BELL COUNTY, Texas — The Texas Education Agency has released their annual report highlighting four priorities — Temple and Killeen ISD weighed in on the report.
The first priority in the report is recruiting and retaining teachers and principals.
“When you don’t have a pool you can pick from it’s a big worry," said Killeen ISD Superintendent Dr. Jo Ann Fey.
“The retention of teachers is the most important because the last several years there have been an exodus in public education," said Temple ISD Superintendent Bobby Ott.
The report shows much progress has been made in recent years due to the teacher incentive allotment created in 2019 last school year giving $260 million to school districts up from just $40 million in 2019.
“In Temple, we participate and awarded over half a million dollars to 50 teachers which increased their pay," Ott said.
Priority number two is building a foundation for reading and math which depends on the high quality instructional materials.
House Bill 1605 was passed last year which gives funding incentives for Texas school systems to provide high quality materials to teachers.
“We’ve actually had Georgetown come visit our classroom," Ott said.
A third priority is connecting high school students to careers and college.
Dr. Fey says she wants her students to have a better career path when they leave her schools and help map out industry partners and feeder patterns in middle school.
“I think we could be better and build much more robust pathways that are aligned with industry," Dr. Fey said.
The report shows schools that adopt a college and career readiness model have the most success with 66 percent of their graduates reaching that achievement.
And finally, improving low performing schools, the ACE program — which is accelerating campus excellence — transformed schools from F to B rated schools.
Forty Texas campuses and 50 thousand students participate.
“You always want to improve low performing schools," Ott said.
Here's a link to the full report.
