June 21, 2022 Alpine School Board Meeting

001three board members who have been excused from this meeting so we have sarah beason and julie king aren't julian and uh they are not here in president but i think that's i can't tell julie is usually the purple one but i'm not sure so we'll see are you there julie she hasn't called me yet oh she hasn't called in yet how about ada okay will you let us know when they call in go so we can uh ask some questions hard questions so uh superintendent we'll go ahead and proceed with the studies hey thank you president clement appreciate that appreciate everyone being here for our study session seems like it's been a month since we met but that's been fine it's been june is a great month we have a couple things on the agenda

002tonight first is y2 analytics kyrene and emily will be here presenting to us the results of the survey we'll turn some time over to kimberly to introduce them kind of get some background information and then we'll spend about 45 minutes or so on that after that we will uh review the fiscal year 2023 senator budget and rob and his uh budget team are here appreciate them being here and he can introduce that and we'll proceed to that point to see if we have any more time for government so okay kimberly well i think that because you guys just uh heard from y2 about a month ago there won't be any further introductions to them but i would like time just at the end to make an overall uh recommendation if that's okay superintendent that would

003be great okay and maybe for the public to be aware of the i just gotta tie the focus group conversation we had last time versus the survey and making that connection okay so i apologize and forgot about that um y2 started out with focus groups across uh all of the demographics of meeting the geographic areas of alpine did a male and female focus group about six of them total and from there they were able to gauge just some initial response on a bond and bond numbers they took that information and feedback and helped formulate a survey populated with questions that they felt could then give them the information that they needed to find get some findings to share with you as far as what would be a confidence level of going for a bond so

004that's the purpose of today is to see the results of the survey that was done they'll explain the the sample size that they went for and the time that they had it out there and they've broken it down what david and i have been so impressed with because we got to see it um yesterday as we met with emily and kyrie but we were just so impressed at how they can break data and information down and they're so good at what they do they're working with another large district in utah as well so they're a very trusted group but you can ask them whatever questions you'd like so watch the presentation and then let's let's do some questions after perfect and we go to state superintendents meetings i usually do a y2 drop every month

005so you guys tell me yeah we're working with y2 analytics we appreciate that thank you superintendent and thank you kimberly for the brief introduction there so as kimberly mentioned we started with focus groups and used the findings from that qualitative research phase to help inform a survey before we get to the meat of things just a quick look at survey methodology so we sampled in total 1 637 likely voters in the alpine school district likely voters are determined based largely on vote history but also a variety of other demographic and consumer information variables that we're able to append to the registered voter file from those things we build a model of each individual voters likelihood of participating in an upcoming election that likelihood is based on their participation in the last most similar election and

006then for the random sample selection their probability of being sampled to participate in the survey is the same as their probability of turning out in an upcoming election so rather than relying just on self-reported likelihood of voting we're looking at historical patterns and other data that indicate how likely someone is to participate and using that to give us some assumptions of what the electorate is likely to look like come november so that gives us a lot of confidence that the sample that we have here really mirrors a sample of a likely november electorate for the 2022 election so as i said just over 1600 participants throughout the school district we wanted to make sure we had a good share of voters in each high school boundary as well so at minimum we have 150 voters

007in each of those high school boundaries at most i believe we had 227 which was in the pleasant grove high school boundaries so pretty good balance there overall and all of our demographic data has been weighted to be reflective of the likely voter population throughout the school district so according to demographic variables such as age gender party registration etc we are broadly representative of that likely voter population again based on that voter turnout model um our survey was in the field for just over two weeks from may 15th to the 24th to the 31st and the survey was administered online so we reached out to voters via email addresses that were again appended to those likely voter records um for a survey sample this size our margin of error is below three percentage points so

008about 2.4 percentage points in either direction when we're talking about the sample as a whole when we're looking at subgroups that sample size decreases and therefore a margin of error increases for our high school boundaries we're looking at a margin of error of about six percentage points in either direction so done with all of the really technical stats talk let's talk survey findings so high level perceptions first we asked the registered voters who participated in the survey to evaluate the facilities in the district and the overall quality of education provided by the district and overall voters are quite satisfied with the services the district provides both in terms of the physical structures and again that educational quality um when we ask go ahead i'm sorry to interrupt you this is old man eyes is there

009any way we could go to like a little take the whole screen on that it's we can't get it to go on the full screen sorry okay so keep continue the story and when there are important things on the screen i'll point them out do that just read it to us every day yeah i'll summarize the text heading slide and then we'll get on to the pictures so we asked voters what they've identified as key issues in the district the biggest challenges that they see the district facing and the things that come up most frequently are the overwhelming growth that the district is experiencing and then how that impacts class sizes teacher burden etc and then whether we're able to attract and retain high quality teachers whether they're being fairly compensated so these are the

010issues that we heard a lot about in the focus groups as well and that was reiterated and sort of confirmed in this quantitative stage of research when we get down to brass tax a little bit we find that a majority of voters feel that the district is in need of additional funding to expand schools and build additional schools to address increases in student enrollment and we have nearly half who indicate that they trust the district to manage additional funding responsibly so there is a little bit of a gap there between the share of voters who acknowledge that the district has growth needs has funding needs and the share of voters who say that they express a good deal of confidence in the district in managing those funds that's one area that we should probably address

011in our communications going forward sort of building that foundation of trust with voters throughout the community we'll talk a little bit about how we can do that so initial reactions to a hypothetical bond proposal we gave voters a snapshot of what ballot language could look like if the district were to propose a bond on the ballot this fall and we have 61 initially say that they would definitely or probably support a bond based on the ballot language alone so no additional information no specifics about projects 61 of voters initially indicate that they would be supportive now that initial reaction is usually a pretty good baseline but we wanted to see whether or not that changed if we gave voters some additional information about the types of projects the district was interested in pursuing with potential

012bond funding as well as some information about the district's track record and history with bonds and sort of repaying bonds accomplishing those projects and we find that after voters read that information after they're presented with those additional details we increase to 70 of likely voters who say that they would support a bond again that's definitely voting for or probably voting for in total we'll look at the breakdown of those numbers as well and then the things that were particularly influential to voters the pieces of information that were important considerations to them and sort of were correlated with that positive valid movement were messages about the district's history with bonds um new schools and projects that were proposed and the fact that the district could propose a bond with a net neutral impact on the tax

013rate so okay i'm sorry yes those numbers are pretty similar to our last bonds they sure are yes okay so quite similar yeah and you hit pretty close on the actual uh devoted percentages too back then yeah yeah so part of the level of confidence that we have here because we are directly modeling the likely electorate and getting a good representative sample of voters that we expect to show up in the 2022 election it gives us a level of confidence that we aren't just asking voters generally and hoping the ones who answered the survey are similar to the ones that show up we have a pretty good estimate there that we're looking at apples to apples comparisons or similar groups of people as those who will participate in the likely or in the election coming

014up so we're pretty confident in in these estimates i will say a baseline like this where we're getting an initial reaction to ballot language and then we're only presenting voters with positive information or facts about a potential bond this tends to be what we would call a high water mark so campaigns or opposition to a bond or potential uh opposition to a bond could very easily erode these numbers we would be thrilled but surprised if the numbers came in higher than this in terms of support but we feel pretty confident that at least right now based on the information available to voters this is reflective of what the ballot would look like yes so it says specific new school slash projects does that mean there are specific individual projects that voters were supportive of or

015that they wanted the type what project would be on the bond laid out for them let me get let me get to the messaging that we presented voters with because it's sort of somewhere in the middle there so let's go through here and i'll get to some of the details um first of all again just some of the high level assessments so we actually had about 43 of voters say that they don't know or don't have enough information to say whether the district is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction but among those who expressed an opinion about how the district is doing currently two-thirds say that the district is headed in the right direction so starting from a pretty positive place again among those who are expressing an opinion which is just

016over half of our likely voter population when we ask them to give a sense of how they feel the district is doing in terms of providing educational quality 54 say the district does a good job 14 say the district does an excellent job which means about two-thirds of voters say that the district is doing excellent or good so positive assessment there uh 22 percent indicate that the district does a four job and just four percent say the district is providing poor educational quality so overall quite positive evaluation again seventy or seven percent of voters there say they don't know or don't have enough information to express an opinion in terms of the facilities in the district we have overall very positive ratings as well again 54 or a majority say that the district facilities are

017good 22 say that they are excellent so about three quarters there providing an above average rating uh just two percent say that district facilities are below average and no voters reported that facilities in the district were terrible so pretty positive ratings overall although we do see concerns about just the growth the size of the schools the student-teacher ratios within classrooms so certainly there is still a sense that while facilities are in the district are good they are not quite adequate to address the growth that we're seeing some of the other concerns that voters expressed were really focused on sort of the student-teacher ratio but also pay compensation for teachers and teacher quality our ability to retain teachers in the district we also asked voters to express their level of confidence in various aspects of district

018service the things that the district for that perceptions of the district really highlight where the district really shines are in regards to making schools safe for children the district received an average of 6.7 on a 0 to 10 scale for confidence there so really positive evaluations you can see the distribution there of school safety perceptions and sort of the confidence that voters have in the district for making safe schools we've got a large cluster here up in that 7 to 10 range so really positive evaluation of school safety and creating a safe environment for students to learn additionally providing high quality education the district receives a 6.3 on that 0 to 10 scale on average again a large cluster of that data being in that seven to ten range really positive associations there and then

019recruiting talented teachers and staff and delivering value for taxpayer investment in the district are the last two things that we would say are relatively higher on that average distribution here again most of those responses clustered above five and many clustered between seven and ten giving us that five point eight average rating on that zero to ten confidence scale other astra aspects of district confidence nothing falls below a 5 average so at the very least the district is passing in all of these categories when it comes to voter confidence but there are there is a little bit of differentiation in terms of the areas where the district performs especially well or whether the voters have higher levels of confidence or trust in the district compared to at the bottom of the scale here fairly compensating teachers

020and staff receives a five on average on that zero to ten confidence scale so relatively lower relatively poorer perceptions there but again no averages below five so pretty positive ratings across the board uh when we asked voters i alluded to this earlier whether they agree or disagree with each of the following statements first the alpine school district needs more funds to expand and rebuild in schools to meet both current and future needs majority of voters agree with that sentiment 61 strongly or somewhat agree and then when we ask whether voters have confidence in the district to manage tax dollars responsibly you see we fall just below that majority marker that halfway point with 46 of voters agreeing with that sentiment but 23 of voters are sort of in the middle there neither agreeing nor disagreeing

021with that sentiment so while we do gain some descent here on the disagree side of the scale we really find that there's a larger cluster in the middle compared to the voters who see the present need and the growth in the district so again 23 there neither agree nor disagree that suggests that there's really an opportunity to provide additional information to voters throughout the district to build that confidence so initial reactions to the bond and i apologize the bond language is very small on this screen i'll hit the highlights here because i am not a lawyer i am definitely not a bond attorney and this is not my area of expertise but we wanted to make sure that we presented voters with something that simulated what they would see on their ballot come november should

022the district move forward with a bond proposal so this is a draft of what the legal ballot language could look like the prescribed pieces that are regulated by the state are presented here so this is a fairly close simulation of what voters would see we asked voters whether they would support or oppose that 595 million bond and gave them the [Music] household tax impacts were there not uh other bonds having been paid off and expressed that because the retirement of existing bonds occurs the overall net impact of this bond would be a zero dollar tax rate change so all of that is reflected here and then we asked voters to react to that hypothetical bond proposal whether they would vote for or against this bond if it appeared on their ballot and we start off

