Highly Mobile and At-Risk Student Programs Quarterly Webinar (May 1, 2025)

001Great. Welcome. Come on in everybody. We're really looking forward to spending time with you this afternoon. My name is Kelly Kravitz and we'll just go ahead and give a couple minutes for everybody to to join us and to get into the meeting. Thank you so much for taking time out to be with us today. And as you come in, go ahead and drop where you're from in the chat. Um, we'd love to see who you are, where you're from, uh, as you're coming into today's meeting. Sweeney ISD, Gainesville ISD, Richardson KL, Lebec, Northeast, Canyon, Gerald, Cumbi, Dickinson. Hi everybody. Welcome. We're so glad that you're here. We love seeing the state represented and just where everybody's from. And Kingsville, Edinburg, ESC10 in the house. Dodto ESC14. Wonderful. Go ahead and put your names and your

002role. We'd love to see that, too. Forny ISD, Dr. Gums, welcome. You guys see anybody that you recognize, um, throw a reaction in there, some kind of like emoji if you if you see some of your counterparts across the state. Wonderful. ESC1 Azelle Cindy Region 6 Margie I'm gonna shout out a previous um previous co-orker of mine Kenneth Cloud from Tombbo IOSD. I saw him in the chat. Kenneth way to Hey, Kenneth. Oh, and I see Debbie Walker too. Tana, region 4. Oh, hey Monica. Thank you for serving as an attendance clerk and all of this kiddos and families that you meet every single day of your life. Thank you for doing that. Bobby White, community engagement. Wonderful. Okay. Well, um we have a very robust, uh meeting today. We have lots of good information

003to share with you all. Um and just so grateful. Um this is our last uh webinar of the 24 25 school year. So, thank you so much to those of you that have um joined us throughout the year. And for anybody who maybe this is the first time you've attended one of our highly mobile and at risk student webinars, thank you so much. Thanks for being here, taking time out with so many competing priorities in the end of the school year and May 1st at that. at we are at the end of the year. Um we just want to say thank you so much for being here. Um and thank you for your work this year, the the labors of love, the countless hours that you've put in serving students and families, sacrificing your own

004time away from your own families to to pour into kids and to meet the needs within your community across the state. So we just recognize you. We thank you for just a well-lived year. Um it's 2425 and um we are going to share some information today. today. I know it's going to be well worth your time and uh we look forward to your feedback as always. Um so here we go. We have a QR code. Um and we'd like to start out with having everybody fill this out. So for all 307 that are attending right now, please take out your phone. And something that's significant about this QR code, we're going to ask you what region you, you know, you're in and what district um what your role is, but we're asking you about some

005resources. We would like to hear what what resources we've created, what are some of the things that have been helpful to you, and what are some things you'd like to see, what would help you in your role, what would help you do your job better. And so, those are some new questions that we've added uh to this. And so, please just make sure to fill it out so we can get that information and get that feedback from you. And then at the end of the webinar, we will have a separate QR code that asks about the training specifically and how it met your needs. So, um, and with that, we're going to go ahead and get started. Like I said, we have a lot to get through today. We also have some outstanding guest speakers,

006so you'll hear more about that in a minute. Um, but we'll go ahead and get started. I'm Kelly Kravitz. I have the honor of leading our highly mobile and at risk student programs unit in the office of special populations. Um, and we are thrilled to be with you here today. Um, our team um, serves some very important initiatives, priorities, and student groups um, within our state. And so that is our military connected students um students who are experiencing homelessness, students who are experiencing foster care um as well as pregnancy related services and we also um provide just leadership around atrisisk students generally dropout prevention um and anything where there's at risk students um we try to be at the table as much as possible and um have a voice for the students and families that

007we serve. So, in our webinars, uh, we want it to be meaningful to you, impactful. We want to provide you key updates, reminders, key action items in light of the time of year that it is, new resources that are available. And so, we'll be doing that today. Um, right now, we're going into our introduction, which we normally do. Um, we then are going to have a special guest speaker, um, Mr. Gay, uh, Dale Fowler, who is, uh, from CTE, our career and technical education, uh, area at the agency. have worked with Dale for a number of years and just so thrilled for the collaboration um sharing some really good information about CTE and how we can foster CTE engagement with our atrisisk uh students. Um we're then going to be uh sharing foster care updates.

008Um as many of you know Dr. Watson her last webinar and time with us was at our last uh presentation so she has transitioned to to a new role at TEA. Uh I'll be stepping in to provide those foster care updates. Uh then we have Texas Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program. Dr. Dr. Vamantes will be providing those updates um with military connected student programs. Um Dr. Ann Lelay and John Dobbins will be providing those updates. Then we've got some general um HMR updates for you. And then really excited we have Sarah Virture who's from um our student counseling student supports team at the agency. She's going to be coming uh to provide a wellness activity for us um that's really focused on you taking care of yourself. And so um she will be

009joining us towards the end and then we'll be um wrapping up our time today. So uh this is our incredible highly mobile and atrisisk student programs unit. I wanted to call out Dr. Lei who was recently um promoted to a manager role on our team. And so just congratulations Dr. Lei just for your leadership and service and so grateful to have you um serving as a manager um of our unit. Um I'll go ahead and turn it over to you Dr. delay and then team members can go ahead and introduce themselves. Um, good afternoon everyone. Yes. Um, I am so excited. I've actually reached my one year here at TEA. So, it's been an exciting uh opportunity to learn and grow along with you. And so, I'm super excited to hear what resources that we

010can offer you. So, uh, if you do um haven't already uh fill in the pre-weinar survey, I'm dropping the links in there. And I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Venamantes. Hey y'all. Dr. Vita Montes. I'm so excited to do our last webinar and do some end of year reminders. [Music] Good afternoon. I am John Dobbins. I'm the HMR program specialist here to support the team and anything. Great. Y'all, we care so much about you and we care so much about this work and just do our best to serve um you and serve our students and families and this team. We do a lot. Um we are small in number but we are mighty in what we produce and the quality and the excellence of the work that we put out. I'm so proud

011of of our team and um we we we are all in. We are all in for you and this work. Um and so anyway, couldn't do it without the team. I'm going to be sharing uh next our guest speakers for them to introduce themselves. Um Dale Fowler, why don't you introduce yourself? Uh thank you, Kelly. Dale Fowler, statewide CTE coordinator. Very happy to be here to talk about the overlap and the the collaboration that can occur between our two teams here at TEA. And I do appreciate very much the work that you do. Great. Thank you, Dale. Thanks for being here. And Sarah, go ahead. Hey, good afternoon. As Kelly said, I am Sarah Bircher, the student mental health program manager um here at TEA. It's kind of a the lineage is um in in

012the division or the office rather of school programs um and then the division of college career military prep. I'm on the cast team counseling advising and student supports and what I generally do there is support the mental behavioral health programming for the the 27 community and school affiliates across Texas as I support kiddos. So super thrilled to be here today. I will be back. Um, I am your bookend at the at the end of this amazing webinar. Um, just to bring forward again self-care um, and how to how to keep that practical when life is is running by us um, at warp speed. So, great to meet y'all and I look forward to having uh, having the afternoon with you. Great. Thanks so much, Sarah. We love the feature of bringing on guest speakers and

013folks from across the agency. We've done that now over the last couple of years and it's just really added a richness and a depth to our time. Um, so thank you all for joining us and and being here today. And we also hope that it um is an example of collaboration and just how important it is that we work together. We get outside of the teams that we're on and we work with people maybe in another office or another area to really serve our students and families well. And um we are so much better when we're together, right? And we're coordinating and collaborating in the work that we do. Um, so, um, as siloed as it can be that we are, um, just want to encourage that teaming and, um, I know that y'all, I

