WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 The truth could break through. Housing isn't just a headline. It's pressured complexity 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:10.000 Tell me about that. 3 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:20.000 And it affects all of us. Our schools, our employers, our seniors, mental health, the very fabric of our communities. Right. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:01:07.000 And today we are covering two buckets that are not legislative, so I'm going to introduce them. So it's schools and workforce housing. Our guest today is Dr. Ryan Noss, who is the superintendent of the Corvallis School District. And he also has a history of being the Superintendent of the Year a few years ago. So the problem here is that he had to close a couple schools. And there was a lot going on with that conversation. And I'm really interested in hearing a little bit more about that and how the housing component and workforce housing has played a part in that, and his recommendations. I can't wait for his magic wand. 5 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:24.000 Yeah. And I think maybe folks will remember our conversation with Eric McGuire, who was really talking about a lot of the effects of our housing situation on our teachers and on our students, and how that affects the classroom environment. 6 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.000 Oh, my gosh, so much. 7 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:49.000 And I'm interested to hear from Ryan about kind of the behind the scenes as a superintendent. What does that look like? How does it affect our schools and our school districts when we have declining revenue and we have to close schools? This school district, I don't think, is in a unique position. 8 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:53.000 It's not. But did you know that Ryan started off as a special ed teacher? 9 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:54.000 I love that. 10 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:57.000 That's so cool. I do, too. So. 11 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Well, I am really looking forward to this conversation. So, yeah, let's get into it. 12 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:03.000 I'm Marty. 13 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:08.000 And I'm Bre. And this is Housing Voices. 14 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:14.000 From the porches and shelters, streets and the room. [VERIFY: theme lyric] 15 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:25.000 If the house had voices, the truth could break through. [VERIFY: theme lyric] Bre: Welcome back to Housing Voices. 16 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:34.000 And today we have Dr. Ryan Noss here with us, the superintendent of the Corvallis School District. Welcome, and thank you for being here. 17 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:37.000 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the invite. 18 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:46.000 So will you do us a solid and just kind of give us your history and how you got to where you're at and all of that good stuff? 19 00:02:46.000 --> 00:03:51.000 Sure. So I'm the superintendent of the Corvallis School District, and this is year 11 in this position. Prior to that, I've had other positions in education, from teaching to being a principal, sort of all the way through. And about half of that time I was working in Lebanon. But throughout all that time, we've lived in Corvallis. So my wife Wendy and I have been in Corvallis for close to 25 years now. Both of our kids went through the Corvallis School District K–12 and graduated and are on to the next stages of life. So Corvallis is really, you know, for the period of time when I was working in Lebanon, it felt like my bedroom community. But then it really became my community community, which it has been for the last 11 years, because I get to both work in it and live in it. So I care deeply about the success of our community. 20 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:52.000 Awesome. 21 00:03:52.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Can you tell us, for folks who don't exactly know what a superintendent does, can you talk to us a little bit about kind of the functions of your job and what your day to day kind of looks like? 22 00:04:03.000 --> 00:06:02.000 Yeah. So I think it's funny because occasionally I'll get invited to a forum and it will be the mayor and the superintendent. And that's actually not right. It's actually, I'm more like the city manager, and my board is more like the mayor, with my board chair. And so my job is, I have a school board, so I have seven bosses, and their responsibilities are to hire and evaluate me, to adopt a budget, and adopt policy. Everything beyond that is my responsibility on the operations side. So everything from hiring, compliance with laws and guidelines, to high quality instruction in classrooms and making sure buses are running. Just everything that goes beyond the realm of policy and budget adoption is really my responsibility at the end of the day. So no two days look the same in my job. That's one of the reasons I really enjoy it, because honestly, there's something that I'm learning every day in this job that I haven't done yet, but now it's my responsibility to do. A great example of that is I just was at an event here at the district office recognizing that we had received a Travel Oregon grant that will help us reopen Osborn, because the school district owns Osborn Pool. [Osborn Aquatic Center] And so one of my other jobs is working on making sure that we can get that pool opened again. So you don't think of that necessarily as the job of a superintendent, but that's part of the role. So again, it's pretty multifaceted. The thing I enjoy the most in it is actually when I get to be in schools and in classrooms, seeing what kids and teachers are up to, because that's really where the magic is. My job is to make sure that those things can happen, and those things can happen well. 23 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:09.000 We have something in common, actually. I worked in special ed at the high school level when we lived down in Houston. 