City Council · 2026-08-26

And highly impacted students there at Silver Peak and T-Tech. Is there any— does the board want to mention, as I go through these celebrations, I open it to the board to add their little 2 cents if they'd like to speak to that. We feel like that was our first 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 place, a safe place for those students who are highly impacted is— I think it was a good first move for us.

I think 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. Yeah, we were the ones that directed—

that was key, right?

Because the last number of years That has been a significant fear in our community, was what would happen to the vulnerable populations if we lost those great facilities that they can go to. Yes. So I just want to— I was just overjoyed to see that be your first act. I think that that really calmed a lot of some of that that was put out there.

And I would say it set a tone well for, you know, how we're going to How we're gonna proceed. Yeah, I just wanted to say the name wasn't defined until the principal told why he liked the name of Silver Peak, 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, and it's hard to go through what they're doing, just like it is when you're refining silver and reaching your peaks.

And You just made me love the name more. It's hard for me to get away from it being Sharon Elementary. So if anybody can get around and love the name—

Yeah, great. Um, okay, we also signed our transportation memo under— memo of understanding with the Aspen Key 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 facilities. So we were thrilled with that. It's a 3-year agreement with the potential to extend. We think it'll be great that we have our transportation folks and their transportation folks working side by side and, and working through those issues together. It It was really interesting how that came about because initially there, it was kind of this no-go. But as we hired people and these people 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? Are they— are we—

I've had some questions. Are you— what's the flexibility with that? Are you guys still going to be able to dictate your start time? And yes, how we're operating—

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 and such?

Yeah, so they have about $2 million of inventory and parts. We'll get an interest in that portion, and for the first 2 years, there's about equal value for 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 and took the bottom end of that. And so we're giving up our interest in those parks. Give our 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 3 years we're there. So it's, it's great for both. They're getting a little value out of the space they have, plus a trailer they can do training in if we need. Uh, the other thing to talk about is, as we approach the 2-year agreement, Perhaps we could even build a training facility on the property and then continue— they could continue to take ownership of that thing over the next decade. So they can last for quite some time without really any payment back and forth from the parks and building.

Renee, tell me if I misunderstood your question, but she was interested in the operation independence of— oh, that we're completely independent.

Yeah, we will get to— we hired our own maintenance staff, mechanics, and we'll take over 2.5 bays and we'll just be independent. Uh, the only thing that we'll share is the service piece. So there's a custodian that we'll share. It doesn't make sense, there's more line hours there. And then there will be a service— service center people that will share those duties. So they'll be Aspen 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 and that custodian.

Yep. Does that answer it? Sounds like it. Great. And this is— I'll introduce, this is Dave Maurer, is our, um, who's assistant superintendent over operations.

Was he a— were you at Canyon View? Yeah, I was. Yep.

For years. Um, yeah, so any, any other board member comments on our transportation?

I would just add, state the obvious, this is a win-win. This is, this is, this is something, and that I hope could extend forever. I, 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 base.

3 blocks. 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— anyway, good thing.

So you're wise to do this periodically. And I would just add that one of the— this particular MOU is a big deal, but I think an underlying current behind that is high levels of trust between us and Aspen Peak. And they've been fantastic to work with. If you watch the board meeting tonight, there's another MOU that we've already signed, one for the 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, it just makes a huge difference that we have a great relationship with that.

Yeah, so yeah, we're excited about Those things. So, um, the other thing we have, we have finalized everything, documents, which is our vision and values, and, um, we'll be talking about that a little bit later. So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that, but you— I think we, we shared that with you guys to, to be able to review. And also, uh, in starting our discussion regarding school boundaries and consolidations, I think we've done a really great job in involving our public early in this whole process. We started a— we did a cluster meeting, 4 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, and just 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 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 8th Street in London. That will— 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 having 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 Um, space things out. They have the— this, this special education office is where we're doing our board meetings. That's in Linden. They have the portals in Linden. They've got CTE in 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 together. And it's gonna— I think it's gonna be a reduction in— gonna be an increase in There's not gonna be as much time spent in the cars driving to different meetings and stuff. I could see it really saving us there. And also— Collaboration as well. And what? Collaboration. Collaboration, yeah. And the teams working together. You're— I mean, in their own little buckets and also collaboratively as a district. That's what we want to model. for our schools is collaboration. So we're hopeful that this is going to be— excited about that. Although 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, um, the way that things were set up, it, it was a benefit to us to hire, and we have a willing pool of people to draw from that needed needed jobs. So, um, I would say we're 80 or 90, Joe? 80 to 90%. Um, and these, these employees who are concurrently, um, working for Alpine School District, we have them for 1 day a week, or about 20% of their time right now. And then at the, at the turn of the quarter, we'll get them for an additional 20% or another day. And then we'll just get— each quarter we get an additional amount of their time at their jobs at ASD or rent or are winding down and things with us. So, um, part of it, Alpine School District, they are paying for some of them.