014think probably even do that better, much better than we do at TEA, but just want to continue to encourage and foster that, um, in our in our work. As far as some housekeeping today, um, please feel free to drop anything in the chat that's just like responsive, who you are. We'll be putting some information in the chat. And then any specific questions like questions that you want answered, please use the Q&A feature uh for that. Um so feel free to use the chat, but any questions put them in the Q&A and we will have a PDF and a video recording of today's uh presentation available. Um and thank you for understanding we're not able to make the presentation available in advance. And as a friendly reminder, we will have CPEs available for participating in today's

015training. Okay. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Dale Fowler for some CTE updates and information. Thank you, Kelly. Welcome everybody. Glad very glad to be here with you. Um if you look in the if you if you click on the QR code in the upper right hand corner on this slide, that's the u link to the CTE TEA web page. Lots of information there uh for you to take a look at when you get a chance. Next slide, please. So um what can you say about CTE? Um it can be a very effective way of uh for to help students achieve both in their career and their academic success. The let's concentrate on the bottom part of this slide. It's really about having hands-on working ex workbased learning

016experiences. That's what really connects u students to uh CTE and really makes a difference. Um one way of defining CTE and is is pretty simple. Uh it is a coherent it's a program of study which is a coherent sequence of courses that lead to uh completion and u culmination of skills that are in high demand and high wage in Texas. So that's our goal. So one way of looking at it is to think about on one hand we have occupations that we've identified and labor market data. We've identified these occupations as being ones that we need here in Texas and in other parts of the country as well but we're concentrating on Texas. So these high need high wage jobs uh are technical in nature and we teach those we teach skills and knowledge that

017are necessary to be successful in those occupations in our courses. So it's really a marriage between occupational technical skills and and academic skills and the occupations that we're trying to prepare our students for. So, and it does really uh lead to engagement. Many times students like the hands-on part. They learn about careers. They make decisions. They don't have to decide on whether they're going to college or not in high school, but they can be prepared for both. Next slide. So, here's some information that I'm going to ask Dr. Lei to to talk about. One thing I will say is that the circled um indicators at the bottom, those are your students that um we serve and we should be serving more of. Go ahead, Dr. Le. All right. Thank you, Mr. Fowler. All right, let's

018take a look at the data around CTE. Um data matters because it empowers informed decision-making and drives innovative solutions. So the following data that you see here is provided by USDE Perkins data explorer that's specifically for Texas. We have some highle data regarding secondary CTE enrollment that's reflected on this screen here that we would like to call out. As reflected in the top portion, you will have the number of public high school public high school enrollment counts highlighted by the first blue circle, high school CTE concentrators count, and finally the total secondary CTE enrollment highlighted by the second blue circle you see on the right. In focusing on this data with the blue circles, roughly 1.7 million high school students are enrolled at Texas public high schools and about 1.2 2 million are those students

019um that are enrolled in CTE. What this means is that 71% of Texas public high schools are enrolled in CTE. So let's break down the data a little bit further. In the bottom data box, we would like to call out the special populations and our priority populations according to Perkins 5. These are learner groups identified by per um the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act as individuals facing unique challenges or circumstances that may hinder their access to or success in CTE programs. Now, these are also aligned with our TEA OSP special populations. Um just like Mr. Fowler um had indicated, our HMER student programs are highlighted in the orange circles on the below box. The percentages are low. Of the approximate 1.2 million CTE enrollments in Texas, only 1.2% homeless students,.1% youth and foster care,

0201% military connected, and 2% pregnancy related students are enrolled in CTE. That's a lot of numbers. So, as a reference, we currently have 121,000 McKini Vental eligible identified students. In this data pool that you see here, the 1.2% um that is reflected equates to a little over 14.5,000 homeless students in CTE. That's not a lot. So, we need to do more to connect our atrisisk student groups to CTE. As Mr. Fowler shared CTE can offer atrisisk students a pathway to both academic success and career readiness. Now that we see what the data reflects, Mr. Fowler will share some key benefits to CTE program of studies for atrisisk students. We want to be able to provide you with practical strategies and identify opportunities for strengthening for next school year and also for the future. Thank you,

021Dr. Ley. Only thing I would add is just a little background information. Perkins 5 is the federal legislation that guides CTE programs and provides funding for CTE programs across the across the country and in Texas as well. And the other thing is that these we're not serving as many of your students as many students in these special populations as they're called in Perkins 5 as we should be. And that's the purpose of our conversation today. And I hope we'll be able to find some solutions. Next slide. Okay. So, some key benefits as Dr. Lelay mentioned. Um, I've talked earlier about the application and the learning to actual realw world context. That does make such a difference. It's one thing to talk about things in the classroom setting. It's another thing to take those skills and

022knowledge that you've learned and apply them in the real world. Another fact about uh CTE students is that they have have higher graduation rates and subsequently lower dropout rates and they do better u overall in terms of academics. I mentioned earlier work-based learning programs uh they are very helpful for students to get that practical experience. Another factor where students have opportunities, they have a chance to earn what are called industrybased certifications which are highly valued by industry and business licenses and certifications that indicate to employers I have the skills and knowledge uh to do to do the jobs that you have available the the entry level employment and beyond. So those industrybased certifications are another avenue by which CTE students can benefit in addition to the coursework and the work-based learning. Next slide. Okay. So

023here um I we talked about employability like can you get a job? Many of the skills that are taught in CT courses are very much along the lines of employability. Can you get along with your co-workers? Do you appreciate diversity? Can you um show up on time and follow directions? And can can you demonstrate knowledge and skills that are valuable to the employer? So, you see those kinds of communication skills and so on. Um the next item there is um a benefit is that you get access to resources and and support. And there are lots of ways that CTE supports students including tutoring and mentoring on the job uh learning. And then one thing I want to really emphasize is something that makes CTE special and that's the um the fact that there are what

024are called career and technical student organizations CTSOs and those are very helpful uh co-curricular organizations that are studentled they have an advisor and they what they do is they practice the very skills and knowledge that they learn in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, they go to competitions and attend conferences of one kind or another, learn leadership skills, and CTSO students that you come across are very impressive because they're dedicated and they they found a place to belong. And speaking of finding a place to belong, we have um evidence uh that we've uncovered here at the agency that we have a person who u who benefited from uh a CTSo and from CTE. So I'm going to call on Dr. Lei to um take it from here. Thank you, Mr. Fowler, and thank you for

025giving me this opportunity. Um I often do not share about the challenges or barriers I faced or overcame as a child and sometimes continuing into the adulthood but the circumstances, opportunities, setbacks, walls, um all those cumulatively have shaped and brought me here today to do the work that I do and to be able to share a personal narrative about how a simple CTE certification became the catalyst that I needed to pull myself and eventually my family out of the cycle of poverty. So, just a little bit of history going back circa 1980s. Uh, picture a one-story um, two-bedroom home filled with 17 individuals, six adults, 11 children. Um, these families were asylum seekers under the Refugee Act of 1980. And my family was one of them. In today's PES terms, we were considered living doubled

026up. Mckin Ventel eligible. Um but throughout my childhood we lived in poverty. For some contextual information, English is my second language. Um I grew up with a very strong cultural upbringing which I will spare you all from. Um I am the middle child, only daughter and I have a special needs disabled younger brother which you do see picture of him and I in the top left. Um, I was always building and modifying contraptions for him to be able to be included in everyday things like feeling the ocean water and enjoying bike rides. Um, I was brought up and raised to be a caretaker or what they would term as a parentified child. Um, the expectation was for me to be able to provide emotional and p practical support for my family member instead of being

027um and and take uh take on a caretaker role rather than being cared for myself. Um, and this was meant to be what my future entailed. So, I was not meant to go to college. Uh, that privilege was reserved for my older brother, uh, the firstborn Asian son. Um, and so, as I entered high school, um, I enrolled in health classes and I joined, uh, a CTSO, uh, called HOSA, Health Occupation Students of America. And um I did this with my parents' permission only because I finagled my way through it and it they thought that it would help me to better take care of my special needs brother in the future and them in the old age. Um eventually I earned my certified nurse assistant which is a CNA and also my emergency medical technician

