Joshua Heyer, Superintendent, Ogden Community School District, April 28, 2026

On our program today with Josh Hyer, Superintendent from the Ogden School District. Good to have you back. Good morning, Jim. Here we are. Made it past the fun time of prom. You got through that. You got through Drake Relays. Now what do we do? Now it's just headed towards the end of school. Yeah, there's definitely some finales here. You know, we're wrapping up a lot of things in April and it's hard to imagine that, you know, we're going to hit May into this week here and but yeah, honestly, we got through a lot of critical finals there with prom, senior trip, Drake Relays are totally forgot about the senior trip. Yeah, which is kind of a critical. That was our 55th year. Everything went great. But yeah, we're actually in the middle of ISAS testing, which is our state assessment testing. Our elementary is already wrapped up. They're doing a little bit more of kids that maybe were absent just those makeups. And then our middle school high school is really in them in the weeds of it right now. So but yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine. I think we got 20 days of school left. Yeah, there you go. Well, and we know you didn't add any because that was one of the things we talked a little bit about last time as board was going to meet and figure out. Okay, well, we had some snow days. Everything kind of fits in the number of hours you have to for for students. So you've got enough. Yeah, at our April meeting, I made a recommendation and it was two recommendations. One, we were really looking at for students, you know, should they need to make up additional days. And then also we looked at our staff with students. The state of Iowa has 1080 hours that you need to and early on this season, we had a lot of days where I was nervous. But it ended up being actually a more mild winter for us and or when we had those storms, it seemed like they were maybe on the weekends. Our students exceeded those minimum hours. So our board said, you know what, no more student makeup days. But then ultimately, our staff missed two days. And they are on days rather than hours. Our teachers and staff do phenomenal and they work beyond the contract. We know that and we're in the midst of doing a lot of curriculum work right now. So my recommendation to the board was forgo one of the days that we missed without impacting pay, while also allowing the opportunity for them to come back and just work on some curriculum design instruction. And ultimately, the board did approve that recommendation. Yeah, they got enough to do working on curriculum, but it's not easy. Again, having watched it a few times over the years, there are some you got to put some effort into it too. One of the things everything will pretty much be done what 27th of May? So 27th of May will be our students last day. That is a Wednesday. We will follow the Wednesday early out just that we typically would do. And our teachers will come back on Thursday and Friday. But we will wrap up before June, which I've seen a couple other calendars and other school systems and that what have you and they are actually coming back that final the following week. Good thing that we do not have to do that. Okay, well, I know Boone Wells. Okay, they're one of them. But then again, you did have to take a look at that calendar for next year. Again, with the way some of these holidays fall and things like that, does that create some issues about getting first semester done by holiday break? Or do you have does that overlap a little what's going to happen for you next year? A number of schools look at that differently. And I don't know if there's a right or a wrong answer. But since I've been at Ogden, they actually have disproportional semesters. Okay. And they think that there's a real value of ending that first semester before going into winter break. And that's something that we're going to continue to do. And ultimately, then they come back with a fresh start right after winter break with second semester school. Well, obviously, one of the big things that came up is we did get done with the budget. I got that certified budget adopted. Nobody came to the meeting. Well, we did. Did you had a few people that showed up when you did the maximum levy hearing? Yeah, at our March meeting, we had a special meeting and somebody we had, I think, two individuals from our community come in. They just really wanted to know a little bit more about that piece of paper they got in the mail. And then ultimately, how do we come up and derive with that? But fast forward, then, at our April meeting, we did have a public hearing for the amendment of our FY25 budget. And the board approved that. And then we did post a $13.45 as our max rate. But once we actually start to put things in the system and really tease that down, our board did approve at our April meeting of $13.40. One of those, one of the few, by the way, that actually did the maximum levy rate in the bottom line was you were able to take it down, even lower. Correct. And that's usually what we have to do is post what we think it might, the maximum it would be. And then we can always tease that down a little bit, if needed. And that's exactly what we did for this year. So I know you've also, as long as we're talking about that budgeting in Texas, one of the issues coming up, of course, is watching what the legislature is doing on property taxes. So it sort of looks like they're moving education out of it, out of the loop, sort of, so to speak, and making some