Council - workshop

Are we ready to go, Kim?

We'll call the Joint Dallas School Board of Directors and Dallas City Council work session to order at 6 p.m. and ask the city recorder to call the roll.

Council President Briggs. Here. Councilor Berrientos. Here. Councilor Blosser.

Here.

Cheryl. Here. Councilor Holzapfel. Here. Councilor Jantz is excused. Councilor Schilling. Here. Councilor Shane. Here. Councilor Spivey.

Here.

School board members, Tyler Ferrari. Here. Dina Lowry. Here. Rob Ogilvie. Zach Steele. Matt Woolsey.

Here. Tyler, you had a brief statement.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Due to my role as an employee of the City of Dallas in preparing the presentation tonight and potential future role with the implementation of a potential project, I would like to note for the record that I will abstain from conversation and any potential decision-making related to this project, but I'm happy to answer any clarifying questions if asked.

One thing on the agenda, collaborative project between Dallas School District and City of Dallas.

Brian?

All right. So welcome, Dallas School Board members and the mayor and city council. Yeah. So this topic was brought to us through the Dallas School Board member, Tyler Ferrari, and the city staff to really look at a potential collaborative project between our two agencies, specifically identifying what we'll discuss in a little bit as far as an issue that we're seeing with the schools, particularly in the numbers of enrollment compared to the number of students that are available to attend the schools. As well as, you know, in our community and opportunity as we age in our community and our demographics have changed over time to be able to just see if there's opportunity to, you know, help support and promote and encourage younger families to live in our community. So we think there's opportunities where there's some overlap in opportunities to one, try to understand maybe some of the factors that influence these changing demographics and decision-making on where students are enrolling in schools, as well as policies that may help with the encouragement of kind of recruiting that gap of younger families and growing that population demographic in our community. So with that, I think we can just jump into the presentation. I think we all know who we are. today, so I don't think we need to do introductions. But stop me if you think that's not correct. No introductions? All right, good. We'll move just right into the presentation. I'm happy to answer questions as we go through this presentation, so stop us and just ask as we go. And there'll be an opportunity at the end of the presentation to also ask questions. So I think Steve and I are taking these slides kind of as we go.

So I'll jump on this one. Before I get into this, I do want to take an opportunity to simply recognize and thank individuals around this table. I think when we have opportunities to bring different organizations together and collaborate and to see things through other people's lenses, that is an opportunity for us to really gain the perspective. I think when we have different opinions, different ideas, we make better decisions when we take all those into consideration. And so being able to do that tonight, we want. The city and city council truly understand what our concerns and challenges are as a school district with enrollment. We recognize that it's not just a school problem or a city problem, but it is something that certainly touches both of us. So again, we kind of get a little roadmap for tonight, what this presentation is. It's about that enrollment picture and demographics and then possible vision and next steps that we could engage in. So let me talk about the problem. Enrollment in our K-12 system is declining. The funding follows the student. And so obviously as you have declining students, you have declining funding. This data that you see only goes back 10 years, but I would tell you that in my experience as an administrator, both at La Creole and at Dallas High School, and now as a superintendent, that that trend is not just a 10-year trend. It goes at least 15, possibly even 20 years back. Um, with the projections then in different, more liberal versus conservative, um, pathways, that trend is scheduled to continue for another 10 years into the future. Um, so if we, we've been kind of focusing on the gray line, that was what we were advised to by the organization that did this study for us. Um, but those, those just continue to show the decline, which is a huge concern for us. Um, And I think it's also a concern for our community. We recognize that with less resources but an increasing challenge, we are expected to address mental health in the schools, behavioral health, increasing students with disabilities. All of those come with costs that are not associated and adequately funded through the state funding formula. but as it declines, there's just simply less resources there for us to meet those demands of all of our students. So that kind of lays out a little bit of that problem from the district's perspective. And Brian's going to hit slide three.

So on this slide, we share just some general demographic information in comparing the U.S. averages with different demographic ages to that of Oregon and that of Dallas. I will note the data from this comes from a couple of different data sources. And so there's some challenges in comparing that because we're not necessarily comparing the same collection methodologies. The Dallas and Oregon information were collected from the same source, and then the U.S. was collected from the U.S. decennial census. So the Dallas and Oregon information were also census data just from the American Community Survey, which is based on estimates as opposed to actual counts. But regardless, with that in mind, you can see that the median age in Dallas is about four years older than the median age in the United States. I don't think that comes as a surprise to anyone that we are a little bit older in Dallas. We do cater to a larger population of older persons. We have several retirement communities, both through some HOAs as well as the Dallas Retirement Village. So this isn't surprising when you look at it, but just to understand as we compare between the US and Oregon. Dallas specifically is a little bit older. When you look at the age of zero and 19 though, the percent of the population is roughly the same. Whether you're looking at the US as a whole or Oregon as a whole and Dallas as a whole, 22% of our population is between the ages of zero and early adulthood, 18 and 19 years old. So,

but the differences are ones of distribution.

