candidate. The League of Women Voters, as an organization, we encourage informed and active participation of citizens in their government. We work to increase understanding of major public policy issues and we influence public policy through education and advocacy. This forum this evening, one of the reasons we chose this forum is because at the local level, the local League has chosen three topics to concentrate this biennium and education happens to be one of them. And we are delighted to have a really an expert panel on this subject and we are also very delighted to have an absolutely fabulous moderator for the evening to take us through this discussion on this important subject. There is plenty of ample opportunity for all of you to ask questions also. You will be given index cards and you can write your questions on that, raise your hand, volunteers will come, take your question, bring into the moderator and the moderator will pose the question. If you have the question for a specific panelist, please indicate that on the index card. If not, the moderator can throw the question to anyone and they will all try to answer your question and we hope to get a very interesting but there is a lot of good things happening in schools. There are lots of challenges and we hope by the end of this evening, you know, they'll be sharing their experiences with us. Now it's to moderate this discussion, we have picked a person who needs no introduction, no introduction to San Antonio and especially no introduction when it comes to public school arena. He is a product of Texas. He went to the Northeast ISD Lee High School and then he went to Trinity University, University of Austin, UTSA and then he was at the helm of the Northeast ISD for 21 years from 1990 to 2011 as the superintendent.  So with no further delay, I want to introduce my friend and our moderator for this evening, Dr. Richard Middleton. I'm going to model something right now. I'm going to silence my phone. Well, it is indeed a pleasure to be here this afternoon to talk to you about the future of Texas and I want to thank the League of Women Voters of San Antonio area for the title. It said the future of public education and I think that's a very optimistic note and I love that that we do have a great future in store for us and I know that the panel that we have today is made up of some people who have not only been in the business for a while but they've excelled at what they do and they have really demonstrated a passion and an ability to lead and create as we determine how we're going to continue to provide the future of public education in this great state. Now I know that this body is apolitical but I do want to make one introduction and I know that if there are others that need to be, I will certainly do that later but we just finished a legislative session in the state of Texas and those folks have come home for a little bit and they will go back in July and we will talk about that a little in our presentations and those people dedicate themselves and have done many of them have done outstanding work. In San Antonio this representative that is here this evening is the vice chair of the House Public Education Committee and representing this area I believe the same geographic area and I'd like to introduce representative and vice chair Diego Bernal. So let's proceed. This evening we have four people as I said and I'll start I'll introduce them and then they're going to make a 10-minute presentation. After that then I will ask each one of them a particular question that came out of their presentation for about five minutes and then we'll open up the discussion and I think you'll see that they are very well prepared and because of where they have been and where they are going. Dr. Sherry Albright. Dr. Albright serves as the Merchantson Distinguished Professor of Practice in Education and the chair of the Department of Education at Trinity University. She is the past president of the Texas Association for Colleges of Teacher Education and serves as the secretary of the Municipal Board for the Pre-KSA, a citywide early childhood initiative in San Antonio. She is also a member of the governing board of the Holesworth Center and we will hear hopefully more about that in her presentation. A new statewide educational leadership center for Texas but I will tell you personally I have seen her expertise not only in the college level but also in elementary leadership secondary leadership that she provided in northeast school district where she really created and started the international school for the Americas which was our magnet program on the Lee campus following Ms. Chula Boyle. So we have a person here who has great college education and credentials but also a wealth of public education and also public nonprofit experience as well and she returned back from New York City. Katherine Clark is a senior consultant at the Texas Association of School Boards for the past 26 years serving as the association's school finance expert. In addition she headed the governmental relations division of the association in 2013 and led an in-house research organization for several years. She has a doctoral degree in educational policy from Stanford University. For those of us who have walked great halls in the pink building in Austin any time that you have an educational hearing and any time that you had research going on and any time they called upon experts to testify about policy over the years Katherine Clark was always a member of that group. She is an outstanding educator and a research person and we look forward to hearing from her. Pedro Martinez is the superintendent from the San Antonio Independent School District. He has had more than 20 years of experience in the private and non-profit public education sectors. Dr. Martinez most recently was superintendent and residence for the Nevada Department of Education in Reno, Nevada and was responsible for advising the governor's office and the state superintendent of instruction on educational policies and decisions. As superintendent for Washoe County School District he improved graduation rates and increased the percentage of students participating in and passing the advanced placement exam. Something very close to my heart since I just retired from the college board. He is a data-driven leader with a strong financial background and in-depth knowledge of academic and reform strategies. He has an MBA from DePaul University and a bachelor's from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and I will tell you we got his career started off at Chicago Public Schools which was quite an introduction to public education. Pedro has been so greatly welcomed here in San Antonio and has been doing it a very ambitious and I think a very encouraging and wonderful program and visioning for San Antonio ISD and we welcome him. Dr. Brian T. Woods is a long time Northside educator. He became superintendent in July of 2012 but he began his career in Northside in 1992 as a social studies teacher at Marshall High School and then also went on to an administration to work at O'Connor as an assistant principal and also the deputy superintendent for administration in 2008. Dr. Woods has a leadership of the university of has his PhD from the leadership of in leadership educational leadership at the University of Texas San Antonio and serves as the executive committee for the Texas Association of School Administrators and is the chair of the regional advisory executive committee and education at the service center region 20. He is a member of the public steering committee, the board of on the board of P16 plus council of Greater Barrett County and San Antonio Chamber of Commerce where he serves on two of its committees. He has also been very involved in the advisory board of the principles institute and also working on the fast growth school coalition. He's also the superintendent have a very successful and one of the largest school districts in the state of Texas not not only to mention San Antonio. I've known Dr. Woods, I've known Brian for a long time and we are very pleased that he is here with us today to add to our to our discussion. We're going to start off in a very imaginative way. It's alphabet by it will start our presentations. Dr. Albright We have more tool to assist with that learning than any other point and obviously that includes the exploding technological revolution that's happening and the opportunities it presents for us to tap into those different ways of learning. We are reaching more students and a more diverse array of students than we have any other time in history. There was a day and a time when your child had challenges and there was no place for them in schools and that is no longer the truth anymore than goodness during other schools. We are offering more customization, optimization, personalization and than any point since probably the one-room schoolhouse wouldn't be had to do that. You know we have stepped out of the industrial area the industrial age of schooling and that factory model of schooling in really remarkable ways in many many places. There's still some old holdouts and we're working on those but on the whole we have moved past the industrial area of schooling model and we're also engaged in a full set of new and dynamic partnerships in education with higher ed with philanthropy with business and industry that are really deeper and more meaningful than what we see in the past. There's a new mental model around that and it's actually partnerships that I'd like to take my few minutes to speak about and to talk about. So public education and higher education need each one. We are inextricably interdependent. Our missions are interdependent in right to so and frankly our public accountability is interdependent and right to so. And so I come at it from a teacher preparation, principal preparation, school psychologist preparation kind of stands and research confirms that deep clinical practice doing the real work of becoming a teacher, of becoming a principal, of becoming a school psychologist is absolutely essential and those deep student teaching experiences, those deep leadership and scholarship experiences are the things that we are desperately in partnership with our public school background. How do we provide the best learning laboratories so that that next generation of educators comes along as the most prepared, the most able, the most ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century? And frankly public schools need us to enhance that pipeline. We are standing on the brink of teacher shortage here in the state of Texas and nationally and I think my colleagues up here with us that we're also standing on the brink of any of leadership shortage here in the state and nationally and that's for a variety of reasons. We have an aging educational workforce, we have retirements of plenty, we have lower numbers of folks coming into the education pipeline and that presents us some challenges that we in fact look at tonight and that's for a variety of reasons. We watch a dip in our enrollment every time there's a legislative session where school funding is at an issue that we see teacher funding. It diminishes the amount of folks coming into the pipeline. The media and the public image that I'm teaching is not helping us. It is not saying that this is an admirable profession that should be held up and I think we're starting to change that line but I think