028or EMT certification before high school graduation. I became the Houston regional president-elect of HOSA. Um going on to lead HOSA teams uh in statewide and national competitions. And on the screen here, you can see some photos from my days in rotations uh which were hands-on worked based uh learning training or practicums um opportunities very much like internships, but uh you'll see uh medical data entry uh in the top right. um the cardiologist uh department. Um I did work with the American Red Cross, the forensic center, children's hospital and more. Um all that to say, little did they know my parents uh the journey in itself gave me the courage and means to want more for myself and it gave me focus, determination, confidence and most importantly hope. Um I did leave home against their wishes

029to attend college breaking every plan that they had for me. Eventually that led me to being disowned by my family. Uh they thought that uh life would be too tough for me without them. So I would eventually come back to the plans that they had for me. I was very fortunate to receive academic scholarships but also personal endowments from the very medical businesses I did rotations at during my HOSA practicums. These paid for most of my college expenses, but it was my CNA certification that I received in high school that allowed me to keep going. I took classes during the day and I worked night shifts during my four years of college to pay for those extra expenses. Now, because of my CNA certification, I graduated from Baylor University with a bachelor's of science in

030neuroscience, pre-law, and premed. Because of a simple certification, it allowed me to build upon skills and knowledge that has led me through being a special education teacher, educational diagnostician, behavioral specialist, assistant director of special education, and earning my master's and doctorates degree. CTE and CTSO like HOSA can shift a child's trajectory in life by opening up doors that people thought were locked. That is why it's so integral in creating these opportunities for atrisisk students as I once was. When we consider the data, we have currently 121,000 homeless students and according to Perkins, only 14,000 are accessing CTE opportunities. So, we must really consider how can we ensure more at risk students like I was are given these monumental opportunities to access um in access to hands-on career focused learning for an improved future. Thank you.

031Let me say just um briefly that that's a very powerful story and it w it warmed my heart uh to hear how powerful um CTE and CTSO was in the in the life of of Dr. Lei. And she's not alone there. As she mentioned there there are lots of uh there are other stories like hers but there should be more stories like hers. And so I think that's the message there. So, um, way to go. And when I when I heard her story, I was like, "Wow, you've you've you've really impressed me, uh, so much." And it's such a neat thing. Um, next slide. All right, let's have a few more thoughts on CTE. First of all, we've talked about Perkins Vibe, which is the guiding um legislation in the in the country for CTE

032special populations. Your students are represented among the special populations that TEA regularly monitors through Perkins. We want to make sure and the emphasis in Perkins 5 is on student achievement. All students, all students, and making sure that they have the opportunities to succeed. Uh let's talk for a minute about something a term that is important for how we measure CTE and that is CTE concentrators and completers. A concentrator is a student who's taken two or more courses for three or more credits, completed them. And a completer is someone who's completed three or more courses for four or more credits. And that sounds like a lot, but it's really not that much. But it does represent uh a concentration and a completion of CTE. And we're we're banking on and we're betting on and the results

033show that students who are concentrators and completers do better than students who don't have any involvement in CTE. Not that everybody should, but you saw the figures earlier uh from Dr. Lei. 71% of the students in high school have some involvement in CTE. Um last thing I want to mention is that CTE plays an important role in the A throughF accountability system. U now to get uh CCMR credit or going forward next year to get CCMR credit students are going to have to be completers and and earn an IBC to get CTE credit. There are other ways of becoming a getting credit for CCMR of course, but the C the CTE part is important and it's something that you may want to talk about with your leadership in your campuses and your districts about how

034you can help them get students um that credit or that CCMR mark through CTE. on the right hand side just a little slide there indicating part of the slide indicating how we autocode students based on completion of um CTE courses and there's a range of u participation that goes all the way to completers uh and it's based on passing courses not just taking courses next slide All right. So, what can we do to implement successful CTE programs for atrisisk students? One thing is that you can work collaborative collaboratively with your school systems across multiple departments. There is likely a CTE director in your district or campus. uh sometimes at the campus level in small schools it's a department head the CTE department head who serves in that role but those individuals are knowledgeable about CTE

035and they should be interested in expanding their programs and including all students because that's what they're that's what they've learned to do and that's what they know is the right thing to do. So, um, that's one thing. On the right hand side, there's funding available. Perkins, uh, five funding that all school districts receive. Uh, there's state funding, uh, state travel, uh, weighted funding for CTE. The more students you have in CTE, the more money your ADA is. The highest level of courses at in CTE, the level three and level four courses are weighted at 1.47 almost 50% more weighted funding for a CTE, a level three or level four student. So that's something to be considered. And there are a number of districts that that's what districts are aiming for to get those students to

036that level so they in part they can get the funding that they need to continue to build their program. And then you see the other methods there. Part title one part A McKen McKenna Vento and local funds etc. local businesses and industry uh support. Next slide. So what are some strategies? We talked about collaboration but you can also reach out to local businesses. One thing that it is needed in many instances is a place for students to go and learn. It doesn't have to be a physical place. It can be virtual, but obviously hands-on means sometimes being in that location, but you can collaborate with local businesses and industries and identify those places. They are often very welcoming to CTE students. They want to give back to the community. You can certainly personalize learning and

037tailor CTE programs. There is a wide range of courses that are available. Uh we have 63 programs of study across 14 career clusters and those career clusters range from IT to manufacturing to agricultural, food and natural resources to business, marketing and finance. You name it. If there's an occupation, we're teaching some aspect of it. So we can also focus on those programs of study that I mentioned those 63. Another interesting part of CTE is the the notion that we should be integrating math, science, reading into CTE because you have to be able to read a blueprint. You have to read be able to read a technical uh manual and you you need to know the science behind different activities and health and tasks in health science for example. And then what we can do what

038we can do together is provide ongoing support and make and put an emphasis on special u populations highly mobile and at risk students. Next slide. All right. So, what are some resources for HMR student programs? One is you see the resources for foster care, military connected. Uh that's part of the the the house or the division that CTE lives in is called college career and career and military preparation. And we're very much interested in making sure that our military connected students are have their needs met because they are unique. Uh McKenna Vento, you see that as a as you see those resources that are listed there and there are some additional resources. Some of these like act that you see mentioned there. Those are national CTE organizations that have a uh a good perspective and

039have good researchbased act uh knowledge and skills activities. uh research to to take a look at next. All right. Uh comments, questions. Kelly, I'll ask you or Dr. Lei to um look in the chat and uh maybe uh ask any questions that you think we should be trying to answer here. I know we're maybe a little pressed for time. [Music] Yes, we just have one question come in through the Q&A. Uh Julie wants to know if this information is being shared with CTE directors. I'm glad you asked that question because uh one of the things that we want Yes, it the answer is yes, it is through uh our professional development training for CTE administrators and counselors. But in addition in addition to that, we're going to reach out. We're going to have HMR come

040and reach out to two of our large largest constituencies and important uh stakeholders and they're going to be doing that um coming in August and later on this year. So, we're going to ask the answer is yes. This is being shared. Not as much as it should be, but we we need to concentrate on that some more. That's all the questions we have for CTE. Thank you, Mr. Fowler. Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here with you today. I wish you well. Please reach out to me if I can be of any assistance. I know Kelly and and uh Ann and others know where I am, but you you feel free to reach out to me as well if you have questions and if I can help in any way. I am very

041much uh in favor of serving students who are in in need of and can benefit from it. Grows a stronger, more diverse uh makes us all better if we have all included. [Music] Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dale and Dr. Lei. Thank you so much for sharing your life story with us, your life's work, and just being so vulnerable and open to share that with all of us. And it was truly inspiring. It's an honor to work with you. And um I just hope all of you out there that is fuel to your fire hearing Dr. Lay's story for the students that you serve, seeing kids, encouraging them, building them, leading them, creating opportunities for them. Thank you for your work. Dr. Lelay, thank you for your shining example uh for all of us. And