The next demographic of age, so this is ages 25 through 44. And again, Dallas is lagging behind in terms of its proportion of population. So we're at 23%, whereas Oregon is 28% of the population is that age. And in the US, the proportion of population is 27%. And then the older age, 65 plus, this is the retirement age. Dallas, 26% of our population is that retirement age, where compared to Oregon is at 20% and the U.S. is at 18%. So again, not surprising that you're just seeing an older population in Dallas. I think that's something that we all knew. What numbers would look like 20 years ago? We do. I don't have that information with me on hand. The raw numbers, we looked at this just in terms of raw numbers. And so our population has grown pretty significantly over the last 20 years. Our population, I believe, in 2000 was around 13,000. We're now at 18,000 in the 2020 U.S. Census. And so, and the proportionate number of older persons grew the largest from 2020, from 2020, from 2000 until 2020. I don't have those numbers in front of me, though, to speak to that.

I'm just wondering, are we getting older? Yes. Because our population is growing and there are a lot of younger.

Yes. As our population is growing, we're seeing the larger growth in people that are age 65 and older. Yes. However, what we also noticed in that same data from 2000 to 2020 is that the number of kids ages zero to 19 was relatively the same, right? So that number was static. And I think it was like 3,600 was the number. And that's just in Dallas, right? That's not the Dallas School District. That was just the city limits of Dallas. And so that number proportionally got smaller, but the actual raw numbers of people that were eligible to enroll in school would have been roughly the same over that 20-year span. And that's what I think Steve was pointing out in the last slide, is that as your number of kids eligible to enroll in school has been relatively stable, the actual enrollment is declining. And so that's what we identify as this gap. There's a problem, right? Something's causing that enrollment to decline when the number of people eligible to enroll was stable. So we need to figure out, you know, that's one of the questions we want to ask and get answered is, and study is, why is that, right? What's causing that? And I think we can probably all sit around this room and come up with the answers. We wouldn't know what the answer is until we study it, but we can, you know, there's lots of reasons why that might be.

Yeah, Carlos, Steve, I want to go back to something you had mentioned the mental health teachers and the educational system. I wonder how prepared teachers are to handle those, like, coming out of their schooling the master's degree. Do they go over how to handle those types of situations?

of yes however i don't know that they that anybody really can be completely prepared for the challenges that we are facing in the schools um some of those really can only be done through mental health specialists people that have had that direct training so they probably go over the surface level but this so much more than needs to be done okay you have mentioned that dallas school district is expected to address those issues um who's setting that expectation Well, we have to help all students gain access to their education. And when we find that there are barriers, like behavior is a barrier, anxiety is a barrier, those are mental health type things that it's our job to help overcome those barriers. And so we then have to make those investments or choose to make those investments in order for that to happen.

Do you see that as an area where parents are choosing not to send kids to the public school district and to send them elsewhere, whether they're being schooled at home, going to charter school or other areas?

I've begun to try to collect kind of some exit surveys for students that are their family or they live in the district but go to a charter school or something online. We try to collect that information and it surprisingly is not as clear as you might think. We have anecdotal stuff that you hear. I'm taking my kid out. There's too much bullying here or this is happening there or this curriculum there. um saying the plural of anecdote is not evidence correct and so i don't ness i don't have that concrete evidence to show that um i think that's one of the things we want to study is that um do you ask parents who

previously uh previously had kids in the school district and chose to take them out is there like an exit interview or anything like that we do but we don't always get 100 participation in in those that might be leaving the district our schools and the private schools and

Where those kids live, are they Dallas school district kids? You can't you can't figure it out through those numbers.

We get communication from charter schools and from the for home school registrations and those things. Those numbers are not. Some, not all of them, not all of them will are on the same system and so we don't get them.

They're not required to give it to you if they don't feel like it.

Like Dallas Community School, for example, they... Somewhere they have to have those enrollment numbers.

Like the state or somebody, those numbers have to be, I would think, public.

No? No. I think that they probably do exist. It's just, I think that Steve's saying they have, you know, the shared systems where they can extract that data. And not all schools are on the same systems. And so it's information that we would have to extract through public records requests or other places. So it's available. We can get it. We just maybe haven't at this time. Yeah. Yeah, so just wrapping up on this slide, you know, one of the reasons, a few of the reasons why it's important, particularly for the city, of these changing demographics is that you have, when you have a smaller population of your residents that are of the working age, right, you know, in their early 20s through, you know, kind of mid 40s, early 50s, you have a smaller work labor force, a smaller pool of people that can work in your community, maybe less attractive to a business that's looking at relocating in your community if the The pool of potential workers is smaller. It's no surprise to the Dallas City Council and maybe to the school district, we've seen a huge increase in our EMS response system. To this year, we had over 5,000 calls for EMS services, and that's how many we responded to. We actually had more than that. but our mutual aid partners help to pick up the rest. But we're seeing just a high demand of that service. And as you have an older population, that is going to continue to grow. So we're trying to keep pace with that. And then kind of anecdotally, as your population maybe gets a little bit more distance from participating in the schools through, you know, school or other stuff like that, there may be potential less interest in supporting things like bonds and things of that nature. So there's no evidence that supports that, and we're not saying that, but that's a risk you'd run is people may become less engaged with the schools. They might have less interest in supporting a money ask that we come to them with. So those are some things that maybe we're concerned with as we look at our data.

