001I am Kelly Kravitz, the director of our Highly Mobile and At-Risk Students Programs team and we are so just thrilled to be with you. This is the kick off to the 2526 school year. We in our team, with our team, we have quarterly webinars that are jam-packed with information, and our team has just prepared an outstanding deck full of information and resources that are going to be relevant to you and for you. Thank you for the work that you are doing and the service to students and families as we've kicked off this new school year. I know that it has been fast and furious and so much going on and we just are literally looking forward to this time with you today, getting to provide some updates and reconnect with you all 'cause
002we show up every day to serve you and the students and families that you serve. So with that, we'll go ahead and get started. So for those that are new, new to our team or just want to refresh our reminder, we are the highly mobile and at-risk student programs team and we are in the Office of Special Populations and Student Supports. And we're actually also in a new division that's called Student Support. But who we are and what we do remains the same. So the program areas that you're going to hear from today is the Texas Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program or the acronym TEHCY, foster care and student success, pregnancy related services and military connected students. We also just support at-risk students broadly dropout prevention and have resources
003and information available. And you'll see that reflected today in some of the information, the legislative updates that we'll be sharing. The point of these webinars is to provide you updates, reminders, key action items to support you in serving highly mobile students and families most effectively. And we want this webinar. And this webinar is a one stop shop for relevant information, resources and updates. So I always like to think of it like as the buffet of HMAR. You're going to hear from each of our program areas and you're going to get relevant information to inform your work So we're starting out right now with introductions and then we have some HMAR general reminders and then we have some at-risk reminders and information. Then we'll have our TEHCY program updates, we'll have military
004connected, military-connected student program updates, and then we'll be closing out with reminders and some closing remarks. So that's what we have on deck. The next hour and a half is going to fly fast. And with that, I already said my name, Kelly Kravitz. I've had the honor of being at TEA for over 13 years and really seeing this work grow from a nothing to a something. And I had the honor of joining TEA and leading our foster care work. And that was the initial project. It was a grant funded initiative and it grew to so much more than McKinney Vento, then at-risk and and on and on and on. And in 2017, a division was formed under Commissioner Morath s leadership to focus on highly mobile and at-risk students, more specifically
005in the Office of Special Populations. And so, our work expanded from being us, a one-person program area to a team of dedicated professionals that lead with both head and heart. Every initiative we lead, we've started. We started it. We grew it from idea to program implementation. And I know that I'm not alone in that. We're not alone as we are dealing with leaders and pioneers from across the state where you get something, you have an idea about something and then you implement it and you create it and you build it. And that's very much what we have done in HMAR. So, I have the honor of leading this team. I would be nothing without my team. This is an incredible team, incredible leaders that have incredible backgrounds and come
006here and pour themselves out every day to serve you all and to serve the kids and the families of Texas at the highest level. We value excellence and deeply value who you are and what you do and what you contribute and want to serve you to at the highest level. To call out and recognize our students that for historically many years were underrepresented and overlooked within our school systems. And we have the honor every day to shine the light and to make things better for those that we serve. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to our HMAR manager to introduce herself. Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Kelly. I am Doctor Ann Le, and I serve as the manager of our HMAR programs. I have such an honor
007to be able to help, support and build upon the programs that we have. Our TEHCY, our foster care, our military, military connected student populations. Before joining TEA in 2024, I was the assistant director of special education and educational diagnostician and a special education teacher before that. So our special population students and vulnerable student groups are such a group that is so near and dear to my heart. Also, I was a former foster parent and I myself grew up as a homeless youth, homeless child. And so it's just a great honor to be able to work in this space with such a mighty team. We are a small but very mighty team, and we make such a big impact. And it's all thanks to your support at the local
008level, the regional level in our community partners. And so, thank you so much for having me today. I'm going to hand it over to our McKinney Vento state coordinator. Hi, good afternoon, Doctor Desiree Viramontes. I do anything and everything with the TEHCY program implementation. Thank you, guys, for the heart emojis. I appreciate it. I'm so excited to have this first webinar and to go over all the updates that we're going to do in TEHCY. Spent the last two years at TEA and this year is going to be one of the best for 25-26 TEHCY implementation. Can't wait to get started with that. And I really want to just shout out just right from the gate that we're going to have Nancy for the first time in Texas. So, I'd love
009to see a lot of emojis for everyone that is going to participate in the national conference going to be in our backyard in Dallas, TX. Yep. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to John Dobbins to introduce himself. Thanks. Desiree, good afternoon. I am John Dobbins, I am the HMR program specialist here on the team. I'm also your point of contact for foster care and pregnancy-related services and I do also support homeless education. Prior to joining the HMAR team, I did spend 26 years in education. I was a special education teacher, elementary teacher, and a middle school math teacher. 20 of my years were spent as a school administrator, as an assistant principal, and a principal at the elementary and middle school level. And I'm excited to be part
010of this team and I am very honored to be here with you today. And with that, I will send it back to Doctor Le. All right, thank you so much. So, as we move forward in this webinar, just wanted to get some housekeeping items at the forefront. So, some Technical Support and engagement. Both the chat and the Q&A functions are enabled. We do ask that comments, feedback are placed in the chat function. And any questions you might have during the webinar, please add it to the Q&A function. When you put it into the chat function with all the feedback that we received, it may get lost. And so, it is easier for us to be able to select some of those questions in the Q&A function to be able
011to answer during this webinar. And of course, if we don't get to all the questions, we will have a list of those questions and be able to address them after the webinar. So, our presenters will be able to answer some of the questions live during our moment of reflection sections throughout the webinar. This presentation is being recorded right now. It is going to be made available on our website by the following week. What is new for our 25-26 school year is that our CPE cert certificates that we provide for attending our webinars will be provided for those who attend the training live. So, if you're here, you're already one step in, but we also need you to complete the end of webinar feedback survey. So, in order to get your your
012CPE certificate, please stay till the very end and then also complete the feedback survey. Where can I use the information from the feedback survey to be able to send you out those CPE certificates? All right, our first portion of our webinar is our general reminders. Super exciting. We wanted to share a new tool with you that's designed to help you to easy easily navigate recent update to to our highly mobile and at risk program web pages. So on the right side, you'll see a little screenshot of it. Mr. Dobbins will be dropping a link for you to be able to access. No worries. When you get a copy of this deck, it will also be available there, so you don't have to to capture all the links right now because
013it's going to be a little fast and furious. This tool was created with stakeholders in mind. It ensures consistency across all our HMAR programs some pages by using a unified format and structure that means clearer navigation, better visibility, and quicker access to the information that you need. The updates also reflect our current priorities and resources, helping districts and partners to stay aligned with the most accurate and timely guidance.