Angelique Smith needs to alter the world by means of schooling.
That’s why she’s presently embedded in San Antonio Unbiased Faculty District’s government group, studying the ropes of public schooling management.
Smith, 57, is a scholar on the Harvard Graduate Faculty of Training pursuing a health care provider of schooling management. Now in her third and final yr of this system, Smith moved to San Antonio after selecting SAISD for the paid residency portion of the diploma, which began in August and ends subsequent Could.
“At my age, I consider in doing this work as a result of I consider that there are nonetheless some insurance policies and a few obstacles on the market that aren’t actually serving to youngsters,” she mentioned throughout an interview at SAISD’s downtown headquarters final month. She wore a crimson blazer with each SAISD and Harvard emblems pinned to the lapel.
Finding out and dealing alongside the highest leaders of San Antonio’s third-largest faculty district, encompassing town’s city core, Smith can also be finishing a capstone mission she’ll need to current and defend in April to her superiors at each SAISD and Harvard.
Her topic: easy methods to enhance faculties by bettering management and utilizing knowledge.
Smith isn’t any beginner to public schooling. With greater than 30 years of expertise, Smith has labored in preK-12 schooling throughout the nation and the world — stretching from her residence state of Georgia to Abu Dhabi, United Erab Emirates and later Boston — as instructor, principal, advisor {and professional} mentor.
She determined to return to high school after nearly teaching principals through the COVID-19 pandemic and feeling like she wanted to be taught extra earlier than coaching different directors.
“I’m simply sitting in my home, you recognize, nearly. And that’s after I realized I had a niche that wanted to be stuffed. And in order that’s what made me go to Harvard,” Smith recalled.
When it got here time to decide on her residency, Smith’s solely selection was SAISD. It was the district’s historical past and the those who compelled her, she mentioned.
That is the primary time SAISD has had an embedded scholar like Smith.
The well-known historical past of SAISD
San Antonio ISD is thought nationally for the landmark 1973 courtroom case San Antonio Unbiased Faculty District v. Rodriguez, which reaffirmed the constitutionality of utilizing native property taxes to fund public faculties regardless of ensuing disparities between poor and rich faculty districts.
Although the case upheld the way in which faculties had lengthy been funded, it additionally sparked long-term activism and reform efforts to create a extra equitable funding mannequin for public faculties.
San Antonio’s public schooling historical past struck a private chord with Smith, a self-described “Georgia peach.”
Smith attended Georgia public faculties because the state underwent racial integration within the Nineteen Seventies, years after the federal authorities outlawed racially segregated faculties. Smith additionally grew up with undiagnosed tone deafness, making it tough for her to discover ways to learn at a time when literacy schooling leaned closely on utilizing sound.
It wasn’t till her sophomore yr of highschool that Smith took a listening to check, shedding gentle on her struggles in English lessons.
Marked by these experiences, Smith knew she wished to be a instructor when she was 9, and nonetheless feels the calling to proper the wrongs she went by means of within the public schooling system greater than three a long time later. Smith labored as a secondary faculty math instructor by means of the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, and moved as much as administrative roles by 2003.
SAISD isn’t any utopia of public schooling, Smith mentioned, however she believes “there are processes in place to assist each little one.”
Smith additionally commends the district’s deal with gathering group enter by means of advisory council and committees on every part from faculty well being to budgeting and particular schooling, an uncommon setup in her expertise.
Aquino: The ‘Beyonce’ of schooling
As a college principal between 2008 and 2018, Smith learn “Breakthrough Principals: A Step-by-Step Information to Constructing Stronger Colleges,” authored partially by SAISD superintendent Jaime Aquino, who was then working with schooling mentoring group New Leaders Org.
For a Harvard project, Smith later went on to interview Aquino, a college administrator who Smith mentioned “doesn’t match the mildew” of superintendents within the U.S.
Throughout the nation, greater than 70% of superintendents are male, and of these, practically 90% are white, in accordance with a examine by the Faculty Superintendent Affiliation.