Yeah, so that's kind of where it's coming in. Yeah, and kind of, this is kind of a more of a shout out than a direction, um, but I feel like the last few years the ORM has done really well and This person right back here, Carrie, has done a great job of this, is, um, always looking for efficiencies. Just recently we had the manager, um, quit and split up her job to 3 people to just see if that will work before just automatically filing. We've done that a few times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it's quite rewarding to see that our strategy innovation team just kind of does a little moving of dots around, a little surface dirt, and people win.

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, uh, have more direct contact with the schools, so we eliminated the layer of supervisors. Yeah, I noticed that. Yeah, so, so we are that 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 house that under a different department. And so those admins will handle that and you can hire, um, less high positions there. So thanks for saying that. Like that, say, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't want to say that.

We're very aware of any budget because I haven't seen you doing 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. Yeah, that's all I have.

Yeah, 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 available only for capital that we're utilizing for the firehouse.

Thank you. Yes, thank you. We'll not have to bond for that. That's great.

Before going on to the next item, um, just because I know almost everybody here doesn't mean everybody else does. Let's do quick introductions. Let's start I'll start and then we'll just go around. And then, and then, Karen, panelist on the mayor.

School District assistant superintendent over teaching and learning secondary and communications. See, we're combined.

There you go, I knew it. Karen Carter.

Joe Jensen, Superintendent, Timpanogos.

Jason Sundberg, Business Administrator. Excuse me, Tyler Vigil, Director of Communications and Foundation. Uh, Pete Woffley, City of Orem Communications.

Dave Maurer, Operations.

Grace Rex, School Board. I represent the Orem High area.

David Smith, School Board, and I represent the west of the freeway, Orem and Olive Vineyard.

Ada Wilson, uh, school board. I represent kind of the Mountain View area, the surrounding elementaries there.

Thanks.

Board member representing Mountain View.

Board member representing South.

City Council.

Michelle Sorensen, Timpanogos School Board, and I represent—

Jen Lyman, um, Timpanogos Board President, and I represent all of Linden and part of PG that Guy doesn't represent himself. Lon Myers, Assistant Fire Chief, Warren Fire Department.

Public Service Director. For sure. Safe school, safe school.

Bryce Merrill, Community Services.

Steve Earl, City Attorney.

Brandon Nelson, CFO.

Terry McGinn, Director of Community Gary York, Deputy City Manager. Brian Clark, Assistant City Manager. Thank you. I took a bite. So did I.

Okay, okay. Yeah, actually, we're going to change this, um, vision and values. Time over to Sterling. Oh, city recorder.

Oh, sorry, Teresa.

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

Yeah, so we, we just, we distributed our, our current, our living document of our different values, and we just think it's worth taking a minute or 2 to share with you our process as well as some of the content of this vision and values. It really is more than just a document that is nice. It's really guiding everything that we do, how we approach things, and what things we approach. And so I think it might just be worth noting that we created this vision and value statements over, how long? 6 months? 7 months. Um, we board members actually started talking about vision. That was actually one of our first conversations after we were sworn in. Um, we realized that we needed some kind of a vision to help guide our efforts as we were looking to who were we going to hire as our superintendent and as our business manager. We, we didn't have anything nearly as well developed yet, but we did start talking about what's important to us. What, 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 Orem City coming into having a vision that's already been established or that sort of thing that you can adopt. We 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 us. I think it captures very nicely about how we see ourselves and what we want to accomplish and what's important to us. It wasn't just us as we drafted this, our first 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 one. 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 give a telepath to share what was important to them. Thank you. Did that 28 times. Over 100 meetings, and we then took all of that information and revised and input and knocked it out. And then through study sessions, finally came to a point where— I say finally, there's no longer a draft written across this. It's 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 experiences of students, educators, parents, and community members. 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 find to just quickly, and I know I say that quickly because I've been in study sessions with us, but if you would quickly identify any aspect of the vision or values that resonates with you, that is really important to me and it captures valuable— can we do that?

