Happy February, CSA Families!
The key question at this stage in our school year is How are you fulfilling your support to CSA? How are you promoting our school? Your sons and daughters are sharing how much they enjoy school at CSA. Are you an active advocate? Are you contributing to our success?
Charter schools rely heavily on parent support. Most schools require a specified number of hours that parents volunteer, but CSA chooses to “suggest” that parents contribute 30 hours per year. Are you heralding the success of your child at CSA? Are you sharing with your friends and neighbors how much your learner thrives at his/her new school? What word-of-mouth promotion have you done to support the growth of CSA, the school that supports and encourages your son/daughter? If you promote our school, this can count toward the “suggested” 30 volunteer hours per year for each parent to contribute.
In six short weeks, we will be providing our estimated enrollment for the coming school year to Cherry Creek School District and to the Colorado Department of Education. This is a make-or-break time for new schools like ours! In short, the success of a school rests with the word-of-mouth marketing efforts from its current parents to increase enrollment. Why is your voice so important? How can you make a difference? Please read on…
In our bond application that funds the construction of our new building, we stated that we would have an enrollment of 250 learners for the 2020-21 school year. Our permanent bond support funds will also be adjusted in some way if we do not reach that level for the coming school year. The school will be built, but the financial obligation on the school via its operating budget (which comes from PPR—more info to come!) increases to fund the building over the long-term. Are you trying to get more learners to come to CSA? The renewal of our three-year CDE grant, the Colorado Charter Schools Program (CCSP) grant, allows us to purchase the furniture, technology, Chromebooks, and anything else needed to make us a premier aerospace project-based school as we expand into our permanent building. The CCSP grant is incumbent on our ability to reach an enrollment of 250 learners. If we don’t reach the “magic 250” number, then the CCSP grant will be reduced for 2021-22, creating a huge burden on our general operating budget (PPR funds again!).
As your School Director, I realize this is perhaps more financial detail than some of you may want. Yet it is essential that you, our CSA community, understand exactly how important this stage of our history is. Just like every other free, public school, including charters, Colorado SKIES Academy meets its financial obligations via funding from its Per Pupil Revenue (PPR), an amount that per state statute, follows every learner. An estimated enrollment is sent to our authorizing district, Cherry Creek School District, on March 13. The budgeted amount that CSA will receive is based on this estimate, and CSA begins receiving payments at the start of the school’s fiscal cycle, July 1. An official count, otherwise known as “October Count,” is conducted in October of that school year, and based on that count, the amount is adjusted either plus or minus in December and throughout the rest of the year. To give an example of how PPR and October Count work, if a learner is part of a school through October Count and transfers to another school, that learner’s PPR money (approx. $8400) stays with the school that they were attending during October Count.
Please help! If you believe what we’re doing is in the best interests of kids, please support our efforts. Do a lot of word-of-mouth advertising for our school, sharing why you chose to re-enroll, or first-time enroll, your daughter or son at Colorado SKIES Academy. There is a reason we had 84 out of 88 learners eligible to re-enroll for next year do so! As one of those families, we hope you’ll help CSA meet its enrollment requirement by telling your story! Support your school by bringing more learners to CSA!
Please join your sons and daughters and share their successes and how much they can actively advocate? Are you contributing your time toward our success? Are you sharing what a difference CSA has made in the life of your learner? Please help us meet the 250 mark!
Warm regards,
Suzanne Acheson
School Director
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