 Hello and welcome to the back story. My name is Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media I have the good fortune of hosting the back story which is my opportunity and your opportunity to learn more about what's going on Longmont. Every one of these programs we feature something that's unique, unusual, relevant, interesting and tonight we have a program that's all of those. Unique, relevant, interesting, timely, especially with the opening of school. I'm joined for this program by a panel of experts on the topic we're going to address and I'll we'll get to that in just a minute but let me introduce Ben Samuels. Now folks I'm looking at that camera you can look at these cameras right here or one of them. This is Ben Samuels who is the marketing coordinator for College Invest and we're going to unpack what College Invest means. Josh Atherton who is the executive director of the same brain education foundation. Jenny Diaz-Leone who is a program specialist for the city of Longmont and is a star in a number of areas but we're going to focus only on part of that tonight and Dr. Don Haddad who is the superintendent of the St. Wayne Valley School District and I don't get a chance very often to interview Don other than over lunch sometimes so it's a pleasure to welcome you all this evening and let me just say from the top how much I appreciate your dedicated part of your Monday evening. More importantly how much I appreciate and others do what you do with your daytime right. The contributions you make to this community which are just extraordinary. Now for the rest of the evening I don't know if I referred to you as doctor I should have but from now on it's going to be Ben, Josh, Jenny and Don okay for the rest of the rest of this program. What we're talking about tonight is Longmont's 529 jump program. There aren't many municipalities and school districts in the United States that have the kind of dynamic or relationship going on that allows something like this to happen but it's a pretty interesting program and one that every every parent every grandparent every aunt every uncle every brother every sister who cares about the future of the children in this community would want to be paying attention to so we're going to just jump right into the content. Josh as the director of the education foundation the foundation's right square in the middle of this effort. Talk a little bit get us started at least on what the 529 program is and how did the foundation get into this. Well first thank you so much for inviting me I appreciate it's a great opportunity and I think you know what we try to do is when you look at the 529 jump program it's a community effort to really bring awareness to what a 529 post-secondary education savings plan is. That's a long term there but it's an effort by community members such as yourself, myself, former council member Bonnie Finley among others, community members, civic leaders to bring this awareness to what a 529 college savings plan is. I say college I'm going to catch myself it's actually post-secondary because I think what's great about these 529 plans is they're for trade schools as well and I think it's the idea that as we all are going on that post-secondary is becoming more and more expensive and so parents especially young parents need different ways to provide that education for their children and how we got involved Bonnie Finley who at the time was a couple years ago was with city council say along my council if you know Bonnie you know when she asked you have to say yes and she had this idea as a member of city council that it should be a community effort to support our children for post-secondary education and I remember to think like she said done with me she said the district is doing so much same-family schools is doing so much right now when it comes to introducing associate degrees two-year degrees for students while they're working on their high school degree we as a community do more to try to get ahead of that and to try to provide ways where children can young children can have opportunities to pay for post-secondary education and so she got me among others as a committee together to start looking at this and over time the committee came up with 529 jump and we've started with a small volunteer committee made up like it says civic and business leaders and to try to figure out how do we bring that awareness to our families in same-brain Valley schools so there is awareness and then there's money yes is there money behind the awareness there is yes city council two years ago approved initial seed money of twenty five thousand dollars which was a big commitment by city council using city council contingency funds and the reason why they did that was rather than just put it on the the community they want to be a part of the solution right anyone could look at a problem but when you're part of the solution that's when you start seeing action take hold and and since then city council has proven additional over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for this plan over the next couple years right now same-brain Valley schools has about just over two thousand kindergartners and this is for kindergartner families to open up these five twenty nine plans fifty dollars to any same-brain kindergarten family who wants to open up one of these five twenty nine plans so well so I don't know if Bonnie's watching if you are we miss you tonight but she is with the grandkids so she's got a priority story but five twenty nine so Ben I'm going to turn you forward to the numbers five twenty nine where does that come from what is five twenty nine so five twenty nine is actually a part of the federal tax code so that's what it's referring to and that's because these five twenty nine accounts were created in congress about twenty five thirty years ago with the intention of helping parents in the face of rising education costs and student loan debt to confront that and giving them a tool that would be able to help them to save for higher education right and a big part of that is these tax advantages that five twenty nine accounts provide so you know in practice what that means is when somebody saves with a five twenty nine account anything that they're putting into it grows tax-free as long as that money is used for some type of higher education expense