so8 million for the architecture for the new high school and 12 million 12 to 13 million for the land has already been authorized by the board when the budget went through in June so that takes the total amount down to around 150 million that would be left for that when do we anticipate doing that least Revenue Bond question the rest of it it need to be detered by the board so the the anticipated start date I was just talking to Frank pulley about that is breaking ground probably in May or June next year so timing that when we did the Middle School to uh in in 2023 broke ground in April we had we sold Bonds in March and had the hearing for that in January so January to March it
033takes a nice time frame is about 2 months when we were looking earlier this year to try and do it quickly it was about 6 weeks and that's a little tight um two months is kind of The Sweet Spot two to 3 months and then that would be for a what year opening if we did something like that that would be a July July of 28th so if we wanted to do J 2028 when does that have to be done by when does the to break to break ground so that would break ground in June to be able to be open in August of 20 so that means to be done by us in to have it to have the money there um so April or March or April could be the hearing for truth
034and Taxation um in talking with our bond Council the best time to sell bonds is February March historically on pricing so um if we did it like the last one with the middle school if we did it in January sell in March it would put us in a nice SP can I get a clear understanding about this if if we did the lrb sooner um would that money be idle until groundbreaking I think if you went after the funds sooner you would have that You' be start paying interest on that but because you're not spending that you would also acrew interest on it so it probably be a little bit neutral in terms of savings but you wouldn't I don't anticipate we would pay for that until we broke ground and started the process yeah
035we want to time it to we get those those right you know four to six weeks before we need the okay so we'll jump into the operations here these top four here are what was discussed by the board in the work session about six8 weeks ago or so so Target class size reduction about 45 FTE is of one increment um sped class size reduction which a lot of time is just with um folder accounts to be able to help with the teachers there there's the subp pay increase of $10 per day um an elementary scaling model is on that one and then all the rest of these items were items that were proposed in the FY 25 budget but when we had the certain amount that was available these are things that didn't make the
036cut um things that could be put in that are are very needed just weren't um able to do that with the funding that was available yes can somebody speak to the class size reduction for our special ed like the urgency of that I just want to understand that a little better yeah Vicky do you want to speak to that you want me to speak to that I can speak to it to a point so our greatest need right now is is our resource teachers some of them are carrying um case loads of 40 plus so we would focus on getting that down um we're looking at um 3432 and um the second area of mean is the speech language pathologist um some of those are over a hundred in your cases the and the special
037ed budget itself does not um have sufficient funds to be able to provide for that that thank you that that helps a lot thank you thank you Vick okay this next slide shows Alpine's 10year tax levy history so of course as we explained there so as values have gone up the rates gone down and you can see that um these last two years have been the lowest um as that continues to go down last year 551 the certified tax rate this is from the budget book 5715 and uh the proposed one for tonight is the 615 again the the tax rate can go down but the amount that you you pay can still increase correct that you individually pay yeah well you individually pay yes if there's ta truth and Taxation hearings that taxing enemies
038your property changes right so yeah you your value of your property has probably gone up more than this has gone down because there's been slight increases to bring back the 20 increments to be able to fund different things in that time so yeah somebody somebody's home that 10 years ago they are paying more in property tax than they were 10 years ago um and the value of their home is going up too so Jason the 14 FTE for the elementary scaling model can you clarify uh are those for additional office staff or can you clarify uh what we think those FTE are going to be utilized for yeah I me I know it's the scaling model but can you clarify like which what you think they'll be used for yeah I believe that most of
039those are for additional assistant principles at the elementary Level Elementary scale okay so this is again just a summary of that what's what's being recommended so it's recommending that a net increase of four increments our 7% increase on the total um school taxes that people have and so the 6115 is the final rate and you can see here all the six rates again and who sets those and right here you can see the voted hold harmless for one more fiscal year on that so the highest in The Last 5 Years which was four years ago is the 16 0016 this shows in the last few years we've had we've we've been trying to it's been a board goal to be able to increase starting teacher salary from 40,000 to 50,000 you know and we're getting
040closer to that those amounts closer to 60,000 for the starting now and so there's been some great um efforts and be able to increase that there's also been Transportation Fuel and repair increases new school construction's probably gone up the most in the last few years of anything construction um so you can see here the last two completed fiscal years almost a 7% year-over-year increase that matches pretty close to the 7% increase that is being proposed tonight we don't have medical insurance here right that would be in the teacher benefits in that and so this this slide here shows as debt Services come off we've been trying to add to Capital Levy and and recommended to continue to do that um the combin here in FY 24 at the the point about the 20 increments is
041the lowest in all this time frame but you can see that the more and more going to the capital which will help to be able to in the future help with interest costs being lower not as much bonding that it's needed so this just summarizes that a little bit more um the geobond debt will continue to fall off it's recommended that that as that happens to be able to keep kind of the rate neutral is to be able to add that to Capital to be able to build up that building fund this is the required tax notice that went in newspapers on our website um outside of the boardroom and this just explains a little bit more there's the 489 for the median value and and this is all calculated based on that 188 rather
042than the 108 increase this will be part of the presentation so Utah County offers several tax relief programs this QR code um you know to be scanned and be able to look at those to be able to see minor to significant reduction of the property taxes for those that inv in that I think we might mention that there's deadlines on those that are imminent I think okay any additional questions here someone had a question just in terms of some of the INF inflationary impacts yeah um when you talked about transportation and fuel do you have a dollar amount of how much extra we've spent on fuel this year with gas prices looking around here I do not have that's okay just want yeah and that and and fuel hasn't gone up as much as other
043like if we're looking the main thing is the new new school construction right and you know I remember 20 years ago gas being around close to $4 and we thought it was the end of the world but it still hasn't you know sometimes they'll go up close to four a little over four and then come back down there is one slide here in the backup that's um interesting this is for the last TCH year so that 5518 is what we were at last year for FY 24 or the 2023 tax year you can see the all of neighboring school districts Alpine was the lowest um and this is the percent higher from Alpine so Provo Neo were about 34% higher than Alpine was in last tax year and these you can see the other ones
044there so canyons and Jordan were very close but still slightly higher while that chinua um figures any other questions or comments okay thank you you're welcome that's very informative and we're going to share that again at the hearing yep okay probably won't be as long in there be more concise on okay thank you okay what else have we got Frank you want to give us an update on the junior high going out in Eagle Mountain all right um I'm going to stand so I can point to a few things just easier for for reference as we're kind of walk through we're going to start kind of zoomed out of the site so we can start from the outside and we'll work our our way in so you see kind of overall site plan this was
045taken probably about 3 weeks ago off a drone site you can start seeing the roads are starting to to take shape um this is what they call Harmony way you see it's connection up here into the into the neighborhood and the school front's uh Harmony Way um the pickle courts are are in and curing out we'll start fencing those here pretty soon as well as some some property fence um that will be going in soon to start uh securing the property area uh just zoomed in a little bit more um you start seeing kind of parkings drop off Loops that will start to kind of take shape here coming off a Harmony way uh some uh landscape areas that will start to happen this this fall so they can be established by the time um
046school starts um one thing unique about this school uh we will be doing a lot more natural vegetation in and around the school to help conserve on water out in this area um it'll have a very similar look and feel to the natural vegetation and Landscape that's currently out there right now the planing Fields will be um natural grass so there's places for PE classes and Community um events and stuff to happen on the school campus but there will be a significant amount more of natural vegetation that does not require water um you'll see water going on it when it first to establish it and then that water will be shut off and it'll just survive off whatever natural rainfall happens there um you can see um here on the right hand side of the
047screen um that area is roofed in we are a little bit farther uh the main entrance to the school is is here um this is the med Center and admin um kind of area um we are now roofed over the top of this so that's all dried in in the last three weeks that's that's been closed in um now uh we're starting to put in Windows and stuff there this crane is no longer in the middle of the auditorium um that's been removed in the last couple of weeks since this drone image was was taken just to kind of give you a perspective and this will be important as we go through some other slides and we get to the inside as you see this end of the building is a lot more finished and
048as we're working um to the west side of the school um storefront windows going in down at that more finished um end of the school um so you can see up here on kind on the left those windows are in in glasses we're starting to put sheetrock and paint and stuff in that area starting to close it in um this is a shot of the gym um it's all dried in closed skylights are in um this is important piece where we start to store and Stage a lot of materials as we go through the building for finishes and stuff is that like a mini traffic yes there's a running track that goes around the top of the gym so if you're familiar with um Willow Creek where we had the admin conference or Vista Heights
049Viewpoint Frontier Lake Mountain you have all a very similar floor plan that have a running track couple Lanes around this the back to the original model that has a little bit larger gym yes we did this a view going large the gym just a little bit so that they're seating on both sides of the gym asine feedback that we got from principles who opened um models Where We Shrunk that gym and said hey if we can enlarge that it would really help with our PE classes so we enlarged it back back up um here's the commons area they're just installing um the main stair um there in the center um this is the admin section where they're framing all that out running electrical data lines stuff there that now taken from the cafeteria taken from
050um kind of the North End looking out to the South out towards Eagle Valley yep all one level on that cafeteria all one level on that cafeteria you probably noticed the Willow Creek model was a lot worse it had multiple steps in it we really don't know why that was the case but it's all flat so there's no no one um tripping and falling yeah we've had a lot of those in those two models we can Timber line back um this is in the inside the auditorium you can see the Crane's not there anymore um this wall they're just blocking up this is where the stadium seating section will be so they'll put that wall up and then they'll begin to pour that uh concrete steps um for The Stadium seats inside the inside the
051AL torium uh this is the second story on the west end of the school so they're just finishing up all of the concrete slabs on the second story of the building um that was uh one morning um they poured 110 yards of concrete that day on on the Second Story and one the guys is finishing it um this is more toward the East end where it's roofed in you can see and here all the hbac duct Works in all the plumbing piping stuff's in we're starting to put in ceiling grid um and stuff at that end you can see sheetrock and this room's been painted out and then we have classrooms now that have mill work that's already been installed at that end so you can kind of see the the progression from the West
052End of the building or to the East end where it's a lot more finished um we get this question a lot why do we start on the gym side or the East End that is where our mechanical space is that feeds the entire school so we start down at that end so our mechanical systems can get put in all the big piping can come in and out of the mechanical spaces and feed the rest of the building so that's why this end of the school gets started started first questions so it's flipped from the lake view or uh lake mountain and Vista and Frontier Model because the auditorium's on the left and the gyms on the right yeah it's just Mir mired over okay so again uh we plan to turn over uh July so
053next summer so we're a year a little over a year into the fild it's tracking great um having a 2-year build window for junior high has been been awesome um and materials and supplies have been able to arrive when we need them and made it so it's progressing really nice can you go back to the beginning and kind of share a little bit where we'll have access from uh I think is it Highway 73 it's out there and what that will look like in terms of traffic FL yeah so I'll come on this side but uh this street here which connects up into this neighborhood comes all the way out to Highway 73 which is called Bell Street um it'll have a little different connection on the Highway 73 as UDOT in the city is
054working on uh a more parallel alignment to Highway 73 so it comes in andly parallels the highway but there will be uh planned a signalized intersection there um I've been told it's supposed to be ready for our opening in summer of 2025 but this Bell Street will be the main access off of 73 and then also Harmony Way connects up into this neighborhood you can head to the east through the neighborhood and also Connect into a signalized intersection which would be like towards black Bridge you don't have to go as far down as Black Bridge before you hit the signalized intersection but you can also come in through the neighborhood into the school I think there are additional plans for 73 to be widened there yes there's a master Transportation plan from UDOT that has
055Highway 73 growing significantly and becoming a lot more of a freeway system through there we have some buffer between we have a lot of buffer we sit quite a ways off UDOT already has um their transportation Corridor purchased through there and preserved for that future widening of 73 are there plans for the surrounding areas around the school it just yeah um I mean we see a neighborhood in yeah we see a neighborhood up here um these are larger lots and homes up to the north of the school we still own about 25 or so acres here around the school for anything that we may have future needs of and then there's additional Property Owners to the front and to the west of the school utility water we were able to tie in I know when
056we were first looking at this I was concerned about possibly needing a lift station on the site but yeah so we worked with the city it was less expensive for us to go to the South um down Bell Street and then connect onto Airport Road um we were a couple of miles worth of sewer um where we were able to connect and it's all gravity fed there's no lift station or anything there that was just more cost effective for us upfront and long term is to not have to maintain the station solely for our properties these homes up in this area are all on septic systems they're not tied in into SE system is that is the couple miles of SE complete I know there was a like an under thing with sr73 that was
057taken a while so we have the connection to make just under Highway 73 process working with UD we we were originally going to bore underneath the highway um there's too big a rock under High we couldn't get the board through so that the pipes aligned so we actually will cut the road and dig it dig it through and that happens um first part of September but all the rest of the lengths of section of sewer they're they're in so it's just that connection across the highway how many square feet is this building 185,000 approximately is that what all of our new Junior highs arey yeah pretty close within a couple thousand ft changed a couple iterations ago and added some science rooms upstairs on that second level it would be on the uh west west
058side of this is that part of this planine as well yeah so we made that change at Lake Mountain where the need was needing additional science classrooms so we added science classrooms in the pods mooved the business Labs upstairs on a a section of the school that was cheap square footage to add that was just still had the volume of a twostory but it was just a roof space so we captured that space and added those three business classrooms which used to be about 180,000 Square ft so it bumped us up about 5,000 ft when we had those science classrooms and then the prep space in between the science rooms for the teachers little easier to build those science rooms in to begin with than it is to add them later because of the Water
059Gap yeah we found as the schools grow in population those uh science rooms became the most um demanded space when we're bringing in Portables that they schools needed more of to be able to accommodate schedule for students so what do we anticipate is the enrollment adjustments is you know that this will be relieving two high schools no just one just one one high school yeah we later in board meeting have a presentation for foundary study um for this school to open it I will say this cannot come soon enough I believe we have 9 167th graders expected at Frontier tomorrow 967 graders one grade level is probably the larger than most yeah Junior highs in the state is that aord I think it may be that's doesn't give like open anything else for Frank on
060this thank you very much for your work on this for your update for covering for Eric he owes you one we'll make a note of that um we have uh end of July first part of August we had our leadership annual leadership conference this was uh Scott's first year of being uh having full responsibility for that and we've gotten some feedback from our administrators on that thank you to the board of you were able to participate in that so we'd like him to take a few minutes and give a summary of uh some of the takeaways there and the things that resonated well with our administrators yeah thank you superintendent um thank you for being there and participating I think everybody had a chance to go into the classrooms the breakout sessions and um we
061always send a survey out to to collect information that it gives us guidance for when we plan the next one um one of the feedback items we got last year when we sent the survey out was it'd be nice to have the divisional meetings there for a little bit and that kept our administrators from having to come back a different time to be able to have that we're still looking at that so we asked them again what they thought and they they're all indicating they liked having those meetings but we want to be in the right Spirit of things with the leadership conference to develop their knowledge skills and dispositions and impact their influence of the people they lead so um a couple of questions we asked on the survey um one of the questions
062was um select we had a box of all the breakouts and all the different classes we offered and said which which ones of these classes help clarify the division for the district um or this excuse me the theme Excellence at work and while all of them were very high uh the three highest were um superintendent's keynote 90% uh indicated that was a a big boost for understanding the theme and connecting the vision for the district um the one breakout session of personal pillars the individual cred on Excellence letters was at 92% and then uh one of the breakout sessions of amplifying Excellence with distributed leadership was at 84 then they were really close behind that but I think that was an indication that all of those breakouts and all the impact they or all the
063opportunities they had to hear and learn really helped amplify the the vision of the district to help move forward and align our work together so we're working together towards a common cause so that's good feedback if you're okay I just kind of there's no names attached to these but we asked for open feedback and it was it's been great to have some feedback from administrator so I'm going to read some just just some direct quotes not going to tell you who they are I don't actually know who they are so that doesn't help to write down who you think yeah we can't tell you whether you're right or not I answered a few of my own in here that enjoy now um so the question was what items what items will you take back um
064from the leadership conference and apply with your staff or leadership teams because we're building everybody's capacity we want them to come back and have that influence at their own faculty with their leadership teams and their uh their teachers so it starts with that admin conference but then that theme continues so they can keep working with their faculties and so a couple of quotes of what people said this is not all of them just a few highlights um one person indicated we specifically will be working to continue to build our climate and culture with in our building that was pretty powerful like it's because that's an ongoing me another comment was we don't have to always be reactive in our work and having been a sitting in that chair as a principal is sometimes it's really
065easy to just react to situations that are coming in but this person indicated we can set goals and make consistent efforts to improve our work so it's not just doing a to-do list it's building excellence and I'm like oh that just that that was the that's the idea is we're building and continually improving what we do but it's influencing those that we that we lead um another comment was I'll be working on My Credo and learning about myself from the letters of Excellence um were they were very powerful for me it has refrained how I think about the strengths of the faculty and staff members this will help me build their capacity and move the work forward at my school so again that influen to be able to work with their faculty a couple of
066people indicated that they want their own faculty to start looking at their own strengths and how they impact learning and it just kind of spreads that g that good news all the way down to the students that's really the goal as so our work gets into the classroom level um last quote for this question is the focus on skills and dispositions is so power so much more powerful than just focusing on knowledge we clearly need to know what we're doing but how we interact um what we do and what we want to be that changes the culture climate conditions of your school so again that goes back to influence for the schools um last question I I wrote down for you is what was your favorite part of the conference that stands out to support
067you in your leadership role and again just open question for people to share uh the first one was Excellence letters and the personal Credo both of them were a game changer for me and how I see myself and you know to me that's pretty impacting because if we if we see the value in what we can do like if we're questioning ourselves or we don't think we're good at our jobs that that becomes a really hard place to be but if they believe in themselves like oh I actually see my strengths I can move move forward and and I can influence others that that's a game changer for schools imagine this person that felt that way now how they lead with a little more strength a little more confidence to bring Excellence uh next comment
