 We are proud to partner the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce with the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. Both of our organizations are very fortunate to have each other as partners and to compliment our missions in pursuit of education this morning, along with the San Antonio Independent School District Foundation. I wanted to welcome you officially to our partnership. We have over 300 people with us this morning. Give yourself a round of applause. Thank you for your enthusiasm. You all know how important education is. It's the most valuable currency in the world and in San Antonio a city that is growing by 20% every 10 years and has consistently done that since 1980. A city of 1.4 million sustaining that growth but also uplifting and building a workforce is critically important. Education is the most important commodity in local economic development. So the work of the San Antonio School District, its trustees, Bedro and each of you that form part of that fabric is critical to both the San Antonio Chamber, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and of course the larger business community. I get to introduce Miss Patty Radle. When I was the city's director of economic development we did a lot of cool things. We started the foundations, the academies, we brought Toyota to town, we did the settlement agreement with the Alamo Colleges to put more money into workforce development and we needed champions on the council. Many of you were there during those times. We funded the first million dollar tranche for the local match for the School of Biology, Science and Engineering at UTSA, whenever you know was councilwoman. And then we created the Center for Infrastructure, Assurance and Security at UTSA which is now the best cyber college in America. So this city has done great things and it has many more great things too. But one of those champions at the time that I had the honor to work with as a councilwoman was Miss Patty Radle. We also created the Westside Development Corporation to focus economic development on the Westside. And before I introduce her, I just, I loved working with her because she was all hard, but she was going to tell you what she felt. And so I was at her meeting once thinking I was Mr. Big Cheese and I was talking about economic development and incentives and I said yes, councilwoman, we can do that. We can kill two birds with one stone when we do this. She looked, she stopped me in front of everybody. She goes, Ramiro, yes, yes, councilwoman. She goes, I'm a pacifist. So you can't use that phrase, kill two birds with one stone. So she, I've learned that lesson. I don't use that term anymore, Patty, but I love Patty Radle. She is our president of the SCISD Board of Trustees, elected May of 2011. She's a graduate of Marquette University with a major in theology. She obtained her teacher in bilingual certification and second major in English from our Lady of the Lake University. She was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the Oblate School of Theology. She taught elementary school and SCISD for 12 years in high school and middle school in local school systems. She has served on the San Antonio City Council from 2003 to 2007. Ms. Radle has also served with her husband, Rod, as the volunteer director for inner city development since 1972. Her current term expires in 2019. Let's all thank Ms. Radle for the wonderful work she does. Let's give her a round of applause. I love working with Ramiro. Don't you love working with Ramiro? I certainly want to thank the Hispanic Chamber and thank the San Antonio Chamber, and thank our wonderful San Antonio Independent School District Foundation for putting this together for us and giving us a platform to talk about the wonderful things that are happening. So thank you so very, very much. But I also want to offer a much broader thank you. We've been through a lot in the last year and a half, and the successes and the opportunity for the initiatives we anticipate have come with wonderful support of the people in this room. The bond and the TRE, I mean, how many cities have such wonderful support? How many citizens vote at 70% to increase their taxes in two different ways? I wonder how it's truly been a community effort. I think all of us felt the wonderful support from the community. It was amazing to have such support from the business community and our families, our parents, our other community members. It just really felt like we are moving forward as a true community, a family community. And this morning I wanted to just very briefly address an issue that's been on the news and to say how fortunate it is that we have this breakfast this morning after one of our colleagues resigned last night. And have you seen the issue on the news? And I just want to say that, you know, obviously to our board it brings us sadness. It is a time for us to do some grieving, but it is not going to be our distraction in moving forward. And we want to move forward with you. We want you to continue to have the faith in us. Because while this is one person's dilemma and we are not the judge in adjourning, and that has to move through the process, our focus as it has been is on 53,000 children. So we have a journey together. It's a long road. It's a long time in the car together. You know, there'll be challenges along the way. I can hear the voices of people who have made long road trips with their children. And you know the things that can happen, but we're together and we appreciate that. And just to make a brief statement together, I'd like to ask our board members to stand. Again, former Mayor Garza, Mr. Howard, Mr. Guerrero, Mr. Valdez, Mr. Leschano, if you would remain standing please. Because we want to say to you together that we have a tremendous leader in whom we have much faith in. And we want you to know that we are behind him. We are not a group of yes men or women because we dig deep in these issues and we have tough discussions. But in the end, we come out with wonderful support for these initiatives that we're going to take on. And we want to assure you that we are together and we will continue to look deep. And we will travel together and we give you a warning. Our leader, Pedro Martinez, drives at about 90 miles