Have you taken a look at the baby boomer generation from 1946, 1964? They were big families, right? And obviously, the people at the tail end, 1964, they're 62. Most of them are starting to retire right now. You can foresee that, you know, those big families, they're not big families anymore. Most of that, the subsequent generations were starting to be a little bit smaller. Like you were saying, you can foresee 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, that there was going to be a problem down the road. Can you talk a little bit about that?

We can show that in a couple of slides, maybe the slide after this next one, where we actually show kind of the demographics throughout the United States. And you'll be able to see visually exactly what you're saying, Carlos. So thank you.

Well, the chart that I showed with the declining enrollment, if we were to continue to follow that trajectory, all of our buildings will be below capacity within the coming decade, if not in the coming years. um i would tell you that we feel like we have been creative and using our facilities in a creative way an example is working with the calamity sd and leasing out space to bring a behavior program i mean to the community that would serve the region it is it is a lease so it is the other program it's not the district running that program but it it will bring in between $200,000 and $250,000 a year as revenue for us by leasing out that space. We continue to explore being able to offer pre-K programs within our school. We are working to try to be eligible for the Preschool Promise Grant, which would allow for families to have that resource to put their kids into pre-K programs. We feel like that investment may help to get kids more kindergarten ready. And so that the behaviors and other things that come in in that kindergarten surprise might be able to be mitigated. And so that investment early can pay off down the road. Tenure numbers are kind of scary, especially the bottom two. Sure. Yeah, for sure. That number, the high school number is the one I think has been the most concerning because we know, I watch kindergarten enrollment because you know that 12 years down the road, those are going to be your seniors. And so if 150 kinders are coming in, but you got a graduating class of 200, you know, you're in a 50 student decline on a regular basis. We do know that we recap some or reclaim some of those coming in from those private schools that maybe only go till 8th grade and or elementaries that maybe come in after 5th grade. So there is some of that adjustment that we go through there, but nearby districts haven't been as fortunate as we have at the moment. Roughly, yes.

Is that going to, how's that going to bolster or shore up the current kids in the curriculum? Is it going to take away from them, or is it going to be self-sustaining, or are the funds going to help other programs?

The anticipation is to reinvest those programs to specifically support elementary behavior. So we would just take that revenue and immediately reinvest that back into our elementary school programs.

But there is a cost to that program and teachers to monitor those behavioral health kids.

You're talking about the one that we're leasing to? the Willamette ESD, we are leasing that space to them. They bring their own staffing, their own everything. We don't incur any costs other than we get resources.

Just the facility.

Correct. Oh. I'll give you another example. We are continuing to explore a CTE hub partnership with the ESD to have our high school program, reach out to a fall city and a Perrydale and Central and bring programs. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'll tell you that if things continue to go in our region, we are not all going to be able to provide every single program. We're going to have to start saying, Dallas, we're going to do this. Central's going to probably have to say, we're going to do this. Let's combine our resources and share and fill those classes and support through the CTE Hub. It's proven to be successful at the Willamette Career Academy in Salem, the CTECH Center in Salem. Those are proven programs that are bringing resources together to support kids in a wide way. Mr. Shane?

Yeah, let me put my ignorance on display. What does CR stand for?

On the. Sorry i'm where am I looking.

slide. The. yeah. classrooms. Oh yeah sorry classroom.

yeah. um. at the end of this we still recognize that um empty seats it costs money and it takes resources everything's got to be done so um i have been working as hard as i can to do all i to do all i can i don't want to be sitting around presiding over the closure of a school in this community period and I I hope that is something that we share collectively um or at least willing to work together and have a debate about how we can support that so that's my personal injection well I agree with that um what is the trigger point if things don't go well question Very good. Um, I will tell you that that is, um, the board has been proactive and that is, and has assigned that to the long range facility planning committee to research and study. So that is part of this work. Um, and so we don't have that trigger. Identified right this very moment, but expect that to be coming forward in this next case.

This may be premature following up this question. This may be premature, but do you have a sense of how close or how near or far we are from that trigger at this point in time?

I think I would tell you that we would be at that spot if it were not for us being able to bring in some of those resources of leasing out our spaces, bringing in some collaboration for other programs, not off in the distance.

I guess my concern Just based on the example you have there, Corvallis having to close the school and feeding off of that as well. My own child works in education or she did until she lost her job in Eugene where they've had to cut 269 positions because of lost revenues. Portland cut 320 full-time positions because of loss of revenues and Salem 120. What makes you think this is a local issue and not a statewide issue?

I do believe it is a statewide issue.

as a district i think the numbers i could estimate right now is we've cut 75 positions in the last two years so it would seem to reason that the issues are being caused at the state level more so than the local level would you disagree with that or

I'm I think my answer would be it is probably more complex than that and what I am wanting and I hope in our conversation with Brian bringing the the local community lens to this for me is really helpful because I do have some thoughts I probably keep to myself in this meeting about state challenges that I face if I had complete funding for high-cost disability we'd be in good shape as a district. If I had complete funding for all the students that we have that are special needs, instead of being capped at 11% for IEP, we'd be in a pretty good shape. I can keep going, but I probably shouldn't. Yeah, we have title money, yes.

It still doesn't close the gap. Correct.

So we're a bit special. I think we're in a rural kind of community and would you say it like at the state level they just kind of like um they rubber stamp you know communities or counties just uh by numbers and not by the demographics and the the mere problems that each county kind of faces because we have different problems than let's say Marion County or Clackamas County or Multnomah County. So is there anything that the state does at the state level that would help Polk County?