068was keeping students at the center is what we are here to do and I think that was well not think that was why we brought the students there is because it brought an emphasis in we're here for students so we wanted to see students being engaged at our leadership conference to show like let's let's keep in mind all the things we have to do and all the details that are there um we have these awesome jobs for kids so that's why the students were there uh a couple more um School Improvement means people Improvement that was a common theme quote that you guys saw in the conference um couple more I have been impacted by the superintendent's message uh he is a wonderful leader and role model of continually striving for excellence I think I
069added a few more things on that one I was I was going to say that was mine that I added no that was actually I and I know superintendent He he'll be em me saying this but a lot of people indicated very similar messages about our super um super there's another one superintendent Farnsworth mentioned what Excellence at Works means excellent at work Excellence at work means the greater Your Capacity the better Your Capacity lead others that's the true definition of influence right there and then um the final comment is the letters oh my the letters and just be able to read those and I hope you guys had the same experience reading your letters of what people thought and said about you and had a chance to really kind of internalize that and say you
070know what I do make a difference and we have pretty awesome jobs to work with kids and teachers and get to move forward that's a quick summary thank you Scott appreciate that any questions or comments by the board before we move on to another topic well I have so many comments um this so just starting with Excellence letters cuz you just touched on that um I like the activity where it was list what you wrote list what the person wrote list the overlaps and I probably enjoyed more watching the people around me watch like I kind yeah right like I wasn't even reading mine I was just kind of watching everybody else but in my immediate group I don't think any of us had things in the column of what I think that other people
071don't think we had a lot that were we both think and then it was very cool to watch them list all the things that other people said about them and it was almost like you could just fill every body around you kind of growing a little bit so I thought it was a very cool teaching moment to be able to drill down to that level and um yes also I feel like the content Focus this year was incredible like I think it was the best conference I've ever been to I loved that we were in groups with different people but that we were in the same geographic area so it felt like there were more conversations happening between classes instead of trying to find uh where you were going and also lots of comments you
072know I told jel the same way but but we would rather hear from you than an external speaker and so um it was it was just cool to I mean we all have conversations with you a lot right so it's kind of cool to hear the other conversations of people who aren't with you regularly and the things that they took from that and so it was um just I appreciate all the setup and all the details and also I noted that I think you spent much less money because the when I looked at things I was like I felt like everything was amazing and perfect and fit all the needs um and it was where love for things to be so thank you for that thank you any other comments before we move on again
073thank you Scott thought you did a great job there and uh good feedback so Cammy and her team also at the same location which was a benefit um to them and set up did our new teacher orientation so I've asked her to share a little bit numbers in terms of uh new teachers feedback from their team uh several of you were able to attend that and go to some of those breakout sessions appreciate again your uh support for our new teachers and that orientation and the onboarding and I feel like in the last couple years your team really has done a great job in onboarding our new teachers to the Alpine culture so go ahead and speak to that experience yes and thank you again as the superintendent said for those of you who are
074able to come even for just a couple of minutes it was really it was really nice to see you there so um we really enjoyed having it at the same location as the leadership conference it made it a lot less stressful for our team and hopefully for the schools in general instead of being a burden on two schools we were just a burden on one school for one extra day so um we just we feel like it went really well and would like to continue that made set up and clean up a lot easier for both teams we feel like um the purpose of the new teacher orientation is something that we keep trying to communicate to our teachers and it's hard because they have specific needs and new teacher or new employee orientation doesn't
075necessarily meet those needs but it's because we are working with hundreds of teachers and the the questions they have are very school specific so we try to let them know ahead of time the purpose of this new employee orientation is something that you can't get at your school that's why if we're not going to hold a meeting that you could get the information at your school schol so the purpose is an overview of Alpine School District this is who we are this is what you are now a part of we want you to be able to feel the culture we want you to be able to see that you're a part of something big hundreds of teachers that are starting the same year that you are that are all in the same place um and
076then help them um just again get well also get to know some of the district leadership members um for leadership team advisory Schoolboard members so that they can put faces with needs so we do have we had started out with a breakfast sponsored by Alpine Credit Union we're grateful for their partnership they do a great job with the breakfast um and then um we have an opening session where the superintendent spoke and then our board president spoke uh and then watched a video about teaching and then we did some breakout sessions and those again were focused on who Alpine is and what we do and so they were our supporting documents so the co coherence map was covered in one session um and then professional learning communities and their importance in the other session and
077then the third session was technology and supported Solutions again things that would maybe be a little more difficult to get at the school level and we have good feedback uh on those most of our presenters end up coming from the district leadership team and advisory and then we fill in with other District level administrators in those spots and if we again get great feedback from them they enjoy being able to connect with the teachers uh at a lower level and be able to connect with them oneon-one this year we had a total of 267 uh employees at our new teacher or our new employee orientation so that does not include there's quite a few people who did not need to come because they were rehired so but so we still had hired over 400 people
078uh but 267 were able to attend out of those uh new to teaching were 148 people out of the ones that signed up ahead of time there were 16 that signed up there and I don't know their stats I don't know if they were new to the district or new to teaching and then previous experience 103 so it's a pretty even balance of the teachers and and employees that we're getting so we're really excited about that uh and then the we had a lunch an optional lunch afterward sponsored by the Alpine Education Association so we gave out some great swag they got jackets uh some knce jackets and then some some little swag from Alpine and again the feedback that we have received is good teachers still want some of those specific questions answered like
079what's the beta what's beta set up my classroom how much money do I get how what's my legislative funds how do I check out a credit card but we encourage them to work with their principles and secretaries to be able to get answers to those questions so any feedback from you any questions I love that it wasn't just new teachers that you included those service providers yes and I think that felt very different to everybody um also two things so I attended the coherence class with Dr Ruiz and Boyce Campbell and they well they're fabulous presenters anyway but in the discussions of the people in the room was very cool to see what like they got handed the coherence me right there like it was their first eyes on it and to be able to
080pull out different things that everybody's been so intentional and putting in for them to pick it out right away that was kind of a a cool moment and then I also attended a class with Prince not principal sorry supervisor web and uh Katy Bowman and there was this moment that that I was like I wish that every new person to Alpine could experience this so after we did introductions he said okay let's talk about it what are you worried about and I watched that room just be silent right and and everyone's just kind of likeing Isel you have concerns like let's talk through it and finally after a very UNC silence for them not us um someone you know raised her hand and said something and he said great let's talk about how we work
081through it and then and it was just a few minutes but just taking things that were Weighing on their mind and just being able to talk through them I just I thought it was kind of an extraordinary experience so we did a really great job with that thanks Stacey and I'm changing my vocabulary to be new employee I know it's hard so I thank you for correcting me anday I didn't correct you I'm correcting myself I keep calling it new teacher and I need to change yeah well appreciate your vision to expand that includ more and continue to improve that anything else on that I just had I just wanted to say I I went went around and talked to you know a couple dozen teachers and uh I was so impressed with the quality
082of the teachers um I mean they're amazing um of them had been a computer programmer and he got back and got certified so he could teach and I think that uh just a lot of background and excellent excellent people working for the district so I thought I think all of them felt that too they could look around and say everyone around me is really good and I I feel honored to be in this group we hear from our principles that the candidate pool is very strong I think that's attributed with several things the board being focused on teacher salary and benefits we're hearing from our University that it individuals that would typically go into other fields are switching now to going to education because of the salary being competitive so those candidates that are pre-service
083when they have several Majors to choose from we're getting more of the the best and the brightest choosing to go into education and then they're coming here so it's we're very pleased with that anything else on that what have please I also attended a class with Jamie James and um I can see his uh Joe Jensen sorry took me on to get there and there was so much conversation around plc's and how excited these teachers like we did these very cool breakout moving activities and I had this moment of like okay the team is going to be so thrilled to know their understanding of this their level of Engagement with how they want to use it and so cheers to teaching and learning in the plc's Great last thing we wanted to talk about is
084just you have been uh the last couple days uh engaged in the new or the school celebration and openings and want to reschedule that to give you the opportunity to visit your schools we try and have a supervisor or a DL team member there as well and uh we schedule that for you and and put those opportunities out there but just want to make sure that's something that's still meeting your needs as board members is that something the juice worth the squeeze on that is that something you want us to continue to do to provide that opportunity for you what what is your feedback now that you're right in the in the middle of it maybe we should ask in a couple weeks when it's fad a little bit but I know that I know
085I saw several of you darting back and forth the schools today and texting me are you going to be here I'm here and so sometimes a tight schedule but uh give us some feedback on that is that something that's beneficial to you as board members I say definitely yes how about you guys I love it I love I get energy from it um and I know I'm supposed to bring the energy but I I get energy as well and I just I invited um the faculties to um share examples of excellence in their schools and I was just so impressed with how they speak of each other so a lot of collaboration and support in a variety of situations but um an an outstanding number of sped uh employees were mentioned as being so supportive
086of the entire uh system so I just love it other thoughts are we going to ask them we try not to take a whole lot of their time I know and and I love I love I think it's the one time of year where we get to see all of those people in one place and I love that moment but I'm also whereare particularly today I am between you and your classroom and so let me be Speedy that you might so so yes I love it but also if it is yeah you might ask I think that's a great idea well in the past we've rotated around like having the entire District together like a UVU and then next year maybe having a cluster and then the next year maybe having the school but my
087sense of it is that employees really are enjoying the school um it takes less of their time it's um it meets their needs and I love being able to talk with with a small group of facult like that I would much prefer us go to them to make everybody come to a location nor I guess would I like to continue the large scale like the cost associated with that but again Ask I did hear from a lot of people they didn't like the one the districtwide celebration that U that we did they they're glad we doing it in their local okay the video was well received every school I was at like they really liked that so that was fun to see cheers at where are you CS he's somewhere wasn't he in here someone
088tell him I said he did great work um and Karen's also anyways they did a great job with the video that they really appreciate the kids were adorable they really were that last little and we had a com one many Junior High kids probably because they advice got filtered or something work on my only request be um some of us need 45 minutes not 30 to travel the trans oh like to speak no to travel okay I had one thought as we were um looking at this as we have transitioned away from a district Community Council I'm looking for ways to involve our community council chairs more in schools and I wonder if they might play a role in that uh back to school meeting just a not well formed thought but I I I
089imagine maybe a community council chair just giving a word of encouragement or or something to the group might be good yeah problem is L them aren't elected by them because they're in September of September is the deadline for it yeah but I like the intention behind the idea yeah and and I think correct me if I'm wrong but uh the schools put in their days um to accommodate for that travel we may get a little bit more directive in that and then line it up if that is a priority for board members to be there so that you have a little bit closer connection and travel but that's that's something we could look at we try to give them the autonomy to choose when it worked with their rotation I think if the outliers I
090mean Julie's I just have a couple outliers but if those were either either first or last I mean I followed the laws but you know a follower and and and the Utah County Sheriff's Office was out today well thank you for that feedback and thank you again for your engagement uh with our schools and connections with our uh people we we I think have the finest Educators in the world that are just so dedicated to their students to their practice and it is like you said for Wilson motivating to be among them and uh fascinating to hear um I was in a couple schools where they introduced each other and just the amount of support professionals that are there to support I think education is changing and the need for that is increasing and it's
091rewarding to see that we're providing more support for those teachers to address Behavior social emotional and other needs and the number of people that are there to support teachers coaches Behavior Specialists counselors in elementary is just significantly different than it would have been 10 years ago can I just brag on one school um I Vis visited Polaris and I one of my questions was always who here is new they had zero new faculty and one person just shouted out we're all here because we want to be and that's just speaking to the caliber of these Educators and their dedication to students even those with high needs so thank you okay can I chime in one more time sorry absolutely um I thought that your message was very appropriate in the video and I ended up
092uh hearing from almost every school how much they valued setting their own goals at the school level and then measuring them and they I think they feel like that's a huge has has been a huge benefit to the whole District but particularly to my school and I think the teaching and learning team have done a good job shaping that holding people accountable we see some great momentum uh ownership at the local level of that so great work by the team I'm gonna give you one more comment I got several texts from people saying that how much they like that DLT was part of going out and being there and so I think just being able to interface and in particular Joel and I were to school that we both came from before and afterwards to
093so many people saying it was just very cool to know the people who are coming in and know that you know he knew them personally and have that connection and so I know you guys have lots of things to do but I appreciate you taking the time to be out there and be with people thank you okay now I think we are finished with those reports and okay um I'd just like to make a comment I love the idea of piggybacking the new employee celebration or orientation with our faculty I mean our administrator conference um the balloons were amazing I don't know who it's Jody Jody arranged all the I've never seen such a variety and color and placement and size and shape little po you know they did such a good job um staging
094that conference with the Swag Bags and the treats and the balloons and just the detail all the little teeny things that were so well done that just flowed and the timing and and the humor I love the writing letters to each other you know it was so well done and I just think that that is really a compliment to all of those who worked on it and I asked how many letters came in that they had to process you you guys remember it was over a, 1,350 how they got all those printed and put in the right folders and in the right sessions that was she did all that it was amazing I hope that you gave her some recovery time to put her feet up a little bit um and um I just want
095to compliment everybody on a a great start to the year now for the board um we have maybe five minutes to to look at something um one of the things Dr farnworth talked about in the um in one of his talks was the idea of being the best version of yourself you can be and I've been thinking a lot about that I've been doing some soul searching about what is the best version of me as a board member of us of as a board and so I just like you to just kick out some ideas for a couple of minutes um what is the best version of a school board that we can look at that we can strive for we've read some books some some of which have um been more impactful than others
096and we'd like to suggest maybe I think I think it was you Stacy that said no I think you said in one of your emails that maybe we could um just be done with the book we're doing right now oh yeah that was me that was you instead of trying to try on through and finish it um maybe we're done with that is that agreeable to the rest of the board for board governance no heart feelings no it's not a personal thing and I think it's just really hard in 15 minutes to try to have you know quality discussion on something is a challenge it is a challenge you did a good job on your discussion though when you did was I can remember when we did it was it me or you it was
097a while and um if there are some other things you would like to do starting in September or whatever if there's another book you'd like to propose or something else you would like to pursue let let me know um or let Julie know and we'll take a look at that so if it's agreeable with you we're done with that book and we'll start something new um based on what you would like to to talk about so I guess the challenge I'd like to throw out is the superintendent challenge is for us to look at what is the best version of ourselves that we can be what is the best version of an Alpine board we can be uh for the next few months so uh suggestions are welcome and I would challenge you to just
098kind of put that in your heart your so with that in mind um we have a public hearing starting at 6 and my understanding is that Jason will do his presentation again and then we'll hear comments and then we'll have board meeting as soon as that hearing is over so for now let's take a break let's go get something to eat and um thank all of you for coming and all of you for your input and your good suggestions so if there's no objections um this session is adjourned and we will go to meeting probably caring e e e thank you for coming and joining us here today uh we will now hold a truth and Taxation hearing to receive input from the public with respect to the proposed fiscal year 2425 tax rate by
099Alpine School District those who have signed up to speak will have three minutes to comment and we would plead with you please stay within your three minutes um I have two sheets so far as people continue to come they will bring me those sheets and so um if you want to speak please make sure you have signed up uh when beginning your comments please remember to state your name and your address for the record all right let's begin I will read two or three names and what we going do Jason skip the sorry Jason we our business administrator now to make a presentation before we begin go ahead with comments all right thank you president hackin um just getting connected here let's see okay so this was presented in study session just a couple or
100an hour or so ago go through uh the presentation once more um for the benefit of everybody here so first off so that you don't have to take pictures on each slide there's a QR code right here you can scan that QR code and have your own PDF copy of that Jason could you just repeat that one more time just for the QR code yeah okay is anybody still this so this QR code if you scan that it'll take you to the district website or it'll take you to part of the district website which is a Google Drive which has a PDF of the presentation so everything that will be presented here is on that PDF anybody need more time on that okay in five four 3 [Music] 2 okay so this is the slide
101what is being recommended and what is the impact so there's a few slides that we'll go through and uh it'll show we'll have an an example of your tax notice what it may look like but this is a summary of what's being recommended what is the impact so the board's considering a net increase in property tax rates for the fy2 budget of four increments to meet operational and capital needs and that is a 7% increase over the certified tax rate so everybody's tax notice you'll see a line for Alpine School District that says 16 plus perc we'll explain the difference here so right there the the tax rate last year the final tax rate for all of those six different levies was Z 0.551 8 um with how the certified tax rate worked with all
102of the information that would have been 5715 this year and so the proposed is to go up to 6115 so 6115 divided by 5715 those are those two columns right here so the 6115 to the 5715 is 107% or a 7% increase so these are the the different levies so the board Levy is one that it's quite the storm okay so the board Levy is stayed pretty flat from one year to the next The Proposal is to raise that three spots here so the fourth decimal place from 774 to 1074 and that fourth decimal place is what's termed an increment so from 774 to 1074 the capital Levy up from 1010 to 1410 which would mean four increments and The Debt Service Levy which this change would not have shown up on your individual tax
103notice but to be able to reduce that Debt Service Levy down from 1231 to 931 so in essence this three increment decrease offsets this three increment increase and left with four increments in capital to be able to um fund projects that are needed board members any any any questions so far just a comment those of you are looking outside if you see a funnel cloud let us know okay it's not looking good out there yeah just a couple weeks ago I saw the movie Twister so I came out of that came out of that movie and I was looking around thinking I was going to see something and I was in California there wasn't going to be one but okay so a little more into what a tax increment I kind of explained it there