24 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:10.000 Okay. 25 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:16.000 So it was really nice to see that you were in special ed as well. And I was like, oh, wow. 26 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:22.000 So yeah, yep. I started my career in Tigard-Tualatin, teaching special education. [VERIFY: transcript read "Tiger Tool"] 27 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it takes a special person. So when did housing first start showing up on your desk as a problem, an issue, any of that? 28 00:06:35.000 --> 00:09:50.000 Yeah. So when we moved to Corvallis in around the year 2000, we looked at renting a place in town. And we looked around, we got some ideas about first and last on rent. We had a dog, so we added a pet deposit to it and a cleaning fee. And I thought, gosh, that's a lot of money. I wonder if we could actually just do a down payment on a house in town. And lo and behold, with a little additional support from my parents, we were able to put down a down payment on a house in town. A three-bedroom ranch that we were able to purchase, me as a third-year teacher and my wife as a surgical nurse in her third year. So that was our first experience in housing in Corvallis. That story can no longer be told. No doubt about it. No question. And so for me, the change to better understanding what I would consider a housing crisis in our community was when I stepped into this role, and when I started to think about employees and thinking about hiring employees, and hearing from them about how difficult it was for them to find housing. That was when I started to really pay more attention to it. Corvallis is pretty unique in our school district because we hire folks and they stay with us throughout their whole career. But I'd been doing human resources in another district where people come and go pretty regularly. It was not necessarily a place people stayed throughout their whole career. And so there, housing wasn't as much of an issue because people were more itinerant. Here, people want to be in Corvallis, they want to stay in Corvallis throughout their career. And so the need for housing and accepting jobs became something that I was attuned to, because people were trying to do both things. They were trying to get a job in Corvallis and stay for their career, and they were trying to find housing for them and their families to be able to do that. And that was not happening consistently. So that's probably where I started to have that experience. And then from there, over the last four to five years, just the decline in enrollment that we've seen has brought the need even closer for me, to better understand that we really do have significant need in housing availability. And it's going to take everybody working together to figure out how to fix that. And so I think it's sort of those three stories, right? The first one was, oh, it's not that difficult to find a house in Corvallis. Two, it's hard for people to find houses here who want to be here a long time with us. To three, we have too many schools because there's just not enough kids in our community. 29 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:59.000 Let's talk about the not enough kids in our... and Bre, I might be talking too much, but, oh, well, I talk too much sometimes. 30 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:00.000 That's why we're... 31 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:15.000 We have the microphones. That's it. Okay. All right. So with not enough kids in the schools, what do you think are the top three factors that are leading to that? 32 00:10:15.000 --> 00:11:20.000 The top two are pretty clear to me. One is housing availability and cost. I think the second factor is that folks just aren't having as many children. And both of these things aren't just Corvallis, but Corvallis has gone more quickly because of the two things in connection: the cost of housing and fewer people having kids. I don't know that there's a third necessarily. The third option is definitely not the same kind of driver. People think that there's more kids attending private and homeschool than some of these other options, and that kind of ebbs and flows, but not to the significant number that we've seen in terms of a reduction over time. So to me, really, the two key drivers are housing availability and affordability, and then birth rates. 33 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:38.000 How does Corvallis rate or balance with other communities of similar size, regarding the schools, reduction in students, and, you know, the necessity to close a couple of the schools? 