Yeah.

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. And but it means more than just— because 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— I think joyful is, is something that just goes a long way. So That's— I think everybody works.

Uh, I'll take 2 if that's okay. The 6th bullet point at the bottom, the back end of that sentence, always assumes goodwill. I think 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, um, the first part of the rectangle under no. I'm a former math teacher, but this 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'm just— 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, uh, with our— and especially with our 4 cities, you know, within our boundaries. That's why we're here today.

I, I'm going to speak. I, 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 is all about those high levels of learning for each and belonging. That's a new— that was a phrase that came in, and belonging for each.

I really like the fact that, yes, children need to know things and 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. But you have shared ones. Mine is together we. That's my favorite part of the whole vision and value statement is those first 2 words. Because it just speaks to the fact that we recognize as a board that this is a, this is a community effort. It's not just us, not together, but it can be. It's together we the board, but it's also together we are district, together we are community, together we. And so I've really embraced that idea that education is a community effort. It 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. Now, I, I didn't intentionally leave you for that conversation.

I'll make my comments when you talk about this.

Okay, 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, you know, proverbially in some cases, 'cause they 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 believes in and lives it. Like, they actually do. And I try to emphasize that with our folks that are joining the team. And I think in public service, right, you feel the same thing. Sometimes people move out, 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 always 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 attest, right, they live by these values in 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.

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 things that have been happening with you. I particularly love the motto, the double meaning. I think that's very clever. My question is—

We'll give credit to Sterling for that.

I'm right.

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

Because all that— 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 We added and belong. And that came from our visit to those schools and the students. That was actually really, really important to the students that, that they— that was there. And so we— that was added. And then also safety. If you look down to the first bullet point, we value student educator safety and well-being. Safety was not a word. Applied through a lot of the other things wasn't 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 empathy. Yep. And then we— then if you want to look under the B column, there were several things that changed. Several— 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. The kids, junior high kids, are the ones that said There's not kindness here. That's missing. And so we phrased it as empathy instead of kindness.

Had a great discussion around that and felt like empathy captured, you know, what we were— what was— It was great.

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

I love— can I just say, I love this, and I have to tell this just funny little quickie. The junior high, my kids, when they 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, um, I said, well, I'll just go out and watch for— said to me, oh, I don't think you want to go out. And my kids would come home and say, I don't get it, we're bumping into each other and not saying excuse me, you know. And it just— that whole little empathy for, for just those little things. And I see this reflected in your goals here, right? To teach that kindness. And I love it because, yeah, you, you have to learn that sometimes. You forget. So thank you.

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

It was kind of fun when students figured out who was there. And that we had— they started to talk and it became very clear the number one thing was bring back True Moo Milk.

That's what they want.

True Moo Milk did not make it to our vision.

So we passed that information along.

Nutrition. Chick-fil-A nuggets. Yeah, that's awesome.

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 at Temple. I really appreciate— I can see, I mean, I know it was the board. Can I make it clear it was the board?

The board.

I guess I feel like, I guess I feel like you'll mesh well because I see a lot of Joe in this too. And so I think you hired the right guy then for I think we did. Okay, I'll let you discuss that after this.

Thank you. This— you can hold us to this. This can inform you. This is, 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 like this.

All right, thank you. Next item is Dr. Jansen, Robust Schools.