that's well worth our consideration perhaps this evening. And then frankly the teachers are getting a misshapen image of what teaching is. It was hijacked by misperceptions around a test curriculum that that's all that they can teach and we know in many many many of our school districts and schools that it's not for the curriculum and what teaching instruction looks like and yet that has been the rhetoric that is certainly about there that is hurting our recruitment. And I also think that we have some challenges around uh education preparation like anything else whether it's schools whether it's education preparation programs whether it's businesses. There are great ones and there are strong ones. There are ones that are out there to make a bluff no matter what and there are those that have a mission-driven spirit to cut what they're trying to do. And we here in the state of Texas have opened the door to for-profit preparation programs that are ill-prepared many of our teachers to come into school. For the first time three years ago we took the balance that more teachers were prepared to alternative certification programs than traditional routes for universities. With much less accountability for those outcomes. And that's a challenge I think we have to face and what it creates in our folks who come in less prepared it creates a churn in our schools because they leave the profession. It's a hard job. People used to say it's not rocket science. I'm going to say it may be. It is such an intensely human endeavor that um that it's not formulaic that it's not if X happens you do Y. It is about human relationships and so I think that that is one of the pieces that we have to look at. And I'll be honest our for-profit preparation programs that will turn into preparation are not preparing them in our wealthiest super good schools who say sure send us a teacher that doesn't have much training and we'll put them in and make them the teacher record to train them up. That is not what's happening. We're doing that with our most poor and all of the children in this community and I think it's something worth doing. And again research tells us the number one factor a student should follow is the quality of the teacher in that classroom. Followed second only but quality of the principal that supports that teacher that hires that teacher that creates the school private and culture in which the teacher can flourish as well as the students in this family so we know and support them. And I think we're in an exciting time at looking at um I'm hoping that Pedro Alves talk a little bit about a new partnership that we engaged in between Trinity San Antonio Independent School District and the Center for the City Education Partnership here in San Antonio which is a collaborative of others who've come together around core education. We've created a new school that opened last fall at the Advanced Learning Academy, housed at both the old Austin Academy and Austin High School and I think we're trying to forge new ways and partnerships that not only include new learning for students but that also include timelines of training for teachers and for administrators in this community that are going to stay in this community and work with them. So then in addition to my work with all of that plan that I have to have at Trinity University I have a blessing of being part of the Facebook Center. I just want to say a few words about that because I think that's a unique partnership and I actually think we should be very discerning in the kinds of partnerships we're looking at between whether it's higher ed, whether it's the non-profit world, whether it's businesses and industry. Charles Butt who we know to be a friend of public education, a supporter of public education, one of our biggest champions for many many years, really went to look and see what his legacy is going to be in the state of Texas and for that he created the Holtzworth Center and the Holtzworth Center is focusing on superintendents and their teams and then cascading down the cohorts and principals in a select set of districts that every two years a new set of districts will be chosen and the problem of practice they're working on is leadership development and talent lifelines and how can we work with teams to build your personal leadership, their effective teaming, their ability to manage change and think about building your best systems and structures and not just what I think is unique about the partnership it's not that it's just come, learn and we send you back to your district but we're placing the team of support districts, support folks and your districts for five years that help them take the new learning, go back and apply it and work on their own problem of practice. Not one that we've designed for them, not one that we're prescribing from the Holtzworth Center but one that makes the most sense to them around this leadership challenge. So I think that's the kind of partnership that's essential that I hope that we're going to be looking toward about how do we not have outside aid entities that come in and pose solutions but there's one people who say let us stand with you and walk with you along pathways in public education to improve our districts, to improve our schools, to support the learning that's happening and so I'll stop there for now, I hope that they will be certain about this somewhere. I'm not the governor for school districts, that's the arrangement, the access of integration in every state except for Hawaii is why we asked just why schools are so, uh, it's common. And there's the catch, isn't there, in the community, what the state wants generally to a global school district needs specifically and I think it's a microcosm here. Yeah, it's not your home. And I thank you, my technician here, and I won't be talking about this one. Thank you. Is that Holtzworth Center? Ah, there we go. Okay, thank you. On the school finance front, it's a shared responsibility of state and local government and that shared arrangement is spelled out in the education code. So we know how much school districts are going to get and in fact what the state does, it tells school districts how much they're going to spend. The technical term for it is the local fund assignment but it's, that's what they're, they're told when the state brings in what the legislature appropriates. I'll mention in a moment the efforts that were made this legislative session to provide funding for public school students that exceeds what we had in the last biennium and what I think the future is for that. There's a, I think there is a wider spread belief than maybe those of us in the room hear very often that public education is in a crisis, that it's in a failure mode and I don't think this is necessarily an accident. And I link that to school finance by saying that it's hard to do the many things you've just heard about without resources. It's much easier to do them on the cheap as you've heard and on the cheap we don't always get the quality or the quantity that we're looking for. When I think about the widespread feeling that schools are in crisis, I don't think it's an accident that this is spreading around the country. I'm a little less optimistic than others here at the table. There's a contingent in America and I think it's growing that doesn't like government or they've been told government is, is the problem not the solution. They feel government is wasteful somehow, though they have some difficulty pointing out how it might be wasteful in a general way. There's always some odd thing that happens in local government or state government that looks to be wasteful and they feel like the resources are being wasted. There's a pushback against things like standards and uniformity. They have heard of children being referred to as snowflakes. Everyone is special in their own way and there is a desire among families to customize if you will their own experiences including the educational experiences of their children and from that we get presses for charter schools of choice funded by the public. So they're public schools but different schools and magnet schools but there's also a press for parents to be able to take public tax money and spend it in private school settings or for private education products if you will online learning, tutoring and other things that are purchased in the private sector without the kind of oversight and constant observation frankly that public schools receive from the community and from our state's leaders as well. Along with the things that I've mentioned so far I hear way too often the disparagement of school boards and superintendents as though for some reason somebody would vote would run for an office that pays nothing for an opportunity to meet endlessly late into the night about really intractable problems and difficult things to deal with like how do we fund the budget and provide a teacher pay increase when we didn't get additional resources from the legislature. Why would somebody do that unless it was important to them in a positive way? People who are school superintendents smart people there are a lot of other jobs that they could have taken and there are lots of jobs that are available to them right now. They do it because they're because they have a heart for it and it's distressing to me having been in this business for a long time and being the daughter of a school superintendent that I hear this too often but I don't think it's an accident I think there there are processes and activities in motion in the country that are making this more probable than we would hope for. Let's talk a little bit positively since we have Representative Bernal here especially. The legislature did make an effort to look at school funding and to do something about it. I was testified as an informational witness at two senate hearings and one house hearing about a plan that I hope school boards develop. My friends and colleagues in an organization called the Equity Center had a different plan just as good they presented that. The larger school districts have an organization they call the Texas School Alliance. They presented their plan to legislators they got legislators got a chance to ask questions probe the data that people brought. There was no one can say that ideas were not presented viable ideas ideas that people have put computers to to show how they would actually affect individual school districts. When it came to writing legislation it was the house that came up with a bill and the house bill was understandably not richly funded but they did offer an additional one and a half billion at one point it was 1.8 billion additional dollars beyond what the formulas would say to help improve the funding of public education. It was a bill that was an excellent start for school funding and it received strong support certainly from the committee of the education committee in the house but on the house floor as well and went over to the Senate and instead of treating it like a school finance bill it became a vehicle for voucher and that was the end of that they when the Senate passed their version with the voucher attached to it the house wanted nothing more to do with it. The special legislative session that's been called is not being called to reconsider school finance. There are two school funding things that I think are important and the upcoming special session one is the desire to pass legislation that would create a special commission to