023with 61 total in support um as our board member mentioned earlier board president mentioned earlier this is very similar to the numbers we saw in 2016 as we were preparing for that particular bond proposal and one of the things that i like to point out when we're looking at initial reactions to bond language initial levels of supporter opposition is whether our most polarized categories balance out or outweigh each other in one direction or the other there is a statistically significant difference between that 18 who say they would definitely vote for a bond and that 13 who would definitely vote against and that's something that's a really good indicator that you have a strong foundation of support should the district decide to pursue a bond on the ballot this year again starting at that 61 total

024support baseline is a good place to be generally speaking we want to be in the high 50s to low 60s for that initial support baseline to have confidence that we're in a good position to move forward should that number be closer to 50 percent we have some concerns because as i mentioned this initial reaction tends to be what we would see as a high water mark it's a lot easier for a negative campaign or for opposition to erode that support level and if we're starting really close to 50 we worry that it's really going to be down to the wire but in this case again with your strong supporters outweighing your strong opponents based on the initial reaction and seeing that solid baseline of support in total well above the majority this is a pretty

025good confidence confidence-inspiring initial reaction to that body language uh we've looked at this broken out by demographic subgroups as well you can see there is a difference between men and women's reactions to the bond language women start out more supportive than men again just based on that initial bond language but we have majority support in both genders we have very little difference between households with and without children which is astounding to me it is so rare when it comes to a school bond that we see children in the home having so little influence so it's clear that there is a significant recognition of the needs in the district and one of the things that this confirms what we heard in the focus groups that really the community values education and investing in the education in

026the community is seen as an investment in the community as a whole even if it's not for themselves or for their own children it benefits the economy if we have a well-educated population it benefits everyone's home values if the schools are good so this is something that i think is is very surprising and also very heartening as we're thinking about again that initial level of support or initial reaction age differences not a lot of significant differences here when we're looking at the age cohorts one thing that i do think is particularly interesting is our 18 to 24 year old voters we don't have anyone indicating they would definitely vote against a bond i suspect that if we actually broke out the age differences by homeowners versus renters we would see a little bit of a

027causal mechanism there it's really easy to support something that funds education if you don't pay property taxes and it doesn't seem to directly affect you that's a little bit of speculation on my part but it's what we've seen in the past so again solid majority of support across all of our age cohorts as well so really positive reactions initially and we looked at this geographically as well within each of our high school clusters you can see our initial baseline again majority support in all of our high school clusters except american fork where we fall just below that 50 threshold uh we're starting out at 48 in the american fork high school cluster um and then our one thing that interested me as well our highest level of support or of definitely four definitely supporting the

028bond voters within the orum high school cluster where we had 26 percent of voters who said that they would definitely vote for a bond are areas where we sort of relatively or we saw relatively lower levels of support pleasant grove lone peak american fork and timpanogos but again across the board majorities starting out initially in favor we asked voters why in their own words they would be in favor or opposed to a bond and the things that really jump out on the positive side of things the issues that come to mind for voters or motivators for why they would support a bond really focus on you can see in the word cloud here the need in the district the need for more space the need for more classrooms for more teachers to reduce class sizes

029there is some sense among those who are initially supportive at least of the connection between enough space and enough teachers to facilitate smaller class sizes initial reactions against the bond really focus on fiscal conservatism taxation the district relying on debt to fund more buildings etc that's one of those ideological hurdles that we see any time a bond is proposed in any municipality in utah it's just that that sense that relying on debt and property tax banks debt nonetheless is something that's difficult to overcome so those are the the biggest hurdles or complaints that we see voters would like to see less reliance on debt and taxation um so skipping ahead a little bit we looked again after we presented voters with some additional details about the bond we asked them again whether they would vote

030for or against and we gain 12 points in strong support so we go from 18 to 30 who say they would definitely support bombs and from 43 to 40 who would probably vote for a bond in total we grow to 70 total support so again really positive movement here when voters are given some additional information about what the district is considering here and the district's track record as well and this is also very similar to what we saw in 2016. um a quick look at our post ballot broken out across high school clusters because i think geography is important here as well you can see that we increased our definitely vote for category in every high school cluster across the board where orem was at 26 definitely vote for initially they jumped to 36 and

031are no longer the most likely group to support the bond once there have been additional details our high growth areas in lehigh and west lake become significantly more supportive than they were initially after reading some of those additional details and we also see growth in those areas that were initially a little bit softer support so our support increases in american force and budget growth though again pleasant growth is still sort of down here in the more hesitant side of things but 62 percent of voters in that pleasant grove high school cluster likely to support a bond uh is not core positioning by canadians and then a quick look at the actual movement from our initial reaction to the bond to our post bond value or post messaging evaluation post additional detail evaluation you can see

032we persuade or a lot of our voters who were in that probably vote for category initially moved to that solid support that definitely vote for area we brought some folks who indicated that they would probably vote against into that soft support probably vote for region and then we have some people who initially said they would definitely vote against who moved into that probably vote against area so we're softening the opposition a little bit to some degree and then we do have a little bit of even more positive movements you can see some of these thinner lines going from the definitely against to the probably four or the definitely four and similarly from the probably against thin line there up to the definitely voting force so some positive movement overall we do lose a few folks

033here uh largely that's when we're talking about the restrictions on how bond funds can be used so the fact that it can't fund teacher salaries that's a turn off for some of our voters who are especially concerned about retaining and compensating good quality teachers but overall again a lot of movement towards support of the bond here so some of those considerations that we presented to voters that were especially influential so this again a very text heavy slide i apologize i will summarize things briefly so we presented voters with seven different statements that included some details about the bond proposition what's being considered and then again the district's track record with bond debt and repayment so our first message here was focused on the present needs for the increased enrollment and growth in the district this

034one said the bond is needed due to the increased enrollment in certain areas of the alpine school district the district has outgrown many of its current facilities growth projections indicate an increasing number of students will be added in the future this bond allows the district to be prudent and prepare for the long-term needs throughout the area the second one bond money can only be used for capital expenses so we did want to clarify to voters that bond money is used exclusively for buildings facilities those types of capital expenses because that is a common misperception that bond funds could or should go to teacher salaries so state law requires that bond money can only be used for constructing and upgrading schools and purchasing land for future schools bonds cannot be used to pay for teacher staff

035or administrator salaries or supplies this bond is only to address the need for safe and adequate buildings and classrooms for the students in the alpine school district the third message is focused on those specific projects so the funds from this bond would support initiatives to build a new high school middle school and five new elementary schools in the alpine school district the proposal would also likely include completing the final phase of the pleasant grove and american fork high school rebuild projects as well as some smaller scale renovation projects so this outlined took over some of the plans that the district had for those funds yes so this was all we told them in that area correct so we the only specific things were pleasant grove and af finishing those high school readings yep that's correct

036thank you another message focused on that no tax increase so the lack of impact on voters taxes because of the size and diversity of the district's tax base and the rapid growth the district has experienced over the past five years the district is in a position to place this bond on the ballot and complete much-needed capital projects without increasing taxpayers tax rate another message focused on the approach that the district took in 2020 and their reaction of the district to the public input that was received so in 2020 the district considered placing a bond on the ballot however after listening to feedback from voters the district pursued a variety of alternative options to maximize the use of current facilities and respond to the changes in student enrollment without incurring additional bond debt these alternative options

037included online classes full boundary adjustments and school consolidations while those solutions were sufficient at the time the district is now an urgent need of bond funds for additional school facilities and improvements to accommodate students throughout the district so again listening to voters reacting in 2022 implementing alternative solutions but now the needed solution or the need is for additional facilities um we also included a message about the district's track record so with the last three bonds passed alpine school district has accomplished all of the projects they set out to complete and did all of this during difficult economic conditions that caused other districts to fall short of completing similar bond projects alpine school district has a track record taxpayers can trust and the final piece of information we presented to voters was regarding the district's tax

038rating so the alpine school district district has a aaa tax rating or credit rating excuse me and a long-standing history of paying back its bond debts ahead of schedule generally over a period of 17 years rather than 20. this results in three years of interest savings and positions the district as a trusted borrower with access to favorable interest rates so this was all the information we presented to voters following that initial bond language and this is voters initial reaction to each of those considerations so you can see all of these were rated as at least somewhat important to a large majority of voters we have a good solid response here to all of these considerations but relatively speaking voters were especially impressed or indicated that the no tax increase in the district due to the

039growth and diversity of the tax base was very important 58 there so a majority fall into that very important category 54 each of voters say that the district's aaa credit rating and the track record or the history of success with past bond projects was a very important consideration to them 52 percent of voters said that the increased enrollment and growth just the pressing needs of the district was a very important consideration to them and 51 said that bond money only being used for capital expenses was a very important consideration we fall just below that 50 or majority threshold in that very important category when it comes to the specific projects and the temporary solutions that were implemented in 2020 but the now urgent needs we took all of these considerations or all of these pieces

040of information and put them into a linear regression model which allows us to find statistical correlations between positive movement on that ballot and reactions to each of these considerations or pieces of information while controlling for demographic information so controlling for age controlling for high school clustering so some of the things that were statistically significantly correlated with positive bond movement some of the things that were potentially influential in helping voters decide where they would land in that final ballot question were largely their initial ballot position that's a strong significant correlator but when we talk about the district's trustworthy track record the history of success in completing bond projects and paying debts back on time and ahead of schedule frankly those things are persuasive to voters those are pieces of information that help to build that foundation

041of trust build that confidence in the district that we see was a little bit lacking in the initial questions about the difference between the district's needs and the level of trust voters have the specifics of the bond so the school projects and the types of things that would be funded by the bond were also persuasive to voters you can see that's a positive significant correlation there and then the fact that the bond will not increase their property tax rate is also a persuasive piece of information a very significant correlator and then alternative options being used in 2020 so the fact that the district listened to voters in 2020 pursued alternative solutions to address the needs that the district was facing at the time and now the need is clear and present that is also a

042significant predictor of positive bond movement and then westlake and lone peak high schools also pretty significant uh growth there in support after they've seen some of the details i think it makes sense that those high growth areas of the district become increasingly supportive as they see more information about the growth and the district sort of acknowledging the need in those areas um specifically looking at the american fork and pleasant grove high school areas because those were a couple of the high school clusters that were less supportive initially we wanted to see what was especially persuasive to those voters that trustworthy track record that history of accomplishing the projects that the district has set out to do the specific new schools and projects that were listed was also a strong significant predictor there i think the

043fact that american fork and pleasant grove high schools were mentioned specifically probably doesn't hurt for voters in those areas this would suggest that it is a significant predictor of that positive movement and then again the fact that the tax increase would be neutral or in other words there is no effect on voters tax rate it's also a strong positive predictor there we also asked voters before concluding the survey what the most memorable piece of information was or what was it that really resonated with them the most and what it came down to was really a lot of focus on the need in the district and the district's history of using bond debt wisely of accomplishing the projects they set out to accomplish um we pulled out some of the quotes here that were particularly illustrative

044of the themes we heard so the district has a plan for growth and a track record of their plans working another voter said that it's impressive that the district has done so in a shorter amount of time that was expected the money can only be used for school buildings not for teacher salary or supplies that was a piece of information that really stood out to some of our voters and that was again a significant uh determining factor for some of our voters the district util utilizing other strategies to find solutions to growth without tax increases however these measures are no longer sufficient that display of fiscal responsibility of responsiveness to taxpayers and voters voices prior to making decisions was also something that stood out again the district has repaid every debt on time and the

045last bond was successful in helping the district to grow this gives me confidence that the next one will do the same and then finally another voter and several voters mentioned the information about the triple a credit rating and access to favorable interest rates because of a history of early repayments so again building that confidence with voters and presenting them with this information is something that has been compelling uh based on the results we see here and that concludes our whirlwind tour for this afternoon so um i uh assumed that if you have not been representing them you are probably aware of some districts that have sponsor failed recently um i don't know anything you could do to kind of contrast the ones that fail from what we're seeing or kind of i'm sorry that's a