Okay, uh, and Renee, it's, it's interesting you say that because I only applied for one district, um, and that's because of this. I, I retired. Retirement was kind of amazing. But I only, I only applied for one district because of who was elected. And this board genuinely lives these. I'll echo what Tyler said. Yeah, I've— 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. Right? It's why we're Trying to make sure we have great relationships with all 4 cities, but also with parents as well, that parents, you know, can trust what we're doing, that kind of thing. So I'll just point to the last value, actually even the last 3. Integrity, 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, we— after we did the 28 visits during the summer, we started to say we're not going to start our massive boundary study, right, 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? Right. 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 4 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 2 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 no matter what 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, 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. And when a school gets too small, comprehensive offerings become difficult. At the elementary school, it's hard to have 4 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 left or 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— well, and I forgot to mention that we actually split into 2 parts because there were really 2 distinct parts. We wanted to not Confused with the public. So in July already, the board has voted to study the configuration plan, which is the early 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. Um, so 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, 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, 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 just renamed.

Oh, but it was no longer—

if you think about it, there was a new building, it was a new name, it was a new student They were, they were affected just as much as Hillcrest. And so we're, we're saying we're going to name Sarah Park and Hillcrest. Um, one 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 and this school coming together. By looking at it holistically, we actually have a lot more options to make better decisions long term. So with that, I'm probably stealing a little bit of Jason's thunder. Anyway, so that's robust school criteria. That's what's driving what we do. You can obviously see the echoes from, from the vision and values in what we've done and how we've done it.

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

Yes, this, this document looked a lot like this document just this week even. Um, we're working on making this one more than just text, making it look more— okay. But this, you posted it yesterday on Facebook.

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? A robust school.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that frequently asked questions page might be a good thing to link or provide a QR code in the, in the Orem City Communications, those types of things, so we can get it out to more than just people who might be following.

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.

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

Joe, can I ask you a question about number 2? Yeah. I mean, we all want healthy environments, we all want collaborative environments, but I guess I'm not entirely sure how you're measuring You've indicated here that you would like to have 3 to 5 classes per grade. And I can understand reasons why being able to mix students as they go through classes might 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— That's been something you paid attention to. Might feel fractured or fragmented over time. And so I was wondering if you could Can you 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. That's one of those foundational pieces that can be related to this somewhat, but Really what we're talking about regarding 5 classes per grade is that when you get down to 1 or 2 classes per grade, it's much harder. The student experience actually suffers a little bit because sometimes there's a group of students you need to break up, and if you have nowhere to put, you know, and break them up, it's hard. It's 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 1, or maybe a team of 1.5. Another way that starts to look is sometimes if you don't get to that 3 to 5 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 2nd, 3rd grade 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 2 classes of 19 from a financial standpoint. Right? And so then you end up with— and we have enough students to justify at least 3 teachers. A lot of those things get in the way. But to your point, it's still every student needs to have those types of relationships with— and 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 size. So the— we're still targeting the same number of students per grade per classroom. So this is not about increasing class size. When we're talking about perhaps increasing this.

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 want a choice between teachers and students and principals of the elementary saying 300 is hard. We need 500, 600. And teachers who said, we want somebody 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. This is 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, it 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. Right.

Schools, good, you know, good 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'll— 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. 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 closure of Valley View, there was a time issue and there was a lawsuit against the district about it. And so every— they couldn't officially do things until I think it was June 1st or June 51st. I don't remember when it was, but it made it so that every— we knew 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 it, to me, it just, it cemented in my mind that 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 gonna change, that they can have that identity. Just because the school is closed doesn't 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 create something great.

Yeah, I— my kids were at Sarah Park when it was combined with Hillcrest 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, 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 go differently. And a lot of that was because, um, I think The district, bless their hearts, really tried to do things well and do it right. But they didn't get enough community input of what the community actually wanted. And they did a lot of— and it was just kind of thrown out on, this is how it's going to be and this is how it's going to be done. And you don't swap off. I think that can be done differently. And the community coming together and liking each other before they come together. Um, I just want to kind of explain for them. I lived here 35 years, so there are people who've lived here their whole life, but 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 ago, I thought was so wise to put the facilities next to the community acres of the schools. So we've had these, these community builders. And, um, 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, the Windsor, the Northridge Stake, we're meeting in Northridge Park, we're going to Northridge Elementary, I know exactly where that is because of those things that were set up years and years ago, that identity, that community identity. I kind of mourned the loss of Sierra, that we're doing our Heart of Orem at the Sierra Park. So I would have loved to have had that school continue to be called Sierra 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, 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, um, it is okay to keep tradition and to just become the new, the new, you know, That some of the people should become the new— the new— you keep the mascot of one, but keep the name. That's kind of my almost— what I find valuable here in Orem is that identity. So right here, Cherry Hill Park, I know where to go, and wow, I know that school's right there. So anyway, that's just from an Orem perspective, something I valued. So I 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 called it Sarah 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 not Hurricane. It's Hurricane.