study school finance and of course that's helpful it's always good to have people continuing to look at it but it's not for lack of studying folks. I can tell you that from personal experience and the people at the table can confirm that as well. The other school funding issue is the idea that school districts would provide teachers teachers a thousand dollar a year raise but without any additional funding they figure there's enough waste and slack in the budgets that the school district could come up with a thousand dollars for each each teacher regardless of where they are on the salary schedule regardless of how well they're performing in their classroom and not considering the effect of the entire salary system for the school district when a particular group of employees gets a raise but no one else does. So there are school finance issues coming up in the special session but they're not the kind of school finance issues that would flow additional resources through the formulas in a fair way to all school districts to help them support all students. I have a little soapbox piece that I've been giving at talks in the last week or so and that is my despair at what's happened with pre-kindergarten funding in the state of Texas. Not that many years ago pre-kindergarten was funded for through the formulas for certain students but more importantly there was an additional 225 million dollars set aside specifically for pre-kindergarten either to help school districts educate more youngsters in pre-kindergarten or have them have longer or more robust pre-kindergarten programs. That's narrowed down to a couple to a handful of million dollars. It shrunk almost 90 percent and yet the period of time in the last 10 years we know more and more with certainty that youngsters really benefit from a high quality first start in school and pre-kindergarten is the place for many of them will get that high quality start and yet we haven't seen fit to fund it appropriately and hats off to the school districts in this area for continuing to fund pre-kindergarten making difficult budget decisions in order to make that happen. So I'll stop with that on the school finance front and turn the microphone over to the next speaker. Thank you, Mr. Martinez. Good evening everyone. Thank you for having me here. I feel blessed to be here with you. So I'll talk about a few things. One, give you perspective on our district. I just finished my second year here in the school district, second year here in San Antonio. I would tell you that every day I learn more. I love the tradition and the history of San Antonio and it has its blessings and great achievements but at the same time also unintended consequences. So for example research has shown and a couple of research studies have come out that San Antonio has the largest segregation of any city in the country when it comes to income and I will tell you for anybody who comes brand new to San Antonio and you drive around it is very visible. I was amazed at how visible it was. By the way, we have some amazing school districts. Northeast, North Side, Alamo Heights. I think they have great leadership. They've had great leadership. You've seen how they benefited the city of San Antonio and I think they're a blessing but unintended consequences is that we have left pockets of poverty, deep poverty in specific areas and frankly you know the standards are the same for every child. Sadly in the state you will find out that for the most part resources are the same for every child and so that creates just some unique challenges. So in my district for example we serve just under 53,000 children. The median income for my families is about $30,000. How do we know that? We actually went and looked at census data and the addresses of our children and we're able to look at that school by school and we know that. By the way, county average is about $60,000. That's also the national average. What does that mean when you have that? Well, of all my schools there's only one that is close to the county average of $60,000. The vast majority are around $30,000 and we have some that are at $17,000. I have 7,000 children that are in public housing where the median income is under $12,000. So it just creates some unique challenges. So for example you know when we're looking at trying to engage our parents. My parents are working sometimes two jobs. They're working minimum pay jobs and you know there's amazing research talks about scarcity. So what happens when you are in a situation regardless of how smart you are but yet you're just you're thinking about survival. You're thinking about where your next meal is going to come from. You're thinking about how you're going to pay the rent.  What if if you happen to have a car what if it breaks down? So those challenges and so at the same time we're trying to engage parents around look we got to make sure your child has good grades. You got to make sure the attendance is there. You got to you know there's you know just unique challenges that are not unique but challenges that every parent faces. So what are we doing in our district? So we're taking it directly on. We just said let's let's really start changing the conversation that it is about access and it is about the fact that our children have the intellectual capability of any child as long as they have access to resources and to quality education. That is what we're going to show. By the way nationally this is a national problem. Statewide you know it's passing the commissioner of education Mike Moratho have a huge admiration for you showed recently that our state overall has not served children to live in poverty well. Less than 10 percent of our children that live in poverty have been successful that are college ready. They've been successful in college. Let's stay wide by the way. Here's what's scary for everybody that or here's what's something that's concerning that everybody should know about. The population of poverty is growing in our state. We're one of the fastest growing states in the country and the population that's growing the fastest is a high poverty population. Over the next several years the majority of our children will live in poverty. Brian is seeing it in the north and north side. North east is seeing that it's the numbers are growing statewide. And so again as you how does this connect with with with the finance formula where we have formulas that have not been updated in decades and decades. So in essence we're working with an antiquated financial system that is in some cases more than 20 years old at least 10 years old and almost every aspect of every funding formula. So how do districts make it make it work? Well if you're fortunate where you're a district that you're in Romans growing you're getting additional revenue even though you know these problems haven't changed for the number of growing children and you make it work. If you're a district like mine that has either been flat or even slightly declining it becomes a significant challenge every single year. And for us for example in our district we feed children over three meals a day because we know that we have to. We have social workers on staff because we know we have to. I have to have behavioral specialists because we know we have to. My children see a lot of trauma and so those are just challenges that we say look we're not gonna and we partner by the way partner with great not-for-profits here in the community we partner with the city we partner with the county and now you know what we're doing also is partnering with our higher ed partners so let me just share with you some of the things that we're doing and again we're trying to change this conversation so first of all to prove this theory that our children have the intellect they have the ability as long as they have access to quality education is we said let's create some new models new school models that nobody's ever seen before and let's see what happens. So for example we partnered with Trinity and opened up the Advanced Learning Academy and we put it in these two sites that historically have been under enrolled historically I would even argue that they were they were slated for closure because the enrollment just kept declining every single year. We now have the Advanced Learning Academy is just starting in second year next year by the way it will be one of my top three schools in the district a very diverse population very diverse in terms of income you know very diverse in terms of academically children children that are advanced children that need a lot of support and what I love about the school is now has a waiting list we have a waiting list like I have headaches now and we'll go into more detail but we have I have headaches now because I'm getting calls about when is my child going to get off the waiting list how can you have you know how can my child not be able to get it we created an all-boys school last year my first year that is also going to be one of my top three schools and we have a waiting list there and it's a school that's just very different it's all boys these are boys that were challenged in other schools and you know that their self-confidence is being built up and so we have four new models that are opening up this fall alone including the first 100 percent dual language academy in san antonio which was at twain middle school that will start with pre-k2 this year we're getting we have an hour waiting list we will start the first Montessori public Montessori free public Montessori school in the entire city of san antonio in bear county again we're getting waiting lists so we're changing the conversation that when we provide this quality options parents will respond in addition by the way as we're doing that we're also establishing the largest international baccalaureate program in the Jefferson area so will that academy has become the first school in san antonio that now has been authorized to be an international baccalaureate school an elementary and middle school and here's what's fascinating about that school so last year when i went to it it was a school that was starting to struggle it was starting to have low performance this year we're already seeing the results it's day and night and what i love is that the kind of projects of these children are working on they're looking at at our society from a global lens so so when your child that lives in poverty you have a certain perspective of the world so usually you have a very specific radius where you live so for example i grew up as one of those children so in chicago inner city i had my world was basically between 16th street and 22nd street and between holston and western which is about a one mile radius in chicago and that was my world by the way i could see the downtown different world i could see the university different world it wasn't me it was it was this was my own world that's how my children that's what my children see and so what we're doing is is changing the perspective and look look at things differently so for example at willan academy i walked into a classroom where their project was the the break the what happened when the ussr was broken up back remember that time and different countries got formed and they're analyzing every single country in terms of quality of health care quality of education the type of government they have now versus what they had before by the way these are these was a fourth grade classroom so this is the type of work