“I actually had a star second, to be fairly sincere,” Smith mentioned of assembly Aquino in individual just a few years in the past. “It wasn’t Beyonce, however for me, it was like Beyonce.”
Smith just isn’t the one one benefiting from her SAISD residency — the district is placing her abilities to work.
As a part of her residency, Smith works as a “senior management strategist” for the district.
Earlier than assembly with the Report at 9 a.m. on a Friday in November, Smith had already attended an government assembly and would later go on to make a knowledge report, attend a digital class at 12:30 p.m. after which preserve working by means of the afternoon like some other full-time district worker.
“I take notes on the management strikes that the superintendent is making, and the dialog that’s taking place. Then, he and I debrief on that: what went effectively, if I’ve questions. And he actually values my opinion,” Smith mentioned.
Different days, she’s strolling by means of SAISD campuses, observing academics and directors, taking notes and offering suggestions.
Utilizing knowledge to enhance faculties
Whereas she’s embedded on the district, SAISD additionally attracts on Smith’s years of mentoring expertise and her abilities as a licensed Information Sensible coach. Information Sensible is a data-processing methodology designed by Harvard school to “enhance instruction and scholar outcomes” inside faculty districts.
SAISD doesn’t use Information Sensible, however Smith is utilizing her experience to offer suggestions and refine the district’s personal data-measuring system within the hopes of bettering faculties, mentioned Aquino.
At present, SAISD has 18 “precedence” campuses which have obtained failing state scores for 2 or three years in a row. A giant a part of turning campuses round is having the proper management, particularly with regards to principals, assistant principals and the those who rent them.
In reality, roughly 25% of scholar outcomes may be immediately attributed to principals, although they’ve an oblique impact on how effectively a scholar learns in comparison with academics who’ve a direct impact, Aquino added.
And discovering certified and keen principals is changing into harder.
Throughout the 2023-24 faculty yr, 21% of principals in Texas left their positions, representing a 5% improve in turnover over the previous decade, in accordance with state knowledge. Campus directors cited job-related stress, lack of help and intensifying stress as causes leaders stepped down.
In recent times, the district has invested in “grow-your-own” management applications for brand spanking new and aspiring principals to handle shortages and retention charges. These applications streamline certification processes and construct mentorship communities, probably easing the stresses of the job.
Usually, when an “efficient” principal leaves their submit, the college’s educational progress and outcomes depart with them, Smith mentioned, marking the significance for districts like SAISD to domesticate robust leaders and take a uniform method in analyzing knowledge to maintain bettering faculties even by means of turnover.
On the similar time, most faculty districts in Texas are coping with tightening budgets, political assaults from state and federal leaders and extra rivals vying for scholar enrollment, making public schooling a decreasingly standard profession subject.
Regardless of the challenges, Smith and her mentor Aquino mentioned they nonetheless really feel referred to as to serve in public schooling on the highest ranges.
Altering the world by means of schooling
Aquino went into schooling after leaving a seminary of the Redemptorist Order within the Dominican Republic, the place he taught literacy to adults and underprivileged youngsters, additionally working with individuals with disabilities and communities with leprosy.
After working in high management roles in locations like Denver Public Colleges and the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District earlier than SAISD, Aquino says it’s his “private” duty to mentor others who additionally need to lead in public schooling.
“I consider that schooling is the best energy for change and transformation, in order that’s why I made a decision to pursue instructing,” Aquino mentioned.
Smith put it this manner: “The adjustments that occur in society occur within the schoolhouse.”
Aquino might be on the panel of judges Smith has to current her last mission to, and if all goes effectively, she’s set to graduate from Harvard in Could. In the end, Smith’s purpose is to be a superintendent within the Georgia faculty district the place she grew up, however she acknowledged she nonetheless has a variety of work to do.
“My mother simply all the time advised me, ‘Irrespective of the place you go, make your pilgrimage again to handle your youngsters’,” Smith mentioned about bringing all that she’s discovered again to her hometown. “The place a lot is given, a lot is required.”
