 Welcome to this episode of Fort Worth Ford. We're here at the Historic Ridgely Theater on Camp Booth Boulevard to have a conversation about education. I think we can all agree that a great education for our children is the bedrock of their future and it's the future of our city too. I'm excited about our panel of experts that we have hosted by the mayor of Fort Worth, Maddie Parker, to discuss this topic. So let's go. Thank y'all for being here tonight. I wanna say thank you for everybody. I'm excited about this conversation and I think we have some of the best minds in education to talk about education so we can talk about where we are and where we're going here in the city of Fort Worth with our education. I think we would all agree that education is really the bedrock of our community and that it really shapes our future leaders, innovators, citizens, and that we have an obligation to make sure that every child no matter their zip code, their financial situation, what it looks like for them can learn and get the best quality education that they can. And I'll say this just to set the stage with a little bit of statistics for you. I really wanna welcome y'all over here but the city of Fort Worth has 12 different school districts that are part of the city of Fort Worth and if you've seen some reports lately out there, only 36% of those are performing at grade level. That's the same as last year, that's the same as the year before. That's an important statistic that we have to continue to work on. There's a vast difference in places. There's an 89% performance level, 12% in other places on the low end here in the city of Fort Worth. And in district three, what I'll say, and we're hosting this tonight in district three, probably one of the most affluent, if not the most affluent neighborhood or a district in the city, that rates it's at 41%. So that troubles me, keeps me up at night and we can do better. We must also recognize as part of this that it is not just about in the classroom, it's outside the classroom and that's why if you had a chance tonight to visit some of the tables, I hope you did, this is a team effort across the board and student outcomes are also affected by what happens outside the classroom. You know, if a child goes to school hungry, they aren't gonna learn well. If a child goes to school with dirty clothes, they aren't gonna learn well. If a child is scared about whatever their personal situation doesn't know where they may sleep the next day or that night, they're not going to learn well. And why does this matter? Because it is their real life consequences for our city. Our kids, what that looks like. We're talking about our future workforce. Those students, another statistics statistic, kids of the students who are below grade level in third grade, less than 1%, complete a two to four year college degree within six years of graduating school. That impacts our city. That impacts crime, poverty, economic development, healthcare across the board, our future workforce, that's who this is. So with that, I'll say this, this has to be important not only to us as leaders, but to parents, to residents, to stakeholders across the board to make sure that we are doing the best job that we can for our children. And that's the exact reason for having this conversation tonight. I wanna say thank you to the organizations that are here. We couldn't do it without you across the board. I wanna say thank you to the Boys and Girls Club, Tarrant Area Food Bank, Lena Pope, Families and Powered, Parent Shield, T3 Partnership, Reading Partners, Fort Worth Education Partnership, Communities and Schools, Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation, Funky Town Food Project, American Reading Council, Press for Tarrant Night Shelter. Did I forget anybody as part of that? Great, let's give them a big round of applause for being here too. A little bit of housekeeping. There were cards out front. If you have a question to ask, let us know. We'll collect those. Jason, somewhere, he raised his hand. You can give him the question. I don't know that we'll get to all of them tonight. If we don't, we'll figure out a way to get answers for you as part of this. And I will not belabor this any longer. Without further ado, I wanna introduce someone that really needs no introduction that's been working in this field for a long period of time, making sure through what she can do, not only professionally, but then obviously with her role that she keeps championing children across the board. With that, I give you Mayor Maddie Parker. Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it. I'm gonna have the panelists just come join me because we're gonna kick this off and get started. That's why you came, is to talk about the state of education and Fort Worth. So all of you just come on out, you're good. Don't be shy. There's no strutting, apparently. We talked about that backstage, but apparently not. Thank you to Council Member Crane and his team for putting tonight's event together. This is always an exciting time for me to get to talk about education because it's truthfully where my heart is. I'll give you a little introduction and then I'm gonna ask each of our panelists to also introduce themselves kind of speed dating style. So be thinking about a really quick thing. You want this audience to know maybe something interesting about yourself and why you're in education today before I get to that. But I don't have to tell you this. You're all educated Fort Worthians. I do not control the school districts, the all 12 that are in the city of Fort Worth. But I do firmly believe that any leader in this community, whether you're an elected official, a parent, leading a business, you need to care about the state of education for all kids across the city of Fort Worth. And I have long said that for too long in this city, we consider those kids, those kids, they were not our problem or our priority. And that does impact the state of education. In Fort Worth, you do have educational disparities. You do have zip codes where students cannot read. And unfortunately, as Michael attested, even in your most affluent areas like D3, only 41% of your students are reading at grade level. But tonight is about solutions. The people on this stage, I think will inspire you to think differently. You may not agree with everything that said. It may make you think differently. You may have more questions. We certainly won't find all the answers in one hour. But I do believe in Fort Worth when you think about the state of urban education across this country. Unfortunately, we are not dissimilar from other large cities in America today. But the state of America, in my opinion, depends upon us getting this right. We have to prioritize differently, especially our students starting at birth all the way through high school. And as we'll get into tonight, also talking about what their post-secondary opportunities are, agnostic of college, college career military for all kids. So with that, I'm gonna start with Dr. Molinar. Congratulations on just defending your