they're doing so when i saw the results the early results come in i said and they were completely off the charts i said well no wonder if you look at what these children are doing it's just night and day so so we're changing the conversation about how education is perceived um early indication now i'll tell you we still have a ways to go you know you know we're nowhere near done but we are seeing early indicators of higher graduation rates higher percentages of children going to top colleges and local colleges so we feel we're starting to go on the right path um and i'll just um and and i'm just i'm happy to take questions um there's a joke that there's only five people in the in the state that understand school finance i believe we have one of them here one of those five but here's what you should know uh and so here's what everybody the millions of residents here in texas should know the way the way education is funded in our state is through your local property taxes every single year as your property taxes go up they go directly to the state unless you're going in enrollment like in north side they go directly to the state and then it funds either growing districts or other districts uh it just gets redistributed and by the way uh one data point back in 2006 the percentage of local versus state was about 50 50 today it is 62 percent local 38 percent state and going down every single year why because we don't change the funding formulas and they're flat um how you know that's what happens and by the way whose property tax haven't gotten up in the last you know since 2006 so guess where they went that's why that percentage has went down so that is just something we need to understand about our state formula thank you petro dr woods a couple of other people are in the audience one is the kind of board member the captain talked about that kind who comes to meetings stays late into the night makes hard decisions goes to events and gets paid not one red penny and that's the the new board president for north side school district Melissa chumlee who's sitting in the back Melissa thank you for being here that's the distinction of doing that in the north side school district for a well over 20 years now so uh yeah that's a lot of volunteers know that about it uh on your point about trustees earlier i also want to introduce for those who may not know her solar comacho with san antonio chamber uh stand up a lot of slap and then i'll talk about you a minute so so it does uh the education work for the chamber and there is no uh greater benefit than she is and no one spent more time in the capital in the last few months than she did so for sure thanks for all that you do for for all of us um let me talk a little bit about our school district and things that we believe and hold uh to be uh true and valuable and then i'll talk make some comments about the recent legislative session both both positive and not so positive so we educate a little more than 105 thousand students in north side schools that number increases every year the diversity of that student population on a socioeconomic standpoint is fairly dramatic uh from families that are in that 20 000 a year income range to kids that live in the dominion and that presents a different set of challenges those families are are very different and to again to want to Catherine's points about expectations about what schooling is and what schooling should be and what it should look like are different to a degree across those groups so some things that uh that we believe as a system uh one is we believe that kids and parents need to be treated not like there's 105 000 of them but like there's five right and we want to treat our folks like they're in a very intimate setting and that's a that's somewhat easier to do in an elementary school it's somewhat harder to do in very large secondary schools but that's a priority for us sherry talked about leadership development and she talked about one of the very few things that research in in this business is crystal clear on is that the highest yield strategy is around high quality teacher in the classroom for performance the second highest yield is principal in the building and so we to that end put a lot of effort into growing folks to be great teachers in our system and that starts with university preparation programs just like sherry was talking about we also put a lot of energy into leadership development within our system so that we're raising up the next generation of leaders we're growing junior to be future principals and so forth because that is that is a way to set up in essence a structure that allows you to continue into the future with success succession planning is important to us again i somebody maybe sherry said this the population of educators in our state really nationally is aging and so there's got to succession planning is really important succession planning really adds value if you want to retain quality in your organization we actually believe and i i know it's not maybe as popular as it used to be this used to be a popular notion we believe in the idea of well-rounded kids that kids ought to have a variety of experiences from which they can grow and learn some of which they'll learn not to like and that's okay others of which they'll learn to love and it will become something that will guide them to a career or a lifelong passion we kind of see ourselves as an incubator for those kinds of ideas that kind of thought so to that end in spite of budget issues that we can talk about ad nauseam trustees and administrators and our district shows into fully fun fine arts programs from k through 12 we have 85,000 kids per day that participate in some way in the arts and we fund athletics and i know that some folks say that money gets wasted on athletics and i'll tell you that my experience is kids who have passion for that there are kids who come to school for that and they pick up those things like english and math and a little science long way because they're around that thing that is true equally true with automotive technology that is true with robotics that is true with a thousand other things we really believe in this notion that kids ought to have a variety of experiences in the in the k-12 environment so that they can choose what really they are passionate about i'll tell you that another phrase that's popular probably too popular among educators is data driven and maybe that's not just maybe i'm just the educator in the room and so that's all i know maybe everybody says that but educators say an ad nauseam and we're really not we're not data driven and by that i don't mean we are ignorant of the data we are data informed we're really values driven any organization that's going to have long-term success is driven by the values that people hold dear within the organization and then certainly data informs their behavior and it helps them in their decision making but i think it's important to say values more is the higher priority of those two so that's just a little bit about kind of what we believe from a 30 dozen stand standpoint in our district let me just transition quickly to the legislative session and you've heard thanks to representative Bernal and his colleagues in the house public education committee you've heard that there was a real conversation for the first time in a long time about what school funding could look like it wasn't a quick fix there is no such thing i'm sure there's no panacea talked about but there was an honest goodness conversation about school funding and perhaps a way forward and not just a two-year way forward until the next election cycle in the next legislative session but a longer term strategic look at a way forward in school funding in texas and i'll tell you early in the session i was probably more optimistic about the conversation even if it didn't translate into dollars per child it was a very positive in my mind very healthy conversation and so i don't need to go through the autopsy of what happened at the end of the session folks in newspaper but what what obviously that very healthy productive conversation was for naught and that did not happen because of competing interests on the other side of the great pink building and we can get into that i'm happy to call names and say who i think all i have no problem with that so i'm happy to get into that but it illustrates a larger point and that is this about legislative sessions and perhaps about where we are in our state for thoughtful people who vote there in any system there needs to be an investment in infrastructure in order for the system to have long term success we in texas we have chosen to focus on short-term issues to to get us through to the next session to get us elected the next time representative burnall notwithstanding rather than take a long-term view of eight year a 12 year of 20 year view of what might our state need and i i think one of the messages to me after a lot of ugliness at the end of the last last legislative session and we are set up for a lot more ugliness in the special session in july i think the message for those for thoughtful voters is we need to hear from our candidates what the long-range planning is not so i get elected in two years but what is the long-range planning around any issue that's not just a public school issue that's true around transportation funding that's true around water planning in a state like texas any long-term issue requires long-range infrastructure planning we're just not set up for that by structure for personality in texas right now thank you dr woods i also need to mention that dr woods was also uh recognized as a distinguished graduate of utsa and i say that because professor sarah herrington is here tonight and her class is here this evening i believe they are starting your first class an education well fantastic and welcome remember from the best tonight and you're also knowing that this is a very high calling and that to educate and prepare the future there is no better so as we heard from our our panel and we talked about a number of things one question comes to mind that i'd really like to present to them and that is of how do we assess and we have had so many changes uh in the last 20 25 years about what does it take to prepare a student for those of you who remember the four by four uh the four by four was that every student in high school would take four years of math science social studies in english and that went away and was replaced by house bill five which gave us a number of alternatives to prepare our students for graduation but their question still remains that we are still struggling to try to recognize a way or find a way to show how school districts are doing and how students are being prepared and now we just had the last iteration i believe of a to f uh that just was passed in this this last session so i'd like to ask each panel from their perspective that what is the best way what is the most effective way that schools can be evaluated to show that they are making progress is it the data f or is it something else or is it strictly by test and i know that uh the first person i'll call him again by alphabetical order did a lot of work and and redesigning how students learn when she was at isa so dr albright what is the best way the a to f system and other systems like that it's so reductionist that i'm not sure it's helpful and then you heard me say earlier that you know people say teaching is a