Monday - August 31, 2009
Good morning! I hope you had a great first week of school and I know all of you were probably ready for the weekend. The first week is always exciting, but also stressful. Yet we had a great start of school! Our enrollment on the first day of school this year compared to the first day of school last year was up by 3387 students. Our enrollment by the end of the week was 90,443 students which is still short of our projected enrollment for base day of 90,556. Remember that we will continue to grow through the end of September, and our Resource Planning Department is still saying we will exceed our original enrollment projection by 1000 to 1200 students. This would put us somewhere between 91,500 and 92,000 students. This is certainly more than we expected, but we continue to see growth even in this economy. Thanks to Rafael Salazar, Director of Transportation, and all the staff in our Transportation Department for the great job they did the first week of school. Transporting almost 50,000 students twice a day is no easy task and we had very few issues regarding our bus transportation. Our Child Nutrition Department, under the direction of Thomas Wherry, did a great job serving breakfast and lunch in all our schools. Our schools were clean, well-maintained, and welcoming to all our students and I especially want to thank all our custodial staff and maintenance staff for all their work. And, I always say that once the teachers are there and the classrooms are set up it looks great! From everyone I have talked with I have heard nothing but good things about the start of school last week and I want to thank everyone in the district for doing such a great job. We certainly showed the "heart of Northside!" Also last week I received some great news! Maricela Alarcon, a fifth grade teacher at Beard Elementary School, was named one of the three finalists for the Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year Program. Three elementary and three secondary teachers were selected from the 39 regional Teachers of the Year from each of the state's 20 regional education service centers. In the press release by TEA, Maricela stated: "As a student, I overcame language and socioeconomic barriers as a result of parent and teacher motivation. Through my experiences, my goal is to offer every child access to what is possible. Passion, determination, desire, commitment, and making a difference in young people's lives - these are the qualities that fuel me." What a great statement, and we all join together in congratulating Maricela Alarcon on being a finalist for the Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year. This past week our Board of Trustees adopted our budget for the 2009-10 year. Developing the budget and preparing it for adoption are approximately six-month processes that require many budget work sessions with staff and several budget work sessions with the Board of Trustees. I am very proud of the fact that we finished this last budget year in the "black" and we have developed a budget for this year that is a balanced budget and will not reach into fund balance. This certainly is not easy given the many challenges we have as a district. The only factors increasing our budget this year are the compensation package and the growth we are experiencing. Even though we would have liked for the compensation package to be more, we are happy to be able to provide a 2% increase for administrators, classified, and auxiliary. And for teachers we were able to provide 1.5% + $955 which equated to a 3.6% increase. I am still concerned about the mandated $955 from the state since the only new money the state provided was federal stimulus money which will not be here in two years. My concern then will be how to continue to fund the mandated salary increase. The compensation package is a cost of $16.2 million; growth will cost an additional $10.6 million; and start-up costs for new schools are about $12.4 million. In total our operational budget is $688.8 million of which 87.8% is for salaries. On a percentage basis 64.3% of budget is for instruction, 8% instructional leadership, 12% for maintenance and custodial services, 13% for student services, 1.8% for administration costs, and all other about 1%. When we add Child Nutrition, Debt Service, Special Revenue Funds, and Capital Projects our total budget for Northside is $1.088 billion. I want to thank George Torres, Deputy Superintendent for Business and Financial Services, and Oscar Cardenas, Assistant Superintendent for Budget and Finance, and their staff, as well as our Board of Trustees, for their great work in developing this budget during the economic times we are experiencing. Next year will be a challenge as we develop the budget for 2010-11, but then it will be imperative that the Legislature address the issue of funding in the 2011 session. In closing I want to mention that the University Interscholastic League is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year. A part of this celebration was an activity in which 100 students were selected from across the state of Texas to participate in a centennial workshop and celebration. These students were representative of all activities sponsored by the UIL and were called the Elite 100. I saw several of these students in a presentation this summer at the UIL Legislative Council Meeting. We had seven students attend from Northside schools:
Thanks again for all you do to make the start of school so successful for our students. You are the "Heart of Northside." Have a great week! |
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