34 00:11:38.000 --> 00:12:37.000 Yeah, I think what I'm seeing is a couple of things. So we were one of the first districts to do school consolidation. But right now, Portland just announced a significant closure and new boundaries affecting about 10,000 students, you know, 25% of their population. Salem's announcing their consolidation plan on Friday, and they'll have a board meeting next week. When I meet with superintendents, they're asking me how we did it, because they know that that's the reality that they're going to face, too. So they're trying to learn before they go into that process. Unless they're a small district and they just have maybe two schools, an elementary school and a junior-senior high, you can't really consolidate much there. But generally speaking, districts with a number of buildings are all having that conversation right now. 35 00:12:37.000 --> 00:13:38.000 And that's largely due to some of the factors that you brought up as well, but also changes in, you know, how we fund schools through the effects of Measures 5 and 50. And then we passed Measure 98, I think it was, for... is the Student Success Act as well. [VERIFY: Measure 98 (2016) is the High School Success measure; the Student Success Act is HB 3427 (2019)] So there's been a number of funding opportunities for schools. But something that we talked about on a previous podcast as well is that because of the housing situation, schools are not getting as much money as they did previously, because there's less money pulled in through property taxes. And obviously Measures 5 and 50 are keeping those property tax rates solid. Can you speak to that a little bit here in Corvallis, how we're doing kind of money-wise? And was that as big a part of the determination for school closures as declining enrollment and the like? 36 00:13:38.000 --> 00:16:19.000 Yeah, it was. So we were cutting, just off the top of my head, we cut about 8 million one year. The following year, we cut about 5 million. We were looking to cut another 3 million last year. And as you make those kinds of cuts, what you see happening is you see less programming and opportunities for students in schools. At the same time, we were having more blended classrooms, so like a second-third grade blend together, again because there were fewer students in those schools. And so there is just this component of distribution that changes as you have fewer students in schools. We had specialists, like a music teacher who was covering two schools because there weren't enough classrooms in one school to be a full schedule. So we were seeing a lot of that happen. And so we heard concerns from the community because, one, we had cut some of our programming as we'd made those cuts of 8 million and 5 million. And then we were also seeing that sort of diluted programming because there were just fewer kids in each one of our schools. So all those things led us to the decision to move into school consolidation, because even last year we were planning to cut another 3 million in our budget had we not gone through this process. So, yeah, the funding is definitely an impact for us. In Oregon, you're funded based on the number of students you have in your district. And so as that number goes down, less funding comes to us. One of the things I will say that I'm super appreciative of is that our community does have a local option levy, and that levy provides our community additional funds for schools, and that allows us to have some strong programming compared to our neighboring districts that don't have levies, which definitely provides greater opportunity for kids. So post-consolidation, in our elementary schools, kids have two days of PE, they have a day of music, they have a day of art, they have library time. We have STEM specialists who are also teaching lessons. So all those things are made possible, really, because of the levy, which is an additional opportunity that our community supports. 37 00:16:19.000 --> 00:17:17.000 It seems to a certain extent a lot of school districts may kind of be caught in, for lack of a better term, like a doom spiral, right? Where you are cutting programs, you're cutting staff, you're consolidating, which means, you know, less opportunity for increased enrollment because you don't have the extra classroom space or schools. And then that means you're pulling in less money from the state per student. And then, you know, you can kind of follow that logically, where it doesn't paint a good picture for the future of too many school districts across the state who are in this similar position. Do you think that we could address this by building more houses, or helping address it? From your point of view, from the schools, would that be a viable thing to help our schools at this point? Is more housing? 38 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:34.000 Yeah, I am a proponent of the addition of more housing in our community. I know that our community sort of is on the fence about that a lot of the time, where, yeah, it would be nice, but we don't necessarily want it in our backyard. 39 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:37.000 And so, NIMBYs. [VERIFY: transcript read "wembies"] 40 00:17:37.000 --> 00:18:01.000 So we do struggle in that decision. And at the same time, I think in a lot of ways, we're the canary in the coal mine as you think about our community as a whole. Once we have to start closing schools because we don't have vibrant communities full of kids, I think that says a lot. 41 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:17.000 And it says a lot for many factors, right? Why are our youth, or I call them youth because I feel like they're that young to me, but why aren't the young adults having children? Right? What has led to that decrease? Right? Because it's not just the cost of housing. 