an hour. And the only signs he looks at along the road are those that say this way to success. So I hope you stick with us, have faith in us. We are all in this together. And we're going to have a very brief video and then I ask you to give a warm welcome. It's like one minute. And welcome Pedro Martinez to our stage. Thank you again to all the support you have rendered to this district. Fantastic. Thank you. The only thing that's harder than being a superintendent is being a merit. For my wife and I, it's very personal because it was our education that helped us come out of poverty. We decided that our children were going to go to public schools here in San Antonio ISD. And for me, when I look at my son, when I think about the quality of education that I want him to have, I think about all of our 53,000 children. I want our teachers to love our children. I want our principals to love our children. Let's love them to a better life. Let's love them to Harvard. Let's love them to Yale, to Stanford. Because if we want to help our children, the best way to help them out of poverty is to give them a great education. If they're successful, if they have great careers, we'll see stronger communities. We'll see stronger economic development. And that's what our role is in our communities. My biggest fear is that I would come here and see an empty room. And that's always something that I'm always afraid of, but I'll tell you. You know, Ms. Radle said this very well. One of the things that makes this job not only motivating, but also doable is the fact that we're not alone. And so thank you. Thank you for being with us. So today, you know, there's a couple takeaways that I want you to have from today. So one is I want you to have some context to what we're doing. Because I think it's always so important to not only understand the work we're doing, but what the context of it is here in our state and in the country. And then the other is I want you to see in President Radle said this. I mean, we are going to show proof points. We are going to show that even though we'll take time to transform the district, you're going to see evidence that we're making changes, movements in the right direction. And I'll tell you, you'll see why I am so optimistic about where we're going as a district. So let's start with this. So take a look at this. This is a study from Georgetown, and they do this by state. And it's one of the most in-depth studies in the country that looks at what children will need for tomorrow's jobs. So look what it says. More than 65% of students for tomorrow's jobs will require some full secondary education. This is nationwide. By the way, Texas is very reflective of the nation. In fact, we have one of the most diverse economies in the country, but we're very much in line with this. And it's not a coincidence that our governor and our state has put a goal that by 2030, 60% of all children need to have some full secondary certificate. By the way, it doesn't mean a university degree, but it does mean that we need more than high school. This is a question I get every day. You say that everybody has to go to college. Keep in mind there's different colleges. There's universities and there's colleges, and tomorrow's jobs require more than high school diploma. So look at this slide. So this slide actually came from the commissioner, who I have a lot of respect for. So Commissioner Morad presented this first in front of many superintendents across the state. And you know, look at this slide and look what it shows you. So what you see in the first columns are the percentage of our children that are scoring, and we call it the final level of proficiency. Our state has been phasing in much more difficult assessments that are actually much more accurate and much more telling about the capabilities of our children statewide. So look at where we're at right now in third and fifth and eighth grade. And this is statewide, ladies and gentlemen. So that's where we're at. Look at as we get into SAT and ACT, which the SAT and ACT, in the child scores college-ready, that means they have a 75% chance of being successful in the freshman year of college. So look at the percentage that we have right now statewide of the percentage of children that are college-ready on the ACT and SAT. Look at graduation rates. So do you see a little bit of a disconnect there? So I'll tell you, you know, it's fascinating, and this is why I have so much respect for the commissioner, he's having this conversation, and I would say probably in the first time for several decades, right? This disconnect that exists between these graduation rates that we have that we celebrate, that we should be celebrating that, but look at the other metrics. Keep going and go all the way down to the last metric. Look at the percentage of children that are actually finishing successfully in our state. And this is not a four-year degree, by the way. It's either a two-year or four-year degree, right? So context. Look at this slide. And I gotta tell you, it was interesting when I saw this slide and he showed this to us. So the top line shows the percentage of children. So this is now broken, breaking that 17% by economic advantage. So in other words, the top line is our middle-class families. The bottom line is our high-poverty families. Look what you see there. Statewide, by the way. So by the way, with a small print, it goes back to 20 years. So for 20 years in our state, our high-poverty children, less than 5%, especially in those beginning years, were college-ready at the ACT and SAT. Look at all the way. And now, and we're a little higher, right? We're at 7%, ladies and gentlemen. 