Latest / The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District / Episode #39-Dr. Alan Spicciati, Superintendent

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Episode #39-Dr. Alan Spicciati, Superintendent · The Recess-An Inside Look at the Auburn School District

• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to the Recess Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your guest host today, the proud Executive Director of Communications for the Auburn School District, Vicki Alonzo.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And today we have a very special guest, and that is the regular host of the Recess Podcast, Superintendent Dr.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Spacotti.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Dr.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We thought this would be a fun way for Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti to be able to talk to you about all the great things going on in Auburn, hear a little bit about his path to becoming superintendent, and for him to give you some really valuable information about what the community will be voting on in November.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, um, Dr.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti, we're going to start with the question you always start with.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who was your favorite teacher and why?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had so many great teachers.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Pennsylvania, uh, went all the way through public schools, and uh too many to name, but I uh what I like to do is maybe name one per level because um had a really fun elementary teacher, Mrs.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Barton, uh, in fifth grade.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember she would let us be creative in class, and uh two of my friends and I started a newscast.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So every Friday we produced a newscast for the class.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the funny part, on the east, you know, we have our uh TV stations start with a K on the West Coast, on the East Coast, they start with a W.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it was Eric and Alan and Keith, and we were weak news, W-E-A-K.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we try to have fun with it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um got a little more serious in in middle school.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: My eighth-grade English teacher was Dr.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Del Park.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm sure he was the first teacher who had a doctorate that I had had.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: He had all kinds of credentials.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he'd coach basketball at Columbia University, and he was the most rigorous teacher I ever had through my doctorate.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then really my favorite teacher, but uh, you know, probably had the advantage of being in the area I loved in school and uh right at the end of my high school career, and I had him for four years, was my band director, Lee Neyer, uh, just an amazing teacher.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: He taught through story, he used humor, he was engaging, um, and you know, he could be demanding but supportive.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he opened my world to so many different possibilities.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I really kind of went to college wanting to be him, uh, be a music teacher and a band director myself.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds like that he made a really big impact on you, and you wanted to be a band teacher and you ended up as a superintendent.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, how did you what was your path from a band teacher wannabe to superintendent?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's funny because uh people ask me about that, and um I like to tell them um one of my favorite quotes is Ronald Reagan said that people would ask him, How could an actor be president?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he would say, How could you be president without being an actor?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I feel that way a little bit that you know my my musical background and and performance career has really prepared me well, right?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm uh I'm comfortable in front of large groups, I'm you know, work with all parts of the school.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And as a music teacher, as a generalist, as a a person who um would come in and and see students who were in everybody else's class, uh it gave me a really good perspective.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was um I taught one year in New York before um my wife and I moved out here, but I started as an itinerant elementary band director in the Highline School District, teaching in five schools over the course of the week.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked for five different principals, and that was incredible preparation, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Each leader brings something different to the table.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great experience.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you would ask me in in year one of teaching, would you ever want to be a principal?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, no way.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I really loved what I was doing.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: But over time I came to see uh that I enjoyed some of the challenges of leadership and just thinking about like, okay, I I had some really big numbers in the band and kids who couldn't afford it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we get instruments?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do you work the resources side of it?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how do I work with teachers on scheduling?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and eventually it's like I think I uh maybe have some skills there and I enjoy the challenge and start to get into administration.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: So long story short, was an assistant principal, principal, and uh on the the cabinet leadership in in the Highline Central Office uh before coming to Auburn in 2015.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great journey.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know you always introduce yourself as the proud superintendent of the Auburn School District, which is why I did that on the intro.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so for those uh who people who are not uh aware of the day-to-day things that go on in our district, what are some of the things you'd like to highlight for our community to let them know about that's going on in our district right now?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you started with that.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think oftentimes, you know, all of the negatives in all parts of society are what get highlighted in the news and on social media.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I love this question.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And thinking back to, you know, picking up my story, starting here in 2015, um, Auburn's always been a great school district.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we've seen that as we've had families continue to move to Auburn, our enrollment go up and up and up uh over the last 15 years.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: When I first started, the first thing I did was ask, what are you proud of?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I got to hear what was working, and we're like, okay, we're not gonna change those things, but what else is there?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: What are opportunities to improve?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and some things I'm really proud of over the last 10 years.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm just gonna try to do this like sequentially through the grade levels uh to keep myself straight here and uh make it a little bit easier on the listener.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we start with pre-K, we call it pre-K.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So our early childhood programs, uh, we covered that in a recent podcast if you want to hear more.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but 10 years ago we had about 400 slots, and now we have almost a thousand slots.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there are different programs that are responsive to three-year-olds and four-year-olds.