City Council - Regular Meeting

And highly impacted students there at silver and. Is there any, does the board want to mention as I go through these celebrations, I open it to the board. So they add their little 2 cents if they'd like to speak that we feel like that was our 1st major decision as a board. So to see it come to fruition for me was very. Just, yay, we're doing it. We're on the right track to provide a safe place for those students who are highly impacted. I think it was a good first move for us.

Just for the staff that I've talked to, they look at it as an upgrade. They have more space. The building is full of light, and it's just going to be a great place.

And it was with Alpine School District. Yes. We were the one with the director. That was key, right? Because the last number of years, that has been a significant year. Well, that's what would happen to the. If we lost those right facilities, what they said. Yes. So I just want to, I was just. Oh, boy, this seems that be your first act that that really calmed a lot of some of that that was put out there. And I would say it set a tone.

Well, you know how we're going to how we're going to proceed.

Yeah. I just wanted to say the name was fighting until the principal. Why he liked the name of silver, silver key. Because silver is a metal that is refined and it looks brighter and brighter. And that's kind of what they're doing with these young kids. And yeah, it's hard to go through what they're doing, just like it is when you're refining silver and reaching your peaks. And it just made me love the name more. It's hard for me to get away from it being Sharon Ellery. So if anybody can sit around and love the name.

Yeah. Great. um okay we also signed our transportation memo under memo of understanding with the absentee school district um that was done at our last board meeting and that was brought to a short-term end the discussion about where to place transportation facility so we were thrilled with that it's a three-year agreement with the potential to extend um we think it'll be great that we'll have our transportation folks and their transportation folks working side by side and um and working through those issues together. It was really interesting how that came about because initially it was kind of this no go, but as we hired people and these people have worked with each other and they were able to see a need and come together to come up with a solution was really, really great. So we're excited about that. Any board member comments on that?

I've had some questions. What is the flexibility with that? Are you guys still going to be able to take your start time? Yes.

Dave, do you want to talk to that at all, how that's going to work with us operating the transportation center? Ownership of our own schedule. They have about $2 million of inventory and parts.

we have the interest in that portion and for the first two years there's about equal value for it we and we didn't even know where to start we looked up the value of a parking space that's electrified for a bus put the bottom end of that and so we're giving up our interest in those parts we just give our hotel interest in the park They're also going to move a trailer onto the property because there's more office staff. So turn that into office space. And then over that last year, the value of that trailer is about what the rent would be for that last year. So we really don't pay anything other than interest in the parts and giving up the ownership of that trailer over the three years we're there. So it's great for both. They're getting a little value out of the space they have, plus a trailer they can be training in if we need it. The other thing to talk about is as we post the two-year agreement, perhaps we could even build a training facility on the property and then continue. They can continue to take ownership of that thing for the next decade. But we can do that for quite some time without really any pain back and forth. It's just valuable.

from the fire scene building. Rene, tell me if I misunderstood your question, but she was interested in the operation of that. We're completely independent.

We will get to, we hired our own maintenance staff, mechanics, and we'll take over two and a half bays and we'll just be independent. The only thing that we'll share is the service. So there's a custodian that we'll share. It doesn't make sense. And then there will be a service service center people that will share those duties. So they'll be fast and peaks employees, but we'll share 40% about of their contracts. The rest were apart from them. So we have our own mechanics. We have our own administration, our own routers that will work independent from that drivers, buses, all independent, except for those service people in that custodian. Yep.

that answer oh thank you great and this is i'll introduce this is dave mauer is our uh who's assistant superintendent over operations was he okay are you a canyon beach yeah i was yep three years um yeah so any any other board member comments on our transportation

I just add it state the obvious. This is a win win. This is this is this is something that and that I hope. But extend or ever. I just don't see a need to have our own. It's right location wise services both of our districts really? Well, there's enough space. It's 3 blocks from our 3 box. Yeah, I mean, you know, it just I mean, it just is a. It's a win win, so we're hopeful, but we've got anything.

When you're wise to do this.

Yeah.

Periodically.

Yep.

And I would just add that one of the, this particular MOU brings me home. But I think another line we currently find is high levels of trust between us and Aspen Peaks. And they've been fantastic to work with. If you watch the board meetings tonight, another MLRU that's, we've already signed one for their alternative schools. We're going to sign another one tonight for the online portion of it. And it's just an adult ed. And it just makes a huge difference that we have a great relationship with them.

Yeah, we're excited about those things. So the other thing we have, we have finalized, which is our vision and values. And we'll be talking about that a little bit later. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. But I think we shared that with you guys to be able to review. And also, in starting our discussion regarding school boundaries and the I think we've done a really great job in involving our public early in this whole process. We did a cluster meeting, four cluster meetings in each of the high schools to solicit feedback and understanding and really have a conversation at tables with our parents and teachers, administrators. at large constituents about what they would like to see the schools in our district look like, what constitutes a robust and thriving school. So we have kind of, we've used AI to make this cute little graphic. So this is kind of what we've come up with in conjunction with our community. So we're excited about that. And we also announced our district office is going to be located at approximately 500 North Street in London. It will allow us to create a campus, kind of like you guys have done here, right? You have this campus that houses so many of your services. We recognize the value of proximity, and so having all of our departments in one building or on one campus is going to be phenomenal. If you've watched Alpine, just because of their size, Alpine has had to... Space things out, they have the special education office is where we're doing our board meetings. That's in linden. They have the portal. They've got an American fork down by the freeway. And so we are really looking forward to. A campus that will address. Everything that will be able to gather and it's going to, I think it's going to be a reduction. It's going to be an increase in time. There's not going to be as much time spent in the cars. Driving to different meetings and stuff. I could see it. It's really saving us there.

And also as well.

And what collaboration collaboration. Yeah. And the team's working together. You're in their own little pockets and also collaboratively as as a district that we want to model for our schools is collaboration. So we're hopeful that this is going to be. about that. Also, I just wanted to mention we have done both of our hiring from Alpine School District, and we have a couple of hires that we've done from outside the district. But the way that things were set up, it was a benefit to us to hire. And we have a willing pool of people to draw from that needed a job. So I would say we're 80 or 90, Joe. 80 to 90%. And these employees who are concurrently working for Alpine School District, we have them for one day a week or about 20% of their time right now. And then at the turn of the quarter, we'll get them for an additional 20% or another day. And then we'll just get at each time we get an additional amount of their time and their jobs at ASE are winding down and things with us. I'll find school. This is they are paying.

Yeah. Yeah. And kind of, this is kind of a, a more of a shout out than a direction. Um, but I feel like the last few years, the worm has done really well. And this person right back here, Carrie has done a great job of risk is, um, always looking for efficiency. Just recently we had the manager, um, quit and split up her job to three people to just see if that will work before just automatically. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. But if it doesn't work, we're starting to innovation team. This kind of does a little moving about the round. We'll put this there. Well, and I think we did that.

I mean, early days, Joe did that with his creating his cabinet team. We recognized the value of having our assistant superintendents have more direct contact with the school. So we eliminated the layer of supervisors. Yeah, I noticed that. So we are not also in recent days.