I don't think I'm prepared to give you an answer to that one. I don't know yet.

I would just say, though, I think, you know, putting that kind of in the lens of the city context, right? You know, we're under, we're, as a city, we operate within the state of Oregon, right? And the rules and the laws that apply to the cities. And, you know, we're a home rule state. And that applies to the local governments and special districts and school districts. And so now they're under a statewide school system and we're under a statewide land use planning system. But we'd have within that system opportunities at the local level and probably at the district level to make some decisions within the framework that's given to us. And I think that's important where we have opportunities to make those local decisions, whether it be at the school district or at the city, uh that's where i think um you have opportunity to maybe move the needle a little bit compared to the rest of the state and you know my question is more is there anything that we could do on a state level for them to support uh our school district i certainly think that yes you could advocate um for polk county through your state legislature yeah all right so getting to kind of the question you had earlier counselor variances like a comment that the

The concern I have is that the numbers remain stable with the amount of kids that are in this area. They're just not going to Dallas high school, Dallas school system. So I would focus in on that. You know, they're going somewhere, whether they're homeschooled or online, or they're going to out of district.

We did have a person come testify before the council about the fact that the options for education was a big draw for the community for them. that they had so many options as to where they could choose to send their child. And they saw that as a benefit.

There is a significant, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

There is a significant shift that we have seen in education, um, post COVID of online programs and those online programs, um, what we are seeing again, we're collecting the information. It's still a little bit too early for us to have the concrete, but we see students that leave to go to online programs, not be successful in those online programs and come back to us further behind than they were when they left. And then we are then facing the data of not being on grade level, not graduating on time. Those things, those come to us as, as non-success stories. There are certainly people who are thriving and doing great. I'm not disparaging online programs, but those programs are not brick and mortar. They don't have the cost, the overhead, everything. And yet those students that are going into those online programs bring with them the same ADM that we get per student. And so there is a significant amount of pressure and I think conversation needs to be had at the state level with regards to online programs.

Could we offer different curriculums like college, careers, business, and different silos that attract prospective students to go through the Dallas School District? Or is it set up that way? Or is it just set up where everyone goes through a curriculum that's like a college curriculum?

We do have career and technical education programs. We have AP classes. So I feel like at the high school level, yeah, we have good options for our kids to be successful going through those.

what are we doing are we doing enough to kind of uh spread the word that we have a really good thriving school district and i i know plenty of people that gone through the school district and very successful are we doing enough to spread that word say we are not doing enough to spread the word

I was going to bring this up later, but we're kind of talking about it now. So this demographic problem that is at the root of everything we're talking about, there's really well solution to it really has to have. There are things that we need people to want to live in Dallas. And though the kinds of things that affect that, some of them are subject to our control here. By our control, I mean the city. But the other half of that is making people want to send their kids into this school system in the medium to long term. I think both halves of that equation need to have solutions. So I'm wondering to what degree have you thought about that and what kind of ideas do you have for addressing your half of the equation?

I think that's why we're here tonight having this conversation, to work in that partnership and to study and direct the effort in the right places.

Yeah, and I would add to what Steve's saying. We can all sit here and come up with, I think, reasons why we think we have declining enrollment or why we think maybe Dallas isn't as attractive to a young family. But until we really study that and get some concrete evidence to why those things are and maybe what the policy changes, maybe there's some policy changes we can do. Maybe there's some built environment that we can encourage and incentivize as a city. Maybe there's some product development in the schools that needs to take place. Whatever it is that comes out of the research that we're proposing to conduct. Um, you know, that's, I think what the council and the school board need to seriously say, you know, if we go through this process of studying this, um, are we committed to implementing, you know, what it is that we study and what we find. And that's, that's a big question. I think that needs to, um, you know, sit with all of you here as decision makers to say, yeah, I feel comfortable that if, if we do this study, if we figure out kind of what we, you know, maybe thought we knew, or maybe there's things that we were surprised by. Um, and there's some, uh, recommended out, uh, recommended you know, policies, decisions, or other implementation things that we can do, are we committed to making those happen? And I think that's an important question that we all need to answer. Yeah.

It's good that we're out there talking about it together because it does need to be attacked from both sides.

Sure. I guess the question is, does this not roll into our vision statement that we're starting to prepare?

Yeah, I think for sure, you know, as we talk about this, you know, and as we study this, I think that that can, you know, certainly have influence on, you know, the Dallas 2047 vision process we're going to be going through this next year.

I'm wondering too, if there's been any surveys sent to parents about their opinions on the Dallas school district as a whole, from the kindergarten to the high school level.

I believe there's been three since I've been on the board for three years.

