Enrollment will continue to be a topic that I address each week, as it is tied directly to the funding that the school district receives. We ended the second week of school with an enrollment of 493, which is an increase of 5 students from the previous week. While I am thrilled with this increase of enrolled students, there is also reason to not be overly excited. During the 2024-25 school year, we increased 9 students between the first and second week of school. The increase of 5 students this year is less than the 9 students gained last year. While enrollment is one factor in school funding, the other factor is attendance. Our enrollment multiplied by our attendance percentage is called average daily attendance (ADA). Our ADA, after the second week of school last year, was 483. This year, our ADA, for the same time period was 458. This is a difference of approximately $250,000 in funding that the school district will receive (assuming this trend stays the same for the entire school year). I do not want to bore you with all the details, but when calculating ADA, it is important to know that not all Pre-K students qualify for funding. Without additional students, the only way to increase funding is to increase our daily attendance. I want to thank our campus principals for making attendance a priority as our attendance rate for the 2024-25 school year was very good. I know that our attendance rate would not be good without the support of our parents, so I also want to thank our parents for making school attendance a priority.
I addressed accountability ratings last week. Since then, we have received additional information. According to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), 80% of school campuses (9,084 campuses received ratings last year) were rated as an acceptable campus. TEA considers campuses that receive a “C” rating or higher as an acceptable campus. I have provided a breakdown of the campus ratings below:
- 23% of campuses in Texas received an “A” rating (MAE was one of these campuses).
- 33% of campuses in Texas received a “B” rating (SHS was one of these campuses).
- 24% of campuses in Texas received a “C” rating (SJH was one of these campuses).
- 10% of campuses in Texas received a “D” rating.
- 4% of campuses in Texas received an “F” rating.
- 6% of campuses in Texas did not receive a rating.
Another rating that school districts receive is the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST). This rating deals with the way that school districts manage their finances. Preliminary ratings have been released and will become official unless there is an appeal. SISD can consider their rating as official due to the fact that we received a perfect score of 100/100 (Superior Achievement). There are a total of 21 indicators included in the FIRST rating, so a perfect score is something for our school and community to be proud of. I have looked back over the records for the previous 9 years and SISD has received an “A” rating in each of those years with the lowest score being in 2017-18 (90/100).
Our runners had a great opening to their season this past Saturday. Congratulations to Zienna Duran on her 17th place finish out of 137 runners. The Elks were in action Friday night in their final scrimmage and they looked like they are ready for the regular season. I was extremely pleased to see the energy and positive attitude that was on display from both the players and coaches. Good luck to the Elks (JV Thursday and varsity Friday) as they open the season against Abernathy. Let’s pack the stands Friday night to get this season started off right. Good luck also to our runners as they will be competing in Borger Saturday morning. It is a busy time of year, but it is the best time of year.
The educators who work for SISD are an incredible group. A great majority of them put in extra hours by either arriving to work early, staying late or taking work home with them. Additionally, there are many of our educators who work during the weekends. These individuals do not receive extra compensation for these extra hours, but they do it for their students. I want to thank every SISD employee for putting in the extra time and effort that allows us to better prepare our students to be successful. Have a great week.
Paul Uttley
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