The Ector County ISD Board of Trustees reached consensus that they would like to hire a search firm to look for a new superintendent.
Superintendent Scott Muri recently announced his retirement after five years with ECISD.
The board said they preferred to send out a request for proposals.
Muri said they are going to have good search firms interested in helping.
Trustee Tammy Hawkins said she’d like them to get going quickly on the search.
The board approved an employment agreement with interim superintendent Keeley Boyer. She had been serving as chief of schools.
Muri said Boyer will become interim superintendent as of midnight Aug. 20.
Boyer will be paid at an annual salary of $250,000, prorated for the period of time she actually serves as interim superintendent. As Chief of Schools, her annual base salary has been $178,628.57.
Muri will keep his base salary of $328,801.56 as superintendent emeritus.
“You’re in great hands,” Muri said.
They also approved retroactive appointments of Rebecca Ramirez as the new principal of Austin Montessori; Milam Principal Sydney Garcia; Executive Director of Leadership Maggie Aguilar; and Executive Director of Talent Development Scott Rudes.
Trustees also got an update on the state accountability system. Muri began by letting the board know the release of 2024 A-F ratings is delayed due to a lawsuit filed last week, the board recap said.
The district is not part of this lawsuit, but they are in another one filed in 2023. A temporary restraining order was issued by a Travis County Judge earlier this month barring the release of the A-F ratings until a hearing scheduled Aug. 26, according to the Texas Standard.
The reports and downloads from the Texas Education Agency being received by school districts now do not include A-F ratings, scale scores, nor federal school improvement designations, the recap said.
Muri pointed out several new aspects of the testing and accountability system:
- Previously each campus weighed equally in the district’s rating, now campuses with higher enrollment weigh more in the district’s rating.
- From 2018-2022 a College Career & Military Readiness (CCMR) raw score of 60 was an “A” (and ECISD’s score was a 65); now a score of 88 is needed for an ‘A’; in 2023, ECISD improved to from a 65 to a 73 but that only earned a ‘C’ under the new guidelines despite the improvement.
- STAAR End of Course (EOC) question types were consistent from 2018-2022, over the last two years STAAR EOC has introduced new question types: drag and drop questions, constructed responses, multiselect.
- Previously, testing was done in combination of paper and online, now it is exclusively online.
- Previously, writing responses were graded by humans, now it is graded by an Automatic Scoring Engine and human rescoring.
- The presentation highlighted five areas where ECISD students closed the achievement gap with state performance this year – 3rd grade Reading Language Arts (RLA) and math, 7th grade RLA and Math, 8th grade math, biology and U.S. history.
He closed with three specific areas of focus for ECISD – 5th grade Science, 8th grade social studies which historically has trailed the state averages, and English I EOC which saw the largest decline in performance at the district level.
- Trustees discussed the idea of memorial resolutions for employees, which got testy at times.
The board discussed the possibility of the school district creating resolutions to be read as part of funeral services of former employees. The resolutions would be a way to remember the employees’ service and are entered into the official record of the church and given to the deceased’s family.
Trustee Dawn Miller said the resolutions don’t take much time to do and mean a lot to the families as a way of acknowledging long service to the district, for example.
Board member Bob Thayer, a minister, said he understood how much it meant to families and thought it was a good idea.
Other board members and Muri said it would take time and he didn’t know anyone on staff who had time to do it.
Board President Chris Stanley suggested forming a committee on how to go about this and it was accepted by the board.