I'd love to see what people are saying.

not just anecdotal our biggest problem with surveys has been posts i'd like to see a survey our surveys our problems is the participation rates i mean we sent one out as a board to many people on an issue and we had less than i mean under 20 participation and we had a large sample size for one so the hardest part for us with surveys has been participation rates whether it's parent square or things we've done as a board we don't get the participation so we don't get credit we don't get credible data

that percentage and then we can see the respondents and how they responded example that we did a survey with multiple open houses to come in and talk about a potential reconfiguration of elementary know we're a little bit different than many communities and then we've got two k3s and then the four or five building um that's been a debate that people wanted to have so we had it and really despite trying to get out and sending things out we just didn't get a lot of um of feedback a lot of staff feedback came which was great but we we get that information all the time since we reconfigured the elementaries about 20 years or so i think it's quite closer to 15-ish 16 somewhere yeah

Yeah, and the city did a, we do a national community survey through a company that provides that service. We'd be happy to share that with the school board as well. The results that came out of this survey, we did this last year. We did that in December, January. All right, the next slide in your packet is the one that you see on the screen here. So this shows just kind of a demographic model of three countries. This is from 2020 data. And it shows Ethiopia as the triangle, your typical isosceles triangle. It's going back to my school days. And that is a country whose population has larger demographics of younger people and less in the older population. range. And so that's what that demographic type looks like is the standard isosceles triangle. The next one is from New Zealand. It's more of a rectangular shape. This is where your generations from, you know, newborns up to your elderly populations relatively have about the same amount of, you know, proportion across the board of the different age demographics. The last one on the right is Japan, which is your older populations tend to have a higher proportionate share than your younger populations, and you start to have a downward triangle, and that's a shape of your demographics. And so in that particular country, you're seeing population decline. as opposed to population growth, which you would see in Ethiopia. New Zealand, your population is stable. You're not really seeing huge growth, but you're also not seeing decline in your overall population. So as we take that same kind of model and apply it to Polk County, this is a pyramid kind of that you've seen over the last 20 or 30 years, dating back to 1990 and also forecasting, which Portland State loves to do their population forecast, out to 2050. So in 1990, that's the top left corner, you're seeing a population in Polk County where you were younger populations were a larger proportion than your older populations. And so you had that upward pointing isosceles triangle. As you get into 2020, you get more of a rectangular shape of your demographics, kind of across the board proportionally. your stable population, your growth in your population is stable. It's not really growing, but it's also not really shrinking between your proportion of different age demographics. 2030, you're starting to estimate out. Again, you are seeing, you know, maybe a little bit of growth on the, you know, teenager to, you know, early twenties. Um, but overall you're really, it's still kind of a rectangular shape. You go out to 2050, um, you get more of a balloon shape. Um, your older population's a little bit smaller, your younger population's a little bit smaller, your middle ages, um, it's a little bit bigger of proportion, but again, more of a rectangular shape. You may be, you know, over the next 20 years beyond that to 2070, you might be starting to the downward triangle shape. depending on how your younger population continues beyond 2050. So, you know, in Polk County, we're really seeing going from a population growth demographic in the 1990s and before to a more stable population today, maybe even leaning towards a declining population in the out years beyond 2050.

I realize we don't have this data here now, but it would be interesting to know how this compares to other areas in the state. Not to sound too crass about it, but when it comes to how we attract people to want to live and go to school here, it would be interesting to know who our competition is.

And Portland State pulls this for all the counties, and so you could easily extract that information if we needed to. So this is an animated graphic. So this is the US population since 1990. So you can see the years are going up on a yearly basis. It also adds the different demographics that started to be counted in the different census years. So by race, so it wasn't just white only added Hispanic and black and Asian populations and more. more than two races as you go. But you see in the early 1900s, you know, we have that triangle shape, right? Upward pointing, our younger populations are much larger. As you get into, you know, the later years, you start to see it go from more of your downward or your upward facing triangle to more of a rectangular shape as you get into the 1990s and 2000s. So again, just showing on the nationwide population trend that we've gone from a country that was growing in population to now being more stable and even looking at potentially declining population as we continue to move forward in the years. I thought Tyler added this just because it looked cool. So good job, Tyler.

It's pretty well known that Oregon is now the 51st worst state to retire in because they count DC. How is that going to affect our population in Dallas when retirees or people reaching retirement age decide that Oregon is not the home for them anymore?

Yeah, it's really hard. I think we'd be guessing, you know, at anything at best. But I think that, you know, plays a factor, right, in decisions of people that are retiring. You know, if you're here and you're comfortable with the system, you know, you may not cause you to move. But it may influence people who are looking at retiring and saying, you know, where do I want to go? Where is it going to work best for me? If Oregon continues on the trend that they're on of being not the best place to retire, I think people may choose to go retire somewhere else. So it's hard to say. We're at the beginning of that question, and I think it'll bear out over time.

That'll be for another night because DRV is one of our largest revenue sources for the city. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

know if three lines saw a better story than what you see on that right chart but it really does the blue line being the the students that we're looking at and really most interested in um every one of those age groups though is really important and i want to be able to see the lens and and adjust the things that we do to to gain the trust on all three of those groups um the reality though is we are not seeing an increase in students. And so if that chart that Brian's been talking about continues on that trend, then we've got kids, families that are delaying having children because the cost of living is too high. I can't get into a home. All those things that are economic pressures that I don't have a lot of control in. But I need to be able to come and talk to those who might help set those policies and other things. That's really where that collaboration for me comes in to be able to see what partnerships can we collaborate in and work towards to support the community as a whole, a growing, vibrant community. I would much rather have the pressure of bringing in a portal because I got too many kids in a building than sitting around a table worried about how am I going to close a building? Which one am I going to do? You know that you're going to get impacted if we start having a conversation about closing the school, right? That's coming here, not just the school board.

