Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Enrollment figures for the 2000-2001 school year in the Steamboat Springs School District RE-2 are up 37 students from its 1999-2000 figures.
The total kindergarten to 12th-grade enrollment in all four schools is 1,950 students as of Oct. 2, compared to an official count of 1,913 last year.
Except for the high school, enrollment in each RE-2 school dropped slightly.
The higher figures in the high school are in part owing to a large graduating eighth-grade class at the Steamboat Middle School.
"It's a pleasant surprise," Superintendent Cyndy Simms said of the overall higher figures.
Indeed, in light of Hayden's dropping enrollment down some 51 students from last year, local educators and board members are relieved to see the figures have not dropped in Steamboat.
Per-pupil funding, allotted to each district by the state, gives the RE-2 schools about $5,880 for each full-time student.
The "extra" funds RE-2 schools will receive for this school year will be used in part to pay for positions added to the district three years ago when enrollment figures were up. Since then, a slight decline in student numbers had forced the district to use funds from the Growth Commission, recipient of some of the half-cent sales tax that goes to local schools, to provide the funds to continue to pay for the new positions.
Because there were a few students "missing" from various grade levels, it was impossible during the enrollment decline to simply eliminate the positions that had been added previously, Simms said.
The good news about the figures is that they bolster the 2000-2001 budget, but the bad news, she said, is that picking up the costs of the added positions which support the School Board's goal of providing student with more staff and smaller classes the budget will just about break even.
A School Board vote on the proposed 2000-2001 budget must be taken before Oct. 15, at which point the effects of a slightly larger district will be more fully realized.

To reach Bonnie Nadzam call 871-4204 or e-mail bnadzam@amigo.net