and on top of that as Colorado residents we are able to take a tax deduction on anything that we save in one of these five twenty nine accounts um on our yearly tax return so so it's really great benefit grandparent any neighbor anybody uh can open a five twenty nine account in the name of a child right and then uh the city makes a fifty dollar donation if it's a if he or she is a kindergartener in the school district you've referred to this as a savings account but that's actually an investment right you're right now i mean that's that's that's good of you to clarify on that and thank you for pointing that out so we offer you know several different types of accounts so there are savings types of options there's actually one called smart choice that we offer in a collaboration with first bank um and it's cds and money market accounts up through uh more investment style accounts that are personalized portfolios where people can choose the type of events investment that they want from a group of funds or age-based accounts uh where professional um advisors choose the funds for you and adjust them as the child moves towards college age or higher education age so a fifty dollar donation from the city in one of those accounts that would be an aggressive kind of account and i know when somebody looks at the screen they have various options and you're not an investment advisor i get that and i'm not going to put you on the spot um but depending on where they put that money and what happens in like in in financial markets right that fifty dollars could grow into if there was a never another dollar put into it what could fifty dollars grow into by the time a kindergartener gets ready to graduate from high school well you you're putting me on the spot a little bit the fifty leaving fifty dollars and never touching it again i'm not sure i could tell you that but i'll give you this example how about this what if somebody put fifty dollars per month yeah every month for let's say they have a i don't know eight year old child and they leave that money in that account or they and put fifty dollars into that account every month for ten years at an average rate of return of around six percent which we could say you know be you know not too aggressive but not too conservative um you might see some a return along the lines of ten thousand dollars twelve thousand dollars so you know that's that's a good amount of money that you can put towards educational expenses and it's in it you mentioned higher education but it's it's any expense after right well and i it's education or life prep i'll second what josh was really emphasizing first of all talking about the fact that this is not just for college right this is for really any type of post-secondary education so we're talking college and university degrees community college vocational technical trade school uh associate degrees two year degrees recently um apprenticeships were approved so many types of apprenticeships so there's a lot of flexibility in that sense and then when we're talking about the types of expenses it's not just you know tuition it could be obviously tuition fees but housing associated with that course of study uh food plans anything like that um software any equipment that's necessary book software uh a wi-fi printers so there's there's quite a quite a range number of yeah i recall someone in the last couple years as we've talked about this identifying a friend or a neighbor or an east or a nephew who wanted to be on the ski patrol and was able to use this to get the training to qualify for ski patrol right yeah i mean there's it's almost unlimited possibilities and another thing i would add is you know sometimes people wonder well this is the colorado 529 state sponsored 529 plan can we only use the money within colorado and no you can use it anywhere in the country so i mean there's there's just a multitude of possibilities so college invests is college invests a hedge fund is uh are you brokers tell us about college invest what is college investment what's in it for college that's that's a great question so so college invests is actually a nonprofit agency that reports into the colorado department of higher education so we are part of the state government um and what we do is we administer these 529 plans or savings and investment accounts and work with financial institutions who we partner with to actually implement them and you know i mean what's in it for us like when we're talking about this 529 jump program it really aligns with our mission because at the end of the day what we want is to provide coloradans with you know an easy way and and opportunities to achieve their educational goals and hopefully i mean especially um you know supporting what the 529 jump program is doing in its effort to get parents and caregivers saving early on right because ideally by saving early when the children are younger and having that long-term horizon to hopefully have those funds grow or even if you're saving little by little it can really have a big impact we can you know lessen the burden of student debt that we know is i mean it's a it's always a national topic it's always in the news so so whoever contributes to a 529 program they get the tax deduction in the year in which they make that donation that money then grows tax-free for until until it's withdrawn exactly exactly um so how much of that money goes to paying for country club dues and you know a big salaries for college invest execs no i mean as a non-profit i mean i mean this is just paying for our it's important for people to know that the reason that's the question is i want people to know um that this is really focused on returns for parents and their children uh at a critical time both as five-year-olds and kindergarten and as they matriculate through the system and graduate grade school we're going to come back to okay why this why this matters what differences might make as we get into conversation jenny you in your work with the city you work with a range of families and kids from all all parts of the community uh and i'm going to get you know i'm going to ask you a question later not just yet about what your advice to parents would be um but talk a little bit about what you think this might mean to the kid you work with and then fold into that what do i mean for you as a young as