Dear Canutillo Familia,
I hope you had a restful summer break and that you’ve stayed cool during this intense heat. Hot weather or not, it’s time to get back to school and I’m excited to see all the hard work from the summer preparation start to pay off. Teachers come back to work on Monday and on behalf of the Board of Trustees I want to welcome them and wish them an amazing school year.
Trustees on Monday will get back to work, too. The Board will have a special meeting to discuss some very important topics. Chief among them is our enrollment and attendance. As I mentioned earlier this month, the District is facing a difficult funding cycle and we must find savings of about $3 million. The state is not stepping in to help us so it is up to us as a District to find a solution to our funding situation.
To that end, the Board will study student enrollment and attendance. As you may know, state funding is tied to average daily attendance. In other words, the more students are enrolled and attending class, the more funding the state will send us to educate them.
A recent demographic study of the District found that a significant number of students who live within the Canutillo ISD geographic boundaries attend school outside of our district. These are students that belong to us and we have to find a way to attract them back to our schools. I am very much interested in engaging with these students and their families to learn what we can do to welcome them back.
Additionally, we have to do a much better job of making sure the students who are enrolled in our schools are actually showing up to class. Our attendance rates have fallen in the years after the pandemic closures and that’s impacting our funding. Our schools keep working with parents to let them know that every day of learning counts. However, that message is not resonating and it is impacting our resources.
If you have any ideas that can help us, I invite you to attend the meeting and participate. Together we can get through this challenge. I hope to see you there. The meeting is at 6 p.m. on Monday at the CISD Boardroom.
Have a great weekend, Canutillo!
Patsy Mendoza
President, Board of Trustees