- Close to 58,000 children and teens attend public schools in Midland and Odessa.

That's approximately 92% of the school-aged population in Odessa and 82% in Midland.

Current enrollment in the Midland Independent School District is 25,500, down about a thousand from last year due to the downturn in the oil and gas economy.

Just over 32,000 students are enrolled in the Ector County Independent School District.

Also down about a thousand from the previous year.

Because the lion's share of school-aged children attend our public schools, we all have a stake in their quality.

So this week we ask, what is the state of our public schools?

(gentle music) What is the state of our public schools?

That's our question this week.

So we went to the experts the superintendents of both the Midland and Ector County Independent School Districts.

Both districts earned from the Texas Education Agency a grade of C for the 2018/2019 school year, the last year for which grades were issued.

There was no testing last year due to COVID.

Both districts have relatively new to very new superintendents and both superintendents are under pressure from within and without to improve student achievement and thus earn higher grades.

We begin this week with Dr. Angelica Ramsey, who began her tenure with Midland ISD on February 22nd.

She comes to Midland from Camarillo, California, where she served as superintendent of the Pleasant Valley School District.

She is no stranger to West Texas, having lived in El Paso for 10 years while working in the Socorro ISD.

Well, thanks so much for making some time for us today.

- Absolutely.

- I know that MISD has a grade of C and I know that your goal is to improve student achievement so we can improve that grade.

So tell me what your strategies are.

- So I think that one of the most important things about how we improve is that we start by understanding that our schools belong to our community and that nothing whether it's not doing well or having great outcomes really comes down to all of us working together.

And so right now I'm really spending my time listening to our stakeholders.

I think I've probably met with 200 individuals and probably over 400 people total as we go through our stakeholder engagement meetings, both internally and externally to first hear from everyone who's already here about what we do well in the district and areas of improvement.

And so while in the end, we'll use that for a needs assessment, what's really important to me is that we as a community come together and figure out what are those high leverage things that we need to do to improve student outcomes but at the same time, recognizing that there are some things that we're gonna have to stop doing so that we can get to students first and better outcomes for all of the children in, in Midland.

- Do you mind sharing some of the things that you're hearing.

- No, not at all.

I, I'm hearing a few things.

The first is that we have the best students around and I've seen that.

So I've been to 38 of our 40 campuses so far I'll finish off my tour of schools this week and I've seen them in class, I've seen them passing period at lunchtime and our students want to learn, they're ready to learn.

We have probably the best teachers, support staff and principals I've seen around.

Everyone puts students first.

They care, they have like the hugest hearts.

And I've also seen that the community is really invested in what happens with Midland ISD.

And so I think those are all positives.

Some of the things that I've heard and it's kind of been able to see that are kind of distractions to to the work.

One, is that we're kind of relational.

So we operate as though we're a smaller school district when we are a large complex organization, you know.

We're the largest employer in town and so that means that we need to have things in writing, we need articulated kind of everything from handbooks to just coherence across the district.

So that's one area that we're gonna be working on.

We're gonna make sure that we're not 41 different islands, 40 schools and our district service center but that we're one big organization that works well, a well oiled machine, for sure.

I'm also hearing that a lot of our initiatives and programs that we've implemented that a couple of things, one is that they come in and not everyone has had an opportunity to share what their thoughts are.

And we may not necessarily have provided all of the support necessary to make sure that they're successful and that we almost as quickly as we may bring on a program or initiative we abandon and look for the next one.

And I think that that's not, that's not a Midland issue, I think that's organizations in general.

We're always looking for that, I call it that silver bullet.

We're looking for that one thing that's going to help and, and the truth of the matter with school districts is it's getting back to the root of why we exist, what we need to do.

We need to have the best teacher in every classroom, the best principal at every school.

And we need to professionally develop all of those people so that we build capacity.

And that's how we're going to turn around the school system.

- And I know you're in the diagnostic period now but if we have the best students then we have the best teachers but our achievement is not what it needs to be.

What are you, what are you thinking there?

- Yeah.

So what I'm seeing is that we're, we use programs instead of the people that we already have in place.

So, we need to provide additional professional development to our teachers in what the high leverage kind of levers are for, for student achievement.

We, a few years ago started professional learning communities here and we need to really expand that.

We have a hard time in the Permian basin, recruiting and retaining retain retention is a big one employees.

And so when we bring on initiatives, we need to make sure that we continuously have professional development, because if we started something let's say four years ago that we know helps student achievement but then we continuously have new employees.

If we don't have continuous professional development, then there's only a third or fourth of the people still here that got that same training.

So it's about making sure that we have the capacity for the best people and that we provide support to them from the district service center to be able to make sure that they're successful.