dissertation. So Karen, briefly introduce yourself and tell this audience something interesting about yourself and why you're in education. So Karen Molinar, I'm deputy superintendent of Fort Worth IAC administrative services. And something interesting about myself by education is that I always knew I wanted to be an educator. I earned my associate's degree, I'm leaving high school, and went to make sure that I started with early childhood, which is so funny because the little ones sometimes can be very challenging and everyone's like, you're not a little person, a little guy, you know, person, but I am. And so I started with my associate's degree and if you remember the pen that had the blue on one end and the red when you would mark papers, like that was my goal to be able to do that, to grade papers. And so it started, but I just knew I always wanted to be an education and I always wanted to be a principal, not necessarily a teacher. So that's just something. It was always my passion. It was really interesting about you that this audience wouldn't know. About me. Oh, gosh, I'm kind of boring, honestly. I have, my daughter has finished her first semester at Arkansas, University of Arkansas, so I have a freshman in college. So I'm an empty nester, so that's been a little different from my husband and I, but as I was sharing earlier, I'm not sure why people get upset about it because we're kind of doing okay. We're dating, we are dating, yes, we love it. Natalie, you're up. Hello everyone, I'm Natalie Williams, I'm the executive director of T3 Partnership and come from a very long history of educators. My mother was an educator, my great grandfather was an educator and I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And I did do that, but I'm loving being an education. I think it's just been a part of what was ingrained in me. My family always told me that that's your pathway to opportunity. And so having the opportunity to lead T3 Partnership and find a way to scale and create more access for students to reach their fullest potential and is what drives me and gets me excited every day. And to our only gentleman on the stage today. Yes, good evening, everyone. I'm Dr. Donnell Waters, the area superintendent for Ideal Public Schools where I supervise 32 campuses from El Paso to Fort Worth to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Jacksonville, Florida to Tampa, Florida. So it's a lot of traveling, but I'm excited to be here this evening. This is my home base here in Fort Worth. Prior to that role, I was the executive director over the Ideal Public Schools in Tarrant County. Originally born and raised in Philadelphia. Go birds. I was waiting for the booze to come. I was waiting for the booze to come, but no, we're not doing too well right now. We had to get it together, but born and raised in Philadelphia. What got me into education was the fact that growing up, I had a mother addicted to drugs and my father was incarcerated for most of my childhood. So school was my safe haven. So as a teacher and as an administrator, I always wanted to be able to provide that same type of environment for the students that were entrusted in my care. So that is probably the biggest and most influential reason why I got into education. Thank you for sharing that. Kara. Yeah, my name is Kara Waddell. I head up Child Care Associates here in Fort Worth in Tarrant County. That's on the young child side of the spectrum. So we help ensure that every child, regardless of neighborhood or circumstance, has access to high quality early education or care. So we believe early education comes in a lot of forms and help support the roughly 1,000 licensed child care programs across Tarrant County. And then we also help, we operate Head Start, Early Head Start, Pick into Garten Child Care for about 2,000 lower income children across the community. So if you wanna know about babies, you can chat with us. How I got into education when I was in high school and I grew up in a small farming town but went to school in the big city and there I was, I worked in an organization that took care of, after school I was the receptionist. Out of a nonprofit that supported children that could not be placed successfully in the foster care system. So they were particularly challenged and I really fell in love with meeting the school and the psychologist and the workers and somehow I thought I want to work in that space and way led to way and I'm thrilled to be doing what I am today. Thank you Kara. Elizabeth. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Brandt. I'm the president and CEO of the Morris Foundation. The Morris Foundation's a private foundation started by Jack and Linda Morris who lived in Fort Worth and loved this city so much that when they passed away they decided to leave their estate to support four priority areas. Education being one of them, maternal health outcomes, mental health outcomes and housing solutions and why those four areas matter so much to the foundation and our trustees is because we believe that all four of those things have to be thriving in a community for kids and families to be successful. How I got into education in this work is I was an AmeriCorps teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I didn't think I wanted to teach forever but those two years of my AmeriCorps experience and one student in particular in my fifth grade classroom really showed me that education has the power to be a great equalizer for kids regardless of the barriers that they are born into. We have too many young kids in our communities whether it's Oklahoma or here that are born with barriers stacked against them that are no fault of their own and education we believe at the Morris Foundation still has the power to overcome those barriers that are stacked against our young children. Thank you. Okay, so to start with questions the first one is really what I want to react to is what are the bright spots that you see in your individual role in education? We see the data and student outcomes and it isn't pretty but I know that each of you can point to things that you think are encouraging and that we need to do more of in each of your settings. I might start with Elizabeth and work our way down. Well, thank you for this question. We have a lot to celebrate in our community. I have a good friend who his approach to coaching youth soccer was based on a book called Caught You Being Good and we really like that idea of how can we catch people being awesome because success breeds more success and when we are lifting up the things that are doing well it encourages other people to scale those effective practices. So I would really start by saying that the leaders in this panel on this panel with me they are doing amazing things. At childcare associates we now have more four star childcare centers in Tarrant County than we even had pre COVID. The T3 partnership has launched a parent focus platform to communicate with parents that is really going to be transformational for our community and a model for others to look to. At Fort Worth ISD we have