104so a tax increment is a fra fraction of a percent so that 0.00001 and so that right there the the primary uh the median value of homes in the district this year is 489,000 that's all all residential units and so for a $489,000 home if it's somebody's primary home they get a an exemption to reduce that down to 45% so 55% of the the total but down 45 to 268 so 268 times that one in the fourth decimal place is about $27 per year or $225 $224 per month so if the board decides tonight to do four increment increase which is the proposal the impact on the average home would be $108 10752 per year or about $9 per month now if somebody's home value value is less than the 489 that amount those amounts
105are going to be less if it's higher than that they're going to be a little proportionally more on that okay some a few items here how that mainly in that box so the county auditor is who sets the certified tax rate the assessor um assesses all of the property values both residential and Commercial and then the County Treasurer figures out what tax revenue each entity is allotted uh this explains a little bit about the certified tax rate so CTR certified tax rate um it's count certified um set by the county auditor so each taxing entity is has a revenue neutrality principle so each year basically for what property you had the year before you're guaranteed the same amount of Revenue each year so as PRI as home values go up the rate goes down to
106be able to have the same amount of Revenue there is a little bit of new Revenue that would come in when growth happens and so whenever the rate is set and then there's new growth on that a little bit comes in but those that growth also brings more students more schools needed so it doesn't quite keep up with Rising costs of inflation for taxing entities um there's also a note there at the bottom so business administrators throughout the state have been have been trying and working with uh state legislators to recommend that when the certified tax rate process happens that there's an inflation piece in that so that taxing entities don't have to go through truth and Taxation as often if we're saying okay last year you got this much revenue with inflation it should
107be a little bit more here's the new rate that would help help quite a bit but as it is now it's just the same Revenue each year unless the taxing entity decides to increase through truth and Taxation okay this is the slide that probably has the most detail it may look a little bit like your own individual tax notice and I've see that there are some people that have brought their own here so anything in yellow on this is going to be and that shows in that right column not included on your tax notice but included for clarity so it's just more information on that so this is as if the full market value up at the top is if you have the medium median home value of 489,000 so there's the residential exemption the
10845% reduction so your total taxable value value if you were in the exact median value home would be You' be taxed on 268 950 so over on the left in the white column you can see in red there's one that says Alpine School District I believe on your own tax notice that may be at the bottom line there's also the state Charter school- Alpine and then the Statewide School the basic Levy so those three were included you can see that there's some dots below just just for clarity of that or explaining that there's other things on your tax notice your city your county your water Conservatory District those aren't included here just to show what for schools your tax your property tax dollars are going to so the First Column you'll see on your own
109is in 2023 you'll see how much you paid for each of those three categories in your taxes but as you see in that yellow column the rate is not included on your tax notice we've included it here to be able to show the changes that have happened also on your tax notice uh that Alpine School District One actually includes four different levies which are shown in that arrow that goes down to the bottom so um you can see the very bottom line where it says 0048 last year or what this one would be with no increase would be 04238 those match the top line here so it's just to give more clarity on on that you see the 1652 1652 that the 9.44 this whole line is identical to this Top Line So within the
110Alpine School District line on your tax notice includes the board Levy the voted Levy the capital Levy and The Debt Service Levy so as shown in the slide three before this the it's proposed that the board Levy be increased from [Music] 0.774 to 01074 or three increments also proposed that the capital be raised four increments from 1010 to 1410 and this Debt Service one is the same in both so you can see the rate in this one is seven increments higher than the rate in this one what wasn't included is The Debt Service where the board can reduce this if they choose a little bit right now three increments offset the one in the board the reason that can happen The Debt Service rate how that is said it is not part of the certified
111tax rate where if values go up the rate goes down and vice versa The Debt Service is set each year the county will say how much do you owe in general obligation Bond debt or principal and interest how much do you need to pay this upcoming year and they can and they set the rate to that amount but for the past eight or nine years we've received a little bit more in Revenue than what we needed to pay that principle and interest and so there's been a fund balance that's grown in that fund and it can only be used to pay off debt from General obligation debt so it can only be used to either pay off debt early or to do something like this and like we did last year the same thing to
112be able to reduce the rate by three increments so we're still able to make the principal and interest payments um but the revenue this if this is chosen to happen the revenue this year will be about 17 million less than our expenses but we'll be able to use the fund balance to pay for that um so when we're looking at this that 1652 is calculated correctly on your tax notice but that's the 18827 if if the median home uh property tax went up $188 divided by what you would have paid just on that line it's a 16 a half% increase but if you include everything that comes to help with schools that increases only 12 and a qu% so 18827 over this 1537 but with the reduction of three increments in debt service um when
113you're looking at this it's it's a 7% increase and so that 7% is the 6115 over the 5715 or the four increment in increase or looking at it another way it's this $107 increase of what you would have paid over the 1537 and that 107 is the difference between um this 1644 and the 1537 so Jason can you um maybe help patrons understand I get this question a lot is why with the taxing entities it lists Alpine School District twice and explain that state charter school why it's under Alpine right and so um yeah the Alpine School District one has those four that are listed below the state Charter we actually have to account for the revenue and expense but never see the dollars they come in and that's that rate's the lowest it you
114can see it's the 0.0069 so it's a very small amount but that goes to all the charter schools that are within Alpine School District boundaries but the Bas the the other that's really not doesn't have Alpine on it is the Statewide School basic Levy which that money the state sets but it does benefit the school district so how that works is with the wpu value or weighted pupil unit that the state guarantees they set a basic rate so if if a school district is guaranteed $10 million from the wpu but 5 million comes in from the basic rate to their District the state gives 5 million more to make that guarantee there's some School District well there's a school district like Park City that may be guaranteed 10 million but generates 20 million in that
115and that extra 10 million goes back to help other school districts to have an equalization there again yeah the charter and the basic the charter and the basic are set by the state um through different formulas that the state legislature um determines okay so why truth in taxation this year there were some questions about um let's see so the first bullet there is to maintain 20 qualifying tax increments so the board and voted levies they have to be at a certain amount if they're not the state doesn't guarantee as much so this year it doesn't affect us but next year it would so it's it's wise to be able to increase that incrementally rather than wait on both of them every 5 years and have a big increase to be able to have that so
116having we have one that's above the minimum one that's below so next year to be able to get that we can change between the two without having to necessarily go through truth and Taxation to get it back to the minimum amount my understanding Jason is that the purpose of that is to incentivize local property local tax effort so that um the state can say you're you are making an effort to fund your public schools at a certain level correct yes okay um the second bullet just talking about some of the operational Investments that are proposed with this tax increase so being able to give the board and staff some opportunities for targeted class size reduction FTE when there's a school that may have a big influx flux of students that wasn't planned to be able
117to have lower class size from in the 30s to down into the 20s per teacher um par professional support for our sped students um an increase for substitute pay um we're trying to compete with other u b uh neighboring districts and they pay quite a bit more for daily sub rates and then a teacher Mentor program to be able to maintain teachers longer uh this is for the first three years of a teacher's career um the the last bullet there is to continue to build up the school building fund so last year through truth and Taxation the board set aside two and a quarter increments or about $13 million per year to go into a building fund to be able to buy land to be able to save up to build buildings elementaries um doing
118that can save a lot of interest without having to do as many General obligation bonds or lease revenue bonds and the bullet right before that um it's important to keep up on our maintenance um replacing things in physical facilities and Technology if we don't have quite enough of the funding but some things have to be done right away can be something of a temporary fix which will cost a lot less but then we go a few years later and be able to fix it that that total amount spent actually is a lot more than if we able to fix it um effectively right at the time it needs it okay so this are some these are some details of uses for new Revenue so the capital and operations are two separate things so there's recommended
119the four increments in capital which would all go towards the building fund um the value of one increment right now this year is about $5.6 million of Revenue so four increments would be$ 22.4 million and three years of that would be 67.2 million so the reason that's included is with the new high school being proposed and being worked on now with architecture and buying land um there was the thought back in March and April to maybe do a least Revenue Bond of 175 million back then before the law changed at the in May um but it was determined that if we were able to do four increments for three years and then do the amount that's now in law where you can do 200 million every 36 months we could be able to do the
12067 million there and 86 million of lease Revenue bond to to be able to build a high school the high school that there's about 20 million that went was approved by the board in June to go for the architecture of the new high school and and completing the purchase of the land so that's already accounted for somewhere else and then um down below the operations this is looking at just the top items are things that the board really felt strongly about in their work session so those um couple increments total there and that was listed on the previous slide and then all the other items were things that were requested through the budget process this um earlier this spring that there wasn't enough funding to fund but but the team the Committees felt that they
121were still very vital for District Operations and those are added there so you can see down at the bottom um the four increments and the three increments is seven increments generates about $40 million of additional Revenue but again remembering that Debt Service can be reduced by three increments so that would take off about the 16.8 million so the the amount net coming in would be the 22 million more which is the four increments this shows the um Alpine School District Total Property Tax Rate um over the last 10 years it's been going down because values have rapidly increased um over the last 10 years um this is just a summary side slide of just saying what's what's being what's being recommended and the impact so those are four increments again so the proposed final tax
122rate with all the six different uh levies tax rates that the that come to education um is a 7% increase over the certified tax rate and explains there the different ones and who sets those this shows the inflation um this is a chart we have you can see in 22 and 23 there was um looking at months it's looking back 12 months to see what the inflation is year-over-year so the last two completed fiscal years almost 7% each year on the inflation and new construction costs have gone way above that uh and teacher compensation benefits we've been trying to increase the board has tried to increase the starting teacher pay to um motivate more people to go into education and been successful in doing that but with Benefits health care costs teacher compensation that's gone
123up quite a bit uh you can see the other items there this is a history historical comparison of The Debt Service Levy and the capital Levy as general obligation bond has been paid off the board has wisely put some of that into a capital Levy to be less reliant on um Bond bonds and to be able to save taxpayers a lot in interest so is usually on a lease Revenue Bond or a general obligation Bond it takes 18 to 20 years to pay that off and we're able to get very good rates because of the AAA rating of Alpine School District but it's still there still is um interest costs associated with that and as we're able to move that to Capital and save up on that and then be able to pay more with
124cash there'll be a lot of savings in interest in the future this is the tax notice that was generated from the state tax uh website that we were required to put in the newspaper to post outside the the boardroom here and to put on our website so that's just explaining a little bit of the proposal and again this has the increase of $188 because it doesn't have the the proposed three increment reduction in debt service uh we wanted to provide this slide if you scan that QR code Utah County offers several tax relief programs so individuals that qualify for one or more of these programs they can reduce you know to anywhere from a minor to significant reduction of their property taxes so we're mindful of that many people on fixed incomes so scan that
125there's some deadlines that are pretty quick on that but there's some opportunities for for Relief through Utah County Le that up for a minute Jason I think some people are trying to get a picture um if you are part of my Facebook group I did a post today with the link there so if you just want to copy and paste that to send it to people you know it's it's right in the body okay board any questions com I'll show one more slide here this is just I thought this is very interesting this is so the tax year we just completed last year this is Alpine's the final rate of the 5518 compared to neighboring districts and where they were um so all of them that last column is percent above ASD so Provo and
126Nebo about 30 about a third 33% 34% higher um canyons and Jordan pretty similar and then you can see the others with wasach and anything I shared earlier that I forgot to mention now I just wanted to share um one of the line items on the detailed of how we're going to use this U Revenue proposed was the sped class size reduction and that was clarified in our study session that currently we have resource teachers who are carrying case loads of about 40 and we'd like to reduce that to 32 Case Case loads as well as speech language Pathologists who are carrying case loads that exceed 100 uh folders so that that's significant they need they need the relief and our sped department does not have the funds thank you for letting me share this
127um I know it's special special education pardon me special education this isn't uh I learn more and more about this each each year as I'm going through this and I know board members do too so it's something hopefully that brought Clarity to everybody um it's still there's a lot of depths and understanding of that but hopefully that was helpful okay Jason some people have come in since your first slide would you mind throwing that first slide up again so that if people who just came in want to um access that presentation they can take a picture of this really quickly and have that on their phone so let's just give a minute okay with that in mind let's um open the time up now to hear public comments I read that okay I'll read uh
128two names at a time and if you can just come right up and your time limit is 3 minutes minutes and we would appreciate very much if you would stay within those three minutes I have uh 30 people that want to comment at this point and um as people come in they'll have a chance to sign up but if your name is not on one of these sheets then we will not be able to have time for you to to speak so if you'd like to speak please make sure your name is on one of our sheets okay let's start with Jared Johnson followed by John Anderson come up to this phone this microphone right in the middle members of the board thank you my name is Jared Johnson I live about three blocks east
129of here I was here at the last I moved into American Fork about two years ago and I was here last year at the tax meeting at the truth and Taxation meeting um it's been a weird been a crazy few years with inflation home valuations everything like that it's interesting to see that as my home valuation is down by almost $100,000 since I bought it according to the assessor records with this proposed tax increase even with the the 7% instead of the the 12% um I would be paying more in property taxes this year than in when I originally bought the home for the Alpine School District it's been crazy with inflation we've all all felt it I'm sure that with um the board has felt it with their additional costs of schools and maintenance
130and everything like that however we have not felt it with Rising student enrollment over the past four four years student enrollment has gone up by less than 800 students whereas uh and if you calculate your total budget um divided by the number of students you've gone from just under $111,000 per student total to over 13,000 with the proposed budget for this year that's a 19% increase in money per student across the entire School District we also know that there will be more changes coming up especially this election season as the voters of cross aling School District vote on uh three different proposals to split up the district into two or three subd districts I would encourage you to please vote against this proposal right now there's a a lot of the proposed increase would go
131to a capital fund which would go to um schools presumably out uh out west where there's different needs than an aging district with fewer and fewer students out here out east where uh I I live personally if this needs to be done please let it happen as uh naturally as the citizens of this County decide what they want to do with the school districts um additionally it's important to maintain those 20 tax increments to receive that state funding last year that was a justification for increasing that and I found that uh persuasive to degree however this year the proposed tax Inc uh increase would lead to almost 23 tax increments which is more than we need this year it's it's an excess of what the state funding would of what we can get through State
132funding if that needs to increase next year as we're in this preliminary this trans transitional stage in between one massive Alpine School District versus two or three then we can have another truth and Taxation meeting next year and potentially increase it to make sure that we're getting those matching State funds however it's unnecessary this time voters voted down a large Bond two years ago and we've already seen two a smaller Bond a tax increase last year and a tax increase this year it hurts me as a a father with small children trying to make ends meet in this crazy inflationary environment and I can't imagine how much it must hurt those uh seniors and retired citizens I encourage you to vote against it thank you thank you Jared John Anderson followed by followed by Carly
133faren um first of all thank you for uh doing a hard job I know when you run the numbers and it looks like the needs are greater than the Revenue that's a hard place to be in um so thank you for that thank you also for the comprehensive annual budget report that's uh posted on the district website um I found it helpful uh but there was also some things in there that were very high level and I would love to see a more broken down uh set of information um this presentation was great to it helped beyond what the report had I would love to have been able to have that that information prior to this meeting to kind of digest it um I'd recommend if possible that that could be done going forward um
134there there were some things in the presentation that uh and and and in the budget report that I would love to have seen broken down further um I noticed that about 22% um just under 22% of the operations costs um listed in the proposed budget increase were for additional support for schools and programs and miscellaneous FS or uh FY 26 budget requests um that's kind of a large percentage to Nazi broken down a lot of them were broken down a lot finer um so I mean sometimes we have to part with our money but all of us would love to uh to feel a little bit better about it if we can see everything that is seen that goes into the decisions that are made and the proposals that that come up for the increases
135um so the the more broken down it can be realizing that not everybody's going to want to see all the nitty-gritty but that that would definitely be helpful um you also mentioned in the presentation that um growth doesn't quite keep up with the increases in expenses that would be a great thing to see the difference between where the growth is and where the expenses increase what and and you know how that all breaks down as well um I did notice in the report that it said that the expected increase is uh 71 students for this next year um and I had no idea so I looked on the Alpine School District website and there uh looked like there were more than 71 schools which would come out to like an average of less than one
136additional student per school and I realized we're trying to get the classroom sizes down and that's a slight uh change in the other direction um but I also noted it in the budget report it said overall expenditures of all funds are expected to decrease by 118.5 million uh that was copied straight out of the budget report and so I'm I'm in my mind to have additional information before this meeting that can help me reconcile oh there's slight increase in number of students across the district less than one per school with an expected decrease in expenditures of almost 120 million it's like uh trying to figure that out would be really helpful thank you thank you John Carly faren followed by Mar [Applause] baitman I'm Carly faren from Saratoga Springs first let me commend you for
137a very well-run School District I've compared your administrative costs with the 40 other Utah school districts and ours is impressively the cheapest I know we have a few state law makers in the audience but I wish we had more legislators here so they could see the consequences of income tax cuts in February I published an opinion article advising lawmakers to not cut income tax and return the funds to schools instead when the state cuts income tax school districts must make up the loss funding with a higher property tax Which is less flexible and harder on families the nine figure income tax surpluses of the past several years should have gone to schools to answer inflation and population growth especially building schools out west so while we'll need to have more conversations with lawmakers about this
138oversight in the meantime we can't afford to starve our schools of funding in other words I support a property tax increase because schools are our most valuable investment in Tech there's a well-known term called Tech debt Tech debt is essentially small short-sighted gains in exchange for massive long-term losses businesses who lack imagination and unwisely believe they can t cut All Tech except the Bare Essentials often end up paying their paying for their lack of oversight many times over when life happens and reality hits we would be wise to learn from these same mistakes and lack of vision our public education system is our massive Statewide jobs training program funding it well will keep Utah competitive producing competent workers who we can depend on to keep our economy running strong when we are ready to retire
