State Summer Leadership Summit welcomes author, Dr. Mario Acosta
Welcome Home, Dr. Mario Acosta!
TALAS is thrilled to welcome back Dr. Mario Acosta, Marzano consultant, author, and esteemed educational leader, to El Paso as our featured guest author at the TALAS State Summer Leadership Summit!
Dr. Acosta brings a wealth of leadership expertise, having served as a campus principal and educational leader in Texas.
He will be presenting two impactful sessions on creating high reliability schools and will also be available for a book signing of his latest work, Five Big Ideas for Leading a High Reliability School.
Bonus! The first 150 registered attendees will receive a complimentary copy of his book!
A native of El Paso and graduate of Cathedral High School, Dr. Acosta’s homecoming is one you won’t want to miss.
With vouchers fast-tracked, other Texas public education issues to watch this session
It only took the Texas Senate 22 days from the start of this year’s legislative session to introduce, debate and pass its priority school voucher bill.
Senate Bill 2, which would allow families to use taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private school tuition, now awaits a vote in the House where similar legislation repeatedly hit a dead end two years ago. But while the Senate has moved swiftly on vouchers, state officials and education advocates have expressed a need for significant investment in public schools, which the state has a constitutional requirement to fund and where 5.5 million children receive their education.
From declining enrollment, budget deficits and program cuts to student absences, teacher shortages and campus closures, public schools walked into the 2025 legislative session with major challenges.
Absenteeism spiked in the pandemic. Texas schools want the state’s help to keep students in the classroom.
n a typical school week, Delaila Constante makes more than a dozen calls to parents of students who are frequently absent from school. Last October, she made around 50 to 60 calls each week.
As a parental involvement assistant at Edinburg North High School in South Texas, Constante is responsible for checking with parents of students who miss too much school, whether their absences are excused or unexcused. Parents often tell her their families face medical or financial difficulties like not having running water or enough food to put on the table.
Constante came into her role in 2022, when schools were seeing absenteeism rates rise rapidly as a prolonged effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem lingers today. Texas school leaders and education experts say repeated absences can lead to worse outcomes for students and a risk of dropping out.
Ector County awarded “District of the Year.”
In the past five years, the Texas district’s investments in staffing and high dosage tutoring are paying off.
Five years ago, Texas’ Ector County Independent School District was significantly underperforming, said Scott Muri, the district’s superintendent emeritus. Today, it’s a different story.
When Muri joined as the district’s superintendent in 2019, he said, students were “struggling academically in school,” and “all the metrics were heading in the wrong direction.” That same year, the Texas Education Agency gave Ector County ISD an F accountability rating.
But now, Ector County ISD, with about 34,000 students, is on the upswing. Signs point to significantly improved student achievement, and the district earned its first-ever B rating from TEA in 2022, the most recent year rated.
The average superintendent salary
Austin— The median salary for a Texas school superintendent in 2024-25 is $153,176, an increase of 2.1% from the prior year, according to the annual Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) and the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) Superintendent Salary Survey.
The survey is conducted each fall to help school districts across the state understand compensation trends. Of all the responsibilities entrusted to school board members, among the most important is hiring and evaluating a superintendent, said Amy Campbell, director of TASB HR Services, which administers the survey.
“As districts wrestle with budget constraints, current compensation data helps school board members develop a compelling pay and benefits package to recruit or retain the best superintendent for their district,” Campbell said.
Bluebonnet Curriculum is adopted
Critics say the curriculum overemphasizes Christianity. Texas school districts don’t have to use it but will receive $60 per student if they do.
A majority of the Texas State Board of Education gave final approval Friday to a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings.
Eight of the 15 board members voted to approve Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year.
School vouchers and public education
After a wave of Texas Republicans dominated the ballot box on Election Day, Gov. Greg Abbott expressed confidence last week that he now has enough votes in the Texas House to pass a school voucher program, his top legislative priority since last year.
The governor shared his optimism during a visit to Kingdom Life Academy, a small Christian private school in Tyler, where he proclaimed that the House now has 79 “hardcore school choice proponents,” a number slightly above the simple majority the 150-member chamber needs to approve legislation.
During the same visit, Abbott also said he was committed to fully funding Texas’ public schools, providing teachers with pay raises and enhancing career training opportunities for students — all of which he refused to do last year when vouchers stalled in the Texas Legislature.
Arlington ISD setting metrics for Strategic Plan
Arlington ISD sets 2025 student performance goals. Trustees worry some are unrealistic
Students in Arlington ISD face higher performance expectations heading into 2025, prompting some school board members to worry the district’s new goals are too ambitious.
At an Oct. 3 school board meeting, trustees were presented with the district’s annual goals for how administrators hope to see students perform year-to-year. The school board approved the new goals with a 6-1 vote, with trustee Larry Mike dissenting.
During the board meeting, Mike and other trustees advocated for lowering some goals in areas he felt seemed unachievable.
Turning schools around
Appointed to lead Texas’ largest district during a state takeover last year, Mike Miles is embracing a model of wholescale systemic change.
Turning around a school district is no small feat — especially when that district is the largest in Texas and eighth largest in the U.S. But Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles doesn’t shy away from bold, wholesale change.
The former U.S. Army Ranger and diplomat to Poland and Russia has spent three decades as an educator. In that time, he has led the Harrison School District in Colorado and the Dallas Independent School District, in addition to founding Third Future Schools, a nonprofit charter school operator he resigned from to take the job in Houston.
Banning Cell Phones in Texas
Cellphones are “extremely harmful” to student learning and mental health, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath said Sept. 18. Morath encouraged state lawmakers to prohibit students from using cellphones in all Texas public schools.
“If it were in my power, I would’ve already banned them in schools in the state,” Morath said during a Senate Education Committee hearing. “So I would encourage you to consider that as a matter of public policy going forward for our students and our teachers.”
School districts across Texas have recently tightened their electronic device policies, with some requiring students keep cellphones, smart watches and headphones turned off and out of sight while on campus.