dozens of schools who have double digit third grade reading improvement between last year and this year. We have a lot to celebrate. I think too at the Morris Foundation we fund over 100 nonprofit organizations in those four areas that I mentioned and there are leaders lifting up solutions together recognizing that in a city and a community as large as Fort Worth has grown to be that if you're going to reach the number of kids that we want to reach you really have to find scalable solutions. So through the REV partnership that the Morris Foundation has supported we have education leaders who are getting together every month saying how are we tackling big challenges at scale. Right now today in our high schools there are 3,300 high school kids who have raised their hand and said I wanna be a teacher. They are in the teacher and educator and training pathway and those schools are working with schools of education and our community to say how do we get keep those 3,000 kids interested in being a teacher and have them go back to their school districts to fill the 1,000 teacher vacancies that we have today as we sit here in this room. These school district leaders are thinking about how do we keep industry experts who have left industry to come be a high school teacher. These are coveted positions. People who had a career in welding or agriculture who are now teaching in our high schools. How do we retain those teachers as a specific population that's really hard to recruit? And so they're tackling big challenges and setting a model that they look to replicate that matches the scale of serving kids across this region. So we have a lot to be excited about here in Tarrant County and the city of Fort Worth. Love it. Thanks to all that you do. And on the early learning side childcare and young children childcare is above the fold. It's now early education is a topic and an issue that everyone cares about from the state house to everyday living rooms. Families are understanding that learning did not begin at kindergarten and learning begins in the home. Learning begins even as early as prenatal. And so I think that that message is one that now people are really aware of. The question is what are we gonna do about it? So on the bright spot site, I know when I came nearly 10 years ago to the community, we didn't know how many early learning programs we had. We didn't know what the quality level was. We didn't know how many early educators we have. And we're beginning to put together a really good sense of what is our early learning system. Some there are bright spots and there's also some dark spots. We have over $80 million in resources to help low income parents pay for childcare. That's the good side. The bad side is that only services about 20% of the families in Tarrant County who are eligible for that. Bright spots are we have more early learning programs than ever before the hard part is parents have a really hard time finding it. During COVID, we were able to prop up with the help of best place for working parents a find feature. So now parents can go and find where are these sites? Do they have availability for my child by age and the quality of those programs? So more to come, but there's a lot of work early learning is not a public funded system. It is a patchwork quilt of efforts between our faith community, our small businesses, childcare chains, our schools, our charter schools working together to ensure that every child has what they need and that very powerfully parents who need to work during those early years really need the help to not just ensure that they're getting babysitting but that their child is thriving at the same time they are in a job. So those are some of our bright spots. Beautiful, beautiful. I'm blessed to be in a situation where I can see school and education all throughout the country, particularly in the South and what I see particularly happening here in Fort Worth and Tarrant County is a lot of student growth and a lot of progress. So what I mean by that is, I'm a resident of Dallas County actually in Soto but most of my career has been here in Tarrant County. I was a teacher, my last teaching job was actually at Fort Worth ISD as a math teacher at Forest Oak Middle School and then moved into administration as a principal and an executive director here in Tarrant County. But one thing I will say about the schools that I see here is that despite the many challenges that are happening here in Fort Worth inside and outside of the school, yesterday I had an opportunity to visit my Tarrant County schools for idea with the new executive director, Mr. Ryan Townsend who took my place. And I was so excited just to see the growth and the development and the collaboration among the teachers as well as the student engagement that was taking place in the classroom. This is truly, truly a bright spot. And I'm saying that in relation to what I'm seeing in other places in other states. You have a mayor here, first and foremost who's been a big supporter for Idea Public Schools and I thank you for that Mayor Parker as well as Council Member Crane have been huge supporters for Idea Public Schools. And with that being said, you can see the trick or down effect that it has on the city when it comes to the educational landscape. I can't say that for all the mayors and all the cities that I represent as area superintendent, but I am seeing the growth. I am seeing the progress. I'm excited to be able to go into those same classrooms that I had an opportunity to see as an executive director now in this role and see the students continue to excel and do well. So, a lot of great and beautiful bright spots that I can see here, do we have work to do? Oh, most definitely. A lot of work to do. A lot of development, a lot of recruitment for high quality teachers here in Fort Worth. But I do see the growth. I do see the impact that's happening in those schools and it really starts from the top on down. Because we're in D3, the number I think is 69% of the students at Idea Rise are at grade level which is one of, if not the highest performing school Michael in District 3. Yes. And I think it's instructive of what is possible with the right level of focus and education because you have economic status of students that is very similar to other districts that are struggling. Oh, yes. And I think that it, to me, is a bright spot and what can happen. And how long has Idea Rise been open? Three years? Four years. Four years. So, one thing I will say about that, Mayor, is Idea Rise College Prep, who was under the leadership of Principal Nicholas Ditto, who's actually here this evening. Nicholas, if you could raise your hand for us. He's right there. Idea Rise College Prep actually gave me, well, the Rise campus actually gave me my biggest heartache every night. And the reason why I say that is because my highest performing campus in the region was also the same place where my lowest performing campus was for the region. So, Rise College Prep is our highest performing campus, one of the highest in Idea altogether, but Rise Academy had its