Dear Canutillo Familia,
Summertime is a time of change for school districts. This is the time when we take advantage of the break to try things out and give our yearlong employees a little time to rest and train. To help us do that, we must take advantage of gaps in the calendar and adjust. I bring this up to say that our regular monthly Board of Trustees meeting for June was rescheduled from the traditional fourth Tuesday of the month to Monday, June 19.
I want to invite you as an involved member of the Canutillo Community to come down and join us. We will be discussing many important topics and we will also celebrate some important milestones.
Let’s start with the celebrations. On Monday we will join the Canutillo Alumni Foundation for Education in recognizing the dozens of students who earned the coveted CAFE Scholarship. We also will recognize some amazing student athletes from Alderete Middle School who earned national honors at a cheerleading competition. We can’t wait to celebrate with them!
Trustees will have to get down to business, however. During this meeting we have a public hearing regarding the budget for the 2023-24 school year. By law, we as trustees must approve a budget before June 30. Dr. Galaviz and his administration will present the proposed budget for us to consider, analyze and adopt.
My initial conversations with Dr. Galaviz indicate that while the District has been financially savvy, the reality of our economic outlook is nothing to celebrate. Because voters turned down the 2022 bond, the District must now use local funds (instead of bond money) to address critical structural and capital needs at our schools. What this means is that campus and department budgets must make cuts so that we can afford to fix leaky roofs or broken pavement.
What does this mean? Hopefully for our students the sacrifices will be unnoticeable. We know our teachers and employees will continue to provide the type of high-quality services that have made Canutillo the Best Small School District in Texas and El Paso’s only Triple A Rated District. But our departments and campuses must deal with smaller budgets and that means fewer trainings for teachers or going without newer technology for a year. This may seem insignificant for a year and we know we can survive it, but we won’t be able to sustain it and remain competitive. We must find a way to offset the cost of our facility and capital improvement needs.
So come on Monday and listen to the presentation. It’s important for our community to better understand the state of our District.
See you then.
¡Un fuerte abrazo!
Patricia Mendoza
President
Canutillo ISD Board of Trustees