And really the whole history there, right? That was a community gathering place. The center for— yeah. So, history that I heard, right? 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. It's aligned theater school patterns. Okay, I just didn't see that on here.

So Jason's gonna talk more about that.

Okay, that goes along with identity, right? I mean, I identify probably more with my elementary school than my junior high, just because I kind of wanna forget some of the—

Some of us.

But—

Are you an Orem Cub?

I am an Orem Cub. I can sing Still Married to You.

You're a Jaguar?

I am.

How can 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. as we look at, um, 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, they split. I was split from my elementary. I went to Orem Elementary, moved here 35, 36 years ago, uh, but we— yeah, half of our elementary went to Lakeridge, half to Orem Junior. And then half of my Orem Junior experience, or half of us went to Well, 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 3 rivers feed into that. And so it— I think that's the priority of the, the board to say, let's keep these communities together. There might be some identity, like identity changes for those middle schools, but As far as high school boundaries, it'll be interesting to see what the board decides, um, on how they're going to make those work. I'm so glad I'm not doing it.

One thing that has become apparent as we've really been studying this really since April, um, in the north you can see that there's consolidation when Sharon closed. Valley View. Valley View. And then there's been fairly significant consolidation in the south and east, right, with Sharon, Geneva, and Hillcrest. And so really what you'll see tonight, likely depending what the board does for sure, is really we're addressing that center part where you can actually look. There's a, there's a circle of, I think, 6 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, it's partly just an evolution of the city of Orem as well, right? And we can talk birth rates, we could talk affordability, we could talk charter schools. All of those affect that. But, um, it's— it'll be a fascinating Study moving forward.

Mayor, may I just throw out there, please see Orem 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, 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. Love for us to, because we, we are looking at some maps as we, 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, ah, 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, not just us, us, but multiple people that we could bring something to a community that will continue to serve and maybe address other needs that, that those areas have. So we're excited about that.

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

Why we have Brent? Always visionary.

Yes, the communications team says ORM is very cool.

ORM gives you more. You rearrange ORM. We do have a V.

All right, I'm just looking at the clock. We've got about 25 minutes.

I told him he had 5 minutes.

And so just— we're good. Just so you know that we will just— just— we're shooting to end at 2, 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, be steady.

Thank you.

And well, I told you you have 5 minutes.

Let's start the clock. So first, President Limmer and I are going to go check out the Hillcrest Park. We're going to play pickleball there tomorrow, right? Pickleball, it's great.

I can watch it. I'll help some.

Um, one thing I wanted to point out here with those optimal school sizes, um, important 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, it's the 3-5. So there's gonna be one less grade if that's the way it goes, but it's still looking at the optimal sizes there. Um, a little background on why we're looking at this. Some things we've shared before, but the elementary— 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 was the same as in 1980. Thank you. 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. Um, and so that's what we're, we're looking at. That's why there's been consolidations, closures already. Um, when we're looking at these numbers, even the K-6 numbers, to get to the 3 grade— 3 classes per grade, it's about 590 students. So by this last year, there were 7 schools of the 20 that were above that. mark. Um, in '27 there's, uh, 5, and in 2030 only 5. So 15 schools are below that mark of the having the 3 on average. So a lot of them have 2 or 1.5, like Dr. Jensen was talking about. Some other things to note, um, as 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 4 principals that have been consistent throughout. with staff, with 3 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, one option for the high schools was brought— is it more favorable to have to close a high school and have 3 high schools that are at robust size, or to bring the 9th grade up? You can probably imagine the reactions there. People love their high schools, their identity up there. So that, I think, is a big reason. As the 9-12 is being considered and is felt pretty favorable from the community, along with the transportation of students that are on activities trying to get from the junior high to the high school. Um, let's see what else. Uh, 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 is different configurations. We have a couple different secondary options, uh, and those we do want to try and get to as much possible pure feeders. So right now there's 4 high schools and 5 junior highs. If a junior high were to close, it would be 4 and 4, 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, it's a pretty Pretty difficult to get everything, but there's some that we've 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 2 junior highs, 2 different feeder systems, and staying together from there on out.