a five-year-old in the kindergarten and somebody says we have confidence in you that you're going to finish high school and we're going to make an investment in you as a five-year-old what would that have meant i think this program uh just creates opportunity for people and i really appreciate what you've been saying about this is post secondary right so as a five-year-old you don't know what your options are going to be and as a parent you can dream of what the options can be for your youth uh but really what this means is you're opening doors of opportunity so you're investing in this in this child to be able to do what they want to do in the future whether it's going to a trade school to to learn how to be a mechanic whether it's going to uh for your university to get a degree in communications whether they want to be on the ski patrol right and what i think that this would have meant for me is you know i i'm a first generation student uh my mom was the first one to come to united states from her family so this whole experience of of college planning kind of hit us in the face when i was in high school and so if we would have started planning much younger i think that there would have been more opportunity for us to figure out ways to make this feasible uh we would have been uh been able to be prepared in a different way and it would have changed my trajectory in a lot of different ways i wouldn't have to struggle or feel like i was financially responsible for that piece and in the same way my mom my mom pretty much in my household it was a single parent income and my mom oftentimes worked two or three jobs to be able to make sure that we had what we needed and so if even you know sometimes we're not able to add $50 into account or $100 into account every month but even if you're adding $20 or when it's your birthday you're taking half of the birthday money and putting that away in the account whatever money you're putting in there is going to grow and if it's some money that you use to pay for books you don't have to worry about the books later on right but i i really want people to think about how many doors of opportunities this this would open for your youth they will be able to feel a security that i didn't have when i when i was going through this experience so i i really recommend people do that i know this just weren't just imagining but if somebody had opened that account for you as a five-year-old what would it have made a difference it would have made a difference because i know that a big piece um and actually for me at the time uh of growing up here and i something i didn't mention before is that i'm actually a product of uh the sanford valley school district community i grew up here i went to northridge elementary i went to long speak middle school and graduated from longmont high school in 2008 yes one of our great graduates right here on this yes um and so for me i know that a big piece of of going to college it was always an expectation for me my mom always said it um but we were never really quite sure of how we were going to pay for it and that was terrifying because um i i know the other piece for me was that i i felt like i had to know exactly what i was going to do when i was going to school because otherwise i would be wasting money and it kind of limited me a little bit to be able to um dream of what other or explore different opportunities i ended up doing that later on um but i know that that would have given me a different security to be able to explore what it was that was actually a passion for me um i ended up still being in my dream job which is exciting but i know that that would have caused a lot of um it would have taken away a lot of stress from my family and from myself during that already very big transitional time so it would have it would have definitely changed a lot of my story moms and dads listen to this uh to get started early right in in to plant those seeds early for in your five-year-old about what's possible don't we don't get this opportunity often so it's a pleasure to welcome you this this isn't a school district program right we don't want to hang this on on you as one more thing to manage or administer but you're supportive so why would the school district get behind something like this what does it mean in terms of the school district's efforts and then i want you to talk about where does this fit into you got a lot of other stuff that you do for kids right so it's not just this but talk about this one and then expand that to the variety of things that the sabering valley school district does that that results in a great graduation right yeah no i appreciate it and you know first i want to start out by thanking you and the city council for making this investment because you know you i realized 295 thousand dollars yeah or what the council thought what the council authorized that's a pretty significant investment and it's open to all children everyone every every child we should have said that earlier regardless of income regardless of municipality if they're a sabering valley kindergarten we're willing to the city's willing to make that investment yeah and i think that that's really significant when you think about $50 for any child a total of close to $300,000 so from a monetary perspective it's significant there's also the sense of confidence that you bring to a child and to their family when a community comes together the school system the business community elected officials civic organizations you come together and you make a statement that public education matters and that post-secondary education beyond the pre-k through 12 experience matters that's a powerful statement it's it's something that when communities do that it elevates the expectations and when the expectation is elevated our children rise to that expectation so they feel an entire community wrapping their arms around them saying we're behind you so you've got the monetary benefit you've got the motivation piece that's there and when you think about an investment in somebody's post-secondary experiences our economy is dependent in large part on how well students do not only pre-k through 12 but beyond when you think about our health care systems when you think about the amount of money that is earned by a student who is prepared for and pursues post-secondary versus one