42 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:34.000 It's too expensive across the board. As somebody I know in that age group right here. Yeah, yeah, it's too expensive. Or then I have to pay child care, right, to keep my job. And it's $1,400 to $2,000 a month on average. And we're in a [child care] desert here in Corvallis, too. 43 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:37.000 I'm right here. I could grab those babies and hold them. 44 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:38.000 With all the time that you have. 45 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:43.000 I'm sure I'd find time. Yeah. Okay. Kids are my favorite people. 46 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:59.000 But I mean, you bring up a great point. I think that that is true. That is definitely a deterrent for folks to have more kids. So, I mean, there's not one driver that's going to change this whole system. 47 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:14.000 It's not. Because I can remember Ed, my husband, and I were looking at how much it cost us to go to university. What was the cost per credit? And when he first started, I think it was like $45 a credit hour. And we were like, what in the world? Was that right? 48 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:16.000 That's a cheap dinner out now. 49 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:43.000 Yeah, wow. But now our children, right, they're not getting $45 per credit hour for a math class. Right? And so that's part of the problem, right? And I think that that's what we really need for everybody to understand. It's not simply that the housing is not affordable. So is the cost of education. So is the cost of all of the things, because they're not rising at the same proportion as wages, for sure. 50 00:19:43.000 --> 00:20:23.000 And in addition to the education workforce, the teachers that do such an incredible job, there also are our bus drivers, you know, the classified staff, custodians, and all of the folks that help keep a school and a school district running. They also are existing in this expensive housing market and then, you know, expensive economy across the board. Can you speak a little bit to the workforce angle? Not just the educators, but everybody else who kind of keeps the school district running. How are they dealing with this environment? 51 00:20:23.000 --> 00:22:23.000 So before I go to that, one thing, I want to take us on a little bit of a tangent. I was at a grocery store not too long ago, maybe the weekend before last, and I saw four CSD employees in that grocery store as well. So there were like five of us who are all being paid to educate kids, and we're all in this grocery store putting money back into the local economy. And so it made me think a lot about this other layer of housing and being able to live in Corvallis, and where you're able to spend your dollars, and whether or not you're able to spend your dollars in your community. And so I just don't want to lose that, because I think sometimes people forget about all the ripples that come from folks not being able to live in the community where they work. And that's one for us. In fact, even in our collective bargaining agreements, we have a stipulation for folks who work in the district to be able to have their kid in the school they're at. Because again, we're recognizing that you may have to live in Albany but work in Corvallis, but we want you to be able to have your kid at your school with you, because that alone is an additional deterrent, or time away. So again, trying to accommodate and recognize that those are the realities for folks. I think for our classified staff, it's even more challenging to find housing in our community. And I think unless you have a spouse who has a higher-paying position in the community, then it's difficult for you to... 52 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:26.000 Have you lost candidates at all due to the... 53 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:31.000 Sorry, did I steal your thunder? No, I'm sorry, I'm just going in a different tangential way. 54 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:32.000 Oh, I'm sorry. 55 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:34.000 No, please, go for it. It's important. 56 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:45.000 Has that happened? Because I've heard anecdotally that there were some medical professionals that were going to be hired at the hospital, I believe, that said no because of our housing situation. 57 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:51.000 Yeah, I've heard about that scenario more with them than with us. 58 00:22:51.000 --> 00:23:17.000 I'd like to take a step back and think about the kids that are going to school here and those that are without permanent and stable housing. What is the percentage of that, would you say, that you're kind of seeing in the Corvallis School District? How is that being handled? What special programs and things are provided for kids who are housing insecure? 