139we elected you to manage our ever important education system we'll do our best to persuade the state to increase income tax funding for education in the meantime please raise property taxes to preserve what we've built and keep our students moving forward and up thank you thank you Carly Margaret baitman followed by I believe is MJ Humphries my name is Margaret bitman and I live in Lehi I know that a lot of money has moved into our communities but there are a lot of us that have lived here a lot lifetime we work hard on meager wages or on fixed incomes families are choosing whether to eat or to pay their bills so their bills are going on credit cards where are we supposed to get more money to give you more money we live on
140budgets and I do encourage that you do not raise her taxes thank you Margaret MJ humph followed by long pay MJ Humphrey Saratoga Springs um one of the things that you brought up and and you showed was that there's a 7% increase the question is here is I know that it's not totally correlatable but who got a 7% increase in pay this year I don't know I didn't so going along with the lady that just spoke there isn't there there's a lot going in with inflation we're we're going in we're probably not in a recession but we're pretty dang close you're asking for more money on top of that our home values have increased and so there is more tax money I know that you've showed that things adjust but don't adjust accordingly and so
141it appears that we're playing a lot of math games I'm an engineer I I play with math and that's what that looks like to me is math games to try to justify additional money going out like the first gentleman that spoke I don't know the last time that I have paid less in taxes than more now you showed a you did Show a slide that showed that our taxes were going down on the assuming that it was only for Alpine School District so there's differences being made up every time you guys go down somebody goes up and then you guys go up and we continually go up we don't ever come down and we're in a state that we prioritize low taxes we prioritize the freedoms that we have and less government in our lives
142and I that's the part where I go back to is I don't disagree with paying for my kids education but when I have a three kids one in each level of school and I haven't seen a damn difference in three years that's a problem and that's why I vote no on this and that's why I'll Contin to say no because I'm not noticing the difference I don't see it yet I have kids in it we need I think we need more of that to be able to see what where our stuff's going and like the last gentleman said or two ago more openness and more detail in the breakdown would do that thank you thank you [Applause] MJ long K followed by Wendy Jensen uh hi everyone I'm L I'm uh from Lehi I live
143on Traverse Mountain uh first uh I want to to um like talk about the school district ratings I found on n.com um the school is the second best in Utah County and uh but it's only only number 12 in Utah um but uh other school districts U even the best one hasn't really increased the the property tax that much compared to this school district also I think the the increase should be line up with the performance so according to the state task scores 45 students are at least proficient in math and 50% uh proficient in Reading in this second best school district um in Utah County I don't think that's high and uh uh I understand the education is very important um part uh in the nation I also went to um American High School
144for one semester here before I graduate um I know math is very important but your increase like 16.52% on the property tax that seems uh too much and in order to justify for such increase I think that should be measured uh in some like a matrix based on the performance of the students number of Stu proportion of stud students that can graduate and go to college uh compared to other school districts in Utah um to justify for your increase like pay for performance uh I I work in healthc care like every time insurance company submit uh a rate increase they have to give uh sufficient data and uh justifications even that they don't increase that much maybe only 5% on your premium um I work on Consulting side I say both the hospital and uh
145and the insurance side for for your health insurance um in order to like uh to make the increase they they share the risks they need to improve efficiency in order to get U uh higher pay so I think uh we shouldn't just count on how much cost um we have we should meure the essential cost and for the optional cost we should uh measure based on the performance of the uh School District um compared to other ones in order to to see if the increase is necessary um and uh publish those uh metrics let the um the public vote uh set up a benchmark in the beginning of the year see if you meet the target uh if you meet the target you get the increase but if you you you don't meet you get
146a proportion of the increase like 50% to like uh 120% of the increase that would be fair um instead of just based on cost yeah thank you thank you Wendy Jensen followed by Lisa wingler hello I'm Wendy Jensen I live in Saratoga Springs on lake mountain um just to share some thoughts about tax increases I can't say I'm in support unless I know that some of the money will go towards the new high school out west if not then I am not in support of this tax proposal because our kids suffer and have to go without you all know that we have asked for a needed High School in Saratoga Springs for a while now so this is why our our needs are not being met for our students even our superintendent encouraged the board
147to build a school in the board meeting on 4:30 when he said our recommendation is that the board go through the lease Revenue Bond and the true Taxation and start building the high school so that it is in place if there was a separation in the same meeting ades said I want to publicly say that I am committed to a high school in the west I'm committed to acting on this in August well it's August sorry where is the conversation about the high school why are we talking about raising taxes when the high school is not for sure and you still have to decide we should have had this conversation before now this is just another imp perfect example of why we need to separate the district our students deserve better my kids deserve better
148I will ask you again to please please vote to build our our high school because our kids deserve it thank you thank you rendy Lisa rer followed by Carrie Kerr L Lisa iner orm um I sent three kids fortunately through the Alpine School District they've all graduated through 12 and other than a short stint and when I put them in a charter school because I did not like investigations math and my elementary would not help my daughter with her dyslexia I have given time money energy to Alpine and I've Loved Alpine and I've supported mostly all the taxes that come through but this one's a hard one we've all seen the bloat in our houses taxes are hard I'm paying additional 400 this year which is a lot and I'm willing to do that but
149I want to understand where it's going now ie appreciate the breakdown I agree about the operational costs all of them that I saw up there I agree with where that's going but I also want to know where's the sacrifice coming from we are all sacrificing we are all struggling with utilities and home costs and every other form of cost businesses are struggling the job I had before they had one now was doing my job and two others because of layoffs we all are sacrificing right now and I want to understand where the sacrifice is here so I started looking at salaries where's the money going because we know we need operational costs so looking at govs salaries.com you look at basically the average according to Census Bureau right now the 24 to 40 year old
150in Utah the medium income is $71,000 not a lot but that's what it is now I'm looking at Alpine School District and what individuals are getting paid and I looked at person after person after person and they were all over 200,000 so you look at Shane farnworth who's the superintendent his annual salary is over 240,000 the salary is 481 per higher than the average 800% higher than the medium salary in Alpine School District Robert Smith a business administrator he makes the highest annal salary of 336,000 and over 74% higher than the average 1,1 161% higher than the medium salary in Alpine School District and then just looking at the state as a whole he makes 179% higher than the average business administrator in the state of Utah then I'm looking at the schools if my
151kids went to orm high I had they have one principal four Vice principles all making over 100,000 a year almost $600,000 in salvies and that's not even counting benefits which we know is very high so why why is this so why do we have such a huge administrative at the district level and also at the school level where all that money is going there needs to be cut businesses are cutting we're cutting and I want to understand how that is coming into play when you're looking at money coming into the district thank you thank you Lisa Gary ker followed by John [Applause] gesy Carrie Kerr followed by John Gillespie I'm Cory ker from Pleasant grow oh that's fine um lived in the school district in my same home for 50 years and paid for my
152children my grandchildren now my great grandchildren I'm not opposing a Utah County tax I'm opposing Alpine School districts increase in taxes on a fixed income we pay more and more every year for a part that I think we have done our job after 50 years in this same home in the same district so I'm speaking for all people on fixed income that this is a hardship and maybe needs to be taken up by the next or a younger generation thank you thank you Kye John gisi followed by Joe garlic I thank you for your service to the district and the community especially to the community you're a representative to both but mainly the community and those that help elect you to these offices there's a lot that's been said about the funding of education at
153the state level District Charter Schools homeschooling I'm appreciative of the truth and Taxation requirement not sure how it came about but the tax increases in 2023 2021 2020 2019 2018 and the bond failure in 2022 I think the Bond failure sends a message this required the approval of the general population it seems that the general population felt like that was a tremendous burden on the other hand these other approvals were only based off of you seven members of the board I stand Here representing five households my home in American Fork and a fourplex in orm I've not raised the rents on my tenants but I'm afraid that I'm going to need to between the tax increases utility increases and everything else they're not rich tenants I'm not a rich owner I've lived in the area
154for almost all my life orm used to be Orchards and apparently Pleasant Grove had strawberries to say the population increase in the value in the Valley is not a natural inflationary increase would be nonsense but we've seen so many homes condominiums rental all of which are feeding the tax systm birth rates are down family size is declining yet more and more residents are feeding the system I feel for those that have purchased home in homes in these past five years of such inflated prices how can they make the payments on their property taxes I just see many factors that are contributing to Alpine's funding without a need for another tax increase one the inflation of the housing market two the continued increase of homes and residents population boom three the decrease in the number of
155children four the use of charter schools and home schools thus needing less Taxation and I wouldn't if it wouldn't have been pointed out but when I see the charter schools are getting $2 to run theirs and and ours are up at 200 plus anyway I'd hope you consider reconsider approving this tax rate live within your means use your good times use these good times do not put another burden on the local citizens Joe garlic followed by Ben Smith Joe garlic from Pleasant Grove where we grow strawberries anyway I went over here to the old Junior High School in American Fork graduated from American fort I live in Pleasant Grove now but I still like a caveman uh all our kids grew up in Pleasant Grove to the school there we've been there for 40 years
156now our taxes have gone from about $700 a year to over 2,000 in that time Alpine School District all the time uh I've not outgrown education and certainly my grandkids haven't and I'm always for it I think there is an unbalance in I guess superintendent wages and stuff and and the other I'm not saying you don't earn your money because you probably do and I'm just saying there needs to be a little more accountability I think when we build new high schools or any school it doesn't have to be a tosma hall it needs to be focused on the students and on the teachers uh I appreciate the Alpine School District I've been in it for a while not working in it but dealt with it uh I love the area uh we all want
157to support what we can but I'm on a fixed income too I agree with everybody else has talked about that our raises don't come period uh inflation I can make it now but if inflation keeps going like it is now we aren't going to make it and the taxes aren't going to help anyway thank you for the time thanks Jo okay Ben Smith the next one looks like EJ Tucker did I get that right Ben go ahead first I want to say thank you for um supporting us and for supporting the district and running it I appreciate that before I came to this meeting I went to an open house for my daughter she's in third grade I have a third grader I live in Saratoga I have a third grader I have a fifth
158grader and I have an eighth grader the third grader some of their classes are 34 people like that is way too many many effing people kids to have in a class third grade man 34 kids in third grade like that's just unacceptable to me and I noticed and I appreciate the breakdown that you guys did on this about what the money is going to and I I noticed that some of that money is going towards um class size reduction so I appreciate that because that is sorely needed on the on the west side and we aren't building Taj Mahal schools over there I don't know what people are thinking but that's not happening these are just like basic schools with basic stuff it's not nothing fancy it's not like Skyridge uh these are just basic
159schools and those schools are needed like we need a new high school already and it needs to be and I noticed that that's on here too so I appreciate that um I know that the money like everybody is worried about their tax taxes worried about their money I'm a government employee I do not make a lot of money I'm not a rich person but I believe in investing in my children and their education and so I support this tax increase because I'm willing to do that and I think it's just needed it's needed to be done and the people that don't like it like the people you need to be complaining to or the state legislators that are cutting your income tax and taking money away from the school the schools like that's where your
160that's where your fight should be is with the state legislature and not with the school board that's just trying to do the right thing for my kids so again thank you I appreciate what you're doing I appreciate the fact that you're trying to build a school on the west side you're sending money to that I appreciate trying to reduce class sizes that's desperately needed I also noticed that there's um there's a funding line in there for um substitute teachers I know people that go to Salt Lake County to sub because they can make 50 to7 75 more in Salt Lake County than they can in Utah County my wife's a substitute teacher not because she's trying to make money it's just because like she's trying to help my kids get through school and like help
161teachers that need a break and so I I mean I I'm not saying my wife needs more money what I'm saying is is I know that you know that's that would maybe help get people to come back to here instead of going to Salt Lake County in sub thank you thank you Ben next um it looks like EJ Tucker call followed by Carol Siller did I get that right my name is Ed Tucker um I live in Highland I moved there in 1983 and uh I'm 85 years old I got old over the time and changed my financial situation a lot uh but uh the last three years uh the property taxes on the halpine school district have gone up for my house at least $200 to $300 and and that's really difficult on a
162fixed income and so I I'm speaking uh against the raise uh raising uh the taxes this year uh the property taxes so I I love this community I love the where I live I I do support the students uh and the and the schools and what's been said here I don't fully understand being an old guy but uh nevertheless uh I I'm speaking on behalf of those of us who have retired and have found the increases very difficult uh from right now the my taxes are 2500 so that to me that's a lot of money so anyway thank you thank you Mr Tucker Carol Siller followed by Wanita hunt Carol Siller did I say it wrong hi I'm Wanita hunt and I have lived in Pleasant Grove for almost 21 years and I love it
163um each year though with the tax raises going up and up and up and I have my husband in a care facility in American Fork and that cost me $3,000 a year my husband is a retired teacher and as you know teachers are not wealthy and I'm trying to hang on to my house but every year my taxes go up and up and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to leave my home that I love and so I just would like to say if you can please be careful with the finances and consider I mean I don't have any children in the Alpine School District No grandchildren I have no one and I don't mind paying my share but sometimes it gets to be too much that with everything going on inflation and all
164I have a hard time making ends meat even just to get my yard taken care of thank you very much thank you an let me call this name again and I may be reading it wrong it looks like Carol Siller it could be something else is there anyone here that is even close to that address okay let's move ahead I'll call for that again Alicia Albert followed by uh John iring hi my name is Alicia Alba I live in Lyndon it's nice to see all of you I want to start by thanking you for the opportunity to speak and also um by thanking each of you for your service on our board I appreciate it um like many residents I'm also disappointed to see that our taxes are being raised again especially in light of
165the imminent school closures and program changes which I believe will be announced by you next month I also and also knowing that these taxes are a m drop in the bucket compared to the critical needs across our district that have been building up for years now without being addressed I believe the current financial shortfall and other challenges that we Face are a direct result of how unwieldy our Mammoth district has become we've reached a point where what was once an economy of scale is now a dis economy of scale where our board feels pressur to rob Peter to pay Paul where we can no longer successfully Bond and where disperate and critical needs across our district are not being met unfortunately I believe that our overly large district is no longer the system best equipped
166to continue providing a highquality education to our children this system is not financially healthy it is not sustainable although I know many of you are doing your very best you are currently tasked with representing more people than our state legislators if we had the same ratio of students to school board members as some as the smaller districts in Utah have then instead of seven board members we would have um that we currently have we would have between 21 and 42 board members representing the new of our district our communities our teachers and our students I appreciate the wisdom of District leaders who understand this and who understand that our District's future needs to diverge that our best path forward is actually a part and I believe that each of the three potential districts um that
167will be on the B this fall not only will have what it needs to survive but to thrive we need districts which can provide more responsive representation more connected leadership and a financially healthier system which can better meet the needs of our communities and our teachers and again most of all our students students I hope as communities this fall that we can all unite in separating into more financially healthy and sustainable smaller districts for the sake of our children by again supporting the three-way split on the ballot this fall um and in the meantime I urge you not to vote for this tax increase thank you thank youa Jan iring sorry right followed by Jim huet okay my name is Jan iring and I live in Highland um and I agree with some of those
168that have talked about needing more information more detailed information about uh you know where where these Cuts or where the money is needed um I was a teacher trainer and uh ESL teacher English as a second language teacher for 50 years and um I um am very familiar with the situation with the immigrants coming into Utah and uh so this would be more of a question question to me um if you have any more information about whether some of these new needs uh for example the the need for more schools uh teachers technology assessment additional support special education whether this could be related to the what what I've heard of the 200 to 300,000 undocumented immigrants that have arrived by bus and plane because of the Biden Administration the last four years um uh many
169of these uh individuals have children in in the schools we've heard about it over in uh Herman mostly but I believe Provo and other uh cities also are feeling the effects um uh my research has shown that only 10% of those hundreds of thousands in Utah are true as siles that that would be here legally the rest are here they economic refugees or migrants I would say not even refugees but migrants um and so I I feel like the whole state and you know the the educational um uh aspect or a part of that there's a lack of transparency to Citizens and I think we need to know um uh are any of these new costs associated with an illegal population that could possibly with the next Administration be deported so you know you wouldn't
170want to be building all these schools and hiring the new teachers if they're not going to be here um you know in November um so i' I'd also like to know what cuts uh have you made um uh already um I know that the cost of Dei administrators diversity equity and inclusion administrators are very very costly um there's a lot of free breakfast going on for uh lots of people and of course if there are illegal immigrants in the schools they would that would be a huge cost probably I don't know how that fits in with your budget there um and I guess those are you know my question are more for transparency when you say you need more assessment is that ESL assessment when you need more teachers is that because there are more
171children in the classroom where you've got to build more schools and more teachers need to be hired um so that's it's more you know kind of a question to be more transparent and um I'm a widow I don't have any kids or grandkids in the Alpine School District so like the other people that have spoken um I've got almost a $300,000 um tax bill and you know I'd like to know that that's being used well thank you thank you Jan Jim huet followed by Ryan Curley can you repeat that name I signed the wrong sheet but my name is Jim huet and be happy to speak uh based on what the impact has been to me to see the notice on the tax increase for the district I've uh I live here in American Fork
172formerly from Highland and I've been here 50 years and so I'm sure with many of these good people I've defeased a lot of the general obligation bonds and uh seing a lot of the new capital requirement needs for the district my my children have been out of the system for uh few decades now and yet I believe as we all believe we're a better Community if our children are educated and well educated but if I could just back up to the 10,000 foot level maybe what uh some of the other folks here are feeling it's that uh we've got a major squeeze playay going on uh with our economy and we find that uh inflation is fighting uh the single families in many different levels it doesn't exempt the school district and the school system
173from suffering the same um inflation pressures as businesses or or or even the single families um but we've got to be a little more prudent I know I've got a tighten my belt in my budget my family budget and I think the school district uh needs to be aware of that I've heard several speakers tonight uh speak to that especially those that are on fixed incomes but uh I notice when we get a tax notice uh from uh the county it's it's a it's an increase but it's a paper increase I wish my property level could be the same and they just pay me the cash somehow for my increase but that's not the way it works and so we refine taxes Rising on on wealth that's created on paper basically so I would urge
174the district to to take a a broad view of this with the demographics that are changing within the state of Utah that we see coming in from other states and and and really putting their needs on our districts and our cities and our school systems we've got to be be careful that the economies of scale that we've enjoyed in the past might be better off if we're fractured into smaller systems where where maybe uh local leadership and local voices can shape their future of their education for their children thank you thank you Jim Ryan Curley followed by Betty Evans or members thank you for your time tonight and thank you for the public it's great to hear all of your comments um so I wanted to express some concerns I had and hope that you'll
