My 2008 Formula for Success

We Must Monitor and Prepare for the Growth

We are about half way to our projected build out capacity. I believe that the district has done a very good job handling the growth to date, but we must continue to look to the future. Here are some of my priorities in this area:

• We must continue to acquire sites in the best locations that we can and continue to partner with the city in order to have a lot of open space around our schools. In case you have not noticed, it is quite common for a park to adjoin a school site. This is a testament to our close and cooperative working relationship with the city.
• We must build quality facilities while at the same time watching our tax rate. This means:
  • They need to be built of quality materials that will last and the existing facilities need to be well maintained.
  • They must be safe and secure.

We must attract and retain the best teachers

This is more than attracting just any teacher. We want the best. We have added around 2000 teachers during my six year tenure and for the most part, they really are some of the best around. But here are some of my priorities in order to continue attracting and retaining the best teachers possible:

• We must improve our screening and background checks of teacher applications.
• We must continue to grow and improve our human resources department.
• We must continue to offer the best overall benefits package.

We must equip and support our teachers

This includes a wide variety of topics such as teacher training, curriculum, and technology. Here are some of my priorities in this area:

• We must continue to improve and expand our curriculum.
• We must provide them the information that they need in order to be most effective with each student.
• We must provide them the instructional support tools to help them perform their job in the best manner. This includes such items as the ceiling projectors, wireless keyboard/mice, electronic boards, and well equiped computing resources in each classroom.

We must maximize the educational experience of each and every student

To me, the two most important items to mention is the focus on each student and the overall educational experience. I am a strong believer that the educational experience is more than a TAKS score. We are developing the future generation that will be running our city and country. They need to learn team skills, leadership skills, and human interaction skills just to name a few. Here are some of my priorities in this area:

• We must continually push the academics. This is much more than just passing the benchmark tests. We want all of our students to be at the top of their class.
• We need to make sure that they feel safe & secure.
• We need to provide them the specialized help when necessary.
• We need to offer a broad range of extracurricular options.

We need the community involved -- It takes a village to raise a child"

This means communication and lots of it. That is one of the reasons that I serve on the communications subcommittee. Here are some of my priorities in this area:

• More and better information on the web site. If you have not already noticed, we are undergoing a major restructuring of our main web site. In the past there was a central organization tasked with the maintenance, now each school and department basically has their own section that they can update.
• Each school should have a newsletter.
• We need to continue to involve parents through the PTA/PTO/PTSA and booster organizations.
• We need to encourge judicious use of the phone message system. In the last year, we switched from a bank of phone numbers operated by the ISD to a computerized system which is capable of enormous volumes of calls. Of course we do not want to overuse this system to the point where it becomes an annoyance to our parents.