Superintendent Update for the Week of February 19, 2024:
Dear Vega ISD Community,
What an exciting week for our students and staff at Vega ISD! This time of year is when the winter sports are in the playoff season and the spring sports are getting ready to begin. Of course, our Ag Mechanics students are getting ready for the San Antonio show this upcoming weekend along with our students who show animals at the San Antonio Livestock Show. UIL Academics and One Act Play are continuing to practice for their upcoming district meet competitions.
I was able to attend the UIL State Swimming Meet this past week and cheer on our own Vega High School swimmer Lynlee Spinhirne who won the Bronze medal in the backstroke competition. UIL swimming is different from the other UIL competitions because all school sizes from 4A down to 1A who have students competing in swimming all compete together. There are no separate categories. Because of this, there is no separate 4A state champion or 2A state champion. The state champion competes with students from all of those classifications in swimming. For perspective, 4A high schools range in enrollment size all the way up to 1,314 students. Lynlee competed against students from high schools that large at the State meet. She also finished 5th in the state in the butterfly race.
Our students and fans showed up this past week for our girls' basketball playoff games in Dimmitt and Amarillo as the Lady Horns won two gold balls this week in claiming both the Bi-District and Area Championships. Our girls basketball team will play in the Regional Quarterfinals against Wellington on Tuesday night. As of this writing, our boys' basketball team qualified for the playoffs and will compete in the Bi-District round of the playoffs against Olton on Tuesday night.
Our powerlifting team did well in Highland Park and we had four of our students place in the meet and our girls' team is preparing for their regional competition.
One of our high school students was named a National Honor Society Semi-Finalist. Be sure to check out our webpage and facebook page with pictures and more details about all of these accomplishments.
I was able to eat lunch in the elementary/junior high cafeteria a couple of times this past week and got a lot of “high fives” from the Pre-K and Kindergarten classes when I walked down the elementary school hallway. If anyone doesn’t have a smile on their face, all they need to do is walk down an elementary school hallway and the kids will make you smile!
This time of the year there is always lots of sickness going around. Please be sure to remind your students to wash their hands often and use hand sanitizers when they have the opportunity. Also, if your student is running fever or feeling sick, please keep them at home to recover. This also helps prevent the spread of germs as well. Our custodial staff has done several deep cleans this past month on top of their typical cleaning cycles in order to help as well.
Our new travel bus was delivered this past week. Many of our students have already seen the bus and are very excited about it. We are very fortunate to be able to add this new bus to our fleet. This bus was purchased from interest earned through proceeds from the last bond approved by the voters. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, many of our vehicles are high in miles so it is important to have a replacement schedule in place so that our entire fleet of vehicles do not have high mileage. Second, because of interest earned over time from the most recent bond, the purchase of the new bus does not come out of the maintenance and operations budget.
Let me take a moment to provide a brief overview about school budgets and how funds from those budgets can and cannot be spent. When we talk about the budget in school districts, there are two different budgets involved in school finance. Anything involving debt services, such as bonds and interest payments, comes from the Interest and Sinking (I&S) budget. Anything involving the day-to-day operations of the district including payroll salaries, supplies, paying bills and repairs, and daily operations comes from the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) budget.
One of the rules of school finance is that funds from these accounts cannot be moved from one account to the other. Each account has a specific purpose, as previously described. When districts talk about needing help from the legislature to improve school funding, we are talking about help with the M&O budget. The M&O budget is the budget that has been a deficit budget for our district, and many other districts across the state. The lack of support from the legislature combined with rising costs and inflation have contributed to the deficit budget. This is why being able to purchase the new travel bus from the I&S budget from the prior bond interest proceeds is such a positive because it does not take money out of the M&O budget.
Again, as we enter our budget planning for the next school year and look at ways to reduce the deficit on the M&O budget side, finding ways to increase revenue is a big part of the solution. We will talk more about possible options within our control to increase revenue in months ahead.
Thank you,
Jerry Adams
Superintendent
Vega ISD