ALPINE The Sul Ross State University Educational Leadership Program has been approved for a partnership with K-12 districts for the Principal Residency grant, a Friday press release stated.
The program is authorized by the Texas Education Agency. Sul Ross State has been approved in each of the five years it has applied.
The Principal Residency grant uses federal professional development funds to pay for principal candidates to leave the classroom and serve as acting administrators while conducting an Action Research Project to improve student achievement on targeted campuses with at-risk subpopulations, according to Dr. Rebecca Schlosser, director of Principal and Outreach Programs at SRSU.
The grant pays for salary, tuition, textbooks, testing and other miscellaneous expenses as the principal candidates serve their year-long residency while obtaining their Master of Education and Principal as Instructional Leader Certificate.
The benefit of a partnership between SRSU and a K-12 school district is the ongoing support and mentorship of principal candidates delivered in a real-world setting of a campus. This year, SRSU’s K-12 grant partner is Pecos-Barstow-Toyah Independent School District. Grant-writing will begin the first week in August.
SRSU partnered with PBT ISD in 2021 without a grant and the first candidate from the District will graduate December. A second candidate will begin the program this fall.
Key to this partnership is the leadership and support of PBT ISD Superintendent Brent H. Jaco. Under the guidance of the Assistant Superintendent of Organizational Management, Cara Malone, the PBT ISD/SRSU principal candidates have been making tremendous academic gains in their work with teacher teams.
“It takes great transformational leaders to create and motivate support for positive change,” Dr. Schlosser stated in the press release. “Not only are our PBT ISD partners, including Mr. Jaco and Ms. Malone, great leaders but those at SRSU, especially Dr. Barbara Tucker, our dean, and Dr. Jennifer Haan, our program coordinator, have been supportive and completely dedicated to the hard work that has made this partnership thrive. We are all looking forward to the next hurdle in the process – filing and hopefully being awarded the Cycle 6 grant.”