We've been talking with the other districts about actually doing our own print shop.

And in our district in Alpine, they've had a higher level admin in charge of the print shop. So we will help that under a different department. And so those admins will handle that and you can hire.

Less high since they're saying that, like that, say, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't want to say that we're very aware of our budget because I haven't seen that, but I just wanted to kind of more of a shout out to some of our folks. And kind of what we have to do nowadays with our budgets. That's all I have.

I was just going to mention on the district office that we're starting, the funding from that is coming from a building fund that Alpine has kind of built up. So it's not from any new bond or it's money that's only for capital that we're utilizing for the startup.

Thank you. Thank you.

I don't have the bond for that. We're going on to the next item. Uh, just because I know almost everybody here doesn't mean everybody else goes to quick introduction. So, sir. I'll start and then we'll just go around. And then I'm Karen. And let's let the mayor.

You know, it's.

You go on that school district assistant superintendent over teaching and learning secondary and communications. See, we're combined.

There you go. I knew it. Karen Carter.

No, Jen, some superintendent to notice Jason summer business administrator. The entire big you direct communications and foundation.

It will flee city warm communications. A date, malware operations.

It's right school board. I reference for my area.

David Smith will board and I represent the West of the freeway warm and all of your.

You know we'll send a school board I represent kind of the mountain area that surrounding all of entries there.

Remember I mean I don't grow.

Early will remember I'm representing cells.

But make a more city council.

It's also it's in Timpanogos school board and I represent. This.

Jen Lyman, Sonocas Board President, and I represent all of Linden and part of PG that guy doesn't represent himself.

Lon Myers, Assistant Fire Chief, Foreign Fire Department.

I'm going to be a public service director. I'm going to be a public service director.

They're always going to be the most.

Brooks Merrill community services for Wilson.

Steve Earl city attorney.

Brandon Nelson, CFO.

Here we begin, director of community.

Here you are deputy city manager.

Brian Clark, assistant city manager.

Thank you. I took a break. So do I. Okay.

Yeah, actually, we're going to change this time over to Sterling. Oh, good recorder.

All right, Teresa.

So we're going to have Sterling Hilton talk about our vision and values.

Um, yeah, so we, we just, we've distributed our, our current. We mentioned our living document of our different values, and we just think it's worth taking a minute or two to share with you. Um, our process as well as some of the content of this vision of value. It really. Is more than just a document. That is nice. It's really guiding everything that we do. we approach things and what things we approach. And so I think it might just be worth noting that we created this minimum value statements over a month, seven months. We have board members actually started talking about vision. That was actually 1 of our 1st conversations after we were sworn in. We realized that we needed some kind of provision to help guide our efforts as we were looking to who were we going to hire as our superintendent and with our business manager. We, we didn't have anything nearly as well, but we did start talking about what's important. Where are our commonalities? Where are we going to be? How are we going to be working together? And we had the luxury of this year and a half of we're creating something. So we really aren't like, or maybe coming into having a vision that's already been established or that sort of thing. Adopt we, he had the. Responsibility, but also the luxury of saying, who are we? What do we want to be? And so that's that's what this captures for. I think it captures very nicely about. How we see ourselves and what we want to accomplish and what's important to it. It wasn't just us as we drafted this our 1st draft. We then went out and felt that it was really important that we speak to all of our stakeholders. And so we met with every single school except 1. That was simply because of timing and arrangement, but 28 of our 29 schools. We went to those schools, we met at 4 meetings. parents, we met with the students, we met with the teachers, and we met with the administration. And we spoke to them and gave them our draft, invited them to share what was important to them. We did that 28 times. over a hundred meetings, and we then took all of that information and revised and input and through study sessions, finally came to a point where I say finally, there's no longer a draft written across events is now voted on it. It's approved, but it is living. So we're not, when we find things that we want to add to or tweak or whatever, we are very willing So, I think that process that I just described. Really represents and shows if you look at the last bullet point on the values, I think it illustrates. That we truly do value the perspectives and experience of students, educators, parents and community. And it illustrates that these values aren't just words, but they guide. who we are and how we operate and how we plan to operate and interact. And that it's not just us as a board. This isn't just our board's vision and values, but it is our district's vision and values. So it's a collective. I think it'd be really interesting. before I open up to any questions that you might have, but I would love for each of our board members, they would like to just quickly, and I know I say that quickly because I've been in study sessions with us. If you would quickly identify any aspect of the vision or values that resonates with you, that is really important and it captures valuable. Can we do that?

Grace, do you want to start? I really like the joyful, thriving students. I think we all want our kids to be happy and joyful. But it means more than just... Like some teachers, we got some feedback of, oh, you can't make somebody be happy. But if they're really learning and they're really... Joyful is something that just goes a long way. So... That's, I think everybody works.

I'll take two, if that's okay. The sixth bullet point at the bottom, the back end of that sentence, always assumes goodwill. It's so easy to make a judgment in your mind and assume goodwill. That's going to be a value that we hold. The other one is in the rectangle, the first part of the rectangle under no. I'm a former math teacher, but this one resonates with me, always.

A little tickle in my throat, so I'm going to test my voice here. But I really love continuous learning and improvement. I think whenever we're standing still, it's not a good place to be. So I think as a board, we're interested in continuously finding new ways to do things better, both professionally and for us.

My value that stands out to me is we value collaboration and accountability. And especially with our four cities and our boundaries. That's why we're here today.

I'm going to speak. I love the high levels of genuine learning. For me, that is an articulation of something that we are aspiring to achieve and to work towards for our students. It's all about those high levels of learning for each and belonging. That was a phrase that came in, and belonging for each student.

I really like the fact that, yes, children need to know things at school, but we're really working to help them become. And these character traits and citizenship traits are going to help them in their lifelong learning and lifelong living in society.

It's always nerve wracking to go last. I was afraid you guys were gonna steal mine. Mine is together we. That's my favorite part of the whole vision and value statement is those first two words. Because it just speaks to the fact that we recognize as a board that this is a community effort. It's not just us. It's not together, but it can be. It's together we the board, but it's also together we our district, together we our community, together we. And so I've really embraced that idea that education is a community effort. Effort and needs to be supported by the community, but also it needs to be shaped. By our community, so grateful for that and Joe and Jason and anyone else.

No, I didn't think essentially.

I'll make my comments when we talk about. Okay. And I invited Tyler, please.

Those of us in the room that are representing Timpanogos School District, I'm the latest addition. I've been here for a couple of months, but it's been really fun for me to watch. This had started before me, and it hasn't changed a lot. They might feel like it changed a lot because they were really doing a lot of work with it. But as new people have joined the team, really in some cases because they've made a commitment to join the team later, but I reflect on these with them because what I make sure they know is that this group, I think in public service, right? You feel the same thing. Sometimes they're like, oh, who are these people and what are they trying to do to us? And we are saying together we, and we emphasize these elements of like, oh, we're assuming goodwill and collaboration. And it's just very impressive, like I said, to join later in the process. But I can just want to pull a test, right? And live by these values and all the meetings and interactions I've had with them.