struggles. So, within the region, my highest performing and my lowest performing is just one stair case apart. So, what type of development and training and support are we gonna provide to the teachers and to the students so that we can change that narrative? And they were able to do so. They were projected for F with Rise Academy, but they wound up getting a B just a couple of years ago, and we're waiting for the results to come out for this year. So, that's the dedication and not only the economic status of the campus, but the mobility rate. The mobility rate is just as important because once you get students progressing and then they leave you, that's hurtful. So, we have to do whatever we can to really get that student persistence up there where we're keeping those kids that we're really having a huge academic impact with. Thank you for that. Okay, Natalie, I had to resist the urge to talk about T3 this whole panel, so we're not doing that. We have to keep Frosty awake since he already threatened to fall asleep. That's right. That's right. I'll do my best. Jokes aside, what are you seeing that you're most excited about, specifically the work that T3 is doing? Well, Frosty will be very excited about this. It's really the power of partnerships and parents coming together. So, T3, partnering with parents, partnering with the community, partnering with districts. And what we're seeing in terms of the power of those partnerships, that 93% of our seniors in our partner districts are taking the pledge, which means they're making a commitment to their future. And who are their partner districts? Partner districts are Fort Worth ISD, Castlebury ISD, Crowley ISD, and Arlington ISD and Lamar High School. And so, what that tells us is that when you partner great advising and caring adults with students and parents and their families in the district, some beautiful things happen. And what happens is students begin to see the possibilities in their future. And that's a tremendous bright spot. I think the other big bright spot is that we've listened to parents and parents want to know what is available in the districts. All of the opportunities that are available to them in P-TECH and early college, high school and CTE, it can be complicated because there's so many opportunities. So the platform that we launched will allow parents to have all of those possibilities in the palm of their hand where they can explore on their own time with their student and find that clear pathway to a bright future. Karen. Yes, Mia. One of the things we're really proud of is with our ESSER funding, we were able to buy new literacy and math curriculum for our elementary, middle, and some of our high school grade levels and core content areas. We're starting to see the implementation payoff on having consistent curriculum. Just today, I received the data from our LEXIA program, which is one of our resources that we use for literacy from pre-K to middle school. And we are now, last year at this time, we had 27% of our kids working within grade level. And as of today, we have 54% of our kids in LEXIA working on grade level. So that's a massive jump for us. And we're really happy that we're starting to see the gains of that new curriculum being implemented. Also, we have implemented interim assessments that we did not do in the past. We started them last year. This year, out of 20 interim assessments for middle of the year, 13 of our interim assessments, we saw double digit gains that came in the week before Christmas. So we're really starting to see our students, their achievement level go up, their literacy levels as well. Just looking forward, we are finalizing our plans. Our pre-K students get out 45 minutes before our regular elementary students. This is our hardship on our parents to have to do two pickup times. And we don't have a lot of after-school care for a pre-K child. So we are working towards implementing across the district wide for our pre-K to stay with us and do a full day all the way into the end when our K through five students dismiss, which will be a tremendous help and give us 45 minutes. This doesn't sound like a lot, but 45 minutes of more instructional time with our youngest children. We're excited about that as well. We have early college across our district. Our students are able to leave, start as juniors and leave high school but not only associate's degree but also with dual credit hours going into college which saves them money and saves their parents money. We, of course, have our certifications. We have CTE. But let's talk about a little bit on the fun side too. We have expanded our Fort Worth After School programming to allow not only our elementary students but our middle school students to have before a place to be, and I wanna say care because middle school would not like that or middle school kids would not like me to say that, but a place for them to be before school starts and after school starts, a safe place. They have free homework help, free tutoring help, activities, engaging activities, and of course then they're able to also stay and participate in sports and our fine arts. So those are just some of the fun things too. So we are seeing, we understand full transparency where we are at with our scores as a district. We are not trying to hide that and we are working towards really increasing those and we know we have to because we owe it to not only our students but our parents as well and we are starting to see those gains. So to flip, the next question is really about the negative and you already mentioned, you acknowledged where the scores are in the student outcomes and you don't go a day where you don't have to read an article about it. So truthfully, as an educator and someone in leadership, where do you worry the most? Where do you think the district has fallen short and how do we change that moving forward? I think for us, we're changing and some of you have already started participating in our strategic planning. We have not had an anchor of what we are and who we are in Fort Worth, I see. What is the expectations of a pre-K all the way through a 12th grader? What do we expect for them at the end of the school year and then how are we anchoring our activities, our strategies and our actions around that? Our strategic plan will hold us accountable to the central office. We'll also hold our schools accountable, our principals accountable, our teachers accountable to making those gains because you have to have measurable results. We have had broad goals. Our district and I do wanna acknowledge we have three or four trustees here in the audience so I appreciate them coming, I think, until they maybe tell me I messed up. But their support but we really, we have to have an anchor. Everyone has to have where are we working towards? Where is our goal? Where's our finish line? And it's not a third grade reading goal. It has to be a pre-K goal, a kinder goal, a first grade goal. It has to be a goal for our departments to meet and to service our teachers. And we have to build a capacity within our teachers and then the