Permian Basin Innovation Zone on Tuesday celebrated students, districts and partners in the initiative that has brought big-district opportunities to small districts.
Held at the Region 18 Education Service Center the event featured families, district officials, industry and higher education partners. Students were recognized for being at the top of their pathways.
The Permian Basin Innovation Zone is a Grow Our Own Initiative of the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin.
Its website says, “PBIZ breaks down barriers faced by rural communities by taking a collective impact approach. By working together, we maximize student access to robust Career and Technical Education to provide access to college and high-wage, high-demand job placement.”
Pathways include education, welding and medical. Next year, they will launch an oil and gas pathway, PBIZ Director Sara Saleem said.
Adrian Vega, executive director of the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin said they are only the second region in the state to have a rural collaborative like Permian Basin Innovation Zone.
“We really just wanted to try to bring everybody together to celebrate all the work everybody’s done throughout the year, but definitely our students. They do this work on the ground every day with their teachers. We wanted a moment to spotlight them for all of the work and the families and the trust you’ve put in us. This is an innovative way of doing things and your districts took that on with grace and then you guys jumped right into it as well,” Saleem said.
PBIZ, she said, is based on the idea of equity. Rural students often feel there is a limited path after kindergarten through 12th grade education. One of the PBIZ students told her the first week on the job, “Everything’s dark after high school here. There’s nothing and for the first time I see a path forward and I see a path in this community forward. I see a way to move out of these barriers.”
That was the moment Saleem said, that she realized how important PBIZ’s work is for students.
The students are the future workforce for the region.
“Industry recognizes that and I think that’s one of the most amazing things we’ve been able to see this year is how industry, communities and schools recognize the value of rural communities, but of your students, and I hope that they can hold their head a little bit higher, knowing that they’re not just rural students, that they are the workforce; that all of these adults across sectors are coming together to ensure they do see the future that we see for them,” Saleem said.
Going into year two, they will have 201 students enrolled in PBIZ programs. The enrollment in almost every pathway has doubled. Students have also gotten jobs by meeting industry partners.
“Some of your ninth-graders are talking with college advisors at Midland College or Odessa College currently. They have access to all of these things. Districts have seen fiscal outcomes of this,” Saleem said.
They were designated to get Rural Pathway Excellence Partnership funding from the state, which brings in extra student allotment money. Each of the rural districts offered a pathway, such as the Academy for Education, medical and welding.
“So in addition to the CTE-weighted allotment, districts are seeing an additional income coming in. That gets funneled in for your students. That is helping us build facilities with equipment that is up-to-date,” Saleem said.
“If we need updates and current technology, we’ve worked on that this year; updating and aligning curriculum, working with districts to fill in those gaps. None of that would be possible without the students and the families and definitely not without the admin and the superintendents being open to something that is collaborative in this way,” she added.
Students have told her that PBIZ has impacted their academic outcomes in other courses as they were able to learn time management skills and study skills.
Next year will be Phase II of the program. This year, the majority of students were in ninth grade.
In the coming year, 85 percent of those students are going to start a dual credit pathway. Then 100 percent of them will be in a dual credit program by their junior year or in a continued education program aligned to an industry-based certification.
Buena Vista ISD Superintendent Mason Kyle said he testified in front of the House Select Committee on Education in favor of House Bill 2209, which eventually became Rural Pathway Excellence Partnership. He said the program will take a little bit of a shift next year with a lot of their pathways going through Midland College. They are Buena Vista ISD’s higher education partner.
“We’ve been really mapping out how to magnify the programs that we have. That way our students have the opportunities that they deserve in the Permian Basin,” Kyle said.
McCamey ISD Superintendent Michael Valencia said his wife, Ashley, taught the medical academy. Like other districts who attended, he said he never dreamed he would work in a district that honored a student from another district.
“Again, this collaboration, this work allows us to understand that in this region, the Permian Basin, we’re all in this together. We’re all trying to make this the best place it can possibly be,” Valencia said.
He said they had 20 students this year at McCamey and it is expected to double next year.
Magnum Cates teaches welding at Crane ISD and Odessa College. He’s been teaching just over three years, he said, and the students work really hard.
“They make me proud all the time. They’ve gone in 30-degree weather. They’ve gone in 110-degree weather. They push through it all. When I first moved here from Houston, I thought I was going to get a bunch of kids who didn’t want to do anything. But man, they proved me wrong,” Cates said.
Buck Love, a career and technical education teacher at Grandfalls-Royalty ISD, also teaches welding and engineering in the PBIZ program.
At first, he thought the idea of PBIZ and bringing in students from other districts was crazy. But Love said it was a blessing having students from Buena Vista. The kids pushed each other and challenged each other to be better.
They had 16 students this year and are expecting 75 next year.
“There are so many things about this program that are so beneficial to our students. … It’s a great opportunity,” Love said.
Berkley Meadows, who will be going into her sophomore year at Buena Vista ISD, went to McCamey for the nursing pathway.
“When I first heard about it, I thought it was honestly something that was going to open pathways for students after high school because, like she said, after high school where we’re at, you didn’t know what was happening. This opens that for kids. That way we know what we want to do after high school and we know how we can do it instead of just graduating high school and it’s like oh what do I do now? You have opportunities to do stuff now, ” Meadows said.
Cadyn Elliott, who is going into 10th grade at McCamey ISD, said the welding program has helped him to grow.
Elliott said the program helped him in his other classes.
“It helped me focus in class because I always had trouble with that. It helped me learn new skills and grow,” Elliott said.
