Sunspot Scholarship Deadline Approaching

The Sunspot Community Center is pleased to offer a one-year (renewable) scholarship in the amount of $500 ($250 per semester) to Cloudcroft High School students.  We will give preference to students planning a career in science or engineering.  Scholarship recipients must attend an accredited U.S. college or university as a full time student and maintain a 3.0 grade point average. 

Funds will be distributed by the Sunspot Community Center, and this scholarship is renewable for a total of four years ($250/each semester) providing the scholarship winner maintains the 3.0 grade point average and submits Renewal Application form.

Turn in the application forms to Mrs. Lisa Morales before 3 PM April 5, 2013.

Regular School Board Meeting for March 19, 2013

Here is the agenda for the meeting.

Here is an article that appeared in the Alamogordo Daily News.

Here is a list of the Budget Committee members provided at the meeting.

The podcast is available at http://cmsbears.podbean.com

Here is the article from the Mountain Monthly

PEDs Grading System Shot Down in Senate

Here is an interesting article from today's Alamogordo Daily News.

Our Superintendent has said many times that the grading system penalizes Cloudcroft because our lower ranked students are functioning at a higher level than most other school's lower ranked students. He has also voiced his frustration at the lack of clarity as to how the grades are determined.

Weekly Superintendent's Report for March 1, 2013

Sequestration:  While I wouldn’t even want to try and explain this federal issue I just received word from Region IX (this is the organization that provides ancillary services for some of our students in the special education program) they were just notified to expect a 5% decrease in funding for their Head Start program.  That has no impact on Cloudcroft Municipal Schools, however, it might give us some idea of what we might expect in terms of decreased federal dollars.  We currently receive two forms of federal funds:  Title I and Title II.  Title I is earmarked for reading and math intervention and is only provided to schools who have minimum of 35% of the student population on free and reduced lunch.  Currently only our elementary meets this criteria.  This current fiscal year we received approximately $76,000 and 5% would be a decrease of approximately $3800 leaving an estimated $72,200.  We currently are paying two educational assistance out of Title I (salaries and benefits) and if this projection is correct we could remain to budget both of these positions.  Title II: we use for professional development, which is provided by Region IX.  This current year we received approximately $17,000 and 5% would be $850 so would plan on receiving approximately $16,150.  Really for us not an incredibly large amount that we could absorb.  Just in case someone asks you, right now it does mean a possible decrease but something we could withstand without making cuts in staffing.  The more and more news reports I hear that discuss the impact to education are really going to be felt at the university level and most likely in terms of research projects.

·        Drug Testing:  We had a round of drug testing for both drivers and students.  No issues to report!

·        K – 3 PLUS:  This is a grant program that PED has been rolling out over the last year.  The grant is designed to provide 25 additional days of instruction for students in K – 3 specifically targeted at reading and math skills.  The issue for me is that we currently have a program that includes students K – 6 and it lasts much longer that 25 days which is funded by United Way.  My concern is that if we apply and receive the state grant we would have to scale back or eliminate our current summer program without any guarantee that these state funds would continue.  The stance I am taking is that we already have a stable summer program in place and I do not feel comfortable taking a risk of state funds drying up and completely losing out summer program.  Let me know if you have any questions about this.

·        Declining Student Enrollment:  This is the area in which we should all be concern.  All public schools in New Mexico are funded based on student enrollment.  Then operational budget is based on the student enrollment from the previous school year and is calculated as the average between the number of student enrolled on the 80^th and 120 day count.  Each student is then multiplied by what is called the unit value.  Our operational budget last year was based on the overall student number of 389.  This upcoming budget will be based on 365.5 (average of 368 and 363) which is basically a loss of 23.5.  Since Sharlotte is beginning to work on next years budget she did some rough estimates in order to get some idea of where we can expect our budget next fiscal year.  According to these rough calculations, and assuming the unit value doesn’t change, we are preparing for a decrease of approximately $213,250.  Keep in mind these funds are directly out of the operational budget.  Keep in mind our total budget was $3,491,142.83 which does seem like a huge sum of money, however, when you consider that around 75 – 80% of this will go out to salaries and benefits there really isn’t much of the overall amount left.  You will be hearing a considerable amount of information in this in the coming weeks/ months.