175hear what I have to say um the first is is that I had some concerns actually about the scheduling of this meeting tonight I should have been with my daughters at our back to school night and U that's where I need to be as a parent is at the high school with my kids and and not here um the second is is that per KSL this is the six tax increase in 10 years that's being proposed and so my question is are we being efficient with our our our tax dollars um the third is is that there's a lot of unknowns right now we don't know what the makeup of the Alpine School District is going to be is this a bit premature to be asking for such a a tax increase and then on
176top of that we we have a water district proposed tax increase and a huge County tax increase and um uh I'm in that boat with people I'm I'm wondering how am I going to pay my mortgage how am I going to pay my bills um I know of people in my neighborhood that are really struggling with this and please um think about it thank you thank you R okay Betty Evans followed by Sean Barry hi my name's Becky Evans and I'm sorry that's okay um I I'm a speech language pathologist that's worked in the schools and a mother of four and a grandmother of four and I love our children um I do have a question for everyone to ask themselves are schools becoming more important than our homes um I've seen first hand that
177children that have their needs met at home perform much better in school families need money to care and feed their families to care for and feed their families I'm concerned about the elderly who are making choices between their U medication and their food and I'm concerned that it's not just them it's many people that are struggling financially I'm concerned that um things are very tight for many families so people are having to cut back and so is Alpine School District also cutting back and is the construction of these new schools really necessary if so um build basic schools why Taj Mahal um I would say we cut back our plans here and I would encourage you to vote against this tax thank you thank you Becky Shan Barry followed by Michelle senson thank you again
178as everyone has expressed thank you for the service that you render but again I have some feelings about it too like most of the people have spoken my name is Shawn Barry I live in Pleasant Grove um the gentleman before me just mentioned that it's a 7% increase here it's a 48% increase that Utah county is looking to assess my home more which is another $95 based on what that is that's 48% that's not inflationary that's somebody can't figure out how to manage your dog gone money that's my opinion I'd like to ask the board those who are salaried employees how many of you got a raised if you will share that did you get a raise this year will you not share that did you not get a raise I'm one said no I'm
179sorry that's not appropriate for a public hearing like this it's public information excuse me our job is to listen we don't okay okay so I'll take that as a Noe comment it's all public information but are you the Mr Farms worth is making $250,000 a year it's a yes or a no it's it's easy to find out please just answer the question okay $250,000 a year and the one lady said the median income is 70,000 I could replace you with four people not not that it should happen but you've got to understand where we are coming from we don't always we're not this Big Apple you can keep taking bites out of and the Apple's still there eventually you get to a core and it's done back in the 1970s I got a minute left
180back in the 1970s I'm from California originally there was a an act called Proposition 13 if you don't know about it Google it if you do know about it it froze property taxes whenever you bought a house so if you bought a house wherever the value was until that house sold the property taxes it with a very minimal amount that could be raised get ready for that in Utah because it's going to show up and if anybody's interested in that talk to me afterwards that's all I have to say vote no on this and you need a pay cut thank you Michelle senson followed by Jared Bramwell hi my name is Michelle senson I'm a resident of Oram and I'm here um to express my support for this tax increase uh looking at the line
181items and the uses for the increase in funds I appreciate that they are not extravagant expenses and I especially appreciate the additional FTE and teachers that are you you are um trying to fund to reduce class sizes I'd like to e Echo some of the thoughts about our legislator legislatures that are um uh progress progressively cutting our public education funding and um ask that you um those that are thinking that this is all their fault it's not and um we need to to hold our legislation um accountable for the um decreases that they've given to Public Funding over the last few years thank you thank you Michelle Jared granwell followed by Lan Ario thank you go ahead sorry like everyone else I appreciate your time and your service and all that you do and I
182appreciate all the comments that have been made there are a lot of people have spent time researching and and delving into things my my comments are relatively simple and I I don't want to repeat what other others have said but as I look at my property tax notice that I received there's already a tax increase that's built into it so to to a certain degree what we're talking about is an increase on an increase already I and I'm just looking at mine it amounts to about a 10% and there may be some math I think another gentleman mentioned that there's you get into math and and the specifics so it's a little bit tough and I may be missing some things but it looks like basically a 10% increase without doing anything a 10% increase
183we've talked about inflation all this fill it um 10% is would be a substantial I think everyone would say hey if I could get a 10% increase on my income I I would take it um with the the request to tax increase it goes up you know we're talking about a 20% increase just going to Alpine School District and so I don't feel like um Alpine School District would be suffering from money or wouldn't be able to accomplish what it needs to do in educating children and um building what needs to be done there's costs that come off as as bonds are paid off there's Revenue that would stay the same um that would facilitate additional growth as needed um so I would vote against the tax increase I believe um comments have been made
184about I have friends some of my best friends are teachers um and administrators and I would just note that I feel like from from an outside Observer the quality of life is extremely high as a teacher uh I I know it's a little bit of a um I think political suicide to attack teachers or question pay and and I'm not doing that necessarily but as I've observed I feel like the quality of life of of teachers is quite high they have way more time off than than most people and uh so I'm not sure what the rumbling is about but I'll leave it there um I would vote against the tax increase thank you thank you [Applause] Lane is it arbo Lane Abbott thank you so uh followed by Jordan Mueller so I live in
185Highland um and I I had four kids go through the school district and they got a reasonably good education I don't have any complaints with that but um there was a gentleman there was a gentleman that talked about numbers games and I think that's there's some truth in that um sure the percentage has gone down but the real dollars have risen dramatically in the last three years um the amount of uh my taxes have increased 60% my property taxes and uh of that 60% 60% of that has gone to the Alpine School District so from me you guys have gotten an increase of $1,800 a year real dollars actual dollars not percentages um so I think the real conversation is the actual dollars you have gotten more um that's a fact I can show it
186in my property valuations of each of the last three years um my taxes are now um as I said 60% higher than they were three years ago the majority to the Alpine School District um I also grew up in California uh in the 70s so I know all about Prop 13 and I do believe that's coming here and I believe it's Justified and I think that you need to take that into account people people are tired they're tired of paying more and more and more I think when you get into government there's a feeling that the most important things that occur in life are the things that the government does um I would say it is not um they are important there's plenty of important things the government does that's why we have a government
187but the most important things that happen happen in our homes and our homes are being SOS and um we have less and it does hurt and so I want you to uh to take that into account uh I believe that you can get by just fine without the percentage increase because you did get a dollar increase and I believe you all know that you see the budgets I know you've gotten more money and I believe that you know you've gotten more money so the percentage is really a misrepresentation in my in my opinion um but I I do thank you I I think this is a great meeting and thank you for the opportunity to speak um and uh once again uh think long and hard about raising taxes on us thank you thank you
188L Jordan Mueller followed by Larry and I'm not sure is it Batu Jordan mu followed by Larry and it looks like Batu but I probably have that wrong if your name is Larry you're up next after Jordan mu Jordan Larry Larry from Pleasant Grove Chris Chris corn followed by John johanes small okay I'm gonna try and get through three minutes my name is Chris K I have been resident of Saratoga Springs for 20 years as of tomorrow I have four children attending three different schools within the Alpine School District Springside lake mountain and Westlake a home of the greatest teachers and administrators in the district I is currently C ly serving my second term as a member of the city council in Saratoga Springs however tonight I'm addressing you not in my capacity as a
189council member but as a concerned parent my eldest daughter is entering 10th grade at West Lake uh a facility originally designed to accommodate 1,752 students with the additional portable classrooms the Mac school's maximum capacity has been increased to 2,246 students Alpine's uh October 23 student count has 2864 students currently in rolled at west lake which we all know that number is higher a year later this figure exceeds the building's original capacity by 1,112 students that means West Lake High School is currently operating Beyond its intended capacity equivalent to the total student population at other high schools in the district this raises significant concerns about the fairness and Equity of the education being provided to students in my area I'm deeply troubled by The District's proposed 16.5% tax increase particularly given the lack of Comm from
190a majority of the board that these funds will be allocated toward constructing a new High School in the west with interlocal agreements now in place I have heard that many ASD board members May delay any decisions regarding the new High School in the western part of the district until after November elections I often hear board members emphasize that education is about the children if that is truly the case why delay the commitment to a new school that is urgently urgently needed now not in 5 to seven years [Applause] as someone who is AC actively engaged in politics I reminded of the famous quote you will know it when you see it the decision to wait until November smacks of political maneuvering over the past decade ASD has raised my property taxes 43.5% yet the capital
191needs of my children remain unmet in closing I'd like to read a portion of an email sent to me on April 29th by board member Wilson I want you to know I am committed to funding a high school in your area with no conditions please do not pass this tax increase without 100% firm commitment tonight to build a new High School in the west thank you thank you okay John help me out is it Johannes MPP Johannes Meer or if Johan Johannes Meer if you want to do the German side of it well absolutely so I just want to give you a little insight into my high school we heard a lot about Alpine School District I want to tell you about my high school in duding Florida we were packed and our building was
192cinder blocks and it was hot in the summer heat there okay but somehow we got by in fact we had split sessions which I you might not know what that is uh but in Split sessions we had the Juniors and seniors go from about 7 to 12 and then from 12:30 to 5: we had the freshman in sophomore the school did everything they could to provide a great education and they did we had a great school there was Community there was everything there and I brought my little metal lunch pail to school I would have never thought in a million years to have the school provided for me and not only my lunch but my breakfast and maybe even a dinner that's inconceivable in in my mind and at time it doesn't make sense schools
193back then taught Reading Writing and arithmetic and we were good at it okay very good at I think our generation there's a lot of older people here would say we're pretty dog on good at those things and nowadays it's not the same when the school provides breakfast lunch and all these other things and you're taking away the accountability and responsibility of parents and you're taking those on and I would just like to read a quote here from Thomas Jefferson he says I predict the future happiness of Americans if they can pre prevent the government from wasting their labor of the people under the pretense of taking care of them we don't need a school to do everything for our kids we as parents have the responsibility and obligation the god-given responsibility to do that and
194when the state takes control of it you're taking away our god-given right and that's not fair at all when the state or when the the school district keeps taking more and more money to provide more and more to students it's socialism that's got to stop we love our kids just as much as you love your kids we want to take care of them we can feed them that's not a problem that's Our obligation and we'll do that maybe it's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a snack pack in the bag like I had but it worked and I'm better for it now because of that because I have a little backbone and drive in myself that I think nowadays it's hard to find in a lot of our youth please don't pass this tax it's
195not going to help our students become the people they need to become thank you John Alex Day followed by John Gad Alex Day followed by John Gad hi there so my name is Alex St uh I stand here today in strong support of this tax increase um I'm a homeowner in American Fork I've lived there for about two well just over two years now um I'm a current candidate for State Legislature I think there's a lot to be done there I've lived in the Alpine School District my entire life um I've gone through the schools all of my public education was through the Alpine School District and it was a phenomenal experience I love education and I know that a strong education sets up our youth for Success later in their lives um but to
196obtain that strong education and Future success I recognize that our school district needs better funding we need increased funding I also want to acknowledge as some have stated we would not have to consider this increase if our legislature allocated proper funds for public education there is a severe failing on the part of the legislature the decision to cut income taxes for the wealthiest utans now puts us in a position where lower and middleclass households and families might have to shoulder a higher tax burden it's unfair it's not right but that's where we are I know there's a lot of economic hurt right now and no one should have to choose between putting food on the table and paying something like a property tax it's not a great choice to have to make right but and
197it's clear that the legislature needs to do more to help utans who are in a lot of need that said the needs of our district still exist uh we talked about how class sizes are far too large uh teachers that are in the trenches right now deserve better compensation they deserve competitive pay and they're not getting it and schools need to be built right I think that's pretty clear um our teachers and children in our school district should not have to suffer because of something like the legislature of shortsightedness we're talking about classes that are over 30 kids like how can we say there's not a need there it's very clear to me that there is a need I recognize that having an additional tax here is going to to impact some fam's finances probably
198more than my own um but I don't know that there's a more worthy cause than ensuring a quality education for our youth right ensuring a quality education for tomorrow's leaders so I would like to reiterate I'm in strong support of this tax increase it's not an ideal situation but with the cards we've been dealt right now it needs to happen we need better funding for public education thank you thank you Alex uh John Gad good evening my name is John G I bought my home in Pleasant Grove 24 years ago which means I've been paying Alpine Schoolboard taxes for this will be my 25th time I hold in my hand a chart I went through the Schoolboard meeting minutes and in the last six years this school board has voted unanimously all but two of
199the times to raise our taxes 10 times in six years tonight will be number 11 five of those times were bonds five of those times where tax rate increases and that's not just keeping up with inflation I checked I compared it to inflation it's faster than inflation so this is a habit this is a problem that you as a school board have um you say you need more money for education but here's the problem you don't need more money you're wasting tons of money if you took all the money you were wasting and just spent that on the things that are most important teaching the children uh you'd have plenty of money here's where you're wasting money you're building schools that are way too fancy you're building schools that are tajma halls or Crystal palaces
200I went through K through2 education in one-story schools and I got a great education because school buildings don't educate students great teachers do and the fact of the matter is You're Building schools that are way too fancy students do not need to walk through a three or four story glass Atrium or a three or four story glass entryway to get a good education You're Building these extravagant school buildings because I think it's a pride thing I think you like to put your name on the building or you like to point at it and say look what I built but the Stu that doesn't help student outcomes that doesn't help students get a better education the other way you're wasting money is through massive layers of bureaucracy everybody can look this up go to transparent Utah
201website and search to see how much the governor has compensated look at his pay and his benefit the governor who administers the whole state of Utah and then go to Alpine School District and look at their top pay look at pay and benefits there are 55 administrators in Alpine School District including two of you sitting here on the podium tonight who make more than the governor of the state of Utah how is it possible that he's able to administer the entire state of Utah and yet 55 of the people who administer little pieces of Alpine School District make more than him in total compensation it's it's just ridiculous the other big problem you have is you all voted to raise your you doubled your own pay the school board I'm talking to the seven of
202you in 2021 you all voted to raise your own pay you doubled it and it's not just your pay again it's pay and benefits the benefits that some of you receive is up in the $40,000 range per year for the 12 or sorry the 17 or 24 meetings that you come to so you're wasting too much money you're stealing the American dream from people in Alpine School District they're not able to get married and work hard and and and have kids and have a home because the taxes that you are imposing on us are too high of a burden please vote against this tax [Applause] in Kone and then Steve Stringham Ken hon and then Steve spring Stringham I'm a product of Alpine School District I moved here in 79 I started school at Northridge
203and even when Northridge was built in 1980 there still wasn't enough room but we may do I was educated in a trailer three of those years at Northridge and I turned out okay okay I run my own company today I'm very successful what I'd like to bring up is I've heard a need that we need new elementary schools the current elementary school costs 35 million student population is 420 to 650 in a elementary school my question is when a high school's built and it has enrollment of 1,400 to 2200 students why does a high school cost $215 million maybe it's time we take a haircut maybe it's time we build utilitarian buildings for our students to go to thank you thank you Ken Steve Stringham followed by Jared Gray I am Steve Stringham uh four
204kids live in Lehigh I also volunteer as a high school mountain bike coach of over a 100 kids um so I'm very involved in the community it's all for free it's all volunteer um it felt a little bit during the presentation like uh my kids when they come to me and they say look at all the stuff I want and I had yet to see any cuts that were listed in the budget at all um and if you say hey and if you say hey we can't really cut then you probably never run a household because when times get tight the things you didn't think you could cut you cut and I'm sure there's some administrative operational costs um teachers obviously need to be left alone in that um but but people are hurting right
205now and I'd love to see some Cuts uh another point is five tax increases in six years that's unprecedented never happened before um not sure why that's happening unless there there's some uh bad um budgeting and and management mismanagement within the district uh the other thing is we are increasing income uh I live in Lehi that place is booming and every building that gets built is new income and so we are getting a lot of new income uh coming into the district so let's use what we have coming in we don't need to keep increasing that one other uh thing is timing of this is really quite poor we're right on the cusp of a really big decision about a district split that may or may not happen and yet we're talking about putting money
206and we don't know really what the needs are if that split actually does happen uh and if it doesn't happen then this is something that can be Revisited but we're trying to make a decision uh in front of a uh equally important decision about the split of the decision um bottom line is uh you were elected to represent the people to the district and hopefully not the district to the people so um hopefully you can feel that there are some needs here um to really um represent the the needs of the people that it's an economic downturn there's an incredible amount of money being spent over a billion dollars a year within this District um I calculate if there's only 25 students per classroom each teacher is essentially generating $300,000 a year and if they're
207only getting paid you know benefits and everything less than 100 where's that other 200,000 going to it's a big big cost for administration and operation and I'd love to see where that's actually going to because I'm sure we can get out the parrying knife and do something there thank you okay Jared gray followed by Laura Web thank you I first want to express my appreciation to the board as a also as an elected official in my second term like Mr K it's not easy to sit here and listen to these kind of meetings and I appreciate you guys' willingness to endure this and hopefully make the best decisions as you know what those are to represent us so I'm not going to speak whether I'm in favor or against the the increase I want you
208guys to be able to have the ability to know we trust you and and want you to do the best that you can and to take care of our kids uh I will reserve the right to make some of my comments in the next meeting because I think it might be more appropriate but I do want to address a couple of things here first of all some of the tax increases as we know is because of a failed Bond uh the bond should have been taken the previous schedule would have had a bond in 2020 with Co that didn't happen with 2022 a failed Bond we know where we're at there 2023 should have had a bond didn't happen now we're in 2024 and we're still not talking about a bond so I want to
209know are how are we going to get the needs of our school met if we don't do it in in some way so that's my first question is how are we going to meet the needs of these students the other uh some of the other notes I want to make is uh what are our current plans of course been addressed to build schools in the west right now especially with the gentleman that spoke just before uh maybe in your area the student numbers are around 400 to 600 the area I come from they're between 1,000 and 1200 in the elementary schools and the high school I wish we were at 1,200 to 1500 it's 3,000 to 3,400 and that's over capacity as Mr K said by over a th000 students that's UNS safe we don't