who's not it's significant for that individual it's also significant for a community a state a nation and beyond so i think the the impact is is much more global than people might realize and yes that individual child's life is being impacted in a significant way and yes our community and so i would support it even if i weren't the superintendent but being a superintendent and having that close-up view of really how much this makes a difference i think it's it's really pretty impressive what you've done and and very grateful to that you know in our school system we have what we call a pre-k through 14 the system and the grades 13 and 14 represent that post-secondary and we look at the ways in which our students can pursue that in addition to the 529 program our advanced placement courses you can earn college credit and we were recently recognized by the college board for one of about 360 school districts out of the 14 000 as honor roll school of the station for the number of students and the diversity of our student population taking advanced placement courses and earning college credit we also have the international baccalaureate program that earns our students college credit we have the concurrent enrollment program where our students can take classes at the college and university level and we will reimburse them for those courses and then recently over the last six or seven years we've implemented p-tech which is pathways through technology it's a two-year associate degree program and it comes at no cost to the student and we have three of them now one in computer information systems one in the medical and biosciences area and our newest one in cyber security and so our students are graduating with an associate degree at the same time earning their high school diploma I think this last year with the front-range commencement service we had 40 students but those numbers are growing every year and so we provide all of those opportunities for our students and then you know the other things that really drive student success are music programs our athletic programs all of the co-curricular but I will come back to this program in particular it is a strong message a vote of confidence an inspirational gesture and a financial gesture that starts our children off on the right track and you could be more grateful for it yeah and we need to we need to continue to find ways to let people know about this opportunity because it's pretty special so moms and dads the city would like to see a greater of the foundation in the school district take right right we budget we've the city's authorized funding and what we want to do is make certain that moms and dads are taking advantages for all the reasons that don just described it's one thing josh to have a good idea right 529 in college invest having that capacity one thing to have a good idea it isn't always simple to turn a good idea into action so what's it take from the education foundations perspective what's it required to turn the idea into something that's actionable and then how would people take advantage of it well it's a great question we're a volunteer run organization right in the mean that we've got a board that are volunteers and it has to be through that volunteer part of things and when Bonnie came up this idea with other city council members it was her creation to make sure that volunteers had input for this that we had people from the businesses civic leaders community leaders like don had mentioned and the foundation's role is more fiduciary we're we're providing a way for people to I know we're going to talk more about this but do if they want to donate money they can do that through the foundation and that might will make its way to the fund and it's also providing a little bit of structure to you know how to run meetings and and to be there as support and liaison I'm a member of the community of the committee and so I provide support to Bonnie and to you and others just to make sure that we have what we need but then a day is based on our volunteers and getting the word out to our community and I think that's really critical it's it's the foundation is overseeing the funds but it's not necessarily a foundation program in essence it's a volunteer idea ran by volunteers you just make it happen make it happen yeah so how difficult is it to actually open an account and I don't that's your question or or Ben's question but if there's somebody watching this and I don't know I don't know how to do that where do I start do I pick up the phone if somebody's not comfortable with the internet then you know getting access online what what would be the first and second steps for parents or relatives that's not a parent who wanted to open an account all that Ben talked about how you open an account but what we do is once that account is opened then they go to our website at 529jump.org or to the sameframefoundation.org website and they can go there and just fill out a very short questionnaire it's you know student's name first and last and parents name and then what school they go to and then what account number is what account that they have and the number that's associated with that and as soon as we get that information then we will connect with College Invest and we'll make sure once a month we send a check over to College Invest and then College Invest make sure that money makes it into those accounts and I also want to point out too that you know we're really encouraging folks to open up accounts but if there's a kindergarten family right now watching us mom or dad or grandparent whoever and they've already they just opened up a 529 account maybe a year ago when you're a preschool that's okay we're trying to limit the restrictions on this because more restrictions and barriers you put in front of it the less people are going to do if you already have one open go to our website felt the account information and we'll make sure the money gets to it so you don't have to open a new account no just take advantage of the offer yep to get $50 free money into an existing account as long as you're a same-brain student and you're a kindergartner and we're kind of in that gray area right now because it's July so if you haven't gone into August and your your son or daughter is about to go into first grade filled out now and we haven't quite started the school