046weird question you know yeah i i think i understand the question though so i will say the biggest indicator to me is this initial bond positioning and the positive movement that we see so again that initial level of strong definitely supportive voters outweighing that definitely against constituency is a really positive indicator to me and is something that differentiates the district from other districts we've seen uh the one district that we've worked with worked with that was not able to pass their last bond this is one of the challenges that that we see is that if there isn't significantly more enthusiastic support than enthusiastic opposition we get worried so maybe they may have been more similar definitely for it's especially cause for concern if we see the responses more weighted in that definitely against category than

047that probably against category we have some ability to move these people in the middle right we saw in this movement chart there's a good chunk of people who say that they would probably be against a bond who move over and say that they would probably vote for that's a good sign but we don't move as much of this definitely against category we don't get as many of those people to come over to our side after presenting them with additional information and that is sort of the cause for concern area that's where i would see a red flag is if we are seeing more of the opposition focused in that enthusiastic strong opposition category than we're seeing in that soft opposition category in this case we have twice as many people in that probably category than

048we do in the against category that's a good sign talk really loud yes inflation so i will say one of the things we heard in our focus groups was that folks are aware enough of the inflation and the cost of living rising right now that the cost of construction increasing that this larger bond amount didn't create the level of sticker shock we were expecting so we had one voter who said that's what a hundred house is and you know being a little bit facetious but not not that facetious uh so i i will say that that doesn't seem to be something that voters are are clinging to we're not seeing a great deal of sticker shock and the number that is the most important to voters is what is their household tax impact at the

049end of the day how does this affect them and their household individually and the fact that that 595 million dollar number results in a net zero tax increase means that voters are willing to support this both because they see the increasing cost of living and because this is something that is an investment in the community that doesn't require more from them than they're already getting julia are you on there i just wanted to make sure julie is there yes go ahead do you actually need a net zero tax rate increase yes that's correct yes did you have any questions julie okay just wanted to make sure we get go ahead yeah i had the same concern ada and i actually looked again since this was all online uh the the language always said uh no

050tax rate increase however there's probably a large number of voters that didn't know what that meant and so but i did notice in here in the language on the bond the bond language actually specifies that there will be an increase of 87 per household in the taxes paid so i believe that it was pretty clear that even though the tax rate stayed the same that there would have been an additional number of dollars for each taxpayer does that help aydah okay i just wanted to make sure that was clear thank you all right um i'm sorry but i wanted to ask you another really hard question by all means um i can't remember whether we asked this before but i think that we have felt we did we didn't want to do probably tax increments

051in the same year as we do a bond but i'm just wondering did you in maybe your focus groups did you did any of them say anything about that or has you worked with other districts have they tried doing that in the same year or i'm just it's a long shot but if you have any incl you know intuition i just wanted to see what you think my sample size there is much too small for me to feel confident relating what i've seen in one other district to alpine so i don't know that i have any particular guidance here and we did not ask any questions about how tax increments may or may not affect folks support of a potential bond so i don't have any data to that effect i'm sorry you don't want

052to like put your foot out particularly thank you that speaks to a tax increase yeah that's a definite possibility again that would be speculation on my part so i think i still have my question from the beginning the question would be do you see data here that says specifying the projects makes them more likely to vote or just specifying specifying the exact project or specifying what type of project so we've had some conversations about one of the problems we had with the last bond was growth patterns by phase four ended up being slightly different than what we anticipated and we needed to move a school sure which people were pretty understanding about but still frustrating to some so one of the questions that we've had is should we specify especially in the latest you know

053where exactly that project is going to go or should we say this type of project but not specify a location do you have data supporting which of those would be more beneficial i don't because in this case the only information we gave voters was sort of the categorical specification of projects what i have seen in this survey data and in the focus groups we've conducted for the district is that seeing a plan laid out understanding that the district has sort of done its homework to develop a plan for how those bond funds will be used seems to be the key factor there so if the district says we're budgeting for a high school a middle school and for elementary school or five elementary schools excuse me because here are the growth patterns and these are

054the areas where we have the most need based on these facility assessments all of these things that the district has done to produce those estimates those are the things that tend to be the most significant predictors of support having the individual school sites laid out is persuasive to some voters we find that some folks want to know you know want to see exactly how each dollar is going to be accounted for or eventually want to see that they will you know have access to exactly how each dollar was accounted but generally speaking i think again having that road map those categories laid out is enough to inspire that confidence and the more specificity we give we can give without maybe tying the district's hands to some of those details that might shift down the road

055seems to be beneficial okay thanks okay thanks a lot kyrie kyrie and emily they're on such a great team and they provide provides so much strong information that should be valuable to you as a board as you now wrestle through where you're going from here or where you're going to direct shane to take our team but from our end we'd like to make a strong recommendation to proceed with a bond a 595 million dollar bond we we get a strong sense from our third party group that there is a high confidence level to support one secondly our voters have an opportunity to weigh in on this and that's why we also like going after a bond we know that there are a few ways that we can go after really large projects like this but

056having our voters um participate in that has really been i think valuable for us but you guys have to do taxing in lots of different ways but our recommendation if you're wanting to know at the end of the day we would recommend proceeding forward with um formalizing going after a bond for 595 million dollars but please let us know where you're at with that recommendation i know that shane has told us that you've got another study group coming up and finally people will be asking what about this particular survey i want to look at the data information a little bit more clearly i want to go through it myself y2 is creating a summary of this information to have available david will put it on he's working with that pr committee on a bond page

057for our website and he'll have it up and running we asked about that yesterday so they're going to be working on a document that will then allow this to be accessed by the public okay thank you kimberly appreciate that so the timeline would be we had the focus groups we did the survey we bring the results back we'll have a board meeting in july what kimberly has suggested is that we believe that you should continue to study the possibility of putting a general obligation bond on the 2022 ballot we would like to prepare for next meeting a list of potential projects scope of that bond for your consideration if there are additional pieces of information that you would like to look at let us know so that we can present that and have that prepared

058for our july meeting for additional discussion and deliberation in preparation for an august determination by the board whether or not we put a general obligation bond on the 2022 ballot there's additional information you would like to receive in the january or july study session let us know but it will the plan right now is to contemplate the projects that would be included in that 595 million dollars okay emily thank you appreciate our partnership with you and your support and um the work that you do to inform our board of education by the way in case you're wondering how different things you say actually sway people that are listening as soon as you said regression the computer science we'll turn some time over to you appreciate you and the team members that you have here and

059the work that you do as our business administrator and the uh you saw i think from our previous survey just a high degree of public trust in the financial workings of alpine school district i think that's a tribute from the public to you and your team and the great work you do so we'll talk a little bit about budget and the attentive budget for fiscal year and if you want to know where some of the information on the actual projects can be found it's in the budget on page 29. there are specific dollar amounts for each project that were completed this last year um cascade elementary in aurum and central and pleasant grove and trailside and vineyard and lehigh high final face i'm not sure does that leave him um just off the freeway silver

060lake elementary in eagle mountain greenwood american four carpet point and saratoga spring so there's some details there within the budget document and i think look at that actually are up um we've had a study session where we've reviewed budget information in the process and gone through details um this process can't be completed without the work of our our business team and specifically randy upton who's our director of budgets his assistant jason sundberg and we have the rest of our budget team christopher michaelis slaughter medicare austin harris appreciate them being here they are the best team and budget that we've ever had in alpine and i've been here a couple years so um really proud of this group i met with a couple of board members and one that we wish i would plan on being

061there but couldn't because of a flight delay but we went through the questions of board members and we always make time to sit down with our board members and let them ask details and what about this on page that and is there a typo on this page here or did we miss this there or etcetera and honestly it was the shortest conversation we've had um ever and i think that's a credit to this team and so i just wanted to write as we start i wanted to thank them for their hard work and thank our board for your thorough review and the many questions but again that the list of questions were fewer this year and i think that's a credit to our board but also a credit to this team we also have steve

062uh reese who's our director of accounting robert foyer who's our assistant accounting director and i think i have a couple more team members online um dana hardman and a couple others who are listening in from home so great team and i'm privileged to serve and work with them we've prepared a few things for you since we've gone through all the details and the budget and the process and who's involved and how the requests come in all of that's available online for the public they're on the business services department webpage there is a tab on the left side you can click on the budget it's available to everybody it looks like this there's a copy on file in my office and i have one additional hard copy right here if someone would like it we're happy

063to provide that to you as well um the other thing i wanted to point out um is all of the folders with requests in the calendar and all of those things are also online that can be seen with that i'm going to transition um randy's going to lead us through um a presentation we're going to focus a lot on the property tax piece again that's something our public that we're that the board is very sensitive to we want to talk about the property tax piece the basic property tax rate was set by the tax commission today about an hour and a half ago and the team had a set of numbers we had a budget put out and they quickly adjusted to update this presentation for you with the latest because we just saw 1652.

064we're going to talk about that and this is the last year that the basic rate will be held at the floor of 16. that was hb 293 that was passed uh four years ago this is the fifth year that replaces the one five seven one sixteen fifty two okay so anyway but again that's just a kudos to this theme they responded very quickly and updated that for you so with that i'm going to be quiet let randy jump into the meat and then answer any questions that you might have okay thanks rob i want to echo what rob said and thank the budget team for their good work there's been as the board knows there's been a lot of changes this year a lot of great ideas a lot of things that you have come

065to tuition after studying for a long period of time and property taxes is no different with some of the changes that have gone on so we're seeing some things that uh i don't know about rob i know in my 25 plus years in school finance i haven't seen anything like this before so a little bit different but again thanks to as rob mentioned we got the basic levy today about 3 40 before we came up and then the team team did a great job adjusting so i appreciate them on the first slide we want to talk about we want to start with where our original assumptions were and kind of where we were at the beginning and keep in mind we're estimating these things back in january february uh with the best data we have

066available and we're looking at some smoothing we're looking at multiple years so what were our original assumptions our overall tax rate value uh we estimated that to increase the 10 over the last four years you'll see here a little bit that over the over that period of time it's gone anywhere from about 12 to 16 and so again being conservative on revenues we said hey we'll estimate an increase of 10 knowing that we probably have a little bit of wiggle room uh and it would go up a little bit more than that our takes tax rate value due to growth though that piece of it which is new revenue for us we estimated at five percent so we've been right in the four to seven percent over the last four or five years which we'll

067see on the later slide uh so that was kind of one of our assumptions and then we also estimated that the the rates along with that we have to estimate what the rate's going to decrease right so through the certified tax rate process as an existing property increases in value the rate decreases so that you have the same budgeted revenue from year year uh outside of growth so we have to estimate hey what is the certified tax rate process going to do to rates and we estimate that those rates would go down about 5.2 percent uh so they've been anywhere in the last four or five years uh between between five percent and seven percent or eight percent so those were kind of our uh assumptions um as we went into it so the real

068question is where what happened where are we really at so that's the next slide um so first of all the overall tax rate value increased 35.6 so 25 25.6 greater than we had estimated now the first thought by i think a lot of individuals not dealing in property tax uh is their day job but think 35 percent wow look at all the rights to revenue you're getting and we wish that were the case but as we'll find out through the presentation it's not as simple as that our tax rate value due to growth was 7.4 which was very helpful certified tax rate actually decreased 22 percent so as the assessed value went up and the rate went down um it obviously decreased more than the 5.2 percent we had estimated it was outside of the

069norm we've had over the last little while our board local levy decreased 23 percent uh and we'll explain in a bit why that why that occurred um and why it's greater than the overall certified tax rate the charter school levy decreased 11.3 so those are dollars that we don't actually see in the school there's three thousand dollars that are pushed to the state office and then distributed out to church charter schools um and we'll talk about that process uh here a little bit of the charter school levy uh and how that affects us so those you can see in the in the chart here you can see what our 22 actual rates were if you remember a year ago went through the capital outlay local levy uh put that at 803. we said hey it's

