San Diego USD is Deal of the Year

See the moment San Diego Unified School District won The Bond Buyer's 2016 Deal of the Year award.

SPEAKER 1: Bonfire's 2016 Deal of the Year Award goes to the San Diego Unified School District.

LEE: I'm kind of speechless. Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge. Thanks, guys for coming up here. This is the team, and I think I'm going to let each one of them say a word or two because they really deserve all the credit for this. They really made this happen. Thank you.

YOUNG: Thank you, Lee. I'm Mark Young. I'm the district's financial adviser. I just want to say thank you to Jenny Salkeld. She's a CFO. She works with the CFO of the district. She was the controller when this initiative started five years ago in 2011. A board member made a comment and we got downgraded. We said, "This is wrong. We have to change the way ratings are done on school district GOs in California." For the last five years, we had an initiative to do this, and we've changed the market in California. Jenny Salkeld, the CFO of San Diego Unified School District was the leader who led it. I wish she was here. She's off on a great mission. She's CFO to High-Tech High, and doing a lot of good stuff. The rest of the district is behind this initiative and we're loving the benefits, the low interest rates and everything, and this is just the combination of five years of lots of hard work. Thank you for the recognition and the appreciation. I love the Bond Buyer.