7% of our children right now, over a 20-year period from up from about, you know, just under 5%. Now, if you go to the higher line, you see more of our middle-class families. And I get this debate a lot. People say, well, you know, superintendent, are you saying that everybody should go to college because you know that that's not necessarily the case? Well, okay, so let's talk about that. So look at that line. So, you know, we're right now just above 25% over, these are middle-class families that are college-ready. So you can argue that not everybody should go to college, but my question to you would be, does that mean that 75% of our middle-class families shouldn't be college-ready? Question, right? So that's the context of the work. So as you look at our district, and you look at that bottom line, and I'll show you some more stats, by the way, our state is getting poorer. Look at the percentage of children that are economically disadvantaged. Statewide, it's grown out at 60%. So again, put that in context with that other line, with that other graph. Here's some other data. And said, okay, let's really talk about poverty. So we compared ourselves with North State and Northeast. And by the way, you know what was fascinating when we did this work? The high percentage of children that are qualifying for free lunch at North State and Northeast, that means their population is getting poorer. Not even free and reduced, by the way. This is free lunch, which means that these families have a family size of four or more, and they make less than $30,000 a year. That's what that means. But look at our percentage. We're more than double even North State and Northeast. But I was actually surprised how high the percentage of free, well, families are called for free in North State and Northeast. So context, right? So this is what's happening in our state right now as our demographics are changing. Here's another stat for you. So look at the median income for Texas. Look at what it is for Bear County. By the way, Bear County and Texas very much resemble each other. Whether it's income, even if I'm going to very much mirror each other. Look at our district, $31,000. Compare that to North State and Northeast. But keep in mind, even in North State and Northeast, the percentage of children qualifying for free lunch is growing because overall, our property is growing in the state. So that's the context of the work. So, you know, for us, as Ms. Redo said, it is so important to have support from the community because this is a big challenge. This, and I'm going to go back to this line, to change this. This is the challenge of the nation. This is the challenge that everybody's trying to figure out. There is no magic bullets. I will tell you right now. I've been doing this for more than 20 years. There is no magic bullets. Every time I see something like this, I get angry because I was that kid who grew up in a very poor family. First in my family to go to high school. First in my family to go to college. And my wife and I, my little brother, the first in her family to go to college. And we talk about this, that it's harder today than it was 20 years ago when we went to college. It is harder today. I don't know why, I don't understand it, but it is harder today, ladies and gentlemen. And this graph confirms it for me. This is why this work is so personal for us. That's why we want to show because over 90% of our children live in poverty. So when you look at that bottom line, and by the way, we only represent 1% of the state. We represent 1% of the state. 53,000 children in the state has 5.5 million children. So I want you to just appreciate the context of that. By the way, not because we want to make an excuse, but we need to understand it. Because if we don't understand it, we will make the same mistakes over and over again. So that's why when you see us doing the things we're doing, know that at a minimum, we are challenging ourselves and saying, let's not do the same things over and over again. Because we see the results. And by the way, this is not about Peter Martinez, this is not about Patty Rado, this is a community effort. It's not about one individual, but we have to solve this. We have to solve this problem. Because we know again what the history shows us. So let's talk about year one. So I'm finishing the year and a half. Again, I feel so blessed to be with you. And I will tell you, year one for me was I wanted to understand it. So I've done this work long enough where I've made a lot of mistakes in my career. When I was in Chicago working with Arnie Duncan, we tried everything. Ladies and gentlemen, we tried any program you can imagine, we tried it. We had 400,000 kids, 700 schools, we could do a lot of experimentation. We tried everything. And at the end, we never found a magic bullet. What we found was strong principles, strong teachers caring for our children, high expectations, that was it. It didn't matter if it was a charter school, it didn't matter if it was a traditional school, it didn't matter if it was a magnet program, that's what we found. That was what we found in our work. So we know that as we do this work, that's what grounds us. So we unveiled our blueprint for success. We started talking about our strategies. We we grounded ourselves with five pillars. Academic excellence, talent management, culture shift, stakeholder engagement, and fiscal management. Everything we do is grounded in these pillars. Every single initiative we have goes back to these pillars. So that is what helps us to organize our work. It helps us to structure everything. And one of the things that I've learned in my career, this is about building systems, this is something that will change overnight. It shows you those graphs because trust me, there's a lot of smart people that have been in our district before and again, it's about systems and it's about thinking longer term and again, looking at ways to solve these challenges. So academic excellence. In our first year, in my first year, we opened up a very innovative school called the Young Man Leadership Academy. I'm going to show you a little video about it in a second. Amazing school. In its first year, 4th through 6th grade was the top three in our district in its first year. By the way, these were boys that, and I don't know if you guys have children and we have boys, I have a six year old boy. I'll tell you, having children later in life, I would not advise it. It is, it is. I mean, he keeps us gone, but I'll tell you, it is he is all boy. I mean, he is just an amazing amount of energy. But one of the things that was great in my leadership academy, so the research said, and it was really interesting, so I asked our principal, I said, Tara, tell me why you started in 4th grade, because I find that fascinating. And he said, because the research was really clear that as soon as kids are tested in 3rd grade, all