charts are just you know two year slices um how come we don't have anything later than 2020 to see

We're pulling just decennial census data. And so when you get to the American Community Survey, you really, the census people that put that data together really discourage you from comparing because it's the community survey numbers. They populate numbers for each year, like 2025, 2024, 2023, but those are five-year estimates. And so they really... comparing 2024 to 2025 to 2026 to 2021, they say it's okay to look every five years, so as long as you're out of that window. But if you're within the five-year window of the estimate, um it's it's not good to compare because of how they do their method and their um of calculating those numbers so for the purposes of this slide we just looked at decennial census data and said what were the actual counts from 2010 and 2020. so um we can still see the trend yes but you see the trend with those two years state on page nine the discrepancy between these two because they don't jive state numbers. Again, they, unlike the American Community Survey, create their own estimates, their own methodologies is how they come up with stuff. So you can really get hung up looking at different numbers from different sources based on how they do their accounts, how they do their estimates.

Why the big jump in the 15 to 19 on the 2020 is it exploded according to Portland State. It's just like, what was that from?

Yeah, and I don't know where that came from. You know, but when, for us, when we wanted to look at this particular, you know, data to be able to say, you know, what is the population of, you know, the different demographics, you know, children, working class, seniors, we wanted the actual numbers, right, from a decennial census count.

So that's why we pulled the numbers that we did here. It's worth calling out there are three different sets of populations that we've been looking at. One is this Portland State, it was Polk County. And this is Dallas City. And then as you look at the enrollment piece, that's going to be for the entire Dallas school district, I believe. And I think those numbers include charter schools, if I'm not mistaken. So different populations that give you different numbers.

So we're presenting numbers in this presentation, again, to kind of show trends and other things like that, noting that if we decide as a school district board and the city council to study this in greater depth, we're gonna look at consistent numbers, consistent methodologies, so that we're looking district-wide to be able to really analyze this and get at hopefully the roots of the problems that we're seeing.

Yeah, well, a lot of what we're seeing in terms of numbers here is, like you say, it's apples and oranges, but it's the trend that you care about.

Steve, can you let me know what the kindergarten enrollment projection was like this year as compared to pre-2020 or pre-pandemic? And I just need that for my... Just to help me conceptualize where we are right now.

I can get it. The actuals. I don't have it.

No, you don't have to have the actual, but I mean, just help me understand where the numbers are. Obviously, the numbers are trending down, but how bad?

Well, it used to be that we'd have at least 100 kindergartners per building, and now I'm hoping that I get 75, right? So we're down 100.

number of kindergartners each year all right um so kind of moving a little bit further back into the the city aspect of this entrepreneurship is important we see it in dallas if you look at the table here with the businesses these are all businesses that are owned have been started in the last several years in dallas from young entrepreneurs people that are in their 20s and 30s And you'll notice that there are a lot of them, which is great. And we're grateful to have them. We're grateful we have an entrepreneurship spirit in Dallas and people that are willing to take the risk to start a business. It's important when we look at our demographic data to say, hey, if we wanna continue this trend of getting entrepreneurs and seeing them grow and having more businesses in our community, We really do need to focus on encouraging an environment where that can happen, making sure that we have homes that are affordable to folks that can live in them and start a business and take that risk. We need to have Just an attractive environment for those young individuals who are in their 20s and 30s to come to Dallas to be able to continue to make those investments here. A growing student population provides the district and the community with the opportunities for more entrepreneurs. A larger school enrollment results in larger funding for the schools, allows the schools to be able to do more things. You know, having just a good diversity and makeup of your community, both in demographics and otherwise, you know, leads to different business types as well. And I think that that, you know, it helps to serve your community better. you know, as it continues to grow and meet the needs of the people that, you know, want to be, live here and want to be part of the community. So just really showing, I was impressed when we pulled up just the number of entrepreneurs, you know, in Dallas that are actively, you know, opened up businesses in the last several years. And this is just a good showing of that.

Out of curiosity, what is, excuse me, what is Young?

the older i get the more i need to have a better definition what was the line on that i would say young you're looking at people that are in their 20s and 30s um i'm not in this category i'm 46. i would not consider myself young

You could probably include West Valley Taphouse on that list because, yeah, it was here before, but it was closed for six months. It's under new management. It isn't a new business, but it sort of is.

And they're young. Yeah, it was a young couple that I think would fit the definition of young in this context. And they did. They took the risk to buy the business and make a go of it here in Dallas. So that's great. Now, this is not an exhaustive list.

So I have a quick question. We talk a lot about, and trust me, I know firsthand, the amount of behaviors that we're dealing with at the school district. How are those numbers for all these kids that are begging to go to charter school, begging for all these other schools, are they dealing with the same type of numbers of behaviors? Obviously, they don't have as big of a population, but percentage-wise that we're dealing with at the high school. I don't have any of the data about schools.

I don't have that.

And I didn't think you would have it, but I just didn't know if there was a sense that if we talked to them, because I know we're dealing with a lot being that I'm both sides of this coin, but I just wondered because everyone is fighting so hard to get into those schools, do the behavior problems just disappear? And so I was wondering about that.

Some of them are online. And so you're not dealing with, you know, fisticuffs and those types of things. And

Well, and you don't know how selective they are about who they accept and who they don't.