leaders on our campuses as well. Yeah, thank you. Natalie, from your lens, a non-profit that is partnering with school districts, what have you seen, especially in your role of leadership really were issued that you know in the Fort Worth and Tarrant County we've gotta be better? I think when I look at what concerns me the most, it's students not realizing and recognizing that all of the opportunities that are available at the district are truly available for them. Oftentimes when we're connecting with students, they see their options and opportunities very limited. We know about half to make it easy if those students will go on to either two year or four year, but the other half are really trying to figure out what does that look like for me? And some of them have very real pressures to find a family sustaining wage job. And so I think for us, it's really those opportunities and it's that information gap and getting parents and students to understand that the pathway to those great opportunities are right there in your high school. And so instead of saying, where are you going to college? We ask them, how do you wanna live? What do you want for your future? How do you define that? And then once they describe what they want for themselves, then we say, let's show you the pathway to get there. But it's complicated. It took us forever to unpack an endorsement, a career cluster, a program of study, a designation. And so when we talked to parents, they became overwhelmed with the 60 plus possibilities that were available. And they were defaulting to say, just get your high school diploma. That can't be the answer. So I think for us, what keeps us up at night and what worries us is supporting parents or making sure parents have access to the information early on because those big decisions happen in middle school. And that's very early and a lot of parents don't think that you'd have to make some of those decisions that impact your enrollment in early college high school, P-Tech and CTE and middle school. And so we try really hard to provide parents and students with the information to make that informed decision about their future. Danielle, what about in specific to idea but also in the charter world? Where do you think, as an educator, public charters are falling short? One thing that really, that I'm able to see on a daily basis that really impacts the overall academic success of students are really these teacher vacancies. Teacher vacancies are playing a huge role by not being able to ensure that we're able to have a high quality teacher in front of every classroom and a high quality leader in every building. Those vacancies are really, really having an impact, not just on idea, but just the nation as a whole. If you can find 10-sped teachers to help service the students in your building, you hit the lottery because it's just that challenging to find high quality folks that's gonna be able to really be there to provide the academic support that students need. So not having some of those personnel resources has had a huge impact on just the overall landscape of some of the success for students. When I first moved to Texas from Detroit back in 2007, I couldn't even get a teaching job in Dallas ISD to save my life because there weren't any vacancies at the time. Now, if you have a heartbeat, a degree and you're willing to do it, campuses are trying to recruit whoever they can to try to come in there and take care of some of these vacancies. So as a whole, we would have to do a much better job of how we're recruiting, how we're onboarding, supporting and retaining high quality teachers. All right, and we can have as many job fears as possible, but if we don't have good leadership at that building, folks are gonna wanna come to the school to begin with. So we really have to focus on those vacancies and making sure that we're providing not just a great educational experiences for students, but also a great working environment for staff. And don't you think that in Texas especially, we are grappling with a lack of respect for the profession, the way we're investing in the education for educators. You have educators that are taking out tens of thousands of dollars in educational debt to go be a top notch teacher, only to be mistreated in classroom. We know how important student discipline has become in classrooms to drive teachers away. So I think that as a state and a region, we really have to tackle this together. And I talk to teachers often that have said I'm leaving the field. I'm the very best at what I do. Furthermore, you're not incentivized. I mean, you're not incentivized to stay in the classroom because you get captained money. You're incentivized to be going to be a principal or a leader in a campus. When I wish you could make $200,000 a year. If you are a rock star calculus teacher, you should make that kind of money in a classroom in Texas. You can't do that today. And I think long term we've got to think about that. And I totally agree with that. I went to college to become a teacher. And the amount that I had to pay to go to Morehouse for a semester was way more than I was making as a teacher overall. So now you have folks that are going to school because you're passionate about education and you're investing your education in college. And when you graduate, you don't even have enough money to even pay the loans back that you went to school for. So these are things that really need to be tackled. Not just here in Texas, but I'm seeing the same thing in Louisiana. I'm seeing the same thing in Florida. So that is really a true conversation we need to have. Where you place your money is where your heart is and where your priorities are. So we have to make sure that teachers are at the helm of all of that there. Yeah, yeah. So, well said, yeah. So Kara, many people don't, if you don't know her well, I encourage you to. She's absolutely brilliant. And she really has become a leader in the country around early education. But you see from your seat what's working in other states and other countries for that matter. So where are we falling short in the US today for our youngest and most vulnerable learners? When 90% of brain development happens between zero and five and our investments are backwards. Yeah. From a system standpoint, if you were gonna put your dollars on the area you were like, what's the greatest return on investment? Is it fifth grade? Is it the high school years? Is it elementary? Is it higher ed? We spend the most amount of money in the higher ed years. Lower return on investment. We spend then a little bit more on the K-12 side. Little, you know, a little better return on investment. But when we get to the early education side, it's the least amount of money that we spend, but it promises the greatest return on investment. So it's an inverse relationship. And so you kind of go like, okay, so at a systems level, we just really haven't thought about it. We haven't figured out how do we wanna do that? Families are where children thrive. Young children love families. If we have a silver bullet, it is a family. So