Welcome Back!

To the parents, students and staff of the Holtville Unified School District:

I truly hope you enjoyed your summer with family and loved ones, traveling, relaxing around the house, playing games, or finding other ways to re-energize yourselves for the coming year.

Last year we made great progress towards ensuring that every student in our District receives a high-quality, worthwhile education. STAR test scores, just one of the ways we measure success, are coming back strong, showing great progress in many areas. While we have some areas needing improvement, I know that with all of us working together we can continue the Holtville tradition of having great schools.

This year brings new challenges. As you have probably heard, education took quite a beating in the state budget. We are working with about 20%+ less funding than we should have for this school year. For our District that means that we will be receiving about $3,000,000 less than we would normally be working with. This has required us to tighten our belts district-wide. For the past year, we have been diligently monitoring and adjusting our staffing levels and other expenditures to make sure we can get through this difficult time. Through these efforts we have mostly succeeded in keeping the cuts away from the classroom. We have a smaller administrative team, less custodians and maintenance employees and fewer support positions. In addition, through attrition, our teaching staff is smaller to reflect the decline in enrollment over the past several years. Even with all these cuts, however, we are still able to provide music and arts education, a vibrant athletic program and course offerings not typically found in a district our size.

I look forward to another fantastic year for the students and staff of Holtville Unified School District!