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we now have pre-K in every elementary school.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to leave your neighborhood to do pre-K.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we know kids are better off, they get a better start.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Our kindergarten teachers can tell you right away uh how those skills matter in getting a good start in school.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're really proud of that.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great thing that's happening.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm proud of the work we've done in literacy in the most recent years.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: We have done a yeoman's job of uh working on the science of literacy.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um these are just like the things that work in kids' reading.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've had some real challenges, you know, and all of this is kind of you know in the spirit of improvement, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: We we know we can be better, we want to be better, uh, but we've had some challenges in the last five years.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Kids missed a lot of foundational, you know, whatever phase they were in in 2020 and 2021 during COVID.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're uh about a third of our students, English is not their first language.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so we have to be better at what we do to help them access learning.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm just so proud of our elementary schools and what they've done learning how to to teach reading um in in really specific ways that are getting success.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: We just started a dual language immersion program at Pioneer this fall, so it's a little too early to you know to report on results, but we did our homework because we know that there's a great track record around the country of students who uh get their academic instruction in two languages, typically, and in our case in Spanish and English, uh end up doing really well in both languages and especially on academics.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we're excited about that.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Moving to middle school, several years ago we were looking at how we can take our middle schools to the next level, and our principals had a lot of energy around the Avid program, advancement via individual determination.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: That program has a class for uh students who probably could access higher uh rigor classes, but maybe they've just kind of been sliding by.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: But then it has a whole school-wide program uh where kids work on their academic skills that are, you know, tr they apply to anything.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: You could take them with you, note-taking and uh how you write and communicate and so forth.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing really great results from Avid.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like I said, our middle schools have adopted it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Some of our schools are, you know, model programs that other schools visit now, and that program continues into the high school, and we're seeing results from Avid and from other work we're doing in our advanced placement courses.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the stats really blow me away.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: We have probably roughly 50% more kids taking AP courses than we did 10 years ago.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you think of, you know, all of the the change in our community, uh, we I mean we have more kids in Running Start too, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but our kids who are in our high schools are taking AP.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um kid you know, profiles of students who rarely took AP are now commonly seen in AP classrooms.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just that they're participating, um, and you you don't have to take my word for it on this.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have a national test that students take.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh our percentage of students earning college credit continues to rise.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a real tribute to our teachers um and the work that they've done uh to deliver great instruction and find ways rather than screening kids out of AP and finding reasons that maybe you're not ready, they find reasons that you might succeed.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and sorry, I know.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love bragging about the schools.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Last thing we have a new construction trades pre-apprenticeship program.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: We really value career and technical routes, um, routes into the trades.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: This one we have an articulation with a trades union.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: You could go into a union apprentice job, or you could go to a technical college, and we're developing a uh welding and aerospace pre-apprenticeship program too.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I could go on and on.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super proud of our work in the arts and everything else, but I'll just leave it there.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've we do.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of we have a lot of really great things for kids in the Auburn School District, and uh it's it's really great to shine a light for our community to hear some of those things.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um speaking of the community, in November, our community will be voting on two propositions that are on the ballot, um, a bond and a levy.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Before we start talking about the contents of the bond and levy, can you just explain to our listeners what the difference between a bond and a levy is?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think about when I was a teacher in a staff meeting and I didn't know anything about bonds and levies, and somebody said uh a mnemonic bonds are for building, levies are for learning.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that has stuck with me and uh came to Auburn and found that they use those terms as well.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: A bond is uh something that we use to build buildings, and it means that we are uh issuing bonds, long-term debt to finance a school, and then uh pay that off over time.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's very similar to um as a as an individual, you may purchase a house, you get a mortgage, and you pay that back.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: The mortgages typically are 30 years, uh, our bonds are 20 years, and it's really exciting because unlike some other, you know, taxed programs that uh go in and stay forever, um, when we pay that bond off, the uh that part of the tax goes away.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we just paid off Auburn Mountain View and and Lakeland Hills and uh Arthur Jacobson and we refinance just like you'd refinance your house mortgage, and I think saved about five million dollars for the taxpayer.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what a bond is.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um levies are for learning.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of different kinds.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um last year the community, by the way, the community is incredibly supportive, and we're so uh lucky to be in the community of Auburn and Algon and Pacific, and uh we've been really well supported by by our community.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um last year the community supported a levy that is our educational programs and operations levy that pays for you know what happens in the school's day-to-day.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's about 15% of our budget.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's what the state doesn't pay for, but I like to say it's what parents, you know, assume that we would provide and and want for their their children and all children, uh, things like nurses and extra teachers and um you know safety officers and so many different things.