Superintendent Update March 26, 2025

Posted Date: 3/27/25 (12:51 PM)

Dear TSD Families,

This communication will cover four topics:

School Cancellation update
Composting starting on April 21
Funding and staffing updates
School Climate Surveys

School Cancellation Update– I want to take the opportunity to clarify this topic, as I know there may be confusion. This past Wednesday I confirmed with the Colorado Department of Education that both the half-day (afternoon) cancellation on October 4 related to the cafeteria dishwasher malfunction and the full-day cancellation on November 7 related to the school threat count against our instructional minutes (we have enough instructional minutes built into our calendar to allow for canceling 3.0 days. This puts us at:

Half Day afternoon on October 4 (0.5 day running total)
Full-day on November 7 (1.5 day running total)
Half-day for snow cancellation on February 14, as this was only a half-day for students (2.0 day running total)
Delayed opening on March 21 (2.0 days plus 1 delayed opening)

To be clear on weather related closures, if we determine the weather is unsafe to hold school, we will cancel regardless of how many days we have used, and then we will need to make up time if we have gone under the minimum instructional minutes. I also realize that opinions may differ on whether the right decision was made for any given call; fortunately or unfortunately, the responsibility for making that call ultimately lies with me. Weather related procedure for closing school can be found here.

Composting – We are excited to work with the Town of Telluride, Bruin Waste Management, and Eco-Action Partners to begin composting in our cafeterias and kitchen on April 21. Details can be found on Slide #5 of the March 24 District Accountability Presentation.

Funding and Staffing – We have fielded several questions on whether the fact that we do not expect to see the worst-case scenarios means that we can add back in some positions we have announced plans to reduce. While I wish this were the case, even the best-case scenario will still require some reduction in staff. The best-case scenario we expect to see at this point would level fund our Total Program Funding for next year at this current year’s funding. For comparison, our Total Program Funding increased by more than 5% last year and around 10% the year before. In addition to wage and benefit increases, there are other expense increases that we have no control over. Because of all of this we still need to reduce FTE, but we now expect to hopefully not have to reduce 15+ FTE as we feared a few weeks ago (I caveat all of this with “based on what we know right now and believe will happen as a best estimate based on current information”). I anticipate we will need to reduce a small handful of additional FTE that have not been determined yet, and we will know a lot more in the upcoming weeks. Most of the March 24 District Accountability Presentation (starting at Slide #6) provides the latest update on funding and staffing.

School Climate Surveys- If you have not yet had a chance to fill out a Parent Survey, you can find links below:

Parent Survey - English

https://assc.questionpro.com/TellurideParentsSp25

Parent Survey - Spanish

https://assc.questionpro.com/TellurideParentsSpanishSp25

Sincerely,

John Pandolfo

Superintendent

jpandolfo@telluride.k12.co.us

970-369-1213