Great. Yeah. So any questions around our vision and values or comments we'd love to collaborate with you around?

It's very impressive. I can tell how much you care about it. And I just think setting that intentionality right up front has all kinds of positive music.

I think that's been happening with you.

I particularly love the motto, the doubling. I love it. I think that's very clever.

My question is... We'll give credit to Sterling for that.

My question is, with that process of stakeholder engagement, which has multiple purposes, I'm sure, but one of those purposes was to receive feedback and to change things according to that feedback. What changed with all that?

Hmm? Specifically high level, high level. Yeah.

High level belonging.

And that's where I stumbled genuine through high levels of genuine learning. That's what. Yeah, I did and belong and that's. And the students really, really important to the students that. Then they that was there and so we, that was. And then also safety, if you look down to the 1st bullet point, we value student educators, safety and well being. Safety was not a whoosh slide through a lot of the other things there. And again, that was another thing that came from. students and stakeholders that said, nope, this is really important to us. And so that came into it. And then if you want to look under the B column, there were several things that changed. There were things that changed there. We added self-mastery that was there. We added empathy.

It was interesting because that was at every junior high, I think we went to. Junior high kids are the ones that said, there's not kindness here. That's missing. And so we phrased it as empathy.

Had a great discussion around that. Felt like empathy captured, you know, what we were.

It was great. It was great to see, especially the students. I think the students' sessions were great.

I love, can I just say, I love this, and I have to tell this just funny little, the junior high, my kids, when I first went, my oldest, we were at Canyon View, which the main hall can be a little packed between classes, right? And I went in the office to check out one of my kids, and the aide, the office staff, said, well, I'll just go out and watch for, said to me, oh, I don't think you want to go out there. And my feet would come home and say, I don't get it. Or bumping into each other and not saying, excuse me, you know? And just that whole little empathy for just those little things. And I see this reflected in your goals here, right? To teach that kindness. I love it. Because, yeah, you have to learn that sometimes. You forget. So thank you.

I liked that you went. to 28 schools and talk to the students. Okay, I'm picturing and I'm going, I know a kindergartner isn't gonna say a whole lot now just, but with the idea of how respectful that is Even if the students were in junior high and high school, you talk, and that's very respectful, recognizing who you're truly serving. And I really appreciate that you took the time at each school to visit with students. Or maybe, did you? I mean, you did talk.

The students at each school. It was kind of fun when students figured out who was there. They started to talk, and it became very clear the number one thing was bring back True Moon Milk.

I really appreciate you taking the time to engage the students as well. Thank you.

And Joe, this has you written. I worked with Joe at school community council. I really appreciate it. I can see you. I mean, I know it was the board.

Can I make it clear it was the board? It was eight or nine before we were sworn in. I guess I feel like you'll mesh well because I see a lot of Joe in this too. So I think you hired the right guy then for what you did. I think we did.

Okay, I'll let you discuss that after this.

Thank you. You can hold us to this. This can inform you. This is who we are. This is what we're about, and it is living. And as we improve and find ways that we can improve upon it, we're going to change it as well. Let it look at us.

All right. Thank you. Next item is... Robust schools.

Okay. It's interesting you say that because I only applied for one district. And that's because of this. I retired. But I only applied for one district because of who was elected. And this board genuinely lives these. I'll echo what Tyler said. What I've observed, it really is together we, not just together we the board, not just together we even schools, but together we, that's why we're here today, right? It's why we're trying to make sure we have great relationships with all four cities, but also with everyone. parents as well, that parents can trust what we're doing, that kind of thing. So I'll just point to the last value, actually, even the last one, transparency, open communication, and valuing the perspectives and experiences of students, educators, parents, and community members, because that's what drove this document. If you look at this document, after we did the clinic visits, During the summer, we started to say we're not going to start our massive boundary study with asking the question, what schools need to close? We're going to start our boundary study by saying, what do we want our schools to be? What do we want each student to experience in their school? And so we actually went out to the community again. We did a cluster meeting at each of the high schools. And we had great attendance. There were upwards of 250 people in those four cluster meetings. And really, it was workshop style. It was not us telling them what they want. It was us asking, what do you want in your schools? Right. And this is kind of a compilation of that. We also then took it to our principals and said, Okay, what do we really want our schools to be? And so with all that feedback, it came back, and we divided it into two parts. And we've represented this here as a building, right, of a school. But on the bottom is kind of the foundation. You know, teacher quality, effective leadership, school culture, and then school safety policy and operations. Those are things that have to exist in every school in the mountain in order to be robust and effective. And then everything above the foundation were the things that are related to size and physical facilities and those types of things that are more related to a boundary study type thing. And so we're obviously going to pay really close attention to the foundation. But in our boundary study, we're going to really look at these. What's driving us are these things. When a school gets too small, comprehensive offerings become difficult. At the elementary school, it's hard to have four specialties if it's a tiny school. At the high school, it's hard to have a full array of AP and all the other offerings if it's too small. And so... And then you can kind of look through those other things as well. At a really tiny elementary, it's hard to have an assistant principal from a cost standpoint. It's much more doable if the school's 600-ish rather than 300-ish, right? And so these are kind of proxies for size, but It's not necessarily about size. It's about getting to truly robust schools. And over on the right-hand side, you can see there kind of where we got to with optimal school sizes. Based on different configurations, so Jason's going to then talk about kind of where we are with our massive boundary study. But this is really what's driving those questions and today's a big day because. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we actually split into 2 parts. And because there were really 2 distinct parts and we wanted to know. They confused with the public, so in July already the board. voted to officially study the configuration fund, which is the 9th graders to the high school. And then if we do that, likely moving the 6th graders to the middle school and having K-5 . Well, there's that part. That part's officially open already today in our board meeting. We anticipate that we'll vote to study the actual schools that would be affected significantly by any kind of consolidation or closure. Again, one thing I would point out as far as the transparency part, we're approaching this different than normal. Normally, One school is named as a closure. And we don't name any other schools that are affected heavily by that closure. So, you know, the most obvious example of that is Sarah Park and Hillcrest. When that happened, only Hillcrest was studied as a closure. But for those of you who are familiar with that situation, did Sarah Park close?

It was renamed.

Oh, but it was no longer think about it.

There's a new building. It was a new name. It was a new student body. They were, they were affected just as much as Hillcrest. So, we're, we're saying we're going to name Sarah Park and Hillcrest situation. 1 other thing that's, I think valuable about looking at the whole district. Is it gives us better solutions because sometimes we think closures in terms of this school in this school coming together. By looking at it holistically, we actually have a lot more options to make better decisions long. So. With that, I'd probably steal a little bit of. Anyway, so that's robust school criteria. That's what's driving what we do. You can obviously see the echoes from the division of values in what we've done.

Is this document available on your website? I'm just thinking of people who might be watching.

Yes. This document looked a lot like this document just this week even. We're working on making this one more than just text. Okay. But this, you posted it yesterday.

It's on our Facebook page.

Tyler, is it on our website?

We do have a Boundary Study Frequently Asked Questions webpage. So please go to that with any questions.