59 00:23:17.000 --> 00:25:31.000 Yeah. So during a typical school year we'll have 200 to 300 students that have housing insecurity at some point during the school year. For us, that is anything from doubling up, meaning two families living together, to lacking shelter. So it's a broad continuum for us, and we have folks in all of those situations. We have a group of family support liaisons in our school district that work closely with families to address housing needs. We have a strong public schools foundation that provides additional resources, because sometimes it's a matter of paying a gas bill for somebody to be able to be free and clear of that and able to move back into housing, or to be able to stay because they were able to make that payment. Gas vouchers, making sure that folks have food. We work with families even to the point where, if we learn through the city of an opportunity for an apartment that has a couple of open spaces, we help to identify families to refer on. Our family support liaisons help to do that. So we do a considerable amount of work in that area. And that's just locally, decisions that we make about the way we use our funds. Federally, there's a program called McKinney-Vento, and that means that students continue to stay in the school that they were last at. And so that also means that we're transporting kids from other communities around us to school every day so they can maintain that positive relationship that they have with their teacher and peers. So different layers, for sure. But having a good partner with the Corvallis Public Schools Foundation allows us to do more in that regard. 60 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:38.000 Awesome person over there at the Corvallis Public Schools Foundation. She's pretty fantastic. She's a friend of mine. 61 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:56.000 I love to hear that, though, especially as somebody who experienced housing instability when I was in school. The ramifications are deep for families and students in school. I couldn't focus on my homework very well because I was working, because my family needed the money. Right. 62 00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:04.000 Well, and one of the things that I really appreciate that Corvallis Public Schools does is they provide lunch, free lunch. Is that still the case? 63 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:05.000 Yeah. And breakfast. 64 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:17.000 And breakfast. Right. Because kids can't learn if they're hungry, right? If their stomach's growling, there's no way the education or information is going to get into their heads. Right? Because you have to survive. 65 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:18.000 Yeah. 66 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:24.000 Well, and I know that that was a change that was made underneath you, because it was during the time since I've lived here. 67 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:25.000 Yeah. 68 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:28.000 That happened when my kids were in school at the time. 69 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:34.000 What kind of society are we if we can't even provide for our kids to have food? But that's me getting on my soapbox, and I will keep it moving. 70 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:35.000 Keep it moving. All right. 71 00:26:35.000 --> 00:27:20.000 I want to kind of move us a little bit back towards housing. We had a conversation recently with 1000 Friends of Oregon, talking about the support that they do for cities in their housing needs analysis, the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. And they talk about supporting these cities in this needs analysis, that, you know, cities are given this task of what this housing situation is, essentially. I'm simplifying it down a lot here. Have you been part of that in Corvallis? Has the school district been an active part of the housing conversations at all thus far? 72 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:45.000 Locally, not with the organization that you're describing, but we have had conversations with Oregon State, with Boys & Girls Club, with the city, with HP. So coming together and talking about community housing and availability. We have been in conversations with those groups over a handful of years at this point. 73 00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:48.000 Can you give us a little bit of information on that? 74 00:27:48.000 --> 00:28:15.000 Yeah, I mean, I think in that case, we mostly have been talking about employee housing. And again, because of the scenario you brought up about people deciding not to take a position with their organization, or having to commute into town. I hear these numbers that are staggering about how many people drive into Corvallis to work every day, 20 to 30,000. 75 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:17.000 Yeah, it's about 30,000 every day. 76 00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:24.000 Yeah. That's wild. But if you're heading out on 34, you see it. 77 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:36.000 Oh, yeah, I drive to Lebanon for work. There was an accident actually the other day on 34, and the traffic was backed up for miles. It was insane. 78 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:39.000 Yeah, I can see that. 79 00:28:39.000 --> 00:29:05.000 Well, what was interesting is when we were talking to 1000 Friends a couple days ago, I don't know what it was, but it was recently, they talked about the biggest impact to global warming is our cars, right? And so here we are having 30,000 people driving in every day, right? Because we don't have enough housing and services and things to support them. So it's also relating to the environment as well. 80 00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:07.000 But it's not very climate friendly. 