Ector County ISD is looking for new instructors through its Odessa Pathway to Teaching program, continuing to work toward broadband access for the entire county and hopeful about COVID vaccines for children.
“Odessa Pathway to Teaching is now open for interested candidates,” Superintendent Scott Muri said during his media call Wednesday. “Specifically, the Odessa Pathway to Teaching provides a teaching certificate for those people that already possess a bachelor’s degree, so if you have a bachelor’s degree and you have thought about teaching in Ector County Independent School District, we through the Odessa Pathway to Teaching, have an opportunity for you. The application is open on the ECISD website … www.ectorcountyisd.org,” Muri said.
ECISD is one of only three districts in Texas that offers this opportunity. The other two are Dallas and Houston ISD, he said.
Asked about COVID vaccines for children 5 to 11 becoming available soon, Muri said the district is awaiting news from the Centers for Disease Control. Noting that the district serves children as young as 3 and 4, Muri said kindergarteners and above will have a chance to get the vaccine.
He was also asked about the district being a site to get vaccines and said ECISD is in conversations with local healthcare providers to explore the possibilities of how they can, as a system, make it as easy and convenient as possible for families to get their children shots.
He added that the district is not a vaccine provider or clinic.
“… And while some of our families may not want this opportunity for our children, we know that many of our families will want that as we’ve listened to their concerns. We want to make the availability of the vaccine as easy as we possibly can for our families so we’re already in some conversations with our local healthcare providers to see if we can make that easily accessible to any interested family in ECISD. But I think … having that vaccine in place and having not only vaccinated adults but vaccinated children will help us as a school system ensure that our kids can attend school on a regular basis,” Muri said.
He added that the number of COVID cases has significantly declined over the last several weeks, which is “great news” for the community.
“… We still have cases every single day in our system and the vaccine will hopefully take us from the small numbers that we have today to potentially zero, so we’re hopeful that this will be a reality and that those families that are interested will take advantage of that opportunity,” Muri said.
Having the shots available for children with the holidays coming would be great, he said.
“… We want our families to have the holiday experiences that they desire … and we know that means lots of people will be together and we certainly want that. The vaccine will be one more thing that we can do as individuals and as a community to ensure that those family gatherings are as safe as they can possibly be and anything that we can do to keep COVID away from our children and away from our adults and away from our community then we certainly need to take every opportunity to do that,” Muri added.
The rapid COVID tests that the state was providing have not come in.
“There’s a different process right now, so the state is no longer sending tests directly to us,” Muri said. “We now have to contact a service provider. The tests are going from a state repository into a variety of different companies and so we are … finalizing an agreement with one of those companies which will not only provide the tests but also the adults to administer the tests on our site …”
On broadband, Muri participated in a U.S. Department of Education webinar Wednesday for people from around the world.
Muri said the Connector Task Force, a group of community leaders that is working on bringing high-speed, affordable broadband to Ector County, was featured on that webinar as an example of partnerships addressing the issue.
Muri said they will need the business community to be part of this.
“We have members of the business community that are part of the Connector Task Force,” he said.
The City of Odessa and Ector County have been approached about helping out financially.
People in certain areas of the county have either unstable or no internet access, and if they have it, it can be expensive, he said.
“They will be able to tap into this new opportunity, so it’s going to be a big win for our business community. In fact, broadband is an economic driver in many communities across the country …,” Muri said.
He added that this will be a win for the business community and it’s one more way to attract business to the area.
“In addition to that, businesses specifically that are focusing upon selling broadband service, they’re internet service providers, they’ll be able to sell their product, their access to the internet on top of this broadband network,” Muri said.
Many local providers are small companies that don’t have the capacity to build infrastructure, Muri said.
“But right now because of the federal money that is available to our cities and our counties and our state, for that matter, we have access to some pretty significant funds that can build the infrastructure and then allow our local internet service providers to simply use that network to share their service with businesses or individuals throughout Ector County,” Muri said.
As for asking for funds from the city and county, Muri said, “Right now, we’re working on the right question and the right question is about money, so how much money are we requesting from each of the entities and so we’re basically working on exactly what that figure may look like.”
“We also have the potential to access some newly appropriated state dollars. The state of Texas received some federal dollars through the ESSER program and the state of Texas allocated half a billion to broadband infrastructure throughout the state. So we also may be able to access some of those funds in addition to the federal funds that are also available locally. We’re working right now on what is that specific dollar amount that we’ll request from our local officials, as well as the state of Texas,” he said.
Muri said if the entities went in on it, they could be considered a gigabit community.
“Many times when we see gigabit communities we think about the city of Dallas or the city of Houston or the city of Austin, but in this case we would have an entire county that is a gigabit county and that is fairly unusual, but highly attractive to families and to businesses that are interested in relocating to our particular area,” he said. “So that’s a unique opportunity that we have in this whole process.”
The district has also arranged satellite Internet through SpaceX.
“There will still be a few pockets of Ector County that even with the solution in place are still so remote that they’ll need a satellite solution, so SpaceX would come into play there …,” Muri said.
There was also an ECISD Live broadcast on social media Thursday focusing on the college application process, financial aid and other postsecondary topics.