- You're talking a lot about teachers and I know that hiring full staff has been sort of challenging in the past.

Is that still a challenge?

- So actually this year, I just heard from our chief human capital officer that we're doing a lot better than we had in the past.

So two years ago we had a lot of vacancies when it came to teacher positions and we're not, we're not a hundred percent fully staffed, that is a national crisis.

But we're doing much better in Midland ISD of recruiting and retaining our teachers.

- So that's one challenge is getting a teacher in every single classroom.

What are some of the other challenges?

- I think in general, COVID is a huge challenge.

A portion of two academic years we've had students not in classrooms and and not learning in the same way that they would have.

It's inhibited our ability to have professional development in person for our teachers.

So COVID, the pandemic has really, I think hurt school districts across the nation.

We've had, I'm gonna call it an epidemic of of keeping our students home.

We have kindergartners throughout the United States that never showed up for the first day of kindergarten.

And so as school districts, we need to figure out where our students are.

So while I'm not a 100% believer in the high stakes testing that occurs across the nation, it's really important for us to see where our students are this year so we can get that new baseline.

So I'm actually excited for our Staar testing for the spring so that then this summer, we can actually say this is the new baseline and now we need to build off of that to make sure we're meeting our students where they're at.

- One of the things I know that you all have adopted is an intersessional calendar.

Can you explain what that is and how you think that will help?

- Sure.

I'm very familiar with an intersession calendar from my 10 years in El Paso and Socorro ISD.

So in essence, there's an additional week in the fall and a week in the spring where we can bring in students and why that's so important is that instead of waiting until the summer, so 10 entire months hap passing and then a student having to kind of catch up, you're able to in a very proactive way, help students with the state standards that they're not mastering early in the year because they, they're really they're foundational and they build on one another.

And if you wait until the entire year passes, a student has gotten behind, but if you can do it early, you can catch them up and then they really have a fighting chance to do well the remainder of the year.

So I'm really excited about it.

- You mentioned that you're familiar with it.

Is that something that's been used in districts where you have been before?

- Yes, yes.

As I've had the intersessional calendar as a teacher and as a campus administrator.

- And you feel like it really works.

- I saw the difference.

I saw the, from early elementary all the way through high school, how using the, those two weeks in, in once in the fall and once in the spring can bring students along to accelerate their learning and you can also push students.

So we need to make sure that we're not just looking at our students that are struggling, but even our high achievers.

That time in the fall and the spring is is a real opportunity to really meet students where they're at and provide them supports regardless of where they're doing academically.

- Are there challenges that are unique to Midland?

- You know, every school district and every community we all believe that we're special and we are.

But most of the concerns that I'm hearing in my stakeholder meetings, they're, they're pretty similar to, to other places that I've been.

Obviously one of the, I would say one of the the things that is the Permian basin has that others don't is that we, we, we have the ebb and flow of our oil and gas industry.

And so that's different.

I've actually never been somewhere where the community is so invested in education.

And I think that's a beautiful thing.

So that's, that's definitely a, a Midland thing.

Challenges, probably again, going back to staffing, the retention and recruitment of staff.

It is a challenge here in particular, but outside of that I think it's just a matter of organizational pieces making sure that we're being efficient and that we just stop, refocus, recenter, figure out why we exist, who our customer is and then what is it that we need to do to help our students?

I, I'm not really big on programs and initiatives because the fancy, you can get caught up in it.

I'd rather us just roll up our sleeves and get back to work just with really strong teaching and learning in classrooms.

- I noticed that you were talking a little bit about some of the challenges.

And I know that, I believe in our district, 50% of the students are impoverished and do those present some challenges?

- I think that there are students that whether they're free reduced lunch students, we have students that are English learners that absolutely we meet our students where they're at and and there are additional supports that they need but I don't believe in that being something that holds back the achievement of students.

There are plenty of school districts across this great state of Texas that show with higher numbers of free reduced lunch students or English learners that are doing better.

And so that's not, you know, I always say we don't blame the children, we meet their need.

If you're hungry, we feed you.

And we've done that really well here especially during the pandemic, but that's not an excuse for us not to be doing well academically.

- Thank you so much, Dr. Ramsey and welcome to Midland.

- Thank you.

- Dr. Scott Muri joined Ector County ISD in July of 2019.

Coming to Odessa from Houston after serving as superintendent for Spring Branch Independent School District.

He also worked in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Dr. Muri, thanks so much for taking a little bit of time with us.

Ector County ISD currently has a grade of C and I understand you've been brought here to improve student achievement so that the grade can improve.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- So we, we are rated a C right now partly because we have a large number of schools that are D's and F's and so they are really struggling.