year and as soon as the school year starts then we're going to go into that new phase and so we're you know again it's just it's a matter of opening it but you know if a family is in a situation where they can't put money in it on a monthly basis that's okay that $50 can sit there and maybe Jenny mentioned maybe it's half the birthday money or something else or grandparent neighbor that's totally fine too it shouldn't be limited to folks who who have money or from higher class it should be open to anyone who wants to participate and there's no minimum donation on a monthly basis that $50 can sit there until you know somebody else comes along and makes a donation sometime later yep all right you'd like to create a discipline of getting a little bit in there on a regular basis because it does add up um josh talk about josh i've been talk about the mechanics of creating the account how difficult how confusing how simple yeah it's so it's it's pretty straightforward um i mean really the only requirement for somebody to be open to be able to open an account is you have to be 18 years or older um you do have to have a social security number or a TIN number and a TIN number what is a TIN number a tax identification number um and have a permanent address here in Colorado or in the U.S. and then right like talking about you know if you're comfortable going online you can go to our website collegeinvest.org there's a lot of really good information that explains the ins and outs of all of this there and you can go through it review it and then enroll directly online and it should only really take a few minutes um it's it's not asking for a whole lot of information beyond you know who you are that identification number your address who the beneficiary is um or you know if you're not comfortable going online you can call us up you can call collegeinvest you can request that we mail you the application um and you can fill it out and mail it back to us or fax it to us or whatever works um so it's pretty it's pretty straightforward all in all it's it's it's not insignificant that a parent doesn't have to have a social security number they need a tax identification number which means all parents whether you're documented or not nobody's excluded from this right you don't have to have certain credentials in order to participate fair true i would say i mean i wouldn't say it's fair ideally right we would be able to offer this to anybody who resides in colorado right but there are just they're just laws that we cannot get around in terms of investments but um public it's the uh it's a good job to ask you about elevations because the credit is taking subsets to help make this easy yep okay let's talk about yeah elevations credit union is is a significant partner not only of us but also the school district they they love teachers they support teachers um they sponsor a lot of things that we do and elevations has committed to opening up any account for anyone um and usually when you open a bank account you're required to put a minimal amount whatever the amount is into that account they waive that and in some cases they'll actually deposit more money in there they'll put $50 in there um i think a lot of those offers just depend on what time of the year it is um but they also have uh spanish speaking uh folks at the elevations credit union that can help out too if if a family doesn't speak english and we really appreciate that because that's how you go through the process and a lot of times that's what's scary for a lot of families um especially maybe some undocumented families is it's just getting past that initial phase and i'm really proud of elevations that they've really stepped up and offered that for us and what are the what are the possibilities that um we have school the school year is about to start um people can go online they can call an answering application uh we we were chatting a little bit earlier about what else can we do as a community to to out to reach out to parents to make it easy uh it's only going to happen through the schools i mean and but to do it without adding a burden right to principals and teachers in the schools what's possible this fall that parents might be looking for as opportunities to learn more about this and get some technical assistance to get signed up i i would encourage folks to go to our website 529 jump um we actually built a new website uh almost because of this our website two years ago was only in english and we revamped our entire website so that there's google translate that's a part of that so they can go in there they can turn it just translate some entire website so that people know what's going on and um there's videos on there that i've linked on there some resources but i would also say go to college invest website as well because they've got some great resources for folks to know about it i think probably the biggest issues that you hear that 529 and the associate with tax documents and it scares most people it scares me um but i didn't believe college invest at first when i heard about oh it's easy right anytime you deal with tax documents it's not easy we actually opened up an account for art one of our children and i we got done less than 10 minutes it was very easy very straightforward i'm not a financial advisor i don't watch stocks on a daily basis and it's great because it's there we know it's there and you know if one of our children decides not to go to college they want to do something else then it can be transferred to one of our other children um it actually can be used for your own student debt too if you have debt yourself it can be used for that as well which so there's a lot of flexibility has been said when it comes to 529 accounts well actually i need to correct you on the on the student debt aspect of it you you actually can't in colorado you and others in some of the states you can use the 529 funds for student debt but in colorado at for the time being and that's what's confused about 529s because there are differences between states right well the jump part of this is 50 to jump start is that where we get the jump start the savings for post-secondary education uh anything familiar with uh any other municipalities kind of the partnership of an education foundation in support of the school district and their kids doing anything like this