another challenge that's obviously facing young children is just we need great families and families need help. Families with young kids base a whole lot of challenges. And if we don't have a system that's designed around that, example, Texas, pre-kindergarten. We're one of the first states in the country to have pre-kindergarten. Do you know what? We gave all the money to schools. So we just forgot to ask working parents, what did they think? Would they like to have eight to two 30 or eight to three? Or do they need help at six 30 in the morning until six o'clock p.m.? And so we just haven't thought about it from the experience of families and then the experience of young children. You brought up teachers. If it's bad in K-12, it's abysmal in early childhood. And people have heard me say this over and over again. We pay Bucky's cashiers more than we pay their teachers that are with our babies. Everyone in this room knows there's nothing more that we care about than children in their very youngest years. And we leave them with women that are incredibly sacrificial and committed. And I say women and it's largely women and largely women of color. And we pay them nothing at this time where it's the greatest return on investment. And so we really need a plan of how do we begin to reverse the tide? So there's a lot of dark sides in early education, but there's also a lot of, there's a lot of room to grow, a lot of room to improve. Thank you. Yeah. Elizabeth. And then indeed. So knowing you and the work that you're doing with Rev right now, you researched this and you know where you're focused, but what worries you the most, specifically what we've seen in Tarrant County? Yeah, I would actually answer that question by stepping back a level and saying what worries me the most is that because it takes time to get the outcomes we want for kids that our community's commitment to shared academic progress will wane over time. Everyone of my colleagues sitting next to me does this work on a day to day basis. They are in classrooms and in schools educating our kids. And I'm remodeling a house. And when we get a beam sent to our house, if it's cracked, my contractor has a decision. I can keep that beam and I can work with it or I can send it back. Every one of these leaders at this table, they take every kid. They are ethically and morally and legally responsible to do so. And they take those kids, however our community is handing them. And so we have a commitment and the Morris Foundation believes that we have a commitment that it's our shared responsibility to make sure that all the systems that support kids, whether it's food or health care or housing, that all those systems are thriving. We as adults sit in this room and we can remember the last time that we were hungry and were we very pleasant to work with? Absolutely not. And you put that in the face and the body of a little kid and they're coming to school scared or hungry or whatever it is that they're dealing with. All of those things, how our kids show up in our classroom, that's a shared community responsibility. And so when I think about the greatest challenge that we are faced with, it's that our community will wane in its commitment because as Karen mentioned and the leaders mentioned up here, this is a complex and complicated issue to take young people and to grow them academically and as people into the citizens that we want them to be in our community. And I was asked one time at a breakfast, you know, Elizabeth, why do you keep doing this when scores are going up so slowly and COVID sent us so far back? And my response to them was, I don't think there's another answer. It is our responsibility to make sure that we are lifting these outcomes up for kids and that each of us is playing the role that we can in doing that. So that's I think kind of the greatest challenge that we face in our city and our kids thriving in the way that we want them to. So I'm gonna ask one more question and then we're gonna shift the cards that Jason hands me in a minute. Let's focus on post-secondary. So I'll say briefly what I think we have focused too much in this country on four university only. We've crammed that down families' throats and that is not the only answer. And as a result, you have stifled opportunity for families and we know right now some of your most emerging career paths do not require a four year degree. They don't even require a two year degree. They require credential and you have the best thing going in Tarrant County which is Tarrant County College which by the way is now providing free tuition. My diet right is over. I think we're starting to shift and understand that a bit more and I think this community has the potential thanks to organizations like T3 that's on the stage to really refocus the conversation to your point earlier, what is your pathway? College, career or military but you have to have a path and it has to be more than just a high school diploma. So each of you are seeing this in different respects. What are the bright spots and towards this work in post-secondary pathways? Karen first of all, I think you could probably acknowledge K through 12 has not done enough. For a while we kind of said you graduated, great job, not my problem anymore and we have to be more connected to what that pathway but that student really is moving forward. Yeah, definitely. It does start in middle school, Natalie shared that in middle school, but it's hard too for middle school, what's your pathway? So it really takes time for us to spend the time engaging our children in what opportunities are out there, what different certifications, what career paths that may not be for college and not everyone wants to go to college and thank goodness, right? Because we all need someone else who has certification and we need them. We have one of the best automotive programs across our district and our kids, they love it and they fight to get into it. I love to go to Northside High School and walk their automotive and we have a female student who got accepted into one of the trade schools, first female, it's just to see their passion because all of us want to passion in what we do for a living. Cosmetology, culinary, we have many culinary programs as well. That gives them exposure that they want to travel, they want to go on a cruise ship and use our culinary skills and work. If they want to do a restaurant or if they want to do private catering. Like it disguises a limit that's something that's different than just going to a two year or four year college and pharmacy school. We have that, we have a great partnership with the Fourth Police Department now where we failed at that at Eastern Hills for years with our police and our fire for some of our students who really want to be police officer or a fire fighter and we did not have a great program there. Now we have this partnership where they can go and they can be trained and they can then work their way to the academy and we need that as a society and as a city and a community as well. We need police officers and we need firefighters. So