070gonna go down to 761 we're down to 626 and you can see all those things along the lines there what our rates went down to it's pushed our debt service rate down based on our principal and interest is due in the 23 year down to a rate of 1714 from 20 to 19 years before so there was definitely some significant changes uh the next slide shows just some tax rate history uh over the period of 2014 to 2023 um our tax rate has gone down 17 percent or excuse me 34 between 22 and 23 our tax rate's gone down 17 overall so you can see i i remember when i was at a previous district looking at the top districts in the state and alpine was one of those at the time i think they

071were in the top eight or 10 assessing rates and i would dare say we're probably in the bottom 15 now um somewhere in that that realm so there's those are the tax rates the next the next graph uh shows us the adjusted tax rate value really what we want to show here is the extremity of the increase in the value so we've got the blue line that has the dollar amounts uh which is the the grid on the left we've got the the orange line the red line that has the percentages so you can't read those um it ranges anywhere from from 11 to 12 to 16.7 in that second year and then 35.6 this last year so one can see by looking at that overall you know history of that if we were to

072go back five more years we'd probably be that we would we would definitely be in the same same room but the 35.6 is not something that uh i think you've added on to rob and said our value is going to go up 35.6 i think he probably would have left me out of the room so um it's just not something that i think that's that's kindly left it's not something that you can really anticipate so just to show you kind of an area there that uh how extreme that 35.6 percent so what does it do to grow let me just jump in on that as the team saw that our initial thought is there has to be an error there has to be something that's driving why when we're in this kind of ban and

073the deviation's relatively consistent over an extended period of time a spike of 3x would cause you to say there's something not right so we talked as a team and made a few phone calls and said hey is there a calculation error is there a tax increment project that wasn't considered is there and the response from the county was no it's correct and so again as randy said if he would have said rob we need to plan on a 35 increase i would have told them i said no go back and rethink that because that's not anywhere in the mathematical or statistical modeling that we use to say this is a change in one year's time it just i've never seen that in 28 years and so that's something again that drives that rate down significantly

074which is what we're sharing with you today i mean it's what we know what would we do if it wasn't that yeah okay so as we as we we realized within the boundaries of alpine school district the assessment is going up now that's for existing properties and so a property that's that we would not designate as a new growth property those values are increasing so as new properties are built and if you've been around the school district at all it's not slowing down what would you what do you think would happen to the values of those new properties i would think uh and i'm i'm in a minority i guess when it comes to the county i would think that those values would increase as well so our growth would increase in a more significant

075value so as you look at this next chart you can see that our growth is a 7.4 our growth over the last few years has been five to seven percent uh these are new dollars that have not been part of the assessment value in the past and so these are new dollars that we can capture um and so we're the we're the op the value goes up 35 but the growth is still still staying about where it's at we're a little surprised by that and that was as raw mentioned one of the reasons one of the contributing factors why we thought hey there's got to be an error here so one piece that the certified tax rate process does not take into consideration is inflation so typically you have inflation you know we've enjoyed inflation

076of one or two percent so as we get that new growth that helps offset some of that inflation because the growth has been higher this year however as you can see on this next graph average inflation has been seven percent so our growth is a seven point three seven point four percent our inflation has been at seven percent so it's basically offsetting the inflationary factor so do we really have new dollars in new growth and we're going to show you an example here in a little bit which is going to show to you uh no we're actually not having new dollars from a growth perspective to help meet the inflationary college of the school district so any comments okay um the next slide we want to show you is just the drop in the certified

077tax rate which is a fancy word for saying we keep our budgeted revenue the same the prior year as we do this year that's really what that boils down to so that again the annual percentage change is anywhere from five to seven percent as far as a decrease in rates you can see that uh we dropped 22 percent this year in our capital and voted rates they look like they're looks like one line but there's actually two different rates there that are decreasing the same and then we have the board rate which is on the orange line or redline that dropped 23 percent so why is that the case so we have we have a rate called the charter school levy that charter school levy is calculated outside of property taxes for a dollar amount

078that the district must contribute based on our assessed valuation that rate at the start of the year they take last year's budgeted revenue and they lump it together with the board leeway revenue or board levy revenue so it's one revenue source they run into the certified tax rate process that rate decreases if you're in a growth state like we are that rate decreases and then they take the amount that's necessary for the charter levy to generate irrelevant to the certified tax rate process and they pull out that rate from the board levy that says this is what it's going to generate so um as we noted earlier the charter levy went down 11 right but all the other rates are going down 22 and that's because of the amount through a separate calculation of the

079charter library that levy has to generate our belief is the charter levies should really be independent right it should be part of our tax or certified tax rate process there has been one year over the last four where we actually actually had a little extra board leeway money because of that process but in a growing district like you are typically you're going to see that rate decrease decrease your board levy farther than uh whether your other rates are decreased so why is that why is that important okay is that confusing this is why it takes 15 minutes to explain those tax increments to somebody yeah there you go that's true speaking of tax increments the next slide all right so we preached to them we preached to the board uh the key so there's a

080there's an item called the state guarantee on both the board local levy side and the voted local letter side we preach to the board that the key is we want to be at 20 increments that's how we maximize our funding and that still hasn't changed so one of the questions that comes up as you look at the flight 23 rate where our voted local levy's been driven down to 1248 and our board local level has been driven down to 429 we're only at a total of 16.77 so what happens well there's a provision in the law that allows for a hold harmless for up to five years so there's a five year look back period so because last year we charged sixteen hundred for the votedly way and we were above four increments which is

081the max we can have as a total of 20. those rates will stay intact for a five year look back period and so even though our our 20 increments is at 16.77 we'll still be fully funded at the state guarantee of 20 increments uh and they'll hold harmless during that during that time so keeping in mind that in preparation for the next slide keeping in mind that for every dollar we generate locally we lose a dollar of state guarantee money right so the state comes out and says at a certain rate we're going to guarantee you're going to generate x number of dollars and if you don't generate that we're going to pay you the difference okay we can see we can report to the board that we're within about three million dollars of not

082generating any state guarantee money as of property taxes in the 23 year no matter what we do no matter what you know yeah so that's that's kind of how close we are so um okay okay now here's here's the telling chart so if you can visualize from the chart um there's four increments that come into play giving us the guarantee that we need from this from the state so this is on the board local levy side and so within the voted within the voted local levy those 16 those the rate of 16 increments generates the guarantee and then we subtract that we collect locally and it's the same regardless you can't raise that anymore because it was voter authorized the board levy how however the board local levy uh has a max of uh of

08325 increments not proposing today that your aides had to turn 25 that's by any means but this is the process this is what happens during the certified tax rate process because that rate was driven down as you can see in fy 22 we had a rate of triplo 559 so up to the triple 04 rate amount whatever dollar dollars are generated there are traded with state guarantee money so every dollar we generate in the blue section we lose one dollar of state funding okay so and that's the way that the state guarantee mechanism works anything in the orange or above is unrestricted funds so you can see in the in the 22 year we generated 5.5 million dollars based on that tax rate of unrestricted board levy money okay so if i fast forward to

084the 23 year now instead of 13 million from the blue section of 22 i'm now generating 18 million so an additional 4 million less than change uh in the guarantee so what does that mean that means that's five million dollars less than state revenue i'm receiving so everything in the blue essentially is a wash right so even though i'm generating more money in the blue area that's not more money for my budget all that's doing is shifting what i used to get from the state and now i get it locally it just changes the source it doesn't increase the revenue in the overall budget the orange section is the section that increases revenue in the overall budget the only problem is the orange section this year is a lot smaller than the orange section last

085year so you can see there's a decrease in that unrestricted revenue so by that board levy rate being driven down as a district we're actually losing funds for that's discernment and so that's that's really a decrease so that's another component that the growth has to offset that's already trying to offset the seven percent inflation so now we've got a double mechanism there so bro no we thought as a team this would be helpful to try to explain and share with you how that mechanism works with the guarantee it's doing what it's intended to do if you generate it locally the state gives you less that's how those guarantees are supposed to work the concern is is moving forward we think one year maybe two year we will be out of the guarantee for the board

086money so all of those funds will be collected locally unless the legislature were to infuse significant dollars into those guaranteed programs so i think the tricky part to explain to the public then correct me if i'm wrong is they feel like as they're paying more we should have more dollars but that's not what's happening because as they're paying more we're losing state dollars so the public feels like you should already be getting more but we're not because we lose an equal amount of state dollars correct and that's why mark it's so difficult to have a conversation about tax increments yeah because these mechanisms they are difficult to explain and so we thought graphically this was the best way we could try to share with you how that is working and so we will continue to

087look for ways to better educate our taxpayers and talk with legislators going back a couple of slides one of the things we did here is to show an unprecedented inflationary factor and this is a fiscal year inflation so i know last quarter it was 8.6 we tried to show to be consistent with our budget a fiscal year inflation average over time the team did a great job calculating that but growth is supposed to help us capture those additional dollars to provide services when your inflation is eating up nearly all of that growth and i've got this reality where i'm losing state dollars because i'm collecting them well i'm not gaining some of those additional dollars that we can provide for teachers for salaries or class sizes it makes it more challenging here at the local

088level it's kind of a double whammy if you will as we look at budgets moving forward and that's why tax increments is an important part of our conversation in generating resources to meet the needs of students and support learning for families because we're not going to get those guaranteed dollars from the city even though we have growth in businesses and things correct and i think as randy pointed out the inflation becomes a two-edged sword it hits you twice really so this was our best attempt to make more simple a pretty complex um situation so that was what i had to add anything else that you wanted to you know hear our board members questions on that dynamic so so i would just say in the beginning we said hey we increased 35 in value what

089does that really mean and we get kind of excited when the property tax numbers come in because there's usually some growth and as a budget team we can add money to the budget right we adjust the book we add money to it you can see the bottom line state has stayed the same but in reality on the revenue side we took away 1.7 million dollars when this came in because of some of these nuances that we're explaining so perfect your questions that's a wrap for tax rates and how it's a component of our fy23 budget and again thanks to the team thanks for you the board members all that you've done the questions we hope this was helpful and informative as we move forward yes you're going to ask a question i'm thinking about it

090a deep one i'm thinking about it i think i'm going to sit up okay thank you bob thank you randy i had some questions i was just getting the description oh i met with him yesterday okay thank you um uh so i was actually trying to hunt through the budget book to find the total expenditures for the budget without capital without capital no that's that's all for all inclusion well without capital so just uh generally is this the general fund sure in the executive summary if you want to look at those first 30 pages um that you're [Music] maybe this is more of a comment than a question but for board members uh if we did max out our increments uh we could do 20 one more increments which would be about 95 million a

091year we could get off of increments which would be even get off of the bond you could generate that's a good point but i mean yeah we need to get off of bonds but the other thing is if you look at the percentage of 600 well whatever the 800 million right it's definitely like over 10 right so if we were to look at that if we if we could somehow get to where we were maxing out our local contribution we could get a significant increase in our budget and 10 so you could decrease class sizes by 10 ish right if you if you were willing to do that so you don't want to do that that was a lovely if but you would increase taxes by how much significantly so so maybe so you want

092to start doing it a little at a time but the bottom line is we also don't want to sit on our hands right because we want to have this this funding available to our students the ceiling for board levy is 25 immigrants the floor is zero and we're at triple four so again we're close to that floor and so what mark's pointing out is the difference between where we're at and the seat each tax increment generates about 4.7 million dollars annually and the impact on our average our median um home value increased this year to just under 500 000. again part of that value significant value increase is that median value is 499 800 which means the average is higher and the impact at that median is about two dollars a month 20 about 27