It's not this. It's the text one, I think, is there, right? The robust role.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that frequently asked questions page might be a good thing to link or provide a QR code in the Orem City communications, those types of things, so we can get down to more than just... Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that those who might be tuning in have a place they can go to look at the document that we're talking about.

I appreciate you saying that, Mayor, because I actually had a list of questions people gave me to ask y'all. I don't think it's necessary. I've asked a few of them just so it would get out on the airwaves, right? It's not necessarily appropriate right now, but I appreciate you referencing that because that's kind of why a lot of people are listening in. Thank you.

Well, thank you.

Joe, can I ask you a question about number two? Yeah. I mean, we all want healthy environments. We all want collaborative environments. But I guess I'm not entirely sure how you measure. You've indicated here that you would like to have three, five classes per grade. And I can understand reasons why being able to make students, as they go through classes, make a lot of sense. But So much of learning is relational. And so I have to imagine that in that bucket, you care about the quality of relationships that students have with each other, that they have with their mentors and their instructors. And I know sometimes as size gets bigger, it's easier to fall through the cracks. And that some of those relationships that might feel fractured or fragmented over time. And so I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to how you measure that healthy collaborative environment.

Yeah, so, and what you're talking about really is the bottom left as well, right? It's high-quality teaching, right? And right in the middle of that, it says ability to build relationships with students. So I think you're exactly right. Those foundational pieces that can be related to this somewhat, but really what we're talking about regarding five classes per grade is that when you get down to one or two classes per grade, it's much harder. The student experience actually suffered a little bit because sometimes there's a group of students you need to break up. And if you have nowhere to put them and break them up, it's hard. It's the same thing for teacher collaboration. We believe that teachers are much better when they're collaborating. And it's hard to collaborate with yourself. on a team of one or maybe a team of half. And another way that starts to look is sometimes if you don't get to that three to five classes, the class sizes get really wonky or you end up with grade splits, which are not ideal. It's not ideal to have a second, third base split. And if you have 38 kids in a class and that's all you've got for your first grade, and we have schools that are in that situation, logistically, it's really hard to split into two classes of 19 from a financial standpoint. And so then you end up with, and you'd have enough students to justify at least three teachers. A lot of those things get into that. But to your point, it's still every student needs to have those types of relationships with. It's not just teachers. It's also that a teacher fosters a culture of connection between students, right? And even a connection between what they're learning and the student and all of those kinds of things.

I just want to point out that school size does not necessarily translate to large school size doesn't translate to large class size. As a matter of fact, we have more options with a bigger overall enrollment to reduce class. So we're still targeting the same numbers per grade or classrooms. So this is not about increasing class size. We're talking about perhaps increasing the thousands.

I was going to also add, when Dr. Jensen visited with us, visited all 29 schools, this is feedback we got from parents who probably wanted choice between teachers and students and principals of the... The elementary saying, 300 is hard. We need 500, 600. And teachers who said, we want someone to collaborate with. We want to be able to have a learning partner or several learning partners. That's where we got kind of this. What we're thinking is from that group saying this is.

Maybe just on this one more comment. I appreciate those responses. I think they're great. And it makes good sense to me. One of the things that's not here and doesn't necessarily belong here, that becomes a really big issue whenever we start talking about consolidation, is identity. And a person's identity is so wrapped up in the school they go to. Schools that foster community also foster an identity around that school. And people grow up, I still, of course, have an identity of the elementary school I went to, because it shaped much of who I developed into. And so I just encourage you, as you start thinking about this tonight and beyond, that there is an identity track here. is how do we ensure that all of that great identity work that has gone into schools over time is maintained in some way and celebrated? I just don't want that to be neglected.

Absolutely. And maybe Jen and Grace can talk to this, because they've both experienced consolidation. And one of the things we've talked a lot about, and we actually have scheduled some focus groups with patrons that will be in any of these schools that are involved, is the transition. How we go about that transition matters. And being really intentional about bringing PTSAs together, bringing SCCs together, any kind of consolidation, making that student experience, even allowing for time and space to both celebrate and mourn the school that might be actually shuttering its doors. We've talked about what's going to be our policy. Do we rename or no? Or why? Or do we leave that up to those community members and all of those types of things? It does matter how. And you guys have both experienced it.

Yeah, so with the public value, there was...

There was a time issue and there was a lawsuit against the district about it. And so they couldn't officially do things until I think it was June 1 or June 51. I don't remember when it was, but it made it so that every year we were closing, but we couldn't do anything. The district wouldn't support us in any type of celebration. The teachers couldn't move their classrooms until the middle of the summer. And to me, it just... It's cemented in my in my mind that we need to we need to mourn. We need to honor that identity. You will even if your school closes, you will. My kids are still Valley View Hawks and the ones that have graduated from there. And I don't imagine that that's going to change, that they can have that identity just because the school is closed. Does it mean that that is gone and we need to celebrate it and and. and mourn it and move on and recognize that we can take what's good. And let's, let's, let's bring that and, and create something great.

Yeah. I, my kids were at Sarah Park when it was combined with Hilt Nest to make Centennial. And I would say the majority, there might still be a few people who really didn't like the combo, but in the end, it was a really good school to be in a, A better facility, there were severe safety issues with this part. And also having more grades and kids and more options have been something that parents overall have really liked. What didn't go over well was the transition. And that's where I would like to see things move differently. And a lot of that was because I think the district loves their hearts. really tried to do things well and do it right, but they didn't get enough community input of what the community wants. And they did a lot of, and it was just kind of thrown in on, this is how it's going to be, and this is how it's going to go, and you just swap off. I think that can be said differently, and the community coming together and liking each other before they come together. And it can be much better.

Thank you. I just want to kind of explain Orem.

I lived here 35 years. I'm just going to tell you my impression from having been here 35 years. Something I truly appreciated is the identity of the areas of Orem. I knew that when I was by Windsor Elementary, I could find Windsor Park. I could find the Windsor softball fields when that was the assigned play place for my child to go do their rec games. And that was one of the things that we have these regional, whoever set that up years and years and years ago, I thought was so wise to put the facilities next to the community acres of the schools. So we had these new builders. And so to me, and I've voiced this before, but to me, those names are really almost sacred. We have congregations that are also recognized If I know that someone tells me the predominant religion, someone says, oh, I'm in the Windsor, the Northridge Stake, or we're meeting in Northridge Park, we're going to Northridge Elementary, I know exactly where that is because of those things. things that were set up years and years ago, that identity, that community identity. I kind of mourned the loss of Sarah. We're doing our heart of Orem at the Sarah Park. So I would have loved to have had that school continue to be called Sarah Elementary to keep that community anchored there because we as a city are going to really be improving that area. So I guess I throw that out there to say, yeah, I understand the mourning of one, you know, if you have to do it, you can only have one name. Maybe you could hyphenate. I don't know. That's for you to decide. But it is okay to keep tradition. And to just become the new, the new, we know that some of the people should become the new, you keep the mask out of one, but keep the name. That's kind of my almost, what I find valuable to take here in Orem is that identity. Right here, Cherry Hill Park, I know where to go. And wow, I know that school's right there. Anyway, that's just from a long perspective, something I valued. So I've moved here because I haven't seen it anywhere else.