additional dollars available there. But we know that most education funding, the supplemental aid, and that comes from income tax. So again, watching the balancing act here. Yep, absolutely. And I've been monitoring that quite a bit. And looking at that property tax reform, and you know, they're beyond day 100, and they're really trying to figure that out. And I think that there's some consensus that they're coming together, I guess, the House and the Senate. One of the things that I've been noticing is that they are, by doing property tax reform, that generates less revenue. So the state is trying to figure out how are they going to come up with that revenue that they are maybe deficit. And a lot of people aren't aware, but there's that save, which is the one cent sales tax. And they pull off 12.5% right now. And school systems get the remaining portion. And we've built our budgets and made decisions based off of having that with the proposal right now is they actually have that going from 12 and a half to 25%, which is ultimately going to be less money that the school would have in our save fund. And our save fund would be similar to our PEPL. It allows us to do those maintenance and what have you. And we actually have like PEPL notes out to actually do some improvement and save note as well. So we're just really cautious and concerned that if this were to go through, will we be able to generate enough money to even pay for the debt that we have with that save dollars? Yeah. And a lot of people need to remember again, a lot of the districts use that you don't use it. It's not for salaries, things like it's got to be for brick and mortar, maybe buses, things like that. That's correct. Yep. You got and they're not inexpensive. Yeah. So that's that's one of the challenges. We've got a lot of moving parts in this year. There is a lot of moving parts. So no, we're we're constantly looking at that. And we have a couple advocacy groups that keep us updated on kind of that property tax reform. And we're just keeping an eye on what ultimately is going to be impacted with that. And another thing, Jim, that they actually are mentioning is is capping your UAB authorized unspent balance. And I think that would be at a 35%. We've ran some analysis and things. And we think we're okay with that measure right now. Yeah, that's keeps again, maximizing that. I mean, there's a minimum you don't want to go below really, that's one of the big things. So correct. Yep. I didn't want to say, as long as we were talking about your staff, I think what your negotiations went fairly smoothly. And very quickly, I think just about everybody's around here went pretty quick. So we were actually signed a two year agreement. So last year, we actually signed that agreement. But no, we were able to go through and get all of our contracts out and or our assignments for our classified staff and our board approved those salary increases for all of our teachers and staff members at our April meeting. Okay, do you have some staff still positions you're going to be looking for going out recruiting? Where are you at there? Yeah, fingers crossed. But I would say right now for our full time employees, we are fully staffed right now. You know, I think we may have a couple of associate positions. We're not quite sure on exactly what that looks like. We really have to look at the students IEP and identify do we have enough staffing to meet the needs of our students. And if we do, we won't need to fill any if we're short. One thing that we went to is actually having an open like interview. And we usually do that in June timeframe. So more information will come if we are going to be having those interviews for associate positions. We found that to be very successful last year by having just that open job interview, so to speak. I think that certified positions that having the retention and again, most superintendents, we love it when we can have that retention. Of course, some had to eliminate some positions. Again, we know that that's just one of the many challenges that some of the districts had. Yeah, for most part, we actually had really good retention rate this year, we'd had to have three people that accepted early retirement. So we backfilled them in February, March timeframe. So it's a matter of just shifting around who's doing what? Yeah, yep, absolutely. And then we did have a few people that were just professional or personal reasons, excuse me. They elected to maybe go back closer to home. So we had to fill a few of those positions. But I'm really excited to say that we're fully staffed for teachers right now. Well, we do have a lot of work going on. So are we underway with the parking lot project? I know that what they were hoping to be started here by mid to the end of April? Yeah, it was amazing. We gave them the green light and said anytime after April 20th, go ahead and start. And I pulled into school on April 20th and they were fully mobilized and ready to go. But yeah, they're making really good progress. They've moved a lot of dirt and they're actually getting that sub base kind of set. And I think honestly, they're going to be pretty darn close to being able to start pouring some concrete. Mother Nature, please. Yes, Mother Nature needs to cooperate. Last week, it didn't. We got a good amount of rain last Thursday, Friday, and it rained them out for a little bit. But they're going to be ready to go here. And they got it in multiple different phases. So I mean, even though I'm saying they're pouring concrete, that's phase one of probably like six