And some of those schools have been struggling for quite a while.

And the other side, we have multiple schools that are that are A's and B's.

But I came here for the challenge.

Interviewed with our board of trustees.

Our trustees are well aware of the challenges we face as a school system.

Talked with members of our community, again, well aware of the challenge that we face but everybody wants to be a part of the solution.

How can we help ECISD go from where it is today to a much better place in serving kids.

And so I love the challenge and, and that's why I'm here.

- What are the particular challenges?

- Academics primarily and and our, our low academic performance really has a number of factors.

One contributing factor, the, the significant teacher shortage that we have.

I came in in 2019 and on the first day of school, we had over 350 teacher vacancies and we never filled those vacancies for the entire school year.

And that meant that at the elementary, middle school and high school level, many kids did not have a teacher.

They had a substitute teacher and that's just not the same as having a highly qualified, highly effective teacher.

And that affects student learning.

It's one thing to have one or two substitutes but when you have that many missing educators, it makes a difference in our schools.

And so that is something that we're working to overcome.

Just the, the professional development that we provide for our teachers and helping them become, you know, go from good to great.

That's a body of work that we're undertaking as an organization as well, making sure that we're spending our, our financial resources appropriately, making sure that the dollars follow the children that need it the most.

It costs more to educate a child of poverty.

So we've instituted some equity based funding so that those children that deserve and need the most money, have the most money to support their educational journey.

A variety of things in those early days of discovery, a variety of work that needs to happen, not just one thing but multiple factors that have contributed to really the decline in our system.

- You talked about a shortage of teachers.

Has that issue been resolved?

- Resolving.

I think, well, this year when we, we went from 352 vacancies in 2019 to 36 vacancies in 2020.

That, that's a huge improvement.

However, we are in the middle of a pandemic and I know that this pandemic is driving away some of our teachers, some of our administrators, some of those folks that have supported this system for years.

And I think across the country, we're gonna face an increasing amount of teacher vacancies, administrative vacancies, support staff vacancies as the pandemic has created, has really made working in education a much more challenging endeavor.

- What is the strategy for helping poverty-stricken students?

- We have a strategic plan that has three basic elements.

The first is foundation.

Anyone that's worked in construction or has ever put a structure together, you know, that the foundation is is critically important to going vertical.

And so we're making some pretty big bets on foundation.

Every family in our system, needs to have high speed broadband access in their home.

We recognize that some of our kids go home and have homework assignments or additional learning and they can't engage because they don't have high-speed broadband, foundational for us.

A device in the hands of every kid.

We, we believe that our students, especially our kids of poverty need to have access to highly effective tools of technology providing those for every single kid in ECISD.

We've just purchased 37,000 brand new devices for all of our students and those are now being rolled out.

Supporting the social emotional needs of our kids.

Again, if children cannot, if they're not feeling safe and nurtured in their environment, then they can't be educated.

And making some big bets on social, emotional learning.

Feed, feeding our kids.

We had kids that are they're hungry.

We now feed every child, whether, no matter what their financial situation is, breakfast and lunch free of charge every single day.

So putting those foundational pieces in place so that teachers and principals can do their work.

Second part of our plan is investing in talent.

Again, we, the number one factor that increases student achievement is the teacher.

And if a child does not have a great teacher, then, then learning doesn't happen for that kid.

So investing in the talent of ECISD is a big piece for us.

And then the third part of our strategic plan is all about our kids and thinking differently about learning environment.

Making sure that they have enough time to learn.

We've added 30 additional days to the school year this year to give our, our kids time.

We have, we're thinking differently about a new strategy called blended learning, taking our very best teachers and blending, if you will, virtual learning with them, to create new and exciting opportunities for our kids.

So a multi-pronged investment, but being very strategic and thoughtful in how we invest our time energy and effort into the kids in our system.

- Is it too soon to tell if your strategies are working?

- Oh, not too soon to tell.

We, even though we're not in the middle of Staar testing and the, you know, the State because of the pandemic has prevented that from happening, we do have other data measures.

One example would be our, our bet in talent.

We're using a program called opportunity culture which allows us to think differently about the traditional role of the teacher.

And when we, when you hear the word teacher, you think about one person in a classroom with 30 kids, you know, teaching a lesson.

Well, in ECISD, we have to think differently about those people.

So we've created a different role for teachers, giving our teachers some wings so that they can not only teach students but they can lead as well.

And so an opportunity culture environment a teacher teaches half-time and the other half of their day they're coaching and mentoring their peers.

And so they're leading as well as teaching.

And we've seen some very impressive results from those teams, those opportunity culture teams, if you will.

