Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and good afternoon. Congratulations on making it to this portion of the application process. We realize that this is an arduous process, but it's truly aimed at ensuring that all charter schools in Texas are high quality options for students and families. Normally, we would go around the room and introduce ourselves, but today I'm gonna take the liberty of introducing our TEA staff, and any State Board of Education members that have joined us. So, hi. I'm Mary Anne Shetty. I'm our Deputy Associate Commissioner of Authorizing a Policy. On with us today from TEA, we have Deputy Commissioner of Education and System Support,
Kelby Oser. From our division of charter school authorizing team, and our new schools team, we have Britney Glenn, Sarah Khan, and John Garland. From our financial compliance team, we have David Marks and PJ Sethna Ryan. From our special populations team, we have Scarlet Pappas and Doctor. Rocha. From our legal team, we have Bridget Ramesh. And from our structural materials team, we have Linda Autry. And I believe joining us, from our State Board of Education members, I see member Maynard and member Hall. And I believe we might have some more join us later on as well,
too. I'll announce them at that time. So for our recording purposes today, today is Wednesday, May 14. It's 01:02PM, and we are interviewing the Museum School of East Dallas for the Museum School of East Dallas. So we ask that you remain on mute today, when you're not talking and only come off of mute to ask or answer a question. And, we've set aside two hours a day for the capacity interview. We'll hear a ten minute overview of your proposed public charter school and then have time today for questions from our TEA staff as well as our State Board of
Education members. We hope to hear both from your governing board, as well as your proposed staff of your proposed school. And based on your interview today and the strength of your application, the commissioner will make a recommendation to the State Board of Education who will consider those recommendations at a future State Board of Education meeting. It's our hope today that your application will stand on its own and not need any contingencies. But if there are any items that need to be revised, our team will be in touch with, with you all related to those. So we'll have you reach, excuse me. We'll have you introduce yourselves now with your name and your role only,
and then I'll provide some additional directions. My name's doctor Donna Duke, and I'm the proposed cochair. My name is Katrina Deano. Proposed community engagement and enrollment community care. My name's Carrie Holiday Sneed. I'm the proposed secretary. Maya Baker, proposed governance chair. Velaz Vander, proposed finance committee chair. Ira Dukke, proposed finance committee member. Mark Willey, proposed vice chair. Hi. I'm Jessica Hernandez. And I'm the proposed member of the Community Engagement Committee. I'm Doctor. Alan Malone. I'm the proposed co chair. And Lauren Coleman,
proposed superintendent. Thank you, everyone. So you will now have ten minutes to provide the panel an overview of your proposed public charter school. We'll start the time when you begin, then we will announce when time is up. Please bring your overview to a close at that time if you have not already finished. Please know that today is not a time to expand or add anything, to your application. And after your overview, we will then begin with our questions. So with that being said, we'll begin with your presentation of your vision. Good afternoon. As the proposed board cochair for the Museum School of Vistalis,
I'm the founder of STEMScapes Collab and PlaySpaces. I design, build, and install indoor small scale kids' museums in schools focusing on age and stage appropriate unstructured play and exploration for all students. My name is doctor Donna Duke. As a parent and native of East Dallas, I attended k 12 public education at my neighborhood schools here in East Dallas and also have served for over thirteen years as a public, private, charter, and international school educator, academic coach, administrator, and principal.
I have a doctorate in education leadership and policy, and I have a four year old daughter currently enrolled in our neighborhood public school pre k program. I'm very excited to be surrounded by a highly qualified team that believes wholeheartedly in our school leader and also for this school model, transforming the learning experience for all students, hopefully for my daughter too. Good afternoon. My name is Jacqueline Arellano. I'm the proposed community engagement and enrollment committee care. I'm a dedicated early childhood with twenty years of experience,
originally from Mexico. I moved to Dallas, at the age of 14 and grew up in the East Dallas community. I'm a first generation college graduate with a bachelor's degree in education. I definitely understand the challenges of limited educational access firsthand. My passion lies in advocating for equitable learning opportunities and supporting children and families in underserved communities. Hello. I'm Carrie Holliday Snead. I'm the proposed secretary. I have a bachelor's in elementary education and a master's in special education.
I also have a Texas teaching license in special and general education. Education. I'm a certified academic language therapist and a licensed dyslexia therapist. With twenty years as an educator, advocate, and parent to two neurodiverse children, I am inspired by the museum school model's ability to engage all learners in meaningful and inclusive way. And as I previously shared, my name is Maya. I have over twenty years of experience in education, including fifteen years in the charter sector, as a school and district leader,
including at a charter network right here in DFW. I am excited to bring my experience working in charters at the network level as well as the individual school level, and my experience in deep background and fund development to the museum school. I'm particularly inspired by the museum school because as a strong advocate for school choice, it means a ton to me that we have built a model based exactly on what the community of Far East Dallas is looking for. Hello. My name is Velas Panicker. I'm the proposed treasurer and finance committee chair for the Museum School of East Dallas.
I have just under fifteen years of experience in school finance, including leadership roles in traditional ISD charter schools and IAGs. Currently, I serve as the vice president of financial operations for Relay Graduate School of Education. I grew up in East Dallas, and there wasn't a school like TMS back then, one that connects learning to the community around us. So I'm excited to help bring that kind of immersive, accessible education to the neighborhood that I call home. Great, James. My name again is Kyrie Duckett, and I'm a proposed member of the finance committee. I have a decade of,
experience in public affairs working, for the past five years in real estate development. I'm excited to bring my experience in facilities and asset management along with philanthropic fundraising to TMS because of my deep belief that strong schools and stable housing are the foundations of thriving communities for students and for families in East Dallas. Hello. My name is Mark Willie, and I'm the proposed vice chair. I've supported organizational governance in a variety of roles across a variety of organizations, including a large charter school network here in DFW, currently as an attorney. My ties to East Dallas run deep, formerly as a small business owner in the area,
and currently as a resident parent of a three year old girl. I'm so excited about the possibility of TMS helping to make learning come to life for her by connecting with this amazing community. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jessica Hernandez, and I am a proposed member, for TMS and the community engagement committee. With over twelve years of experience in mental health and social work and currently serving as the executive director with Orinwood Neighborspace, which is a beautiful community center in East Dallas, I also serve as a mom of two who have had the pleasure of attending
the TMS camps. I am deeply connected, to our TMS mission and very inspired by the way it nurtures curiosity and confidence, not just in my kiddos, but in all the kiddos that attend. And I am very confident and very ready, to put in efforts to see it thrive within the East Dallas community. Good afternoon again. I'm doctor Arlene Malone, and I'm honored to serve as co chair, proposed co chair and academic achievement of any member of the Museum School of East Dallas. For over thirty years as president and principal consultant of Olive Tree Tree Associates,
a human resources consulting firm, and more than fifty years of experience as an interpreter for the deaf, I've dedicated my career to fostering inclusive and impactful learning experiences. What drew me to TMS was its transformative vision, a model crafted with and for the community, where learning is more than content delivery. It's a living museum where learning is a curated experience. CMS isn't about doing more of the same. It's about doing better by design, enhancing, not replacing, and helps align construction,
rethinking how to make the teaching profession more joyful, more flexible, and sustainable long term, and leveraging partnerships to deliver immersive experiences that build strong schemas, develop deepen deeper literacy, and foster critical thinking. Our extended day structure increases instructional dosage and access to teach aligned curriculum four times more than a traditional ISD. Today, we have a team that's laser focused on sustainability and accountability. We've built a strategic model that maximizes resources,
minimizes costs, and prioritizes impact, always keeping every child at the heart of our work regardless of background or learning style. For East Dallas families and for students across 75,228, TMS represents a future where every child is seen, every voice is heard, and every experience is elevated. Thank you for your time and consideration. Well, thank you to all of our board members just for your passion that you shared in your introductions and your commitment to this important work in Far East Dallas.
And thank you to all the esteemed TEA and SVOE members for your time today. Over the last two years, we've had the privilege of deeply engaging with the 75,228 community through a community co design process, Speaking with over 300 families and more than two fifty school age children through community events, focus groups, town halls to create a school designed with the community and for the community. Across every conversation, the message was the same. Families want a school that goes beyond filling mind with knowledge.
They want an immersive learning experience, one that intentionally puts students first and allows them opportunities to explore and embody their learning in real life. And so I wanna take a moment just to share a quote from a parent in our summer camp survey. She said, TMS was the first place my neurodivergent daughter felt like she belonged. The expertise and passion of the teachers coupled with the learning expedition to the Trinity River Autobahn sparked a new passion for gardening and she is already counting the days until she can return to that experience.
My name is Lauren Coleman, founder and proposed superintendent of the Museum School of East Dallas. And I am joined by an incredible team that was thoughtfully chosen for their expertise and commitment to doing this work well in the years ahead. And together, we have built a model that immerses students in their community, enhancing the curriculum and bringing learning to life. For too long, this area has been known as the forgotten Far East Dallas, but we are here to change that narrative. So, as a resident and a parent with children within this community and an educator with
over twenty years of experience as a principal, a teacher, and a coach, I want nothing more than to see this community thrive. And, with this model and with this team and this opportunity, we are ready to make it happen in East Dallas. So, thank you for your time today. Thank you for sharing that. So, we will begin with our questions, from TEA staff. But first, we wanna verify the number of campuses, grade span, and maximum enrollment. So we have that you're seeking to serve a maximum student body in year five of 450 students in grades k through eight at one campus.
Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. Alright. Thank you. So I get the privilege of asking the first question. So, miss Coleman, your application and the application states that you kind of served in various roles including principal, assistant principal, mentor, coach, and the board has stated that each of these roles, were have provided an opportunity for you to hone your skills and prepared you to excel in this position. So I'm curious to know how did that experience, or any other experience, also prepare you to take on operational and financial responsibilities of running a school such
as student recruitment and enrollment, facility preparation, budget management, and engaging and working, with vendors? Yeah. So I would say my experience in the other areas outside of academics is really deeply informed by my role as a principal, especially in the early years of other charter schools where at least two other times I had the opportunity to help transition the existing charter to a new building. So this was really gave me hands on experience with collaborating with operation staff, helping oversight with facilities management,
vendor partnerships, and budget allocation. So what that looks like for facilities, I attended the weekly facility walkthroughs where we would assess readiness of the campus, identify potential hazards, ensure academic and operational spaces were prepared for student use. Also just continuing to build those strong relationships with our vendors, both on academic and operations side, facilitating regular meetings to align those expectations, any deliverables, and also being proactive in addressing any challenges. This also included, helping run our after school clubs program,
which was also, we had over 20 vetted vendors that were coming in and doing enrichment programming and we were tasked with ensuring the alignment with our mission and negotiating those service agreements to maximize their value when they were coming in on campus. So, again, lots of experience with those vendor relationships. In terms of budget management, while, my my budget as a principal was smaller, I would definitely say I, was tasked with adhering to best practices in financial management, including rigorous monitoring of spending,
strategic fund allocation, regular financial reviews with the operations team and the financial team at large with our CMO, specifically around restricted funds, really making sure that I understood the difference between title, my title funding, any grants, and how that was being allocated and how I was sticking to my planned budget. And also part of that, within our, I would say, startup phase with TMS, just planning to utilize similar financial management systems and protocols to make sure that we're tracking our spending, compared to our projections, making sure that we're having that operational efficiency.
And then I think with that, it really came with, when looking at the operations and facilities, I had a lot of opportunities for that cross departmental collaboration, really making sure that everything was streamlined, communication specifically, everybody's aware of timelines and kind of the who's doing what within that process. And so I think just navigating facilities, budget management and vendor partnerships were really grounded in that experience that I was able to have as a principal. And then I would also just add to that with recruitment. Within the past few years, especially around COVID,
at least at the charter school that I was at, we were tasked specifically with helping with recruitment. So, I frequently attended recruitment events and had recruitment goals on my campus that I tracked daily looking at our numbers. And so again, very aware and lots of experience and making sure that we're meeting those targets. So, my next question is for the board. So, I'd love to hear from the board a little bit in the ways that you all plan, to hold the superintendent accountable for those start up and launch activities of the school.
Well, for starters, we have a structure that's very much based on the charter school performance framework that performs and and lays the groundwork for what we're going to do. We believe that it's important that we monitor our our structure and accountability, that we have a robust superintendent evaluation set that's aligned with the Texas Association of School Boards and superintendent evaluation tool and customized to our specific goals. We have academic process indicators,
We have operational metrics, and we have financial metrics, all of which we will be monitoring to help determine how our superintendent is performing. We also have corrective plan and interventions in the event that we get off, off course. And we will know that we're off course because we'll be reviewing our superintendent's monthly reports. She'll be letting us know how she's performing, how the school is performing in those areas, and we'll be monitoring those areas to see if they're aligned with the expected performance that's stated at the outset. So all of that, forms the basis for the work that we're gonna be doing.
We also will be using data driven metrics tools. So we are very much a data oriented board. Wanna know what the numbers say and how those numbers line up with our expected levels of performance. And, we will be, reviewing that based on Coleman's data that she'll be providing on a monthly basis. And that'll let us know how we're doing. We'll also be looking at budgets. We'll be looking at student performance. We'll be looking at facility walk throughs to determine if the facility is operating at a level that it should based on operation,
maintenance, those kinds of things, and that that work is, proceeding as expected. All of these things will be done within an environment of accountability and transparency. The information of those of us who will be a part of the team that's looking at, our superintendent's performance, we'll be reviewing will be shared with the entire boards. That information is known, available, and familiar to all of those who serve on the board. Thank you for that. Thinking about kind of you know, you talked about and mentioning tracking of data and thinking about the data that you might track. Besides the facility kind of pieces,
what might be a data point that you would track in the start up year to make sure that you all are on track to a successful launch? Oh my goodness. There's several. One is the academic performance. Obviously, another is student enrollment. We have enough students to run the school as we should. So having that information available and seeing how that number in terms of student enrollment lines up with the expected number of students enrolled is a good indicator for us. We'll also be tracking student performance, as I mentioned, in terms of how the students are performing against major, exams and other things that,
determine their performance against the state, determined models of performance for the students, whether those are STAR exams or other exams, to tell us how we're performing. I mentioned, financial analysis, cash flow analysis, budget variance, spending, and how that is aligned with the expected levels of so those are some of the specifics we'll be looking. Yeah. And I would say the the only other one that doctor Malone did not oh, sorry. Question. Sorry. We we we got a lot to make sure to get through. And sorry. I wanna make make sure that we get the opportunity to move forward with that.
So I have one last question that's kind of part of this. The question is for, miss Coleman. So can you speak to your experience or education, I think, in implementing this type of model, and why, why you all chose the the the museum school kind of model that you outlined here. Yes. Absolutely. So, as we mentioned in our introduction, I think one of the most exciting things about this school is that it was built with our community. And so, we engaged in about a two year community co design process that started really grassroots.
Looking into our community, hearing, again, I am in that and live in the area and so speaking to other parents, it kind of started as a conversation of dreaming what would be possible for our community. And so, within that community co design process, we were able to research a number of different models and bring those to our co design team and our families. And they are, this is ultimately the model that they voted on that they felt like was best or that we felt like was best for the community. In terms of my experience, in education in the past twenty years,
I've had the opportunity to work with, expeditionary learning, international baccalaureate, which have similarities to the museum school model. The museum model elevates from those out into the community. So, whereas in some of those models, it kind of the culminating piece was maybe a project. This one actually takes it out into the community, which was one of the biggest pieces that they were wanting, especially with our high population of neurodivergent student, emergent bilingual students, and really the research around closing the exposure gap for those students that the more
exposure we give them out into the community to enhance the curriculum, the stronger readers and writers it makes them because of their stronger schema and then ultimately the more successful they are able to be. And so, that is really, so the experience has been much in that similar realm of kind of the interdisciplinary learning. This model just simply takes more of an integrated approach bringing all of those research based strategies together to really be reflective of what we're teaching in the TEKS as opposed to only doing it one way. And so that is,
that speaks to the museum piece. And then as we've mentioned, we are doing the extended day model. This also came from our input from the heavily from the community. Both, we had a number of months where we met with teachers and we said, you know, if we're really thinking about what's best for kids, we also wanna look at, you know, what the teacher perspective is in this. And so, that was a really exciting piece for us was to think, to take their feedback, to take the research, to take what the community wants and say, we're gonna do this core instruction in the morning where we're really streamlining what the
teachers are focused on. And then taking our experience with our community partners to enhance that curriculum in the afternoon for the explore time. That time not only really gives us an opportunity to elevate what they're learning and bringing it into their real life, but there is also a benefit for our families. You know, saying what thriving really looks like for them is picking their kid up at 5PM and they have not only had a engaging full school day, they've also had the opportunity to engage in intervention or tutoring to have an arts
integrated lesson at the Dallas Arboretum, and to get to do their boxing class. And so for our families who might not typically be able to take their kids out for enrichment, they're getting that in the school day and it's also reinforcing their learning. Thank you for that. I'm gonna go to Britney who has our next question. Perfect. Thanks, Miriam. Welcome guys. Good afternoon. I almost said good morning. But here we are. Let's talk a little bit about your enrollment. So you propose to enroll two zero two students in year one in kindergarten through
fourth grade. Here's my question. What experience do you have in meeting recruitment goals? And what consideration shaped your enrollment projections and decisions to serve kindergarten through fourth grade? Yeah. So happy to jump in here. So one, when it comes to recruitment, as Lauren already shared, she has had experience, opening a, it was part of a larger network, but opening a brand new building in different places and bringing students in. So she brings that wealth of experience, as well as myself over, over the course of my time at a charter network here in the DFW area.
I helped open over 25 schools as a senior district leader and recruited all of those schools to capacity with more than 50% of them having a wait list. And so I am bringing that knowledge to the museum school in terms of how we can have recruitment. I think one of the most critical elements that will happen for Lauren and support that work as we go into the museum school first year of opening is the deep connections that we've made in the community. So we've been testing out this model in the community doing small camps, and each time we've exceeded our enrollment in those camps.
So we know that the desire for this model is readily available, and it's about communing early communicating early and often directly with the parents and making sure they know how to sign up, how to get their students in the door, and how to get ready. And so that is why we know we are confident that we can do this recruitment. In terms of the specific numbers around recruitment, I know that, you know, we've thought a lot about the budget that we need to open, what we need to be able to offer, being realistic about balancing that enrollment number with average daily attendance so that we can
meet our financial goals. And then, of course, the decision to move up to third and fourth grade actually came directly from the parents that were committing to bringing their students. They said we love this idea. It's beautiful. It's great. I have this wonderful kindergarten, but I also have a third grader, and I am not gonna go spend time dropping my students off at two different buildings in the morning in elementary school. So that wasn't the original plan, but again, this organ this this school is committed to making sure, like, we're a community based school and then we're meeting those needs.
And so that's what led us to sort of shift mindset from just a k to two opening and start to think about how we can provide a space for siblings, of those younger students who are already committed to joining the school. And I like to hop hop in there, if I may. We've also, have all this experience and done it many times before. We've also thought about how to supplies and also have started the work as she just mentioned, but it will continue when we've had a plan. So it's a progressive plan, broken it down into quarters leading up to the launch of the school, each with a different focus.