81 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:16.000 I would like to just ask you a couple questions with regards to workforce housing, right? And I liked your term: instead of closing the schools, the consolidation. Right. 82 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:17.000 Yeah. 83 00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:44.000 One of those schools is now being used for a similar purpose, if I remember. I think that one is Letitia Carson Middle School. [VERIFY: Marty's description of the building] I did see in the newspaper that some drills and things were being done there. Is that a possibility to turn that into, or, you know, redistribute that to being somewhat like workforce housing, or something like what the Boys & Girls Club has done? 84 00:29:44.000 --> 00:31:05.000 I think that at this point, we're not ready to move in that direction. And one of the reasons we're not is, when we met with our Long Range Facilities Planning Committee, who helped us to kind of get to the point where I started to come to the board with proposals on consolidation, we wanted to maintain the buildings for now, in hopes that things would change in our community and we would be able to reopen those spaces. And so something as significant as building housing would mean that it would potentially no longer have the opportunity to be a school. And so we're not ready to do that yet. But it has been something that people have asked about, and there has been a bit of discussion about it, but not anything significant beyond that. And you're right. Letitia Carson now has all of our early childhood special education programming, and all of our Head Start programs are in one space. And also COI [VERIFY: organization name — transcript read "coi"], which serves families as well. They have four preschool classrooms in that building, too. And so it's become an early childhood center. And it's almost full at this point, which is really fun to see. 85 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:11.000 Well, it's really important, right? Because the earlier kids get a firm start in their education and the joy of learning, right? 86 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:13.000 Yeah. 87 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:39.000 The better they're going to do and the higher they're going to thrive. And we want that for all of our kids, for sure. Share with us your perspective on the process of the consolidation. What were your greatest takeaways, learning-wise, on that? And if you were to tell yourself, oh, yeah, go and change this or that, what would you do differently? 88 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:57.000 So the whole process was really, really hard. Of my career, and this is year 27, it was the most difficult year that I've had. And I can't even think... like, COVID was far easier, frankly. 89 00:31:57.000 --> 00:31:59.000 Oh, boy. 90 00:31:59.000 --> 00:33:40.000 Than consolidation was. I think that where we landed is where we needed to land. The process to get there was challenging. One of the things that's hard about it is that you have to really make a decision by around November, because a million things have to happen once the decision is made: where teachers will be the following year, where kids will be the following year, how transportation will run, how programming will happen, because we moved to K–6s and seventh-eighth grade junior highs. All those things have to happen. And so you really have to make a decision by around November. I know Portland Public put out a date of December in the last couple of days for when they're going to make their final decision. And I think that's going to be really difficult for them to get everything done between then and the beginning of the school year. So that being said, I wish there would have been more time in between to continue to have conversations with community members, to better understand the proposals, to get more feedback along the way. But between summertime and getting to November, that is a narrow period of time. And so what I would change is I would have done more during the summer. Even though we know people are less available then, I think I would have tried to stretch out my timeline further. That's probably one of the things I would have changed. 91 00:33:40.000 --> 00:34:21.000 Because your school board, they had a really hard job, right? My kids were out of school by that time, so I was thankful and grateful for that. And a couple of your school board members are friends of mine. But hearing and reading, almost in some cases, abusive behavior by people in the community, because they were so passionate about, you know, the wants and the needs. How do you go back and care for them, and, you know, really take care of that? Because those are such important people in the community, because they're doing really hard, hard work. 92 00:34:21.000 --> 00:35:01.000 I think oftentimes I go to the emotional, caring side. But in this, I feel like what I can do is see this through in a way that we have a solid school year. We're going to have bumps along the way; that happens every year. But if it can feel more consistent or predictable, like a typical school year does, I feel like that's sort of the gift I can give, because it's the evidence that we did a hard thing and we've been able to do this out of that. And so that's really where my intention is. 93 00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:22.000 Yeah. Because reading some of those minutes, and going until like 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning for a school board meeting... nothing means more to a human than their child, right? So having passionate parents who care and who come and show up is also a blessing, right? Even when it's hard. 94 00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:40.000 And you mentioned the $200 million levy. [VERIFY: transcript read "200 billion dollar"; Ryan clarifies the $200M was the bond] Now that there have been schools closed, is that enough? Do you think maybe the next time around there needs to be more asked for, or less? How does that change? 