Plano ISD seeking new approach to academies

The Academy Visioning Committee is looking to create a revolutionary way to educate children in Plano ISD.

The concept of an academy school, however, is not new and even has had many successful applications in areas surrounding Plano.

Phyllis Parker, assistant superintendent for Garland ISD, said the district has had an academy program since the late 1980s and it has been wildly successful.

“I would say the success has been evident in that the level of work that academies were doing in the beginning very soon spread to the other elementary schools,” she said. “And then the academies and magnets, in response, had to elevate their teaching and the types of studies they did. And it was kind of like a cycle.”

Since the first academy elementary schools, the district has spread the concept into three middle schools and three high schools.

Carrolyn Moebius, Place 2 trustee on the Plano School Board, said while the committee is evaluating nearby districts on how their academy programs work, the board is hoping they look outside of the box.

“I’m hoping that no one is just thinking in a limited version regarding what an academy is,” she said. “I think that we can really offer a unique spin on it.”

The committee allows the board to have the community’s perspective, Moebius said.

If the board is not satisfied with the results that come out of the committee, the board won’t vote on something it is not comfortable with, she said.

But Moebius said what is presented to the board this year could be the framework for a board vote later this school year.

“At this point I truly believe it’s wide open,” she said. “I think many of (the board members) have ideas of what we would like to see, but with the people who are on the committee, a good cross section of people that we will definitely be relying on them heavily to give us a really good report.

“We have our ideas, but they’re the people that are researching it.”

Mark Ball, a member of the committee and representative from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, said the committee is looking to take the academy idea to the next level.

He said the people on the committee are not using any methodology for what they expect in an academy school and hope to create a new standard in Plano ISD.

“If this type of standard exists elsewhere, I personally have not been made aware of it,” Ball said.

Parker said Garland’s academy program was started because of a court order to respond to the needs of certain schools to be more diversified in terms of ethnicities and cultures.

Although the court order since has been loosened, she said, the program allowed the district to address needs of students in addition to add to the diversity.

“(We added academies) to balance the schools, but at the same time to respond to the need to address gifted and talented kids’ needs and allow them to expand and grow in the areas where they were gifted and talented,” Parker said. “When we have a waiting list, we know that it’s still viewed and seen by the community as a viable and important part of the education system.”

She said because the district has an open choice policy for where students choose to go to school within the district, it allows the students to choose what campus, and specifically what academy if they so choose, best fits their needs.

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