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Columbia Heights Public Schools are faced with funding shortfalls in many areas, including indoor air quality, long-term facilities maintenance, special education cross-subsidy and needing more staff to provide crucial academic interventions. One serious area of concern for Columbia Heights Public Schools is the new way of calculating Compensatory Aid. For this coming year, compensatory aid for fiscal year 26 will be calculated based solely on direct certification. Currently, compensatory aid is calculated using a combination of direct certification and the education benefits forms (commonly known as lunch forms). Based on calculations for Columbia Heights Public Schools, relying solely on direct certification would result in a shortfall of about 3.7 million dollars. Without exaggeration, this would be catastrophic for us. We consistently hover around 76-80% poverty rate among our student body. Columbia Heights will be big losers with the new formula, not because our families are suddenly more wealthy, but simply because of the data collection method. On paper about 76% of our families still qualify for compensatory, but they are not all included in the Direct Certification calculation. CHPS would drop from 76% to 50% of families qualifying for compensatory if only Direct Certification numbers can be used. This would be a drop in funding of over $1,000 dollars per pupil, which is 5 times more than a district like Burnsville and 10 times more than a district like Anoka Hennepin. This will effectively leave CHPS without enough cash on hand to pay our employees, and therefore we would need to borrow funds and pay interest. From 2015-2024 we have made cuts every year. Our district has already cut everything we can, we are at the barebones. Our principals and other staff have had to take on more and more roles. CHPS is calling on the legislature to all to either do a “hold harmless” or allow a dual model using both the paper Education Benefits forms and direct certification for the calculation.

Columbia Heights Public Schools is jointly submitting with the City of Columbia Heights Recreation and Columbia Heights Library, an application for the 21CCLC grant through the Department of Education. This application would be for out-of-school programming from fall 2025 to summer 2028. Please contact Kristen Stuenkel, Director of Community Education & Communications if you would like to review the application after May 1, 2025.

This week's CHPS Update includes information about CA's Musical, Annie Jr., opening this weekend! There is also information about Adult Enrichment classes, Activities Department updates, and reminders about Spring sports registration!

This week's CHPS Update includes information about PreK and Kindergarten Open Houses, School Social Worker Week, March Celebration and Recognitions, new CHPS Promise Fellows and more!

This week's CHPS Update includes information about Public Schools Week, upcoming Know Your Rights presentations, the new CHPS HealthLine, and custodial job openings.

This week's CHPS Update includes information about School Bus Driver Appreciation Day, the CHHS Music and Art Trip to Chicago, CA's Musical announcement and more.