210have the capacity for lunchrooms we don't have capacity in our auditoriums we do not have the capacity to educate our students correctly I do have commitments out of five of the seven board members that have said they support a high school I want to know when that's going to happen I did hear you say that there's a commitment for $20 million but they have not closed on the property misconception most people think that we own property in Saratoga for high school that's not true we have a contract for property so I want to know when that's actually going to happen whether it's after the election or before we're now already too late to start a school for the 27 28th school year so that's a concern of mine I've been bringing it up for months
211right now we're putting it off again until November and possibly until January that's a big concern of mine because I don't think that we'll be able to open until the 2028 year at that point how many students are we going to have in our high schools by then you know 3,500 each school that's not appropriate and that's not a good way to educate our students so lastly I wanted to ask in your presentation you mentioned between 40 and 45 new fdes and I believe 14 new assistant principles I'd like to know throughout the district where those people are being assigned and if they're being assigned appropriately to take care of all the needs of all the students again thank you for your service and I'll talk to you more about that in the next meeting
212thank you Jared Laura Web hi my name is Laura Webb I'm from Oram I've owned my home for 31 years all eight of my children have gone through the Alpine School District and now all of my grandchildren are going through the Alpine School District No One Believes In I love the alen school district I think it's a good District I taught for 25 years I just retired from the alentine school district three years ago and um No One Believes In education more than I do but there's way bed in every Department I know that now the economy has turned down we have had to cut back in our in our households all of our households I know everyone's filling it every time I walk into the grocery store I just want to turn around and
213walk out and we've had to tighten our belts it's time for the Alpine School District to tighten there's places that we can tighten everywhere this is not the year to raise taxes not with this economy turned down we're tightening you need to tighten I I vote no on every Bond not because I don't believe in education or the Alpine School District but because I don't believe that a good use of taxpayer money is to be paying for interests and Loans I think that if you want to buy something that you should have the money to pay for it and I know that we can fix our finances and get back to where we need to be without always continually getting more loans and more interests that the taxpayers have to pay for if we would
214just tighten up thank you thank you Laura okay that comes to the end of our signup sheet so that being the case um I will now entertain a motion to set the fiscal year 2425 final TX tax rate for Alpine School District at 0.00 6115 as proposed so I hear a motion I Mo I move that we set the final Alpine School District t total tax rate at 06115 for fiscal year 2024 2025 do I have a second okay it's been moved by Julie and seconded by a um is there any discussion board members now is your chance to weigh in sure I just uh I appreciate all the comments I guess it's been uh inspir inspiring to me to see all of the eloquent and uh great uh analysis that people have done I
215uh uh I have thought deeply about these as well as all the emails that I've answered and and thought about I do acknowledge though that there is a need for uh moving forward with this funding and I so I'm going to be in support of this motion other comments yeah I just like to say something um meetings like it's um it's your turn to listen now we have listened now it's your turn so go ahead 8% of the people so no and you ignore us every time excuse me it's our turn to speak we have listened carefully we have all taken notes we have all taken notes so the floor goes now to joyn um these meetings are are really difficult meetings to be at both to speak at and to sit and to listen
216at and I I appreciate those that have taken the time to Advocate I too go to a grocery restore on a regular basis I too feel the INF inflation I um one gentleman asked if I received a raise this year I did not um in my profession there was no raise um and I've heard many comments about the growth in this district and when we look at statistics it tells one story but there's another story that needs to be told the statistics and the numbers when you look at a chart says Alpine School District grew 75 students um between October 2022 and October 2023 and it's anticipated will grow approximately 75 students between October 2023 and October 2024 however um where my kids go to school um in a community that I've lived in since
2171999 um the school grew over 250 students um my daughter and I took a picture um so that anybody could verify of a seating chart when when I went to back to school night last night of her biology class biology is a tested core subject um there are 40 students on the seating a chart and I wish I could say that that's her smallest class but I'm pretty sure her math class is a little higher based on the number of students that were in her math class at the close of last year that will be flowing to her dist her class next year so while while the numbers say were not growing the population is shifted and as the population shifts the need for schools also shifts now as a district we've done some things
218to change how we do things and I think this is really important to hear um schools in orm were not built for a thousand students but every time we build an elementary school in the West in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain we anticipate that it will house at least a thousand students and some of those students are re are schools are reaching 1,200 students this year these classes are packed um as we look at student numbers across the district they're high they're higher than when we look at Northridge which was a growing school or Windsor or Bonville which is where I taught in the 90s when those classes were um when those schools were big I went and did some counting and I had to count because all I could find were pictures of the
219classes um and I know what my class size was it was 24 first graders in 199 6 at in a growing School those class sizes are not what I heard today or yesterday or Friday was and I was in the schools that I teach so I understand the needs and I understand how extremely difficult this is and you better believe I'm going to be talking to my Representatives who gave us an income tax cut and are now asking us to pass on because we didn't get that funding in income tax to pass it on in property tax which which is a regressive tax and it hurts those on a fixed income the most you better bet I'm going to be advocating very loudly on the hill this year because that's not it's not sustainable for
220our our for the generation that has paid their dues and bought their houses to have to sell them so they can pay taxes that's not right um so I hear what you're saying and I live what you're saying and I understand what you're saying and then when I look at the flip side of it and I look at our schools and if any of you would like accountability on the budget there was a 200 Page document that I spent June reading um that goes very detailed into our budget um and it's on our website you're welcome to it if you want a hard copy of it you can kit me up afterwards I will pay to print it so that you can read it and highlight it if you like the old school method um
221but it's a hard place to be it's a hard place in these meeting meetings the needs are real on every side so please as you go away from this meeting um and I don't know how my fellow board members are going to vote um but don't go away saying I wasn't heard I heard I just had to take a different perspective and they had to look at the um issue with the lens of 38 kids in a science class 40 kids in a science class um and it's important that we can continue to educate our population going forward because otherwise as a country we're doomed so as I sit here and I've listened and I've heard your perspectives I hope that you also hear our perspective of a growing district with growing needs um and
222additional students that we do have to build a building for we didn't decide to have elementary schools cost $35 million that was not anything and anybody at this table decided that's based on the economy that we live in that's the reality that we have if I could build a cheaper Elementary School I would I would do that every day of the week but I have to have a building for the students to be in and the building has to be adequate that the students can move around in the building and I'm afraid I'm rambling but I want you to know that we are listening we're just also balancing the need of a 84,000 students who we've been entrusted to educate other comments I appreciate that thanks Joyland um I appreciate everyone coming tonight I love
223the the idea that we have truth in taxation I think it's a wonderful thing for us to be able to come and face you I think it's important it's local and uh to remember that we are you we're not voting for something that we're going to to feel ourselves my husband's a school teacher and has been for 28 years I'm very careful of looking at these websites that say how much administrators and teachers make because I I wish we made that much in my family but it's it's not accurate online and I don't know why I could show you our paycheck and what it looks like but it doesn't look like what it says he makes online um one of the things that I think I mean in joyin hit a lot on that is
224uh we're we're we're feeling the in inflationary pinch as well as school boards and trying to figure out what that means and how we can um stretch the dollar even here um I belong to an organization called Cobb conservatives on board I sit with uh board members across the state in small small districts and I'm astounded they are paying the same prices we are with new schools it is just inflationary and it is it's crazy we understand and recognize that we have needs out west that we need to address and um as I went through um and asked a lot of questions of our business administrator and asked exactly how much this would cost for taxpayers and and and learning and studying that it would be about $225 cents um a week to be able
225to make this increase and and help out in places that we needed to uh make adjustments and help educate students we we are in a pinch um Joy Lynn did bring up a good point and I hope you understand that um listening and hearing I mean we we do listen but we do hear we heard and the hard part about this is that sometimes people that are elected officials get voted in and they get accused of not listening and I think what that means for some people is you don't agree with the way I what I think and therefore you're not listening it's not that it's trying to be able to balance two difficult things and so I hope you can appreciate that and um and and who knows you may not be happy with
226vote tonight and you know you can vote me out that's America and that's what's so great about democracy is that we have that ability and and see and look because I remember when I got on this board six years ago and I remember people saying to me I hope you go in and see what you can do to make sure that the dollar stretch more and that they're not wasting uh money I was astounded to come in and find that out of You Know A District with 85,000 students and just a little over um and 9,000 employees and just a little over um 300 administrator ators it's not topheavy um the board members uh I think it was a gentleman from Pleasant Grove who brought up how much we were paid we hadn't it's less
227than ,000 dollar a month and there's a lot of work that goes with this this job and part of the reason and I'll tell you why we had voted to increase the salary is because we have people in our community who would love to serve on the board of education and have a voice and some of these people are wonderful people but don't have the time because they have full-time jobs and it has to be an incentive a little bit for people to come and serve here we need everybody's voice especially those that are running single households and families I appreciate you being here tonight and I know that you know some of you are disappointed but we are trying for $225 to be able to help uh do what we need to do to
228make sure that we're providing the right education for our students that we all love your students your children my children our grandchildren um it's something that I think is important to um look at and to be able to say is is that worth that $225 to help something that we can do to make it a little easier and provide those tools and supports in our classrooms so like my colleagues have said um we we are all feeling this um if I only work 40 hours a week I don't quite make $6 an hour I paid $75 in babysitting today to do my job here so for my family it comes at a personal cost for me to do this job it's also really hard to continually hear teachers be attacked for administrators to be attacked
229in terms of cutting our principles are looking at things all year round Business Services is looking at things all year round I know you don't all see the bud budget process um I wish you would come out when we do go through that the number of requests far exceeds the money we have and there are things that legitimately need to be funded that we don't have the money to do um we spent the last few days talking to teachers and faculties thanking them for their work getting excited for the year and all I can think is I hope that nobody is listening tonight because they work too hard for our kids for some of the comments that were said um with the amount of reevaluation and constant review I stand behind what business services does
230and what they are trying to do to keep us floating moving forward one thing that I think is important to consider is that no matter what happens at the ballot in November um we still have kids to educate we still have employees that we need to pay so maybe we split and maybe we don't but part of our challenge here is that we put some things off first with covid um and then with the failed Bond and we can't wait any longer so um for those who have asked to uh pause until that decision is made I very much heard what you said but I also know that we can't stop making these decisions because our work has to go forward um another thing I wanted to to bring up in terms of the Taj
231mahals I don't think we build Taj mahals I think we build schools that house kids we build our schools to last 50 years Charter Schools build them much more cheaply and they have repairs in the first first first year I have a friend that taught at a school in the city that I represent and first year they were making repairs so part of this is trying to build schools that will last and sustain the kids that need to be educated in them another thing I want to share is that our health insurance went up $15 million this year um and that is a sign ific an amount and it was something that we needed to take care of these are things that we don't ask for these are things that happen and we take care
232of them because we take care of our employees um and then for those who are frustrated with this this night the scheduling um I do believe that changing that for next year in the next meeting um oh and then one other thought um for the comment that the annual comprehensive report was too detailed we have the popular annual ual financial report it's about a 20page document and that's a little bit uh well it's more condensed uh and you can look through that too I think one of the hardest things here is that we all talk to people our patrons across the district and not everybody is represented in this room I heard from over 50 people who said I won't come to truth and Taxation because I don't want to be yelled at I'm afraid
233to go be in that room and I respect that because I don't want anyone we signed up for the job other residents have not so we're balancing people who call on the phone people who send emails people who stop you in the grocery store the gas station um there's a lot of people that support this not because they have the money or they aren't filling the pinch because they understand that a well educated Society is better for all of us so I will support this because I believe and supporting our students and our teachers and our administrators when you look at the number of people that are superintendent and see senior leadership team manage we have nearly 9,000 employees he's not paid adequately for that job and I really wish we could stop the narrative
234that people in public education should be martyrs I support this I support the capital going to the new high school um and I'm supporting this in good faith that my colleagues will also do what they said they [Applause] do I'll go ahead have a lot of notes here but I think the thing I want to say most of all is thank you for those of you who set aside time to be with us tonight we appreciate hearing from you it is a good reminder for us to hear that our decisions do impact your budget um I think sometimes uh we might forget that but thank you for the reminder that we need to be aware of uh the opportunities that we we have to C to cut costs and to be frugal um I think
235we needed to hear that so thank you um I do want to make it clear just in case somebody missed the memo that we're talking about a 7 7% um increase and not a 16.52% year that we could fix this problem because it doesn't tell the whole story about all of our taxing uh capacities that's while some taxes may be going up other levies are going down so I apologize you know it's it's something that's beyond our control right now but I apologize for that confusion because it happens consistently um I also want to make it clear that it's not just $225 it's it's about $9 per month is what we um this 7% represents uh when you multiply that times four it's $9 per month and I know that that's significant for some of
236you I do want to point out that there has been a law passed that requires us to transparently say exactly what um the tax increase is paying for we have been proactive and that law goes into into effect next year we have been proactive this year in spelling it out for you in in the document exactly what we have planned what we would like to accomplish our board goals have been uh to reduce class size to retain teachers by treating them well and to engage the public um better so I I feel like we're working on these goals as we strive to um make teaching a living wage something that you can raise a family on um we've done we've made a considerable effort to do that um I do want to point out as
237the the last um I say slide but the last uh frame points out that Alpine School District compared to our neighbors we are taxing at a lower rate than all of them um so what we do tonight we do reluctantly but we I want you to know that we have a conservative board and we try to keep things conservative and manageable for our public we don't want to be a burden to the public but we do know that we do have needs some of these are new new needs um I know that there was referenced that we have multilanguage Learners um we don't ask them where they came from we don't ask them we're not allowed to we just serve children that show up with needs and and that's the that's the truth we're not
238allowed to ask why or how they just are in our schools and we love them and uh I live in one of those highly impacted communities I live in orm where one the most impacted School in our school district is in Oram and we have quit talking about disadvantaged children these are advantaged children and we want as Educators to be just an additional advantage to them I do I do want you to know that they do require a additional resources as you know I asked a third grade teacher what is it that we have to invest in a student that comes knowing no English I said is it is it two years of oneon-one and she said no it's five years five years that they need one onone one on two one on Three they
239need close and intense Services um that's what what we're up against I do want you to know also that many of our schools are knocking it out of the park in where when it comes to student achievement and advancement doubl digigit advancements in the last two years and maybe the superintendent can speak more to this but my schools are doing amazing things particularly in the kindergartens the first grades they are they are they are serving those kids and raising the level of Education that they're receiving this Alpine School District as a whole we have you know a lot of U districts had learning gaps with the uh pandemic year we had a little bit of a learning Gap too but not as much as the rest of the country not as much as the rest
240of the state we did well through that challenge um I do want to acknowledge um as my colleague Joy Lynn has stated there is uneven growth across the school district where where you know in the west they're growing like cats and dogs we're not growing so much on the other side of the district but that doesn't mean that we don't have needs consolidation and rebuilding of our old schools requires resources I feel sorry and sad every day when I remember that this the bond failed in 2022 it only failed by less than 3,000 votes if only 3,000 people had flipped their vote that Bond would have passed and I know why it failed um there was a lot of confusion in 2022 so I I I just think that we owe it to our kids
241to uh invest we are setting ourselves up to uh fund the high school we're putting the increments in place so that they will be there when uh we get the rest of the funding lined up [Music] um the the nature of tax increments they're they're kind of good and bad they're kind of flexible because you can we can move it around a little bit to meet our needs whether they be capital or um or operations but it's very rarely that you'll hear a taxing entity lower your taxes right on the other hand if you pass a bond the bond matures and goes away so I hope that as a school district you know we're talking about this split question and we can't be talking about passing a bond at the same time we're talking about
242splitting so we need to settle this issue about what we're going to do and I can assure you that whether we split one way two way three-way sorry that doesn't make sense whether we split two-way or three-way it will not be cheaper it will not I hope that we can come together and address our needs together and I would like to get back on the bonding cycle that goes away and um and even the C cost of paying cash has a cost because as we to uh the time it takes to build up a building fund enough to pay for a high school we've lost money in inflation so it we as a board are balancing all this and yet is it a numbers game yes it is and I am so grateful for Jason
243sunberg because he has explained this process better than anybody I've ever heard and I told him today every time I listen to him I'm learning something new and I've been on this board for six years so it's complex and it feels like a numbers game but he understands this so anyway I I am voting in support of this tax increase with an understanding that it does impact your budget and that I need to keep that in mind as a board member thank you um I just want to thank you all for being here today especially um fighting I don't know what that was Hurricane something um appreciate all of you being here tonight um it's never easy as an elected official knowing that um you potentially going to make a decision um that impacts a
244family in a negative way um and for those of you um who have expressed that um I do want to extend um my apologies for that the realityy is um we were dealing with some significant situations I have a school tomorrow it has their seventh grader day where they welcome new seventh graders in and we're expecting 960 children to walk in the door that's one grade level at one school um the needs in my area are overwhelming that we're going to have 6,300 students between two high schools 60 classrooms in satellites and Portables um it is a significant ask for our ad administrators for our teachers and for our children we desperately need this High School in Saratoga um and the reality is yes we have growth and we have needs that are ever increasing
245when you look at the at the growth patterns that are happening we have 5,000 people moving in every year to Lehi we have another 6,000 moving in in every year to Saratoga and eag mountain and a lot of those are children um we need to work on our class sizes because we are asking teachers to do too much and we need to do a better job of extending supports to our special education department so I know this is not the answer that many of you came looking for tonight and for that I do apologize at the same time we have to balance that with the significant needs that are occurring in our communities thank you okay before we take a vote I just like to add my voice to the discussion um there has been
246a lot of concern expressed tonight about transparency about um inflated building about tightening your belt there are a couple of things that a couple of places you can go for more information one is every single check that is written by this district is put online in board documents and you can see those you can see where every penny has been spent every single month so if you have any questions you can see how much we're paying to such and such City for utilities you can see everything there is nothing hidden so if you would like to see exactly how that money is spent we have maybe 80 or 100 sometimes 120 pages of of board documents every meeting and um all the checks are listed you can see exactly where the money is going and
