Camp Verde Unified School District Superintendent Steve Hicks announced during the Governing Board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 10, that Camp Verde High School will continue its third year in a row being graded an “A” by the Arizona Board of Education.
The district received a “B” letter grade from the school in November and appealed it after points were deducted for graduation rates.
“The way it worked was when a kid starts freshman year in high school, he has four years to finish,” Hicks said. “Any kid that doesn’t finish in four years is counted off.”
There were three students counted off, whom the school counselor said it was in their best interests to not graduate in four years.
“One of them was a Special Education student with an individualized education plan, and it said in the plan it behooves this kid to go to school a couple more years and to finish high school graduate maybe five or six years,” Hicks said. “Then the other two were juniors who graduated early.”
The details leading to the schools grade overall will be posted on azreportcards.azed.gov on Feb. 23.
The middle and elementary schools both received C’s when report cards were released in November and neither had appeals with the state.
Enrollment
CVUSD counts enrollment every two weeks throughout the academic year. In an email sent out to families on Jan. 29, Hicks said the district is growing and thanked the parents for being patient with some of the effects, such as longer wait lines for pick-up after school and expanded bus routes.
Superintendent Assistant Mary Hudson provided the Governing Board with enrollment numbers, listing an increase of 84 students overall in the district compared to its 1,586 students at this time last year. The district ended last year with 1,610 students.
Camp Verde Elementary School grew the most, adding 84 students compared to this time last year, and Camp Verde Middle School added 16. Camp Verde High School had four fewer students than this time last year, but 11 more than it ended last year with.
The alternate schools, like the online school and the accommodation program, all had fewer enrolled students. The enrollment numbers going up has also affected the number of meals served at the schools, Hicks said.
Lunches
The district began outsourcing its food production several years ago, and pays for that with federal grant money.
“The way this works is the National School Lunch Program, federal grants pay us for every meal we serve, basically,” Hicks said. “We get paid, and then we would have to pay Southwest Foods for their work. And we thought, ‘well, we might be losing money. We might be subsidizing their work.’ But that’s not the case. So far, it’s been pretty much even.”
Hicks said so far, this year, the district has sold more than 13,000 meals more than it did last year.
“That’s the whole point is we’re serving more kids, serving more in our community,” he said, “and then financially, we’ve worked right now — we’re not at the end of the year — but right now we’re at we are 38,000 [meals] in the black on this and that’s good for us.”
Donations
A few board members and Hicks attended the Board Operational Leadership Training Seminar that took place in Flagstaff last week.
One portion discussed finances and partnerships, Hicks said. Without the many partnerships the district has, Hicks said the service the schools provide would look much different.
“Recently, we’ve had some community businesses come in and help us out,” he said.
Hicks said it’s fairly common for businesses to come and help the district, especially because it needs it more than other districts with more money would. Recently, a concrete company came in and filled some places where it was needed.
“If you’ve heard Mr. [Mark] Showers,” the principal for Camp Verde High School, “was talking about the weight room up there, we’ve had some donors come and help us with that,” Hicks said. “We had a floor that needed to be put down, a real weight room floor and so Tierra Verde came down and spent three days with their flooring crew and donated their time to put down that floor.”
