Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Additional revenue from an unexpected influx of students has put the Steamboat Springs School District in a position to give its faculty and staff raises that weren’t budgeted this year.

The Steamboat Springs Sch­­­­ool Board will consider a proposal from the district’s Collaborative Bargaining Team during a special meeting tonight. The proposal would provide salary step increases for all eligible faculty and staff members.

The bargaining team app­roved the proposal Nov. 9. The Steamboat Springs Education Association, the district’s teachers’ union, approved it by a wide margin Nov. 23. Of the 210 faculty and staff members who voted, 199 approved the proposal, eight opposed it and three abstained.

Last spring, the bargaining team agreed to a 2010-11 faculty and staff salary package that didn’t include salary step increases or cost of living adjustments. That created potential for the first academic year in some time in which the district’s employees weren’t given raises.

But the deal included a caveat that the district would revisit the package after the Oct. 1 pupil count. The annual, official student count determines the amount of per-pupil funding the district receives.

The count revealed that the district has 49.5 more full-time-equivalent students than the 2009-10 academic year. The additional students create nearly $291,000 in additional revenue — and that’s after funding expenses and the restoration of some positions that were cut last year.

If approved by the School Board, the salary step increases for eligible employees would cost the district $290,711.

Superintendent Shalee Cun­ningham, a member of the bargaining team, said she’s pleased the district has the funding to give raises to faculty and staff.

“I really believe in supporting our staff in times we can,” she said. “There have been times in the past we couldn’t and times in the future we won’t, but right now, there’s this little window of opportunity.”

Cunningham said she thought the increased enrollment was because of some transfers from outside the district and students shifting from private schools, and even more so, because families are moving to the area for the first time or returning.

Also at tonight’s meeting, the School Board will consider whether to approve a nearly $3.2 million Building Exc­ellent Schools Today grant — through the state’s Capital Construction Assistance pro­gram — for the North Routt Community Charter School.

The grant, which has a nearly $800,000 match, will allow the charter school to replace its three buildings on Routt County Road 62 in Clark with a 12,600-square-foot, six-classroom facility that would double as a community center during nonschool hours. The new facility would be located about a quarter-mile north on the property of North Routt Preschool.

Colleen Poole, the charter school’s director, said in an e-mail last week that construction is expected to start after the snow melts in spring, with occupation expected for January 2012.

The School Board also will consider tonight whether to approve a settlement agreement and bargain and sale deed with Colorado Mountain College, for a 2-acre parcel owned by the school district on the college’s Alpine Campus in Steamboat.

According to terms of the settlement, the college would pay the district $144,000 for the property and $86,000 for unpaid rent. The bargain and sale deed would transfer the title to CMC for $10.