of a sudden we look at our children differently because we see those scores. And especially with boys. And it's one of the things we always have to think about. Even as parents, there is research that says that as soon as you start seeing grades and test scores, your view of your children actually changes. I mean, think about that for a second. So our boys, especially boys of color, already, because they are you know, they are active. I mean, they are they are mobile. And again, our view changes about them. So we wanted to create a school that was different for them. And I'll tell you, so you'll see a video in a second on that score. Well, we also did and you know, again, you know, lessons learned. We opened up a brand new school in 6 months with almost 600 students. Think that, you know, we survived that we had an amazing principal, Kathy Bezier who's here right now in our audience. Just an amazing school. And it's in its first year. And I will tell you, see a little bit of video of that. Very different type of school. Very different. Very different than what our community has seen. The support we're getting for it is amazing. I will tell you, we already have a waiting list that's several hundred students for this school. And it's probably in its first year. But the parents can see it. And we can see it. And again, you can see a little video about that. We also started developing our strategies around academics. We brought in Dr. Doug Fisher, who's the national expert on instruction. And he actually trains our principals and is working with us to train our teachers and brought him in. You know what was interesting also. So in our first year we also laid out a particular direction. So as part of our blueprint we laid out 10 aggressive goals. And one of the things we said is even though the work was early, we wanted to see the capability of our staff. And it was amazing. This is just two examples. We had over 30 schools that even with harder assessments had distinctions. But these two are two examples of schools that stood out. We had Davis Middle School with Julio Garcia, one of our amazing middle school principals. Lois performing middle school in our district. Just before I got here we put him there in one year he literally more than doubled some of our test scores and went from one of the lowest performing middle school in our district to having a distinction in science in one year in middle school. Gates Elementary School is another one that actually in some of their test scores almost tripled in some cases. And again went from a low performing school to having five out of six distinctions in the state. So again, examples of what is possible in our district. And one of the things we also did is we went to some of our higher performing schools and everybody, by the way, when I came to the community said, you know, you have schools like Young Woman Leadership Academy, you have Travis and we talked to them and said, guys we need you guys to really show us what you can do. So Travis just been named as a nominee for the National World Ribbon. By the way, a hundred percent of their class got associates degrees last year and this is a great story. Eighty-six percent got it during their 20 years while they were in high school. President Vela from San Antonio College said, you know what, that other 14 percent, I'm going to bring them in for the summer because all they need is a few credits and I'm going to get them their associates degree and we had a hundred percent of our students last year for the first time ever. President Vela, please share with them our appreciation because he is there at our graduations. He is there at every event that we have with the kids and he is a true friend. And of course gentlemen of Delia, our amazing principal here also amazing school. A hundred percent graduation and we challenged Delia when he said, look, when we look at young tuition academy, we got to show what's possible. A hundred percent of these girls are going to four-year universities, top universities across the country ladies and gentlemen. It was work just like in Delia that allowed us in our district, we went from three graduates to five percent attending tier one universities including some of the colleges you see here on the screen. So I mean Delia led the way with a hundred percent of our girls doing that. And of course she also was the national blue ribbon school for 2015. So now let's talk about year two. So year two now for us became so first year was about we wanted to learn, we wanted to set a clear direction, we wanted to raise expectations. Year two became really about now starting to implement our strategies and starting to set conditions for change. And one of the things that we learned very quickly is that we didn't have enough resources. You know, it was fascinating when I came to the district I was in a meeting with about 30 of my colleagues, supertents across the country, and I saw these big stacks of paper that were all about, you know, the plans for the settlement once we won the lawsuit for education funding. So it was like this thing, and by the way the price tag was over three billion dollars and there was about four different ones. And it was north side of Houston and Dallas and I'm just watching this, I'm fascinated by it I'm just seeing these stacks of paper and everybody's just, you know, said well we're going to go with option one because it helps, you know, Houston more. Or no, we're going to go with option two because it helps north side more. And there was this huge debate and I just thought my goodness, three billion dollars. And then of course, you know, the end of the story we found out from and everybody was kidding like when are we going to find out another week, another week, another week. And then we found out what happened, right? We lost the lawsuit and we saw at that time in our district, we said my goodness if we don't have resources from the state, what are we going to do? We had a deep discussion with our trustees and said how do we make sure that we can contain, we can really continue this path without sufficient resources. And as President Murido said the community stepped out. Out of 160 voting precincts 159 voted for both ballot questions minimum by 27% I think that's impressive of course. I