Echoes from Cañon
I want to congratulate and thank Lincoln School of Science and Technology principal Tammy DeWolfe for her successful Safe Routes to School grant application! Ms. DeWolfe was recently notified we would receive this grant. Last fall Tammy put together a nearly $1 million grant application, including securing $572,000 in commitments from our Cañon City local government, to enable and encourage more kids to safely walk and bike to and from school. If you have been through the LSST neighborhood recently you have noticed there are very few sidewalks, safe crosswalks, and bike lanes for students and parents to utilize. This exciting project will greatly improve this situation.
The Pride Club will be hosting its annual hair drive on Tuesday May 9th at Cañon City High School. This open to anyone in the community willing to donate 8 inches or more of their locks (so much for my participation) in support of children with medical conditions who suffer hair loss. Local professional hair stylists will be working in the morning, and graduates from Tony & Guy will be cutting hair the afternoon. Appointments are 45 minutes long and hair dressers will be happy to provide any new style participants would like. This is a no cost event and anyone interested should contact Mr. Marushack at Cañon City High School.
I would also like to take a moment to thank Cañon City High School alternative to suspension coordinator and technology recycling teacher Ken Cline for allowing his students to step up to support the kids at Cañon Exploratory School by re-imaging quite a few out of date laptop computers. Doing so is allowing CES to sell these items to students and families to support future technology purchases at the school.
The Pride Club will be hosting its annual hair drive on Tuesday May 9th at Cañon City High School. This open to anyone in the community willing to donate 8 inches or more of their locks (so much for my participation) in support of children with medical conditions who suffer hair loss. Local professional hair stylists will be working in the morning, and graduates from Tony & Guy will be cutting hair the afternoon. Appointments are 45 minutes long and hair dressers will be happy to provide any new style participants would like. This is a no cost event and anyone interested should contact Mr. Marushack at Cañon City High School.
I would also like to take a moment to thank Cañon City High School alternative to suspension coordinator and technology recycling teacher Ken Cline for allowing his students to step up to support the kids at Cañon Exploratory School by re-imaging quite a few out of date laptop computers. Doing so is allowing CES to sell these items to students and families to support future technology purchases at the school.
CCHS musicians earned quite a bit of hardware at this year's Blossom Music Festival!
I had the pleasure of meeting last week with district literacy coordinator Gina Gallegos about progress our children have made as a result of Lindamood-Bell Seeing Stars intervention, based on beginning and end of year diagnostic reading assessments. I was especially intrigued to see how one of our 4th grade students, who at the beginning of the year showed reading comprehension below the 1st grade level (performing only at the 5th percentile) is now comprehending at almost the 7th grade level (at the 95th percentile). What great progress this child has made thanks to the hard work of our instructional staff!
It is wonderful to see five of our Cañon City High School tennis athletes have qualified for this year’s Colorado state tournament. Bailey Coccaccio, Avery Trainor, Jamie Hall, Sierra Londenberg, and Ally Means will represent us in doubles and singles respectively. Meanwhile our Lady Tiger soccer players will also begin first round state competition in Durango later this week.
Finally, how about that Cañon City High School Tiger Pride Band? Congratulations to Mr. Race and all his students for once again securing the Blossom Music Festival Sweepstakes Award! By the looks of the wonderful performance put forth by our combined middle school marching band, and by the number of students participating in it, Mr. Race will have plenty of talent to work with for years to come!
It is wonderful to see five of our Cañon City High School tennis athletes have qualified for this year’s Colorado state tournament. Bailey Coccaccio, Avery Trainor, Jamie Hall, Sierra Londenberg, and Ally Means will represent us in doubles and singles respectively. Meanwhile our Lady Tiger soccer players will also begin first round state competition in Durango later this week.
Finally, how about that Cañon City High School Tiger Pride Band? Congratulations to Mr. Race and all his students for once again securing the Blossom Music Festival Sweepstakes Award! By the looks of the wonderful performance put forth by our combined middle school marching band, and by the number of students participating in it, Mr. Race will have plenty of talent to work with for years to come!
The Focus of Our Work
Board vice-president Lloyd Harwood honors CCSD staff retirees at our annual ceremony.
Director of instruction Adam Hartman has been working diligently all year to guide our K-5 staff members through an elementary math resources adoption process.
In light of work we are doing implementing new K-5 literacy resources, good growth results we achieved K-5 in math based on spring 2016 state assessment results, and feedback received from K-5 teachers and adoption committee members, we have decided to proceed with a resource adoption decision now, while offering teachers the opportunity to be early adopters next year if they choose to implement them at that time. All other K-5 teachers will be welcome to teach one more year using our current resources before moving to fully supported implementation of our new resources during the 2018-19 school year.
Adam feels this soft roll-out will meet teacher need and allow us to develop some in-house expertise with the resource so we can best support all teachers once full implementation hits.
On another front, we have been working diligently to prepare a proposed budget for the 2017-18 school year in time for salary negotiations and our June 1st preliminary deadline. As a result of decreased pupil count, and an unanticipated reduction in our counted at-risk student population, we are expecting our end of fiscal year 2017 revenues to come in at roughly $240,000 below what we anticipated. This means the first step in our budgeting process will be to take into account how we'll make up for those lost revenue dollars.
At our Superintendent’s Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday our directors discussed this situation in detail and have already been attacking the problem head on. As of right now we anticipate receiving in the neighborhood of $550,000 in new funding for next year, and will do all we can to create a budget that allows us to achieve our instructional and personnel salary goals, while also attending to our most pressing facilities needs. A big help for the coming year could be the passage of the Rural Sustainability Act. This legislation could result in nearly three quarters of a million dollars in one-time operations funding allowing us to purchase updated learning resources and address operations issues. We expect to know by Wednesday May 10th how both the School Finance Act and Rural Sustainability Act fared.