I know that that's part of it too. That was part of my question. You talked about programs that you could implement in that. How much autonomy do you have from the state to be able to do that sort of a thing? you've had it how come and i trust you and i i've known you for years and i know what a great job you're doing here in the community um my own kids went through your system and very successful but i mean if you could do that wouldn't you have already

A quick example of that because I think your question is spot on. I don't have the ability to say no to a family that wants to transfer to an online school, Oregon Connections Academy. I mean, there's so many of them. I can't say no to that because I don't have two options just like it in my own district. So I have to have the brick and mortar school, two options of online school, them to say no i don't want any of those i want to go someplace else that's the way the law is written the way i understand it the way i've received legal counsel advice i can't say no It would be potentially, if I had that ability to have those programs, could we reclaim kids in our district? Could I provide an opportunity? We have a Dragons Academy online right now, which is providing a tremendous service for some kids. But that was brought out of necessity, a changing community, a changing school demographic of need. And so as a district, we have to be making those adjustments as well. But I can't afford to have multiple online programs and manage them the same or too small.

Yeah, Steve's taking the next couple of slides.

So maybe let me take this from kind of the data conversation into maybe more of a I don't know, I guess we just call it direction from data to direction. I think we could talk about a potential vision of having a community that is attracting young families, that we have partnerships and we're doing things that are developing the community itself with young families in mind. That was a potential policy kind of conversation we could address. What are the things that are there that we can work together to do? And if we have that potential vision, If that resonates with you, then I think what I would do, Brian, going to advance it, is talk about some possible next steps. None of these things that are on this slide is something that we are asking for a commitment tonight. It's certainly some ideas and some things that could give us a place to start. I know that I have a lot of things I would like to know more information about, and I don't have the resources to do that. having surveys of things, Kim, that you've talked about, those are all absolutely parts of things that we just can't do at all while we're trying to deal with behavior and other things at the same time. But if there's an opportunity to maybe decide together, can we address the enrollment issues? Can we figure out how to stabilize that? Can we tackle some of those low hanging fruits? and have it done in a in a really comprehensive way that makes sense i'm interested i'm willing to be a part of that collaborative conversation and see where we can take it people who are in the system why did you choose to be in in the system compared to the alternatives available to you why did you choose to come to public school as opposed to being yeah because that might have some clues in it yeah no not specifically yeah no i just wonder if

Yeah, obviously, that's a topic for a survey or surveys. I just wondered if you'd asked the question before.

I just think that there's an opportunity. There's so much that we don't know. And you said it. Anecdotal is not, you can't make decisions on anecdotes. So I would like to have factual. I'll give you an example. You know, you've heard it in the community. If you target one specific school, middle school age is really, really rough to be a student. and people talk about the bullying and harassment and things i know how much effort and work that goes into that there's so much that goes into addressing that on a regular basis and yet people will still say you're doing nothing but i can tell you that we had population at the beginning of september on september 19th i have the that's our 10-day drop date so we know that's our starting spot from the start of the year to the end of the year our population changed by one student and i believe it is to the positive So if you hear things out in the community that I'm leaving, my data doesn't support it. Yes, we have mobility, people coming in and leaving, but it's not a hemorrhage out that the narrative oftentimes becomes. I'd like to be able to have facts to share instead of anecdotes.

Steve, to clarify for this setting, our declining enrollment, as you just said, is not students leaving mid-year. It's we're starting every school year with less students than we ended the year before.

correct okay just to clarify for this setting you're seeing again a kindergarten class come in of 130 but a graduating class leaving of 200. that that's not sustainable for our district we will continue to see that declining enrollment the resource goes down and school closure would be on the table in conversation i think we're all pretty much on the same way throughout I'm not having that conversation.

We can send, you know, we can send the old babies.

Build houses for people that can, so they can afford, I mean. Yeah. No, I think those are great questions. And we can ask questions and we can kind of come up with ideas.

Is the list of ideas in this meeting?

I don't think so. I think what we really want to do is we want to better understand the issue. We want to better understand the problem. We want to understand the... I think the problem is that we're seeing, as we defined in the slides earlier, you're seeing lower enrollment, but a population of students that are eligible to attend is relatively the same in terms of raw numbers. And so why is that? Good share.

Yes, we're losing some market share.

statewide and it's not just us it's not just that yeah and it's not and it's not yes and it's not every school district in the state right you're seeing some districts that actually have enrollment increases um so there is some nuance there and it would be good for us to study locally why why is that occurring here right what are the factors in dallas in dallas school districts in the city of dallas in the surrounding areas that feed the Dallas School District. Why is that enrollment declining? I think we need to understand that. So for me, I think the next step is performing some research, probably using an outside agency to help us conduct that research. We mentioned in the report an organization through the University of Oregon There's a sustainable cities initiative where they put handfuls, multiple handfuls of students together who are usually graduate level students that come in and will study a topic like this and really kind of get at what is the source of the issue that you're wanting to understand. And they'll put their research hats on and come and figure that out and present their findings to us and also give us opportunity for, you know, changes in implementation strategies, policies, you know, recommended projects or things you could do to help, you know, address the issues that they're seeing, right? And those are all just suggestions. There's no hard, fast rule that says we have to do what they say. But I think that it would be important for us to really understand, you know, these challenges that we're facing and why we're facing them. So I would advocate that we do a study.

