Are You Ready for Some Football?

High school football in Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD starts tonight at Tommy Standridge Stadium, 1330 W. Valwood Parkway, Carrollton.

We have three games this weekend.

Here’s the schedule:

• Thursday: Creekview vs. Arlington at 7 p.m.
• Friday: Newman Smith vs. Denton Guyer at 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday: R. L. Turner vs. Terrell at 7 p.m.

Come on out and support your local high school teams.

If you haven’t purchased your tickets, you can purchase your tickets at the stadium. The ticket booth opens at 6 p.m. each game day.

For information about ticket prices, click on this link: C-FB ISD Football Ticket Prices

And, if you are a C-FB ISD resident who is 60 years or old, you qualify for an Advantage Card. Come by the Administration Building during our office hours for your card. You will need to bring photo identification to show proof of age and C-FB ISD residency. The card provides free general admission for athletic events plus much more.

Interested in Advantage Card: Advantage Card Information.

If you need to a complete schedule of home Varsity Football Games, you can find the games on the district's website under our Event Dates. Our Event Date page has many other activities that you may be interested as well.

Here's just a schedule of home varsity football games.

Varsity Football Games at Standridge for 2009-2010

See you at Stadium!

First Day of School in C-FB ISD

Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD students started school on Mon., Aug. 24. What a great grand opening we had. From reports across the district, we had a wonderful first day. Over 25,000 students “reported for duty.”

Our pre-kindergarten students - four-year-olds - will start next Monday (Aug. 31). They always start one week later. That gives our pre-kindergarten teachers and staff time to double-check enrollment status and paperwork.

I visited Country Place Elementary with Superintendent Bobby Burns. And, we found students working away as if they hadn’t been gone for the summer. We also found a beautifully renovated building. Country Place Elementary was built in 1974, and now it looks like a brand new school with a new cafeteria, offices, classrooms, library and much more. The modernized look is thanks to the 2003 bond referendum approved by C-FB ISD voters.

In our branding positioning statement, we talk about quality, learning-focused facilities. And, the "new and improved" Country Place definitely fits the bill. For all those former Country Place Eagles, you need to stop by and take a look.

Take a look at part of the tour of the school with Principal Kathi Ferris and Superintendent Bobby Burns. Thank you Country Place students and staff for sharing part of your first day of school with us.

Board of Trustees Special Election Information

C-FB ISD will hold a special election on Tues., Nov. 3 to fill a vacancy on the School Board. This election will be in conjunction with the General Election that is scheduled for that first Tuesday in November.

Persons interested in running for that C-FB ISD School Board position have until Aug. 28 at 5 p.m. to file the necessary paperwork. All the paperwork is available in the Administration Building, 1445 North Perry Road, Carrollton. The building is open Monday through Friday. For more information about filing, persons can call 972-968-6185.

If you need information about how to register to vote, you can check out information on these websites:
Dallas County Elections website: http://www.dalcoelections.org/

The Secretary of State’s voter information:
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/index.shtml

Denton County Elections website: http://elections.dentoncounty.com/go.asp?Dept=82

The deadline to register and be eligible to vote in the Nov. 3, 2009 General Election is Oct. 5, 2009.

Below is information about the C-FB ISD Special Election for School Board, including Early Voting Dates and Locations plus Precincts for Nov. 3.

You can also find this information on www.cfbisd.edu


C-FB ISD Board of Trustees Special Election Information

We are financially and academically strong

The good news about Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD is that we are a financially and academically strong public school district.

We are very fortunate that we have solid, well-versed educators and financial leaders on our team. That doesn’t mean that our district like other Texas school districts isn’t facing financial challenges.

Basically, C-FB ISD and other Texas districts are in this situation because our state school finance system operates under what are called Revenue Targets. Revenue amounts are now based on the Revenue Target per student allocation not on local property values.