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh not to mention athletics and our activities, you know, a lot of the things when you ask somebody uh what do you remember about school?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they'll say first, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Just like I talked about my band program, another kind of levy is a capital levy.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's a pay as you go.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if a bond is a long-term like your mortgage, this is uh pay as you go.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So capital levies can run six years.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they can pay for technology.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've had a technology levy uh that can pay for m major repairs that are different than building a school.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, replacing a roof, um, and you know, just can can do the things that we need to do to keep our our facilities in top shape so that they last a long time.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's important for our listeners to know uh what the difference is.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that explanation.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: On the ballot, uh November 4th, uh we have a bond, which is proposition number one.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can you share what the projects for the proposition one are?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have three schools on the ballot for the bond, which we call proposition one.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: The focus of this bond is middle school.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: We are really fortunate, as I mentioned earlier, um, to be a growing school district and growing community.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um you may hear about districts that have lost students, 1,000, 2,000 or more students.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's not our story in Auburn.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: We continue to grow.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And really, for for the past decade, we have had more students at the middle school level than uh our schools were built for.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we had other priorities.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We had a dire need in elementary school, and and we built a lot of elementary schools in our last bond.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, now it's time to tackle middle school.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So our bond would build a fifth middle school, which uh would allow us to remove students from portable classrooms across the district.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: We currently have 43 portables, so that's about a thousand students who are learning in portables.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's enough students to fill a new school today on day one.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we often talk about this is a need and not a want.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't, hey, we think we're gonna grow.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Can you can you trust us and build schools?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've actually had these kids for a number of years now.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And a portable classroom is a good learning environment, but uh your hallways aren't any bigger, your bathrooms aren't any bigger, your cafeteria.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can't at Cascade Middle School, I'm gonna get to that in a minute, but Cascade, you can't convene the whole uh student body or bring your parents together.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a severe shortage of parking at some of our sites.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're really ready to have a fifth middle school.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first school on the bond, and and that would be built on land the district owns uh in Lakeland Hills on Sumner Taps Parkway, kind of between Hagen and the lake, if you know that area.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful site.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I got to walk it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can't wait to see a school on that site, and this helps the whole school district, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna relieve overcrowding across Auburn.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the second school is Cascade Middle School.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Cascade's 58 years old.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: It has served the community really well.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have worked really hard to keep it going, uh, but every school gets to a point where they need to uh be rebuilt because it's just it's more cost effective, honestly, uh to invest in a new building than to keep uh trying to prop up an old school that was built for, you know, a couple of generations ago instead of what we're trying to do in educating our students for the future.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the new cascade would actually be about a mile north of the current site.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: It would be off of I Street Northeast and 40th between I Street and the river.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: We currently own 75 acres up there, and it's a great site.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And someday in the distant future, it could hold a middle school, but also a high school and an elementary school.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It gives us five more acres for the middle school, which means that we can really do it right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: The current cascade site is pretty cramped.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just uh hold my breath every time I'm there at dismissal.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: The buses are triple parked because there just isn't room.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we can do it right on the new site.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'll keep our current cascade building, uh, which will give us some flexibility to use as an interim site as we rebuild other schools or any other district needs.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third school is an elementary school.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's Alpac Elementary, and Alpac is in the condition that needs to be replaced.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's 53 years old.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I want to just quickly tell a story of how we got to Alpac being on the list.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Every time we run a bond, we bring together a group we call the Citizens Ad hoc group, and it is a committee of parents, citizens, community members, staff members, and they look at all the data.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: They look at the engineering reports on the condition of all the schools.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we survey all the principals on the functional ability of the schools, and they prioritize.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're first passed through, I think they wanted to build six schools on this bond.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then they think, okay, what is a reasonable ask for the community that will support a relatively stable tax rate?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they decided the most important things were new middle school replacing Cascade and replacing Alpac.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so that's how we arrived at three schools on the bond.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of information.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the first thing that our voters will be voting on.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have proposition two, which is a levy.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about what's on that levy?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, proposition two is a capital levy.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: It is uh we call it the something for everyone levy because every school will benefit.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is safety and security improvements, major maintenance, and a replacement of our technology levy.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in terms of safety and security, the capital levy, proposition two, will bring all of our schools up to the modern standard.