95 00:35:40.000 --> 00:36:26.000 So there's two things. The bond was the 200 million, and that went towards construction. The levy is on a five-year renewal cycle, and that just goes towards operations. So that goes towards additional teaching positions, additional career and technical education support, extracurriculars, music, and art. So that levy doesn't do anything to the buildings themselves. It just means that we have more people and more opportunities in schools. And so that one is concentrated. Yeah, it's not about buildings at all. It's about what happens in the building. And that actually is on the November ballot for renewal. 96 00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:57.000 Yeah. As we continue, I guess I'm maybe asking you to prognosticate a little bit here, because our money is not going as far as it used to, as we're seeing a lot of rising, you know, labor costs. You have to pay teachers more so that they can, you know, live in the communities. Everything costs more, essentially. Do you see that... if this passes, I guess you've got five years from November, correct? 97 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:05.000 It would start in July. The current one ends June 30th. Yeah. 98 00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:41.000 That's something that I've always appreciated about Corvallis since we moved here, is that things for the schools always pass. And knock on wood, I'm knocking on my kitchen table, that that continues. So closing schools saves money, but it can make things a little bit less attractive. What are some of the trade-offs that you think having to make these hard choices is having, not only on our current students and families, but also on the growth of the city, and the staff, and how many staff and instructors you lost in the process? [VERIFY: last phrase, transcript read "to do those in the process"] 99 00:37:41.000 --> 00:39:55.000 So we didn't lose as many teachers, because one of the things that happens when you do school consolidation, if you keep your class size ranges the same, you still need the same number of teachers, because you'd have the same number of kids. Where the savings is, is that you have fewer, oftentimes, classified staff or fewer principals, as an example. So you have fewer positions that aren't teaching positions in your system when you do school consolidation. And so we didn't lose many teachers beyond what we would lose because we're in declining enrollment. The biggest change was in all these other positions that went away. And so that, for us, was what happened. I think that long term, what it means for us locally is that we have strong programming in our schools that parents and families, I think, are excited about, or should be excited about, because again, that levy allows us to do more things here locally in our schools than many districts across the state. The challenge has been the families that have gone through the consolidation, and how they feel about the district and how they feel about the decision. That's the part that takes time. And in some cases, I don't know that you ever get back to the same place you were relationally with folks when something like that has happened. I speak with other colleagues, superintendents, who've gone through the same thing, and they say, yeah, people just never forget that you had to do that thing. So in some cases that will never change. But at the same time, being consistent over time and trying to provide good educational opportunities locally is what I can do to try to address that as best I can. But I think that's the group that is impacted into the future: those families that have had to make that transition. 100 00:39:55.000 --> 00:40:20.000 As a community leader, and as someone who has identified that housing affordability is a problem, not just for the teachers and staff but for the community and children as a whole, how are you advocating for increased housing viability here in Corvallis, and how do you use your position to make a difference? Because you are influential. 101 00:40:20.000 --> 00:41:39.000 I think telling the story like this. The story I tell is that when, and everybody's probably heard this story now, but when HP came in the '70s, the community decided it didn't want to grow. And so it worked really hard to avoid growth. I mean, in the November election, there'll be two changes to the Corvallis charter related to the number of councilors and the length of terms. That was an intentional decision, to have nine councilors on two-year terms, because that would slow down any sort of progress. We are still trying to get out of those old patterns. Voter-approved annexation is another great example, where we've again tried to limit growth in our community. Because again, what I shared earlier, we're sort of on the fence about this whole growth thing, about this whole housing thing as a community, because we sort of want it, but we really don't necessarily want it. And so it's this rub that happens, and so it makes it even more difficult to get out of the decisions that put us here in the past. 102 00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:52.000 