247so that might be helpful to some of you if you'd like to do that another place you can look for more information is every year the Utah taxpayers Association does a report where they compare all 40 school districts in a number of areas so busing costs and um um the amount that goes directly to the classroom and teacher salary and administrative costs and if you look at that report over the last four or five years Alpine is one of the lowest in the state in terms of administrative costs per student we are lean I don't know where the rumor comes from that we're not we are lean you look at those reports and those are third thirdparty reports we're not making this stuff up it's not coming from Alpine our our administrator is the lowest
248paid across the wasach front so I think there's information out there that would be helpful to you as you look at this the other kinds of things that we see as a board that you don't get a chance to see is we are on committees we're on um we have six seven how many committes eight committee seven committees and we're each on three of them so there's three board members on each of those committies so like budget uh budget and legislative and um teaching and learning and policy and capital Improvement well one of those committees meets um the budget committee meets we all meet every month but every year every Department gives um a needs request for Capital Money this is roofs this is heating and cooling this is asphalt this is repairs for schools
249and this year we funded less than half of the requests because we did not have the money and so some of those requests are on the presentation you saw you can't put off building a roof forever and I remember very clearly several years ago being in a meeting where the gentleman who was in charge of the physical facilities said it is cheaper to replace a roof before it fails than to let it fail and then have all of those costs that that acre to that and you know that with your own homes so our intent here is to get caught up we have had years and years of insufficient funding for a variety of reasons and we're behind and we have got to maintain our schools we've got to make sure they have roofs and
250heating and cooling systems if your kids come home and say boy my classroom was hot well we need to fix that and it's not free so we have we see things that you don't have a chance to see but we'll be glad to share those with you that are urgent we cannot put off forever um not replacing those things and not fixing those things it's not fair to the students it's not fair to the Future generations to not take care of our students in our schools the other thing that strikes me is we take everybody it does not matter where they come from it does not matter what language they speak or don't speak it doesn't matter what what um difficulties they bring with them we love them all and we invite them all our
251doors are open to all children we don't care where they come from or who they are or what they need our job is to take care of those needs and to meet them at the door where they are with a smile and so we are doing the very best we can we love your kids we love our communities and we are aware that there are needs that differ across the community the needs of one Community are different from another and we work together we all of us represent all all of the children in Alpine and we're doing the very best we can to make sure that all children have a good opportunity and we want them to go home smiling every day we want them to go home happy we want them to have good
252experience and we want them to go home telling you what they learned in school so um with that in mind I think it's time to call for a vote and I think we will call for a roll call vote the um question that has been stated is um the motion was to entertain a motion to set the fiscal year 2425 final tax rate for Alpine School District at point 06115 so with the roll call vote um we'll start with board member Wilson just come right across the board uh before I cast my vote I do want to acknowledge um a great leader who is superintendent Shane Farnsworth he has challenged this school district this year to bring their best self to schools he has challenged us to be excellent personally and as Educators and he
253has put built a great vision for this school district and I just want to thank him I vote in favor thank you board member Lincoln I board member Mark Clement I board member King I board member member hacken I board member b i board member bitman I the motion carries it passes as proposed thank you with that in mind um this hearing is now officially over our board regular board meeting will start at 10 minutes at 8:30 and if you would like to make comments in our regular board meeting I think the sign up sheet will be out by the door thank you for coming and thank you for caring about Alpine e e e right all right let's begin here we invite you to take your seats and to um board members come on
254back up and we'll get going [Laughter] okay thank you for coming tonight or thank you for staying as the case may be we're going to be begin tonight with the Pledge of Allegiance which will be led by Scott suar audience please arise repeat the pledge after me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all our inspirational thought or reflection will be given by Boyce Campbell May hello good evening um I have four children that are all starting school this week my oldest is starting 8th grade and my youngest is starting kindergarten we've done all of our normal back to school Traditions with shopping and one-on-one activities with our kids so we're really
255excited and having all the feels in our home right now uh today we uh attended back to school nights and I had so much fun watching the energy there in the school buildings and as we drove over to the schools I asked each of my kids I said I want I want you to tell me one thing you're nervous about and one thing you're excited about with school starting so we went through each of them and then when we got to my kindergartener he really thoughtfully said said I'm most nervous about making new friends but I'm most excited to meet my new teacher because I think she's going to love me he's pretty confident little guy and as I talked to my children's teachers today I could see they were tired but they were so
256excited to meet their students because that is the payoff one of them said to me as kids and parents buzzed around her classroom look around at the energy my classroom that makes all the work worth it I can't wait for school to start if it's all about the kids happy first week of school thank you boys all right uh now we're going to go to um public comments and as I think probably all of you know a sign up sheet was available I have it now with uh the list of people who have signed up and this is your opportunity to express concerns to the board um would you please Begin by stating your name you will have three minutes to speak and um we would urge you to if you have concerns let us
257know if a staff member can help you we can we can direct you with that also there are a number of people who have made online comments and we appreciate their comments and we want them to know that we do read those comments and we appreciate their the time they take to share those with us so let's start off with John Gad John know's all about the time limit he's been here before all righty what you got good evening my name is John Gad uh I bought my house in Pleasant Grove 24 years ago um I have two concerns and um the first one is uh well they both relate to overspending by the school board uh I brought up in the last meeting that the school board voted themselves a pay raise three years
258ago you doubled your base pay and I also brought up that you've um also increased your benefits there was a com comment by one of the Schoolboard members that well we did that because we want other people to be incentivized to come and run for the school board well that's nonsense because if that was true you would have made the pay increase only come into effect once new school boards are elected but you didn't do that you made it come into effect immediately for all of you all of you all so you all got a pay increase you could have said let's wait till the next election or let's let let's let's make it effective you know once each seat is filled but you didn't do that so the the reason that you've given repeatedly
259for doubling your own pay that you want other people in the future to get that pay is nonsense because you would have waited to do the pay increase have it be effective in the future the second thing I'm concerned about is you talked about in your uh study session that you're still moving forward with this high school and you're still looking at a price tag of $175 million for a single building one of the most expensive high schools in the history of the state of Utah and I've brought up repeatedly that you're building buildings that look like Crystal palaces You're Building buildings that look like the Taj Mahal they have three-story glass entryways they have three or four story um atriums you do not need these massive Crystal Palace buildings there are cheaper ways to
260build school buildings using tilt up construction which some other school districts in the state have utilized there's massive cost savings on this building school buildings and I don't know where you're getting your advice or who you're talking to or who your friends are in the construction industry but you're building buildings that are way too expensive and the reason that matters is because you're raising our property taxes to do it and who does that hurt it hurts the very children that you care about that you're trying to educate because their moms and dads can't afford your property tax increases and you're hurting the teachers that you care about because those teachers can't afford to buy homes you're you're stealing the American dream the American dream is you is you get married and you have kids and
261you buy a house and if you work hard you can afford to have a house but increasingly more and more people can't afford that here in Alpine School District and you're partly to blame because you're wasting money and when you waste money and raise our taxes to pay for that wasted money it's stealing the American dream from moms and dads and teachers and seniors and everyone else thank you thank you John uh next will be uh amber Harrison followed by Nikki Brammer excuse me Amber Hansen followed by Nikki Brammer thank you I want to thank you guys for the jobs that you do contrary to what a lot of the people have expressed today I don't agree that Mr faren Bush should be paid less um I don't know that there's another person in the
262world that would want to represent 84,000 students for Less um I also don't think teachers are living lavish life as an educator of 15 years in Alpine School District the days that I had off were non-contract days and so I recognize that maybe what the public can see isn't what actually is happening behind your computers and I thank you for the difficult jobs that you do um that goes unnoticed um and with a lack of gratitude often times so thank you um like I said I am here as a 15-year veteran educator and as a a patron of Saratoga Springs and listening to audio from the most uh recent work session it appeared to me that there are probably more board members who are in favor of a high school in Saratoga Springs than before
263and to you who are supporting a school I say thank you um in listening to that audio the concern was also expressed that there is a narrative out west that we believe that the school district is not working for us as an educator and a patr and a a patron that has not been my experience however you can understand why patrons have felt this way um as the discussion about a high school was cancelled on March 16th with no communication as to when we could discuss the schools and the buildings that our students so desperately need the schools that we currently have can't possibly meet the demands that that our students have um we the patrons of the West are happy to be team players in this District but we have to be on the
264team we cannot be silenced and we cannot be sidelined uh nipping that narrative that the school board does not care about the West starts right here uh you have asked us to buy into the ideal that we are stronger together and it's time to walk your talk do not do what you promis to do when you were swor on to the board ask yourself the question um what is best for all students in Alpine School District before making any decision and remember the importance of equity and education across the district those are two of the things that you promis to do for us as your patrons and for your students you have the control to nip the narrative commit to funding a high school that the high school that we so desperately need and communicate
265the plan and the timeline to the patrons please do what you've asked all of us to believe in and lead the charge let's be stronger together thank you thank you Amber Nikki followed by Chris Christie esperson hi there how's it going hopefully this this is an easier meeting than the last one um I just wanted to talk about a couple programs that I'm concerned about um I am happy to send things to Sarah send emails but I want to put this on the public record um because I'm really concerned about it and I missed the meeting earlier because I had three different schools to go to for back to school night with my five kids but I'm really glad that I went because in my second grade class I learned that we have a districtwide
266AI program and the teacher said that my second graders are going to do Ai and writing what um I brought up concerns two years ago when an English teacher taught my honors nth graders how to use chat GPT that was very concerning and I know that in one of the work sessions shortly thereafter Dr Farnsworth wisely pointed out that we need to focus on literacy if we're going to use AI but I'm shocked that we might be using AI districtwide which I was told it's a districtwide program and I'm especially shocked that it would be in second grade okay so I asked the teacher for some more detail she said she was just introduced to the program last Tuesday and so I'm also concerned that a teacher might be implementing a program where she said
267I myself am not all that techsavvy but we're going to be using it so you can imagine my concern um I would love to to get I I did get some information who I need to talk to the Innovative learning coach but still second grade you guys okay so that's one concern I just want to be on the public record secondly another concern that I have um on my school's calendar there are meetings for the ruler program at Alpine Elementary and virtual and as I've looked into the AL or the ruler program this is a a program that is deeply entrenched in Dei you didn't RFP Ford in 2022 which was before the legislation that said that we should no longer be using Dei and so as I've looked into this the ruler approach. org
268is the website you can go you can go and look at um there is a commitment to Dei that is that is very well documented it says Bel lower the specific ways Dei is addressed within ruler Dei in personal and professional learning teachers have sent me screenshots of the program Dei and classroom content Dei and family engagement you guys this program was supposed to be done in July the legislation happened during the last legislative session I have deep concerns I know you changed the title of our Dei director but you can't just change a title and not address the implementation of a program that started in 2022 so I punt that to you I look forward to understanding more thank you Nikki Chrissy esperson and then Jen Southwick hi my name is Christy esperson I'm
269from Saratoga Springs and I just I'm here to advocate for our high school now um you've talked about how we've had to delay things for several different reasons um which I have been out here my kids have gone through all of their schooling in Alpine district and so I've seen how that has had to get pushed back and as someone else has said we have been team players out in Saratoga Springs um people have mentioned that they went to school in trailers and in satellites we have those um the trailers at one of the schools that my kids went to they couldn't put any more trailers at the school my kids didn't have their playground they had no black top to play on because they had trailers there to house students and they wouldn't let
270them put any more there so we are doing what we can with what we have but it's time to give us our high school now and you just voted to have the money to do so and I would like to know when it's going to happen we need a date we need a timeline it needs to happen right away thank you Chrissy Jen Southwick hi my name is Jen South um I live in Saratoga Springs as well I feel like I could say ditto and go sit down um both the teacher and chrisy um echoed exactly what I want to say I just would encourage you to please um take this money that we now will be getting with the taxes and help the kids out in Saratoga I know there's Capital needs all over
271the district but I think it's fair that if we're meeting needs in Oram or broken roofs that we're also Meeting those needs out in Saratoga and I think um I have kids that have graduated from West Lake and I have one that hasn't even started in the school system yet and so I'm in this for the Long Haul and there's a need and I see it I've taught with the district as well and I felt it in the elementary schools out there and I I just don't want it to keep getting pushed so I also would ask that we set a timeline and get some dates and and give the people out there a little bit of Hope thank you thank you Jim okay that concludes our public [Music] comments Al righty just checking here
272Al righty uh next approval of the minutes uh do we have a motion to approve the minutes I move that we approve the minutes second the motion okay it's been approved by excuse me it's been been motioned by Sarah moved by Sarah and seconded by Mark that we approve the minutes all in favor say I I any opposed say nay okay the minutes are approved uh Dr Farnsworth claims yes you have you have received your claims for the month and I recommend you accept the claims do I have a motion to accept the claims so moved the claims okay it's been moved by Stacy seconded by AA uh is there any comment seeing none let's vote all in favor say I I any post say n okay the claims are approved Dr Farnsworth thank you
273you've received the routine business as well for this month and I recommend that you accept the routine business okay do we have a motion to accept the routine business I move to accept the routine business okay do I have a second second the motion okay it's been moved by Jo Lin and seconded by Mark is there any discussion can I just make one comment I I think uh Ronda noted that we have new form for our Lea specific licenses I think there's some room for improvement still and so I'm going to refer my suggestions to you Rhonda that who should I refer those to Cammy Cammy okay thank you any other comments I have one um while it's not a large amount of money I am always appreciative when trip requests include um fundraising I
274know the um football players in my neighborhood Hood have been out and I just appreciate having an option for parents the amount I think is still crazy high but just appreciate the coaches and the teachers that make that effort than you other comments I was delighted to see two more education Innovation Grant applications that's um a wonderful opportunity for schools we have two more that applied so I'm excited to see that happen um we need to take a vote Yes okay um all in favor of approving routine business I hi hi any post okay it stands approved Dr fernworth yes the first action item is the board approval of our early learning plan and we will invite Boyce Campbell and Carrie Milner to come forward appreciate them uh scheduling this on the truth and Taxation
275evening uh I know that we cannot approve this until the state approves it and we have to approve it by the end of August so that leaves your window the August board meeting so thank you for waiting and uh being here and appreciate your work on the early learning plan and board members after hearing the plan I recommend that we approve the early learning plan for the 2425 school year thank you okay so we'll just we'll go through this um here's our early learning leadership team um we're going to just go through our goals for last year and whether we met them or not and then we'll look at uh this coming year so um the literacy goals the first goal is a state growth goal that is set by the state for us and
276the goal was 60% of students will make typical or better growth in grades 1 through three and that goal was met with 64% of the students making typical or better growth so our second goal we're asked to make uh local goals um and they're formulated by a formula that the state gives us our second goal was a first grade literacy goal and that was to increase um the first grade students who scored proficient on aadience reading by 4% from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and that goal was also met so our teachers are doing a really good job in our students and we appreciate it the third goal was also a local proficiency goal um and it was to increase uh kindergarten students who scored proficient on the Cadence
277reading by 9% that was met with an increase of 14% so that was exciting I did want to just share this slide with you as far as uh what it looks like for full day kindergarten they increase by 22% uh versus everybody at 14 and half day students increase by eight just to share that with you so okay our goals for this coming year a few things have changed at the legislature so there is a not a growth goal that's set by the state for literacy um but there is a local goal that um we set and there again we go by a formula that's put to us from the state um this is a kindergarten um students making typical or better growth on a kadence reading they take the average of the last three
278years find the average and add three to five for rigor so our goal is 65% I I don't think we're going to have a hard time passing that at all so and then um also in our early learning plan is what curriculum are we using for tier one instruction our core program will be wonders 2023 for our early adopters and uh 2014 wonders for our other um teams right now next year rolling out to the whole district and that is our tier one core comprehensive program that we'll be using for literacy um assessment we have a screener it's a kadence reading from there it tells us what students are at risk we take those students and we give them a diagnostic uh test um and so the kids that are scoring below or well below
279we want to dive down and see what they're missing a diagnostic is administered to these students and then we identify what foundational skills they're missing and we help with interventions with those students so for interventions we are currently using 95 intervention um so the students that need more help with those foundational skills they're put in intervention groups so it's a tier 2 intervention block 30 minutes a day um at separate from from tier one the students are not pulled out of tier one instruction and um they are given these lessons by some some schools have reading interventionist and some it's par professionals but um we that's what we're doing for intervention so I'll turn the time over to math all right with our math goals uh just want to remind you aadience math was introduced
280uh just three years ago and in our first two years we're immediately following covid and we were still learning about it and then we learned and we started implementing things with our teachers this past year and our teachers have worked so hard and I'm so excited to share these with you see we also our state growth goal same thing we had 60 uh our goal was to have 60% of the students in grades one through three achieve typical or better and we met that with 62% uh growth in grades one through three you can see the history of of the last two years it's a pretty significant jump to this year our teachers have been working hard our local proficiency goal uh was actually second grade it says first grade at the top but it's
281second grade it says second grade in in inside it was to maintain at least maintain the percentage of second grade students who scored proficient on aadience math from the beginning of year to end of year the reason that goal was to maintain is because if you look at the last two years our students were falling by six or s% in the last two years so we wanted to make sure that we didn't lose any students at least but this year we we way exceeded that goal uh with by by uh with a 3% increase and we're really excited about that our second grade teachers did amazing work this year so our math goals going forward we want to focus on um we're going to focus first our local math goal will be to uh increase
282the percentage of first grade students who are scoring at or above Benchmark from beginning of year to end of year um we're we're doing okay we're kind of we we feel like we can concentrate there and really make some good things happen in in first grade um we want to increase that by 3% from beginning of year to end of year and we'll maintain the the local growth goal of at least 60% growth uh in grades 1 through three the curriculum we use uh is I ready classroom 2024 um and then our assessment we have our Cadence math screener we have the I ready diagnostic which is a comprehensive diagnostic given three times a year that guides teachers but also guides students in their individual learning plans we also have uh District Ben District benchmarks