i'm i'm not familiar with any other localities doing a similar program i mean i i do want to take the opportunity i don't want to fail to mention that college invest has some special programs that are in the vein of the 529 jump program that you know if somebody was taking advantage of this program they could uh they could gain further financial help and incentives through college invest so we have one program called first step and the way that it works is any child born or adopted in colorado on or after january january 1st of 2020 can receive a hundred dollars into a college invest account um if it's already opened or when their parent or guardian opens one and then there's another program called our matching grant program where depending on the eligibility criteria um we will match whatever somebody saves in a 529 account dollar for dollar up to a thousand dollars per year and potentially for five years so yeah so i mean we we have a lot of you know grants and financial incentives that we want to give to colorado families to encourage them to save and especially early college investment would would match up to five thousand dollars a thousand over five potentially potentially based on criteria based on criteria and eligibility exactly um powerful uh i was going to say the only one i'm aware of st paul minnesota they're doing something similar where they provide fifty dollars to their residents but no st paul's pretty big city and i don't think there's any other city like longmont about a hundred thousand people that's doing stuff like this um but also you know being there is support of the school district and our students and like i said when body said that earlier that's you know our school district is moving at lightning speed and they're trying to do everything for our students we as community need to be there in step as much as in step as we can to do this and i think like don mentioned to you i i thank you for city council support on this it's great is there any data that we're aware of on the effects of or relationships between five twenty nine accounts or other college savings accounts and uh in high school graduation or other uh outcomes of schooling yeah well i know there's for college investors uh you know several studies um out there that have looked at you know the relationship between assets and going to college right and how that affects that and like i said there's multiple studies that have come to the same conclusion the same result that regardless of socioeconomic background any child who has savings that have been put put aside and dedicated to higher education and that they're aware of that and you know maybe there's that expectation right they're something like five to seven times more likely to actually pursue higher education so that's the the what data i'm aware of is right there right the kids at at the time they transition from elementary and middle school i think the study i saw are six times more likely oh okay self identify as graduating from high school and continue your education yeah doesn't matter how much money's in the account exactly other variables i it's a correlational it's a causal but that's a powerful finding right that that kind of investment small investment in a five-year-old could have that kind of effect on their vision for themselves right going forward um there are lots of ways right that people could invest in their kids this is one you mentioned that the that the college invest will donate a hundred dollars based on a decision made by the state legislature the parents have to wait for their child to be a kindergarten to receive no no uh so i mean we were talking about the first step program which is the hundred dollars you you should go to college invest website now or call us uh and if if they would fall into that eligibility period so a child born after january first 2020 yes parents could open that account today they would be two-year-old two and a half year old exactly and uh and then we could add 50 dollars when they get to the kindergarteners they could start with 100 exactly we could add 50 now that 150 becomes real money by the time they graduate that's true yeah josh you talked about other ways uh it's it's not just parents opening an account what are the other ways that the community can support this you manage people mention people donating to the foundation what else is possible yeah i mean people can go to our website like i mentioned uh 520 and jump down to organ they can donate um you know we're we're always looking to increase that fund the city council has approved 295 000 like don had mentioned but um we're really trying to expand this beyond just the city of longmont and you know our district is vast and big and there's a lot of different um folks in our community and so anyone to support it we're on and if they want to be if you want to be on the committee just let us know contact us at the foundation and i think this is going to be kind of the future of of really saving for post secondary education it can't be the burden cannot be on students full time when they get out of college jenny had mentioned that she's a first-time college graduate i am too and i'm a i'm a product of same primary school as well and this would have been huge i i was raised by a single mother as well with my two brothers and when i got to college it was loan loan loan mom's gonna help us some food maybe a little bit of covering the rent and i went to college 20 years ago when it was much cheaper i look at students now who are looking at you know six figure debt just go to college that's a big burden and when you are looking at someone who wants to become a teacher and they're going to have to have 80 or 90 or 100 000 dollars of debt to become a teacher a lot of people are looking elsewhere and other careers that make more money and so we want to be part of the solution and if other municipalities i mean this is the this is really the the uh lawnmower city council's commitment you have other municipalities within the same very ball school district um decided they also wanted to make a comparable investment to have their five-year-old five-year-olds who would they contact and how do they do that they can go to our website at 529 jump and bonnie's information is on there my information on there we can connect folks to how we do it and uh we were really