Speaker 1: I've got Aaron Kane, Douglas County School Superintendent in the
Speaker 1: studio with me now, and we got to talk about
Speaker 1: this bond issue, because there's bond issues for a lot
Speaker 1: of different school districts. And if I thought Denver Public
Speaker 1: Schools would come on the show, I'd invite them too.
Speaker 1: But I am a doug Co resident who is actually
Speaker 1: supporting this bond issue, and Erin is coming on for
Speaker 1: the next few minutes to talk about a few things.
Speaker 2: What are you for having me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What is different about this time than the last time?
Speaker 3: In your view?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, last time, we were trying to run
Speaker 4: two initiatives at the same time during an incredibly challenging
Speaker 4: tax year, and we are so so grateful to our
Speaker 4: taxpayers that we were able to get last year's five
Speaker 4: a r mill levy overt across the finish line, and
Speaker 4: it has made a tremendous difference for our teachers.
Speaker 2: But we do still.
Speaker 4: Struggle with our capital needs, and so the bond on
Speaker 4: this year's ballot is a little bit different than last time,
Speaker 4: primarily because inflation is so much we just can't afford
Speaker 4: as much as we would have with last year's bond.
Speaker 4: And we couldn't afford as much with the previous either,
Speaker 4: so inflation.
Speaker 1: One thing people need to understand is that Douglas County
Speaker 1: is growing by leaps and bounds, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: growing in the areas where we already have schools.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 4: We call it growth and decline in Douglas County. So
Speaker 4: eight hundred and fifty square miles two thirds the size
Speaker 4: of Rhode Island, we have lots and lots of very
Speaker 4: different communities, and our older communities, such as Highland's Ranch,
Speaker 4: are aging in place, which means people like my family
Speaker 4: moved here twenty five years ago, kids went through the
Speaker 4: system and we're still in our houses. So those schools
Speaker 4: haven't had a lot of enrollment of new young kids
Speaker 4: because the empty nesters are still in their homes. Whereas
Speaker 4: we have massive construction underway on both sides of Highland's
Speaker 4: Ranch and Sterling Ranch which is west of Highland's Ranch
Speaker 4: west of Santa Fe, and in RidgeGate which is in
Speaker 4: Lone Tree east of Island's Ranch, as well as in
Speaker 4: Castle Pines east of I twenty five, Crystal Valley, Crowfoot Corridor,
Speaker 4: and Parker.
Speaker 1: I think it right now, Parker's nuts everywhere. There's not
Speaker 1: a place in Douglas County where there is not construction happening.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's an accurate sty It is.
Speaker 4: An accurate statement, and the homes are going up so.
Speaker 2: Fast it's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: So tell me about what you're doing right now with
Speaker 1: these areas where you have too many students and not
Speaker 1: enough schools.
Speaker 3: What's where are these kids going and what is that like?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well, Sterling Ranch is the most extreme example. We have
Speaker 4: enough kids in Sterling Ranch, which again is east of
Speaker 4: Santa Fe. We have enough kids in Sterling Ranch to
Speaker 4: fill two elementary schools, and we have single school out there.
Speaker 4: So we are bussing all those kids, some to Roxboro
Speaker 4: and some across Santa Fe into the edge of Highlands Ranch,
Speaker 4: into Coyote Creek or Trailblazer. Coyote Creek is completely overwhelmed,
Speaker 4: and certainly, as you look at projections over the next
Speaker 4: few years, it will be an untenable solution. So we
Speaker 4: will have to continue to try to reboundary. But you
Speaker 4: can't reboundary your way out of this, right And of
Speaker 4: course I can't pick up an elementary school from the
Speaker 4: middle of Highlands Ranch and PLoP it into the middle
Speaker 4: of Sterling Ranch.
Speaker 1: Are we at a point where we're going to be
Speaker 1: closing some schools to open new schools?
Speaker 3: What's I mean?
Speaker 1: Obviously that's way down the pike, but is that potentially
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 4: Well, we have to deal with both growth and decline,
Speaker 4: and actually this bond assumes we're dealing with both. So
Speaker 4: we do need to build a school in Sterling Ranch.
Speaker 4: Regardless of whether the bond passes or not, we will
Speaker 4: need to consolidate a few schools in Highlands Ranch. That
Speaker 4: absolutely has to happen because our kids are losing out
Speaker 4: on opportunities. When you are in a system that is
Speaker 4: all really small schools, which Island's Ranch is it's really
Speaker 4: hard to get full time art teachers and key teachers,
Speaker 4: let alone be able to offer things like STEM and
Speaker 4: foreign language and so thriving schools are schools that have
Speaker 4: more students and they have thereby there are more opportunities
Speaker 4: for kids. So it's something we have to look at both.
Speaker 4: That's why we call it growth and decline.
Speaker 3: How has the bond been structured? What is the woman
Speaker 3: to just asked the question? I want to ask, sure, how.
Speaker 1: Do we know the money's going to be spent the
Speaker 1: way you say it's going to be spent?
Speaker 4: Terrific, Thank you for the question. So we have a website.
