As we continue to move toward an August 8 reporting date for
Community and Student Engagement, I wanted to pause and reflect on the process
and progress we have made in our district.
This has been a significant undertaking to get to where we are today, a process
involving a district committee, campus leadership and, as you would expect, community members. Through this
process, our district has utilized a number of third party resources, including
our Region ESC (Region 11) and input from other districts that had already defined a
set of questions to use as part of their evaluation process.
So, with the caveat that this is simply our district's view and approach, let me
briefly describe the process that got us to where we are. Remember … local control gives us the
flexibility to define our own approach and how we will satisfy the requirements
of HB 5.
We began by identifying an existing committee, our District
Advisory Committee (DAC). We initially
shared with committee members the intent and objectives of House Bill 5, and emphasized the
importance of completing a self-assessment based on to-be-defined
criteria. As noted above, there are a
number of existing resources we identified, including a spreadsheet and set of
questions already defined by the Region 11 ESC.
We also gathered sets of questions adopted by other districts in their
evaluation process. From those, we then
took the “best of the best” and added to that list questions specific to our
district; again, these additional questions were developed by community
members, not the district Administration.
Having completed the initial process of developing a set of
questions for each of the eight elements, we have now shared that list (four
questions per element) with campus leadership and with our site based decision
making teams; this effort was initiated the week of April 4. Our expectation now is that these teams will
complete their evaluation efforts and submit to Administration no later than
May 8. After that, Administration will
then aggregate the evaluation feedback and share with the DAC in mid-May. Assuming that the DAC will then approve the
evaluations submitted for each campus, we will be in a position to submit our
district’s self-evaluation to TEA, complying with both the intent and time
frames defined by HB 5.
This also begs the question of the value of this
process. Most districts already have a process in place to gather and evaluate community input; for
those districts, this is largely a way of formalizing a process that is then
applied consistently across all districts.
For others, i.e., those who do not have a well-defined process, the
Community and Student Engagement element of House Bill 5 provides a framework
for developing a process and ensuring community involvement. Either way, this legislation is a
reinforcement of the need for districts to solicit input from, and then act
upon the wishes of, the community.
Our hope in providing a series of blogs highlighting the
Community and Student Engagement element of House Bill 5 is that we have
provided a framework to help guide you through the maze of implementation. The information presented is an outgrowth of
a series of presentations by Bobby Rigues, Aledo ISD trustee and the architect
of Make Education a Priority, and myself.
Content for these was developed through a series of discussions with a
number of different resources, including Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, Chairman of
the House Education Committee (and primary sponsor of HB 5), H D Chambers,
Superintendent – Alief ISD (who worked closely with Rep. Aycock), representative districts across the State, and TASB Governmental Relations.
We are sincerely grateful for their guidance and support.