So, anything I Missed or any questions instead of like splitting the junior high, splitting the high school? Yeah.

The, the proposal 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 because— 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 4 high schools, so trying to keep it A little bit smaller, but even that with having 9 12 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 about 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, where Orem, Linden 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 5 of them, there would be 3 of them less than Less than— 3 of them less than 1,000, the next one at right around 1,000, and 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 will— 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, is how that can all work together.

Can I speak to that? It has been amazing to me because, you know, we are doing a Truth in Taxation. Tomorrow, right? Is that tomorrow? Um, it has— as I've had those conversations with people, it has been very interesting to me 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 bond 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 the— but 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 talk to are just anti-tax no matter what. But, um, yeah.

I just want to acknowledge that we're both dealing with the same pocketbook, you know. Um, 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.

Jason, do you ever feel like you're living a giant story problem? 5 people, one lives in a greenhouse, one has a purple house, and who owns the parakeet?

Jason loves it. I was talking to him.

I was working on a bunch of stuff this morning. I don't have a lot of time where I have 3 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, well, thank you. I just— I don't know who owns the parakeet, and I don't know who lives in the houses, but I'm glad that you, you all are going to be figuring that out. Thank you. Uh, all right, next item. John, you're up. Safe routes and bus routes.

I could just give you handouts. I would, but I'll show you some data here.

Take Pete's chair.

Um, a few things have changed just in the last few days of talking with David and a little bit with Joe.

Um, the last 2 years I've been working on establishing, um, what bus stops will be closing, and this is the El Paso School District website, really good about showing kind of the school boundaries. Um, we'll take Lake Ridge for an example. There used to be a, a layer that Talked about— we were both worried 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 years I have actually taken some screenshots and shown what those are, and it was a little more alarming literally up to a couple days ago where I thought, oh man, the school district's going to close all these routes. And I have all this data of how many— we had a table that's saying there's 70— not routes, I should call them bus stops— there's 70 stops. You're now going to have to walk. But 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 it's a little hard to run.

Delete that part.

Okay, David.

So this slide here, a lot— 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-'26 season. 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 Lake Ridge and University Park? Yes, so I added, um, these roads for State Street, University Parkway, I-15. There's actually 2 bus stops west of I-15 that are closing. I say were because I think that you as a district now have the option to— this 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, um, what we want to do is remind the school district we're here to help. Um, we've met with community— school community councils. Um, I have a meeting with Orem Junior High assistant principal I'm coming up. What happens is, I think I have UDOT. 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 9 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. Um, and so there's potentially a lot of stops and a lot of kids and families. And so, um, we can go through other schools, but I think you get the point. I've got all the other 4 or 5 schools. They're all junior highs, right? The elementary, um, that we're going to take any of the of the buses from elementary and high school. So, um, I really wanted to get the point across is that we're here to help and we're here to work together. I do have other versions of, of other schools, uh, kind of their repercussions here.

As John finds that, just to— we talked yesterday and we were concerned that maybe there were some stops going away. 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 because we don't have drivers. And that's creating some double runs and some differences in timing. But all the stops are in place in Orem. Vineyard, there's a couple that have been taken away. and PG won and Linden won, but Orem remains the same.

So that was comforting. And yeah, we, um, 2 years ago is when I started this process, and the direction I received was that the school district is going to close these. So it's all 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 7 miles. This little green line represents— this is the Safe Route to the current Safe Route to School plan here. You 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 this 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 age of students. When you talk about by 2030 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, um, school has a— what do they call them— a Safe Routes to School administrator that works with them. And then that's item 3, work with the cities to physically walk or drive or both.

I'll make David run it. I said David, not Dave. You're David. I'll run it. So we actually walk the paths.