I would just say you could pass as a norm native. And the reason I know is because you call it Syrah Park. Peter has been coaching me. He's been coaching me for the past month every time I say Sarah. It's not Sarah. It's Sarah. It's not Hurricane. It's Hurricane.

And really the whole history there, right? That was a community gathering place. Yeah. So history that I can remember. Impressive. Oh, can I ask one more thing about this paper? I don't, because I've had questions. Theater schools, is that part of your conversation? That would be an outcome of these aligned theater school patterns. Okay, I just didn't see that on here.

Jason's going to talk more about that.

That goes along with identity, right? It does. I identify probably more with my elementary school than my junior high, just because I kind of want to forget some of the... Are you an Orem Cub? I am an Orem Cub. I can sing still. Are you a Jaguar? I am. You remember that. Huh? But I am a Mountain View Bruin, definitely. So I think the identities are a lot stronger with those high schools. And as we look at... Keeping those relationships. I think that is a priority of the board to keep those true feeders, which we don't have now. We have, I mean, I was split from my elementary. I went to Orem Elementary.

Moved here 35, 36 years ago.

But yeah, half of our elementary went to Lake Ridge, half to Orem Junior. And then half of my Orem Junior experience, or half of us went to all of us at Mountain View, but then Timpanogos came our junior year, right, Jason? And then that split again. And if you look at Timpanogos, that's literally three rivers feed into that. And so I think that's the priority of the board to say, let's keep these communities together. There might be some identity changes for those middle schools, but as far as high school boundaries, it'll be interesting to see what the board decides on how they're going to make those work. I'm so glad I'm doing it.

One thing that has become apparent is we've really been studying this really since April. In the north, you can see that there's consolidation when Sharon closed. And then there's been fairly significant consolidation in the south and east with Sharon, Geneva, and Hillcrest. And so really what you'll see tonight, likely, depending on what the board does for sure, is really we're addressing that center part where you can actually look. There's a circle of, I think, six schools within a mile and a quarter of each other. None of them are more than a mile and a quarter from each other, and they're all in the 300s soon. And so it's... Partly just an evolution of the city of Orem as well. And we can talk birth rates. We could talk affordability. We could talk charter schools. All of those affect that. But it'll be a fascinating study moving forward.

Mayor, may I just throw out there, please see ORM as a resource for trying to figure out how to use any properties that are consolidated. We can be helpful in making sure they maintain identity, community gathering, park, recreational uses. Obviously, we've done that really, really well with...

I need to go view that. I've heard that time and time again, and I'm like, yeah, that's what I'd love... to because we are looking at some maps as we are just I wore makeup today so I can't rub my eyes but I've been rubbing my eyes a lot talking about this is that concern about that's kind of that's leaving a large area without something so that's what we would love to do is be able to partner not just with you but like I'm thinking United Way there's a lot of community partners with I mean, not just us, but multiple people. Like we could bring something to a community that will continue to serve and maybe address other needs that those areas have. So we're excited about that.

You can spell Orem several times with all the letters in here.

Why we have brand always visionary. Yes.

Team says warm is very cool. And warm gives you more, you rearrange. All right, I'm just looking at the clock.

We've got about a 25 minutes.

I told him he had five minutes. And so we're good. Just so you know that we'll just, we're shooting and at two, but it looks like we might, I don't want to cut anybody short. And so we'll just move right along and to Jason. I told you you have five minutes.

I meant to start the call. First, President Lyman and I are going to go check out the Hillcrest Park. We're going to play pickleball there tomorrow, right?

I think I want to point out here with those optimal school sizes.

I'm looking forward to see the K-6 and the K-5 are different. So if there is some movement of 9, 12, 6, 8, it's not to be able to say, well, now there's more elementaries to close because it's not having to do with that. It's the 3 to 5. So there's going to be one last grade if that's the way it goes, but it's still looking at the optimal sizes there. A little background on why we're looking at this. Some things we've shared before, but the number of elementary students we had in our schools, there's 20 elementary schools. In the area right now, the 4 cities, so the total enrollment last school year with the same as in 1980. In 1980, there were 17 schools. There's 20 of those schools now. So that kind of helps a little bit seeing that also. Going back to 1980 is really when enrollment in the area started taking off. So elementary enrollment peaked in 1988 and has gone down since 1988. Junior high peaked in 1992 and has now gone down. And then high school, 1998, with the overall, when you put them all together, was in 1996. So declining enrollment since 1996 overall. And so that's what we're looking at. That's why there's been consolidations, closures already. When we're looking at these numbers, even the K-6 numbers, to get to the three classes per grade, it's about 590 students. So by this last year, there were seven schools of the 20 that were above that mark. In 27, there's five, and in 2030, only five. So 15 schools are below that mark of having the three on average. So a lot of them have two or one and a half, like Dr. Jensen was talking about. Some other things to note, and we've started this... Boundary, we've had boundary committees, which have been really great. We've brought in principals. So the elementary and the secondary ones have had four principals that have been consistent throughout with staff, with three board members in each, as we've just been planning this for many months of different brainstorming sessions, figuring those things out, the cluster meetings, focus groups. One option for the high schools was brought, is it more favorable to close a high school and have three high schools at robust size or to bring the ninth grade up? You can probably imagine the reactions there. People, their high schools, their identity up there. So that, I think, is a big reason as the 9-12 is being considered and has felt pretty favorable from the community, along with the transportation of students that are on main activities, trying to get from the junior high to the high school. Let's see, what else? So yeah, we're looking at many different options tonight. We'll just present a little bit about some of the things we've been looking at in the boundary committees, looking at numbers as different configurations. We have a couple different secondary options. and those we do want to try and get to as much possible pure feeders. So right now there's four high schools and five junior highs. If a junior high were to close, it would be four and four, which makes it a lot easier to get that pure feeder. And then even with the elementaries, to be able to see if there's a possibility to get... It's a pretty... Pretty difficult to get everything, but there's some that we looked at where maybe one school that already is split does that. And if there is a split between it, we're trying to get as close to a 50-50 for that to be able to make that, you know, they're going with friends. And then it doesn't where they come back. So if they split the elementary, they're going to two junior highs, two different feeder systems, and staying together from there on out. So... Anything I missed or any questions?

Well, it's instead of like splitting the junior high, splitting the high school. Yeah.