093per year for each increment so you could do the math mark and see what 20 increments or 21 increments would do i just wanted to share with you kind of how that map works out because i i our team as we talked through okay what questions might the board yeah this is this was that was when we thought you might well the the it answers the question of do we need to pay attention to this 20 increments thing anymore i think the answer is probably not because by the time we run out of our five-year whole harmless which makes me really sad because now that's been a big motivation to get the board to go to truth and taxation in the past now we have to actually say do we want to leave planning on

094the table that we should use to have education is there any precedence or history of a local area decreasing that value to then qualify for money or once you hit that threshold you likely just stay there that is a fantastic question alpine school district years ago when geneva steel was operational you were one of the highest assessed value districts in the state park city at the time was one of the lowest interesting several decades later alpine was one of the lowest because of our prolific growth and some of the unique issues with our tax base how that shifted and that's pre-silicon slopes and this board prior boards had an impact in silicon slopes in our partnership with micron and other companies but it was interesting that we were high and then we were one of

095the lowest assessed value for student and then qualify for a lot of guarantees so can a district shift absolutely yes the morgan school district where i where i was before here we had a cement plant in croydon if you've ever been to croydon there's a wonderful place to eat it's on the left-hand side of the road as you're going up the canyon next to the ground yes right next to the brown cow and we used to stop there and eat but the cement plant there in croydon was one of our largest taxpayers and our tax place was not diversified so when the cement plant protested its tax value and it was supported by the tax commission and they dropped about 20 in value it changed our qualifications significantly in a one-year period of time so

096can that movement occur randy could probably talk to you about his experience in the went to basin with the oil the boom and the bust and how that significantly impacted revenues whether they be local or whether they be from the state so the answer is yes it can happen it's not common likely not to have those year to year so it's interesting you bring up park city because i'm now not remembering exactly but it seems like they're per pupil nothing is like 30 more than what we get because they have their tax base they have a large tax base that doesn't have very many kids but i wonder what they're saying due to this weird year because i'm sure that the all those condos and things are appreciating like crazy and so they're they're based

097their rates going down but i wonder if they're having the same stagnation kind of thing due to the the uh rate going down further than inflation's going after something i'd have to check with todd my initial uh discussions with steeple um salt lake county increased their values their values and so we were trying to say well we had estimated 10 how far off are we going to be park city my guess is they're up significantly the values are up significantly and growth is also significant in park city there's a lot of building going around now what that is i don't know i have to look into it i guess by i'm kind of putting on my legislative hat i wonder if this is a general problem across the state that we should be addressing through

098some kind of legislation with the amount of growth that we're getting we should be getting additional dollars particularly our growth in businesses and if that's not happening it seems like we ought to be trying to find out how to change i think there's that challenge and i think there's also the challenge of this sport coming to terms with if we no longer qualify for state money that's a challenge the benefit of that is our taxable our every dollar and so we have the potential to generate the challenge of that as increments but we do have the potential now that we are qualified to say okay can we do something with our own tax base and a rate to increase the revenues coming in i still think if you let that go down below 20 it's

099bad pr with the legislature but i think but i think making sure our legislators understand that we went down 12 increments this year like because last year we debated were we gonna do one or two should we do that we didn't have to do that to stay above the 20 and we decided to do a couple and even though we did it when we didn't have to last year now we're down 12. which we can't do in a year and i think this challenge is not unique to alpine school divisions you know living in america i just got a tax notice from american pork city they're dealing with that same thing right even though the taxes base increases that does not generate automatic increases for us especially when you have that inflationary factor that is

100negating the growth hey rob so it's park city's assessed value went up 38 their growth went from 544 to 800 facebook wow so they're eight hundred thousand twenty percent so and the same kind of scenario um o'clock oh is um test test thank you very much yes um she's is um if you change your mind not is were thank you welcome everybody to uh our board meeting this evening it's always exciting to see people here to participate with us we would like to excuse our board members that are not able to be here tonight um julie king is participating remotely and i believe we're still trying to get ada wilson and uh sarah beason is also excused from from our meeting tonight so we will now go ahead if you notice on the agenda we

101have the final budget public hearing and then the tentative budget public hearing before we start in our normal board meeting so as board president i now declare the public hearing on the final budget for fiscal year 2021-2022 open and we will now entertain any comments on the final budget we don't have anybody who signed up however if there is anyone who would like to come up and make a comment you're welcome to uh i don't want to put you on the spot but rob would you like to say anything about the process or what the final budget it turned out or anything like that thank you president clement i'm happy to share we have um randy upton our director of budgets he presented in study session and we've had a very robust budget process started

102back in october of last year for the public david i don't know if anyone care about you or karen could you pull up the district business team webpage i just want to show for the public that's here maybe those who might be following from home or may want to look at the recording online where you can find the budget there's always a hard copy in the business services office downstairs on the left hand side of the business services page it says district annual budget if you'll click on that that'll show you the document that we have for the board and this budget includes the final budget for last year and the tenant budget for next year so both document our both budgets are contained in one document here for you so david if you go

103back if the public has additional it's about 200 pages of light reading so i would encourage you if you need some help that late at night and spreadsheets are your thing that we've had got some great graphs and teams have done a remarkable job putting this together but uh would recommend you download a copy and take a look or look at the online copy if you go back to the page the main page david um you have the financial report the popular annual financial report there but if you go down to historical reports click on that page for me and if you wanted to come in here and you wanted to look at other information items right at the top there's different folders so if you want to look at the board study of district

104restrictions at the top left or um i want you to look at the district annual budget folder it's the fourth one from left to right so the public wanted to look at different budgets from the past these are all of the budget documents that we've started to put out online available for the public if you go back one click david there's enrollment projections um etc if you want to look at budget documents and some of the detail click on that folder right there and that will share some additional information about the budget calendar and who's responsible for what program there's two different budget processes capital is on the left operations is on the right so those two folders at the top again you can drill down and look at additional information about the budget process

105the requests that come in the different needs that departments or schools are requesting whether it be capital investment or whether that be i need an additional um secretary those two folders contain a type of information for the public so those are just a couple of things to share with those who are here and those online again appreciate the team trying to put this information out and available for our public to be as involved as they want to be so with that as maybe an intro the budget that we have before you tonight we would recommend to your approval and i think president clement you have the tentative tax rates we received the basic levy set by the tax commission about 20 minutes before study session and the team updated the budget document for study session

106and then also for your consideration tonight so thanks to the good people on our budget team and it's just privilege to serve and work with all of you in that process thank you for the overview um i believe that we've given anyone who wants to make a public comment the chance to do so so i now declare the public hearing on the final budget for fiscal year 2021 2022 closed and a motion is we need a motion to approve the final budget for fiscal year 2021-22 as amended i'll make that motion that we approve the final budget for fiscal year 21-22 pardon me no this is part of the budget hearing do you not want to do it now i'm sorry so now we're just through with the public hearing okay so we are now

107going to saunter for about three minutes and then we will open the budget the public hearing for the tentative budget for fiscal year 2022-2023 i think the legislature they get up and they kind of wander around for a little bit until uh stretch there you go that's a sauntering move right there if i've ever seen it okay um board member uh king or board member wilson did you have anything you'd like to add to the discussion here mostly i just want to test out and make sure you're able to talk to us um can you guys hear me okay yes i am here thank you thank you excellent we can hear you both um that's great to at least know that we've got you both in there did you did you have anything you'd like

108to comment about last uh last year's budget i just appreciate the business services team because i met with rob yesterday to go over my last set of questions because it's an ongoing conversation so i just appreciate the time that he took to go through all those pieces with me and i suppose it would be worth noting to the uh the public that our particularly our budget committee goes over these things with a fine-tooth comb and we really appreciate them and the review of everything it may seem like we don't talk about it a whole lot in our board meeting but that's because we've done a lot of work beforehand the board's had the budget document to review and that's something that we take seriously making sure that we're being accountable with public funds so i'm

109now kind of thinking we're approaching the end of the sauntering period and it's really easy to take that money and and start to allocate it in ways that you can't project into the future and i think we've done a really good job of keeping that money controlled in a way that it's not going to hurt us when it disappears so i just appreciate the the team working to keep that one-time money controlled in a way that we don't depend upon it i think that's an excellent um point uh again we've had coveted relief funds and other funds that were one time and it's tempting to try to use them in a way that would require additional funding in following years i think the the budget team's been really good at finding projects that can be

110completed and then that funding is not needed moving forward okay so we are now going to declare the public hearing on the tentative budget for fiscal year 2022 2023 open and we do have one person signed up joe johnson to speak about the 2022-2023 budget so if you'd like to to approach the microphone you can do that thank you for your time tonight um just a couple of comments on the budget so a couple of meetings ago the you know it was a it was a great meeting the board was able to rejoice in having salary including increases um that were well deserved to our teachers if i understood right you stated your next goal was to work on lowering class sizes here are some budget suggest adjustments that i would hope you would consider

111that maybe would help you accomplish that goal um first is to let parents take the primary primary responsibility and the social and emotional wellness of our children i can reconsider the hiring of six psychologists 10.4 social workers i don't want you to 0.4 14 elementary school counselors and 10 board certified behavior behavior analysts this could free up approximately enough money to hire 71 additional teachers if i did my math right rob will have to tell me but the other thing is is look at restructuring the department of equity inclusion and student support significantly just in simple math of eliminating some of that overhead you could allow for the higher additional five additional teachers you could resize the department in the communications it looked like and maybe this was a misprint in the budget but it

112looked like salary without headcount increasing was going up 135 um you know just uh if that were resized to more of a of a gradual increase from 2019 going forward that could hire another 4.5 teachers you know just in these three simple ideas that would allow one additional teacher in every school not that that moves the needle enough but it starts to move the needle a little bit you know years ago parents would seek to limit screen time with our kids how many times did we hear our own mom say no video games or turn off the tv i know i heard that plenty of times you know studies show that mom knows best the screen time including gaming tv and social media is hurting our social and emotional wellness and maybe we ought to

113re-look at our concern with with the behavior of our students and look and see if that if the one-to-one learning is really what would be in the best interest of our students instead of adding to a problem and then needing to add the overhead to work on that problem you know another idea is lowering class sizes and non-traditional ways that don't force kids into home schooling because it gave students an option to e-learn as their choice from their home for those students whose parents prefer learning at home the district provided the same opportunities to them as those who are in person which would lower class sizes increase revenue improve relationships with uh you know with with some of the struggles that teachers are facing with some kids that want to go online some kids want

114to be there that looks like that would be an easy win-win and that's being done in other districts i really believe that our uh if our primary financial goal is to improve our schools i think it'd be great to uh look at what we can do to actually make sure that we're measuring the right things and seeing those things attained thank you thank you for your comments um is there anyone else who'd like to make a comment on the budget go ahead both you first and then she can go next and if you wouldn't mind stating your name that would be perfect my name is sydney finch and i would just like to verify that money is set aside to implement the hpe 374 in the district so i just want to be on the

115record okay we appreciate your comment by the way just so you know we don't usually respond to comments but we we do listen yes thank you go ahead hi my name is rebecca spencer um and i didn't plan on speaking tonight but i have done a little bit of homework on the social emotional wellness of our students and i just wanted to give perhaps a different perspective as a special olympics mother um he's very tapped in with the special education community tonight it actually feels a little personal to me i've got my eight-year-old here with me and we're dressed up because we are going to viewing as soon as we're done for the father of one of her close friends from school and there's four little boys the 10 year old um has those a

116significant special needs a girl and five girl twins in the school district and my mom has suddenly found herself as a single parent and i sure hope that the schools will continue to support this family when they have needs it because it takes a village i know it takes a village because i appreciate the village i know you've heard me here again and again saying thank you all my school district for what you do for a special education community i'm deeply grateful for the support we have as a parent i'm extremely involved i've been accused of being overly involved in my child's education i spent thousands and thousands of dollars probably eight to ten thousand dollars learning to teach a special needs child to read so that my child would learn to read i spend

