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District

Superintendent Update March 5, 2025

Posted Date: 3/05/25 (11:00 PM)
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Telluride R1

 


 





Dear TSD Families,

 

This communication will cover three topics:

  1. School Climate Surveys
  2. 2025-26 Final Calendar and 2026-27 Draft Calendar
  3. Information on Funding and Staffing

 

 

  1. School Climate Surveys - As part of monitoring our Ends Policy goal of fostering a safe and healthy community through “consistent student and staff culture across buildings which supports achieving our ends”, we will have students in grades 3-12, staff, and parents complete the School Climate Assessment Instruments (SCAI) developed and administered by the Alliance for the Study of School Climate (ASSC) in the month of March.  The SCAI surveys, which are scientifically developed and third-party administered and analyzed, are rated as one of the most effective school climate tools.  Below are the links to the parent survey in both English and Spanish. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to complete the survey, as it provides valuable data on areas of strength and improvement.  This survey will be open through the month of March.

 

Parent Survey - English

https://assc.questionpro.com/TellurideParentsSp25

 

Parent Survey - Spanish

https://assc.questionpro.com/TellurideParentsSpanishSp25

 

 

        2.  2025-26 Final School Calendar 

2026-27 Draft School Calendar


 

3. Funding and Staffing – As we have discussed at several BOE, District Accountability, Miner Community, and Staff meetings, we are facing the potential for significant shortfalls in our educational funding from the state for 2025-26. This is partly due to the state’s overall projected shortfall in revenue of up to $1.2 billion and this does not even include any potential impacts from federal funding cuts. Best case scenario, we could end up about level funded compared to this year; worst case scenario, we could be down more than $3 million, which represents over 20% of our budget.

 

With our enrollment declining year-to year, we continue to adjust our staffing as necessary.  This includes not replacing retiring Art, Drama, and (one) Special Education  teachers, as well as reducing core and other elective FTE due to graduating our largest class ever.  Should worst case funding scenarios play out, we will be forced to go much deeper with cuts; losing $1.5Million in funding would mean potentially cutting 15 staff, or 10% of our workforce.

 

The following resources provide details on the funding issues:

 

I encourage you to advocate to our representatives in Denver on behalf of the school district.  Contact info for our legislators is below, as well as key talking points and template advocacy letters.

Talking Points:

    1. Do not support the Governor’s Proposal to take away multi-year averaging and move to 1-year student count for funding, it would decrease funding to many districts in Colorado at a time when increased funding is needed. Telluride would lose over $1Million in Total Program Funding from this alone.
    2. Please support any bill that would pause implementation of HB24-1448, given the revenue concerns that exist, and the issues that still exist with HB24-1448.
    3. Fix the Locale Factor issue with HB24-1448.  The current NCES Factor was never intended for funding calculations.  Telluride’s “Urban Cluster” population increase from just under 2,500 to just over 2,500 will result in a loss of over $1Million in Total Program Funding because of this factor’s use in the formula.
    4. Please do not support any bill that would remove or decrease the Hold Harmless Factor in HB24-1448.
    5. Please pay serious attention to the recommendations from the Adequacy Studies, which the General Assembly passed legislation to fund at significant expense.  These recommendations make clear we are underfunding education in Colorado by billions of dollars, and recommend increases to Telluride of more than $2 million (not cuts of up to $3 million).  It is imperative the General Assembly appoint a committee in 2025 to develop a blueprint on how to implement the Adequacy Studies.


Template Letters – please use the links below to download or cut and paste from the templates and modify as you see fit to send to the legislators above:

 

Sincerely,

John Pandolfo

Superintendent

jpandolfo@telluride.k12.co.us

970-369-1213