So q one is focus. That's gonna be, like, July to September time frame. Focus is gonna be upping the intent to enrolls, intent to enrolls as high as we can. Q two, we move from intent to enroll to enroll with the focus of really standing up the platform to manage the applications. Q three is really locking it down. Ideally, this wouldn't involve a lottery if we're oversubscribed. If we're under subscribed doing things like, stepping up in person canvassing around the neighborhood, in person meetings, but also, online digital efforts like holding virtual office hours.
And then final finally, q four is gonna be, like, the last push for enrollment. It's really gonna be a little more contingent on where we are in enrollment versus versus our plan. And, miss Britney, if I may, just to close off on that, community engagement piece of, you know, our efforts, We didn't just approach this with just basic conversations and just the one and done deal. We really kept coming back to the families through focus groups, one on one meetings. We had a couple of pilot, camps, which our families really, really enjoyed. So the feedback that we are receiving from our families is that they would love
to be able to have a kindergartner, but also a sixth, seventh, and eighth grader within the same school and just being able to call one place home versus having a variety of homes for school. Right? And so at the moment, we are, at about 50% of our projected year, one capacity for our seats, and we're really excited to continue that going. So we've been very deeply involved in the community and not just miss Coleman and our entire board, but, as someone who, you know, works in the community, we really,
really take the time to listen to our community. Thank you so much, Mary. And I'm gonna send it back to you. Thanks, Britney. So we are going to, John with our next question. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm gonna be the what if guy today. So, what if, I do appreciate you all's confidence and the research and community engagement that you've done thus far that really sort of fueled your expectations to reach that 200, student enrollment projection. But what if, you know, shortly before you open your doors, you're able to enroll roughly a hundred students.
Right? So if we take the budget that you you gave us, we modify that enrollment projection to a hundred students. We're not taking any staff off. That puts you all at a deficit of almost $600,000 Could you walk me through kind of your process in balancing that budget kind of recalibrating what that would look like and any areas that you would prioritize? Yes. At TMS we understand that, enrollment variability poses a significant risk to new charter schools. To prepare for that reality, we built a budget that's not only conservative,
but strategically designed to absorb and adapt to fluctuations in per pupil revenue. That is a proactive approach and not a reactive one that includes contingency planning with phased cost controls and responsible financial oversight. So in the scenario that enrollment falls below projections, our leadership team would initiate a structured response beginning with data driven analysis of the funding gap and its root causes and including any ADA based adjustments. Our first line of defense would be our contingency reserve, which grows from 2% in year zero to 5% in year,
five or, yes, 5% in year one. Sorry. Equating to about a hundred and $7,000 in year one. That's outlined in our financial workbook. That reserve is purposely designed to be flexible with targeted allocations to absorb pressure points in facilities, special educations, or contracted services without disrupting core programming. Because we're anticipating these variables, our budget includes room to maneuver without undermining instruction or staffing. And if the enrollment exceeds that built in contingency, we're prepared to execute a phased cost reduction plan that prioritizes preserving our academic integrity.
For example, our facility agreement is written to be on as utilized terms, which means we can renegotiate rent space based on actual usage versus the entire building. In parallel, we would actively be pursuing revenue enhancements. Our board led development strategy includes contingency pathways for securing emergency grants and philanthropic support. Specifically, we seek, supplemental funding from charter school growth fund, with capacity to raise maybe additional 50,000 in year one. Throughout any budget realignment process,
we'll strive to maintain a high degree of transparency with the board and community, providing monthly financial reports that track budget adjustments, monitor revenue performance, and assess any cost saving measures. Panika, thank you so much for the response. And maybe you can answer this. So you mentioned sort of a lot of different scenarios, and it sounds like you all thought this through. At a hundred students, where would that where would you all be on that spectrum of contingency planning? Does that make sense? Like, at a hundred students, you'd be at about 50% at what you originally wanted. So where would that be in terms of your response?
The first step we take is to make sure that we're not touching staff. We realize that our class sizes are on the low end. However, we would we are open to, growing those class sizes within specs of the law, with intention to rescale back to our model as we mitigate, contingency measures. So our main focus is primarily to put off nonessential any nonessential, expenses that we would not need, whether that's travel or contracted services that don't apply anymore. But, again, our main focus is to make sure that we are not,
touching our core instructional model. Great. Thank you, Maryann. Thanks, John. We're gonna go to Sarah with our next set of questions. Thanks, Maryann. Good afternoon, everyone. So I'm gonna shift a little bit and talk more about your, day in the life kind of school design. So from 1PM to 5PM, you state that students will engage in individualized enrichment and acceleration programs through community partnerships, specialized teachers, and interventionists. So my question is, can you provide some additional detail on how that time will look for students on a daily basis? Doctor. Yeah. That's a great question. Students at TMS are gonna receive extracurricular
intervention, different opportunities during that second portion of the day. We shared a little bit about that earlier in our openings. But really, we're going to be using the data, the dashboard in order to identify the students that need specific interventions, and those students can be pulled for interventions with specific teachers, or interventionists, specifically if they're in the EV program or if they're in special education or if they're just missing out on a specific learning standard, then we use that time first to prioritize the, filling in the gaps.
The second way that it can be used is also as extensions, for learning experiences for students. This provides some flexibility for students to be able to engage in, different opportunities that can enhance the curriculum. That means, like, we can we'll be close enough to the arboretum because of where our location is in Dallas that we have already secured a partnership there. We can almost walk across the street if we needed to, actually underground, not even across the street, to get to the arboretum in order to do a full on immersive,
learning experience that oftentimes kids just don't get to conceptualize because it's so abstract, whenever they're reading it or learning it in a curriculum. Another way is by providing local partners. So, I know Lauren mentioned earlier a boxing partnership. We have an arts partnership. There's just different local community, people that are from our communities that already are leading in our community in these different things that our kids are interested in. And those partnerships come to us and they the kids get to choose what they
get to, experience. And so, like, boxing or art or theater, different types of, experiences. So we're really trying to you know, they're going to read a play for fifth grade to take on the STAAR test. And now they're going to get to, like, write one and be part of one during this theater partnership that they have in the afternoon. So we're just, like, leveling up what they're learning in the standard normal curriculum. I'll let Lauren expand. I see her head nodding. Go ahead, Lauren.
Thank you, Doctor. Duke. And I just, I was going to give a specific example from the two times that we've done this in our, pilot camps just so you can have an actual, like, day to day picture. So, how it worked on our camps is at 01:00, kind of depending on the group of kids, they rotated. So, some went to one part of the block and some went to another. So, I'll just speak to, let's take a class of 15 kids and at 01:00, they would go to their tutoring class, for this summer. So, it was a partner millennial education who had experienced tutoring kids,
specifically for STAR or other readiness takes in the K2 secondtor. So, our camp was for second through fourth graders. And so, they designed specific intervention based on a pre assessment for students to help close gaps during that hour long block where they did within the block kind of rotated thirty minutes of a small group, thirty minutes of some computer intervention, even some just practicing typing to prepare for third grade, things like that. And again, this isn't our pilot program. This would obviously be much more elevated within an actual school year,
but they would get that intervention. So, what's really exciting for us if I go back to a lot of our pilots or our focus groups, was that our kids are going to get that tier one for instruction in the morning. We won't have to navigate kids being pulled out to receive services during their tier one time. They will all have that block in the afternoon for whatever their needs are on even whether it's, on the neurodivergent spectrum from dyslexia all the way to GT, emergent bilingual, even for our newcomers who need,
more time learning English, they'll all have a block in the afternoon that specifically applies to their need. Then after that, they would go to a movement class, which, in our partnerships we use boxing. After that, we had a partnership with the artist outreach. It's, it is drama that is driven that's teach driven. So, what that looked like is when we were learning about water, weather and energy, they were actually able to take the concepts like the water cycle and have students do script writing and plan out what could this look like if we did this in a play and presented it to our families at our exhibition.
So it's really pushing students to not just think about learning the content, but also thinking about once I learn this, how am I going to show my knowledge outside of just taking a test? And so in that drama element, they were able to reinforce the TEKS and what they were learning. So, it wasn't just, hey, we're gonna run around and do a play. It was aligned with what the kids were learning. And then we also had an art teacher, an art class that was there from the community that was able to look at the art and say, what pieces of art can we bring into this?
So, students actually were able to create a diorama of the water cycle, but again, it wasn't just throwing it together. The teachers were really able to push them to think about if you're presenting this at a museum, if you're a curator or if you're a docent that's gonna be talking about this piece that you've created, what do you need to ensure that it looks like? So, it was also very iterative of looking at drafts and thinking about how do I produce high quality work that's onto the exhibition that's at the end of the week. So, again, that was just a micro picture of what that would look like in a nine
week unit. Thank you, Doctor. Duke. Thank you, Ms. Coleman for that. Just kind of following up on that, would the expectation be that the community partner is utilized every day in the classrooms? Yes. So that is one of the exciting pieces of our model is, for example, in a traditional ISD or charter school, I know my experience has normally been what you typically know as a specials teacher. They might get music once a week, they might get art once a week. Our kids are getting it every day. And that may change per unit, you know, they might have nine weeks of art, nine weeks of music.
But what's exciting about that is what our kids are getting in a unit, surrounding schools are getting in a year. And so, we have the opportunities to significantly close those exposure gaps for kids who might not have access. You know, I know for me, I grew up with a single working mom who didn't have a college degree. I watched all my friends whose parents could pay for dance class go and I couldn't. But if the school's providing that opportunity for that enrichment, then our kids are gonna have access to it and in a significantly increased dosage
than they might typically have access to. And then last question for you, thinking specifically about the community partners, what staff positions will recruit and manage those community partners? Absolutely. So our school leadership team, which consists of both the academic side. So the principal and the assistant principal, our Dean of Students, as well as our, office manager, and our operations manager and our business manager. So, we see it really making sure that all of us are clear on what those job descriptions are and
utilizing our community, just all of our connections within the community. We're lucky that most of us are from there. We know a lot of the people and so we are able to reach into our networks, to really build a strong pipeline for those partnerships. Thank you so much. Maryann, back to you. Thank you, Sarah. So I'm gonna go to, John with our next question. Thank you, Marion. Lauren, what you said really resonated with me. I also was raised in East Dallas, to a single mom. So I know a lot of what's in that neighborhood as well as knowing the importance of having exposure to those things.
