Joshua Heyer, Superintendent, Ogden Community School District, May 26, 2026

I'm taking time to visit with Joshua Hire, Superintendent from the Ogden School District. Thanks for coming in. You're into the final days. We're in the final days. Yeah, thanks for having me, Jim. But yeah, we got, well, today and tomorrow and we're going to be done with kids. Okay. Graduation, everything went out, went off pretty well. We had a great ceremony. The weather cooperated. It was a little bit rainy and we were a little bit nervous that week, but everything worked out. Had a great ceremony. Wonderful attendance. Just really proud. We ended up graduating 65 kids. Large graduating class for Ogden this year, but, you know, everything went well last Sunday. That's what we kind of look at. So that class, 65, what are we looking coming in? We've been seeing around 50 to 52 kids or so. So, you know, and we've anticipated this, a slight decline in enrollment and really that slight decline is naturally whenever you graduate a larger class, you want to backfill with hopefully the same size. Yes. And we don't anticipate that. We anticipate probably in that 50 range. So, as I've been telling people, we're kind of right sizing. We have a couple of large classes that come through and then really our system will level out. Wouldn't it be great if life came with remote control? You know, you could hit pause when you needed to or hit point at that time. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome. But pre-diabetes does with early diagnosis and a few healthy changes. You can stop pre-diabetes before it leads to type two diabetes. To learn your risk, take the one minute test today at DoiHavePrediabetes.org. Brought to you by the ad council and it's pre-diabetes awareness part. Yeah, absolutely. Whether it's open enrollment, whether a new family comes in and kind of as you're insinuating, they might be a third or fourth grader. So, we may not need as many kindergarteners because that would offset that number. But yeah, nonetheless, for our listeners, we probably are going to be down, you know, five to 15 when we do official count in October next year. That's a long ways away. A lot can happen in the meantime. Which did want to hit out because we haven't really touched on this. But obviously, following very closely what the city's doing, some of their housing, which obviously one of the things is to attract more residents. And again, with some of the economic development things that are going on, it is a good opportunity to have new families. It is a critical aspect. Yeah, you know, and with Daisy coming in on, you know, and we're hoping to be able to capture some of those. But with some of those new employments and some people moving into the area, we hope that Ogden is an option for them. And for them to be an option, we need affordable housing. We need residential housing. And I think people, well, I know people tend to really enjoy Ogden. So, the houses typically aren't flipping as you would. They kind of stay there, don't they? They sure do. So, yeah, Ogden Legacy, you've been mentioning that, you know, they have a goal of hitting a certain amount of residential houses over, I think, a 10 or 12 year span. They're well on their way. They're doing great. But boy, we sure would like to have a couple more as well. Because when they're out doing this, and it is every community, it's the same way. It's not just coming to our city doing this. We have our quality of life. We have our parks. We have our recreation. We have our schools. We have, you know, we have a grocery store down town. We have all those. And I think that the school is a critical aspect of that. I always consider it the left hand and the right hand. They have to complement each other. So, we're trying to do things as far as, you know, academic achievement provide excellence at opportunities. But then also, if somebody does want to come to Ogden, we need to make sure that they have the ability to actually reside in our district, hopefully. All right. Well, as we wrap up this year, and once again, pretty much done for all the younger ages here this week, right? Yeah. So, Wednesday, tomorrow, will be our last day with instruction. We ended up having a little bit of no snow makeup. So, our board, back in, I believe, March, they recommended and accepted my recommendation that they were not going to make up any days. So, tomorrow will be our last day. It is a Wednesday, and we always get out at 2 or 2.05, depending on what building you are, but it'll be a regular Wednesday dismissal tomorrow. And then our teachers will come back for Thursday and Friday for some professional development, check out processes, clean in their classrooms, just the kind of those standard end of the year routines that we need to do. And then teachers will be done. Okay. What about a staff retention? We touched on this a little bit earlier, but you had pretty good numbers, or people staying, and did you have any that you needed to fill? How are we looking there? We're in great shape overall. We did have early retirement that we offered earlier this year. We had four people accept that. One was an associate classified position, and then we had three that were certified. We've been able to fill those positions, and then we did have two teachers for a variety of reasons. Typically, it's because they want to get closer to home that did leave our school. So, we appreciate all that they did for the years that they were serving in Ogden, but we were able to fill those positions, which is great. We like that. Yes. And