042with that, we're going to go ahead and transition to our foster care section and provide uh some updates. So, we're going to talk high level closing out the year, some reminders with financial aid, um FAFSA, supporting students with post-secary. Uh we're going to talk about transition assistance. We're going to provide some information as we plan for the next year, closing out this year, planning for the next year. Um some information about foster care and awareness month, which is this month in May, and then uh save the date for our upcoming foster care summit. So, wanted to remind you that all students uh that are in foster care in their 11th and 12th grade year, um we and in the schools are to notify them regarding their tuition and fee waiver. And this is a fee

043waiver that is a lifetime benefit. Students need to enroll in one college course. Students who have been in foster care um before they turn 25 to activate this benefit for life. And on the school side, we're required to notify them in their junior and senior year about this benefit. So, we want to make sure that we have notified students and we want to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to connect students to opportunities where they could activate that waiver while they're still in our care, while we still know them um to support them with the activation of that lifetime benefit. And you can find more information about this in chapter 13 of the foster care and student success resource guide. Additionally, it is a requirement in Texas schools for students to

044graduate that we help students uh fill out their FAFSA and we provide support related to the FAFSA and making sure that it gets filled out. For students in foster care, there is a specific question when they've been in the managing conservatorship of the state that needs to be checked. Um so, please make sure that you're doing that. Um these FAFSA requirements are for all students statewide. Uh you can there is an opt out option. Um but obviously with our students, we don't want to opt out. We want to opt in. We want to make sure this gets done. Um, also our students experiencing homelessness, all of our student populations, making sure that they've gotten their FAFSA filled out. Um, for our students experiencing homelessness, those that are unaccompanied, providing that appropriate letter for the higher

045ed institution, verifying their unaccompanied and homeless status. Um, and so we just want to make sure that we're doing that as we close out the year and have due diligence around that. Um, within our transition assistance policy, uh, there are a number of requirements that relate to post-secary and post-secondary planning. And there are some that are for homeless and foster care, both populations, and then some that are unique to foster care and some that are unique to homeless. So, we want to make sure um, with that post-secondary planning, you're also reviewing that transition assistance policy and reminding yourself of those types of activities. um connecting students to on-ampus opportunities, connecting students to community opportunities, making sure that the appropriate liaison in higher ed are connected to the liaison within the school district. Um those are

046just a few things off the top. Um filling out the FAFSA and other post-secondary supports are all included in that. Um something else that is in the transition assistance policy is the reminder for training and professional development. And so as you are thinking about how this year is ending and preparing for the next year, thinking about who needs to be trained concerning transition supports for students experiencing foster care, students experiencing homelessness, making sure that everybody, the principal, the registar, the counselor, designated liaison, nutrition coordinators, transportation specialists, that everybody receives that professional development, that everybody's on the same page. And so as you reflect on this year, one, how did you do in training? Is everybody getting the training that they're need that they need? If not, okay, what can we do in planning for the

047next year? How can we make sure that people are working together and working on the same page and supporting those transitions and mitigating barriers for our students as we close out the year? This is just a time of reflect on how we did and then we plan for next year and how we can improve. Um, so wanted to remind you about that. Um, also wanted to remind you about our transition assistance toolkit. And this is a resource now that's been available for a number of years, but we do have resources to support you um with the transition assistance. And so again, in that spirit of um improvement, growth, growth mindset, how can we get better? How can we review our practices and our processes? How did we do this year? And how can we plan

048for next year? And just want to remind you about this toolkit. Um, similarly, there are some trainings that were recorded a couple years back that are available that really walk you through all the pieces and parts and all the requirements. So, as we plan for the next school year, a couple things that we wanted to remind you of is submitting your updated foster care liaison and your updated homeless McKinvental liaison in Ask TED. Um, so please make sure that you do that. There's often a lot of turnover in these liaison roles and so um if if you're new to the role or there's going to be a new person in the role in over the summer, please make sure that that's on your list to get that updated. Uh we also want to make sure

049that you are reaching out to and making connection with DFPS and the um education specialists that work for DFPS. This is also a really good time to uh reflect on your collaboration with DFPS this year. Is there anything that could be strengthened? Is there things that went well, things that could be improved as again planning for the future? We already talked about training um ensuring proper documentation for PE's identification. So with students in foster care, it's that 2085 or the court order, but reflecting on your ident your documents, um your enrollment documents. Do they ask the right questions to get to the right answers? What are our processes? What does that look like? and making sure that those things are tightened up and shored up and that we have proper communication with the forum whether

050it be online or in person being filled out appropriately and then we have the right communication happening um within the campus and within the district so that we make sure that students are properly coded. Um it is so important and I can't stress that enough. Um, and then with the enrollment conference and the welcome packet, those are all activities as you're starting to plan for next year, making sure that you're reviewing how did we do with our enrollment conferences? How did we do with our welcome packets and communicating to students who were experiencing homelessness or foster care when they came into our school? What did what were our processes? How did that work? Um, so again, re re reviewing our tools um and reviewing your processes and strengthening and planning uh for this upcoming upcoming

051year. May is National Foster Care Awareness Month and so we've included here a toolkit. This is a great opportunity to increase awareness about students in foster care, promoting um them the educational opportunities, awareness about life circumstances, just using this opportunity to mention students in foster care in an upcoming meeting or training or thinking about your practices differently. How do we how can we increase awareness about this student group in the work uh that we do? And lastly, want to give you some dates. Um, so we are planning our third foster care summit. We are going to be moving this from September to December. Um, so a little bit further in the year in 2025. And our tenative dates, it's going to definitely be the University of North Texas. So, it's definitely going to be in

052that location. And we are still securing which date it's going to be. most likely the second and third, but it will be during that first week of December. So, go ahead and block that time. Um, it will be a two-day or one and a half day summit um again and it will be that first week of December. Um, so we look forward uh to seeing you there. Great. I realize I talked a bit fast. I do apologize for that. Um, are there any questions? Uh there was a couple requests for additional uh FASA letters which we've documented. Uh so we have that in place. [Music] Um there's a a request for the foster care summit to be on the fourth and 5th. Oh, okay. Specific. Um there is a question they there is a school

053district it's a large school district that has many other training uh folks that they must attend. Is there ever a time where training is going to be required for all or most school district personnel? And this is from Sakia Johnson. Um we don't have a scheduled required uh training for people to attend. Um, but we do have various trainings available that could fulfill that requirement. We will be working on developing a TEA learn course and we're going to be doing that across our uh unit uh for all of our programs. And I think as far as meeting uh training standards and things like that that taking that course would be really beneficial for folks. And in the meantime, check out all the training that we have on our website because we've got a lot um

054especially in the foster care space. Uh Dr. Dr. Watson led us through that entire guide with webinars on every chapter. Um, so that is definitely a resource that's available for you. Great. We'll go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Venezi program updates. Thank you all so much. Welcome everyone. I'm going to go through the Texas Education for Homeless Children and Youth. um commonly known as TEI updates and I'm so excited for our last webinar because we get to talk about end ofear reminders and summer planning. So just want to set you up for all the different things that I'm going to be talking about as we go through this section with TETI. Um couple of considerations that are going to be really helpful have you have a strong um finish to your school year

055and a strong start to 2526. So, for end-of-ear reporting requirements and summer planning, it's a great time to go ahead and run some PEMS reports to look at progress monitoring, um, which of your students are going to need to do summer school enrollments, which of your students need to enroll in enrichment opportunities over the summer, as well as, um, what are your promotions looking like between grade levels, and if there's any assistance that you can provide for your students, um, based off of that data and recommendations of things that they can do over the summer. Review your Mckin Vento program needs and community partnerships. Um include items in your request from your program services assessment. Reach out to those community partners about the upcoming school year. And also develop strategies um to develop and communicate

056your program needs including district data, end of year survey information or community information just depending on how you um implement your Touchy program. So let's dive in. So couple things that McKini Vento leaison under the federal Mckin Vento act need to do in the summer for McKini Vento students to meet the same academic sta standards as housed students consider some of the following. So end of year progress checks. So, this is you looking through each of your students that you have identified as experiencing homelessness and seeing where they are academically, if they um coordinate, if there's a summer school program, if there's any credit recovery things that they can be doing over the summer, if they can enroll in community college courses or dual credit courses, any enrichment opportunities. um when you go through your

057data and look at where your students are, also looking at if there's any promotion um conferences that are being held at the administrative level, that's a great time, this is a great time in April and May to be looking at that. And also, um what does your district offer for summer enrichment programs or summer school enrollments? What are the qualifications? putting that together in a nice little newsletter packet or email or remind to send out to your families can be really really instrumental. Something that's very um handy to do while you're doing that is to also include any summer opportunities for community resource support. Um and just throw an emoji out there if you have any students or families that have a really hard time over the summer connecting with food. So there is a

058huge food insecurity when you go through the summertime. Um, and so it's great if your district offers food opportunities with your cafeteria services, um, you definitely should let your families know so that they can come and access those food resources, um, and where they can go in the community to get fresh produce. Um, the Department of Agriculture has areas all over the state of Texas that provide a free produce day and that's once a month. So coordinating with any of those community folks is extremely important and make sure um check in with your ESC McKini Vento leaison if you're not very sure of those opportunities of what could be offered regionwide. Um the summer is a very long and difficult months for our families or students and families to get through. So it's really important

059that we're communicating all of that information. Um, you can put all of this together in one newsletter and one email and one remind and one text for your unaccompanied youth just to make sure that they have this as an entire packet of information of how they can approach the summer. And you can also do ongoing automatic email reminders um for things that happen during the summer as upcoming events. And we can jump into the next part of it. So this is my favorite part. I mean I always have a lot of favorite parts. This is definitely one of my favorite parts um when I was a liaison for 5 years is going and meeting with the unaccompanied youth to provide the verification letter. We have an excellent resource on our touchy web portal. Um so

060when you're doing the verification letter including the social security number you need to make sure that you do this as a hand delivery which is always much more fun to do anyways. It's a great opportunity to catch up with your your seniors that are unaccompanied youth um to talk through FAFSA verification and then also ask them what schools they've enrolled in um or selected or still considering doing applications for and see if there's anything that you can do to connect them to their school counselor if there's still opportunities for them to enroll in post-secary options. All right. So, in this next phase, um, over the summer, I'm not sure if there ever really is a quiet time when you are running a a homeless program or wearing many hats, but I do know as the

061school year winds down and as you make your recommendations and you're transitioning in May and June, it's a really good time to start to pull together um a reflection and review of all of your professional development that you've been providing. And this can be when you are um doing meetings with administrators, doing meetings with registars, connecting with the transportation department. Um, if you do some kind of learn modules at the beginning of the school year that everybody has to take to go over Mckin Vento practices, this time between May and June is a great time to review, assess, revamp all of your professional development, your approach to school personnel and how you reach out to them to ensure successful identification of Mckin Vento eligible students. Um something that I did as a personal touch um

062you have folks coming in in the summer um I worked the whole time throughout the whole summer and so after that short break with the central administration uh our registars would start and then our counselors would start and it's kind of like a phased in approach and so something that I did is I did a video to welcome them back I did a quick refresher over the SRQ for the registars um not not nothing big I did it off my phone and did it as a video and sent it, you know, did 30 seconds and it was really helpful for my registars to have that information. You can also do that as an email, just some like helpful for reminders as you're coming back in the summer or any updates that you may have or

063any professional development that you would like to share with them. Um, so I have a few buckets and some suggestions based off of our Teti web portal selections of what you can do with registars, nutrition coordinators, and transportation specialists. And then also as you're looking at campus based folks for counselors, principles, administrators, and the designated liaison that could be points of contact that you work with at each campus to help um do your TEI program implementation. So let's take a look at what those recommendations are. Just trying to make it easy for you guys to turn it over um and go ahead and copy and paste that in there to the email of like, hey, you want to know about more about Mckin Venta or you're new to the role. Here are some suggestions. Um

064all right so if we can go into the next slide. So here these are some professional development uh suggestions for you if you are working with registars nutrition coordinator and transportation specialists. We've already developed the webinar for you. So you have Mckin Vento 2011 and it covers the enrollment identification dispute resolution processes. Um that enrollment and identification is super helpful to go through for your registars and nutrition nutrition coordinators. And I always added transportation inside of my approval email um so that you could know if there was going to be school of origin transportation. I always highlighted that for the transportation support and then the transportation department would do a reply all on that approval email and let them know what the routing information was. It was a quick and easy way to make sure

065that everybody was in the same communication. Um, in particular for your transportation folks, we have um, our new webinar that we did this year is the Mckin Vento 301 for transportation. It focuses on transportation strategies including school of origin transportation services and funding. We recognize that our webinars are two hours long. It also has the slide deck. And so if you are including that as a link and you want them to focus on a particular area within that, like maybe you want to explain school of origin or maybe you want to go through the SRQ, you can always just put the slide numbers on there um and really help direct that professional development. But just wanted you guys to know about this that it's already created material and it's really easy to turn it around.

066This is a great time to prep those emails to help folks when they come back on board for the 2526 school year. And then going into the next slide for our counselors and our administrators, um principles, anybody who is a designated point of contact, truency officers, anybody and anything that has anything to do with um discipline considerations. This is a great opportunity to do uh Mckin Vento 101 to do overview to key components if they're new to their role and working with the Mckin Vento student population. There is also funding and sustainability. There's always a lot of questions of how to do different things. So that would be that entire PowerPoint goes through title one part A. It goes through um state comped. It goes through title 4. It has Perkins with the CTE considerations

067that we heard from Dale. Um if you guys could give some engagement like give some likes or some hearts if you use any other program services to help your outside of Teti funding. Do you use any other federal funding to help support students experiencing homelessness? And if you want to pop that in the chat for which which funding source you use and how you use it. There we go. There's a few others that do that. So if you do your Title One Part A set aside, there's a brand new worksheet that's out from Title One Part A. Um, so those are excellent ways to do that. If you're new to looking at different funding sources in the postp world, you can go ahead and look at that funding and sustainability and also share it with

068these folks. Um, our most popular webinar and I'll just invite Dr. Ann Lei to join us on camera is our discipline work that we did this year for the discipline toolkit. Um that was definitely a labor of love between us and the entire I feel like we we just did everybody across TEA like you'll see like a large dedication page but we are so thankful that we had over 1,700 register and look at that webinar and we had administrators and we had counselors we had designated leons and everybody was so excited about that content and how it could help you. Um so definitely use that when you're looking at your professional development. It's a nice quick turnover. If you're like, you know what, Desiree Ann, I don't think I can get them to go through

06940 pages, we've got you. There's a one-pager already ready for you and it's ready to hand out. And if you're like, they don't know any of the basics, we got you. That's a onepage in infographic. So, you got the onepage infographic and your one pager for discipline and you are good to go on your revamping for professional development. um we work really hard here and looking at our feedback and both of um both of the transportation as well as our discipline came from feedback from you guys from the surveys that you fill out. So just huge thank you. Oh Cynthia, thank you. Great job with that webinar. We really appreciate that. Um I don't know, Ann, I'm not seeing very much engagement. So I I don't know if we should do more content like that.

070I'm I don't know. I don't know. I need to see some like, you know, some love out in the universe out in the because we're Okay, here we go. Keep it going. I don't I don't think you were you were seeing it. I was seeing some some Oh my goodness. Okay, now my screen is just like now loaded. Everybody's very excited. Of course, we're going to keep doing that. We want you to keep the feedback coming. That is how we drive um what we do in the touchy space for and also our HMR web um content. So, keep it up. Keep all that feedback going and also turn it over. Share this with your principles, your administrators, your counselors, your designated liaison. Um, I've got to say like John, go ahead and hop on. He's

071a former administrator. He is saying this is a gamecher in the, you know, and how you can work with your administrators. So there straight from the administrator's mouth. He's going to, he's going to throw two thumbs up towards that. Um, so just wanted to shout out the team and all of the different ways that you can use this for your professional development. How do you guys know we like dogs? We all have dogs. Yes, thank you for that. We love that. All right, we'll hop into the next slide. Thank you guys. Oh, see now now that now they're going. If you find a hedgehog, I just got a hedgehog. So, super excited to see that. Now, how can you assess gaps in services and supports? Collaborate with your programs. Talk to CTE, talk to EB,

072talk to SPED whenever you see that your student is involved in other programs. This is a great opportunity to develop a network of support looking at LEA policies and procedures to support implementation of School of Origin transportation services. Make sure you're including school of origin program services and the procedures in your annual McKini Vento trainings. Now, there are I don't know if you guys know this, but CTE programs are different between campuses within your own school district. And so, making that case for school of origin, especially if that student is engaged in that CTE program, is lifechanging. You guys heard Dr. Lei talk about what she was able to accomplish in that. Um I had many of my students get certificates through CTE programs. Um lots of quality support um with students with disabilities. And

073so making that case for school of origin when you're talking about programs with your administrators, with your counselors, with your registars to make sure that your students um understand and are not you're not creating gaps and services and supports as you're working with your students. All right. And we can jump into the next one. So, what else can you do during this time? You you can look at strategies to assess gaps and services and supports, but also go back and review your intake forms. What services were already provided? What items were requested but not available? How often do families contact you for additional services and supports? Is there something that people were contacting you about? And I know housing. So, like throw a thumbs up if you you have families that are asking about housing.

074We have an affordable housing cross uh crisis across Texas. It is so difficult to provide that support. Um, but you can work with your HUD office. You can ask your HUD office if they can provide a Mckin Ventto leaison voucher. It exists, y'all. I I joined a HUD board to make sure and look at all that kind of stuff. So, whatever they're asking for, whatever you have as a gap in service or you're like, I wasn't able to get a coat for a student or or a sweater during cold weather or I needed hygiene kits or I needed this kind of school supply. This is the time to review that. And you can send out a nice quick thank you to all your community partners. Also, while you're sending out that thank you, like, thank

075you so much for your support and what you were providing for the inkind donations. Just to let you know, we're projecting 2526 is going to be about the same. Um, can we do we have a commitment with you to do this next year at this time? Um, can we increase the donation? Do you know of other groups that we can work with to meet these the hygiene kits, prepaid cards, whatever you're needing and you saw as a gap in service? So, it's a thank you and it's also a way to create sustainable practices. And then we'll hop into the next part of it. So, go through your program services on your intake form. We have one on the Teti web portal. If you want a place to start, that's a great way to do that.

076Review them. Review your funding sources. Look at um title one part A. Look at state comped. Look at the funding and sustainability webinar if you need some more ideas. Develop those grant proposals and community partnerships to make sure that you have a nice sustainable thing to set you up for a very successful 2526. And then as we roll, we'll go into the next part of it. And this is the month of the military child. So I do want to get through get get you guys going so you can hear all that awesome thing. So, you can do a needs assessment of your Mckin Vento program. Um, the the best way to do this, the easiest way to do this, what I would highly recommend is to do the RDA self assessment. It is a it's

077already ready for you. It's in a rubric format and it's a great way to just click off, do I do this in my program or I don't do this in my program. The best part, it's a comprehensive overview of anything and everything you need to be implementing with TETI. Um, you can connect with your ESC McKini Vento leaison if you're like, I don't know what this is means or how I can do that. Um, and we have lots of our ESC Mckin Vental leaison on this webinar. So, if you guys want to throw some love at your ESC Mckin Venta leaison, they always appreciate that. You can do that in the chat or you can do some emojis with that. Um, my most important reminder for this time of year is to run all of

078your Mckin Venttor reports before summer roll over. Think what data you will need for your interview reports, the needs assessment, presentations. What Annette is calling out Ann saying she's so awesome and supportive. We agree, Annette. Thank you for that. Send out your end ofear survey to your students and families, pertinent district personnel and community partners. If you need any help on anything that's on this slide, just reach out to your ESC McKini Venta so you can navigate that space and get helpful suggestions. All right, we will go into the next one. Tanya and Amy are great over in ESC12. Okay, this is our opportunity. So, check in with your ESC service center for summer professional development options. And if you guys just want to throw out all the emojis and the reactions that you can

079in support of your regional ESC Mckin mental leaison, they work so hard for everybody across the state. We have a huge capacity network. We are 50 plus strong because of the excellent work that they are doing around professional development, resources and support, technical assistance. If you don't, you're not on the clock during the summer because you're off on summer vacation, you can always send your folks to opportunities that are happening at their ESC service center. They're open. They have BPD opportunities. So, make sure that you're connecting them with those resources. Yes, Ann, you love region 13. ESC4 is so helpful. Oh my gosh, guys, that is so good to send that that reflection and that feedback to them. They love it. That is awesome. And then that this is wrapping it up for me. So

080I'm just going to um go into the next part of it. Remind you guys that we have one more touchy office hour that's May 15th. We'll drop that registration chat in the link if you want to join us. This is an opportunity where there's not a PowerPoint and you can just bring whatever you've got and we will help you answer it. And we we are a little bit low on time. So I am going to if you have a question for me absolutely drop it in the Q&A. I'm happy to answer those. already answered a few. Um, thank you guys so much. I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Lei um to go into the military space and Mr. Dobbins. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you, Dr. Vamante. So, we are now here

081at the military connected student program updates. Um, during this portion on the next slide here, uh, during this portion of the HMR webinar, John and I will be presenting you with updates and reminders of available resources, planning activities for the summer. Purple Star Campus designation and month of military child update. And lastly, PD opportunities. Um this isn't the first time we have shared uh this data report that we will be presenting to you today. Um this is just a reminder, but um earlier in this uh semester. Um Kelly, if you can go on to the next slide, the agency developed a unique uh statewide and individual regional MSI or military student identifier data report brief. Um this was to support the strengthening of the infrastructure implementation and support for military connected students across Texas but

082also included uh purple star campus designation data using the PE's C197 data. Um this brief um provided an opportunity for state, regional, and local partners to gain understanding of the data trends and discuss ways to enhance implementation strategies um for supporting military connected students. And I'm going to go ahead and drop this link here for you. So, if you haven't seen it already, go ahead and click on this link and then you can open it up. Um, at a high level, this report can assist stakeholders in understanding military uh student identifier across a three-year analysis, specifically 22, 23, and 24 fall snapshot data. overall statewide counts by school year and by individual MSI type or PES code one through six is uh depicted here on the first page and on the screen you will see

083that in the purple uh table um in the middle of that first page. Additionally, the data brief provided a an overall count of military connected students by ESC region. This is on the second page um at the very top you see those bar graphs right there. This highlights the importance of connecting and partnering with your ESC military champions because some of the LEAs with the high number of military connected students are located in ESC regions um that are not near military installations. And for example um ESC4 is in the top five um the top 10 and they are not near a military installation but we do have a very large military connected student population. And lastly, at the bottom of that second um page in the purple uh table that you see um it depicts

084the information of purple star campus designation across five years that TEA has awarded um the designation. This allows readers an opportunity to understand how many purple star campuses were awarded by ESC region as they compare to the total number of military connected students. This is an if you love data, this is an an amazing opportunity to look at ways to increase the uh motivation and um and getting the designation for purple star and but also um really um highlighting the importance of military connected uh student population and bringing that support to them so that they can um grow in their academic but also um as they transition into um their environment. On the next slide, um it gives a little uh bit of a suggested activity um as we are wrapping up the 2425 school

085year. These suggested activities can help you prepare for the 2526 school year. Um four recommendations that we have is reviewing your school systems military student identifier or peace coding system, ensuring that your local process captures all six identification codes. Um the second uh recommendation is updating your campus web page for military families with enrollment and registration information that's pertinent to um the next fall uh registration window. Three, planning professional development opportunities for supporting military connected students. This can include uh PES identification um how to support u military connected students through student transition programs or just u an awareness for um at risk students and lastly reviewing the purple star uh campus designation rubric but also um the uh OSP results driven accountability self- assessment or or RDA for military connected students. This is a great

086way to be able to identify opportunities for program strengthening. And on the next slide, um the 2526 purple star application window is currently open. Um a TA was released uh April 3rd to announce that April uh is month of military child and that the purple uh star application window opened which was um April 4th and will be closing June 6. So, we're one month into the application window. Um, interested uh eleas uh still have an opportunity to apply um all the way till June 6. It will close at the end of day on June 6. So, I'm going to drop the link here to the TAA so you have the information that you need. Um but um at a high level on our next screen that purple star campus designation uh just wanted to remind

087you that it recognizes Texas school systems that show support and commitment to meeting the unique needs of military connected students and their families. Um Kelly, can you advance to the next slide? The four main purple star criteria is depicted here on the screen. at a high level um campus-based military liaison, a campus web page for military families, a campus studentled transition program, and at least one of the three military initiatives that is uh depicted there. Um the awards are uh given out each fall. The designation lasts for two years and after the two years, campuses who want to continue to keep that designation must reapply for redesignation. So, this uh 2526 application window is going to be our sixth year at TEA um to be able to um get the award across. So, we're looking

088forward to receiving your application. And then at a high level, providing you with important uh dates and uh updates for the application window. Um the green check marks means that it has already passed. So, right now, what we're looking at is our next and last Purple Star office hour scheduled for May 21st. So, if you have questions regarding the application process or just have inquiries regarding um information you would like to submit before you submit it, this is a great opportunity to get clarification, but also to listen in on other um questions that other people may have. Um so, be sure to attend whether you are new or applying uh new to applying or renewing. um to align to our strengthened commitment to serving our military connected students and families. We have increased the rigor

089for our purple star process. Our support services and implementation strategies continue to evolve and grow in order to best meet the unique needs of our students, families, and stakeholders. And with that, we have developed new and innovative resources in order to match our efforts to support the rise of Purple Star across Texas and beyond. And with that, Mr. Dobbins will be able uh to share some reminders about these available resources and tips and strategies for completing the application. Thank you, Anne. The STA has a one-stop shop for Purple Star Campus designation application support and overall implementation. Don't forget to visit the website uh to view the application exemplar resources, recordings, and PDFs after this meeting. These resources will walk you through each application question and provide suggested responses aligned with the application rubric. Additionally, Purple

090Star rise and 10 additional new Purple Star campus designation tools are ready for you. We also have tips and strategies for the purple star campus application submission. Ensure your campus-based military liaison selected is a campus employee. We recognize uh we encourage all applica applicants to use the purple star campus application rubric. This will assist you in meeting the requirements and providing necessary details. Using the application PDF will help you pre-plan your responses prior to starting the application submission. As a reminder, application submissions must be completed in one city. Use the optional evidence template to help organize and plan out your evidence uploads. Reminder, your upload must be in one PDF file and evidence must be included with detailed descriptions. We have an application exemplar reporting and PDF to assist you in understanding how to align

091your responses with the rubric and examples of accepted responses from prior submissions. Ensure you click the submit button when your application is completed. We also encourage you to download a copy of your submission once you have completed it. As part of April's month of the military child celebration, Ann and I had the opportunity to visit two districts to see the great things they are doing for military connected students and some of their month of military child celebration. I had the opportunity to visit Flower Bluff ISD. I was honored to be welcomed by the superintendent Chris Steinbrook and associate superintendent Dr. Baransky. We visited the primary and junior high campuses. I was able to meet with campus administration and counseling staff to discuss their military connected students programs and see some of the activities the students

092were participating in for the month of the military child. It was very clear to see supporting military connected students is a part of Flower Bluff's district culture now and we'll review her campus visits. Uh for my visit to Waller ISD I was greeted by the amazing Dr. Dean Guerrera, Waller ISD's military connected liaison and district and campus administrators, including the director of state and federal programs, chief academic officer, HT Jones Elementary and Waller Junior High School principles, and also Mr. Benny Mays, the loan finalist to become the district's new superintendent next month. Led by Crystal Sanders, uh, campus military liaison for HT Jones, they organized an amazing purple up day breakfast with military connected parents and students. The immense pride and support across the staff, families, and student was evident, and I enjoyed the students

093sharing their stories of their families with me while depicting them through coloring and drawing of family portraits. Waller Junior uh Waller's junior high, a military connected activities are led by Alli Lee, campus military connected liaison, who is also named secondary district teacher of the year. She not only influences the growth of military programs on the campus, but districtwide. Our purple up celebration at the junior high included very competitive games of military bingo with students and staff. Thank you, Waller ISD, for sharing your campuses, students, and successes with us. And on the next slide, we want to take this opportunity to thank all our Texas school districts who participated and celebrated month of military child in April. Your support in recognizing and honoring the sacrifices and resilience of children who are part of military families is

094crucial as we work to address the unique challenges and triumphs these children face such as frequent moves, deployments, and family separations. We have been excited to see some of the celebrations that were submitted as part of the Purple Star application, but would love to see more from across Texas schools. If you have pictures of your campus's April celebration that you would like to share with us, please submit them to our 2425 celebration stories across Texas link which we will drop in a bit. And now John will share a few PD opportunities related to military connected programs. Thanks Kenan. Uh as a reminder we do have the new TA learn course purple star rise that was released in January of 2025. This course was created to support Texas schools with implement implementation of the Purple Star

095campus designation. This is a three-hour course and does not have to be completed in one city. We currently have 230 learners registered and we'll drop a link to this course in the chat. Another course that you have the opportunity to take is the MC3 Compact 101 online training portal. Complete this free course on demand and on your own schedule. When you complete this course, you will receive a 1 and a half hour CPE certificate. This course is recommended for district campus ESC staff as well as any military connected student stakeholders. This training can count for your purple star campus professional de development requirement for your campus military liaison. And we'll also drink drop a link to this in the chat. And that comes to our question and answer session and any comments. Do we have

096any questions? Ann, actually we're going to address the questions as we go. But in the sense of time, um, we're going to move on. Thank you. So then, thank you so much. Now, Kelly will be reviewing some of the additional resources that are available to assist you in your work. Thank you team. We are going to rip through these resources. So much good information happening. Really quickly, um the new RDA accountability manual is out. And the biggest thing that you're going to see in relationship to other special populations, which are groups, homeless, foster, and military, is that hold harmless has been removed. So hold harmless kept some districts with smaller numbers of students from being rated through the process that the RDA pro system does and now that has been removed. So all um population

097all campuses and districts regardless of their size will be looking at the other special populations indicators with RDA. So just wanted to make sure everybody's aware of that. The new accountability manual is out. You can look search the manual for the information, but make sure to flag that for your administrators and know that for yourself. Chapter 37 uh is some excellent information related to discipline and there's a tea learn course that um we we don't we didn't create our discipline area created but wanted to make sure everybody is aware of this because there's such good information in it that relates to discipline and discipline policy. Um related to charter schools. If you're a charter school, the agency has a new all-in-one charter school update form. So for foster care leaison, homeless liaison, anything where before

098you would email the agency, now it all goes into a a one-stop shop in this form. So just want to make sure that you know that and can utilize this form to provide any updates to the agency concerning your charter school. And with that, we're going to go ahead and turn it over to Sarah Virture, who's going to talk about educator wellness. this camera. There we go. I've been struggling with my cursor. Sorry about that. Um, thank you so much for welcoming me back. I'm not going to lie, when I came back on uh and and Dr. uh Beta Montes was on, I thought I had jumped on to uh Home Shopping Network, I was looking to see who was um going to get the watch. She has such amazing energy. Um and thank you