The problem that we've been looking at is that the junior highs and the high schools have identical boundary. Some of that makes it a little difficult, but it should work. But some would need to be a little bit larger than others. Orem High is the smallest square footage of the four high schools, so trying to keep it a little bit smaller. But even that, with having 912 high schools, and in 2030, they're all under 2,000 for the number of high schools with Orem around 1,600. There's another thing why we're looking at that, too. So the Pleasant Grove High School in 2020 was at its highest, and it was at 2,200 students. They're now at 1,800 and projected to be at 1,450 in 2030. So that's where we're seeing a big decline right now in that area where Orem, Lyndon have had that also. Looking out to 2030, if there were no changes, I mentioned the elementaries where there'd be 15 of the 20 less than about 530. So they'd be anywhere from 230 students to 520. But the junior highs in 2030, the five of them, there would be three of them less than 530. They're even less than 1,000. The next one at right around 1,000. There's one at 1,200. And then the high schools all around averaging about 1,350 or so. So the high schools right now to have that robust program, Alpine has put a lot of extra teacher FTEs to the schools to be able to have that, where that works for a district of 85,000 students. It'll be more difficult for a smaller district unless there's more revenue through property tax increases. So that's some things we've been asking, too. Like, we can get to some of these robust things by just raising taxes, or we can this way or combination. So that's really what we're studying is how that can work together.

Can I speak to that? It has been amazing to me because, you know, we are doing a truth in taxation. Yeah. As I've had those conversations with people, it has been very interesting to have people be against what Orem is doing, trying to raise taxes, and yet at the same time saying they're willing to support education if y'all went out for a bonus of some kind. So I think that speaks a lot to what our I don't want to say what our community values, but kind of that they value children is what the point is. Right. So just I want to make sure I communicated that to you today. That was very interesting for me to hear that because some of the people I talked to are just anti-tax no matter what. But yeah. Yeah.

I just want to acknowledge that we're both dealing with the same pocketbook, you know. So we need to be cognizant of your needs as well and not, you know, put the pressure on unduly. And that's, I think this is not our main purpose, but certainly one of the purposes to demonstrate to our public that we are doing what we can to not be a burden. And to you.

Thank you. Jason, do you ever feel like you're living a giant story problem? A lot of people, one lives in a greenhouse, one has a purple house. Who owns the parakeet? Jason loves it.

I was working on a bunch of stuff this morning. I don't have a lot of time where I have three hours all open, and I did this morning, but I really didn't come up for breath and just get into Excel.

He was into it.

Well, thank you. I just, I don't know who owns the parakeet. I don't know who lives in the houses, but I'm glad that you all are going to be figuring that out. Thank you. All right, next item, John, you're up. Safe routes and bus routes.

I'll just give you a handout, so I won't show you some data here. a few things have changed just in the last few days of talking with David and We'll do it with Joe. The last two years, I've been working on establishing what bus stops will be closing. And this is the El Pan School District website, really good about showing kind of the school boundaries. We'll take Lake Ridge for an example. There used to be a layer that talked about . We removed as a city, because if you look at the marquee down here in the bottom, it says, students come first. And that's kind of how we approach it from a traffic transportation point of view, busing that we want them to be first in safety to get to and from school. So that. link no longer exists. However, the last couple of years, I have actually taken some screenshots and shown what those are. And it was a little more alarming, literally up to a couple of days ago, where I thought, oh, man, the school district is going to close all these routes. I have all this data of how many. We had a table that's saying there's 70 hot routes. I should call them bus stops. There's 70 stops. There's now going to have to walk What I'm finding out is that with the boundary changes, Dave, that we're not going to make kids walk across State Street. And so we're going to have to run. So this slide here, there's a lot of data in there, but what I wanted to point out with my crazy laser, if I don't kill somebody's eyeballs, work up there. Each one of these little dots represent a bus stop, and this is last year's school. Not this year's, not the 25, 26th. And so we were kind of going forward, going, how do we get all these kids across to Lake Ridge? How do we get all these kids across to Lake Ridge? And

University Park. Yes.

So I added these roads for State Street, University Parkway, I-15. There's actually two stops west of I-15 that are closing. I say were because I think that you as a district now have the option to get a little closer. But the previous organization of the school district published this. So it kind of got worrisome. And our biggest thing is safety of the kids and how do we get them there. And, you know, this From here to here is about 1.3 miles. And there's another school that's 1.79, 1.8 miles. So it's pretty far. So what we want to do is remind the school district we're here to help. We've met with school community councils. I have a meeting with Orem Junior High assistant principal . What happens is, I think I have you, Doc. What happens is, and you can correct me, is that the Safe Routes to School program is kind of managed through the state grants you can get to do improvements. This is what they put out there. I only showed nine bus stops over here. They actually have 19 and 20. I think I had 9 and 10 or 9 and 15. This is the most current Safe Route to School for Lake Ridge. And so there's potentially a lot of stops and a lot of kids and families. And so we can go through other schools, but I think you get the point. I've got all the other four or five schools. They're all junior highs, right? The elementary. They weren't going to take any of the buses from the elementary and high school. I really wanted to get the point across is that we're here to help. We're here to work together. I do have other versions of other schools.

As John finds that just as we talked yesterday, we were concerned that maybe there were some stops going. I've confirmed with The current director that in Orem, no stops have been, it's the same stops as last year. And so nothing's been taken away now. Caveat to that is we have, we're short 20 to 30 bus drivers. So there's actually buses that we're not driving through no drivers. And that's creating some double runs and some differences in timing, but all the stops are in Orem. Vineyard, there's a couple that have been taken away, and DG1 and Linden 1, but Orem remains the same. So that was comforting.

And yeah, two years ago was when I started this process, and The direction I received was that the school district is going to close these. So it's actually going to happen this month. And now it hasn't. This is an example of the, this is like from the school down to the bottom is seven miles. This little green line represents, this is the safe route to the current safe route to school plan here. were to take that school and superimpose it there at the same location this bottom line is this bottom line which shows you the current boundary of the safe route program for the school that means none of these areas and none of these stops currently have a safe route now we thought it was going to happen august but it's going to be next august so i propose correct me if the Steps are wrong, but once you decide on a boundary in which schools stay and which change, you have, I believe, access to an age of students. When you talk about by 20, 30, or 40, these things will happen based on ages. I'm sure you know of clusters of students' population and where they live. That's not public. Once you decide upon that, it's the school community councils to establish these safe routes, and each School has a, what do they call them, a safe rock school administrator that works with them. And then that's item three, work with the cities to physically walk or drive or both.

I'll make David run it. I said David, not Dave. Leave your David.

I'll run it. She walked the paths. You'll get the feeling what the kids do. And sometimes it's evergreens growing way out on Northridge. There was these bushes that you literally couldn't walk down. Whether it's sight distance, the vehicles that can't see the kids. So we really need to figure out what that safe route is. We want to work with you to do it. We'll help you do it. There's tripping hazards. There's sight distance. And the important thing is the timing of improvements. When we did a Bonneville school, we did a hawk signal. It's a push button hawk. $160,000, $170,000. It took months to get it designed, get it built. So we need to get ahead and work backwards from we have an August 1st deadline of kids not being bused We need to start in December this year to get stuff designed. And we do a lot of design in-house, so you're getting a deal there. We'll design most of the stuff if we can. And we even construct some of the concrete if we can and do that. We do have a kind of an ongoing, I don't know if it's written, but it's usually a 50-50 split of improvements with the school district in the past. So we usually have small, medium, and large projects, 20,000, 60,000, and about 100,000. And depending on the crossing type, kind of range from that. And then once the administrator updates the website, UDOT looks at it and approves it and it goes to their website. So I just encourage that we work together and we get ahead of it so that we don't show up August 1st and we have this unsafe.