You all are gonna do it through partnerships. So I I totally get that and and I understand it, but I didn't have a question about it. Right? So if you were awarded, what partnerships would we if we're coming to see you all for your year one visit, right, what partnerships would we expect to see in those first few months? Absolutely. So we have also talked a lot about scaling it. So for example, I wanna define that we look at partnerships in two different ways. We have our partnerships that will specifically align to the units. So to give you an example,
one that we've given a lot is, a teacher might say, hey, in this nine week unit, you guys are gonna become the dramaturgs for the local theater. So, everything you read and write is gonna be unto learning about the 1940s. We will go to the theater every other week. Every other week, a liaison will come to the school, and then together, you will have this culminating presentation where you go see the play, you present to the cast and directors. That is, one of 36 partnerships that we will eventually have when we're built out K to eight and those are strategically aligned for the unit.
Then we will also have those afternoon partnerships that we look at more as what you would traditionally know as enrichment. But again, to us, it's not just a specials class that's not related. It is very much intentionally aligned. And so, we're gonna be very strategic, but also not, we're not looking to have, we don't think we have to have 36 partnerships and this many the first year, but we are gonna be very intentional of what those look like. So, our what we're planning for right now are the partners that we've already developed deep
relationships with on our pilots, which would be the artist outreach, LaBoure boxing gym, which is a nonprofit in the area and I'll speak to those two specifically. They're also grant funded, so so we do not have to pay for them. And then we also have the Lake Highland School of Music, and then Rachel Larley Art Studio, which are those two they've given us a subsidized cost. And so again, you would see those in action. In terms of the intervention blocks, we would have our intervention in STEM, we have a number of educators in the area that, for whatever reason are not doing full time teaching anymore,
but are still very much interested in being a part of this work that would be in those intervention and stem blocks. And so our goal would be, it's gonna kind of look different per grade. For example, in our pilot, we were strategic in our younger kids, what they were getting at certain times versus others because they tend to get a little bit, tired more quickly. And at the same time, we had a lot of conversations around, okay, let's say they left our school by three, three thirty, we're home, what would they be doing in that hour anyways?
You know, they would likely either be playing, doing some type of play and how can we capitalize on that? Or they would, you know, be going to enrichment, or if not vice versa, going to sit at their, you know, at somebody's work or with a babysitter. And so how can we really enrich this for them? One thing I'll add to that is, you know, we were so excited about the pilot because in theory it does sound like a lot of moving parts. And, once we did it, so after the first few days, all the partners know exactly where to go. All the kids know exactly where to go.
And, as long as we are consistent and we're there monitoring and reminding them, I mean, within a few days, everybody was where they needed to be right on time, and we were just making sure those transitions were seamless. So just to recap, you would see those seamless transitions, and we anticipate that you would see those partners that we already have established relationships with and have been able to work through with our pilot. And so the pilot, you know, is at a scale. You're gonna grow that, arguably exponentially, right, if you're approved for year one. Have you had those talks with these partners? Are they available? Because that's gonna increase their necessity,
right, to be available to you. Is that is that conversation already happened? Yes, that and it actually started from the beginning from approaching them saying, hey, we wanna do this pilot and it's unto the school. And so, while we're doing the pilot, we wanna continue a conversation with you on what this could look like on a larger scale. For example, the artist outreach just got a large grant from the city of Dallas to where they're literally asking us, when can we do more? Because we have all of this funding and we need to, we need to put it into action.
And then LaBoure Boxing Gym, for example, they're a nonprofit boxing gym with a whole separate passion and mission for their belief on what that, how that benefits students. So again, they're both, ready and willing to ramp up, because it's very much aligned with their mission and what they're looking to do. Well, for the sake of time, Marion, I'll take it back to you. If there's time to follow-up, I'd love to reengage with you all on it. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And we have a SBA member. Francis has joined us. I believe he's still here. And he has a commitment,
so I'm gonna let him kind of interject, ask some questions, and then we'll go back to our TEA questions. Thank you, Mary, and I appreciate that again. First, I just realized that I didn't say good morning and well, no afternoon. And thanks to the TEA staff for all their work in this process. Also wanna recognize my colleagues, doctor Clark, and Maribelis Hall, and Maynard Wick who are also on the line. Museum School, good afternoon. I have two questions for you. At first, I was gonna ask a question about what makes the Museum School the Museum School because for some reason, I wasn't understanding it. But through other questions,
I was able to appreciate, what you're trying to do here. So I'm changing my question, to ask in terms of the your your model, the museum school model, how you prove that, this innovative model works? What is the observable and measurable, things that you're going to do to ensure that students are actually learning? This is not just something new and innovative, but actually will be transformational for education. I think I'd like to to start off on that one, if that's okay, Lauren. One of the things that makes the museum school so different and so unique is
in the exhibition, at the end of each unit. And that's when students, really show what they've learned through their own creations and through their own, projects. I guess some people would maybe that that might be how you can think of it as a project, but it's bigger than that. This is when kids create an entire showcase. So if they were learning about the water cycle or the life cycle, they're showing how the life cycle works in all these different areas, in art,
in science, in math. They're really conceptualizing and putting how the life cycle works in all these different areas of their lives. They're gonna create a campaign on how to conserve water and write a pitch to the city of Dallas on how we can, I don't know, recycle better, you know, whatever their their pitch is that they wanna create? And that that also combines with standardized assessment shows that they are learning this in a, you know, standardized assessment kind of way.
And then they're also learning how this applies in their lives and how it can impact their community. And at the last exhibition that I was able to attend, I had a parent at the end just say, how come I haven't seen this before? How come like, why aren't all kids, all schools doing things like this? Because they just felt so proud of the things that their kindergartner made and showed off at that event. And if I may add I'm sorry. I have a follow-up in a minute,
but go ahead. Okay. So maybe not such a formal response, but more so of a parent who has experienced, the model. My daughter, Camilla, has attended now two camps and to speak on the water cycle. We are still driving around, and she's asking questions about what's happening with the clouds and why is there evaporation on the windows. Lauren got her started. Miss Coleman got her started on journaling. And so she literally walks around everywhere with the journal now making notes about the things that she is learning. The exhibitions to speak on those,
I don't know if we have if I specifically have any words to just express how they are unless you just really experience it. But it is absolutely stunning to be able to see, all the things that my daughter learned throughout the week, because usually, right now, they're at a small private school, and what I get is just, you know, a couple coloring pages here and there. But she had a whole robot that was built out of boxes that is still sitting in my office. Just a variety of different learning experiences, and I'm so excited for us to hopefully open so that I can transfer my
kiddos over. But more on a personal response on that than professional, but, it's been a great experience as a parent. Thank you. Member Francis, I'd love to give you some quick numbers just to back that up. Up. At our last camp, we prioritize three of the highly tested fifth grade TEKS, and we asked a question, how could we look at our second through fourth graders and really reinforce these TEKS in this week? And so we backwards plan from that. Had a pretest and posttest. It was about seven questions, nothing super, long,
but it wasn't multiple choice. It was kids drawing and writing. And so they have explore journals and that's also a part of our model is daily reflecting and documenting their learning process. And so just in that week, we had kids grow from 33% mastery, to 80% mastery of those three fifth grade science teaks and these were not even fifth graders. And so what we really attribute to that is the intentional work that we did during that core time in the morning. And then we had an on-site partnership with the Perot Museum that came in And
then on Thursday, we went off-site to the arboretum. And so they got to not only learn the content, in the classroom and through literature, but then they got to see it in context within their community. And so through that reinforcement is what we think speaks to the increased achievement. And then there are also national studies on the model through the National Association of Museum Schools, that speak to, a museum model specifically when I, with underserved communities where it increases exposure and therefore increases achievement. Okay. Just some quick follow-up questions. So is this a new model or is has this been done somewhere else?
Where did you get this idea from? The model had is is a national model. So where I saw it was at, the Museum School of Avondale Estates in Atlanta. I did a residency there where I spent two weeks with their founder really learning about the model. You said Avondale? Sorry? Avondale Estates. It's right outside of Atlanta. There is a they have a website, National Association of Museum Schools, where you can find there's about 50 nationwide, some on the East Coast, some on the West Coast. There are not any in Texas. Okay. I'll be I'll be checking that out. Thank you for providing me with that.
Uh-huh. And in in terms of what you've been I guess, what you've been able to see so far from from your experience, how does that I guess, how does the the student, how does that transform into I guess, translate, sorry, into, the assessment portion on the start test? Are these kids, in your opinion, performing better because of these nuanced experiences? Yeah. So from our so if I go back to that example and then also the research that kind of brought us to this model, it is the immersive learning. So it is taking for example,
if I go back to the the dramaturg example, students weren't just right, reading about the 1940s and writing a paper out of context. They were actually able to take it a step further, enhancing it from what, the experts in the community can bring to that work. And so, we looked specifically at the research, for example, for emergent bilingual students. Not only it made it come alive for them. So, as opposed to just reading it in a text, they're able to actually apply it in a real space in their community.
