San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Striving to improve learning at Southside
Superintendent ends first year with an eye to the future
With only days left in the 202021 school year, Southside Independent School District teachers and administrators were not letting anyone slow down.
Instruction continued to the very last day of classes, when students celebrated the start of the summer break — what little they could have of it.
Superintendent Rolando Ramirez drilled through end-of-year campus visits, hopping from classroom to classroom with his top staff to evaluate teaching and learning in a pandemic-hampered year when every minute counted.
“Everything we do has to be intentional,” Ramirez told administrators at Losoya Middle School. “We can’t just do it because we like doing it, or we think that it is good. There has to be a purpose for it, and we have to be asking those questions.”
How, they asked, were students — both virtual and in-person — engaging with each other and with their teacher? Were students randomly selected to participate?
How was each classroom using technology?
Was the lesson relevant to learning plans constructed to face the reality of standardized tests?
“We have everything on our side. … The students, the staff and our parents are on board. So, there is no reason for us to fail.”
Ramirez wanted to end his first year at Southside ISD with a better understanding of where the district stands and where it needs to go next to get better academic results.
“The purpose of this is, how can we make things better?” Ramirez said during a visit to Gallardo Elementary. “It’s not an ‘I got you,’ or ‘The teacher is going to be in trouble ...’ It’s just about, ‘How can we help by making these recommendations?’”
First year
Ramirez was hired in April 2020 after former Southside ISD Superintendent Mark Eads announced he would retire after leading the district since 2016, a tenure that saw a state intervention rebuild its board after years of unstable leadership.
Ramirez came from Valley View ISD, in the Rio Grande Valley, a rural district with about 4,364 students, more than 90 percent of them considered economically disadvantaged.
Valley View had a history of academic struggles but earned an A in 2018 and 2019 under the Texas Education Agency’s rating system, reaching an overall score of 95 and performing at or above state averages in most subjects in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.
At Southside, Ramirez took over a district that had been under a TEA-appointed board of managers since 2017. It enjoyed stability under Eads but still struggled to overcome its low academic standing.
Ramirez saw a similar challenge to what he had inherited in the Valley, he said, a district where students were not expected to perform well and where infrastructure didn’t meet their technology needs.
His goal is to change the culture and the expectations — the outcomes will follow, he said.
Has anything changed so far? Yes, especially communication, said trustee Jesus “Jesse” Hernandez, who was appointed by the TEA in 2018 and, having also won election, will stay on the board as it transitions from state control.
“It’s his willingness to have conversations,” Hernandez said of Ramirez. “It’s as simple as having a conversation with his community, with his leadership team, with his teachers and just being there all the time.”
The superintendent has attended almost every district event in the past year, nights or weekends, Hernandez said. During the pandemic, Ramirez was visible at every food distribution hosted by the district.
The challenges are real, but having leadership that chooses to engage with the community, rather than hide, is an important part of rebuilding, Hernandez said.
“It all builds and leads to building trust,” he said. “To ensure that the community has faith in, not only the elected leaders, but that the administration, the schools, are doing what’s best for the students.”
Southside earned a C in the state’s accountability ratings in 2018 and 2019, increasing from a 73 to a 78, well under the state’s average performance.
This year might not be different. Preliminary STAAR results show most of Southside’s students performed similarly to 2019 — the most recent point of comparison because the tests were waived in the pandemic year of 2020.
Students were urged to return to classrooms this spring to take the STAAR, but attendance was not mandatory and the results are not expected to carry the same weight in calculating campus and district ratings (which also were waived last year.)
But even with less at stake, Ramirez was among area educators who pushed to get as many students as possible to take the tests, hoping this year’s STAAR results could be a useful snapshot of what the pandemic did to learning. With about 90 percent of students participating, the district gained an idea of the damage and what may have worked.
“By no means are we content with the scores,” Ramirez said.
“But knowing where we are at and knowing that there are some improvements in comparison with last year, with all the obstacles our students and staff had to deal with this year, is very promising and encouraging.”
At Matthey Middle School, the percentage of students who met grade-level expectations for algebra remained at 29 percent this year, the same as 2019. Those who mastered it increased from 11 percent in 2019 to 15 percent this year, while the number who “approached” grade-level expectations decreased from 64 percent to 57 percent.
At the high school level, preliminary algebra results were worse. Only 2 percent of students mastered the subject, down from 19 percent in 2019; 10 percent met grade level, down from 48 percent; and 37 percent approached it, down from 76 percent.
The high schools fared better in English, biology and history, maintaining or slightly improving the 2019 scores.
What is expected next year? One of Ramirez’s immediate goals is to have the district move from a C rating to a B and get any failing campuses to a passing grade, C or higher.
“We have everything on our side,” he said. “The board of managers and the involvement of TEA here at the district are 100 percent supportive of the initiatives that
the district is taking. The students, the staff and our parents are on board. So, there is no reason for us to fail.”
Planning
Flexibility was key when planning for 2020-21. But even amid constant changes and uncertainties, many school districts knew early on that they would need to expand summer school, to repair the learning loss experienced by students at all levels.
At Southside, summer school is open to all students this year. It started Monday for high school students and will run to July 1. It will go from June 28 to July 22 for K-8 students.
The district identified and contacted students most in need of summer classes but didn’t make them mandatory, opting instead to encourage early commitment from parents and students.
Last week, 450 high school students began their summer courses. The district already has commitments from 1,148 of the younger students — the goal was to have at least 1,000.
Over the summer, the district is also starting to roll out its STEAM — which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — and Health Science academies at the elementary and middle school level, to expose students earlier to paths they can take in high school.
“It’s now making it to where you have more hands-on activities that are fun and engaging, and relevant, to our students,” Ramirez said of the academies. “And where they actually see how what they learn from the books and the lessons come to be in real professions.”
For teachers and staff, this will also be a time to adjust next year’s curriculum to meet students where they are, Ramirez said, just like last year, when staff of all levels participated in the creation of curriculum and STAAR study guides that will also be used in summer school.
In the following weeks, updated STAAR scores will be one of the many metrics used to shape next year’s curriculum and guide the preparation of even the youngest students as they move up to STAAR testing grades.
“Once we have that system in place, you are going to have students coming in from the very getgo, who are going to be ready for the exam,” Ramirez told administrators. “So study guides are going to be very important.”
Hernandez said he expects that the continued focus on accountability will lead to more cohesive work and, eventually, better test scores.
“He’s very honest with his team, and he has very clear expectations,” Hernandez said of the superintendent.