283that are aligned to the standards that are created by our district assessment department and also our rights benchmarks and then interventions um we have a time set aside for interventions there's intervention Tools in I ready and also uh best practices and number sents such as counting Collections and number talks that we've trained our teachers on so there's our goals in a nutshell any questions I have a question um on interventions for literacy are we using 95% for both the Wonders 20203 cohort and the Wonders cohort um so 95 intervention is different than 95 core so 95 intervention is used for the intervention block um 95% core is currently used by some of our schools still doing wonders 2014 that's their decision um mov moving forward we will use uh wonders phonics so for our phonics
284block will just be from our wonders program I just had a question um we have we're moving towards having schools set their own goals for the school and as I looked through these how does their school go goal interact with the district goal um do they are we still asking them to uh anyway how is that how does that work yeah so we set goals because we're asked to by the state but we also have local goals too because we want to see Improvement across Alpine School District and a lot of our schools they set their own goals but that contributes to our goals and then also to the to the state goals so so are they so are they aware of these like a second grade teacher so he may have a school goal
285that's you know doing begin of beginning of year to end of year by 3% the district goal is six% is that confusing to that teacher or what does he do with those two goals yeah so I think like the way that the state the formula that the state gives us to figure out these goals wouldn't work on a school level because we're talking about all of our schools you know what I mean so if I'm at a school and I'm starting at 49% at the beginning of the year 3% is not enough for me right I want to get the kids proficient by the end of the year my goal is to get as many kids as I can proficient by the end of the year so they have to look at their own circumstance
286and they want to improve and that Improvement is going to help um us in our goals as you can see we met every single goal this year we're seeing this upward swing from kind of a fall during Co we're seeing this upward tick and we're getting back to where we were before so it's exciting but they have to look at their own individual circumstance but of course they're looking at Improvement which is going to help with all of Alpine School District Improvement and board member Clayman I assume that we would work with a school supervisors and others if their standard was lower than what we had the state expectation to be we would work with them and say you know what here's a minimum expectation your goal needs to be above that minimum expectation there
287may be an occasion where because of some challenges or specific demographics where they're lower but we would set an improvement goal for them to get to that minimum standard well I I just appreciate that because what we expect is that there is an overall goal and then there's a targeted goal for a a specific uh learning Gap that they see in their particular schools so I think together those two goals support what's happening and we see that a lot of work so thank you for your training of our our teachers and for all their good efforts because obviously yeah doing great okay I need a motion to approve the early or to accept the early learning plan do I have a motion I move that we accept the early learning plan as presented and a
288second I second the motion okay are there any comments or questions I will just say from the beginning of when you start the process of curriculum and then you've got to roll out and then we're teaching people to get on board right and giving them the skills that they need I sat here thinking I swear we started this like eight years ago but it really hasn't been that long and I just want to say thank you because I think this is It's a process that is so long that sometimes it's it's just long right and so I appreciate that you both love what you do and that you are so good at what you do um in your words you use the word Diagnostic and I thought this is what I want every Patron to
289understand right that our teachers it's like a doctor for learning right they are assessing where where that child is and where those gaps are and what they're going to do to get those gaps and it it's it's really kind of a miraculous process to me and so just thank you for being in this thank you for being excited about being in this I love when supervisor Circle up and say you know have you seen this great progress have you seen what these schools have done and so I think there are so many people that are supporting this and I just very much appreciate your work and the intention you put into it thank you do love we do a comment about test scores um many people are not aware that there are many countries in
290the world where the school year is January to December so our schools get a an influx of students very often in January and then we test them in what March or April or May and those scores are lumped with all the scores and so I think that we're doing a better job than it looks like actually because we're we're working with all students no matter when they come and no matter where they're at and including those students that hardly speak a word of English when they come to the country so thank you all right are there any other comments let's take a vote all in favor of accepting the early learning plan or approving the early learning plan as presented say I I I any you oppos say n okay it stands approved thank you
291thank you thank you appreciate your presentation and your work the next item is uh we would like to request that the board open the formal boundary study for the new Middle School in Eagle Mountain as mentioned by board member King there is about uh 700 plus almost 800 7th grade students at Frontier Middle School the Middle School in Eagle Mountain an additional Middle School is under construction set to open next school year here and we need to begin the formal boundary study process Frank pulley our director of physical facilities is here appreciate him uh filling in for Eric Woodhouse he owes you two now that's two um to uh give an overview of what that boundary would study would include but we would recommend that we begin that process of articulating those boundaries getting Patron
292feedback and uh going through the process so that we can have formal board approval on those boundaries so we'll hear from Frank and just give a brief overview and then open it up for discussion and a motion with our recommendation that you begin that formal study process as outlined in State Statute thank you superintendent um it's always exciting to be able to open a new school but as you know it comes with adjusting boundaries and we we look at these schools and want them to be a a pillar in into the community and they're wonderful facilities to for our students um to be and enjoy and our staff and stuff um to be there um couple of notes there just for potentially impacted schools um Cedar Valley High School we anticipate that you know the
293ninth grade would be coming out of Cedar Valley high school and back into our middle schools um obviously um Frontier Middle School um potentially Vista Heights Middle School um listed some elementaries in Black Ridge in Brook Haven Cedar Valley Desert Sky Elementary Eagle Valley Elementary Hidden Hollow Mountain Trails uh Pony Express um elementary schools all that need to potentially be um into the new feeder system of a of a new uh Middle School um Rich you went mind hitting that next slide um and those we kind of listed out here um we know that um some of these schools may not be impacted and it's hard to accurately um detail out what schools will be impacted until we start the formal boundary study um with a a boundary committee uh to be able to know
294exactly 100% what schools will be impacted but we think that these schools out in that area potentially um will be impacted and Frank we're taking a more uh conservative approach with our interpretation of the statute to say anyone that could possibly affect be affected even though they may not be affected we're going to notify so that we make sure we're in compliance with the with a inter any interpretation of that statute we will met the statutory reest yes and or you hit the next slide um talk a little bit about the the statue so um yes sorry can I interrupt you just really Qui just for clarification if we have patrons watching it looks like you have listed every school in Eagle Mountain with the exception of Silver Lake and I'm assuming that's because that's
295in the Westlake cluster correct okay so just wanted to clarify potentially any Elementary in Eagle Mountain and cedar Fort with the exception of Silver Lake could be boundaried into this new Middle School correct just wanted to make sure for parents excitedly watching that that was clarified I have a question on that if we listed Vista as a potential school that this could impact Would we not also include well because Brook Haven goes part to Vista part to Frontier so I'm assuming because brookh Haven's in it and and it you could take the entirety of Brook Haven I'm assuming that's why Vista was in correct me if I'm wrong Frank yes that's why because of the Brook Haven the split between Frontier to to Vista any other questions um just review quickly of State Statute you
296required to uh give a 30-day notice um email and um Postal Service um with all the schools that potentially could be impacted which is why we listed as many schools that we did just to make sure that we're covered there um there at least needs to be one public comment um during a regular board meeting and at least one public uh hearing and provide at least 30 days notice um for that public hearing here's our anticipated timeline there um obviously today um to begin the formal boundary study um with August 14th through August 7 or October 7th um boundary committee meetings um they meet to study the feasibility of the boundaries um to make adjustments and recommendations um for consideration um October 8th um provider recommended boundary options for Community input um October 10th and
29715th um potential public openhouse to seek public feedback um to the options that the boundary committee puts together um October 22nd to look at Alpine School District a board meeting for a public comment and November 12th um the public hearing and December 10th to be potential board decision on a new boundary for the Middle School um we look forward to working with principal Jolly in in doing this as well as other members of the boundary committee I know board member King be part of that boundary committee to help look at this as well as other principles to initially start the study and then seek um Community input and feedback for potential options there Frank would you make sure that we get this presentation to Rhonda and then she can send out to board members so
298they have a physical copy of it yes yep we'll do um if all goes if all goes well here's kind of anticipated project timeline for boundary study um we recommend that the board would take action tonight so we can start that process just be able to meet the needs um for all the notice and timelines that are put forth by State Statute so research and enrollment and map data is step one and step two is a boundary proposal development step three is a public feedback and then step four is is action okay thank you um I need a motion to open the formal boundary study for the new Middle School in Eagle Mountain I move that we open the formal boundary study for the new Middle School in Eagle Mountain do I have a second
299PA second and is there board question question or comment um so Frank this is not a criticism it's just an observation um because of the timeline that's in code we're going to have to develop the boundary proposal before we have October 1 counts um that we usually base like our new and then we do our enrollment projections in November based on that and kind of realign that so one of the challenges once again not a criticism it's just the reality of what the legislation is one of the complications is we will not have the most updated data or our new enrollment projections when we're determining boundaries which another piece of data that um uh I guess it could be slightly challenging considering what we see the growth in the west that we're most likely to
300see um changes in those enrollment projections in that time frame so it'll just be another challenge that we're working with um based on the time requirements yeah I think you know given that we have August 14th through October 7th hopefully if that October 1st you know that warm body count hopefully that gives us I know it's only a few days but hopefully would have a pretty good idea where we're at student population wise yeah I wish we a little different timeline from the state statute would be great but um we'll work with it perhaps uh Jason you and your team can put in an adjustment Factor given where we've been and where you anticipate will go is there any other comment or question seeing none let's vote all in favor of approving the opening of
301the formal boundary study for the new Middle School Eagle Mountain say I I I any oppos say me okay make it happen Frank thank you thank you next item is policy 1621 parent and family engagement and we will invite our legal councel Craig Brinkerhoff to come for forward uh the policy committee has been working on that policy and we recommend your approval of the update of policy 1621 I don't have a a lot of uh intro to this particular policy we what would happened is we tried to expand it a little bit to go beyond just Title One um we wanted to include parents that might have language issues besides just being low income um and all parents so you'll see that the title change parent and family engagement parentheses including title one so it's
302been expanded just a little bit we worked closely with uh annaise on this as well as Aon hail um who helps direct these programs and uh so we are excited to present this new version uh we it closely mirrors a lot of the federal regulations that are required and uh we would recommend it for your approval okay do I have a motion to um approve policy 1621 I move that we approve policy uh 1621 I'll second moved by Sarah seconded by Stacy is there any comment um I'm gonna I don't know how I missed this one in the board docs but somehow I did so I'm just going to abstain from voting just because um yeah that you're lucky Craig thank you Julie um and I just wanted to say we we included in the
303parentheses including title one so that if we're audited for a required Title One policy that they will understand our thinking of starting really broad with the general parental involvement and then narrowing down to include the title one making sure that we've meet met all those requirements so it'll be easy in an audit for somebody to ify that we have met that requirement somebody can scroll down so that you can see where the title one information is going going going there you go all right is there any further discussion I think this is the title one um guidance that's been requested long appreciate the uh policy committee's work on this thank you and you Craig also any other comment I just appreciate the work on it I'm I'm excited like that's probably odd to be excited
304about policy but I'm in good company up here but um I'm I'm excited to see what opportunities surface for parents and how we use our community members in different ways any other comment okay seeing then let's vote all in favor of approving policy 1621 parent and family engagement updated version say I I andos say may all right the policy is approved next item is policy 6161 and I have been informed since this agenda was created last week the policy committee has uh requested that uh this policy approval be postponed uh as further information is gathered around sensitive materials uh we're waiting for some curriculum experts to uh weigh in on that so I'm I'm suggesting that uh we we recommend that we postpone the adoption of policy 6161 for a future board meeting I we
305have to move on that one you do that's just my recommendation so we would need a motion I move that we table policy 6161 selecting and Adoption of instructional materials I'll second it okay it's been moved by drin and seconded by Sarah any other comments all right those of us on the policy committee looked at this pretty closely and felt like there was just a little more work that we needed to do with it um all in favor of uh postponing this till another month next month uh say I hi any oppose say all right thank you we will do that thank you thank you Craig next item is a budget adjustment uh in policy any budget adjustment over 50,000 needs to be brought to the board for for approval we have asked for and
306received permission to extend additional 10 FTE to reduce class sizes in our elementary um I believe uh seven of those have been approved we're looking at the additional ones as well this is the formal process to make those uh budget adjustments our recommendation given that the board has gone through truth and Taxation this evening that 10 of those come out of the increment funding for 20 for the 2425 school year that is our recommendation and thank you for approving those additional FTS that we could address class sizes and growth do I have a motion to amend the budget to approve 10 additional FTE I move that we make the budget adjustments for the 10 additional FTE and do I have a second second okay it's been moved by Julie and seconded by a any comment
307I just want to applaud the heroic efforts of our area supervisors they are really our boots on the ground in addressing these um hotspot issues and and they deal with a lot of of uh concerned parents uh who see the the huge class sizes and think their world is falling apart and and these supervisors are saving the day in uh a million ways so we just appreciate their recommendation and the ability that we have um with our increments to uh meet this need that is right now yes and thank you for the uh FTS that allow the supervisors to do that work okay we've had a a motion by Julie and a second by a to approve the budget adjustment for 10 additional FTE all in favor say I I any oppos to say nay
308thank you it passes um Dr Farnsworth yes the next item is the 2025 board meeting schedule if you want to pull that up you can see that schedule several several a few comments were made this evening that it's difficult in August to have a board meeting scheduled during back to school nights or the week when schools typically have that so you'll see an adjustment typically we meet on the second Tuesday of every month but you'll see the August meeting for next year our recommendation is we move that to August 5th that's the first week of August it comes right on the tales of our administrative conference and our new employee training uh which will will squeeze us a little bit but as we review that with staff we feel the need to it's better to
309have our Patron representation here during truth and Taxation so we're recommending that uh in August and then in November the uh second Tuesday is Veterans Day and the fourth Tuesday is the week of Thanksgiving so we're recommending a single board meeting in November uh that is when we go over enrollment and one other item in November and yeah the caffer um we believe we can still do both of those in that board meeting who recommending a single board meeting in November of 2025 on the 18th so those would be um the adjustments that are atypical to a traditional board meeting schedule and th those are our recommendations do I have a motion to approve this um calendar for the 2025 board meeting schedule I move that we approve the following calendar for the second okay
310it's been moved by Stacy and second by Mark is there any discussion I just wanted to thank staff for being responsive to the dates and making adjustments in this calendar I also appreciate pulsing Us in the conversation around November so I think that's going to be great for families appreciate that any other discussion okay seeing none let's take a vote all in favor of approving the 2025 board meeting schedule say I I any oppos say n all right it passes we will proceed with that and hope that those adjustments will make things a little easier for the public uh now we have an opportunity for board member or superintendent reports or information items I just want to say thank you to our custodians our buildings look so clean and bright and shiny me like I
311was looking just kind of along the inside window sills and different places and I don't know that I've ever seen some of my schools look this clean and lovely and I know they've just been working all summer but I've and maybe some of you have felt this but as we've gone to the back to school celebrations like the tone just feels different like you walk in and things just feel right and they look great and so just recognizing that that was a lot of work that probably won't get much recognition we'll make them aware of your white glove um I just wanted to send a shout out and gratitude for print services I know they've been working insane hours this summer um happen to be at print services a couple of times and just seeing
312like the boxes going to the ceilings of schools you know like this is the third grade at Brook Haven and they're the writing journals and just the sheer volume of work um it's a little bit overwhelming I'm not really sure how they handle that like it just feels like like pressure every time and I walk in that building and then just the same level of gratitude for purchasing and Warehouse um there is a massive amount of ordering of desks and chairs and um crayons and just all the things that make a school function and um everything goes through purchasing and warehouse and then is taken to the appropriate school and um summer is some of the busiest times um for some of these uh depart departments that we have and a lot of those things
313go kind of unseen they're very much behind the scenes I just want to express my gratitude particularly to those groups that that work so incredibly hard over the summer so that um our classrooms and our teachers are ready for first day of school a note about print services I was talking to Jake last week and one of their main machines broke down over and over again this summer so they were feeling very behind but they got permission to get a new printer it is I think being esta installed this week or next week so they're pretty happy about meeting the demand and delighted to be able to do that um are there other board member reports I just wanted to apologize to our public again for having this meeting on a back to school night
314um that's a very big night uh for our schools um because usually there's opportunities for parents to to sign up for volunteer um positions or opportunities and I just want to say to our parents out there we need you you are an integral part of our Public Schools um and that you have so much to offer uh no matter what your interests or talents are we want to include you in our schools and and I hope that each one of uh our parents sees a place that they can contribute to their local school can I do one more absolutely um so you know when we weren't running from school to school if we had some time I loved watching how each principal or admin team if the were more how they set up their PD
315days and how they were welcoming people um the leadership team at Lehigh Jr did a very cool getting to know you activity and so I just I love the way that they made those days welcoming inviting and unique to their faculty and I know they did a lot of Summer planning and probably nobody knows that these days even happen but it was just very cool to see how they all personalize it and I think they did a great job any other comments one note for the public is the theme for Alpine School District this year is Excellence at work and I have seen that in every single school I have visited I've seen that commitment and that excitement and Dr Farnsworth has challenged um all of us to be the best versions of oursel that
316we can be and to figure out how to do that so I've been thinking about that and thinking that's going to take some work but that is a good a good goal and so for the public we want you to know that we are trying to be excellent every single teacher in every single school and not just being the best versions of ourselves that we can be but also helping our students be the best versions of themselves that they can see are there any other comments All right we have needed for a Clos session tonight for personnel property litigation or collective bargaining and we will need to take a rooll call roll call vote on that do I have a motion for to adjourn to uh a closed session I move that we adjourn to
317attend to a closed session to discuss Personnel property litigation and collective bargaining and a second okay it's been moved by Sarah and signed by Mark roll call vote uh board member Wilson I board member Lincoln I board member Clement I board member King I member hacken I sorry board member b i board member bman I thank you um this meeting stands adjourned and the board will move into Clos session thank you for