Speaker 4: If you go to the Douglas County School District website
Speaker 4: DCSDK twelve dot org, there is funding Challenges button on
Speaker 4: the top, and it lays out the bond planned in detail,
Speaker 4: so you can see for each one of our ninety
Speaker 4: two schools exactly what changes are going to be made
Speaker 4: as part of the bond, because a huge part of
Speaker 4: it is just capital investment.
Speaker 2: We need new.
Speaker 4: Boilers and chillers and carpet and roofs and you know
Speaker 4: all of those things. We built most of our schools
Speaker 4: between nineteen eighty four and the early two thousands. In fact,
Speaker 4: in Douglas County, we passed a bond every three to
Speaker 4: four years from nineteen eighty four all the way to
Speaker 4: two thousand and six, like clockwork, and those bonds passed
Speaker 4: during those years were used to build new schools. So
Speaker 4: about half of our new schools were built during that
Speaker 4: time period, which means half of our schools are turning
Speaker 4: forty to thirty years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and need have significant needs.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the oversight board.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you bet.
Speaker 4: There's a mill bond oversite committee, a citizens committee that
Speaker 4: anyone is welcome to join, Apply to join.
Speaker 2: It's also on our website.
Speaker 4: They look at monthly, they consider every single expenditure and
Speaker 4: they're able to map it to our bond plan. Our
Speaker 4: bond plan is incredibly specific. So you know, if we
Speaker 4: said we're going to fix a chiller at Chaparral High
Speaker 4: School or replace it or whatever, they've got the bond plan,
Speaker 4: they've got the expenditure and they can make that connection.
Speaker 2: And that's true for the entirety of the bond.
Speaker 4: The detailed expenditure, anticipated expenditures are all laid out on
Speaker 4: our website to make it as transparent as possible for
Speaker 4: our textpayers.
Speaker 1: This is not a giant slush fund. I love it
Speaker 1: when somebody's there just want a slush fund. This is
Speaker 1: already so clearly documented that it would shock me if
Speaker 1: we could not just say, Okay, we need this money,
Speaker 1: and it's already been managed in such a way that
Speaker 1: is so transparent.
Speaker 3: I have to say. Erin, I realized that we have a.
Speaker 1: Challenging demographic in Douglas County when it comes to asking
Speaker 1: for tax increases because you have a very conservative population
Speaker 1: who sees the excesses of other school districts and assigns
Speaker 1: those same excesses to Douglas County. And the way that
Speaker 1: you guys have gone about this to provide absolute transparency
Speaker 1: should be the gold standard for every school district. You know,
Speaker 1: every school district should do it this way, and it
Speaker 1: would make it so much easier, I think, to make
Speaker 1: people trust that the money that they're giving is being
Speaker 1: spent in the right way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I'd loved our voters to know
Speaker 4: that the money that they gave us through the mill
Speaker 4: avey over I had last year five A, we promised
Speaker 4: that we would give nine percent increases to teachers and
Speaker 4: support staff. The ballot initiative passed in November, and in
Speaker 4: January we did it. We made it happen retroactive to
Speaker 4: the beginning of the school year, spent exactly as the
Speaker 4: taxpayers anticipated. Our starting teacher pay went from forty five
Speaker 4: thousand a year to fifty two.
Speaker 2: Thousand a year.
Speaker 4: So those changes, and then on the school security side,
Speaker 4: we had six million for school security. We hired campus
Speaker 4: security specialists at all of our elementary schools. They are
Speaker 4: all in place. Parents can see them plain as day
Speaker 4: when they're outside helping with traffic and doing all those things.
Speaker 4: And our law enforcement partners increased our school Resource officer
Speaker 4: account also very visible, so that money has been spent
Speaker 4: exactly as promised, which I think helps, like you said,
Speaker 4: build that trust in the system. And the last thing
Speaker 4: I would say to something you said is we do
Speaker 4: have a master Capital Plan published on our website. Our
Speaker 4: Master Capital Plan is one hundred plus pages. It goes
Speaker 4: through all of our ninety two schools in detail with
Speaker 4: every single capital need that it currently has, along.
Speaker 2: With that it will have in the next five years.
Speaker 4: So every expenditure that we're making in the bond is
Speaker 4: also those needs are documented in our Master Capital Planet
Speaker 4: calls for eight hundred and five million dollars over the
Speaker 4: next five years, which of course is not what we're asking.
Speaker 2: For, but we'll put a big dent in it with
Speaker 2: this bond.
Speaker 1: Can you stick around because I want to talk about
Speaker 1: some totally unrelated to the bond issue. Aaron brought in
Speaker 1: some crazy statistics about kids that I want to jump
Speaker 1: into you, So if you can stick around for one
Speaker 1: more segment, that'll be you get all right, We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. I want to talk about these statistics first,
Speaker 1: because you brought in statistics today that are shocking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is this? Where did you get these?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, they come from our strategic planning process.
Speaker 4: So in Douglas County School District, we are entering into
Speaker 4: a strategic planning process because the workforce that our kids
Speaker 4: are going to enter.
Speaker 2: Is going to look nothing like what we've seen.
