Superintendent Report

Superintendent Report: Eagle Point School District 

April 23, 2025 

Find the EPSD9 Community Newsletter HERE! 

Teacher Appreciation Week: May 5 - 9, 2025 

Teacher Appreciation Week is scheduled for May 5-9. Let’s recognize our EPSD9 Teachers as they shape the lives of our students, inspire a love for learning, and foster personal and academic growth. 

Our teachers’ commitment extends beyond the classroom. They serve as mentors, role models, and advocates for our students’ success. By celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, we honor the profound impact teachers have and reaffirm our commitment to supporting and valuing their contributions to education. 

Late-Start 2025-2026 

Next year the District will begin holding late-starts on Wednesdays and, except for one day on February 27, 2026, we will not have professional development days. Class time on Late-Start Wednesdays will begin an hour later than other days of the week. The purpose for this change is to provide time -every week- for teacher teams to meet and review student data and to use this information to directly improve instruction in the classroom. The short-hand educators use for this time is called ‘PLC time’. PLC is an acronym for ‘Professional Learning Communities’. 

It is our intent for PLC Time to be used for identifying and acting on student performance data that benefits our students in the classroom immediately. Additionally, we view this practice as a powerful tool for improving instruction long-term. These PLC meetings are basically teachers working to make each other better teachers. Eagle Point leaders see this change as essential to improving student performance. To ensure success our District has put a large amount of time, energy and resources into preparing for this change. We want our staff to have the necessary tools and data going into the team meetings, the ability to use the information effectively to produce concrete improvements in the classroom. 

The District Leadership discussed putting into place an early release schedule rather than a late-start. WE decided against this option because EPSD9 has tried this practice in the past with limited success. At that time, we found our middle schools and high schools 

struggled with student supervision as students waited for activities and sports to begin until teachers (coaches) had completed their time reviewing student data. This led to PLCs not meeting, not able to focus on the work at hand or breaking up early. As well, during early-release our District experienced elevated rates of staff absenteeism, as staff used ‘non-instructional time’ to schedule appointments. This practice, while in a sense understandable again, contributed to teacher teams not being able to meet. Lastly, we struggled to balance the time each school had for PLC meetings due to the requirements of transportation. As stated earlier, EPSD9 has sunk a tremendous amount of resources into making this effort successful and we cannot afford to repeat earlier mistakes. 

While Eagle Point School District sees the need to move to late-start Wednesdays as our best option for success, we also recognize that implementing a late start will impact families. Please feel free to share your thoughts and concerns with school leaders so that we can use the information in making future decisions and consider possible solutions. 

2025-2026 Enrollment, Budget and Staffing: 

As we prepare for the 2025-2026 academic year three interconnected topics important to EPSD9 will be determining our District’s academic situation and financial future. 

The first of these is declining enrollment. EPSD9 projects it will have 2% fewer students in the coming year than it does in the current year. If all other variables, such as the funding per student and staffing costs, were to remain the same this decline would require a future downward adjustment in staffing. Fundamentally, this is the most critical issue to the long-term health and success of the District. 

However, between February and June of last year, EPSD9 made significant reductions in its staffing to account for this projected decline in enrollment. We believe these reductions are sufficient for the 2025-2026 school year and that our overall number of employees can remain stable. The District does need to make some adjustments regarding which positions will be staffed and which will not. These adjustments, while not impacting the overall number of employees, will reduce the number of staff in certain job categories while adding staff elsewhere. 

Financially, the Legislature is working on determining school funding for the biennium (two-year budgeting cycle) and will finish this work by mid June. EPSD9 must have its budget for 2025-2026 completed prior to this meaning that, without firm figures we need to budget conservatively. Additional factors making conservative budgeting prudent are that while the state coffers are full and the Governor’s budget does include a healthy allocation to education there continues to be uncertainty to where the final allocations will be. This uncertainty is aggravated by questions regarding federal funding, which depending on if, where and how these reductions were to appear could have a minimal to very large impact on EPSD9’s funding outlook. Finally, recent talk of a possible recession has also begun to be voiced, which if true and depending on its degree would have a significant impact on the District’s financial outlook. 

Summer School: 

Two bills funding summer programs have passed the legislature and are waiting for the Governor’s signature. This along with funds that the District has budgeted will be enough to move forward with summer school. Information on those programs will be going out in the coming days. 

D9 Foundation: 

EPSD9 community members and alumni are reminded that the D9 Foundation is a non-profit all-volunteer organization dedicated to providing scholarships for every Eagle Point graduate. Fundraising is vitally important to keeping the scholarships coming to our students. The Foundation is currently beginning the preparations for our annual Golf weekend and Dinner Auction. 

Please consider volunteering or joining this organization. Information in doing so can be found at D9Foundation.com.