It, even the opportunity to reinforce that vocabulary, reinforce those durable skills, it gives them an opportunity to really embody what they're learning and not just learning it for the test. And so that is part of how we've seen it really lead to achievement is because it makes the learning come alive and become relevant. It's also not when we talk about learning expeditions, we're not talking about random field trips. These are very aligned, intentional experiences that are created to reinforce fatigues. And so, we have an for the starting in the summer,
the mapping process that we do that starts with the high quality instructional materials that are aligned to the TEKS and then looking at what are those authentic connections within our community that we can expose our students to to enhance this. And so we've just really seen that reinforcement of the skills, including with the extended day so they just have more opportunity to see it in different contexts is what is helping the students master the content. I will also add when you look at neurodivergent students on both spectrums,
whether they're gifted or whether it's dyslexia learning disability, there's a lot of research around bringing in their interest. And so this model also gives us an opportunity Again, if I go back to the dramaturg example, when they're researching the 1940s, for students who are interested in let's say what people were wearing then, they could be researching that piece. If there's students that are more interested in, the business side of it, they would research the business side of it. So, there's a lot of opportunity to bring in student interest and engagement, which even further invest them in that content and ultimately gets them to achievement.
Right. So so you have so there's data to prove this up. Mhmm. Yes. There's national data to prove it. Okay. I'd I'd be interested And I'm happy to share it with you. Yeah. I'd be interested to see that. You could probably go through, Maryann, to have that sent to me. Okay. One quick I I I just make a statement and say, from what you just said, you know, in terms of the different communities of students, neurodivergent, dyslexia, so forth, so on. A lot of the times, you know, students, you may you may see, this may happen. So, you know, just for your FYI, you may see students that are probably classified as dyslexia just performing so very well
in your model. And, yes, it could be attributed to the model, but the most important thing is that these students are actually, for the first time, receiving appropriate instruction. A lot of the times we misdiagnose and the child just did not get appropriate instruction. So just something for you to think about. My last question is this. Bullying and absenteeism are two very, they're very important challenges, in the state of Texas. Choose one and tell me how would your school model, in terms of how it's set up, would alleviate or reduce,
any wish any one of the the one that you picked, the linear absenteeism? I'm so sorry. Just the very first words you said, it was hard to hear. Can you just say the beginning of it? Yeah. I was just saying, choose one of those two, bullying or absenteeism, and explain to me how your school model would alleviate the, the numbers we're currently seeing in the state of Texas or reduce reduce. And you said it so absenteeism or what would be on it? Ism. Bullying. Bullying. Oh, bullying. Okay. Yes. Yes. Sorry. So sorry. Well With my accent.
Yeah. For well, I would I think that, well, I would start with absenteeism. I mean, one thing that is really important to us is engagement. We really believe that, part of getting kids to school is kids wanting to be there. And so we think that this, we really believe in the joy that this infuses also back in learning and, we also believe in our teachers being certified and high quality. And, we think that together really is what will engage our students in the model. It's not always these, having to have a lot of extrinsic, prizes and things like that,
but it really is the relationships and the engagement with the high quality content that they're getting. It is that giving them an opportunity to truly learn things that are relevant for them, that will really engage them to being on campus. We also really will prioritize those relationships with families, which is really the foundation of the work that we've already done. And so I think having those, relationships with our families as well, that, you know, you're not just another number on our campus, but we care if you're here. We want you to know what you're missing if you're not here and we're also
here to partner with you in that, not just say, you know, here's your your phone call your automated call that you weren't here. But, really, what can we do to support you to make sure that you are here and that your kid wants to be here as well? Alright. Thank thank you, Lauren. I am out of time, but, I'll see you in June. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, member Francis. I'm gonna go to Sarah with and go back to for our TEA folks and go back to Sarah with our next question. Perfect. So I just have a quick question about staffing. Your proposal plans to employ seven core teachers and two teaching assistants.
Is the presumption that kindergarten through fourth grade will be self contained? If not, can you discuss your rationale for the number of instructional staff you plan to serve 200 students? Yes. So we plan for them to be self contained. Again, just to clarify though, you know, the teachers will teach that four hours in the morning, and then we're moving all their planning time to the afternoon. So they will teach, straight through eight to 12, those core content, subjects. So the seven is two kinder, two first, two second, and then we have one third, fourth split. Again, that is in response to those intent to enrolls that we have.
We have also specifically for that position, begun to in our recruitment of teachers, ones that have knowledge of doing multi age classrooms and having success with that, which we do We already have We've had the luxury of having even Carrie on our board who has experience working in Montessori schools and so we've been able to take some teachers who have both that experience but then also experience in a traditional school that we can really bring together. Again, that is Even though that's not a part of our model,
we wanted to be responsive to the needs of our community and we knew that, we would be able to do that with the success that the teachers that we're we're looking to recruit have had in the past. Thank you, Ms. Coleman. Maryann, back to you. Alright. I'm gonna go to Scarlet with her next question. Okay. Good good afternoon. I almost did it too. I almost said good morning. Your application describes creative and supportive environments that meet each student's needs and mentions sensory friendly features, as well as a variety of learning modalities and learning opportunities. What professional development has your organization identified to address challenging behavior or implement,
specifically behavior intervention plans that may be required for students with disabilities? Yeah. We're actually predicting a higher enrollment with neurodivergent students, because of just the attractiveness of the model for different modalities of learning. And so, in our recruitment, we're making sure that we're targeting different well, not my recruitment, but in Ms. Coleman's recruitment teachers with this experience, with experience, successful experience with neurodivergent students, specifically ones with dyslexia,
needing behavior intervention plans. And our, professional development plan whenever we begin the first school year is actually normally it would be two weeks, but in the first year it would be three weeks in order to ensure that everyone is on the same page with our mission, vision, alignment, execution of each of those things and how we infuse a school, with those specific values and vision. And we also know that each student has their own individual accommodation, their own individual plan.
And so just making sure that we are identifying correctly the students, that we're creating progress monitoring and interventions that really match those particular students' needs. And we also, like Lauren just mentioned, we also have an individual on our board, which is Carrie. I'll let her kind of take that answer from there, just to expand on that. Maybe there's a delay in her. No? It's okay. I I'll Carrie, you can jump in too, but, one thing I do wanna add and just kind of highlight again, both with Carrie and and me and Donna,
my degree is in, special education from UT Austin, which, I say to say that it I didn't realize until later that only zero point one percent of people actually have their degree in special education that are working, in education. And then when I met Carrie, she's a cult. And so I just think we have a unique experience of educators who are really experienced in special education. And that really is our passion. You know, we want students no matter how they learn to feel welcome, we are the school that says bring your kid.
We will figure it out and we want them to feel a sense of belonging here. So I have significant experience in working with behavior intervention plans, students with special needs. That is something I've done now for almost twenty years and so I feel really confident from the kind of the school leading from the school side in terms of working with our special education coordinator, working with our special education teachers, making sure we're following, if we're receiving students through the identification process, making sure we're following our MTSS process of fidelity,
making sure we're not over identifying students and we've spoken to a lot of the processes of that in our application of how we will ensure that that happens. Did that answer your question? I hope I got to all the pieces. Very good. Thank you. I do have another question. In your workbook, it indicates a a line item for special education teachers, and you guys look like you're allocating 62,000 there. And then you have a specific one for the special education coordinator, and it looks like it's only 55,000. When considering roles and responsibilities,
can you share your vision for these two roles and outline the specific responsibilities that will be assigned to each and why there is that difference and, you know, kind of explain to me that model of oversight and who's managing who and so forth. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. And just to clarify, you're seeing the difference between the special education teacher and the special education coordinator? Yeah. It it it looks different to me from a traditional model. Absolutely. So, I my assumption, what you're seeing is that our special education coordinator will start out part time.
And the reason why is again, wanting to have a conservative model, we really thought about, if we look, we took the number of kids that we anticipate to have our first year and kind of said, okay, about how many hours a month would this would a special education coordinator spend on, planning out arts, coordinating with the special education teacher. And when we had that number, it just really didn't justify a full time special education coordinator our first year. And so that is why you're seeing the lower number. We plan to as our numbers grow,
we would turn that position into full time, but I think that's the main difference you'll see. So we see the special education teachers delivering the instruction and then also being the case manager, and that would be supported by the special education coordinator who would help with all the setting up of meetings, helping, ensure all of the progress monitoring is happening. Those are those reports are going home to parents and communication, and coordinating with the the teacher as the case manager. Okay. I can hand it back to you, Marion. Thank you. Mhmm. Thanks, Scarlett.
So now we are gonna go to Bridget with the next question. Bridget, your audio is not working for us, so I'm gonna, while we try to figure that out, I'm gonna go to David with our next question. Good afternoon. I will switch gears, and we'll talk a little bit more about finance. My first question is, you, discussed the 2025 fundraising development plan, and you provided some possible foundation support, including the startup grant from VES. Have you applied for any additional grants or received any commitments from donors at this point? Yes.
To date, the board has committed up to an $80,000 pledge, and we've applied for numerous grants related to startup and social impact. That includes, Verint Fastrack for $5,000. That's short term funding. Hoglund Foundation, dollars thirty thousand for to support at risk children in Dallas. Charter School Growth Fund, we've applied for $250,000 over three fiscal years. Camelback Ventures for $40,000 Z Combinator for $10,000 Used dual venture funds for $215,000 And, we are hoping to secure a loan from Building Hope in case we get approved
to upgrade our space. And I'm assuming all of them are contingent upon you being awarded the the charter. Is that what they're telling you so far? Yes. They're all in process right now. Okay. Oops. Sorry. My next question, involves transportation. I noticed that you didn't, include any transportation allotment, so reimbursement for transportation. But on the the on the flip side, so on the expense side, you, in your zero year budget, you put in $196,000
which is about a fourth of your expenses for that year. But then in the narrative, you indicated that you were expecting to transport, three special education students to and from school. But then you're also gonna use the vans for learning expeditions. I just was trying to to reconcile the two because you talked about going to an auction to get the four vans, but it didn't seem like they that hundred and 96,000 seemed like it was a lot for the how you describe the the transportation needs.
