Farwell ISD News
By
Mike Read, Superintendent of Schools
I would like to take this opportunity and wish all of our patrons a happy and safe 4th of July! I encourage you to enjoy your time with family and friends as we celebrate our independence.
All of the offices at FISD will be closed on Friday, July 2 and Monday, July 5. We will return on Tuesday, July 6 at our regular time.
I would like to focus this article on two very important issues facing our school district this summer – our annual budget process and our water situation. I have been working on the creation of the 2010-2011 budget. It is always a challenge to create a budget in small schools. We are considered a “Chapter 42” district which means we live on a very tight budget. Any new money coming our way would be due to a spike in our enrollment. We have been blessed this past year with the addition of 20-25 kids. Keep your fingers crossed as we prepare for the 10-11 school year that we can maintain our numbers.
The first step to our budget process is calculating our estimated revenues over the next school year. To do this, we must rely on a series of financial templates generated by the Texas Education Agency (TEA),and those guide us toward the creation of our revenue estimate. At the current time, I am working on the 13th version of the TEA financial template. Because our state’s finance system is so complex, we may see one or two more templates before TEA gets all of the kinks worked out and feels comfortable with the final product.
This data, and much more district information, is supplied to the TEA templates, and the spreadsheets calculate what our revenue projections will be for the upcoming budget cycle. This information will be made available for the 2010-2011 school year around the end of June. I will keep you updated with any new changes.
I will continue to analyze any new versions of the template that TEA releases and refine our revenue projections throughout the summer months. Our staff will also be working very hard to compile all of our campus and department expenditure requests to be ready to report all budget items to the school board starting the first week of August. One of the major responsibilities our board has is to adopt the budget and set a tax rate for the new school year. Please remember all of these budget meetings are open to the public, and everyone is invited to attend. Also, as we move toward adoption, I will report in the near future our expenditure requests for the new budget, so everyone will be able to correlate these to what our revenue estimates will be for 10-11.
As stated above, another issue we are dealing with is water! FISD had a new water well drilled about a year ago with the hope it would help alleviate our problem. We had the new well tied in with the existing well and at the present time, both wells together are pumping around 26-28 lbs. of pressure. This concerns me greatly! Our water situation is vital not only for our school, but our community and future! I have faith that everything will work out for FISD!
If you get a chance, please drive by the school as we are putting a new roof on the high school, painting all of the buildings (trim, gutters, etc.) to look the same and we are in the process of getting everything ready to have the portable building moved for our kindergarten class in the fall. I certainly appreciate all of our caregivers and what you mean to our community and school.
Thank you again for supporting our children and our school, and if anyone has questions about the issues in my article, or about anything else, please do not hesitate to call me (481-3371). I will be happy to discuss any issues with you.