rocket science and i think it is the entire enterprise of school is an incredibly complex interconnected human centered interesting and so those reduction systems that let us easily say they're or god forbid they're an act of what happens there um it's not particularly helpful it doesn't help the school know what to do it doesn't help the community know what to do so there's a there's a granularity i think in how we look at school and a complexity frankly in how we look at school i'd love to say that we can just boil everything down something simple and that happens we do what that is simply not the nature of school and so with that in mind i think assessment of students is similar you heard dr woods talk about um us wanting to look at the whole child that there's something to letting students grow in all aspects and yet we are not measured on that in any sort of way and frankly probably scares me a little bit on what that might look like if they wanted measures and all of that there are ways that we can do things technology-enabled ways there are smart exams that allow students to craft um more complex answers to things that were the tests for the assessment actually the learning process for students and we just aren't there yet we continue to go with a very safe bubbled in quickly scannable way to measure people and that's a both community inadequate I think from all of that and I think that's across the board it's across the board is how we assess whether teachers are ready to come in that should be a performance-based principal coming in should be a performance-based process and frankly was looking at those kinds of things in the state and yet not turning around and saying what would it be for two performance-based processes for students that is nuanced that is smart you know we don't fare well on the PISA exam it's the international exam because those exams are much smarter nuanced problem solving based exams that are not reliant on what you've learned but are actually leveraging everything you've learned to discern a new response that's higher order thinking in our world and yet our tests actually probably dissuade us from teaching to that very kind of thinking in many ways and so you know we the old saying that what we measure gets taught I think we should be much more careful with local measuring thank you Catherine we have an accountability system in the state that's pretty complicated to understand and convey to ordinary citizens but I think it contains the framework of something that could be useful for us we do know how do need to know how students can perform on measures that help us understand what they've learned and what they need to learn going and we need to have conversations at the state about that as opposed to questions about you know where's the a to cut off where's the f cut off it'll be amused to learn that there is a bill passed that requires the state to come up with a system that would make it a mathematical possibility that all school districts could get an a well of course that's what we want we want every school district and every campus to be an a campus what is this you know normal curve distribution about it's not and you know that we've we've kind of passed the the point of reason on some of our accountability measures what we can go back to and part of the framework the accountability system had was a component called the student and parent engagement component community engagement and it was something that school districts themselves could create and measure themselves on and promote it as as they saw fit and I think having that local component would be certainly helpful I mean the gentlemen on both sides of me have amazing ideas and would probably come up with something with their administrators that would be really helpful in articulating exactly what the district's doing how far it's gone and where they think it needs to go in the future so I'm hopeful that at some point soon we can refine our accountability system in the state to be more useful in helping us understand how schools and districts are doing and to help them not just to label them absolutely so I think for us you know when you look at our new models that we're creating we're creating them in a certain way where basically if you look at the underlying assumption we have is we want our children to love to learn and so for example the advanced learning academy everything is project-based everything is with their hands we use a little bit of technology but I'll tell you you know we do amazing things with cardboard we have an architecture club in the third grade where the teacher there actually do they actually do models like architecture models at the young man leadership academy they have a lot of technology because boys love technology all the furniture is movable but what's amazing about that school is not the technology but the systems they built where the boys are working in groups they're working together they're problem solving together so for us you know and what I find with those two schools as two examples they do that and the test results take care of themselves because they're just at a higher level and so for us you know I do worry about the A through F system because it does it does come at it from such a negative perspective and we know that children that live in poverty they're going to start at a lower level just because of challenges because you know maybe their family's working two jobs then they don't have access to go to the library like my family and I we go to the library every single week that's our that's one of our hobbies that we do and and my son you know has had access as a six-year-old to thousands of books and that's his favorite that's what he loves to do my parents couldn't do that for me not because they didn't love me not because you know they brought me up to be honest to have integrity but again my father was working two jobs I'm the oldest of 12 children 10 of us still alive good Catholic family and you know it just I mean that was just the way you know we were raised and and so it was teachers that really had made a difference in my life and so for us I do worry about how we measure that I think one of the things that I worry about just here in Texas is that we've been so test driven that we forget about instilling the love of learning we did put in a diagnostic that actually actually shows our parents where the children are at not only within our district but nationwide so I would say the other side of it is that as we look at results Dr. Albright talked about the piece of results we also got to make sure that we look at things nationally because sometimes we can be a little bit isolated here in Texas and and you know I have children that you know we got a child that's going into Georgetown three they're going to Middlebury in Vermont and my soul works we're again expanding the scope of our children so they could see what's happening nationally and so and many of them by there will still stay at the house of you know College Station UT Austin Texas Tech and UTSA and Tech San Antonio got the majority of my graduates but still I mean we want them to have that larger perspective. So one thing I will say though is that I think most of the folks in the room know that it's the highest width performance on norm reference test is anybody in here so what's very disheartening to me is when you look at a threat that's been done in other states and you look at the initial ratings that were released in St. Texas in January of this year the correlation with family economic status of a kid to the school is very high and so if we're spending money on a brand new accountability labeling system in Texas to confirm what we already know which is poor kids are going to struggle more on norm reference test I'm not sure that was money well spent and so with that I'll leave it throughout I want to I want to circle back to what Catherine talked about with regard to a community based accountability system and I wouldn't suggest nor would I think it'd be feasible that schools all across the state of Texas not give some kind of common assessment. I've heard very few educators advocate for that. Question is what what percent what amount should that weigh against what the community itself says is important and it may be that the community says you know those state tests we care about that and that's important to us so we're going to weigh that more heavily but it may be that the community doesn't think that and I think frankly in many communities across our state they would not impose that kind of accountability system on themselves. We want well-rounded kids so we want to measure how schools are providing lots of opportunities for kids or they'd say we want rigor and we define rigor as advanced placement slash international baccalaureate so we're going to we're going to measure at least high schools that way it's it is ironic to me that in a state dominated by conservative politics this is an observation I don't think it's a political statement I'm trying not to make. In a state dominated by conservative politics we have less and less local control every legislative session I think that's that's terribly ironic and when I look as a preview of coming attractions at the special session call by our governor I see further attempts to attack what little local control still exists in the state of Texas and so in my mind the notion of accountability ought to have at least some significant portion based on what the community teachers and board members and parents actually think is important I think that that makes a lot of thank you I think it's the part of the program now where we will give you a chance to ask questions and have our audience have our audience ask okay we have some of these that will be addressed to a particular person on the panel and then there'll be something that'll be addressed to all members what is the SAISD or NISD's reaction to the Houston Chronicle article on special education and it's underfunding and underrepresented under representation of students for me I was surprised because I've just never heard of of a state having either a restriction or an implied restriction on special needs children our district has always been above the state average which is not good or bad it's just a fact I will tell you for some of our children that have significant special needs it is very important because the earlier that we can diagnose some of the better of an opportunity have to get them a better quality of education so for me it was troubling again I don't didn't fully understand it because I just you know again I had never seen that before percentages of students enrolled across the state and what they found was that Texas Texas has multiple accountability systems it has the one that's mostly based on tests that we were just talking about it has another one called PVMAS that's performance based system that measures a whole other set of rubrics hidden within that performance base hidden in plain sight in that performance based system for years was this measure that if you had more than the state average of special education students that you had to develop a essentially a plan to kind of figure that out well these are public schools right we enroll who comes to the door so that was something that north side we never concerned ourselves much with we've always been well above the state average we continue to be well above the state average today and so