they were actually in hard need areas. One of them was an ag position, and the other one was an elementary art, but we were able to jump on and try and grab some candidates early in March, April timeframe, and we've been able to fill those. So, as of now, we're looking good. We are fully staffed for next year, which is a great thing. All right. We do that. Those are just some of the things that happen, too. Let's talk about a few other things that from your board meeting, obviously, a little update on what's going on with the construction facilities. And we knew you had talked about the elementary, getting ready to move forward with that fairly quickly. Where are we at with that? Yeah. So, we got two aspects going on, the parking lot. We'll talk about that in a minute. That's highly visible. Yes. Yes. So, everybody's able to see that progress, but what you're referring to is our elementary, and we took out a pebble note, and with those dollars, we wanted to try and address the things that were identified in our facility assessment, and there were some things as far as maximizing the space in our elementary. During our May meeting, our board listened to FRK, they are architect, and ultimately, they approve the design development. What that allows our architect now to do is start to do those construction documents so that once those are done, they can take those to the board. The board will approve those. We'll set also a public hearing, and if all of those things happen in June, July, we'll actually send those out for bid, accept the bid late July, and they're hoping to actually get that contractor in here and do demolition before school starts, which is great. It's a tight timeframe, but we have mapped it out, and we really think that everything is going to work. By doing a lot of that dirty work before students are back in, they will allow then the general contractor, whoever is the winner of the bid, to be able to come in during the school year and do that remodel underneath the gymnasium during the school year. So, you've already planned on how we're going to avoid being there and keep that strictly a construction zone. Absolutely. We're going to have to lock down a couple of things, but ultimately, with the location on where it is underneath the gymnasium, I think that we're going to be pretty good that we're able to do the construction and continue with instruction for our students. That would be phase one, Jim, and really what that does is it allows us to move some things, computer science, our art room, our media center. That would move down into their new space, probably about April, 11 months from now, and then when school is done next year, they would actually do the remodel of those vacated spaces. So then August of 2027, when students and staff come back, we would be completely done with that project. Get it all taken care of. A lot of work, and again, timing will be everything. Timing is critical, but boy, we're really excited about it. We think that ultimately, this investment is going to open up a lot of different programming, a lot of different things for our elementary. Boy, we can't wait to see the end product here. It's the short 14 months from now, and we're going to be doing a ribbon cutting on the thing. It is. I know you went around, looked at a couple of different places, you came over and took a look at the ledges elementary and interesting things. It's great to be able to say, hey, here are the possibilities. We have an idea on what the architects are saying, but to be able to actually see something on a piece of paper that's two dimensional and then actually see it in three dimensional and walk through it, you're able to kind of get a better understanding on what that space will look like. And ledges is a gym. Honestly, I think the community of Ogden, or excuse me, Boone should be very proud of what ledges is. And it gave us a greater opportunity to be able to imagine what could be the possibilities for our community as well. So keep working on it. That's going to be the elementary project, the construction on the parking lot. I know we've already got started on that. So it's going to be busy over there. It is going to be a busy summer, but you know, as of right now, we're in great shape. They really broke it up into a phase one, phase two. We started early and a number of our community members were a little bit wondering why were we doing that. And the goal is, is let's get the project done before football season starts as well as school starts. And by starting early, what they've been able to do is complete phase one of the project, which will allow us to have traffic flow onto our campus and be able to leave while they shut down the remaining portion, which is phase two. And they're planning on doing that. Well, Thursday, so May 28, they're going to be shutting down a good portion of it. But because we were able to complete phase one already, we're able to have traffic flow and some parking on our campus over the summer. Helps read. It does help read. Yep, it's going to be tight. But boy, we've really tried to communicate to our community a lot about as far as where to appropriately park in those things. And I think we're going to be okay. Tell you those nights, you got both softball and baseball there. That gets a little, a little hectic. It will be. But you know what, they're working it through. So and that's, that's the big thing. That was the whole thing about, you know, like we said, we have a good contractor. We understand, you know, and here's what we're going to try to do, keep things