117a significant amount of money outside of the therapy i am very humbled and grateful that we've been able to do that and it has been a great personal sacrifice there are countless families who don't have the ability to provide some of these extra supports that our children desperately need to grow up as well-rounded contributing members of our society i know that it's a very hot topic as i've started to delve a little deeper into some of the issues in education and elections but i would just love for you to consider the perspective of those parents who are deeply engaged and are doing everything we can and are deeply grateful for the additional support that is needed thank you is there anyone else who'd like to make a comment okay saying none i will i'm going

118to declare the public hearing on the tentative budget for fiscal year 2022 2023 closed and we will now saunter for about six minutes because our board meeting agenda starts at 6 30. foreign family makes jokes about me you thank you so much well okay oh yes oh how you doing thank you yeah i mean following you hey myself oh god okay we would like to welcome everybody to the board meeting for the alpine district board of education we've just completed a public hearing on the the fy 2122 final budget and the fy 2223 tentative budget and we appreciate those who've provided comments to us on those we will now have a pledge of allegiance and inspirational thought by melissa peterson please stand join me in saying the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the

119flag 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 so my name is melissa peterson and i'm a mom of four busy kids and i'm a nurse of 21 years and i do lots of stuff in the community and my life is busy like all of us so i love reminders like this from c.s lewis that says children are not a distraction from more important work they are the most important work and i think sometimes good little reminders and quotes that i keep on my phone one of them is how we listen to our children holds just as much value as the way we talk to them i think we need to all be a little bit better advocates

120of listening to our kids and one thing another one i love is respond to your children with love in their worst moments their broken moments their angry moments their selfish moments their lonely moments their frustrated moments their inconvenient moments because it is in their most unlovable human moments that they need to feel loved and i think those are just good reminders that we could be more present with our kids and look at the kid who's in right in front of us to that moment well thank you thank you for that thought i appreciate that as a board of education it's important for us to recognize various accomplishments made by students employees and patrons from throughout alpine school district as we honor the individuals and groups this evening we acknowledge the families and others that have

121helped them to achieve their goals thanks for your support you've offered to those who recognize this time we appreciate your attendance here tonight just in advance it would not be inappropriate inappropriate for you to leave after resignation after the rest recognitions if that's what you want to do just let you know so we'll go ahead and start with uh amber okay so the utah state board of education and microfocus announced the 2022 winners of the young technology scholar awards alpine school district had two students received this award spencer smart from american fork high school and jared young from timpanogos high are they here [Applause] so this award recognizes talented high school students who demonstrate impressive technological skills and well-rounded character for more than two decades the young technology scholar award has been given to students

122from schools across utah and helped fund scholarships to further their education in pursuing a technology related degree this year eight students were rewarded a total of eighteen thousand dollars congratulations spencer and jared [Applause] uh thank you um families of these two students would you like to stand we'd love to recognize you also [Applause] thank you the ninth annual high school musical theater awards have been announced skyridge student savannah carrasco is on her way to new york city after winning the award for best actress she won for her role as aldonza in the man of la mancha savannah will represent the state of utah at the jimmy awards in new york city in june skyridge high school's gavin webek ella peterson and chip brown received the best orchestra award for the man of la mancha cena

123tomlinson ashley doro gracie burton and sophie keller of pleasant grove high school received the best student choreography for the addams family so let's go ahead and and those who are here could you come forward [Applause] so if i'm not getting audio congratulations can we have parents and those who are supporting these students stan will be recognized [Applause] by the way i have to just say that the choreography and the dancing and the adams family was pretty darn amazing that's something i really enjoyed thank you can i make one comment as well anytime you see this level of talent you know that there's been a significant effort made over many years to develop that talent so we congratulate the families who supported them and the students who have been persistent in following this passion and this

124dream and achieving at such a high level so congratulations again [Applause] mr francis are you here right in front of me oh my gosh please come up so that you might stand here awkwardly while i tell everybody how awesome you are this is the best part it's the best part bart francis has received the sorenson legacy award for excellence in arts education he has been teaching art at mountain view high school since 2006. what makes bart an exceptional teacher is his ability to inspire uplift and bring out the best in his students students find us his projects fun and engaging and they can't help but be infected by his optimism and passion for art congratulations [Applause] congratulations to west lake and mountain view high schools they are recipients of the utah interscholastic athletic administrators association

125director's cup awarded each year to the top school in each class that demonstrates combined excellence in athletic academic and sportsmanship and student leadership this is the second year in a row that mountain view has won in westlake's first year [Applause] oh we would like the principal and invited guests to come up thank you so foreign so if you're here to support mr francis or these fine programs would you stand up that we might appreciate you as well [Applause] okay so these next several awards are announcement only the teams i don't think the teams are in attendance correct okay they'll be um presented their certificates at a ceremony at their schools so the first one is congratulations to the american fork high school boys tennis team they won the 6a state boys tennis championship claiming the

126school's first ever team title so way to go caveman dave the warm boys team the orange boys team have one of the most impressive showings ever as it overwhelms the 5a competition to win the 5a boys state track championship go orm tigers [Applause] next we have congratulations to the lone peak girls golf team for their win in the 6a state girls golf championship uh they secured that title in a dominating fashion so way to go nights and then the lone peak girls track team put together a big win to become the 6-8 girls state track champions way to go [Applause] for the first time in 41 years the lehigh pioneers are the state champions in baseball they had finished the season with a record of 27-4 the pioneers went undefeated through the playoffs and ended

127their historic season on a 12-game winning streak so congratulations to our pioneers and to the families who had a grandpa on the team 41 years ago and boys on this team so way to go in the eye [Applause] okay we always uh really enjoy recognizing those who've accomplished a lot in our district and as we mentioned before if you want to leave that's perfectly appropriate so thanks for being with us however really exciting stuff is coming up i'm telling you okay we now i have allocated time for community comments uh time set aside for community comments is not a time to discuss specific personnel items personal issues are not appropriate discussion knives for an open meeting environment if you have personal concerns you can contact a member of the administration or put your concern in

128writing and address it to the board of education so we will allocate three minutes each for these comments and we'll start with sydney finch then joe johnson and then charles blake hello again uh my name is sydney finch i have four kids in alpine school district i'm here today to ask the school district board to follow the newly passed hb 374 and hb 243 that was passed in 2022. these two laws state that the leas immediately remove all and any inappropriate and pornographic books but and display visible warning on anything anything sensitive in nature utah attorney general sean ray stated a few weeks ago on june 2nd 2022 he said in his memo utah state board of education and individual school districts should immediately and certainly comply with the state statute including hp 374 to

129remove pornographic books from all school libraries the urgency is even greater for elementary and junior high libraries as they serve younger students the compliance to protect children will help immunize schools from lawsuits for violating the state laws which could affect our budget he goes on to say that let me make it very clear that whenever it involves children pornographic pornography is poison no question no debate access to porn is already a public health crisis made even worse by its prevalence of online via smartphones among teens and children for many age for many children today porn exposure and addiction comes as young as nine years old sex exposure can have a harmful physical mental and behavioral effects on children he said if it were up to me i would take very proactive measures to remove any

130kind of pornographic materials in the school there's been a lot that has been done to locate these books so there's no excuse for anybody to say they don't know what they are i hope that in this budget we are funding for our libraries to clean out this material and the books that are not age-appropriate it's been said to reach out to the school's principals and i have done that it is it is now up to the board to make sure that you guys are following the laws if you don't think that we have any inappropriate books i have a list of some books that are in my children's schools and i have um a part out of a book that i would like a member to give to you i have a list of ones

131that are in my school and if there weren't children in here i would wish i could read to you what it is because it is so inappropriate um if the books are left and deemed pornographic it could cost the district up to um like 250 000 if you guys if we're not following the hb 243 so that can affect the budget so i just am a big advocate to getting rid of these books out of the kids schools and i want my kids to be successful and i know that one bad exposure can ruin a child's life forever and i will forever advocate for my children and i have some material i'd like to be given to you if someone can thank you for your comment i'm next joe johnson hi again just really quick

132you know a couple of days ago my family went to see top gun and it was awesome and my kids were saying okay well we want to go see the first one and i thought you know that's great and i got thinking about that there was one scene in the first movie that my youngest son i thought we got us talking because we talked a lot about uh you know current events in our house but it got me thinking a little bit about um you know books and libraries and some of that and the one comment that actually uh you know we made as we were talking about he said well what if there was a book that was just fine and someone went and slipped something inside of it and didn't change the content

133of the book didn't change what the narrative was didn't change anything but all of a sudden there was an extra page in there that was unappropriate would that make the book appropriate or inappropriate i thought you know what that's actually a really good point because right now before hb 374 it was taking this content as a whole where that one page could you could say well everything else is perfect but with hp 374 that's now a different take because now we say that we are looking at basically like we do with the movie rating system that i'm not looking at how awesome top gun was except for that one scene and saying oh yes this is great for my son i'm looking at it saying because of that one thing it's not appropriate for my

134kids so one of the things that i had actually committed to do online to a board member that's not here tonight is i committed to draft a policy that was different from anything that had been presented so far and so i will send this to you on your emails i will not bore you reading my good ideas uh tonight but basically this is different than what the board of education has with their two policies that they're going to address on the 30th i thought that i would give you a parent's perspective on this on something that i think would be very simple and very effective manage books from our libraries i think it becomes something that could be used throughout the district as a way to ensure that the naughty list stays the naughty list

135the nice list stays the nice list but yet we can still have things that are set aside for age-appropriate things in school because i you know i i'm certainly not an advocate for the you know book banning or anything like that but i also am not an advocate for things that uh really don't belong in our children's minds in their day-to-day living things thank you charles wood it's good to see you all um i'm not going to talk about library books i've taken the opportunity over the last few weeks julie king actually asked me if i had spent time in the schools and i realized that i had not spent as much time as i would have liked as a candidate for school board in the schools and so i've been taking the opportunity to

136talk to principals and walk through the schools with them and see what they're seeing and i have to say we've got some terrific people working in our high school district and i just want to commend the board the staff whoever is responsible for hiring and supporting them we really do have some terrific principles and teachers that i've got to know over the last few weeks there are a few things that i've seen as i've been walking through the schools i don't know if you're aware of so i just thought i'd bring a couple of those up one of them is that it appears that you're installing the little buzzers in each of the schools and some of them have them some of them are in the process of having them installed the schools that i

137have gone to where they have them they tend to have a very narrow field of view and so if somebody's not standing right in front of it they can't see who it is and often it's confusing as to where somebody should go once they're buzzed in the other thing that i've seen is that one of one or two of the schools they actually were either propping the door open into the office just because it was easier or things like that because again of the confusion and so i'm wondering if there's a more robust system that we can put into place so those people come into the vestibule they can see the whole vest wheel they they have a real clear way of communicating with the people in there so that we can keep the schools

138locked and safe when it's appropriate to do so beyond that um the other thing that i've been talking a lot to a lot of the folks out in my area since we're at lehigh and sarasota springs we're seeing some pretty substantial growth in a lot of those areas is just the discussion of growth and sometimes it's hard to find substitutes or teachers who are willing to go all the way out into the furthest west part of the district you know so some of the schools that are in saratoga springs that are further around the lake they're just harder to get to and therefore harder to find substitutes for it seems that they're able to find teachers but in a lot of cases those teachers are trying to get a job in the district and then

139they're looking to transfer to a school that's closer to home which i don't think is inappropriate but again if we can address some of those issues i think those are things that um you're probably more aware of um the one that i didn't know if you were aware was the buzzer issue in particular thank you thank you just kind of recapping i think we appreciate all those comments sydney talked about the need to remove pornographic books from libraries and joe kind of had a model policy that might be helpful we appreciate both of those ideas and i appreciate your your observations seen while visiting schools and uh ways we might be able to improve school security so thank you all of you for your public comments we will now move on to the rest of