at least locally that wasn't as big an issue okay before we preparing our students to place a global workforce place jobs in in an IT and nursing for example are high-paying jobs that compete on a global level this would then be a multiple range of different kinds of occupations and i'll start with the ladies this time there are some remarkable schools that combine the elements of preparation for a career with the regular school curriculum to enable a student to pursue their training and their education in that field faster and more effectively either with community colleges or with other higher education institutions we have early college high schools in the state where we've got some you know unique schools as well that have gotten together with the community college with a higher education institution and designed something that works for that community and for the likely jobs that that community will hold in the future i'm really impressed with those there are instances of those all over the country i read about a high school in california and vista california where my niece actually lives and they have an amazing high school where every student is working on things that are addressed what they want to have happen next for them whether it's an academic career which a lot of kids don't think of anymore or whether it's a job the nursing was mentioned IT technical jobs were mentioned there are manufacturing skilled manufacturing jobs that have high pay and go begging so you can look all across the country and find really exciting examples of those things as well as looking right here in texas at some of the opportunities that are available to students we need to let the public know about these and get better support for them an internal conflict for me in thinking about college preparation and career preparation and how they're going to get it um so i think we are doing an amazing job with offering lots of choice in many places and it raises a serious question for me about access to them um our comprehensive high schools have gone from being criticized for being they used to have the term shopping mall high school we didn't get a little anything if you wandered through it long enough right versus focused career academies and pieces like that and i think our challenge is to think about what's the balance to the midpoint of that it breaks my heart in some realms to see the destruction of the neighborhood school that is a hub of a community and that offers that support for an entire sense of family and actually reestablish your community and for sometimes that's the rad cake and i know how kids can soar when they go to health careers or if they they're at the international school the americans my old school and we're set on a trajectory toward learning there and so i think we've got this constant rub to think about and how many different purposes were served how important is it for students when they leave high school to be really great learners to move into the first future in whatever career or college pathway they choose versus how much responsibility we take on in public school to train people for a career to train people for a career specifically and so so that's my that's my dilemma with these kinds of issues is trying to find that balance between access so that all kids can choose and that's reasonable when we're thinking about those kinds of pieces and balancing choice and access to that choice so i have a broader perspective yeah i was actually going in exactly that direction and i think we feel that attention all the time there are certainly students kids families who have in their mind a clear direction of what they want to study and where they want to go and what that looks like and so do we provide options for those kids yes we do but i don't think that that necessarily describes every student and i and i don't think that it necessarily describes every really great student either the notion that we can sit here today and predict the job market for a 14 year old sitting in one of our schools today is asinine right that is that is not reasonable and so i don't know that ours is necessarily to teach a laser focused set of skills as so much as it is there is a basic learning of amount of knowledge that educated citizens must possess and then this notion of critical thinking this notion of being able to work with other people and here described in all kinds of ways that applies in most folks jobs no matter what it looks like whether it exists today or it hasn't been invented yet i think has a lot of value so i i worry about a focus on a single set of skills whether they be for a job need or whatever is driving that we just don't want to prepare students for a job market that exists today the 10 years from now when they're ready to go into that job market no longer exists i'll just add that for us again we know that if we can if our children have a passion for learning they're going to be fine that's number one i will say this though when we identify something that motivates them the question we're asking is how do we how do we raise expectations so that the quality of what they're getting is the highest it can be so i'll just give you an example we have culinary programs in our high schools when we in the last bond our board was very very proactive on building our culinary programs in most of our high schools and what we found when we did them is great facilities but the program wasn't that great and so and and it wasn't that a lot of the children wanted to go into culinary but that was a subset so we decided well who's the best in this here in san antonio and it was the culinary institute of america so we just announced recently a partnership with the culinary institute of america where they have now trained and certified our instructors we're using their curriculum and so for my children that really want to do that they have that option now by the way most of them will take a culinary class and they'll like it and they'll say yeah but not for me that's okay but if they're going to pursue this now they can get up to 30 credit hours that transfers directly into the cia culinary institute of america not the other cia and and they can pursue a bachelor's agreement they want to in new york because so many of our best restaurants are actually graduates of the culinary institute of america so so for me whatever that passion is and we're doing similar things with st philips and san antonio college whatever they like we say okay what is the best way to nurture that motivation but i agree with the panel is um you know let's let's not assume let's let's just see what what again what what kind of passion they have and at the end let's make them great problem solvers let's have them work in teams and let's have them again just love to learn thank you since i have been in the business since 1973 this question always comes up especially in san antonio and it's one i would imagine that we need to get on the table and continue to talk about and the question is what is your thought on 16 separate and unequal school districts in san antonio you know that there there were four friends up here before now that i'm glad there's a back door over there i will start off by by by saying that as we dealt with that issue years ago we have seen so many different different kinds of suggestions we did with uh we started with taxing districts that were ruled unconstitutional and quite frankly we have separate boards of education we have a commisioner this time that is pretty aggressive in dealing with with uh board relationship problems and uh with governance issues but each one has its own governance and its own leadership and that is part of the democratic process i'm not sure we want to bring ourselves together as one big district like houston or dallas but we will have some idea that in the very near future i believe that the accountability issues coming up are going to face we're going to face some consolidation i believe and this is from somebody who's no longer in the business so i understand that on my heart is there i understand this is a very dangerous and a very difficult issue to deal with but as we see small districts everywhere who are trying to there's a question about rural education in here as well do we talk where do we talk about consolidation do we consolidate all of west texas for example uh in san antonio is san antonio different from austin or houston or dallas they all have uh small suburban districts outside their their major urban district so by frankly we're not that different uh than other areas and other major urban areas in the state but i do believe that if an accountability system does become cohesive and coherent that there will be districts that will be forced to join others if not for financial reasons simple fact they have trouble governing themselves in the best interests of students now that's a political statement and i apologize to the league for that but it's it's from it's it's from a retired guy so from that i'll i'm going to throw that on my superintendent buddies first our former buddies so quickly i i want to echo the point that uh folks who live in barred county assume that nowhere else looks like this and they situation is similar because those simple cities are so big the school districts that serve the central part of the city are consequently very large i think if you went and you did satisfaction surveys in those districts some folks would say not your consolidation such a great idea the other the other point though that i think is important is this is another thing that isn't lacking for study this notion it's actually been studied a barred county legislature file the bill one or two sessions oh i can't remember now that mandated that the a higher the state education agency hire a contractor to study this issue so they did that and what they showed was the consolidation would add to the cost of operations in the six to eight percent range so this this issue has been studied i think the perception persists with the notion that you could grab economies of scale type savings which are usually here behind consolidation is actually not accurate sure absolutely i'm wondering if it's a different question what is the question were what would it mean to have strong governance in all of those school districts what would it mean to have functional districts and what then might the solution look like to let that be achieved the actual point you know as opposed to the consolidation there's very thank goodness for the association school boards and folks like that to do school board training but that's typically after folks become school board members so what are we doing to prepare the folks who are interested in running we have some programs here in the city that are working on issues like that are helping folks think about what it looks like to be good stewards of their school districts and i think there's much that we can do as a community i think the fact that the turnout in a school board election is so frighteningly low that we're not doing our voting job to identify strong enough citizens and encouraging people to run for those incredibly important role one of the last places of community-based democracy and it's well worth the attention the whole discussion and as i can satellite some of these whole discussion is about how do you deal with inequality if not by consolidation are there other ways that you can deal with the unequal ability unequal