Colleagues,

I know most of you are enjoying your time away from work on spring break, but it’s important to me that I keep you informed of our progress toward developing a budget for the 2017-18 school year. Yesterday, I gave our Board members a first look at some of the highlights in our initial budget proposal. For the first time in years, we are presenting a balanced budget without any funding increases from the county.

Thanks to the strong commitment from our County Commissioners to support students last year and the continuing efforts of our Finance team to identify efficiencies, prioritize spending and strengthen our overall budgeting processes, we are more financially stable as a District than at any point since the merger.

Over the past year, we’ve been able to redirect almost $60 million in savings to support schools. Now, as we look forward to 2017-18, I am recommending unprecedented investments for our teachers, students and schools – nearly $50 million dollars in total.

Just as we did a year ago, we leaned on teachers, school leaders, parents, community leaders, lawmakers and even students to help us establish funding priorities. This feedback has been extremely valuable as we worked to identify investments that will have the greatest impact on student achievement.

Some of the investment highlights include:

• $11 million for teacher raises
• Expanded PD for teachers & school leaders
• More math & literacy interventionists
• More instructional coaches
• More behavioral specialists
• Academic transformation plans for 19 Critical Focus schools
• 20 Summer Learning Academies
• iZone expansion

View additional investment details here.

We’ve realized considerable savings by promoting school choice to recruit new students and attract former students back to our District since last summer. In fact, we started the year with approximately 1,000 more students than projected. Though we’ve mitigated enrollment declines, we are still projecting a 2-percent decline in enrollment for 2017-18. This impacts about 94 teaching positions across the District, but I am proposing over $2 million in this budget to guarantee that no teacher in a position impacted by enrollment loses their job.

Schools are currently following the standard annual process of excessing positions during budget checkout due to lower enrollment projections, but I want to emphasize again that my intention is for no teacher in one of these positions to lose their job. I not only recognize the strain of the excessing process, but I also understand the value of having qualified teachers available and ready to fill any vacancies that may arise. Additionally, some educators whose positions are impacted may also have opportunities to serve in new interventionist roles as we look to increase support for high-need students and schools.   

We have additional meetings with our Board this month to finalize our budget and will hopefully remain on track for approval by the Board in April and County Commission before July 1.

I want to thank all of the educators, employees, families and community members who have provided input over the past few months. It is truly inspiring to see so many people come together with the same goals in mind – to support effective teaching and positive outcomes for our students.

You, our employees, are at the heart of this work, and I hope you know these investments are aimed at building on your strong work and the remarkable progress happening in our District. I will of course keep you informed of all developments as we continue to move through this process.

Sincerely,

Dorsey E. Hopson, II
Superintendent