I am gonna turn it over to Mark to to give you kind of some background on the transportation. And then, Mark, I can you can kick it back to me after that if that works. Yeah. That works great. I think I less about, I'll speak more to what that one ninety six is doing and and less about how we got to that fear one ninety six. Really, it's a three pronged approach to transportation. So you mentioned you touched on it already, would be prong number two or prong number three would be comprehensive transportation for learning expeditions. We'll start with compliance with state and federal laws. So specifically,
this means prioritizing students with IEPs. We base that number of three students, based off some of our other models and kinda backed into that one. Making sure that we are in line with our individualized education programs. That's gonna be door to door transportation and make sure there's action there is access to the school. Second prong is gonna be strategic location selection. So, we anticipate a great number of our students to be able to either walk or bike or take public transportation to school. So we've been focusing our recruiting efforts in an area that's amenable to that and,
in that close proximity area as well. So we placed the school in a spot where, the actual transportation to and from school is gonna be a little bit lower. But we also are rolling through and have some needs in the afternoons for our learning expeditions. So I'll I'll I'll dive in a little bit more, David. We the the biggest piece is we knew we needed transportation for learning expeditions because they're going to happen often. And we knew that financially, we would not be able to get a big charter bus and and be able to do all of that. And so it really was thinking about, okay, if we were able to just take one grade level at a time,
what is the minimum amount of buses we would need, or vans? And so it was four of those vans. Upon the research that we did around, van maintenance, gas, insurance, that so that number encompasses kind of all of what we were thinking about with that. We so we wanted to be conservative and so we know that there is an option to potentially get some of those, at a cheaper price at an auction or donated, but we did put the full price in our budget in case that didn't happen. And so the number reflected is if we were to actually have to purchase four
of those vans and then including all the maintenance and expenses for the year. Okay. So you're not planning on providing transportation to students unless they have an IUP that says and that part that portion you have planned for in the 25,000 in year one and then the adjustments going forward, as well as all the field trips for the learning expeditions. Is that is that accurate? Correct. Yes. Okay. And then my my next, question has to do with the learning expeditions and then also the
budgeted for those two items. And you've talked about kind of both of them, but can you mesh the budget along with, what those are? Because you do have a cost assigned, but I also heard that some of them are necessarily they may be, you may have an agreement where they provide the services for free. So can you kind of reconcile all of that for us, please? Absolutely. And so we did kind of a general, we looked at about what the the average cost paying them hourly to come five hours a week,
would be about 10,000 for the year. When we did the budget, we were not sure if two of those like the two that I talked about would be grant funded if that was the case. And so again, from a conservative standpoint, we wanted to go ahead and just say, if we did have to pay for them, then we estimated it to be, about 10,000 for the year, but that was just for one grade. And so we needed to actually double that to account for more classes for the year. And so the number that you're seeing is reflecting if we did not have all the grant funded
opportunities and that we would really have to pay full price for those partnerships. So again, it's looking at for one partnership, they would do either, it kinda depends on their capacity, but they would either come one hour a day or two hours a day for the week. If it's two hours a day, it's because classes are switching, like a group would have it from one to two and then another group would have it from two to three. And so that was kind of estimating our hourly rate to pay, into those partnerships and then multiplying it by how many weeks and then the amount
of partners and classes. And then my follow-up is, so with the two being grant funded, based on your budget, then does that mean you can expand it to two more of the learning expeditions or explore time? Is that the idea? And then the second part would be the flip of that, kind of touching on what John talked about. If there was a decline in enrollment, where are these programs? Because it's been a big part of your program that you've talked about today. Where are they at on the list of services that potentially would be on the chopping block?
Absolutely. So part of the exciting piece of it is there are, we have a long list of grants that we can apply for that are specific to, some of those enrichment pieces that, you know, people that are really passionate about bringing music into the school or, I can't think of any another example right now, but, we do know that if we had a shortfall that we would have a lot of opportunities for grants to apply to cover those. On the other side, if we do get more grant funding than anticipated, the how we see the increase in that is that we could actually maybe make the classes smaller.
So if we had extra, you know, maybe we offer the class instead of only two hours a day, would the partner be able to offer it from one all the way to five and then we spread that out to be able to make smaller classes for kids so that they get that smaller ratio, is one of the things that we've talked about if we do get more grant funding than anticipated. Okay. And now on the flip side about where these programs are at on the list of, on the chopping block if you do have lower enrollment.
Mhmm. Are you saying, like, which ones would we get rid of? Not necessarily. I don't want you to identify I'm not asking for specific programs, but where is your because if you're losing and you don't get 50% of your kids, you y'all have, said you're not gonna get rid of the staff side. Right. So, there are there's, I mean, if you don't have enough revenue for all the expenditures then expenditure, you have to start cutting back. Mhmm. So I'm what what I'm asking because this is a very significant part of your program Mhmm. Where are they on the on the list of of on the chopping block?
Gotcha. Another thing that we've talked about is we could reduce the hours for those partnerships. So instead of them coming every day, do we reduce it to, they only get it three days a week and then even, you know, do we ask, do we Right Right now, there's an incentive for teachers having additional planning. But in those first few years, might we need to take some of those planning hours back so that teachers are taking a little bit more ownership in that one to three time? Again, not completely, but, you know, maybe it's Tuesdays and Thursdays they're needing to help out with intervention or stem or
things like that. Those would be some, some creative opportunities that we would have there. I would hop in to I'm sorry. Go ahead. Eddie. Just say that the assumption that they would be on the chopping block isn't necessarily true. As we talked about, some of these are funded by grants, and that's not tied to enrollment. It's tied to whether or not, you know, it's happening. So lower enrollment figures, these activities don't don't aren't really attached to enrollment figures. So it's not really as much at risk. Yeah. And I think for us, it's about if if we were to come into that scenario, we'd rescale with intention.
Every adjustment that we make would be weighed against our academic model to ensure that we're still continuing on our promise to deliver museum based experiential learning even if it's at a slightly narrow scale. Okay. That's yeah. I just wanted to follow-up. I mean, you had it as a as a budget item. And so, therefore, I didn't you know, based on the the grants that you receive and then the amount that you're having to to pay for out of the budget. I was curious on where that was at. Alright. I'm good. Thanks, Maryann. Thank you. Bridget, I think you're back. Let's try. Can you hear me? Yes.
Okay. It appears that you were originally formed as a Texas corporation as the civic school, but then changed the name to the Museum School of East Dallas, as a charter holder. Many of the items in the attachments, including the co design team, various community events, focus groups, and several social media pages presented your school as the civic school. And then I think the bylaws that you submitted with your application include both names, as the name of the corporation. Can you discuss why the name changed and how, the name change has been communicated with those who knew you as the civic school
and whether or not the bylaws have been updated since? Great question. Yeah. So, when we if I go way back to the beginning of our co design process, as we mentioned, we really wanted to build a school with the community. You know, we said we don't wanna be kind of what maybe a typical process for a charter school has been. We really wanna start authentically with the community. With that said, so what this looks like is going to events at Owenwood and having a table and saying, hey, we wanna start a school. Tell us about your experience.
What do you want in a community? And with that, we didn't wanna be like, hey, we're here and not have a name. So initially we knew we wanted it to be something around community. And so with my design team, we kind of threw some names around that meant community. There was a nearby private school that used to be called East Dallas Community School. We met with their founder and said, do we think that would be confusing? We kind of came up with maybe, and so we chose a name that we felt like meant community, but that wasn't exactly what their name was. With that,
we knew the entire time that we wanted our community to have the option to vote on the school name. And so, but we also knew we needed to get certain things in place and we knew that we would have the option if, if families wanted a different name, we knew we would have an option with the state and with the IRS to change that name. We didn't want it to be a reason to pull this back in the process. And so that is why Pacific School was just kind of a name that, a small group of us came up with initially to call ourselves as we were out in the community.
And then after our first year of community co design, we had a big official, town hall that we had at Owenwood and invited all the families out where we had, we had charts up all around the room where they were voting on things. And, we had a presentation saying, hey, based on all the data we've collected this year, here's kind of what we're hearing you say. And so part of that night was there were options for names for them to vote on based on what people had given in our survey. And so, the Museum School of East Dallas is ultimately the name that families voted on.
So that was in April, 2024. And then one of the big pieces that came out of that was the family saying, hey, we're really excited about that, this and how can we see the museum school model more in action? Well, since there are not any in Texas, we weren't really able to take a bunch of them outside of Texas. We said, why don't we bring it to you? And so, that's when we did our first pilot at the end of in August twenty twenty four. And so, over those three months, we worked with with some, local marketing people in marketing pro bono that helped us do a rebranding launch.
And so our rebrand launch happened the week of, our first museum school pilot in August 2024. And so, that is in the name officially changed. With that said, and, as I'm learning with any rebranding, we do still occasionally come across a place where, it was not successfully changed over. But so one of them, as you're describing, was in our policies. And since then, we have made all of those updates and changed them. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks,
Bridget. I'm going to go to Linda now with your next question. Hi. Talking about instruction here. What plans do you have to support the understanding of the instructional materials being used by teachers and coaches? We're talking about product specific professional development. Great question. So around professional development, we have kind of a three level approach, where one of them will be around the onboarding and initial training. And that will be through our summer institute. And I mentioned earlier that it's going to be the first the fifteen days where
everyone starts at the same time. It's an intensive training around the high quality instructional materials that we've chosen. And that would all be led by the instructional leadership team of TMS. That includes the athletic direct sorry, academic director, department leaders, grade level coordinators. And it will emphasize, the TEKS, the ELPS, all the alignment, through deep diving in those curricular materials. They'll be doing role plays, simulated classroom scenarios. There's a new teacher onboarding.
