News

The Texas High School Project of the Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) is offering a grant opportunity for schools, districts, non-profit organizations, and higher education institutions. 

The Exemplar Program is a grant program designed to showcase and support existing successful and innovative secondary school design programs that are associated with increased student performance in schools serving high-need student populations. Exemplars will be used to provide secondary schools across the state with models of best practices and recommendations for replication.

CONCORD, Mass., Feb. 27, 2006 — SolidWorks Corporation today announced it would grant SolidWorks® Student Edition CAD software to as many as 1,000 individual U.S. educators in a new initiative aimed at improving students' math skills and their interest in technology-related careers.

The SolidWorks-STEM Educators grant – whose acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, and math – includes training and lesson plans to help teachers and faculty from middle school through college integrate the four separate disciplines for more effective education.

With backing by the National Science Foundation (NSF), STEM is an emerging movement in American education, which is increasingly realizing that global competitiveness requires students to be technologically literate. STEM addresses academic warning signs such as a new study funded by the Department of Education that found that U.S. math students in 4th and 8th grade perform consistently below peers around the world and continue that trend into high school.

"STEM Education is absolutely critical for the U.S. to lead the world in high technology innovation," said Dr. Krishna Vedula, executive chairman of the Massachusetts STEM Collaborative and former dean of engineering at the University of Massachusetts – Lowell. "STEM integrates 'pure' math and science with the disciplines to which they're applied, and CAD software can play an integral role in this endeavor."

Legislative Alert

7/28/05:  As you know the 79th Session of the Texas Legislature, and now the 1st Special Session, have failed to pass an Education bill. There are two bills that have to pass to fund public education and related changes, particularly taxes. These bills in both sessions have been HB 2 and HB 3. HB 2 is the bill that explains how education will be funded and changed and HB 3 is the method of paying for the fiscal changes in HB 2 through various taxes.

Many believed HB 2 would pass both houses leaving only HB 3 to be worked out in the 2 nd Special Session. HB 2 passed out of conference committee, and the full House. However, it failed in the full Senate. Senator John Whitmire of Houston filibustered HB 2 on the Senate floor until it was time to adjourn the session. As the 2 nd Special Session begins, the Senate is going back to their original bill, SB 2 that is much better than HB 2. The House will continue to work with HB 2.

May 23, 2005.  This past weekend at the NASA Space Center in Houston ten (10) teams of Auto Tech students competed in the Ford/AAA skills contest.  The top five teams in the contest were:  5th place -- Cypress Falls High School, Instructor Randy Thomas and students Anthony Ho and Jonathan Green; 4th place Hereford High School, Instructor Monthy Smith and students Ricardo Ramirez and Chris Garcia; 3rd place John Marshall High School, Instructor Thomas Berger and students Travis Shaw and Joshua Kilborn;  2nd place Cypress Fairbanks High School, Instructor Donald Kessler and students Shane Cloud and Bradley Duron; and first place Birdville Career Center, Instructor Olin Harrington and students Michael Easley and Christopher Powell.  Birdville Career Center also had the trophy for the High Written Score from the Contest.

Throughout the Coastal Bend, good jobs go begging for want of prospective workers who have the skills that employers urgently need.

By Gene Seaman - State Representative, District 32.
December 3, 2004