March Madness

March Madness and Budgeting: If you are a basketball fan (or not but just know about "March Madness"), chances are good that you will be filling out a bracket (for entertainment purposes of course) to determine who you think will win it all. You might use your knowledge of the game, uniform color, favorite team, or location of the games to guide you towards your eventual champion. The fact is that you have NO control over the outcome. If you get to the last game and have picked the winner, about the most credit you can take is that you took an "educated guess".

Imagine if you planned your home budget or if we planned our school budget based on the logic of March Madness brackets. Each year we would be on the edge of our seats wondering if at the end of the school year our budget was balanced. If it wasn't, we would be stressed out. If it was, we would be jumping up and down with happiness. A roller coaster ride for sure.

Thankfully, there are solid financial practices that we can use at home and here at school so we never get too high or too low when we are creating financial plans. Most times we expect our plans to work the next year and the year after. We are living in that plan at school right now. Slow and steady wins the race. Slow and steady also doesn't make for good news or headlines, but it does make for less stressed staff, adequate resources for our students, and the ability to plan for the future.  I LIKE this kind of March Madness!

Snow Days and the Calendar: Looks like another decent weather week as we get closer to spring. I wanted to let you know that as we begin to move out of the nastier weather and into the nicer weather, we need to change our school calendar slightly to accommodate various contractual obligations related to snow days.  Because we have only had one snow day (so far) students will not report on Monday, April 8 (staff does report); and students and staff will not report on Friday, May 24 or Tuesday, May 28.  If we have another snow day between now and June, I will let you know if there will be any additional calendar updates.

This is going to be a great week. I get to read to a few classes, attend a Career Fair, check out a science fair, and of course visit all of our buildings as I always do. The week will be capped off with our Culture Fair at the high school on Saturday, March 23. A great event that you should take the opportunity to attend.

C.O.D.E.: Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Community Oriented Drug Education ceremony for both Stonehedge and East Hill elementary Schools.  This is an important program that all of the elementary schools in the District participate in, and I especially enjoy going to the ceremonies and seeing our students graduate.

Have a wonderful week!

Chris