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Schools built 30, 40, 50 years ago were not built with some of the um elements that we have today, like secure entry vestibules and standard six-foot fencing and cameras and uh the modern locks and all those um, you know, the hardware that helps our staff keep the school secure and safe.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so we're really excited about that.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Every school that wasn't on the last bond will get something for safety and security.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have some uh schools that are serving us well that are not going to be replaced anytime soon, but they uh they need major upgrades, they need uh a new roof or flooring.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have seven schools that never had air conditioning installed, and this would address that, and all of our schools would have air conditioning finally.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it would address Auburn Memorial Stadium, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think probably most people listening have been to an event there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a great asset in our community.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have handrails on those steep staircases, and uh, I think we've all kind of gasped seeing somebody who's a little bit unstable going uh up or down those stairs.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it it really pays off in a lot of ways in terms of safety and maintenance, and then this will replace our technology levy.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So every six years uh since 2014, we have asked for the community support for technology.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: That has been transformational.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's allowed us to get to one-to-one and have really just really uh reliable networks that a you know, a teacher or principal doesn't have to worry if this stuff's gonna work, it just works.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and our communities provided that, and we're rolling that renewal in here.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Our current tech levy would would uh sunset next year, but this would continue for another six years.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we have two measures on the ballot and uh lots of uh information on our website if people want to find more information.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's is there anything else about the the election that you want the community to know?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, um talk to people.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to one thing that we're doing this year is we're setting up uh tables at events just just to have more conversation.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I think what happens is you get your information from other places, and uh oftentimes it really doesn't reflect our reality here in Auburn.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we I want you to talk to people in our schools, talk to teachers, talk to principals.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to parents.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not in a school or your children are older, uh just to hear what it's like truly.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I want people to know that this is a need and not a want.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we we have a lot more things that we could put on this uh these two measures, but we have scaled it back as much as we possibly can uh to keep our tax rate within the range that it has historically been.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's you know, it is a tax increase, but I want the community to know that our local school tax rate is one of the lowest it's been in the last 15 or 20 years.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually been going down.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um we have a great track record of fiscal stewardship in the Auburn School District.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Our our projects have come in on time and on our under budget.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: That happened uh in the last bond through the pandemic.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's truly amazing, and I'm so proud of our team and everything that they've done.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes I I think there's some skepticism, where does my tax dollar go?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you just see it all around town.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think we have an impeccable record of coming in with well managed projects, uh, and we want to keep our promises to the community.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, uh uh we just have to get the word out to vote.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's our civic duty.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we run messages on our reader boards every single election, uh including, you know, elections that are not school elections, uh, because we think it's a stronger community if everybody votes.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really important on the bond.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mention this, but uh not only are we required to have a supermajority of sixty percent yes to pass, but we have to uh validate, which means that we have to have 40% of the prior general election.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's fifteen thousand four hundred and ninety votes that have to come in.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So this is one where you can't leave it up to your neighbors.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can't say, I think I'm gonna set this one out.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: We really just think it's important in every election that our community shows up and votes.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there you go.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Great, a lot to know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, remember to vote by November 4th.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, as I mentioned, if our listeners need more information, we have a lot of information on our website.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you're also welcome to call the district office and we can connect you with the right people if you have specific questions about tax rates or specific projects.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh pretty soon on our social media and on our website, we're gonna have some uh renderings of what the middle schools will be looking like if the community uh supports these measures.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so exciting.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think if you look at our master list, we have 72 presentations uh to school staff and community groups.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we're always looking for more.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know anybody who'd like uh a little presentation about this, uh I'd be happy to come out, just uh contact the district office and we'll set something up.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you, Dr.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, we are nearing the end of our allotted uh recording time here.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And as you always wrap up your podcast, Dr.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti, what was your favorite thing to do at recess?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I loved playing kickball at recess.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: My elementary school had a courtyard, so it was it was built kind of in a uh U shape, and in the middle uh it was all paved, so uh rain or shine, we'd be out there kicking the ball around, and I I ended up, you know, spending many years playing baseball, but I don't think I had any more just pure joy than playing kickball with my friends at recess.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a great memory.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this has been uh production of the Auburn School District.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we would if you liked what you heard today, please share it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: We were trying to get the word out, not only about the upcoming election, but about all of the great things that are happening in the Auburn School District.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we have a great superintendent, Dr.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Spacotti.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh have a great day, and next time uh you'll hear Dr.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Spacotti again as the the host of your podcast.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye.