The 80-day Española School District membership report officials submitted to the Public Education Department, shows the District’s 13 schools have fewer students than they did during the Oct. 12, 2016, 40-day count.
Thirty eight fewer pupils were enrolled in the Española School District, as of Dec. 14, bringing the number of students to 3,688, compared to the 3,726 that attended the District during the 40-day count.
The biggest decrease was at Española Valley High School. The school had 17 fewer students between the approximately two-month period in the two counts. The second-largest decrease was at Española Middle School, which saw its enrollment drop by seven students during that short time span.
The remaining decrease of 13 students came from Chimayó, Dixon, Fairview and Hernandez elementary schools.
Los Niños, San Juan and Velarde elementary schools retained their student population.
Neither Associate Superintendent Myra Martinez, nor Finance Director Myrna Garcia, returned phone calls seeking an explanation for the population loss or what it means for the District’s bottom line.
The official number comes several weeks after District officials released a 40-day count report that showed the District gained 236 students, compared to the 3,815 enrolled in August 2015, for a total of 4,051. However, the final report the District submitted to the Department, on Nov. 21, instead shows a loss of 89 students for a total student count of 3,688.
Martinez has said, on several occasions, she doesn’t know how the wrong information got released, but believes the incorrect numbers can be attributed to a data conversion.
Española School Board President Pablo Lujan and Information Technology Director Andrew Trujillo confirmed the incorrect student totals were the result of transferring data from the old system to the new Synergy Software system, which the District uses to store and track data.
“There were students on PAWS (Principals Aide for Windows) that were never taken off of the system,” Lujan said. “That is why when we rolled over to Synergy it looked like we were up, but when we looked at students individually, we saw there was a deficit.”
The enrollment data is important because school districts across the state compile the 40-day count and submit the information to state regulators, who use the data to determine how much money the district receives from the state. The state’s 89 school districts are funded through the State Equalization Guarantee, a funding formula designed to ensure students have across-the-board access to a quality education.
State regulators take the base enrollment from the 40-day count and multiply that by the number of students in each grade level, then factor in several other components, such as the number of English language learners a district has, to determine a District’s total funding formula.
While the 40-day numbers are significant in themselves, the Department also uses those figures, along with the numbers compiled at the 80th and 120th day counts, to determine a district’s transportation funding.
The District’s former charter, Cariños Charter School, saw a one-student increase from the 40- to the 80-day count, which could spell trouble for the County’s only dual-language school.
Cariño’s leadership based the school’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget on the hope that they could recoup some of the students they lost during the nearly two-year shuffle, while school officials looked for a stable facility to call home.
Officials at the K to 8 charter school hoped to get their population up to 175 students before the January 2017 start of the second semester, but failed to reach that goal. There are currently 103 students enrolled at the school.
Cariños Board Secretary Del Jimenez said the failure to do that, will have a disastrous effect on the school’s future financial outlook.
“We had to hit that 175 mark just to cover the cost of that school, which we aren’t doing at that time,” Jimenez told his fellow Board members during the Jan. 10 meeting. “Since we have to cover the cost of our school, we will be in the negative at the end of this semester.”
However, it’s a fate that can be avoided with a little due diligence and belt tightening, according to Cariños Financial Director Michael Vigil.
He said as a result of not meeting the student population projection, the district will see a sharp reduction in the amount of money they receive from the Student Equalization Guarantee.
“As of right now, our SEG (Student Equalization Guarantee) has been cut to half of our monthly allocation,” Vigil said. “We will see that for the next six months.”
He said the Charter School took in more money than it spent during the last month of the first semester and if they can manage to do that the remainder of the school year, it could end on a positive note.
“In December we had a pretty large excess of revenue over expenditures,” Vigil told the Board during his Jan. 10 presentation. “So we basically need to see quite a bit more months like December to close out the fiscal year in order to break even. So cash will be tight and we are going to work to cut where we can to make sure our expenditures are necessary.”
Cariños Chancellor Vernon Jaramillo said the administration has taken proactive steps to weather the financial downturn, such as seeking outside revenue sources.
“The Board approved that we seek donations,” he said. “We are anxious to find ways and means to fund the school. We are trying to find grants and grant writers so we can survive as a school.”