Speaker 4: And then I believe that in the next decade we
Speaker 4: are going to see more change than we saw in
Speaker 4: the last century, and so our kids need to be
Speaker 4: ready to lead that change, not just adapt to it,
Speaker 4: but lead it. So we're entering into this strategic planning process.
Speaker 4: But the other factor is that our kids have changed.
Speaker 4: So not only has a workforce changed, our kids have changed.
Speaker 4: And these are some of the statistics I was sharing
Speaker 4: with you on the way in. How many of us
Speaker 4: remember standing in line for a.
Speaker 2: Driver's license center?
Speaker 3: Stay, yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: I remember.
Speaker 4: I still remember camping out early in the morning, so
Speaker 4: that could be first, you know, at the little DMB
Speaker 4: on one County Line Road.
Speaker 3: That was me.
Speaker 4: So in the year two thousand, eighty seven percent of
Speaker 4: kids had a driver's license by the time they were seniors.
Speaker 4: Today that that percentage is fifty six percent.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: And it gets more shocking into In the year two
Speaker 4: thousand and seventy eight percent of our high school seniors
Speaker 4: had part time jobs, and today that is forty three percent.
Speaker 4: And then finally seventy nine percent. In the year two
Speaker 4: thousand of high school seniors had been on at least
Speaker 4: one date, and today that number is forty two percent.
Speaker 4: So our kids are our kids have fundamentally different skills.
Speaker 2: I mean, imagine all the skills.
Speaker 4: You picked up or I picked up driving a car
Speaker 4: as a sixteen.
Speaker 3: Year old job when I was fourteen years old.
Speaker 4: Me too.
Speaker 3: I used to drive.
Speaker 1: I taught gymnastics because I had taken gymnastics before I
Speaker 1: got really tall, and I rode the gym owner came
Speaker 1: and picked me up from middle school and took me
Speaker 1: to my job, and then my parents had to pick
Speaker 1: me up. But I've literally we had a job NonStop
Speaker 1: since I was fourteen years old. Same same.
Speaker 2: I had a job when I was fourteen as well.
Speaker 3: I worked.
Speaker 4: I worked at McDonald's. Everyone should have to work at mcdeiks,
Speaker 4: so too.
Speaker 1: In their lives really have become the gold standard for
Speaker 1: teaching kids.
Speaker 2: About urgencies and manner.
Speaker 3: So, I mean some.
Speaker 1: Of this is in high school especially. I think that
Speaker 1: when I was in high school and I was looking
Speaker 1: at getting into college, I didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: volunteer and doing you know, extracurriculars and all of the
Speaker 1: things that we now have put on kids as a
Speaker 1: requirement where I think they get more out of a
Speaker 1: work experience than anything else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've kind of created this our generation Gen X.
Speaker 4: We've created this incredibly structured busy plan plan for our
Speaker 4: kids where everything is planned and everything is supervised. And
Speaker 4: because so one of the ways to think about it
Speaker 4: is we've converted from a play based childhood to more
Speaker 4: of a screen based childhood.
Speaker 2: Right, So they're either supervised.
Speaker 4: Or on their phones, right or And when we were young, right,
Speaker 4: we were out playing and figuring it out. And that
Speaker 4: means that their brains have actually developed significantly differently than
Speaker 4: our brains developed at the same age.
Speaker 2: And so in our district, we're.
Speaker 4: Thinking about how do we how do we meet these
Speaker 4: kids where they are and make sure they're ready to
Speaker 4: lead the future workforce, and how do we work with
Speaker 4: our families starting at a young age to really encourage
Speaker 4: things like a play based childhood, a little less structure
Speaker 4: in that day, a little a little less supervision actually,
Speaker 4: and more time for kids to interact with each other
Speaker 4: in person, not on screens, you know, teach them about
Speaker 4: social media and the dangers of device use at younger
Speaker 4: in younger ages. So there's so much to engage in
Speaker 4: our community with so that we can partner with our
Speaker 4: families to make sure that our kids get a lot
Speaker 4: of the skills that they are missing out on because
Speaker 4: of statistics like the ones I just shared with you.
Speaker 1: Aaron Kine, thank you so much for sticking around because
Speaker 1: I find that incredibly fascinating. And I bet there's a
Speaker 1: lot of parents out there like my My daughter's fifteen.
Speaker 1: She has no interest in getting her learners permit, and
Speaker 1: I finally told her, look, if you want to go places,
Speaker 1: you better learn how to drive because the taxi service
Speaker 1: is almost over.
Speaker 4: Same I made my kids get their licenses. They weren't
Speaker 4: that excited, and.
Speaker 3: I bet they're happy about it now.
Speaker 2: And Mandy, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: Before I go, I just want to mention one thing
Speaker 4: I forgot to say before, which is that our our
Speaker 4: bond in Douglas County is a no tax increase bond,
Speaker 4: so it is there will be no change in the
Speaker 4: current mill.
Speaker 2: Levey rate, so it is a zero tax impact.
Speaker 4: It's permission to borrow some money and to continue attacks
Speaker 4: a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: All right, Aaron Kane, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.