099so much to this this phenomenal team of Kelly Kravitz and Dr. Lelay and uh John Dobbins and uh Dr. Vamantes and then today from uh Mr. Fowler who presented. Um you've spent the last hour and a half digesting information and I'm going to walk you through just a few minutes to process information. um as uh in the education system. I've been in education. I was a a K1 educator and and I've been in for over 18 years. And um you say you hear all the time self-care, self-care, it's where it's at. It's where it's at. Well, one of the things that is is interesting about self-care is when you are drowning lovingly, um you freeze and you know there's things you need to do that could help you. you know, there's spaces, but we also

100have to honor that things are moving very quickly around us. We're just going to take a minute and I'm going to introduce you to a self-care plan, right? So, this is just a way for you to sit and intentionally remind us who we are when when that movement starts going, when it helps us manage stress, it improves our mental and physical health. Right? So what we're looking at here um in the dial is we are in the middle that is us and the the around are the the topics um that we highlight in areas that we can build in some self-care throughout our day. Um thank you. All right, Miss Kravitz. Thank you. Um what is a self-care plan? It's it's a preventative tool, right? So, if we do not choose a preventative tool, we

101in education know we mostly work in reactionary ways. When we're reactionary, we tend to go and our brain neurologically goes into fight, flight, freeze, right? So, what we're doing is training ourselves to lean into this tool, take 10 minutes to plan um and know that you can carry this outline with you when you get overwhelmed. Thank you. Here's a couple examples. Right? So, if we just had to self-care for me, I would I would use the the dial. But also, this is a way that we can teach our students, teach our own kids, teach our teams to to move in and just take a moment to plan. we move through um positive affirmations or setting an intention uh for the day and then we always have a checkout at the end of the day. How

102did today go? What what did it look like? What did I do? Great. Where do I need to still continue to grow? Thank you. So, in that self-care plan that you'll see at the top, we see professional self-care. There's a piece of me that needs physical self-care. There's a piece of me that needs personal and hygiene self-care. There's mental self-care, emotional, there's a spiritual component. There's a professional piece. There's maybe even a financial piece. So, all the sections here in in the dial are now laid out and in the top of the columns. And I've just laid out some ideas of of ways that we self-care. I would absolutely love if you could if you self-care and you have something that's tried and true for you. Let's throw it in the chat. Um and and

103maybe somebody can say, "Oh yeah, you know what? I have been walking. I love that." But it's been like two months, same route, so I'm going to shift that up, right? Or if I'm um feeling a little low in in the spiritual self-care area, I'm going to go to a place that that brings me peace and harmony. or if I am um working working and really struggling to find that personal intellectual growth piece, I'm going to sign up for a class to learn something new. So, it's just an intentional way for you to go in and create love yoga. Thank you. Yes, Rachel. I It's such It's a game changer. um when you break off into nature and see trees and the oxygen and that um versus that that like truck trackwalk which I love

104but I think there's a time and place. Um yeah, Dean's reading a book not related to work. I think that's that's an interesting space to to move into is time, right? So a large barrier for for us in self-care is time. But here's what I know to be true. When we are frazzled and moving and and and don't have time to stop, the best gift we can give to ourselves and everyone that we support is to take a 10-minute stop, reset, work to to to lower the chatter in our mind, and then continue because then you move toward bringing your best self versus your your stressed self. Love these. Keep them coming in in the uh in the comment. Beautiful. Oh, Shelly, now's your time. It's gardening time. Okay, Kelly. One of the pieces into

105speak with time is we're starting small, right? If if you are already walking and you want to add a podcast, right? or if you like walking silently or you're just tweaking the little things that you do to prioritize your well-being being to bring your self and your self-care back to the front of your mind because in this time of year, you guys are are are hoing it. Uh things are coming at you that stimuli is coming at you um over and over and over again. And one of the the strongest practices is a self-care plan because you can lean on it and not have to create ideas when you are feeling dis d disregulated. But also I want to take a moment and and do um it's called a breathe pause or box breathing. What

106I want you to really hone in on, this is really great for when you have so much I got to do this, I got to do that. I can't quiet my brain, is you imagine a box and we breathe in for four, hold for four, and in this four of the hold, you look at the quiet and listen. And then exhale four, hold for four. And you keep that pattern going. until you find your parasympathetic system starting to relax, starting to calm, and knowing that it is not a selfish move for me to to prioritize self-care. It is the best for myself and all the people around me. And we were able to do that in 7 minutes. And so if you can do this in seven minutes, know that you can take this with

107you everywhere that you go and pull it out of your pocket when you start to realize that you are getting escalated or deregulated. So or disregulated, sorry. Thank you all so much. I absolutely love being here. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for all the love. Dr. Le, are you going to jump into our reminders real quick for every Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah, so much. with everything that we do for our students, uh it is just much needed to prioritize our well-being. Thank you so much for holding out to the final portion of our webinar. Please stay on for a little bit longer. We promise there's a few more updates. Um on our next slide here, we have our 2425 HMR unit uh newsletter that went out on April 11th contained updates, celebrations, and resources

108from all of our programs. What we really want to um highlight here is be sure to subscribe to our list serve. Um this is how we stay connected and our communication goes out through our gov delivery. And so um if you want to stay uptodate and current on all the things that are happening and rolling out, be on our list serve and that way you can be the first to know. On our next uh slide here coming really soon. We wanted to share this opportunity to join our dynamic team at HMAR. The HMAR at risk coordinator position will be posted hopefully by tomorrow. So be on the lookout. This was formerly Dr. Walson's position and this role will be supporting at risk foster care pregnancy related services and the overall HMR team. It's a great

109opportunity to play a critical role in significantly expanding the infrastructure to support atrisisk students through awareness tools and resource development and training and guidance. Please share this with your network, your colleagues, and those you think will be interested um in applying for this position. We want to see you apply and we will drop this link to the TA employment um to uh for you to investigate uh later. All right. Um Kelly, do you want to take this um last few or do you want me to go ahead and go? I would go ahead and take us home, Ann. All right. So there is also an opportunity for our McKini Ventel eligible and foster care students to take driver's ed for free. Empower homeless and foster youth by eliminating financial barriers to obtain a driver's license.

110So this uh course is available in English, Spanish and ASL virtual class or self-paced. We promise you we will get you the copy of this deck um shortly after. So you will be able to have access to this um promptly. Um, going into the next slide here. If you have technical assistance, I did drop the information earlier in the chat. Each program has their designated TEA email address. Be sure to send emails to the respective programs email address so that we can respond accordingly. And then as we are wrapping the 2425 school year soon, don't forget to sub submit any celebrations, events, or achievements for your LEA or ESSE, including any month of military child celebrations. We plan to close out this submission on June 6 to begin the video production process. We will be

111working to put together a video reel of all the submissions as an endofear celebration across Texas. And then uh finally again list serve. This is the QR code to um join our list serve. This um is going to be our way of um communicating with our stakeholders. So it's very important that you stay on our list serve if you would like some updates. And now I'm going to hand it over to Kelly for our final remarks. [Music] Uh thank you everybody. In light of time, we're going to go ahead and uh just wrap things up for today. Um you can note this when you get the deck. Any just key takeaways and reminders. Um we would love for you to fill out the survey um and provide us uh feedback on today's presentation. We're always

112reviewing your feedback and continuing to strengthen. Um, again, thank you for your time today and being with us. Thank you to the team, our guest speakers. Um, thank you for all of the work that you did in the 2425 school year. We wish you a good close out of your year, a restful summer where you're implementing that those self-care plans and recharging. Um, and we look forward to seeing you in the next school year. So, anyway, this is concludes our presentation today. Thank you all and we look forward to being in touch with you. Have a wonderful summer and we'll see you next year. Take care. Bye-bye.