planning on doing more this about two years ago we had something happen in the form of coveted and a lot of uh cities and towns had to look elsewhere and figure out things and i think you know hopefully we're getting through that and we're getting back to really focusing on this so if if folks want to support this just let us know we can connect them to the powers to be that's right i've learned something in this conversation i knew about the first step program but i thought parents had to wait until their kids were in kindergarten in 2025 so that they could get that start uh early and we could simply enhance that when they when they i know i'm glad i'm glad we were able to to clarify that because it makes a big difference well and if there are any municipalities that happen to watch this city council members or others and you'd like to kick in i'm certain the school district and the foundation not going it's not going to slow us down that slow the city of long london all right as we're about to start the school year you you may have said everything you want to say about all the stuff that's going on but i want to give you one more opportunity to talk about reasons that you're proud the reasons we all ought to be proud of you mentioned a bunch of them earlier uh or your state of the school the state of the school district stick here before we before we wrap this up what else should we know from you about what's coming in school year and the things we should be excited about hey you know i think most people know but just as a recap the same brain is currently the seventh largest school district out of 178 school districts when i started as superintendent we were the tenth largest and not too far down the road we're going to be the sixth and the fifth and ultimately we've got 33 000 students now our buildout plan is for about 75 000 students so within the 411 square miles we're growing we're up to 60 schools now and that growth is probably going to translate into a bond initiative in 2024 because we're gonna have to build more schools and continue that that growth and that's not from the operations side that's for the construction side of new schools but i'm really proud of our our students and our teachers and our staff and our community it's always challenging but the last couple of years for our teachers and our students and our parents and our community and learn has been challenging with COVID but they really came through it in a in incredible way and some of the some of the data supports that you know our graduation rate is nearing 92 percent now and that's a four-year-on-time graduation rate and our our dropout rate is now at 0.6 so 99.4 percent of our students are going to finish whether it's in four years four and a half years and when we started a lot of the work around early childhood and so on our graduation rate was at 75 percent and we had fewer requirements so right now we have among the highest requirements in the state and the region and we have one of the highest graduation rates but it's gone up even though we've increased the requirements so i'm very excited about that and proud of our students and it's not just the academic side you know our music programs were identified as one of the top 15 percent of all music programs in the country and our athletic teams have won more state championships than other districts throughout the entire state of Colorado for two years in a row and you look at individual and team state championships from a percentage standpoint so our students are really excelling and and i think they gave us a lesson in resilience because well so many other institutions were standing down public education was standing up our teachers were showing up our children were showing up even though everyone around them were closing their doors our doors were open and you know you have 90 percent of the children in america k through 12 are enrolled in a public school and so the future of our country is dependent on how well our public schools are doing our community has rallied in the form of passing militia overrides and bonds to support our children and our children have responded and our teachers and our staff have responded so you know i couldn't be more proud of them and after 38 years of doing this i'm going to my 15th year as a superintendent and uh they just never cease to amaze you they never cease to amaze you and this conversation right here around kindergarten you know we're starting our children in that preschool for all our kids in full day kindergarten and take them all the way through post-secondary and uh it's a heavy lift but it's it's a lift that our entire community is engaged with so as you mentioned earlier in your your comments about growth is that true of all the school districts in the front range no actually thank you for that question because the opposite is true we are seeing a massive decline in enrollment out of the metro area school districts other than same brain and not just by a few kids but by thousands of kids and one of the things that really when people say why well there's a little bit of growth area but all the communities have growth areas but they're not seeing the students return from kovat you know we maintain about a 98 to 99 participation rate throughout kovat because of our teachers connecting with our children and so we never lost sight of them they never lost sight of us and so when it was time to come back at full swing they were here and that wasn't the case in a lot of other school systems so no they're not growing anywhere near as fast as we're going in fact they're shrinking faster than we're growing yeah I think that's a factoid that is pretty remarkable and I think it's something that the community ought to know and another reason to be proud uh that I know this this community has supported the school district has stepped up when the times when they've had the opportunities and been asked with no these are bond issues but that's well-earned that doesn't happen if they don't have confidence in the leadership and the performance of the school district so good on you it's good on the community for stepping up but it's well-earned well I appreciate that and you know the last thing that I will share is this concept of the school year you know we extended our school year for k through eight all the way through the month