Started last year with eight schools using that model and this year we have 19 schools using that model.

We have some data that we follow and we know that that bet is paying off and so we're expanding that bet in our schools.

- You mentioned the hiring of new teachers are there other challenges that are unique to Odessa?

- I think the community in which we live, you know, is unique.

Every community is unique.

We have to understand, you know, what, what are the learning needs and desires of our families and community members.

One, one element that we compete against is you can be an 18 year old in our community and drop out of high school and go into the gas and oil industry and earn over six figures.

Earn over a hundred thousand dollars in a job that doesn't require a high school diploma.

That's difficult for us to compete against.

And so we have to be more collaborative with our businesses and industries to make sure that they're supporting our children in their continuation of not only high school but some kind of post-secondary degree.

So today in Texas, 70% of our jobs in our state require some form of post-secondary credential.

And we have to aspire to that.

That means 70% of our kids, if they wanna be competitive, even in our own state, they've got to have some form of post-secondary credential.

Two year degree, four year degree or technical certification, but something our kids need.

- What is your dropout rate?

- Oh, we, we have, we lose too many kids to really businesses.

So poverty is a driver there.

A child growing up in a family of poverty and sometimes that child going to work to support the family, to pay rent, to pay food.

We lose kids to poverty because mom and dad or their family situation requires that they work full time.

We've got to be a bit more flexible for those families.

Again, we lose far too many kids.

Currently our graduation rate is a little above 83%.

In the state of Texas, we're at 90%.

And so we have work to do to make sure that we're at least a competitive from a graduation rate perspective with our state.

- Is language a barrier for some students?

- Yeah.

Language can be a barrier for some of our kids.

We have a dual language program, a very effective dual language program.

So when kids come in, at the, in the elementary grades we want them to be bilingual.

We want them to be fluent in their native language, read, write, speak, listen but also fluent in English as well.

And so those kids that enter in the elementary grades and enter our bilingual program, they do exceptionally well.

It's our middle school and high school students.

Sometimes that they enter if they only speak Spanish or French or a language other than English, it can be challenging for those students to enter in middle school and high school and learn English and balance your biology class at the same time.

And we do see kids struggling, particularly middle school and high school with language deficits if they come in, not speaking English.

- Let's talk for a second about COVID.

I understand that 26% of your students are still studying at home.

- Yup.

We at the elementary level, pretty healthy number of students that are engaged in school.

In fact, most of our elementaries have over 90% of their students face-to-face and that's healthy.

It's our middle school and high school students.

Virtual learning for middle school and high school is a bit easier.

Students could be a bit more successful.

They're self-motivated and more of those students, again, about 26% have opted for virtual learning at the secondary.

We anticipate that to be very different in August as we return to school.

I think the vast majority of our kids will be face-to-face in August.

- [Becky] Thank you so much, Dr. Muri.

Appreciate you.

- You're welcome, you're welcome.

- When it comes to improving test scores, both districts face challenges of large populations of economically disadvantaged students who are also traditionally educationally disadvantaged.

A look at demographic data shows the economically disadvantaged student population in Midland is 50%, 55% for Ector County.

Both districts are majority Hispanic, 64% for Midland, 78% for Ector County.

Here's the rest of the demographic breakdown.

(gentle music) Both superintendents emphasize the vital role each citizen plays in the success of public schools which is often said, but still worth repeating bears on the future success of our communities.

Our painting this week is an untitled acrylic from Jack Roth, an American painter, 1927 to 2004.

Roth was an abstract expressionist painter, poet, photographer, and mathematician.

During his life, he was represented by one of the most renowned galleries in New York.

He also taught mathematics at prominent US universities.

In the 1950s, his work was selected by the director of the Guggenheim Museum of Art for the traveling exhibition, young American painters alongside De Kooning, Motherwell, Pawlik and others.

It was one of the first major debuts of the abstract expressionist movement to be shown at an American museum, traveling to prominent museums across the country.

In the 1960s, he was included in a new acquisitions exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1979, he was awarded with the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in painting.

And in the 1980s, he was awarded the New Jersey council of the arts grant.

For the next two decades until his death, Roth continued to pursue his many interests, mathematics, teaching, painting, sculpting, and poetry.

This painting is from Baker Schorr Fine Art gallery in Midland.

Finally, thank you for joining us for "One Question".

we will be back each Saturday at 4:30 where we will get answers to the questions you want to know from the people who know.

Otherwise to watch "One Question" include Basin PBS Facebook, Passport and YouTube.

And you have a question, send it to us OneQuestion@basinpbs.org.

I'm Becky Ferguson, goodnight.

(gentle music)