What do you think that you would like for people to best understand about housing, schools, and the changes that they could help make? 103 00:41:52.000 --> 00:42:57.000 I think first and foremost, it's not easy. You can't just wish it to happen, or even will it to happen. It's going to take concerted work on the part of a number of people within the system to see change happen. I think that the theory that by building more apartments, college kids will move and open up housing that's been, you know, rented by five college kids for the last 10 to 12 years, I think that's a step in the right direction. But I also think we need some additional mid-level housing in our community. I think we are making progress, specifically around affordable housing and apartments. And at the same time, I think that there's a whole other housing inventory that we need to work on. 104 00:42:57.000 --> 00:43:43.000 I appreciate that, because we've spoken on our podcast about the continuum of housing and how people really need to move through it and then kind of come back around, right? So that our seniors don't stay in these big houses because of the affordability of trying to find something smaller. So we really appreciate that. Now it's time for my favorite question. All right, Dr. Ryan Noss, you now have a magic wand. And you get to say what you really want to see changed. But more importantly, too, what can people do to affect that change, as to how it's going to help the housing situation, the students, and the teachers at the Corvallis School District? 105 00:43:43.000 --> 00:46:06.000 Yeah, I think one thing is telling our story. I think telling the story of the good things that happen in our schools. I think that we in Corvallis have really phenomenal people working in our schools, and we have great families supporting our schools, and a whole community that supports public education. At the same time, I don't think that that story gets told often enough, and I understand it, because people don't get to see it through my eyes. Every couple of days, I'm in buildings and get to see what's happening there. I think we have really good things happening in our schools, and I think sometimes we lose sight of that. In terms of a community, we're really fortunate to be able to live here, because when we decided where we were going to buy a house or live, there was a short list for Oregon of places we were really thinking about, and Corvallis was one of those. And that's where we ended up. And so I like that. I also know that that's something that I need to share with other people, including, you know, my kids. I'd want my kids to be able to buy a house in Corvallis and have it be affordable enough that they're able to do that. So I think that sharing what that vision could be for our community is really important. So I would wish people better understood the challenges we face and the influences that impact the decisions that are being made to either grow our community or not grow our community. And I think frank and honest conversations about what we really want are pretty important, because I do think that we kind of want both things. We want it to be a quaint community that we hold onto, and we also want it to be thriving. And I think it can be both things, but I think people see it as one or the other, and I think that's where we run into trouble. 106 00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:35.000 I'm really glad that you brought up also kind of the true need for housing, and what our students are facing in the classroom as well, because I think a lot of people do see Corvallis specifically as a very kind of quaint and idyllic college town. But we also have a lot of need, and I think a lot of people do not see the full spectrum of how many people do need support in our city. 107 00:46:35.000 --> 00:47:06.000 And because you didn't, I'm just gonna plug it, guys. If you're watching this and you live in Corvallis, please vote for the levy to continue the help of our children, because they are our future, and they will be putting us into our retirement homes. Yeah. You know, so if you only do it for selfish reasons, do it for that, but really do it for the sake of the kids. So that would be my magic wand for you, Ryan. And we really appreciate you coming on our podcast. Thank you for talking with us and taking your time out. It helps. 108 00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:17.000 Yeah. Well, thank you for your work and sharing these stories, because I do think these stories need to be told, and for people to better understand the realities we face. 109 00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:20.000 We do. Thank you so much. I'm Marty. 110 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:22.000 And I'm Bre. 111 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:27.000 And thanks for joining us at Housing Voices. Have a good day. 112 00:47:27.000 --> 00:48:12.000 Bre (outro): A special thanks to our partners MartyFulford.com and Cynit.net for supporting thoughtful dialogue around housing in our communities. Music for Housing Voices is provided by Karen DeWolfe and Adrian Kriz. Thank you for helping us set the tone. You can find us at housingvoices.com and connect with us under Housing Voices on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, TikTok, and our YouTube channel. If you found value in today's conversation, share this episode, follow the show, and help us expand the dialogue. Until next time, this is Bre. Let's keep listening, keep learning, and keep building practical housing solutions together.