So we're legally bound to some things that we have to do and provide. What if the study comes back and there's nothing that we, I mean, we could do some things, but other things we can't do to really make a big difference. I mean, if it's the state mandating certain things.

And if they identify that, hey, there's some state policies that are really driving enrollment across the state that's a bad idea, then I think we have an opportunity for some advocacy with our state to say, hey, look, we did a study and it shows that the things that you're mandating state are causing some problems in enrollment. And we're coming together as a city council and a school district board in your local community just down the street from the Capitol and telling you this is a problem and we've studied it and here's the results. We need to see some changes. So I think there's advocacy that we can do at the state with that information, right? We may not be able to change it here. The school district or the city may not be able to change what needs to be changed, but we can then be the advocates of that change at the state legislature to try to make that happen.

Brian, can you address whether you've gotten word from other leaders of cities in LOC around the state that are doing these type of research projects or possibly could partner with them if there is such a roadblock and has to go to the state level where we can do a unified front with them? Or is it something that we're breaking new ground here? Do you know?

I wouldn't say that we are cutting the trail with this topic. I think that there are school districts, whether they're partnering with their cities in the districts or not, this is, like you said, this is an issue that multiple districts across the state are facing, and I'm sure a lot of work is going into that. I can't tell you which ones, but we could simply ask and find out fairly quickly. And as we, if the council and the board are in favor of having your staffs work on this problem together, I think that we can pull that information together, talk with other districts who are also doing this work. And if we find out that, hey, there's some challenges that we need to really go to the state with, then we can pull the resources of all those cities and districts that have done this work together and address those issues at the legislature.

I think if we're gonna address this locally, we'll need to address housing development We'll need to address the birth rates here in Dallas, the kindergarten enrollment projection, migration patterns of people moving out, moving in, and local employment trends. If we concentrate on those five things and use a university like Western Oregon University, they put out teachers and cops, and they have a master's degree program. And we could probably talk to a professor and say, hey, let's have a cohort group that works on a project on these five core projects and see what they develop.

That's an interesting idea. This might be a really good subject for somebody's thesis or dissertation. You might get some quality free work that way.

It's not free through the program that we're talking about through the University of

organ but i mean the university of oregon is not the only um the organization that offers this it's just it's you know we get a bid or a quote we could certainly you know do a request for proposals and see what other agencies are out there or groups that might do this type of work yeah and i think it would be important for us to do that whatever brainstorming we do obviously has got to be informed by by data gathering and those are all valid ways to do it we should probably try all of them Our next slide, I think, was just a question slide. And you guys have asked lots of good questions today. Are there any other questions that we have not asked?

I have a sense of urgency about this. I don't think, and it's an opinion, I don't think we can kick this can 10 years. Can we make it 10 years on this trend without going out for a bond for the school district? Because if we have to, I don't think we're going to be able to get it. So what is your 10-year feeling?

I don't believe that we can make it. We cannot make it 10 years without going back out for another bond.

The city moves slow. If we approve housing to be built, I mean, it's years. So I have a sense of urgency about this and I don't want this to be a year from now. We have this exact same conversation that we don't know where the kids are going and do we actually care? What if we just pour more kids into the community? I just believe we have to move quickly on this. We can't wait another year, another five years to start taking some sort of action. So I would like to see some proposals, some costs associated with getting these studies done.

I think one thing that, you know, the wheels of government, whether it's local government, state, school districts, others, they tend to move slow. And don't take offense to this, all of you elected officials, but it moves slower if we have to go to the elected officials to get approval on things, right? Because you don't meet as often as maybe Steve and I can meet because we work every day on things like this. And so I think that... Our suggestion to the boards, and correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, would be that the amount of money that it would take to be able to study this, we feel doesn't require action by the district board or the city council. We can probably together pull our resources to have it be a pretty nominal amount of funds to be able to study this if needed at all. and so um I think if you were to kind of give us that latitude to say yes this is a topic that we want you to work on um we want you to work on it together and uh we want it to be done fast right uh relatively fast um that that we just kind of have that latitude to be able to do that work decision making um we hardly ever use it but we have the ability to call emergency meetings I was just talking with procurement processes and stuff like that. Again, we're not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're not even talking multiples of tens. We're talking pretty nominal amounts of money, stuff that's within our existing budget authority.

I think we could think as a start really, you know, tapping into Western Oregon University, their master's degree program with their education and whoever the dean is. of that program you know those master's degree students are going to be starting in september and they're going to be going from september to december that'll be but this will be a fantastic project for them to work on they can come to us like a cohort and report to us what their findings are on the five key topics that i'm talking about and i bet you we can get it done for free because they're trying to get a good grade out of it and uh they're doing research so it's incumbent on us to follow up with something like that the notes we're taking notes on that counselor shilling i think i can speak pretty much as a group here and say that brian we trust you steve i don't get to direct you i just got to talk to you over the fence

to go ahead and proceed down this path and i think that's a consensus that we're hearing from the group we trust we know what you were hired for so since i'm getting from at least the council um that you know the city's in steve and school board members thank you is there anything else to bring before the meeting all right just thank the board we can't make any decisions tonight but we will continue discussions yep

Will adjourn.