Students ask ‘why’



STAFF REPORT

SAN LUIS — “This district is strapped literally from payroll to payroll with low cash flow,” Centennial Superintendent Mark Maksimowicz said during a special meeting of the school board this week.

“We are barely making payroll and paying bills, and we have got to be able to do some things to get out from under it.”

Maksimowicz, who will be with the district until next summer, has vowed to leave the district in a fiscally sound position with tools in place to prevent the recurrence of financial crises in the district in the future.

In the meantime, the district board is looking at staff and supply cuts and will make a decision on those cuts next week.

Many students, staff and community members have had questions about the Centennial district’s financial crisis, and several students and one parent provided the board with a list of written questions following the board’s October meeting in which the public was informed of the need to make major cuts.

During the meeting this week Centennial School Board Member Charlie Jaquez Jr. read those questions and the board’s answers.

Following are those questions and answers in a condensed form:

1. QUESTION: Why was this financial issue not addressed before the school year started?

ANSWER: ... because the school board was not aware of the severity of the situation until mid-September after the Colorado Department of Education completed an informal audit of the general fund. CDE accountants found that our expenditures (bills and costs to be paid) are increasing while our revenue (money available to operate the district) is decreasing ...

2. QUESTION: Where are the funds going to pay the teachers?

ANSWER: The funds to pay teachers come from the General Fund. Money for the General Fund is determined by the state ... based on the number of students attending the district ... About 48 percent of the General Fund money comes from local property taxes, paid by persons from southern Costilla County, and the remaining 52 percent comes from the State Income Taxes paid by the citizens of Colorado.

3. QUESTION: Is there anything that students and parents could do to help the issue?

ANSWER: Parents can attend parent-teacher conferences, open house, sports events, fund-raisers, music programs, and workshops for parents. You can volunteer ... Make school a high priority. Students can faithfully attend school; take pride in your school, and work to achieve as much as you can.

4. QUESTION: As a high school student, am I assured that I will get all my credits to graduate after making teacher cuts in the middle of the year? Will I be forced to resort to online programs to make up the unfinished credits? If not, will the credit requirement be lowered?

ANSWER: Students are assured that their credits will not be in jeopardy. The possibility of getting on-line credits is being looked at. Credit requirements for graduation will not be lowered.

5. QUESTION: The nicest things that I have seen in classrooms, to be honest, teachers have bought themselves.

ANSWER: It is true that teachers buy many classroom items themselves ... We appreciate their open willingness to give of their time and money.

6. QUESTION: I’m not sure that much staff including teachers, office staff, cooks/custodians and other people that are necessary to run a school are going to want to apply to work here next year ... in an unstable environment such as this.

ANSWER: We hope to achieve a stable school environment so that students will want to come to school here and so that teachers will want to teach here where they are valued and nurtured.

7. QUESTION: If they change my class schedule in the middle of the year, and I’m not able to finish the full credits that I started in the beginning of year, why wouldn’t I want to check out of this school district? ... The strongest tools that we have for our education is the strong staff that we have now, and that is being taken away from us.

ANSWER: If you believe that you are better served by going elsewhere then you do what you must do. It is obvious that you care so we hope that you will stay with us and make this a better school ... There is a lot that is good at Centennial.

8. QUESTION: Are there any laws against laying off so many staff in the middle of the school year?

ANSWER: (No.) The staff and the district have a Master Contract article that prohibits such layoffs; however, that article is currently being negotiated out of the contract because the district cannot afford the costs of keeping all of the staff that we currently have.

9. QUESTION: Is this just the state’s way of getting our school to shut itself down?

ANSWER: The state is committed to working and cooperating with us to make Centennial the best that it can be.

10. QUESTION: I keep hearing that the reason we are in so much debt is because of bad spending.

ANSWER: The district is in financial trouble, not because of bad spending, but because of over-spending. A dollar spent for education is a dollar well spent; however, we can only spend what we have ...

11. QUESTION: We shouldn’t have to layoff anyone. All of this should have been taken care of before the school year had even begun.

ANSWER: We could not have taken care of this before school started because we were not aware of the seriousness of the issue. This spring we came to realize that our previous administration had lost its grasp on the financial position of the district. We made a change in administration only to find out that ‘the district was in very serious financial trouble ... We are sincerely motivated to provide the best teaming environment that we can afford .... These are dire times in this country and in this district. To the students and community, we ask for your help and prayers.