What you need to know
During a League City Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon May 17, CCISD Superintendent Karen Engle shared updates on the district, including how district officials and CCISD board trustees are improving the intermediate school experience.
- As part of the district’s Vision 2030 plan, the goal is for all intermediate schools to be nationally recognized as centers of innovation, creation and collaboration.
- Modeling The Leader in Me program at 11 CCISD schools, starting in the 2024-25 school year, sixth-graders will take courses incorporating The Leader in Me skills.
- District officials are also considering facility modification proposals for innovation centers for 10 of the district’s intermediate schools and/or four schools of innovation.
- Officials’ goal is to have intermediate school students spend a week together every couple months working together in a shared space to solve a problem, similar to what Ed White Elementary School students do.
Engle also shared other updates, including on the Vision 2030 plan.
- By 2030, district officials want all CCISD graduates to be creators, critical thinkers, collaborators, contributors, communicators, connectors, compassionate and confident. These values are the result of district talks with business and industry leaders, who noted they want to hire not only smart graduates, but also those with character, Engle said.
- Also by 2030, district officials plan to have the district offer pre-K to all interested families. The district announced a single pre-K class for the 2023-24 school year, and 500 families expressed interest in it, Engle said.
- CCISD officials have also changed how the district determines class rank. Now it’s only based on a few core classes, and electives that previously did not boost students’ GPA, such as band and choir, now have no bearing on class rank, allowing students to follow their passions without fear of it lowering their rank, Engle said.
In their own words
It’s important for students to learn math and reading, “but it needs to be much bigger than that,” Engle said in reference to CCISD officials focusing on fostering students’ character. “We need compassionate students.”
Enrollment is down in CCISD for the 2022-23 school year at under 41,000. It was higher last year and topped 42,000 in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.
“We’re not looking at new facilities. We’re making sure we’re good stewards of what we have,” Engle said. “Our enrollment is not going up. We are not growing.”
