Fort Worth ISD welcomes students back to school. What’s new this year?
A half hour before the first bell, dozens of families were already lined up on the sidewalk outside M.H. Moore Elementary School on Tuesday morning, waiting anxiously to get inside and see their new classrooms.
At the front door, Principal Ricardo Alvarez and Superintendent Angélica Ramsey greeted families in English and Spanish as they walked in. In the entryway, Miguelito the Mustang, the school’s mascot, gave out hugs and high fives as kids walked under an archway of red and white balloons — the school colors.
Tuesday marked the first day of school in the Fort Worth Independent School District, and school leaders at M.H. Moore encouraged students to come to school dressed to impress. Accordingly, some kids came clad in boots and cowboy hats, others in red cardigans. Erica Romero walked up to the building with her daughter Destiny about 20 minutes before school started. Dressed in a red and white cheerleader uniform and holding two pom poms, Destiny said she was looking forward to starting fourth grade. She was especially excited about studying science, she said.
Romero said getting her family ready for the first day of school was a big task. Destiny is one of four kids, and Romero said she’s found herself pulled in several different directions over the past few weeks. Asked how she and her family balance it all, Romero shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard, but we do it.”
One of the teachers greeting students as they arrived for the first day was Lizeth Gonzalez, an emergent bilingual teacher. The first day is always exciting for teachers and students alike, Gonzalez said. For students, there are classroom procedures and expectations to learn. For teachers, there’s a whole new group of students to get to know.
Gonzalez, who was M.H. Moore’s teacher of the year last year, said teachers are clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. Gonzalez works with fourth- and fifth-graders on literacy. Students who are in the upper elementary grades this year were early in their school careers when schools shut down during the pandemic, and many missed out on learning the building block skills that lead to reading.
In fifth grade, teachers are supposed to work with students on more advanced skills like reading comprehension, she said, but there’s a block of time built into the daily schedule for teachers to offer extra support to students who are behind. Teachers use data based on students’ answers to questions in class to see who might need extra help.
Fort Worth ISD still lacks a strategic plan
The district is starting the year without a codified set of academic goals. Last month, district leaders presented a proposed five-year strategic plan to the school board. Among other things, the proposal laid out plans that called for 50% of third-graders to score on grade level or better in both reading and math on the state test by 2029. This year, 29% of third-graders met grade level in math, and 33% did so in reading.
Under the plan, the district would have worked toward those goals by offering professional development to teachers and expanding systems for identifying students who are struggling and getting them extra support before they fall too far behind.
But the board rejected the plan by a 5-2 vote. Some members who voted against the proposal said they weren’t opposed to the details of the plan, but wanted to allow more time for public feedback, since the proposal had never been presented publicly before the meeting.
Since the vote, Ramsey said, district leaders have gotten feedback from teachers about the plan, almost all of it positive. Some Fort Worth ISD teachers told the Star-Telegram that district leaders asked teachers for feedback without first walking through the details of the plan, leaving them without a firm understanding of what they were being asked to comment on.
Ramsey said district leaders would continue to get input from parents and the broader community before bringing the proposal back to the board. In a city the size of Fort Worth, doing that kind of outreach work takes time, she said. She said she expects the proposal to go before the board again in September.
In the meantime, academic progress across the city appears to have stalled. In a report released Monday, the nonprofit Fort Worth Education Partnership noted that the number of public school students who scored on grade level on this year’s state test declined by a percentage point compared to last year. That figure includes campuses in all districts and charter schools networks in Fort Worth, not just Fort Worth ISD.
Ramsey acknowledged that the district isn’t where it wants to be academically. Even though the strategic plan hasn’t been formally approved, district leaders need to start working toward the goals outlined in the proposal — goals like accelerating student learning and making sure families feel safe and welcome at school.
“Just because the plan hasn’t passed yet doesn’t mean that we sit and wait,” Ramsey said. “The school year has started. We have to start working on those initiatives.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2024 at 11:59 AM.