preparation unequal economic status mr martinez talked about this about his district what is what is the remedy is it a legislative remedy that we continue to work on our funding systems that drives money and resources to try to equalize opportunity what can be that way of giving and we used to talk about it in school finance about vertical equity you don't treat unequals equally you have to give each one according to their need and it's a very difficult proposition the old days it was a weighted pupil system which confounded most people to the point where we tried to do away with it but the idea that people need to be treated differently how do we achieve that through practice so i think i think it all starts with us coming together and understanding the challenge and the problem you know so many times you know you hear these these conversations nationally about how we're losing our middle class the fact that companies are struggling more and more to find local workforces so they're importing more labor so you know there's all these conversations and at the same time and we're seeing gaps grow in the country so first of all we have to understand it let's acknowledge it let's understand that when children succeed regardless of their poverty level regardless of their income level it benefits the entire country if you think about what happened in the 50s and 60s after world war two when more individuals were able to go to college because of the gi bill or after the second world war that changed the country completely and so for us it's really having those conversations i think i saw dr drennan from trinity here in the audience she has a she does an amazing presentation that talks about the history of san antonio and the impact of segregation and what happened and how we became the most segregated city in the country when it came to income so let's have those conversations let's understand it by the way nothing you know there's nothing you know controversial about it it's just factual data and then let's have the conversation about what does it take to for children to succeed and one of the things that i i mentioned is that i don't know how to quantify we can get into all the funding formulas and like i said i'm very passionate about that too but i don't know how to quantify what a middle-class family can provide their children versus somebody who lives in poverty so i was the first of my family graduate from high school first to go to college my family lived in in-depth poverty i was born in mexico lived in in-depth poverty is where my father came to this country we became citizens my father were two jobs still struggled and because i was able to go to college i was able to buy the buy them their first home because i went to college every one of my siblings is either finished or finishing college by the way four teachers in the family and so you know let's understand that when we also when children succeed we all succeed it creates economic development it creates economic growth when we have segregation in terms of people that are successful versus not it hurts the entire society hurts our entire community and then let's have the conversations of how do we make sure and what i love about the city it's very it's a very generous community i will tell you one of the things that i feel that makes us different here in san antonio there is a generosity that's here there's a passion and caring that is here that i can't tell you that exists in every other location in every other city and so for us let's come together and figure out what those needs are because again i have children that parents can't get them the tutoring that they need they just don't have the means i have children that again when after they leave us they don't have meals at home oh it's not the parents fault they're trying their best i'll just show you this one last story that just brought it home to me so we were very proud of a student that we had at one of our at one of our high schools which got a full ride to columbia and you know very proud of the student i mean amazing student very successful but yet you know we found out recently my counselors found out that the family is about to be evicted from their apartment and the child is struggling with do i go to new york but my family's getting evicted right and by the way because of travel costs and books right they still have he has to come up with about two thousand dollars to twenty five hundred dollars this summer the counselor calls me says what do we do i don't not want him to not you know take advantage of this great opportunity to go to columbia it's a it's a he's the first in his family to go to college this will change the whole trajectory of his family just like it did for me and um and of course you know and so so again i just share with you i mean these are the real stories that i see on a regular basis and again this is a child that academically has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that has the intellect intellectual ability has the ability to completely change his family's trajectory but these other challenges are real and i just can't help but think about myself who i didn't want to be a burden on my family i i you know i thought that i went to college i will work two jobs if i have to to make sure my family never has to worry about you know me going to college right and i know that this student is having the same exact thoughts there are a number of questions in here that that as you've asked one about the rural schools are getting more support and resources from stem programs and quality ap classes and different kinds of programs that are not economically efficient in smaller systems kathleen what have you have you seen in your research what are some good practices that we're seeing with rural schools we still have quite a number of rural schools of course we've changed in texas over the years but what about rural schools i don't know the numbers for rural but the school that school districts that are considered small like we've texas definition small is 1600 or fewer students we have over 700 school districts that are considered small and the vast majority of those small districts are rural or small town school districts what are we doing for them well the school finance formulas do acknowledge that there are economies of scale that these small districts can't take advantage of and they do get consideration through the funding formula to the extent to which the state wants to support it as part of its share so there there is an attempt to do that but what the districts are doing themselves i think it's more impressive and certainly more modern a lot of them are making good use of technology they're either working on with themselves or they're having help with their regional education service center to provide online face-to-face as well as online instructional materials that will help their students get some of the benefits that students in san antonio area get because there's such a diversity of offerings here so that's certainly the use of technology is an important element for the rural districts but they are not going to be able to go very far with that without being able to keep up with technology and that involves financial resources as well so again it comes down to the issue of you know equity is fine we let's let's let's take the superintendent's issue stories to heart but we haven't tried yet really funding our formula so that we're providing the needed resources for those youngsters we put the san antonio school districts together and ask them do a simple research project for a year and a half and what are the resources that students from extreme poverty need to be able to keep up graduate on time with their with their schoolmates and have good opportunities following school let's them come up with that number and let's see if we can put that in the formula and really fund it let's do that first let's and then see what happens as well well okay we've got the funding fair what else can we do what else do we need to do thank you this next one we'll start with dr albright what kinds of incentives are teachers uh what kind of incentives do teachers have in terms of rewards for advanced degrees do you feel this can serve as positive role models for students as teachers get advanced degrees that's been changing here in the state of texas uh used to there were uh differential pay and different career ladders for advanced degrees they still get a bump up on the scale but it's not a significant bump that would pay for that degree over time necessarily would take a number of years um i will say though that we have lots of teachers who are potential learners they're looking to become master reading teachers master science teachers master mathematics teachers and to really work on those things i would shift that question to the team to talk about what are the career trajectory for teachers that actually let teachers stay um you know for many years if you wanted to move into higher pay to move into leadership in administration and so i think us thinking about what does teacher leadership look like what does it look like to compensate varying levels of teacher leadership right now with stipend folks for those kinds of things could teacher see themselves in a global trajectory to keep them in the classroom and yet giving back through mentorship to curriculum development through all kinds of things i think those are the kinds of things that would model that and so i think it's important for us to model that and to be learning to students absolutely but i think you would see teachers doing that all the time whether it is the they go to a remarkable amount of training to be good teachers they are out in all kinds of seminars and workshops and graduate credits in the summer on weekends i am astounded that anything we offer through center for educational leadership at trinity is over signed uh oversubscribed within a day of us offering teachers are hungry learners school leaders are hungry learners and uh extinct into that culture and so i do think that's being modeled out there but i think institutions look at what do you are what are the role okay i would i would not have said it that well okay there is a couple of questions very interesting they're asking for advice from the panel to dr clark specifically uh what in your experience what methods are most effective in advocating for well-funded public education when talking to your state senators and senators is underline and then to this i couldn't make this up to the superintendents what directions do you give to your lobbyist and that's a very well phrased because you are not a lobbyist in terms of priorities accountability vouchers and compromises how do you abdicate in other words what is your best process the best process is to start now and get acquainted with your legislator before a legislative session starts they need to know your name they need to have seen you more than one time it can be they do get out in the community they're sometimes they're at a community a neighborhood function get yourself to one of those things stick out your hand introduce yourself make your first comments to your legislator a thank you they spend a lot of time in austin they work hard whether you're happy with the results of their work is another issue but they're working hard and they believe they're working in the best interests of texas so give them a thanks for that continue to keep in