of june for kids that wanted to do that we'd have thousands of students who are taking advantage of that and jumpstart programs right now our kids are back in school doing math and language arts for two weeks before the school year start so we've really closed that summer slide yeah where that digression occurs that well the notion that kids don't want to be it's not true they are flocking into the opportunities for math and language arts and robotics and science and all of the things they love their schools and uh and we're glad to see it all right i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you to clean it up it be our clean up hitter i just want to make one personal observation before we do that i've shared this with on before and i shared it with the school board um uh my wife and i are mother and father-in-law of a brilliant teacher who started her career in the St. Berger Valley school this we spent 19 years at Fall River Elementary uh and i and i won't brag on her i just know how good she is because i spent i've got my own time in this business and i and i know her teachers and teaching when i when i see it um but for reasons that had to do with family and location and proximity to their residents she she left the St. Berger Valley school district to take a job in another school this is before we made a name at this point because i don't want to embarrass anybody but the difference in her experience as a classroom teacher in the school district she's in now compared to what her experience was in the St. Berger Valley school district is um substantial and discouraging from her standpoint that where where this school district has committed to resources to teachers resourcing teachers in classrooms around the needs of students is a night and day difference from what she experienced here to what she experiences now with far less support uh with far less confidence that in the schools right that been what she experienced here uh teachers in a very different role where she is now compared to what she experienced here so uh for anybody who watches this um if if you if you really want to understand some of the differences in what makes those differences it's the priorities that this school is displaced on teachers and teaching and learning so uh as a as a as a former educator as a member of the community i appreciate former super well i know it has been jenny you are you are a cleanup leader what's the message to parents and kids what what should they hear from the one who's closest to this experience the youngest at this table i think maybe um but you're but you're in that you're in the field every day working with these kids and their moms and dads so the the message that i'd like to leave parents with is take a risk for your for your youth take a risk for your child i know that sometimes when you're dealing with forms or processes like this it could be very scary um but know that there's people here to support you through that you're not alone we believe in your children just as much as you do and we want to see them succeed and we're rooting for them whatever whatever path they decide to take but by starting this again i want to reiterate you are opening doors of opportunity for them you're opening an opportunity for them to to have something to fall back on money that they can use in the future in whatever way they they need for their education i know that one of the things that i even worried about was how am i going to get a computer to to go to college and and i need that right or i'm going to be bouncing back and forth between different computer labs uh so there's different opportunities for use of this money but more than anything it's the opportunity and what i think is most important is starting the conversation if you're starting these conversations when when your child is in kindergarten and asking them what do you want to be and even starting with questions like well what do you think you have to do to get there right because we can dream of what we want to be but we also have to start thinking of like what do we need to do to be able to get to those dreams and so if you're starting those conversations at a young age those are only going to become so so normal to your youth and your children that that's already going to be a vision for them when they're growing up they're already going to know like yeah i need i want to do this and these are the steps to get there it's going to become more attainable it's not just a dream it's it's a goal it's something that we're working on from that very young age to to when they actually graduate high school and move on to that next stage so i really encourage you all to reach out to whether it's the the foundation you can also reach out to the youth center especially if this uh spanish-speaking families that you want to get involved we are more than happy to to help you through that process and we look forward to working with you all this is something that as you can tell we're all very passionate about and we would love to get more people involved amen i know i'm inspired so we're going to wrap this up i just want to one more time thank you for your time here in this program and again for what you do with your day times this is just a little blip the series work it's done day in and day out and we're all very grateful for that long months uh that's the backstory of the 529 program next month last monday of the month of august we're going to be right back here in the long month public media studios the topic is going to be housing in long month long month city manager Harold demigus eric wallis who is one of the founders and in the ceo of left hand brewing but more importantly for this conversation uh is the chair of prosper long month which is a group of high profile volunteers who have stepped up to lean into the issues of housing to work with the city to find solutions in ways that reduce housing insecurity and and provide way more opportunities for those who work in long month to live in long month so if you care about housing you have questions concerns suggestions six o'clock august 29th long month public media studios would love to see you here and you get a chance to be part of the interview right you get a chance to ask questions of the experts so we'll see you then thanks again that's the back story on the 529 jump program