And then the second level is going to be ongoing professional development in which they're engaging in what's often called professional learning communities, PLCs. This is where they're, ongoing and reviewing the material, the data that they've collected, their adjusting pacing guides, lesson plans, assessment data, all those things in order to receive targeted coaching or unidentified areas that students need support or that the teacher needs support. They're looking at the quarterly data cycles that also will be presented monthly to the
board. Each one of these data points that gets uploaded into the dashboard. The next part will be around instructional leadership development, and that's, around a leadership academy that includes that leadership team that I mentioned, where we're making sure that, that they're being held accountable to the goals that they've set or that we have set for the campus. And then the last one is just around continuing to develop and monitor coaching and continuous improvement in the cornerstone of those high quality,
instructional materials and implementation plans. We also have every intention of if opportunities are available. We know, for example, TEI, TEA has provided grants for the strong foundation, which, some of us have, seen that model in action. And so we're really interested too in keeping an eye on what opportunities are available from the state, because we know anything coming from the state is gonna have the right kind of alignment and really match what we're looking for in terms of rigor for students. That's all I had, Mary Anne. Thanks. Thanks, Linda. Okay. And now I'm gonna go to Doctor. Rocha with our next question. Thank you, Mary Anne.
You mentioned dual language programs and ESL programs on page 56. If you meet the rule of 20, will dual language be the program of implementation to meet your students' linguistic needs? So we actually are going to do the, the inclusive the ESL inclusion model. But if you were to, with enrollment increase and you meet the rule of 20, which means that you are required to implement the bilingual program, would that be dual language? Well, we would do the all of our teachers are gonna be ESL certified, and so we would have it be have them all be in the same class
with the ESL certified teacher. Okay. So, once you once you read the the rule of 20, you are required then to move into the bilingual programming. And, hence, my question would be the follow-up would be, you mentioned on year one, you would have, pre k through fourth grade, which is five classes. You you kinda alluded to to one one classroom, one teacher, but just in thinking that there's more students per grade level. Right? You have if these students in each grade level, how is one teacher and one support staff help meet the linguistic needs or to
roll out the you know, your your practice or your your intention or your innovation, to meet the needs of the ED students? So sorry. Say the question again. Yeah. Actually, I think, Lauren, and and do apologize. I I'm also the one with a bilingual background. Oh, sure. Yeah. So we actually wouldn't be considering a dual language program initially. So obviously, if we expand meet the rule of 20, we would be considering other bilingual options, such as transitional bilingual education, as an opportunity for our students. While we know dual language is a fantastic model,
as you well just pointed out, giving the staffing constraints, especially in those early years, being able to have a bilingual teacher at each grade level to do a dual language program with efficiency is not appropriate. And so right now, obviously, we are going to require ESL training. We're gonna require it else in sheltered instruction as we get into those older grades, but we would be looking at a transitional program as opposed to a dual language program, in those early years. Now in the event that, financially or either staffing wise as we grow, we could afford to expand that program.
That is definitely a consideration we would make at this time. But based on our current resource limitations, we don't anticipating offering dual language, given those constraints. And thank you for that additional context. Just FYI, you know, if transitional and dual language require the same certified teachers. So if you have the teachers for transitional, it will work out for your dual language. And just FYI, you get an additional incentive just for implementing dual language as well. So just in thinking of your LPAC, right, having it as super vital for the committee to ensure that students identification,
placement, progress monitoring, and reclassification are conducted to make the most appropriate instructional decisions that impact student outcomes. You mentioned that the ELPAC parents would be the representative for each student's ELPAC. So my question is, what process do you have in would or planned to have to adhere to the committee's requirements of that one administrator, bilingual or ESL teacher, and a parent of any EB students, and not necessarily each bilingual student's parents? So we anticipate at this stage, obviously, one of our certified teachers would serve on that committee.
Lauren would serve as the district administrative representative. And given close ties to the community, we've identified a number of, a number of parents that could serve in that ELPAC board. And so the the the goal would be to identify a parent early on, make sure that they fully understand, sort of the requirements of being that representative for the entire district and and sort of representing the voice and needs of parents as well as, you know, thinking very clearly about succession planning and making sure that while we have one parent that we've identified, we have multiple parents that understand the potential requirements of that their role in the
ELPAC because we know how important that consideration is and that core team is to making sure that process runs smoothly. Thank you for that. And just my follow-up and my last question is basically on that initial assessment. For identification, we have statewide approved language assessment tests, pre loss, loss claims. Do you have a plan to follow the updated TA developed standardized letters? And how would you archive them accordingly? Our our plan is to adhere to all the expectations of the TEA. And as far as documenting,
we're going to document them both in the ILAP and in the student information system. And this ensures that we're consistent and also that, the documents are accessible for all of our instructional staff. Lauren, did you have anything that you would like to add? Will you say the question one more time just so I can make sure we answered all parts of it, please? You did. It's like for the identification statewide process, we have, the language assessment testing, the pre lesson, loss links. Mhmm. So how are you planning on archiving this, TEA developed standardized letters? Okay. Nothing doctor Duke,
did you say that? Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Maryann. Thank you, doctor Roger. So we are at time for our SBA member questions. I know that member, Revelus, has a commitment, so I wanna, try to honor that and let him ask his questions before he has to leave. Thank you so much, everyone, and thanks for accommodating me. I have a quick question on the, responsibilities of some of your staff there as outlined in the application. Your culture coordinator is listed as having several, duties including, you know, overseeing programs like,
students with disabilities, emerging bilingual, dyslexia, at risk, gifted and talented. And then you also mentioned that this person will be tasked with individualized support, helping students manage stress, develop social skills. I'm wondering, can you clarify whether the culture coordinator will be responsible for the culture, the special ed, ESL, bilingual, individualized interventions, and counseling type of activities? Absolutely. Thank you for that question, Amber Evolos. We we see our culture coordinator, as your typical dean of students. And so they're going to actually be very much over the culture,
student culture for our campus. So they would help with implementing our culture plan for the school, in terms of our core values, what that's looking like in terms of school assemblies, morning meetings, things like that. They would also have a role in any escalated, if if kids are needing extra support, kind of helping us through that MTSS process if needed for certain students. In terms of special education, they would, they would not manage that. They would just be a resource to help, with any students that have,
additional needs that they're needing support outside of the classroom. So you'll have other other staff members response directly responsible for those? This person will just oversee those duty? I wanna I wanna understand. Absolutely. So they mhmm. So they are going to, so specifically around student behavior, they'll help with a lot of logistical pieces around, they'll coordinate with our operations manager, for even things like lunch duty. They'll coordinate with our explore coordinator to make sure that that process is, smooth around student transitions.
So, really, anything that is student facing, and that is not academic, they will be supporting. Great. And that's in vein. I see also that you have other roles and positions, like the mentor coordinator to connect students with mentors and local organizations, family support and student behaviors, and, wondering if these are different positions or if it's who is responsible for these duties on under your plan? So they part of the dean of students will also be helping with community engagement. And so some of the things that you are referring to are some of the
partnerships that we are looking to have, for example, specifically with Owenwood Farm and Neighbor Space. They are a community center within East Dallas that already have a lot of services that we would be able to refer our families to. And so they would also, the dean of students would also help with that as well. I'm wondering if you have any concerns about finding a person that can fulfill all these duties? It seems really, really layered and really, expansive. I'm wondering what your expectations are of finding a person for this role?
Absolutely. So, we actually already have somebody slated for the role that has been, integral in helping plan our school from our community co design process to now on our helping with community engagement. And so she was actually pretty integral in helping us think about what are all the needs that, we would need support with on the campus outside of our instructional leadership team. And so we have somebody that is very interested in that role. And I'll also name, you know, in those first few years, there will be more hats worn than later on. So, we anticipate,
you know, when we have a smaller number of students that it will be more manageable. And then as our number of students grow, some of those duties and responsibilities would be dispersed out or when we have, when we're able to hire additional roles to help support. Doctor. Thank you. My last question is on, in your application, you state that the BARDA Public Schools in New York was, collaborated with the Museum, school in the creation of the application and the program. Your founder also had a residency at the Brilla Public Schools. Is is that correct? Yes. Yes. I asked, because, you know,
after taking a look at the campuses, in in The Bronx, I did see chronic absenteeism, at at those schools, down to, you know, 56% to 66%. I also saw extremely high teacher turnover rate at one school in one year was at a hundred percent. It was a complete teacher turnover. Mhmm. And I'm I'm so I'm wondering, if, you know, why you would connect with Brill as a model for your charter school given these these concerns. Absolutely. So I have the opportunity during one of my planning years to be receive some
funding through the Kern Family Foundation. And part of what came with that was a residency at some different schools that they support, which was a limited number to choose from. Bria was one that I was able to connect with at one of their conferences that kind of opened their doors. My goal of that visit was specifically to learn about how they take their core values and very intentionally infuse them into their culture. In my experience, I had worked in schools where that I hadn't seen it done well before. And they are a school that,
while some of the other metrics I was not there to observe per se, I was specifically interested in how they talked about their core values, from the top down. So even got to meet with their executive director, got to meet with their, E team to see, you know, how aware were they of their mission and their core values and how they really lived that out. And so the goal was to see what that could look like from a systemic level as opposed to the experience that I had seen a lot of times where it was just kind of posted on a wall but not really referred to.