think that is impressive. At the same time we got aggressive about applying for grants so we got the largest federal grant ever, $46 million over five years and I'm going to talk more about how we're going to use these resources and so we said again we're setting up the conditions for change. So now let's talk about our pillar of talent management. At the end of the day, as I shared before there is no magic votes. It's all about the quality of our folks how we support them, the expectations we have for our children. So here's what I want you to know when we're pushing right now and I share this with our staff. So the ballot questions, we were advocating for that across our community last year now this has become our new mantra which is we are we want to identify internally and recruit externally so that we will have over a thousand of our teachers that are master teachers. By the way it does not mean necessarily advanced degrees these are teachers who are mastering their craft, who have shown a track record of student achievement and what we want is to recognize these teachers. We want to recognize them, we want to elevate them these are teachers by the way as I'm going to our schools and I'm finding them it's amazing because I love this. So I walked into one school this school had six out of six distinctions, one of our top performance schools very quiet school by the way, nobody ever looks at this school and I told the principal I said show me some of your master teachers that I want to recruit for this initiative so I met this teacher who was 70 years old by the way does not look 70 70 years old very passionate and just a very different type of teacher and the principal said look I gotta warn you, I mean her classroom doesn't look like the traditional way, it's just she's really different but by the way 100% of her kids are passing and exceeding the state standards and I found out and I asked her a little bit about what she does and one of the things that I learned about her was that during lunchtime she's a 4th grade teacher, she brings up her children he eats lunch with them every single day, drives the principal crazy by the way but has such a connection with those kids, with those students like one that I've never seen before and then the same school I found another teacher who was in her third year getting the same results and then I met another teacher who was a preschool teacher 20 year veteran who said superintendent I just I keep trying to lead preschool I keep trying to lead preschool but it's like a magnet from that can't lead preschool and I said you shouldn't lead preschool preschool is one of the best investments that we can make and so these are examples of master teachers so our goal is to have at least 1,000 of our 3,000 master teachers to be master teachers over the next 5 years we will pay them an extra $15,000 by the way we're asking them to work an extra a month and we're asking them to work an extra 5 hours a week because we want to leverage those teachers to be part of our leadership team to help us solve the problems and then we want another third of our teachers to become a pipeline to become master teachers that is our vision we hire about 500 teachers every single year ladies and gentlemen so I'm always going to have a team of teachers that are newer teachers in the experience that are in their first few years there's always going to be about 1,000 there but that's the goal, that's the vision we have I will tell you we just started this campaign so please spread the word we're getting a lot of interest we already have more than 200 applications internal and external and we're just starting to see what we want by the way just in case if you're thinking about a Q&A where teachers top out in salary in our county by the way it's also the same in Travis County teachers here once they hit over 20 years they top out at about $65,000 a year they top out at $65,000 a year in this initiative our teachers will make well over $80,000 a year that's what we're talking about so the other thing we did is and this is this is on your table we also started putting some very interesting tools both for parents and teachers and what you have on your table is what we call the NWA math report and what's great about it is that it shows information where our children are at in the district it shows where they're at nationwide and it actually shows an expected amount of academic growth for every one of our children so step back for a second and think about how powerful this tool is for our teachers because they know this assessment is given at the beginning of the year in the middle of the year and the end of the year they know where children are coming in they know by the way in the detailed analysis they know by state standard they know how to it gives them tools to how to group children together because one of the things we learn is that even with high property children many of them come in already with a lot of talents and sometimes our traditional tools don't identify that information right from the beginning and I'll tell you our best teacher will say this confirms what I've seen and what it takes me about my first month to see I can see it almost immediately once I see these results the tool for parents where parents can know exactly where their children are at not only again within our district but nationwide this assessment is given to millions of children every single year and they can see where they're at we also said again this is part of our work doing things differently because it's one of the challenges we have in our state is that 55% of our teachers are alternative certified what does that mean is that there's a shortage of teachers so we have the colleges of education they only produce about 45% of the teachers statewide that means all of the majority of our teachers they usually get degrees that are not in education nothing wrong with that there's several programs to get alternatives or vacations and you pay several thousands of dollars most of those teachers have never spent any time in our classrooms by the way some of them are great but again it's just such a difficult model and this is a statewide issue so we decided we said you know what we gotta do things differently so we started creating our