Minutes of the Joint Meeting of the Texas Panhandle P-16
Management Board and Executive Committee
February 8, 2017
1. Call to Order and Welcome
Dr. Jud Hicks called the meeting to order at 12:45p.m.
Members present: Jud Hicks, Ray Cogburn, Robert Riza, Mary Clare Munger, Jackie Jenkins, Tanya Larkin, Kyle Lynch, Becky Burton (representing Russell Lowery-Hart), Dana West, Gregg Bynum, Darryl Flusche, Brian Fuller, Susan Allen (representing Wade Shaffer).
A proxy was received from the following: Anette Carlisle (Jud Hicks), Stacey Harris (Dana West), Chance Welch (Jud Hicks), and Shannon Carroll (Jud Hicks)
P-16 Specialist present: Karla Weatherly
P-16 Communications Appointee present: Matt Koumalats
Guests: Robert McLain, Mindy Hampton, Joanna Martinez.
Note: NEWS Channel 7 filmed during the meeting and did a story on the P-16 Council on the evening news on February 8th.
2. Approve Minutes from the August 26, 2016, Meeting of the P-16 Joint Meeting of the Management Board and Executive Committee
Action: A motion was made by Robert Riza and seconded by Tanya Larkin to approve the minutes of the November 9, 2016, meeting of the P-16 Joint Meeting of the Management Board and Executive Committee. The motion passed unanimously.
3. Robert McLain, Superintendent from Channing ISD led a presentation and discussion on the issue of the teacher shortage in the Texas Panhandle.
He presented the following facts:
· Most of our teachers come from the WT program and enrollment in Education as a degree is down.
· More educators are coming from the Alternative Certification program than the traditional student teaching tract.
· Texas Tech has a teaching tract that is an Associate’s degree plus one year program.
· Teachers do not promote education as a profession to their students and sometimes even discourage them or put the profession down.
He proposed several ideas:
· A dual credit course for Education that would go towards a degree plan for Education majors – the Master’s Degree Principal or Superintendent could be the teacher on-site for this course.
· Scholarships should be offered for Education Majors if they agreed to return to the rural districts.
· Allow High School students to work as a student aid for a part of the day and be paid for it.
· Promote a “grow your own” teacher campaign.
· Have teachers who love their jobs to share their testimonials about the fulfillment of a teaching career.
· Allow students to job shadow educational positions: teachers, principals, counselors, superintendents.
· Host an event or media message to promote our profession.
Other discussion items:
· Students only have five attempts to pass the content tests and this hurts the college record and the student.
· GPA of Education Majors at WT is a minimum of 2.75.
· Amarillo College already has four dual credit TECA course hours with 16 hours of classroom observation for elementary education majors that transfers to WT. Other specific education classes that are currently offered at AC, FPC and CC are EDUC 1301 Introduction to Teaching and EDUC 2301Teaching Special Populations; but these are not dual credit courses. To teach the TECA classes a Master Level Degree that includes 18 hours of Early Childhood Education course is required.
· A sub-committee of Jud Hicks, Ray Cogburn and Karla Weatherly will meet to discuss how P-16 might help with this issue.
4. P-16 Specialist’s Report
a. Karla reported that we will be using the ESC works sign-in sheets and members will receive an email letting them know that they are registered for the meeting.
b. Karla Weatherly reported on the Math Matters Summit that was held on November 29th. We had 89 that attended and 18 were in Dumas by video-streaming as well as several WT professors. The participants generated a list of ideas that were brainstormed at the event on ways districts can work to improve student success in math.
c. The Clarendon College Daze event was held on February 7th and 31 attended. There was a mix of community leaders, counselors and even some potential students. It was a great day and we even had a rodeo event where the CC students exhibited some of their competition skills.
d. The WTAMU Research Project has held two meetings to survey parents, students and community on the barriers to attending college and career education after high school. The data will be presented at a future P-16 Council Meeting.
e. The FAFSA Scholarship Competition is continuing until March 15th and almost all the districts are ahead of where they were last year when the competition ended and a few districts are over 75%.
f. The Patient Care Technician dual credit certification course has been updated to meet the new TEKS for 2017-18 school year.
g. An explanation of the Early Childhood Think Tank Project was given and a draft of the community poster with the slogan: “Teach Me…. I’m Yours” was presented. A list of area resources is being collected to have on a flyer that will be given to all new parents at the panhandle hospitals when they have a baby. Karla will meet with Doug Curry who was also exploring a similar parenting resource and they will collaborate to make it meet the needs for both groups.
h. Karla shared a handout that outlined some of the activities of the P-16 Specialist since the last meeting on November 9, 2016.
i. The P-16 budget and expense report for 2016-17 was presented and reviewed by the group.
5. June Giddings shared about Texas OnCourse – This is a free college and career readiness curriculum that is in the final stages of development by the University of Texas. June is seeking participants to help pilot this curriculum this spring so that it is ready to implement in the Fall of 2017.
6. Other Items: Mary Clare shared about the TX-KEA free kindergarten assessment tool that was developed by TEA with Children’s Learning Center. Any public kindergarten can use it for free.
7. The next meeting for the Joint Management Board and Executive Committee will be:
May 10, 2017 from 12:45-2:30 (after TASA and lunch) 5800 Bell
8. Adjourn - The meeting was adjourned at approximately 2:30pm.