Luis impressed by community support five months after becoming Brock ISD superintendent

Dec. 28—BROCK — Superintendent Shannon Luis landed in Eagle territory five months ago confident she’d chosen a community that devotes itself to its young people.

That’s exactly what she found, Luis said recently.

“Brock is a great place to be,” she said. “The community has been very welcoming, very supportive. and by, community, I mean parents, community members, the staff, administration, the board.”

She also knows she didn’t alight on just any school district.

“There is a ton of pride in the school in this community,” Luis said, sitting in her office across Eagle Spirit Lane from the high school. “People know about Brock schools all over the state. So, there is just this understanding that you are in a great place. And that’s been very apparent.”

Sure, a savvy school superintendent would say that. But Luis, who holds a doctorate degree in education, has five months of evidence to back it up.

“What’s impressed me is the support of the parents on the campuses,” she said, describing a parent/teacher committee and the Brock ISD Foundation.

The latter is poised to begin awarding privately funded grants for classroom projects soon in the new year.

Brock also boasts active booster clubs for athletics and band, including a new one this year for the theater department.

“The amount of time and effort that our parents put in to organizations themselves, to be able to support their kids here, has really been impressive,” she said.

The parent/teacher committee provided breakfast for teachers at a different campus every day in the fall, and apple bars for staff with “every fixin’ you can imagine for an apple,” she said.

Teachers also found lunches with their names written on them.

“That doesn’t happen everywhere — or, if it does, it’s kind of during your more traditional Teacher Week,” she said. “But these organizations are doing things throughout the school year. And that’s impressive.”

Brock ISD will transition to a Monday through Thursday school week after the winter break. Four weeks will have Friday school days because of Monday holidays like on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“One of our hopes for the four-day week is we’ll see improvement in attendance,” she said.

Luis recommended parents watch for weekly campus newsletters to keep abreast of the change.

And there will be a parent-district meeting on Jan. 16.

“We will have an opportunity for parents and community members to come at 6 o’clock that evening to the school to give input,” she said.

The parent input session will cap a planning day wrapped around Luis’ four main goal areas — academics, operations, finances and “customer satisfaction.”

Describing that last goal, she said, “Teachers and parents are our customers.” She calls all four areas together a balanced score card.

“It sets the expectations in all these areas,” she said, adding she anticipates follow-up sessions on individual campuses ” …to give teachers the opportunity to give their input too.

“And then the administrative team will take the four goals and write objectives within each of those,” she continued. “And then we’ll set targets for ourselves over the next two years. That sets the foundation for administration and campuses to make decisions.”

The most visible looming change for the Brock landscape is the Intermediate campus rising along Farm-to-Market 1189.

Funded by a 2023 public bond referendum, the new campus will have a 750-student capacity for grades 2-4.

“It’s on track, it’s on schedule,” Luis said of the new campus. “It’s set to open in August.”

Like all public school advocates, Luis will be watching closely as the 89th Texas Legislative Session convenes on Jan. 14.

The last session was a wild ride, with Gov. Greg Abbott calling four special sessions after the regular session in a failed attempt to pass school vouchers.

The governor followed up by funding primary races of candidates more amenable to spending tax money on private schooling, and he now says he has the votes he lacked in 2023.

“Really, the big picture that we need is funding for our schools,” Luis said, explaining Brock ISD is in the “midsize allotment” range in the state’s school funding formula.

“I’d really like to see that be a priority, is to increase the mid-sized allotment we receive,” she said. “I don’t want to see the session end like it did two years ago where all the money is sitting in Austin.”

Abbott killed a significant increase in the state contribution to local schools, from a $32.7 billion surplus, when his voucher plan bit the dust. That included pay raises for teachers.

Texas is expected to carry a $27 billion surplus into the coming session.

Texas’ per-student allotment has remained at $6,169 since the 2019-20 school year. Meanwhile, inflation, health insurance, food and fuel costs have only risen.

“And now schools are asked to ‘figure it out’ on a fixed income,” Luis said. “Because, that’s what we have, is a fixed income. It’s a real challenge.”

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