own lab schools just like the medical profession we have residents for a year and then over that year they take over the classroom by year one they have a teaching certificate by year two they will have a master's degree very different model and we started this with AOA out in elementary school we'll start as a lab school with 25 residents this fall coming up and then CAS is also we're also planning a lab school with UTSA starting next month in addition to that what's interesting in our state is we have very few specializations around literacy one of the biggest challenges we see with our children especially pre-kated 3 is around literacy we went to Texas A&M with Dr. Madsen and said create something that's customized for what we need where you have not only a master's degree but a master's degree and to become a literacy specialist and we created that and by the way we had 20 slots we had over 80 teachers applied and the 20 teachers that are going through the program now have shared with us that it's completely changed the way they're doing their work their classroom but also how they're influencing their colleagues so I'm going to talk a little bit about innovation and you're going to see a video in a second for two of our amazing schools and one of the things I'll just say about innovation is that when you look at how we're doing things I mean you may call it innovation and I love that compliment I will tell you again we're doing things differently we're problem solving and we're giving options to families to help us with this video. Interactively when I ask questions it helps me understand it more we do a lot of research I didn't want my daughter to be going to the school where all they really do is open the book or read the chapter answer the questions they wouldn't have learned as much as I had shown them pictures of all these works of art they had to go out and heal the weather and talk to each other and come back and research I'm very curious once I've learned something I'm like wait I have a question I have another question I don't like just learning from a teacher I like going online and looking for good information The Advanced Learning Academy is a collaborative place for students but it's also a highly collaborative place for the teachers and all adults in the school who work together on a daily basis to plan interdisciplinary project based curriculum to really make learning relevant and rigorous for students Opportunity is one of my main reasons to be here Yes the professors are very fun they help us learn these things Once you see that there's something that is kind of the angle where they're interested if they like sports, if they like movies whatever that happens to be you can find a way to drive the instruction in those directions that tends to be the best way for their learning We will talk about Never Give Up to the teacher who told me my story about how I didn't give up and kept going and how I got the highest quality in the class Guy Talk is a motivational inspirational time of day that we carve out for all of our student body teachers we all come together as a family and we just talk about things Each time you come you learn something new, you learn something creative and you apply that to everyday life They're here for you You look at these new models that are coming out not only are we seeing a lot of promise of the results but what I love is that when you go visit these schools again it's just such a different culture it's just such a different set of expectations at ALA for example the schools doesn't have traditional bell times they have bands and grates where children can go to kindergarten, you'll have interaction with first, second and third grade the teachers are planning together if you're in our middle school grade they're in high school very different at work, very project based at the Young Love Leadership Academy Derrick will tell you that our boys get five high fives every single day whether it's the custodial person, the counselor the level of confidence that these boys have keep in mind what I told you earlier about our theory when we opened up that school when the test course come out after third grade people will get them differently they just do and like I said there's a lot of research that we as parents we start looking at our children differently when we see those test course and we see those grades and there's a lot of research about that so they're again a different approach and like I said already one of the top three schools in our district in its first year next year we are opening up five new models five new models, the first Montessori school first public Montessori school in our district in the south side Steele Montessori we had an information night and I'll tell you I got there early and I didn't see any parents and I thought oh my god it's going to be an empty room we're just going to be here, it's going to be an empty room five minutes before we started we had standing room only and at least a hundred parents that called that could not make it but said we're interested in this model and just that first information night we have cast tag which if we have more time and you can google you can see the video of what that school's going to look like I mean state of the art I mean just you have to look at it just google it and you will see Kate Rogers here our amazing partner from HEV just a very different type of school we have Ogden who's opening up and we have Michelle here our amazing principal who will have a lab school 25 residents working with a very innovative room the late group again very very innovative model Lamar and elementary school completely different calendar we have Brian Sparks our amazing principal by the way he has his wife he teaches at LA he's probably one of the best teachers in the district so we get sort of a two for one deal with Brian and his wife amazing by the way the calendar will be an 11 month school year LMR will start a dual language academy next year very very innovative things going on by the way we have not a waiting list the Lamar elementary school so this area again it's just become so popular and then twain dual language academy our goal at twain is that not only will our children be fluent in the second language they will be bi-literate