The Education Partnership of the Permian Basin is in the middle of creating a five-year strategic plan that should be completed this spring.
The partnership also is working with Contigo Ed and four districts to improve college, career, military readiness, which is also a factor in state accountability.
The partnership is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting and improving the quality of education throughout the Permian Basin from cradle to career, its website says.
“… There are four phases to the plan. We’ve already completed Phase I, which was an internal analysis or assessment, talking to staff and board members about gathering information about where we are as an organization,” Executive Director Adrian Vega said. “Phase II was to get more feedback from members of the leadership team. So they’ve had an opportunity to interview different members and so they’re collecting that information and synthesizing that information.”
“Now we’re moving into Phase III, which is to really try to hone in on what are some strategies, or big rocks, that we need to focus on for the action network,” Vega said.
The partnership had its first strategy session with the members of the Grow Our Own Action Network to think through where they want to head.
“At the end of March, we’ll have a second strategy session with the same members of Grow Our Own and then we’ll have a strategy session with members of our ECAN (Early Childhood Action Network) group, the chairs and some other individuals to really help refine our focus areas and strategies around ECAN. I think probably by the end of spring, for sure May, we’ll probably be bringing a draft to the board and to the leadership team meeting so that hopefully by June we’ll have our five-year plan adopted and that will be the roadmap,” Vega said.
He added that it was good to be together and to reinforce the idea that “we’re all in this together.”
“So if the region is going to move forward with some of these outcomes and indicators, no one entity can do it by themselves. It really is going to be a matter of working together and sharing information.
It’s really trying to unlock, or figure out, how can we create regional systems. One example might be data sharing, making sure that our colleges and our schools districts are on the same page of just sharing information, so whether that’s TSI data or whatever the case might be that can help facilitate a transition going from k-12 system to a higher ed system,” Vega said.
“Another example might be if there’s a shortage of maybe math teachers really strengthening the partnerships in some of these dual credit opportunities where maybe a college can help share a staff member in terms of teaching some of these classes,” he added.
Another example, Vega said, could be college advising. “Are there some things we can do to ensure that our school systems are equipped or working on best practices to effectively advise kids to help navigate that transition from high school to college. These are some of the ideas that have surfaced that we’ll flesh out more and see how we can drill down or optimize across the region for a greater impact,” he added.
The College for All Texans website says, “The TSI Assessment (TSIA) is part of the Texas Success Initiative program designed to help your college or university determine if you are ready for college-level course work in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics.”