phases. But no, they're on schedule or maybe even ahead of schedule. So fingers crossed that we have a good spring and also summer that that is able to be done by August 1st. And I know you guys have worked with them on the just the staging different things. What's going to be happening when we've got baseball, we got softball, you're going to still have a lot of traffic in and out. It's a matter of how are we going to what are the logistics there? Yeah, and we've been working on really with Bishop Engineering. They're the ones that are overseeing the project. But then our athletic director, Reed Smith, prepared some maps on kind of what does traffic flow look like during phase one and two? What might it look like? You know, if you're coming on June 15th, where can you park appropriately? So we're trying to do a good job of communicating that information. And we've sent that information out through our infinite campus. And we're sending it out to all of our guests that will be coming to our campus or the summer. Downside, it's a little inconvenient this year. It will be convenient for the next three months. But after that, it's going to be a lot better than it has been. And we're definitely, I know there's a lot of people looking forward to that too. Work going on at the elementary. I know that the board did give them permission to go ahead and start doing some design and stuff like that. They're making just making progress. They're making really good progress, Jim. Yep, absolutely. So at our May... You're kind of hoping we'll get started here before probably by the end of the summer, early fall? So if all things go well, they're going to come at our May 8th meeting. And the board's going to have to make some critical approvals at that time. But then we might have to have one or two special meetings in June or July with the public hearing, getting things approved, getting bids sent out, those final construction documents, the approval of the winning bid. But we are fingers crossed going to get started on this thing before school starts, just simply for the demolition aspect. We want to get a lot of that loud, dirty work done before we get kids back in the building. So if things go as we are hoping over the next three months, we're going to have demolition probably done in early to mid-August. That'd be good. Yeah. Well, and I mean, those are some of the... Those are the things that logistically people don't tend to think about. But yes, do it when they're not there, have it sealed off so they can go ahead and do their work and construction work, and the kids can just keep going to school. Absolutely. At the end of the day, we need to do the work. They need time to do it, but we also don't want to be impacting instruction, if all possible. There's going to be some natural, but we're going to try and reduce that as much as we possibly can. Okay. As we start to wind down this school year, what other things are coming up off the top of your head? Yeah. Well, honestly, we're just wrapping up a lot of the sports season. We are in the midst of ISAS testing, like I said. We will have graduation on May 17th. We will also be having our senior awards night, and that would be on May 13th. So that's something that's really critical. Our elementary is going to be actually doing a family engagement night and welcoming just our families in, and they're going to have a number of activities. And I believe that's on May 5th. So that's something to kind of look forward to. But overall, we're just trying to wrap up the school year and kind of put a final bow on it. If we've gotten a lot, we've already started doing the sign up for next year, getting kindergartners lined up, things like that. They've already done a lot of that already. Already. So I get a lot of that already in place. Yeah. I actually had a meeting with our HR director, and she's kind of in charge of rolling over the calendar and those types of things. And a lot of people are thinking, yeah, we're putting finale on this school year, but in the backside, we're already kind of working on what does 26-27 look like? And we're doing a lot of that work already right now. And if they want to find out more, then come to your, what, Friday morning meeting next Friday? Yeah, dawn discussion. So on actually this Friday here, I'll have that available, and that's at the Linder Good Center. So come out, find out what's going on, ask the questions. It's a great opportunity for us just to be able to connect, me to get to learn a little bit about you as well as if you have any questions about what's going on in the school, be glad to be able to answer those for you. As you're looking at the stuff over the summer, as far as the current facilities, we've got the construction projects going on, but there are some other things that they'll be looking at, the board will have to make decisions on, guessing, painting, carpet, whatever. Yeah, honestly, it would just be our standard deep cleaning. You know, the hundreds of thousands of square feet that we have between two buildings, it's a lot of work for our custodians. So really, I think that our main focus this year is the construction projects that we have a hand, as well as just really making sure that we get a deep clean and get the school ready to go for the next school year. And we got baseball and softball coming. We do. Yes. So just keeps everything going. It seems like we always got something going on with our kids. I do appreciate you taking time to come and visit with us. Joshua Hyer, a guest on our program today. Thanks so much. Thank you.