by 8th grade they will be taking advanced placement classes in Spanish by 8th grade that is what we're building at twain and that's opening up this fall five brand new models so you know as Ms. Rero said we're going about 90,000 miles an hour we're trying to show the community what is possible with very different models because we know that if we show these proof points first of all our parents respond and we're seeing it in the interest and we want to show what is possible even when you have children that live in poverty even when you have children that are struggling and of course we're also looking at things at scale one of the things that we learned early on was that many of our children were struggling when they went from elementary to middle school this was also interesting when I looked at enrollment and I saw enrollment declines our biggest enrollment declines were in those middle school grades so our parents were also speaking to us except parents they don't necessarily complain they just walk away they literally just go to a different school so this year we started converting 11 of our schools, elementary and low performing middle schools so high performing elementary schools were expanding them to 8th grade low performing middle schools were redesigning them to become pre-K8 models by the way, Twain was a struggling middle school and that would be one of our most innovative dual language academies starting next fall with pre-K2 so we are making changes and these are big structural changes but again as our trustees we are focused on students we are focused on what works for them we will have the largest international baccalaureate program in the entire county in the next two years the largest and if you want to see what it looks like go to Woodland Academy who's up for authorization this year I can see the difference in the instruction I can see the difference in the classroom there was a project that they were doing just the other week where they were looking at the break up of the USSR so just think about the context of what's going on right now with Russia they were studying the break up of the USSR and the students were struggling with all the different countries and the names but they were studying about the demographics and the lifespan and the educational levels and about that whole context of what happened in the USSR I mean that's what they're learning that's what they're working on that's what you're going to see through the international baccalaureate program just again, we're already seeing the impact in our classrooms and this is what's exciting for me I'm very personal so I showed you those earlier slides and I showed you the context of what we're working on I will tell you that we are sticklers what we're going to be stubborn is we're going to change the conversation we're going to change the conversation about what our children can do we're going to change the conversation about what our belief systems are about our children because we have to challenge ourselves we have to challenge ourselves here in this room, in this community we're challenging ourselves with our staff that is the work that is the work that we challenge ourselves why do you push college so much why do you push two in universities because what I have found in my 20 years of doing this when you have children that can elevate at the highest level it sets the tone for everybody else if our top performing children cannot reach top universities it sets the tone for everybody else because remember your years in high school remember how everything was so magnified what ever happened in your life friendships and relationships they look at everything and when they see children that can do it they say okay if that student if she can go to Stanford maybe I can try but imagine if our top students and I gave you the top college the messages sent to everybody else so again very early last year we were able to increase the number of students that got into top tier one universities from 3 to 5% look what's happening this year so we doubled down on that we doubled down and right now we have more than 3 fourths of our children are applying to college and almost 9 out of 10 are applying to at least one four year university at least half of our students are applying to tier one universities across the country by the way we had a very very nice story last year about community members named Walter who drove students every year to go see colleges it was about less than half a dozen students and that story that kind of blossomed into a much larger initiative and look what we're doing this spring break we're going to have over 80 students visiting universities across the country there are top performing juniors by the way so that when they go to their senior year they'll have visited several campuses and that's happening this spring break just to finish this up so as we go into year 3 here's what I want you to look for we're going to push hard around culture shift and stakeholder engagement in fact at the end of this year we'll be announcing a new compensation plan for principals that will be based on performance and that will be brand new because again we want to track and retain the best principals and so you will see that at the end of this year you will also see a huge emphasis on stakeholder engagement I mean I am so proud to be here in this community that is so collaborative but we are doubling down and more partnerships we're going to partner with the chambers as we look at how we part of industry with our high schools this fall we will be announcing a principal for a day initiative where I want community members to shadow our principals for half a day I want you to see what it is and understand the work so we're going to open up our buildings to the community that will be coming this fall we will be empowering parents in a way that has never been done before you just saw a little bit of the tools that we're using with NWA maps which gives parents more information than ever before so those are things that are coming up this fall so with that I think we have just a couple of minutes for Q&A and I want to recognize Richard Perez our amazing member from the greater chamber we have a couple of minutes for questions any questions, we have a couple of