And John, that will be a fairly tight timeline for us. On December 2nd, the board will decide on which schools will change. And then hopefully, close to that time, we'll have some boundaries ready. And then it will be up to the existing school community council to look forward to what you're instructing about in December. So that will be a very tight.

Well, and in a perfect world, if it was a very large infrastructure, usually a hoxton.

Yeah.

That would be good. Clearly, we can do other things faster. But the sooner, the better to help us get ahead of it. And whatever mechanisms of monitoring and still taking a walk and saying, if I was a kid in this neighborhood, how would I get to the school? Let's keep talking.

One thing right down to Cascade. Remember, John? So Cascade was designed for two drop-off an hour later gators, early birds. And it was consolidated with Sharon. And it was a one drop off. There were traffic. There were safety issues. I saw John. I went to the school community council, watched our traffic team handle those just expertly and quickly. But truly do that before school started would be ideal.

You'll see a lot of signal there. You'll see tie lines. You'll see red curb. You'll see crossing guards. The city does pay for the crossing guards, too. That happens. I don't know what they cost per year, but that's on us 100%.

And you'll see the Friday bike bus.

I was really happy when I asked Dave about bus drivers because we do have these double routes. And I said, no, do we not have enough bus drivers? And he says, we're fine. We've got enough bus drivers. And then I said, well, but the double routes, he's like, oh, ASD doesn't. ASD's in a bad shape. And I think that speaks to people want to work for this district. And so I'm hopeful that that means that we'll be able to have enough bus drivers. Now, that being said, The state only reimburses us for eligible routes. So everything that's an ineligible route that we're paying for 100%, that's going to impact our budget and our bottom line priority.

That's a priority.

Distance is 1.5 miles for a elementary and 2 miles for secondary.

One of Jen's talking about people asked where they wanted to be. Well, I didn't share the bus, but we wanted to be a lot of them.

of these community because the student counts so we got all the bus drivers pretty short if you got any buses later i will say john and our transportation and traffic we are over the line so we don't create it we want to look at things from all angles we want to be as helpful as we can um even to other cities in the district if they don't have the same kind of personnel and sophistication that we do. So we see this as a resource. We get the solutions that you perhaps wouldn't be able to just on your own.

We can adjust. We can't say by August 1st we got everything done. We can react and help stuff.

I was curious, do you have an idea of how many crossing guards we have?

Yeah, yeah, through the police, the 3034.

Just noting just how important they are. To our communities, I mean, we value them so much and appreciate training and.

It realized the city put in the bill on that. I thought the school district.

City happens. Thank you very much. I live in. West of the freeway, but. The school that's closest to me is vineyard elementary, which is in vineyard. And I've seen the crossing guards. One of the crossing guards is in Orem, crossing over to the sidewalk that goes right by Vineyard. And one of them's in our soccer park that's crossing over to Vineyard Elementary, which is in Vineyard. How do you guys do that with Vineyard? Do you pay for the morning? They're coming from Orem to Vineyard in the afternoon. Have they gone from Vineyard to Orem, or how does that work?

We just go for that. Give him a few library cards.

The vineyard is building us a new signal at the Lakeside Park. Yes, I've vineyard painted that 100%.

It would have been great to have that done and the other construction in Orem done. I can't get out of my neighborhood without... There's two ways out without going all the way down to... That's another issue, another meeting.

You know the signal arms were on backward. That's the delay. I just learned about that.

I haven't told you. Thanks, Sean.

Lon, are you here for it, Chief? Yes. All right. Here I am, Chief.

Well, that's the guy who puts out the dumpster prayers. I'm that guy. Yay!

Six-five, I can see over the top. It's that video. Sweetheart, is that you? Sure. Okay.

Welcome back. Students in the Alpine School District have always learned math, science, and history, right? Well, now a new class will teach students how to put out fires and save lives. It is a new partnership with the Orem Fire Department. New specialist Alex Camero live for us at the Orem Fire Department tonight. Alex, this is an opportunity for those things I imagine to get a head start on a potential career.

It sure is, Mike. You know, it is one thing to learn about firefighting in a textbook. It is something else to go out on actual real calls. It's what some high school students in the Alpine School District are doing with the Orem Fire Department. But for as much as it helps them get experience for a potential career, it could also help the fire department in the future. Are you ready for this? Even though it's an easy part of the job, Layla Bonham still wanted to be perfect at it. this firefighter turnout gear in less than 60 seconds. She had no problem with it and couldn't wait to do more and learn more about being a firefighter.

I love it so much, just like everything about it, putting my life out for other people, saving them, comforting them even. It's just so amazing.

Bonham is still a junior in high school, but thanks to a new program between the Alpine School District and the Orem Fire Department, she's getting a head start in her future career.

I think that like more kids should know about these programs because I didn't know about them, but it's truly amazing.

This is only the second class. There's one each semester. Students get credit for it. They even go on fire and medical calls, learning about what it takes to be successful in this career. Even learning tasks seemingly as simple as getting a water line off the firetruck. Love it all.

Really tough, and I love a good challenge, so I'm willing to work for it, because it's really hard, but it's going to be a great reward in the end. Blood pressures, heart rates, oxygen saturations.

For the Orem Fire Department, the class is a great way to help with recruiting. Departments have had challenges with recruiting since the state changed the retirement plan covering first responders back in 2011.

The numbers just aren't there the way they used to be. Prior to the change in the retirement system, it's really thinned out.

and classes like this one can help we'd love to hire these kids at some point down the road bottom sign up now if she could yeah but she's excited to know when she can she'll be better prepared it's just so amazing and i love the adrenaline rush Both Bonham and Anderson, the students we interviewed, say after high school graduation, they're planning on going to the Firefighter Academy at Utah Valley University. They say, though, that the skills they are learning now will only help them in college, ultimately leading to this kind of a career.

Mike? It's fun to see how excited they are about the whole thing, and hopefully more will be just as excited. All right, Alex, great story. Thank you.

Start with good company and a conversation worth waiting up for.

