Appointing a bond committee and the need for special education diagnosticians were the main topics tackled by Ector County ISD Superintendent Scott Muri during his media call Thursday.
The ECISD Board of Trustees is in the process of appointing a bond committee for a potential November 2023 bond issue.
“… We would like to put a committee together. Our board is currently in the process of doing that. We are seeking parents, so we’ll have a parent representative from every school in the district; as well as a staff representative from every school; multiple individuals from Central Office from each of the different departments and divisions, as well as community members,” Muri said.
“Our board is busy right now seeking those community members that may be interested in serving, and so if that’s you, if you are interested in serving on the bond committee you may reach out to any one of the ECISD trustees. Their contact information, both telephone and email address, can be found on the ECISD website www.ectorcountyisd.org …,” he added.
On special education, Muri said there is a statewide backlog on testing due to the lack of diagnosticians.
Diagnosticians, he said, are individuals that oversee the testing process.
“In our state right now we have a backlog. Specifically in our area, we staffed up those positions several years ago and currently have a diagnostician pipeline. We have five individuals that are currently in the pipeline. We are funding their education so that they can be diagnosticians. That is one of the investments we made using our ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) money so that we could have enough of those individuals in place to work with any of our students that are identified for potential special education testing,” Muri said.
ECISD is currently outsourcing diagnosticians, but Muri didn’t have information on what company, how many diagnosticians were brought in or how much they cost.
“Again, our challenge in our state is we don’t have enough of those individuals. … I will even go back to my last school district, we had the same challenges in that district as well. This is a just a position that is difficult to find. That’s why we are very focused on developing and cultivating those individuals within our organization. It is a hard to staff area in public education right now,” he added.
He said there are some companies that provide access to diagnosticians, but the rules are pretty specific.
“These individuals have to be Texas certified, if you will, so there are some pretty rigid requirements for these individuals, from a Texas perspective,” Muri said.
Anytime you outsource, he said, you’re typically paying a bit more.
There aren’t necessarily age timelines for testing.
“… Once a student is recommended for testing, the clock begins. But … there’s a pretty lengthy period of time for all the testing to occur. It’s up to a year. It’s a healthy window of time,” Muri said.
Testing helps parents know any type of disability that a child may or may not have.
“But in the short term, if a child is struggling in school that conversation is between mother and father and teacher to work and support that child in whatever ways that need to happen. So regardless of testing timelines or the process of testing, we as educators have to meet the needs of those children today. If a child is struggling today … our responsibility is to address those concerns today regardless of what testing might say. We don’t wait on that. That happens immediately,” Muri said.
During a Nov. 8 workshop, the board heard a presentation on the district’s quest to earn the Trusted Learning Environment Seal. That is the nation’s only privacy framework designed specifically for school systems.
Muri said cyber security at ECISD doesn’t involve a lot of people, but it does involve a lot of equipment.
“Most of our monitoring actually takes place using software applications that monitor our network. Anytime we notice an anomaly, that software application notifies one of our technology engineers. We have one individual that’s responsible for the overarching piece of cyber security in our system, but we have a team of individuals that work collectively to make sure that we maintain a safe and secure environment,” Muri said. “So again, the monitoring is typically done by our software application that simply alerts us if there happens to be a breach or any kind of vulnerability in the network.”
In the case of a breach if it’s something that can be easily addressed, ECISD’s technicians can take care of it pretty quickly from school or home.
“The nice thing about our network and technology is our technicians don’t physically have to be present to address any of the needs that we may have. So a technician would be alerted from wherever they happen to be, using whatever device they would have access to, they would be able to address that concern. If it is a larger breach or the concern cannot be addressed by one of our technicians, then we do have contractors as a part of the relationships we have with different vendors to provide technical assistance and support should we need that in the future,” Muri said.
“But we are pretty quick to respond to any type of breach as our software that monitors our network alerts us to anything that may be problematic.”
As for who would want that information, Muri said there are a lot of people in the world, not just the U.S., seeking information from everyone.
“Typically, they want social security numbers; they want birthdays; for adults, they want credit card information; banking information. That’s the type of information that many times our illicit individuals are seeking information that they can use to create bank account information that they can use to create online personalities, if you will, so they can have access to money, have access to information. But that’s primarily social security numbers, banking information, birth dates and we maintain that information so we have a responsibility to make sure it stays safe,” Muri said.
He added that ECISD provides a lot of professional development for its technicians to make sure they are kept up to speed on the latest information, software and the vulnerabilities.
“Cyber warriors are always improving their ability to infiltrate a network. It’s important that our own team stays up to date on the information that is available, so we make sure we provide regular professional development for them in whatever manner we deem necessary,” Muri said.