mics that are floating around so if anybody has a question or two I know that we're kind of just taking it back by all the fantastic things that are going on but I know that we might have a question or two there we go right there good morning, Irene with my ISRA center thank you for coming out to visit I wanted to see what plans we had as we started opening the schools particularly to the business community what role entrepreneurship it's a great question so one of the things that you're going to see that's a statewide initiative is first of all if you look at our early college program Travis is a great example, very successful we are not going to be doing what I call early college 2.0 which is going to be that not only was children get certificates and associates agree but the goal is to tie them to specific industries and jobs that are in demand in the community so that's something you're going to be learning more about in the area that you're going to see us over the next five years I would like to recruit 5,000 mentors for juniors and seniors because one of the things I'll tell you is we do this work for college it is again, you know there's a lot of support that these kids need many of these students are the first in the family to go to college, many of our parents are working two jobs and I'll tell you to navigate the system today it is harder than it was even 20 years ago so look out for that as well we adopted by industry partners and I want mentors in our building that will be pushing hard in the next 12 months Brian Diller from Dignity Wail and Neighborhood Association Hi, Peter so it's been in the past you've had a big go public campaign and as somebody who works with charter schools and with public schools with SAIT very closely and I've seen the good things that come out of Kibb how's the partnership going to be in the future with regard to charter and SAIT it's a great question so you know what's fascinating about our state is that we have a concept called industry charts and what's interesting is that all of our most schools are industry charts so that gives them this and the board has been amazing about this we give complete autonomy to the school that's why we're doing things very differently we're actually learning from some of our charter competitors so the one thing I will tell you is it's a sort of friendly co-optition I would say so we're going to continue to learn from each other we're having some great partnerships with Kibb for example because they have a great initiative around how they follow kids after they actually get into college and so we're actually copying that model from them they're also copying a lot of practices from us frankly and so for us that's going to continue to be the work I will tell you that we're going to advocate for high quality schools so whether it's our own schools or other schools in the community that's going to be our focus because again you saw all those graphs that I showed you earlier this is a big problem this is a big problem nationally and again we need to make sure we have all the best ideas at Fatima I'm Fatima, I'm with SA Rise and I have a question about the schools that you didn't mention up there so the schools that aren't special in district charters or academies what is your plan for ensuring their success it's a great question and so when you look at the master teachers so one of the reasons that we went for the federal grant that we got one of the reasons that we went for the TRE and we talked about it especially around after school programs and summer programs is to create this and recognize this cohort of amazing teachers and I'll tell you we'll have over a thousand in the next five years over 80% will be internal I think that will be the game changer across all of our schools and what I love like I said is as I'm meeting these potential teachers they're all different and I love that and it takes these individuals who have this special magic they're mastering their craft they're showing success already with their children and I'll tell you we're going to be very competitive at Ogden for example we have to include 25 master teachers so we're recruiting them aggressively externally at ALA all of our teachers are master teachers and that's one of the reasons we're seeing success that we're seeing so for us that's going to be our big initiative district wide at scale and then when we unveil our new compensation system our principal ladies and gentlemen will make more than 90% of my staff is into office that's the way it should be because they have a difficult job managing their own CEOs or their schools that's what we're going to see in this new compensation system that will be unveiled at the end of this year so that will be at scale at district wide well let's hear a round of applause for Fowlman and of course all this stems from leadership things don't happen by themselves they have it with people that are committed they have an elected official that are behind and pushing them giving them the resource necessary to do these things so congratulations to the board as well let's give them a round of applause so a couple of housekeeping things we neglect to mention an elected official in the room her name is Sandy Wolfe and she's on the board at the northeast independent food district Sandy we're glad you're here an important official who serves on the port of San Antonio board Chris Alvarete we're going to close with a couple of things number one is that immediately after this around 9.30 or so the Woody's actually having an event a press conference where they're going to be unveiling the name of the Woody I think it's going to be a new name so if anybody's interested in sticking around if you just go up to the right and come to the front of the building there'll be an event there if you all aren't so inclined if not we thank you for joining us today we ask you to continue to keep the faith and the faith is important because without believing in something it's hard to go after it right you have to have it in here and you all are committed you all do great things but we need to do them together and take it to another level and your chamber of commerce my chamber, Ramiro's chamber this community is ready to help so thank you all very much and we stand adjourned