moving, but try to get it done here before we get back to school. Before we get back to school and before we get a really large crowd. So yeah, a little bit of an inconvenience. I think everybody will accept and understand that, but knowing the long-term benefit of what we're going to be able to have by doing this project. Well, I didn't want to go back to a little bit of what happened with the legislature as they wrapped up. And once again, they're, they did their property tax reform. The governor has signed it. So we know what's happening there. Again, well, a lot of variables will have to wait and see how things come together. Schools, a little different setup. Again, a lot of people keep talking about cities and the county and stuff like that. Schools also have some restrictions and they've made some adjustments on how they're doing things. They're going to reduce some of your property taxes, but they're taking some of your save money to do that. And I know when voters did approve your revenue plan, basically, you were, it said, save money, we're going to use for these projects. And you did some long-range planning for that. It's going to, it's going to have an impact. It will have an impact on us. And really what we're referring to is, is the one-cent sales tax. Yeah. And that goes save. But they have a portion that they pull off of that before they distribute that out to schools. And schools receive it on a per-pupil basis, a certain amount and try and create equity across all districts. And a portion of that was being pulled off, it's a property tax replacement. And it's really helped to reduce that. And I believe it was around seven to eight percent, which is the percentage that was being pulled off. Through that property tax reform, they accelerated that amount that is getting pulled off, ultimately getting up to a 25% of that is going to be pulled for property tax reduction. That's a chunk. Which, you know, it's going to benefit and we're going to have a little more tax. But the consequences is that schools are going to receive less money in their save. And we've been working with Piper Sandler and ultimately, I think over the next 10 years, it's going to be around $700 to $800,000 less that Ogden would be receiving and save. So when we're making decisions, we're not just looking at FY 27, FY 28, we're really looking at what decisions are we making now and how might that impact us in FY 35, 36, etc. And naturally, this is going to impact us. It's going to impact all school districts because so many of them use the money that same way that Ogden did. I mean, there are certain things you could spend that money for. New buses. New buses is a prime example. And actually, I've been working with our SBO and how is this going to work knowing that we're going to have less revenue coming from our save? And that's one very aspect is that we have created a bus replacement schedule because we want to make sure that our fleet is up to date. We want to make sure that it's safe for kids. And we typically are every other year replacing one of our five buses so that a bus is about 10 to 13 years old before we're replacing it. We might have to go to a schedule for a while that we're replacing buses once every three to four years. So are we going to be okay? Yes. But there is also a ripple effect and implication when we aren't able to receive the dollars that we had anticipated receiving. Yeah. And buses are, as I recall, seeing the one of the last bids was about around 150, 170,000. They are. Yeah. That's this year. Yeah. And every year they typically go on this year, you know. So yeah, I mean, when you're talking $150,000 price tag, you know, and we're getting reduced, our overall save is going to be reduced, you know, $800,000 over the next 10 years. That definitely has impacts and we're not able to maybe purchase a bus as quickly as we had anticipated. People will see less on the property side, but you guys lowered your rate and everything this year anyway. Our rate did go down slightly. You know, our biggest goal is to stay as constant as we can, if not possibly lower that. And I believe ultimately we went down to a $1340, which was a little bit per thousand less. Now, will they see it because maybe their assess value maybe had gone up, but that isn't, you know, the school district isn't the one that's doing the assessments. That's already done. Somebody else did care of that. So let's talk a little bit about some of the other things going on. One of the things where you do save yourself some money is, and you're going to be doing a little sharing with United School District. I saw on their agenda too that, what, food service, right? Well, yeah, actually, what we have in the past on food service with United Gym and they've actually hired a food and nutrition director that's going to be able to oversee. So what you were able to see in our board minutes was as the discontinuation of that agreement, but in return, South Hamilton actually had a need. So we were able to discontinue the United partnership and join one with South Hamilton. It's been great. One of our food and nutrition director, she has a wealth of knowledge and we've been able to educate and really I think somebody that's at United is ready to be on their own and independently. So yeah, that's really what ultimately that was. She trained them enough. She trained them enough and kind of letting them fly and then ultimately, there was a need up in South Hamilton. So we went ahead and moved and agreed to a partnership that way. And we have the same working superintendent.

