At the Oct. 6 Montgomery ISD special meeting, the principals for all district campuses provided the board of trustees with updates on initiatives they are implementing for the 2026-27 school year.
Many principals also reviewed the recently released State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness scores and how their campuses improved or fell back in 2025-26.
The framework
At the special meeting, principals across the district presented updates to the MISD board on their individual campuses' outlooks going into the new semester. These campuses include:
What's being done
Creekside Elementary School, led by Principal Shelby Smith, has reported improvement in economically disadvantaged students' 2026 STAAR scores. Smith said the improvement is thanks to campus initiatives like behavioral support and building up staff capacity.
A survey of teachers this past September showed that 93% felt that the campus's systems and processes were working effectively, and 86% of teachers had seen an improvement in behavior on campus.
Montgomery Elementary School Principal Robert Ingalls highlighted the step back the school had taken regarding its STAAR test results. In the 2023-24 school year, MES had scored an 83 on the STAAR test; the following year its score rose to an 88, and this year it dropped to a 79.
“Dr. Ruffin earlier called it a C campus,” Ingalls said. “It's not acceptable, and it's not what we represent at Montgomery Elementary School. We weren't good enough for our kids, for our parents and it wasn't good enough for you guys [the board], so what are we going to do?”
Ingalls said three student groups are performing lower than their peers, including economically disadvantaged students, special education students and emergent bilingual students. MES has begun to implement new programs to support students and teachers in their academic work as they look to improve their district standing.
Because MES is a Title 1 campus, Ingalls said he was able to hire a new reading instructional coach to help improve students' reading comprehension. The campus teachers meet every week to discuss their teaching plans in advance, ensure they understand the material and review student data to develop effective lesson plans.
The other side
As part of her campus success plan, MISD DEN CTE Center Principal Kristy Starkey discussed the growth the CTE center had seen this past year and future program initiatives.
According to Starkey, in the previous year the DEN had only 409 students; this year the student population grew to 520. The DEN also runs a dual-credit program through a partnership with Lamar State College; the previous year, the district had only 85 students registered in the cosmetology program.
This year the dual-credit program has over 450 students registered, thanks in part to new programs of study added to the coursework, including:
Animal Science/Vet Med
Welding
Automotive
Health Science
Criminal Justice
Each principal who presented a campus success plan detailed how their campus would be putting additional effort into certain performance improvements for teachers and students for the current and future semesters.
