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