Newsletter 01/29/25
Hello Parents,
If you haven’t heard, the OMB memorandum that confused and worried us from Monday has been rescinded. Thankfully, this means we can get back to business as usual. Our four-phased contingency plan for austerity measures can be put back on the shelf.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to scrap our contingency plans entirely. There are still threats to charter and district schools that represent a potential, sudden cut of 25%+ of our funding. Those threats currently include:
Another federal freeze. If the administration again decides to freeze our funding we would be back in the same spot we were in yesterday.
Closing of the US Department of Education. The US Department of Education (ED) is the federal government’s mechanism for disbursing federal funds to states and their schools. The ED also is the federal agency in charge of making sure that kids with disabilities or kids who are below the poverty line are getting the assistance they need to be successful in school and life. If the ED is closed and no agency is immediately ready to take its place to fund our schools, we would again be in a position where we would lose 25%-40% of our funding.
I understand that budgets and agencies must be reviewed and that when necessary, cuts are appropriate. I think we can all agree that we want change to come in a measured way that doesn’t negatively impact our children and their futures.
Thank you all again for your understanding. This week has given all of us a case of what I’m calling “organizational whiplash.” Please give us a few days to get back on track. By next week we should be all back to normal.
On a different note, I’m almost caught up with my correspondence. If you’ve written to me with no reply in the past two weeks, I’m doing my best to get back to you by Friday. Thanks for your patience.
Kind Regards,
Principal Roll
P.S. Today some parents asked me, “Doesn’t federal funding only make up 11% of your budget?” That’s true for many US schools, but it wasn’t a typo. Even after “Red for Ed,” Arizona only funds around half of what many others states give to schools. Since the amount of federal monies we receive is roughly the same, the percentage of our total is higher.