Silver Consolidated leaders outline calendar changes, 4-day school-week criteria and mill-levy options to fund facilities

The Silver Consolidated School District board heard a districtwide calendar update and a detailed facilities funding briefing at its March 19 meeting.

Superintendent Eddie Hawkins told trustees the Public Education Department issued a March 7 ruling that compelled the district to convert certain staff-development and parent-conference days into instructional or remote-learning days so the district meets a 180 instructional-day requirement. Hawkins said the district adjusted three days (including an August staff-development day and two other dates) and used two remote-learning days as part of the fix so the school year start and end dates remain close to the schedule previously approved by the board.

Hawkins also described new PED guidance tied to four-day school-week campuses. Under that guidance, campus-level proficiency will determine whether a school may remain on a four-day schedule: campuses below 45% proficiency must show 15 percentage points of growth to stay four-day; campuses between 45%–65% must show 10 points; and campuses in the 65%–80% band must show 8 points. Hawkins said the department has not yet released the exact calculation method for those proficiency comparisons and that districts must submit both a four-day and a five-day calendar for PED approval. He added Cliff School — which has been operating on a four-day schedule — is preparing a five-day option for submission while continuing to refine its growth plan.

Trustees spent the second half of the presentation focused on long-term facilities funding. Consultant Mark Valenzuela presented three illustrative scenarios for capital funding and state match: the current structure (district local match ~63% and state ~37%), a 50/50 match scenario, and an optimistic 70% state-share scenario. Using an example $100 million set of needs, Valenzuela showed how each state-match assumption changes the district’s unmet need and how asking voters for additional local capacity (roughly a 4.1-mill increase in one scenario) would increase annual local revenue by about $6 million.

Valenzuela warned trustees the Public School Capital Outlay Council and the Public School Facilities authorities are being inundated with requests statewide, and state matching rules remain unsettled. "I can't tell you what they're thinking about what that amount would be right now because, again, I'm trying to — they're trying to figure out how much capacity they have," he said.

Board discussion centered on what level of local tax increase would make a new school feasible. Dr. Joanna Diaz pressed for clarity on household impacts and the long-term consequences: she said that, in her view, "our only chance to build a new school in Silver Consolidated Schools is to get to the 10 mil." Trustees asked staff to return with more precise household-impact figures and to bring updated scenarios to the next meeting.

Next steps: staff will await PED’s published calculation worksheet before finalizing the district calendar for reapproval and will return with more detailed mill-levy and household-impact estimates for future meetings.