there's so many things but it's finding their passion and that's where we need partners because our kids passions, they change and they should change because we evolve as a society and we are, we're K-12 and we think literacy and math and social studies and science. So we need the help of our business partners to say this is what we need from you and help develop the curriculum. Our teachers need help knowing what you need from us to teach our kids so they can come out and be partners with you and the business community. And as Natalie's, I'm gonna ask her to answer this question and I'll go to the question to the audience. Tom Harris I think was here earlier if he's not still and Tom is chairing our mayor's council on education workforce and it's really about that is ensuring that our workforce actually has informed our school districts what they need to see and partner with T3. So Tom thanks for all your volunteering wherever you are. Okay Natalie answer this one we're gonna shift over. So I always, when we were working together as a team to figure out how do we create those opportunities for students, how they begin to see themselves in jobs that they can't even conceive of. I want you all to think about this. Your home 1.5 mile radius. If the opportunity, the business doesn't exist within that 1.5 mile radius, there's no exposure to it. So for some students we're asking them to choose and select careers that they have no idea can't even conceive of and have not been exposed to. We know 100% of the students will not have access to an internship or an apprenticeship and that's okay but we can leverage and utilize technology and student voice and student agency and get them engaged in exploring what are these possibilities and bring that insight directly to them so that they can choose and they're not feeling as though their options and opportunities are limited to the exposure that they have in their surrounding community. Because what we do know is that a lot of the communities that our students live in don't have a lot of major companies that are right around the corner they're not able to see that they're not able to have access to that but they want that, they desire that they want to be able to see all of those possibilities so I think coming together, showing parents showing students what that looks like it's not just a nurse or a doctor they're phlebotomists, you know their radiology texts there are so many other diverse jobs that you can have in health sciences but many students only know what they've been exposed to. Sure, thanks for that. Okay, first question, I think we'd hit on tonight which was with knowledge of the broken family the number one common denominator why are we excluding families from the solutions? I don't think you can exclude families I hope that's been obvious tonight but I'm curious if you feel like we didn't hit on anything tonight that would maybe help appease that question or raise that question more thoroughly. Please go ahead. I would say that's one of the things we're really working on this year and Parent Shield has been such a great partner with us we meet with them on a monthly basis just Parent Shield, Dr. Ramsey, myself, we meet with them, they've given us some great ideas and I don't like to say parent engagement I like to say partnership. One of the things that we're gonna be working on is moving to a standards based report card that is more about what does your child need to know and should know in that grade level and it's more parent friendly. Right now we're doing great how can you give a first grader a, b, c, or d? It needs to be a standard based like where are they and learning their numbers or multiplication, their addition so we're moving towards that which we're really excited about but then also just what we call our parent portal like how do we help partner with our parents of knowing this is what a map score says what level is your child on how are they doing in school? So we're revamping that as well so we can be more transparent with our parents and show like this is how your child's reading this is what we're doing this is what you can do at home we have family engagement specialists under Marta Plata and every single school that we do parenting classes for are with but we don't want, we don't want to be classes we want them to partner like I say with us to tell us what do they need from us to make them feel more comfortable about school and with their child Kerry you're gonna say something? Yeah well we have to listen again when parents say they feel left out it's like tell me more tell me more what that's like and on the young child side we have about 1200 families that are enrolled in one particular program around Tarrant County and we had an opening parent night where we talk about this is the first time you've left your child in a program with a teacher and we had a parent evening it's 600 families show up so I mean 50% attendance on the first night and they are so eager to know what do I need to do I want to make sure my child's ready for success in school and so we have to be able to carry forward that same kind of enthusiasm that they bring in with the youngest children and somehow keep that going down the pathway I know the second piece I know is a lot of families for us in working with especially lower income families they don't know what to do you know they're like there's a school or I have to enroll early you know when do I have to turn things in and so more and more we're realizing our role that we have to start working with especially our lower income families when their children are about two or three they're not already enrolled in a program or they are and start setting expectations about what is it gonna look like for you as a parent to have a kindergartner and how do you choose a really powerful school like what kind of school do you need is your child showing a developmental delay or disability how do we let's check that out now let's talk to your pediatrician and others and figure that out because that may influence what school you go to so I'm so grateful for I think we've got what school school hoop families empowered we've got a couple of different find features we have the find feature to help find childcare and others and we're trying to help give parents the information so that they can't choice has a lot of power behind it and we know that but the reality is what we're gonna do not get parents information to have an informed understanding of what's best for their child so you have to listen again to them afresh and we have to remember that the parent really does know their child really well and what would be a great fit for them and I also think as a focus on radical respect for families choice and what they're doing for their family if they are choosing to stay home with their kids what can the city do to make sure there are more choices in our public libraries to help support those families if they're homeschooling their children if they've chosen private school or charter school that it has become so toxic around the conversation of education