140the agenda you have all received the minutes in your communications we need a motion to approve the minutes i'll move to approve the minutes from our previous meeting here we have a motion from amber a second from sarah any discussion all in favor say hi okay i think that was an eye from ada what did julie say i too i did mark can you hear me that was just julie uh he's just not on is that right hi we heard both of you so uh be patient with me i'm going to go ahead and try to get make sure you account for your votes okay the motion passes uh acclaimed superintendent thank you president clement you have received the claims for the month and i recommend you accept the claims is there a motion i

141believe that we accept the claims give motion from sarah second from stacy any discussion sing then all in favor say hi i only heard one eye oh no we got all of them okay perfect uh the motion passes routine business thank you you have uh received the routine business for the month which includes a budget summary alpine foundation board summary personnel hiring and releases student trip requests and lea specific licenses just want to give a little bit of a clarification there has been some miscommunication with the state on lea specific licenses so as you read through the 45 pages of those licenses you'll see that some were previously approved by the board because of some tracking issues they're asking us to reapprove those through the board and send those on so those were from this

142previous year that there were some paperwork challenges so we appreciate your patience and improving those again as part of the routine business and then the trip requests there was a discrepancy or a difference in the patron approval on one of the lehigh football trips 66 to prove there were 80 participants some of those are players that will come on to the team for next year so it still meant the threshold of approval i just want to articulate why that was a lower parental approval than typically you'll see on that and i recommend that you approve the routine business so we need a motion a second from amber any discussion yeah i have a couple of quick things um i wondered i noticed on the trip request this time that that was a common thing that

143was happening was um teams are asking to go on a trip but they haven't actually had tryouts yet and so they do have students that they don't know if they're going to be on the team and my question was are we are they going to have to re-talk to their parents and see if the parents because it seems difficult to now it's basically going on the trip is a condition of being on the team and that seems like a burden that maybe shouldn't be placed on some students that they can still be part of the team but they don't have to show out a thousand dollars to go on this trip so that was my question is the trip still optional yes i believe what people will follow up on that to make sure that

144the student isn't obligated without representation okay and then my second question was i noticed and i've seen this before but it can i guess for whatever reason it stood out to me this month um we frequently have groups from different schools that are attending the same out-of-state function and my question is do we ever and maybe this is a secondary supervisor question i don't know but is there a way to make sure that those groups know they're both going like i was specifically noticing that the volleyball team from lone peak and from i think pleasant grove were going to the same competition and i thought as i was looking at it because i've done trips before they only have one busload of kids so if they were to combine together and get one bus be

145way cheaper than both groups getting their own bus to go and i thought i don't know if that's something that we could facilitate between groups hey you've submitted a request for this and so have you if you're interested in you know getting the same hotel or getting the same bus or whatever you could control your costs better on that trip that would be better for those families so just an idea we did that last year until pleasant growth beat lone peak stop we'll beat them here before we look into that there is coordination uh so do we ever yes we do do we always probably not right like i know some of the color guards have the drum lines have shared a bus and i know there are groups that have shared buses but i'm

146just wondering if from the district level we need some way to facilitate that so that if maybe those two teams don't know each other are both going yeah director and our fine arts directors uh to look at the process of coordinating uh that awareness so that if there is a will to do that they could look into it as a way to save costs i just thought usually when you go like your two big costs are the housing and the transportation and if they could help combine that and lower that cost it might be better for all the kids thank you for that awareness we'll look into that that's a great idea any other comments i just have a comment on um part of the routine businesses about the alpine foundation and i just wanted

147to say thank you to tyler his team doterra all the um sponsors who generously donate so that we can recognize these people it's a remarkable event to be a part of and so thanks to everybody who made that happen in david's videos i think i think those were shared out at some point somewhere and so i think it's a great thing to watch and to see some of the cool things that our teachers are doing thank you we will pass on that recognition any comments from ada or julie no thank you nothing else okay perfect okay we have a motion from stacy a second from amber all in favor say aye hi hi hi we got them all the motion passes president clinton are we ready to move on to the action item we are

148ready to move on okay we have two of those i appreciate rob and the budget team that prepared the final budget for fiscal year 21 2022 and we recommend your approval of that i will turn just a few minutes over to rob to give any uh clarification or explanation that he desires to on the 2122 final budget thanks superintendent the one thing i just wanted to point out it seems like a formality we rarely have patrons comment on a budget that's really over but it's an important process and step because we are held accountable by the state auditor by our external auditors by other whether it's state board or ledge auditors that we stay within the budgeted expenditures approved by the board so when we adopt that final budget one of the key purposes is

149so as our financial books close for that year we have set a cap if you will of expenditures and we have to stay within that because there's always a lot of people auditing and looking at those things and so that's why it's important and so i just wanted to share that with you something i haven't shared in prior meetings i don't know why i needed i felt like i needed to share that maybe for the public but it's an important check and balance um on public funds and so that's really the only comment i would share on the final budget for 21 22. thank you and so now i can say that we need a motion to approve the final budget for fiscal year 2021 2022 as amended and now is what i say i

150make that motion that we approve the final pleasure for fiscal year 2021 2022. a second we have a motion from sarah second from amber the discussion i just want to thank the budget team for the entirety of all of the question answering they did during the 21 22 budget year thank you for answering my many questions all the time uh amber i mean sorry aydah or julie do whatever you have a comment yeah i just wanted to just next to uh how about [Music] i just wanted to say thanks to rob and his team i just appreciate the diligence and and really the clarity of your reporting um i think you you try to make it as user friendly as possible and we just really appreciate that i think our public shapes it too so

151thank you for making it accessible and available true i was just going to say i was appreciative i know that we've had a lot of challenges this year we haven't faced in previous years whether that's finding the right balance for the esser and gears money as well as the free and reduced lunches and that always you know that there's been a change in a flip-flop back and forth and i just appreciate all the efforts that have gone in to make sure that that money is spent in a way that benefits students directly thank you by the way for the publix just so you know it's been a challenging few years in the budget year we had a lot less students enrolled than we were planning on and that was a real challenge but we decided

152the budget team found a way of keeping all of our teachers so we didn't have to let them go and then this last year we had a lot more students enrolled than we expected and we had to find a way of trying to shoehorn them into schools and so it would be nice if we had an unremarkable year but we'll see whether that happens next year we have a motion from sarah a second from amber the motion passes thank you we appreciate that i think it's just good timing that we close one set of books and we open another set of books so you have received the 2022 2023 tentative budget and we recommend your approval of that budget and give rob a few minutes to clarify or share the information that he wishes about

153the 2022-2023 fiscal year tentative budget thank you superintendent thanks to our budget committee the three board members that serve that and all of your questions it validates our work and so sometimes you think you're asking a lot of questions or it's a burden on behalf of the budget team and our whole business team we appreciate the board's diligence and your stewardship to ask those questions sometimes it takes a little time to respond and to put together some information for you but we are grateful again thanks to randy for his leadership in the study session for the public who was not here we got our entire budget team i'd like to mention them uh by name uh and thank them for the great work it's the best team that we've had here in alpine and i've

154been here just a couple of years and would just like to thank them randy upton jason sundberg uh austin harris lauren nedeger and crystal michaelis and we had a couple of other business team members that are supporting our accounting director steve reese and robert boyer as well as a couple others online i really appreciate the opportunity to serve and work with them a couple of things just to point out the budget all funds for fiscal year 23 is a billion 44 million we've got a lot going on the general fund budget is about 760 million just under 800 it was pointed out by our board president in the study session and we spent a lot of time in the study session trying to make complex tax information more simple and we'll continue to look for

155ways to do that so that our public can feel more connected to their dollars in support of their students and our schools in our communities a couple of things just again to point out um we got the basic tax levy about 20 minutes prior to the study session and the tax rate has decreased significantly because of this the increase in assessed value and new growth in our community so last year's tax rate was 69.04 that includes the charter local levy if i net out the charter local levy from last year the tax rate was 60 42 the proposed rate is 55.88 which nets out the charter school levy or a decrease in tax rate of about 12 and a half increments in my 28 years in public finance that is an unprecedented change and i

156just want to point that out the budget committee has worked through a lot of requests and processes i appreciate our principles the school supervisors our operations team that do so much with so little and we always need more especially in a hyper inflationary environment the ability of us to do the work we need to in the summer while school is out is not just a short timeline but it is also a struggle with some of the increased costs fuel expenses that everyone experiences has caused us to rethink and look at other ways of doing things so this budget contemplates all of those things that's not perfect but it sets the stage to implement the board's class size reduction plan beginning in the fiscal year 24 plan and that is a huge deal and it's remarkable

157to me that working groups of teachers and principals and board members and staff members came together to come up with ideas to transition us away from some things that have been holding us back to set the stage for teacher compensation significant teacher compensation our board president i met with a legislator this morning we talked about the investment of the legislature and how this board in this budget is investing that in teachers and pushing resources to schools and then allowing the school principals and their teams to make the work for student learning as best that they can and this budget does that and again it sets the stage for the boards one of the board's highest priorities and that is to be aggressive the lowering class size in subsequent years and i'm excited to be part

158of that i know i've spoken a little too much but i wanted to cover just those couple of key points in this 10-minute budget for next year there's a lot more work to do um if we had more resources we could do more i would need more classroom spaces to do more and to do it faster and that's something the board's wrestling with as well so thanks to you for your hard work thanks to randy and his team and thanks for the opportunity i have to be a small part in that so with that i would recommend your approval and any questions you may have good motion i move that we approve the fiscal year 2022 2023 tentative budget i'll second that promotion from stacy a second from amber discussion i think you kind of

159had touched on something earlier when you said sometimes when we're in these meetings we don't do a lot of talking and i think when i say this is my favorite process to be a part of like i genuinely mean that and really grateful to everybody on that team when we ask all the questions i think my favorite one is when we have everybody come in and tease right and and for for me one of the most challenging things is that every every request that comes in is valid right like i would love to fund every single thing i don't think we looked at one thing that seemed unnecessary or you know just larger than it should be and so i'm also really appreciative to all people from different departments all our principals when we're breaking

160out those tables and i'm superintendent uses afraid phrase wrestle with and i think that might be an understatement for this and so i just appreciate the level in which everybody engages like but do we really need that many of that or can we do something different or could this be covered under a different department and so i think the process is intense and it's long but the way it is handled and approached i think leaves me in a place where where i know we've literally you know just kind of got through every single line item and is this what's best for our kids and so um yes there are some things that take longer than some of us would like um but it can get it's kind of awesome where we're going and so just

161i also want to thank the public for their patience as we get things going the right direction right we always want to make sure that we're setting everybody up for success we're doing in a way that's sustainable um and so i'm really excited for the years to come and i'm very excited about this budget so do you have a comment ever i do i do i always have scientific comments um the budget process is hard i think because there's so many things we would love to do and i guess it's not unlike a personal budget you know there's things you would love to do but you just can't so you really have to prioritize what the most impactful things are going to be and i appreciate how this process looks at what our goals are

162as a district and then tries to match our funding to what our goals are and i think we're doing that i think this budget shows that our top priority as a board is recruiting retaining and rewarding our good teachers and we have done that i think to the best of our ability with this board with this budget i mean but i also think our other high priorities are increasing student achievement and making a difference for kids as they're learning and i think we're doing that too and so i'm really appreciative of the process i am also appreciative of the budget team uh rob met with me yesterday for probably too long so they're getting shorter as i'm getting better at this they are these meetings are getting shorter um to answer all my questions about

