Welcome To The Second Half Of The 2011-2012 School Year

This week, we began the second semester of the 2011-2012 school year in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District. This is an excellent time to remind our staff, parents, and community that your school district is strategically working toward one goal: high achievement for all students.


We have developed four strategic objectives that guide our work on our one goal, and they are found in the strategic improvement plan, our district improvement plan and campus improvement plans. All of these can be found on the district website. These plans are designed to help us continously increase student achievement, to provide an effective learning environment and to be more operationally efficient and effective. While doing all of these, we want to build confidence among our staff, parents, and entire community. Basically, what this means is everything in C-FB ISD is tied together.

I encourage you to look through our documents because you will see that C-FB ISD has a plan to move student achievement forward. Our team also has strategies in place to advance our other three objectives as well.

During the second semester, the district will continue to face financial challenges as we prepare the 2012-13 budget. We will keep you informed about where the district is in the budgeting process in Focus Points. On February 16, the Board of Trustees will hold a work-study session on resource allocations to discuss the district's budget and other financial issues.

As we plan for the February work-study session, the staff is using a systems approach to analyze C-FB ISD programs, operations and services. The School Board, the district's governing body, developed three guiding objectives to prioritize resource allocations and determine budget reductions.

The Three Guiding Objectives

· Minimize the impact on student academic achievement

· Minimize the impact on non-academic special services and programs for all students, i.e., extra-curricular and co-curricular programming

· Minimize the impact on the ability to retain and attract quality staff

Through this process, we will prioritize the proposed cost containments based on what will have the least impact on the district's goal of high achievement. We know that this isn't an easy task, but we are committed to this systems approach.

Finally, we know it is important academically for students to attend school each day. But, what you may not remember is that district finances are tied directly to student attendance. Since 2006, Texas public schools have been funded based essentially on the number of students in attendance in school. For example, this year's budget is based on $5,239 per student.

We never want students to attend school if they are sick, but we do want students in school every day if they are well. We encourage students and their families to be supportive of good attendance. The good attendance and being on time learned as early as elementary school are expectations of today's employers.

As C-FB ISD begins the second semester of the 2011-2012 school year, we know that there will be many "bright spots." We invite the community to join in our efforts to help all of our students achieve at high levels.