By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
Mike Morath, Texas’s Education Agency’s Commissioner dropped into the Queen City Thursday morning to see how the local school district was doing.
Morath, who was appointed as TEA commissioner by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2016, made his first visit to the San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District as the commissioner of education. Morath oversees 1,200 school districts in Texas.
Morath said that SFDRCISD had shown a significant improvement academically and he wanted to visit to see how they were doing it. For example, Dr. Lonnie Green Elementary moved from a C to an A rating during the last grading period.
To find out how this happened, he visited with students and educators at the SFDRCISD Career and Technical Education campus and then visited Lonnie Green, the district’s newest A-rated campus.
While at the Career and Technology Education campus, he visited the welding, automotive and aviation maintenance classes and enjoyed a breakfast taco from the culinary arts students.
“CTE is so vital to our students because thanks to CTE, these students are able to graduate and make a good living,” he said, shortly after leaving the campus.
En route between CTE and Lonnie Green campuses, Dr. Carlos H. Rios, SFDRCISD superintendent, drove him by several other campuses, including North Heights Elementary, Del Rio Freshman Campus, Del Rio High School and Early College High School.
“We want to take this chance to showcase our campuses and students as much as possible,” Rios said.
At Lonnie Green, Principal Cheryl Pond showed him third grade teachers during a planning session.
Morath watched the session for a few minutes and then shared how vital planning was and asked the teachers what challenges they had. The teachers told him they had difficulties getting a data systems program and a testing platform to communicate.
He listened as one of his party took notes on the concerns. “I’ve got my homework,” he told them. “My team and I will be taking a look to see if we can improve this. “
The interaction meant a lot to the teachers. “We enjoyed having him in our planning session,” said Liza Fabela, a Lonnie Green third grade teacher. “He asked us to give him a homework assignment on ways he can improve resources for teaching and learning.”
After visiting the planning session, he visited three classes with Pond.
Throughout the visit, he was quizzing teachers he encountered on a variety of resources, seeing if they were being effective.
Rios said in his 18 years in the SFDRCISD, this is the first time a TEA Commissioner of Education had visited Del Rio. Aida Gomez, who’s been in the district for 28 years, said she never recalled a visit in her time either.
The visit lasted a bit more than two hours and afterwards, a Texas Department of Transportation plane took them to San Angelo, where they visited campuses.
—
Contact the author at joelalangton@gmail.com