163the budget and it's interesting to me how the numbers tell a story but sometimes that story is not the whole story and sometimes even as a board member you need more details to be able to fully flesh out that story and um i think this budget tells a good story it tells a good story of where our priorities are and what we're trying to accomplish in the district so i'm grateful to our budget team i'm grateful to the budget committee for hammering out a lot of this i know it takes so much time and um grateful for all the pictures in that 200 page document because it made it not take quite as long to read as i thought it was going to that's it yeah i haven't called in school i have a very

164high degree of confidence in rob smith his department and in the budgets that they bring to us for several reasons one is something that he mentioned earlier i'm on the audit committee and our district is audited between two and five times a year externally and then internally we audit at least half or third to half of our schools every single year and sometimes we find things and we act on that sometimes they find things we act on that but we are constantly looking at what we are doing and making sure that it that it is absolutely correct in every possible way and for that i have a very high degree of confidence the second thing is that we have triple a bonding for both moody and fitch which does not happen over a short period

165of time and it doesn't happen easily there are very few entities that have that kind of success and i think rob said once it took what 15 years to get there 15 years of constantly working on every single detail to make that happen one of the things that i think is fun to celebrate is the fact that our budget book and i should grab it right now our budget book this one that they come up with every year has been um so beautifully done and so detailed so accurate that it has not become a model for other school districts nationally all over the nation that would share our book with other districts so there are those two things um the the third thing that really gives me a lot of confidence in what we're seeing

166is that every single month when the budget committee meets they send a report to the entire district uh into the entire board but they have a list on there of every single change that's been made this money has come in this money's been spent you know any little adjustment of course correction depending on the ebb and flow of of things that are happening in the district and nationally stated we are kept uh in we are apprised constantly of any single thing that is being admitted or changed or worked on each month and so for those three reasons um i have very high confidence in these budgets and i think that that would be something that the public would find comforting and appropriate to know that we are in very very good hands about my school

167district thank you julie did you want to make a comment um i actually don't the budget team knows how much i love them and uh so i'm good yeah i would like i i would like to comment uh this has been my first year serving on the budget committee and it's really been eye-opening for me i just appreciate the patience of rob and his team as i've uh served and asked questions and learning so much first of all just to find out the dozens of people who are involved in this process and the great talent that they have in setting these priorities uh we had to whittle down a list at least i'm looking at the list of about 80 items and we had to trim that list uh by by more than i can't

168frame it had to be but um uh there's a lot of things that that went by the buy and that were very very significant and i just want to acknowledge that not everyone got or is going to get what they wished for and hoped for um but i think that we've done a good job as has been said in looking towards our goals and setting those priorities and funding those priorities which are a large part student learning which means investing in the future so i i just also appreciate the work that's been done in scaling which is what the term that we've been used using uh to uh talk about the these staffing of our school take a little bit of the pressure out of that and make it more of a rubric i think

169we need to be fine-tuning some of our title one spools and the needs that they have but i really appreciate the effort towards making that a fair process of allocating employees support to each school so thank you rob for all the work you've done here i know that it's considerable your team so thank you very much thank you um i just want to make a comment just a teaser for those of you who haven't yet been tempted to look at the budget book on page it actually has a comparison between the percentage of instructional expenses in alpine district versus other similar districts around the state of utah and throughout the nation and i uh i was impressed with this because um and we really do uh channel our money towards instructional expenses we we use

170almost all of our funding for teachers in the classroom and uh just to give you an idea i can it alpine we're spending 70 of our total budget on instruction other districts in the state are spending 59 percent of some other similar districts and that's a huge difference and it shows the priority i think that our budget team has on really trying to minimize those expenses that aren't associated with instruction and uh so i i think it's kind of amazing we're able to maintain that even though we uh we have had difficult times during the last few years so thank you for all of that work we have a motion from board member bateman a second from board member bonner all in favor of approving the fy 2022 2023 tentative uh budget say aye aye

171aye aye oh let's hear it from that was ada julie i said i you did sorry it was a little bit croaky i'm sorry that i didn't hear it so the motion passes thank you appreciate that you have received the membership report the last one of the year the trend continued areas that are growing continue to grow overall we grew in our elementary numbers stayed about status quo and our junior high and came down a little bit in our high school that's due to early graduation and some other factors so if you have any questions on the membership report i'll answer those but it is in your information i don't see any questions uh this is your last any any last comments you'd like to make any information items from julie or aydah i'm good

172mark thanks thank you uh how about other board members or superintendent do you have other information items i have one to share board members are aware of call attention to the public that each year we send out a culture climate and connection survey we partner with hanover research to do that we want to make sure that we're attending to the conditions of our staff and support professionals and make sure they have good working environment and i just want to highlight some of the findings from that we sent it back to hanover because they had disaggregated some things differently so i've got an updated report for you but just a few highlights of alpine school district teachers somewhat agree and 37 strongly agree with this statement i enjoy my job which i think that's about 78

173of our teachers agree that they enjoy their job that is interesting we look at the news education week article from april 14th they asked a similar question nationwide with barely 50 percent indicating that they enjoyed their job so we know that education has been a challenging location the last couple of years and there are threats of the great resignation that educators are having challenging and we acknowledge those challenging times but are appreciative of the work that our teachers do our support professionals and the conditions and climate in which they work that we're able to provide environments where they are connected and committed to their work over 90 percent feel welcome and safe at work another telling factor in the research one of the significant factors that affect student achievement is collective teacher efficacy we define

174that as the belief that teachers have that they and their team members can make a difference in student learning 94 of our teachers indicate they believe their team can have a significant impact on student learning top three factors that make teachers more likely to continue employment with alpine school district are the work environment that they currently enjoy their instructional autonomy and their supportive leadership the single biggest factor that teachers report that make them less likely to continue employment in alpine school district is student behavior and i think that is a factor that we have not seen as strong an indicator in past research i think that's telling that one of the great ways that we can support teachers is by additional resources support professionals behavior specialists school psychologists counselors that help teachers address student behavior

175because if we don't address that that is the single most determining factor that will cause teachers to leave the profession a couple areas of improvement we've got about 60 to 65 percent of our teachers strongly agree that leaders within my work environment ask for my opinion when making decisions that impact my work so we can work to improve the opportunities that teachers have to give feedback into their working conditions or decisions that will affect them we see a greater or a need to less than half of the respondents 49 somewhat or strongly agree that there are consistent opportunities for staff to learn about people from different backgrounds race ethnicity religion orientation etc and then just again continuing uh overall very positive with the work environment we'll take this survey i will send out the recent

176findings to you as a board we'll continue to review that and look for areas that we can improve but overall particularly compared to national averages i would say our teachers have a strong supportive work environment you go ahead sarah i'm on the alpine foundation board superintendent yes board member wilson i'm sorry i apologize uh superintendent i wonder if you would just quickly address uh we heard in public comment today about concerns about a house bill 374 and what we are doing to implement that mandate we have from the legislature would you just make a brief comment on that i think we made it made a statement online we have posted a statement on our web page that explains the process that we have been going through and continue to go through to be in compliance

177with and support house bill 374 a parent committee gave input to our policy committee we are receiving counsel from the attorney general's office our own legal counsel we also have a committee of media center specialists that are reviewing our current materials and the procurement of those materials to make sure that we are in compliance with state statute in addition to that the state board of education is giving guidance on a model policy that should come out the end of the month our policy committee will continue to meet receive input from staff draft a policy with respect to sensitive materials to make sure that we are in compliance with the statute and doing our best to make sure our students have access to appropriate materials and then we will train our media center specialists and our

178administrators on that new policy in august and september that process will uh outline it ahead i just was saying thank you but you're not done thank you i was just going to add that that policy will clarify how employees students parents may raise questions or concerns about material that they question it will outline the procedure and policy that will be followed for when when parents students or employees have questions about the materials that are in our libraries and in our classrooms thank you um thank you very much i appreciate that you're welcome hey sarah i'm on the alpine foundation board and one of the programs that the board the alpine foundation sponsors is the star summer reading program so this month in june the entire alpine board met at lehigh elementary to to visit that

179program and then to hold our meeting there and i cannot say enough good about the star summer reading program and the the investment that this district has made into these little tykes who are struggling for one reason or another and we have more than doubled the sites this year that we have had in the past and as you look at the data and the statistics the growth and the gain for these children in this program is absolutely sensational it is remarkable and the teachers have been well trained and the students love the program they have fun they're learning but this is one of the places where the alpine foundation can make there has made a significant difference in supporting that program so accolades to all of those teachers and all those supporters of that program

180thank you thank you julie did you have any comments you wanted to make i'm good thanks mark okay um so one of the things i heard most frequently from parents in the last i guess we could say all year but particularly towards the end of school and i think you know it's probably exacerbated by the fact that as we get closer to the end of the year um kids kind of a little bit forget themselves and maybe their manners and actions um but i've heard a lot about bullying and specifically racial bullying and so i have been cheating on this for quite a while i had a post ready to post several weeks ago and then i didn't want it to cloud graduation um but i thought i would take the opportunity now just to

181ask everybody i'm listening to have a conversation with your family with the people around you last week i was at a symposium where secretary cardona and um admiral murphy both spoke um and admiral murphy said something that really kind of resonated with me and he said you know we really need to consider our values and answering what kind of society we want to live in um and what future do we want for our children and so i've just been kind of thinking through what is our responsibility as parents with the children in our home that um we either birthed or adopted or they live in our home full time as well as the children who may come in our home um because they're friends with our children and i'm not sure that we are all

182clear about our expectations for our students and what to see what what our expectations are if they see something if they're involved in something live in a very recording happy society and it made me really sad and disappointed to watch a video where there were probably 40 kids with cameras that were recording something and that one of those kids was going to help and so i just thought as a community we could kind of have some of those conversations talk to our kids about what is expected of them and i am in no way suggesting that anybody should jump into a fight but um perhaps going to get help and maybe not just standing there laughing because for some of our students they really they really struggle with some very serious challenges and so um

183and then the other thought i have related to this and other things sometimes i hear from parents the principal didn't do anything and what i've decided that means is we didn't see a behavior change and obviously with any situation that is not okay for a student we want to see behavior change and i want to just encourage parents if if an administration has taken action um and maybe the behavior changed for a little while or you know not at all to stay in contact and circle back with those admins again because certainly we want all of our students to feel safe in our buildings and our principals need to know if something is still going on so just humble plea let's have some of these conversations let's talk about um i don't know it's a

184great chance to reflect on what i really do want for the future and what what i want to see for our students so thank you i just want to take a quick minute and comment on some electronic communication that we received with respect to school safety i know there have been recent events that are disturbing for all of us and one of our foremost concerns of the board and senior leadership is the safety and well-being of our staff and students we will be presenting next month at our study session some things that we have done to ensure or to contribute to the safety of our students we currently have a team that we send to texas to find out the latest research and intelligence and feedback and best practices they will return a deeper next

185day or so later part of this week and we'll get a report from them on things that we're hearing that we can do to improve and we look forward to sharing that in july giving you an update of what has taken place and what some thoughts are about future things that we can do to make sure that our buildings are welcoming learning environments for our students but also they are in a safe and protected place so i appreciate the comments the concerns that are shared by our patrons with respect to the safety physical safety of their students we share those concerns and are seeking to address them in the best way possible we'll share some more information publicly next board meeting any other comments reports okay seeing then we have need for a closed uh

186session to discuss personal property litigation and collective bargaining is there a motion i move that we move into closed session nothing is not right and move that we adjourn to closed session to discuss personal property litigation and collective bargaining um uh we've yes i think we do need a second so stacy's we have a motion from board member bonner a second from board member bateman and we now are going to do a board a roll call so according to ponder i remember i for me i [Music] board member wilson so that is the connection so the the bow is unanimous and we now will adjourn to close session you