Increases in property values are no longer as important to the maintenance and operating (M&0) budgets of school districts as they once were. If local property values increase, state funding decreases. Unfortunately, the Revenue Target hasn’t provided for needed teachers or competitive teacher salaries or kept up with other such rising costs as utilities, health insurance, gasoline, and food.

C-FB ISD is coping with those challenges because the School Board and Administration realize that the district's complete financial picture includes fiscal responsibility to taxpayers, a quality educational program for students, and competitive salaries for staff.

Plus by working together, C-FB ISD developed guiding objectives that we’ve been using to help reduce our M&O budget for the 2009-2010 year. Using those objectives, the district has made significant reductions in many areas of our budget. Even with these reductions, C-FB ISD will still have a deficit budget for 2009-10. This will require additional reductions in the future as well as a consideration of a tax increase.

We’ve also delayed our construction program for a year. The district did not sell any school construction bonds this year. As a result, the district is lowering its debt service tax rate from .3223 cents to .3022 cents. This decrease will help our taxpayers see a slightly lower overall tax bill. (You can see that on page 39 of the “Quick Facts” below.) In fact, this is the fourth year that the district has lowered the debt service portion of the district’s overall tax rate.

Our finance department pulls together lots of great information about the district’s budget and other financial information. One such document is the “Quick Facts Version of the 2009-10 Budget.” This 42-page document is below, and it can also be found on www.cfbisd.edu.

A public hearing will be held on the 2009-2010 budget at the next School Board meeting on August 27 at 7 p.m. All meetings are in the Administration Building, 1445 North Perry Road, Carrollton.


Quick Facks Version Budget 2009-10

Convocation 2009

Being prepared for the hot weather

August means hot weather in Texas and the beginning of practice for high school football. And, our C-FB ISD athletic program is prepared. In fact, we are really prepared. Thanks to good planning and reviewing the University Interscholastic League and the National Athletic Trainers' Association, C-FB ISD came out on top in a recent Dallas Morning News survey of about 40 area school districts.

Our athletic department has guidelines that are very comprehensive. They include recommendations from the UIL and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. Our procedures take weather conditions into account, including the heat index. Our guidelines include what some people call often overlooked items. These include: weighing the athletes before and after practice, measuring the heat with an instrument called a sling psychrometer, and having ice baths available.

The district also has guidelines for our elementary schools and PE classes too. We look at the heat index as well as the ozone conditions.

C-FB ISD continually works to maintain a safe learning environment for students. And, having extensive heat and heat illness prevention guidelines for our student athletes is part of this goal.

C-FB ISD Heat Guidelines

Deliberate Practice

“We value creativity, relevance and rigor."

“We have one purpose: learning.”

Those two sentences are from our positioning statement, and you’ve seen them before in our blog. The emphasis on creativity, relevance and rigor continues to pay off for C-FB ISD students.

• Newman Smith graduate Celeste Russell and R.L. Turner graduates Rabab Surani and Hussain Lalani earned scholarships through the Gates Millennium Scholars program, the nation's largest minority scholarship program. These are full-ride scholarships to any university, and only 1,000 are awarded nationally.
• Amelia Ragsdale, Creekview junior, was one of 25 individuals who completed New York University's Summer Woodwinds Program for high school students, college students and young professionals. She also received the Excellence in Achievement Award. She was one of three high school students chosen to study with some of New York's top instructors from NYU, Julliard, and Manhattan School of Music.

This summer, we’ve been reading the book Influencer, The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. It’s a fascinating book. And, in the book, they talk about deliberate practice that has been researched by psychologist Anders Ericsson. His findings tell us that you can have talent, but unless you have carefully practice over and over to enhance your skills through structured or “deliberated practice” you won’t achieve outstanding performance.

I don’t know if these four students have heard of “deliberate practice” but isn’t great to see individual students excel because they have studied and practiced?

We in C-FB ISD believe in high achievement for every student, and the way to get there is through “deliberate practice.” And, we will because C-FB ISD has one purpose: learning.