and parents have felt attacked on all sides and I think at this point in time what students really need is to feel a certain level of respect in families too so I know the city has really grappled with that as well on how we provide the right kind of services to our residents in an important way. Okay, I think I can read this one have you ever considered the issues in education could be exacerbated by screen time and ed tech devices? Yes, having raised small children and it's like the number one thing as a parent that scares me but at the same time recognizing they have to have access to this device that is totally changing the world and we have time to talk about that that's a whole nother session but whoever wrote this question, I agree I'm sure you all do too and how we grapple with that as educators especially in an early age when if ever is it appropriate to introduce an iPad to a child right before the age of five? Okay, what percentage of third graders and fourth ISD are reading at grade level according to district data and what has been implemented by administration to improve this as work? You talked about curriculum changes currently today, what's the status of third grade reading? So I did share where we're at with our map scores for middle of the year we are seeing those gains we're looking at are Alexia Alexia is the resource that is the companion against map we do have researched the shows that the Alexia scores and the map data are aligned to the star data so as I said last year we had 27% of our students working within grade level and right now we have 54% that are working within grade level not where it needs to be but that's great gains for us it's about consistency of implementation of these resources and given the kids the opportunity we have a couple of teachers that I saw this evening as well and our students need that they need reading every single day they need to be met where they're at and then grow and grow more than the year's growth we do have the teacher incentive allotment too for our teachers just to touch a little bit on we do have the ability of what we're trying to see that if you do grow your child more than a year's growth there is opportunity for our teachers to earn extra compensation and that is one of the programs that we do participate in with the state Okay, thank you Do for schools use trauma informed techniques to include instead of excluding children from discipline with discipline issues? Yes, so we do have what we call risk assessments we do have a lot of students that have a lot of needs but we have great partners as well so when we have a student that does have outcry we have what we call a risk assessment it's just not for suicide but it's also for mental social health issues that they may need counseling we have great resources we have a family action center as well as family resource centers that we have partnerships with JPS and then HR so we do we have a lot of those it's hard because our counselors do not really go to school to be to be able to intervene at that high level so we do need more help in that we try to refer them but a lot of time our referrals take up to months to get them in to see you know someone who has that background that can help our children and then it's also getting the parent at that point to go in take on transportation as well as you know course insurance help Yeah, thank you very much Okay, a lot of these were all for 4th ISD Karen's un-talking Anything in closing we want to share with the audience before and I think we'll be here for another 30 minutes with some of our guests that came to share information Anything else from y'all Natalie? I was just going to say the parent piece continues to come back and kind of knot me a little bit and I think one of the things that we think about is every parent regardless of their circumstances deeply committed to the success of their children and there are some parents who because of work they can't take off time they have issues that they're juggling and managing that should not preclude them from being able to be as involved in the decisions as it relates to their child's success and so when we were thinking about how do we partner with districts to give that empowerment to parents where they can maybe they're working a night shift and they have a break over dinner and they can take a look and see how do I make some decisions about my child's future and oh these are some of the endorsement pathways that I think would be great well great they can do that and then we email that directly to Fort Worth ISD so parents one of the things that we heard from them is that we need greater access during times when we can explore because we can't always come to campus during traditional school hours and so whoever wrote the question about parents they are the key parent empowerment, parent engagement student, agency, student voice all of those things are really the glue that helps us propel these opportunities forward Thank you, go ahead And Mayor Parker, my colleague also was going to sit around the parent piece as a principal I was very adamant about wraparound services for my families so a lot of times whenever I was able to really dig deep and build that rapport and relationship with the families I was able to identify some of their specific needs so we were able to have wraparound services where we were able to bring in employers to come in and speak to families about resume building finishing up your GED opportunities for them to get employment in the community things that were able to help them as a parent so that they could therefore help their child and ultimately be able to put their children in a situation and a better situation for when they come to school they're ready to learn so those wraparound services are also equally important yes we want parents to be able to articulate those things to us but a lot of parents may not have time to come up there if they're working night shift morning shift and all of those things like that too so as a school and as a school district we have to provide opportunities where they can see what we're offering through those wraparound services so that if there is a need that we can fill they can come to us as well Awesome, give these folks a round of applause please Thank you all for taking time on a Wednesday evening to join us tonight thank you to Councilmember Crane for putting this together and to Jason and the entire team to now as well and originally theater for hosting another great event with that I think we're all done and we can see you in the back Thank you for watching this episode of Fort Worth Ford this has been a great conversation about education here in Fort Worth this is the reason we keep having these conversations so we can keep enlightening ourselves and understanding what the needs are in our community so we can make it better so thank you again for participation thanks to our panelists for being here today if you have other ideas or topics that you'd like us to discuss email us district3atfortworthtexas.gov or give us a call 817-392-8803 Thank you