And so, that was the purpose of that visit was to just to learn how they do that. And it it doesn't even necessarily mean that we're taking all of that. It was just an opportunity to to reflect and kind of learn about their practices and how they align that. So so help me understand your answer. Is is your answer that you you are taking the overall spirit of the program but not the implementation, that you saw in New York in in in The Bronx? So, one specific thing that I took from them, really was a a document that where I saw that they how they streamlined their
core values, interdepartmentally. So, I got to observe finance meetings where, their CFO is aware of the mission and the core values and they brought that into that finance meeting. So it was more from a culture piece of seeing how they, just how they talk about their core values. Also very specifically how they developed their core values with their families, which was something I was really passionate about. They initially had a few core values that they developed, but then got feedback from their families that some of those didn't feel reflective of
the family's cultures. And so, they did a lot of work in opening up and asking families, what are your core values and how can we reinforce those at school? And so that was a big piece too that we took and actually immediately implemented and was able to take into our co design process, process, to make sure that the core values that we identified for our school were reflective of what the families were wanting. Okay. Lastly, real quick with with Bria and thanks for correcting me on the on the pronunciation. With Bria, you know, it's been called the classic, a classical Catholic education model. Mhmm. I wanna make sure that,
we have in the records, this, are you going to follow, the Bria's model for, for, religious classes during school day or after school? Absolutely not. That did that have nothing to do with our visit there? Okay. Thank you so much. Mhmm. Good afternoon, everyone. I my question is centered around the accountability piece. On your application, you state that the reason why there's a new charter school needed is because the accountability scores in the surrounding schools are low. But when I pulled the most recent data from TEA's release a few weeks ago,
the twenty twenty twenty three ratings, it shows that in that area, six, 66% or six of the nine campuses actually had b or six of them had b's, three of them had c's. There were no d's and f's. So can you speak to what that will look like now since those scores are not those schools are not performing well? Absolutely. So, again, our goal was when we started out the community co design process, it came from families not being happy with having a B rated school.
A lot of families said to us, if we were in the West Side of the city, a B would not be acceptable. A is the only thing that's acceptable. And so, why is it that we're okay with our kids in the forgotten Far East Dallas area to have only have access to below an A rated school? But in the other areas of the city, we don't accept that. And so, a lot of it came from our families wanting access to an A rated campus. And since I had experience taking a campus from a C to an A with the same type of population, there was a lot of conversations around that's what they want for their families.
And so the a lot of our model is based on making sure that we are giving an a rated education to those families who want it. I'm glad you mentioned that because last so from my understanding when I did some review, you were the principal from 2019 to 2023 at Uplift White Rock. However, the score has actually decreased from a b to a c under your leadership. So how are you going to transform a school to a a when it dropped under your, leadership. That actually didn't drop under my leadership.
It dropped after I left. So from 2019 to 2023? Mhmm. So the 2022, '20 '20 '3 rating was under your leadership? That was not. K. Going back to transportation, who will be responsible for the mapping and doing the routes to troubleshoot the students on their transportation lens? Absolutely. Our operations manager is who we are planning to work with. We also have some, some connections from our board of, people that have worked with Dallas ISD before and understand how to map out those
routes. And so we'll use that network and those connections to make sure that, our operations manager is able to map those out. Okay. You all also talk about in your application the wait list. For the students. We in pulling the data, what I noticed is most of the wait list is for pre k students. You all will not be serving pre k students. So where are you gathering your wait list from the charters around us from? And not for district, for each campus. Well, so we look so specifically in our community,
for example, Dallas ISD has some choice schools, including Mata Montessori, Sanger, Solar Girls. And so, we have a lot of families who are interested, have been interested in getting into those schools and have been on the wait list for years, even Dealey Montessori. In addition, once those some of the families that have gotten in have actually not stayed because they didn't like that their kids were on buses for, they were having to get to the whatever their local school, they would have to get there up to an hour early and their kids would ride the bus and then they would get home an hour late. And so, they just didn't,
want their kids to have to be on a bus that long every day. And so, a lot of it came from not wanting to be on the bus or having to be on wait list for years in those surrounding schools. And so that is another thing that really drove us was to say, hey, let's create a school that can help kind of take some of those families that are already looking for, a different option, but are it would be able to stay in their community. Can you provide SPLE board with the list of, students not student names, but the number of students who are waitlisted on those campuses?
I have some of it. Let's see. You can just send it via email. Oh, sure. Yeah. Thank you. I'm done. Thank you. Yeah. I believe member Hall and member Maynard are still here on the line as well too. Hi. Thank you so much for your time today, and thank you to our TEA staff for facilitating this and, all of the work that the museum school has done, preparing for this. I know it's it's a ton, so congratulations on making it this far. And, my question, I think, would be for Lauren, for Ms. Coleman. Can you tell me, just teeing off a little bit of,
what Doctor. Clark was asking about with the school that you were the principal of and, you being the, you know, proposed superintendent totally understand, you know, those questions. And so I just wanted to give you an opportunity, though, maybe if you could tell us, a little bit about some of the, you know, the success that you had there and the experience and how you're going to, you know, achieve similar outcomes, with the museum school and how that prepared you to be the superintendent. Absolutely. Thank you for that question, Member Hall. So I think one of the things that was kind of the catalyst for us
to really take the step forward for the museum school was the success that we had and lots of families that said, you know, wow, if we were able to do this here, what, you know, how what more could be possible within our community? And so, initially when we were planning, the board really pushed me to break down, you know, what was it that led to our success? And so, I think the first thing that we really did prioritize was high quality instructional materials and lesson plan internalization. And so, we really put kind of all eggs in the basket of ensuring that our teachers
were deeply and adequately trained on how to implement those high quality instructional materials and that they were implemented with fidelity. And then making sure that we were using our internalization times, to really lead to outcomes for kids that we could that we weren't just needing to meet, but that, we had very intentional procedures and structures in place to ensure that teachers, that their first time that they were teaching the instruction wasn't in front of kids, but that they were practiced, they were rehearsed, they were prepared with their team, to also make sure that all students were receiving,
that high quality instruction no matter which classroom you were in. And so, that was the first step, I think, that really began to build our foundation from the school initially being a C when I took over. The second piece, I would say, was having a high quality intervention program For kids that were still getting high quality, tier one instruction and then still needed more support, we had very strategic plan for how we were gonna respond to that data and respond to it immediately. And then, I think,
a third piece that was, I think, really innovative for us at that time is within our district, a lot of, your high quality teachers you were or your highest performing teachers, we were coached to put them in third through fifth grade. And, we had a really significant conversation of, you know, instead of kind of feeling like we're scrambling and putting a band aid on, gaps in third through fifth grade, how can we be proactive and ensure kids leave kindergarten ready for first grade? And then, they leave first grade ready for second grade.
And so, we, really, we had a, a conversation with our staff to say, hey, if you are a teacher that's getting really strong results, would you consider moving to kindergarten through second grade? And so it was kind of a risk. So, but we took a lot of those high performing teachers, put them in our kindergarten through second grade classrooms, and then really, enhanced our coaching in those third through fifth grade classrooms. And after that year, which we were still able to maintain our scores and then the following year was when we moved up to an A because of the foundation that those teachers were
able to build. And so, I think it is was also really having a whole school view of what good instruction is and seeing and getting teachers to see it's not just about my kids in this grade, but but it is about this community and about every kid in this campus. It's about the coherence of the curriculum and us all working together to ensure that we get there. Great. That sounds amazing. I really appreciate your time. Mhmm. Thank you. Ben Remainer, do you have any questions? Just just one, I think. Because I think we're we're a little short on time.
Lauren, I think that you mentioned that you were a you're a campus principal. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Yeah. Have you been a superintendent before? I have not. No. K. Well, tell me a little bit about that because I will tell you that, there is a little bit of a transition there because, you know, those things are related, but they're not the same. So tell me a little bit about how you intend to, provide yourself, you know, surround yourself with some supports for that because, you know, being a superintendent and versus being a principal, they're not the same. Yes,
sir. Thank you so much for that question. And that is actually a conversation that I have had significantly with my board, and even up to when I considered even going into this process. And so, I very much started with leveraging some of my, professional mentors, which include Rosemary Perlmutter who helped found Uplift Education, and was also my college professor. I've been able to leverage her expertise and lean on meeting with her. I have other superintendents and CEOs of Charter Networks that I was connected have been connected with in
Texas, one from Oklahoma. And so, have just really had, really been so grateful to just being from Texas to have a lot of, to have a large network of people that are excited about supporting me and have been willing to meet with me on a monthly basis and really give me kind of the honest, nitty gritty of what it looks like to be a superintendent and the difference. And so, while I do think I've put a lot of time and effort into learning that difference and being aware of, you know, as a principal, I was doing a lot more implementing what was given to me.
And I do think as a principal, I kind of naturally would step out more into strategy mode and thinking bigger of, not just doing what we have to do, but how can we think bigger and even be more strategic on improving our campus. And so I think that was through those mentorships that I have and continue to sustain. We also have Doctor. Duke on our board who is working towards her superintendent certification and has been so kind to share that with me. In addition,
I have 100% plans to pursue the my superintendent certification. I'm in the process of applying to both the region, our region superintendent certification program, as well as some other any other programs that I can attend that will help prepare me for that. Yep. And and is that through the, through the service center? Yes, sir. Okay. And has the service center been helpful to you? Absolutely. So just being able to talk to, one of the one of the leaders there, Tony of Palagonia, was has been really instrumental in just helping me.
The first time when I reached out said, you know, here's what I'm doing. Where do I start? And has been super kind just to share, you know, all the resources that I can check out. I've been able to follow-up and make sure that, I'm still on the path to be able to pursue those. So, yes, they've been very helpful. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, member Maynard. And that will bring our capacity interview to a close for today. So thank you, to our applicant team, both proposed staff and leadership of the board. We appreciate your time and effort in this process.
Thank you to our TEA staff and our State Board of Education members for joining us as well. So we will, you'll be notified of the commissioner's, recommendation, by May 28, and, we will proceed from there. This concludes our interviews for today for our viewing public, and our, next interview and last interview will commence tomorrow at 9AM. Thank you, everyone.