You'll get the feeling what the kids do, and sometimes it's, it's evergreens growing way out on Northridge. There was these bushes that you literally couldn't walk down, whether it's sight distance or 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. We did a— I think it's Bonneville School. We did a HAWK signal, 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 You 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, 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've had— we usually have small, medium, and large projects, $20,000, $60,000, about $100,000. So 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, we have this unsafe—

And John, that will be a fairly tight timeline for us. On December 2nd, the board will decide 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 the future and start to look at routes.

And we're talking about December, so that'll be a very tight Well, in a perfect world, if it was a very large infrastructure, usually a HOX ticket, 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 taking a walk and saying, if I was a kid in this neighborhood, how would I get to the school?

Well, let's keep talking as we do this.

One thing, right down to Cascade, remember, John? So Cascade was designed for 2 drop-offs an hour, later gators, early birds. And when it was consolidated with Sharon and it was a one drop-off, there, there were traffic— there were safety issues. I saw, John, I, I went to the School Community Council, watched our traffic team handle those just expertly and quickly. But truly, to do that before school started would be ideal.

Signal there, you'll see pylons, you'll see red curb, you'll see crossing guards. Just 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.

Yes.

Well, and we, we— I was, I was really happy when I asked Dave about, uh, 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, I said, well, with the double routes, he's like, oh, ASD doesn't. in a bad shape. And I think that speaks to people wanna 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 gonna impact our budget and our bottom line.

What are eligible and not eligible as far as—

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

What Jen's talking about, what people asked where they wanted to be, Lion's Share of the bus drivers wanted to be a lot of these communities, but because of the student counts, so we got all the bus drivers, we're just short 30. If you got any buses, Lion's Share.

I'll just say, John and our transportation and traffic We are over the line. So we want to be creative. We want to look at things from all angles. We want to be as helpful as we can, even to other cities in the district if they don't have the same kind of personnel sophistication that we do. So see us as a resource. We get the solutions.

Thank you. that you perhaps wouldn't be able to just on your own.

We can adjust. I mean, we can't say by August 1st we got everything done.

You know, we can react to stuff and help stuff.

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

Yeah, through the police department.

I'd say 30, 24. Just noting just how important they are to our communities. I mean, we value them so much and appreciate training.

And thank you.

I didn't realize the city footed the bill on that. I thought the school district did. City is doing— what happens? Thank you very much.

I live in Orem, west of the freeway, but the school that's closest to me is Vineyard Elementary, which is in Vineyard. And, uh, I've seen the crossing guards, and the— one of the crossing guards, uh, 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? Is it you pay for the morning? They're coming from Orem to Vineyard. They're going from Vineyard to Orem, or how does that work?

We just— hey, give him a few library cards. Vineyard is building us a new signal at the Lakeside Park, so—

oh yes, I, I, Vineyard takes that 100%.

So 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— I mean, it's— there's 2 ways out without going all the way down to—

but that's another issue, another meeting.

You know, the Orem's Great, can't wait.

Well, that— the signal arms were on backorder. That's the delay. I just learned about that. Oh really? Thanks, John.

Lon, are you here for it, Chief? Yes. All right, you're up, Chief.

Lon's the guy who puts out the dumpster fires. I'm that guy. Yay!

6'5, I can see over the top. Is that video?

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 News Specialist Alex Cabrera live for us at the Orem Fire Department tonight. Alex, this is an opportunity for those students, 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.

You ready for this?

Even though it's an easy part of the job—

But you got it.

Layla Bonham still wanted to be perfect at it. Okay, go. Meaning putting on all 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. Cutting my life out for other people, saving them, comforting them even. It's just so amazing.

Autumn 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.

On my left shoulder, my right shoulder.

Even learning tasks seemingly as simple as getting a water line off the fire truck.

Love it all. It's really tough, and I'm— I love a good challenge, so I'm willing to work for it. And 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, um, 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.

Autumn would 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.

Now, 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 excited. All right, Alex, great story. Thank you.

Start with good company and a conversation worth waking 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 could see by the interviews of both Layla and Ben, they're very excited, and that's what we're after.

When was this? Was this last semester?