Kind of ironic how that happened with, yep. So they've been helping, yes, for those that aren't aware, yes, South Hamilton. They share the superintendent with United. So that's, so we've had the same people working on it too. A couple other projects I saw you about, you have a batting cage project that's going on, other things that are happening over the summer. What things are we looking at outside of our construction project? Yeah, we're going to clearly be busy with a number of those projects that we previously had mentioned. And you know, there's just a lot of standard deep cleaning that takes place over the summer. We're going to have a small little roofing project. Really, for the most part, our roast are going to be up to date after we get done with this little project. Just managing all the other things that we've been discussing. You did previously mention that batting cage project. We have a batting cage that's probably been on our campus for about 25 years. And at the time that they built those, they used chainlink fence. Sure. It was the best and it was the recommendation. But when you're hitting baseballs and softballs off of chainlink fence, they typically will ricochet off. And also, they start to fall apart. Tear them up pretty good, yes. So ultimately, what this is, is we're going to get a new batting cage to really kind of help our programs. And it's going to be a safer facility for our students. Get the mesh. Yep. And that's exactly what it is. It's going to be some mesh, less poles. Really, as well as a lower surface, that's going to be kind of a turf material. So if it were to rain, we don't get washed out and rained out for those batting cages. There we go. Good. We do have activities going on. Let's see. Tracks, we wrapped up snake track. We've got baseball, softball going on. So some pretty good competition going on. There's a lot going on right now. Yeah, we wrapped up our spring sports between golf. Track had six either individuals and or relays make it down to the state meets. So we're proud of them. We had a couple of students that were in the soccer program shared with Boone. But all of those are wrapped up and we are honestly in that transition to summer sports and softball and baseball is going on already. We've got a lot of things happening. I did want to ask you, and it kind of just escaped my mind there, but I know with the graduation and everything that went on, even before that, you had some recognition. Do we have scholarship day, wards day, things like that? Yeah. And did all of that go off? It went extremely well. And what we have is on the Wednesday before graduation, we have a senior recognition ceremony. And the individuals are able to come in and see how much scholarship money they had. And I think the total, don't quote me on this, but it was $150,000 that I think we handed out to our students. And it just goes to show how our community shows up for our kids. Some of our kids walked away with 15 to $20,000, which is going to pay for at least their first year of college. So it's a great opportunity for our community to give back to our students and give them a good jumpstart on their post-secondary career. With 60, what, 65 graduates? 65 graduates this year. That's pretty good. Pretty good, too. Coming up next, what regular board meeting activity as you get into the month of June now, the summer months? And I'm thinking most of your things have been taken care of at least to wrap up this fiscal year. So yeah, we'll be June 8th. We'll be our next regular meeting. We'll have a couple of things to kind of start to look at either in June or July as far as approval of handbooks and some of those standard operating procedures. And with the elementary project, we're probably about 80% to the finish line, but we're not there. So this summer is going to be busy with some decisions that the board is going to have to make and our approvals over the summer months of June and July to make sure that we're ready to go, hopefully with demolition there in August. Alrighty. I appreciate you taking time coming over this year and getting us all updated on what's been happening over in the Ogden School District and look forward to continuing through the summer and next year as well. Well, thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.