One other budget area we have been forced to deeply consider is federal programs funding. Unfortunately we have yet to receive clear guidance from CDE about how many dollars we can anticipate receiving for next school year. Thus, we have had to simply guess based on last year’s funding and news we have heard coming out of Congress. We first developed a preliminary budget that spent all anticipated funding on staff salaries, with a $10,000 overrun. Unfortunately, this would have required us to eliminate the traditional indirect cost funding that supports our general fund, and all programs related to it. As a result, we are taking a much closer look at what we can afford to do with our dollars, with our main goal being to limit any impact our decisions might have on the instruction of kids. As everyone must live within their means, we simply need to build a federal programs budget that plans for spending of only the dollars we will actually receive. It would be extremely helpful if we could just know what that amount will be.
In light of work we are doing implementing new K-5 literacy resources, good growth results we achieved K-5 in math based on spring 2016 state assessment results, and feedback received from K-5 teachers and adoption committee members, we have decided to proceed with a resource adoption decision now, while offering teachers the opportunity to be early adopters next year if they choose to implement them at that time. All other K-5 teachers will be welcome to teach one more year using our current resources before moving to fully supported implementation of our new resources during the 2018-19 school year.
Adam feels this soft roll-out will meet teacher need and allow us to develop some in-house expertise with the resource so we can best support all teachers once full implementation hits.
On another front, we have been working diligently to prepare a proposed budget for the 2017-18 school year in time for salary negotiations and our June 1st preliminary deadline. As a result of decreased pupil count, and an unanticipated reduction in our counted at-risk student population, we are expecting our end of fiscal year 2017 revenues to come in at roughly $240,000 below what we anticipated. This means the first step in our budgeting process will be to take into account how we'll make up for those lost revenue dollars.
At our Superintendent’s Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday our directors discussed this situation in detail and have already been attacking the problem head on. As of right now we anticipate receiving in the neighborhood of $550,000 in new funding for next year, and will do all we can to create a budget that allows us to achieve our instructional and personnel salary goals, while also attending to our most pressing facilities needs. A big help for the coming year could be the passage of the Rural Sustainability Act. This legislation could result in nearly three quarters of a million dollars in one-time operations funding allowing us to purchase updated learning resources and address operations issues. We expect to know by Wednesday May 10th how both the School Finance Act and Rural Sustainability Act fared.
One other budget area we have been forced to deeply consider is federal programs funding. Unfortunately we have yet to receive clear guidance from CDE about how many dollars we can anticipate receiving for next school year. Thus, we have had to simply guess based on last year’s funding and news we have heard coming out of Congress. We first developed a preliminary budget that spent all anticipated funding on staff salaries, with a $10,000 overrun. Unfortunately, this would have required us to eliminate the traditional indirect cost funding that supports our general fund, and all programs related to it. As a result, we are taking a much closer look at what we can afford to do with our dollars, with our main goal being to limit any impact our decisions might have on the instruction of kids. As everyone must live within their means, we simply need to build a federal programs budget that plans for spending of only the dollars we will actually receive. It would be extremely helpful if we could just know what that amount will be.
The Past Week
A display from the CCMS War of 1812 museum.
Last Sunday I traveled to Colorado Springs to present a breakout session on digital safety for students at the annual Parent Teacher Association state delegate convention. On Monday I visited the Cañon City Middle School War of 1812 museum display, met with district literacy coordinator Gina Gallegos, and then attended our annual staff retirement celebration. On Tuesday I started my day on KRLN Radio’s Morning Line, attended a superintendent advisory council meeting, attended a meeting about conducting a special education program study with our partners at Lindamood-Bell, and had a much needed touching base session with Fremont County director of human services Steve Clifton. On Wednesday we had our monthly central administration office staff meeting, I met with our operations staff employees, judged the Harrison PTO Chili Cook Off, and met with Pueblo Community College leaders about needed upgrades to the electrical system in our CCHS welding lab. On Thursday I met with RE-2 superintendent Rhonda Roberts, then with director of special services Lynnette Steinhoff, and I left work a little early to travel to Buena Vista to watch my son Stefan’s baseball team play. On Friday morning operations manager Jeff Peterson and I met with folks from the GE Johnson Construction Company to discuss preparations for the upcoming BEST board meeting where grant decisions will be made. I also met with literacy coordinator Gina Gallegos about literacy coach evaluations, and with several directors about our 2017-18 budgeting process.
This Week
This week we'll be celebrating Colorado Teacher Appreciation Week! On Monday I will be working in the office catching up on correspondence. We also have a board meeting and work session in the evening. On Tuesday I have quite a series of meetings including one with our probationary teacher support coach Jamie Davis, SAC, Lindamood-Bell (about next year’s support contract), Leadership Team, CCEA leaders, and folks interested in establishing a regional recreation center or YMCA in our community. On Wednesday I’ll meet with classified association leaders, attend some of the Cañon City High School delayed start professional development session, and catch up on year end office work. On Thursday I’ll attend the regional monthly Manager’s Lunch Meeting and a joint session of CCEA and classified association leaders to discuss budget issues before negotiating salaries. On Friday I’ll attend a regional superintendent meeting, and touch base with director of personnel Misty Manchester. I look forward to traveling to the San Luis Valley on Saturday to celebrate the college graduations of some of my former students, and of some dear friends, at Adams State University.
Thanks for listening once again.
George S. Welsh
Thanks for listening once again.
George S. Welsh