This video was this last winter. It was, I think, 2 semesters ago going last fall. So we've had, to that point, we've had the fall of '24 was our first class. We've run 4. We're about to start our 5th. We usually try and get between 8 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. And 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, 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 in 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 participate 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, Lehi, 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 outfit them with some basic uniform needs. 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, it's— we love community outreach and we love our students. And we— 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, it's—

they, they show up in the afternoon and they go into the— and later on that night, and they, 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. Internship with PT.

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. I do. Yes, it's one man, and they're all kind of sheepish. I don't want to do this. And then by April, they're ready to conquer the world. So yes, thank you. It's a great program. Yeah.

Yes. Sorry, how do you recruit?

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

I see what you did there with your description. Wildfire.

Okay.

All right, thank you. All right, last time on— next to last item on the agenda is our police chief, uh, Chief Robinson. We're gonna talk about about school resource officers. Welcome.

So tremendously proud of our program and the community, uh, relationship that we have with our principals and what we do with our school resource officers. We have 5 full-time, uh, school resource officers, a sergeant and 4 detectives that are permanently assigned to our 3 high schools and our 3 junior highs.

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

So they're, I would say, excellent examples of who you want in school, of being that blend of, uh, 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 in these. I feel comfortable with my own kid going there with the type of officers that we train and these schools. So we take that responsibility very seriously. They follow the national NASRO, National Association of School Resource Officers, model. First and foremost, they are law enforcement officers. Secondarily, they are educators. Many of them, all of them in the high school teach a class 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 is— this fight's going to happen behind, uh, the— what are they called now? Bleachers. Yes, I was thinking of the, um, pickleball, uh, And so back to Bren's initial, we are innovative. We, we do things good. We're always looking to do things better. And so our, our school resource officer, probably 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., Mrs. Wilson's math class is, 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-mandated thing that came from one of our officers and looking for ways to be better. I— it's just beginning of the new year. Your school year starts next, you know, a year from now. And so I would just say, let's get together, figure out what your expectations of school resource officers are, so we can meet those and can, uh, be prepared to meet those, uh, from personnel and a, a budgetary standpoint so we can make those things work. Any questions?

Your, your training, has that been on an Alpine District level or is it bigger than that? Your— or your SRO training?

Meaning what? So our— every officer goes to the NASRO class, uh, it starts in June, so everyone goes to that. Are you talking about the grid system search, or just their initial training?

Just, just training over in general.

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

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

Yes. So they're— they've got their own little network, they got their own little group chats, uh, 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.

Don't we have—

not a good description, but I just didn't know if you'd had the conversations about whether it— they continue training in on that level after the splits.

Uh, let's talk about what your expectations are. My intent would be to continue that, and if there's room that we can improve.

And 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 2 questions. The first, when they're so one-to-one to each of the secondary schools, do they also have an elementary they're over or go to? Yeah.

So if something, a request, knows there's assignments that those— so that the sergeant and the other detectives split their time amongst the 3 junior highs, and then the 11 or 12, uh, elementaries, they're all assigned to that. And so if there's a request that come in, uh, that officer, that SRO, would respond there unless they're unavailable, then somebody would, uh, backfill.

Then the other question is, during the school year, is their time that they're working, is it 100% at the school? Is it 90% and they're doing 40 hours.

They work 5/8. They're there from 7 till 3 and after, dealing with these parent problems or teacher questions or principal questions. They're 100— those 5 are 100% dedicated to—

And in the summer, have more help at the department then?

They come back. That's usually when they take their vacations, the teachers. Um, so, but 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? Personally, no. I'd love to. I'm just thinking of the fire department.

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

Oh, yeah.

You know, 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— what's the term?

Good. Very cool.

One of the, one of the things too, I think you can't, you can't measure is what doesn't happen because they're there. It's, 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, Mount View.

We, we don't have to imagine the worst-case scenario. We, we experienced the, the worst-case scenario. And so, um, yeah, the Model Agency Award is what they received in 2024.

Right.

Um, 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 when our next meeting's scheduled, but I, I imagine Aaron probably knows.

Aaron? Yeah.

Okay, right, here we go.

Eventually we're gonna host you.

Yes, in our new district office. I host you.

Well, 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 in there. Take care.

Good luck with tomorrow.

Great meeting. Thanks, everyone.

I don't think I don't have anything to address.