touch with them once you they know your name you may send them something a letter keep your the points in your letter i would say too uh don't have a laundry list of things you know you'd like to talk to them about when the legislature's in session or when they're in their office in the region find a time to see them again all of this is before the session starts when the session starts that's the time to make specific requests for either action or at least for deliberation for specific legislation so you'll need to keep track of legislation there are some good ways to do that uh if you are online the texas tribune covers uh legislation very well including edgy education uh and if you see me afterward i can give you folks to contact with interesting either free or low cost ways to keep up with the legislation but get to know of them make sure they have a good impression of you from the beginning with a thank you keep communicating with them and when the legislative sessions in legislature's in session they're more likely to listen with real ears to what you have to say uh with regard to advocacy around particular issues obviously uh there are lots of groups part of part of what happens in the state of largest texas in a state where school districts are so diverse by the kids they serve as well as uh by side the whole urban rural dynamic you know there's so much diversity across school districts what a lot of school districts have done is belong choose to belong to groups that tend to have a similar set of beliefs sometimes informed by those factors of who they serve and where they are and so forth and so uh for instance we knew the notion that that funding would run up against vouchers didn't just happen in the last two weeks right we could have predicted that uh many many months ago that those two issues were going to compete at the end of the session and we were pretty clear the organizations that i'm familiar with and i'm a part of that uh we weren't going to compromise on that that was an absolute no go and the group had to really look at itself and look at its financial situation and say are we prepared to say no to funding per child in order to prevent vouchers that's a hard that's a hard conversation for most of that uh and ultimately those groups decided that was in the best interest of the students in the school district and moved forward but those types of conversations happen virtually every session around some set of issues frequently funding and i i would just add just to really get involved you know as my colleague said get to know your legislator get to know the legislators that are at the leadership positions speaker Strauss by the way has been a huge advocate for us in public education but get to know the legislators both on the senate and on the house and and let them know your opinion i will tell you i mean they expect brian and i and our associations to be there at the table sometimes you know i always wonder is the state as big as this is it actually is feels to me something's like a small town i just tell you just feels like that to me and and when your voice is heard especially on something as fundamental as education something as as fundamental as making sure we have equity for our children that have more needs something that supports the economic investment and development of the state i think that can be very powerful and you know that there's several ways for you to see what those are including you can call any of our districts and we can tell you who's leading which legislation on which side of the legislature and it doesn't matter if you're in san antonio don't be afraid to call somebody in dallas or in you know in the area around houston or austin because this is our state and these are all our children and and all of us have a vested interest in their success all right so frequently when i go visit a legislature that i don't know i'll take a picture of a five-year-old it doesn't matter to any five-year-old to work and i'll say see this is that your son no it's not it's a five-year-old who goes to school in my district this is the ultimate infrastructure project this right here is the most important infrastructure project in the state i even if you don't like kids even if you're just in it for economic development if we don't invest in this the rest of it doesn't matter some things that are in people's minds tonight one is on early childhood wanting to know how the best way to communicate to the legislature the importance of play socialization and movement in the classroom which i fully advocate how can we get this across to the legislature to make all school all schools developmentally appropriate the other is and i love it in simplicity where did all the kindergarten funding go and of course we have the questions that will be the address i guess in and quite and to use brian's words ad nauseam um we will see the questions about sex education about immigration the bathroom bill all of those will become part of the of the discussion that will impact schools and the very in in this next special session i don't know if anyone would like to comment on any of those but uh at this point we're about right about out of time and that would be something for another discussion um we've seen also concerns about charter schools that do you think those are segregating the school districts that you have and having something that at some point that discussion about what happens in a school when you begin to have those kinds of programs coming in and working with with all different students and would these in fact be able to meet the needs of special needs students that will be a big debate uh and i suspect in this special session especially with the the voucher issue on special needs children all of those questions are are on people's minds tonight the last one for you would be what is the one thing you would like to see happen in education the one thing the answer is probably not not around funding although that would take the top five i can tell you that but if you press to one um i think the answer would be a turnaround in the public perception of those who have chosen to become educators uh Catherine i think mentioned and i think she's spot on that there's a a nationalist not just a state issue there's a national conversation that is focused on teacher bashing and and and claiming the tools are wasteful not necessarily with a whole lot of rich data uh and and really uh the to sherry's point which is just heartbreaking that when when the legislature meets and there's conversation around funding or the lack of funding and there's conversation about teachers can't pay their professional association dues through payroll deduction even though it costs taxpayers exactly zero dollars those kinds of really hurtful conversations i think impact our ability to bring the best and the brightest to this work uh and that's a that's a sad state of affairs so look i was i was a classroom teacher and i did not always make all the best decisions i don't in the work that i do now i suspect that there are some others of you sitting in the audience who are not perfect every minute of every day and and be as that is the case i really i think not not so much in this room but in the larger conversation and it starts with legislators i think our legislators are high on the list need to really kind of remake the whole conversation about the value of educators what they provide to our society because it impacts the bottom line of getting those really great teachers i would say it's a realization and that having folks recommit to own their public schools being engaged to their public schools speaking out about their public school who's sharing the great stories and letting us know if they aren't doing well and not going to the media or to the teacher and to to be in relationships with our public schools to do more turning things around it was great um that focus that community focus that first power is in our hands just to put it at the same thing a different way i'd love to re-energize the notion that there's a common good in education that it's a common experience that at least most of the people in this room have had we close our eyes say think about school what what do you see write it down a piece of paper there would be enormous uniformity among all the people in this group because we've had a common experience we went to school with people we didn't like we went to you know the kid across the street we didn't necessarily resonate with that child but we went to school with them and we went went through things that you know people up at the front say we're there to expand our horizons give us a new look at things there was a sense that education was there for the common good and we were all in it together i would like that to come back resonate for more communities similar to my colleagues um just to have much more engagement and participation in our community and what's happening in our state i'm still new and i always remind people even though i've been here two years i'm still learning but what i see is a lot of division uh i do see as my colleagues have said our teachers feel under attack uh they don't feel respected we have less nationally less teachers less individuals going into the the uh into the colleges of education and ever before um and and and we have a shortage of teachers here in our state and so for us recognizing that the best investment this thing can ever make is in education the best investment it can ever make is in public education and that it can be a state that can show the country it can show the country what's possible most states are jealous of our state of the diverse economy that we have the type of industries that are in this state and so you know what i would wish is i wish they were jealous of our educational system like the panel finally before we say thank you to everybody i just like to say as the moderator and i've Catherine mentioned a moment ago that after all my years in education it's come down to this public education is for the public good the result means an educated public who vote who participate who value others and and respect the rights of all and that to me is what the League of Women Voters has given us an opportunity to discuss tonight thank you panel and thank you so much well on behalf of the League of Women Voters i want to thank Shariah Albright, Brian Woods, Catherine Clark and Pedro Martinez and i also want to thank Richard Middleton for doing such a great job moderating the panel and i want to thank all of you the fact that you all are here tells me that there is interest in education so engaging public with the education that's what the idea is and i'm glad that you know there is a lot of food for thought for all of us and we will be thinking about it we will be getting back to you guys if we have any questions and concerns but i thank you to take time from your business schedule and come and join us and share your expertise and ideas with us i also want to mention that now cast was live streaming the program which you can also watch later on so we will be putting the link on our League of Women Voters website LWVSA.org so you can go to our website so any friends or colleagues who could not come and attend this evening they can they don't have to miss this absolutely fabulous discussion they can watch it on this so with this i conclude the program and thank you very much all of you for coming and joining us thank you