We love our cadets. We love the program. As you can see, it's got energy, right? It's a true symbiotic relationship in that we both mutually benefit. As Chief Hurst talked about, numbers have been... A little lower than they were back in the day when I was testing 30 years ago. We'd have 60, 70 people show up for one career firefighter position. These days, the numbers are not like that. And so our intent through community outreach is to target these kids, these students, and to offer them this cadet program where they can come and they can smell the smells of the smoke on the turnouts and put them on and we put them in uniforms and put them on the fire trucks on the ambulances and it is just it's amazing and it's a hoot and i think you can see by the interviews of both leila and ben they're very excited and and that's what we're after what was this this last semester this video was this last winter it was i think two semesters ago going last fall so we've had to that point we've had uh The fall of 24 was our first class. We've run four. We're about to start our fifth. We usually try and get between eight and 10 students per class in there. So we keep it manageable. But these students are assigned crews. They're assigned just like if they're working and they get to go out and they get to know these people. You saw Firefighter Whipple in there talking to some of them. So it's really a lot of it's about coaching. It's about mentorship. And I don't know your name, but you talked about coaching. with regards to the development of these students to become. I love that because that's what we're doing. For those students that have an interest in firefighting, this is a physical manifestation of that path. We bring them on and they continue to grow and they develop. And what we get from it is... candidates that we can hire. And in fact, some of these cadets have actually already received jobs on fire departments and surrounding areas. And so they're still really young. And so it's going to take a while to ramp them up because they're 17 and 18 years old. So as far as the high schools go, just to kind of give you some quick idea, we have them Participant in high schools have been Orem, Timpanogos, Mountain View, Pleasant Grove, Cedar Valley, Sky Ridge, and Carl Mazur. And this fall, students are coming from Provo, Lehigh, American Fork, and Payson high schools. And so we're pulling back from that. Program costs the student $200, which we do a physical down at WorkMed, and we output them with some basic uniform needs. Okay. And we invite the graduates, the alumni, back to help us with fire prevention night and programs that we do. And that's it. We think it's a wonderful program. Like I said, we love community outreach and we love our students. And it's a way that we can really tap in and provide resources for them. You guys have any questions for me?

Are the classes taught during the school day or is it after hours?

It's... They show up in the afternoon and they go into the, and later on that night and they get credits as well. So it's.

Yeah, I'm just wondering if it's part of the internship.

That's exactly what it is. And so they get to come and hang out and get school credits. So any other questions? It's sure fun.

I went to the graduation of the last one and I'm same group. I believe in January, I met them like on their first day and to just see the difference in confidence. I don't think you know what I'm talking about. Yes. They're all sheepish. Do this. And then by April, they're ready to conquer the world. So yes. Thank you. It's a great program.

Yes.

Sorry. How do you recruit quick?

Social media these days, right? We get the word out, and these kids, it travels like wildfire. They hear about this program, and we get a lot of response.

I see what you did there with your description. Wildfire, okay. All right, thank you. All right, next to last item on the agenda is our police chief, Chief Robinson. We're going to talk about school resource officers. Welcome.

Still tremendously proud of our program and the community relationship that we have with our principals and what we do with our school resource officers. We have five full-time school resource officers, a sergeant, and four detectives that are permanently assigned to our three high schools and our three junior highs.

We've got the one at Lake Ridge. Very impressive. Is it Lake Ridge? Yeah.

So there, I would say, excellent examples of who you want in school of being that blend of Mr. Friendly, but yet being able to be there when the worst happens. And so my child goes to one of these schools, and I'm very confident with the people that we have. I feel something with my own kid going there with the type of officers that we train in these schools. So I take that responsibility very seriously. Um, they follow the national ASRO, uh, National Association of School Resource Officers model. Uh, first and foremost, they're law enforcement officers. Uh, secondarily, they are, uh, educators. Uh, many of them, all of them in the high school teach a class, uh, as wanted by the high school, and then informal mentors. And so making that a, you know, you talked about kindness and empathy and things like that, building relationships with the students so that we hear about problems before they are problems. But I feel uncomfortable enough to go to the school resource officer to say, hey, this fight's going to happen behind the, what are they called now?

Teachers. Yes.

I was thinking of the pickleball. And so. I have to brand initial. We are innovative. We, we do things good. We're always looking to do things better. And so our, our school resource officer, we. More than a decade ago, found a weakness in our ability to communicate inside these schools and you go into a hot scenario and you're like, hey, I'm at Mr. Wilson's math class. Well, our officers don't know where Mr. This is Wilson's math classes or a mass officer response. Pleasant Grove officers, county officers don't know where that is. And so came up with like a grid system. Imagine Battleship, if you're old enough to remember Battleship. B3, that's where we're at. And so that was codified in state law. And that's now a state law. mandated thing that came from one of our officers and looking for ways to be better. I Just beginning of the new year, your school year starts next year from now. And so I would just say, let's get together, figure out what your expectations of school resource officers are be. And so we can meet those and we can be prepared to meet those from personnel and a budgetary standpoint. So we can. Make those things questions.

Your training, has that been on an Alpine district visible, or is it bigger than that, or your SRO training?

So every officer goes to the NASRO class. It starts in June, so everyone goes to that. Are you talking about the grid system search, or is there initial training?

Just training in general.

So every one of them attends that class that's offered every June training.

Is there any type of collaboration with the other SROs throughout ASD?

Yes. They've got their own little network. They've got their own little group chats, communicating and doing that training. So like in the summer months, we utilize your buildings to train all our officers in the police department.

I walked accidentally into one of your trainings, and I was like blown away.

Blown away. Don't we have any problems?

Not a good description.

But I just didn't know if you'd have the conversations about whether it's the continued training on that level after the splits.

let's talk about what your expectations are. My intent would be to continue that. And if there's room that we can improve, then yeah, I'm always open for that. If there's a different model that you want to follow or something besides NASRO, I'm open to those. As long as it's moving us forward, better and safer.

So I have two questions. The first, when they're, so one-to-one to each of the secondary schools, and they also have an elementary they're over or go to?

Yeah. So if something, a request, knows there's assignments, so that the sergeant and the other detectives split their time amongst the three junior highs, and then the... 11 or 12 elementaries, they're all assigned that. And so if there's a request that come in, that officer, that SRO would respond there unless they're unavailable and somebody

And the other question is, during the school year, is their time that they're working, is it 100% of the school? Is it 90% than they're doing?

40 hours. They work five-eighths. They're from seven until three. And after, dealing with these apparent problems, teacher questions or principal questions, those five are 100% dedicated to them. And in the summer, have more help? They come back. That's usually when they take their vacations. Teachers. So, yeah.

You do work extracurricular events as well?

I do. The high school, like football games is probably the most apparent one. I'm trying to think of some of the other ones where the overtime pages come out are usually for the football games.

You don't have time to teach an internship class, do you, Nick? Unfortunately, no. I'm just thinking of the fire department.

They do have the law enforcement class at the high schools that the Green Force officer generally teaches. It's for credit, usually first period, TE, CT class.

I'm not just bragging. This is reality. Our school resource officers are literally award-winning as part of this national association.

I forgot about that. In 2024, we were recognized as the term. Good.

Very cool. One of the things, too, I think you can't measure is what doesn't happen because they're there. It's a huge support as a secondary principal, especially to have them there in certain things that are a little bit tenuous, but it also prevents so many things from ever happening.

I mean, we don't have to imagine the worst case scenario. We experienced the worst case scenario. And so, yeah, the model agency award that you received in 2024. Right. So proud of our officers and the work that they do in school. It's important. It's needed. Dedicated. I gladly send my kid to the school. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Which leads us to our last item. That is to adjourn. So I don't know what our next meeting is scheduled, but I'm asking. Aaron probably does. Aaron probably does. Okay. There we go.

Eventually, we're going to host you in our new district office.

We'll have room to host you. Of course, you're always welcome here. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. It's good to see all of you. Thank you for all of you. Take care. Good luck. Good luck tomorrow.

I support you.

Great meeting. Thanks, everyone. Thank you very much.