By Anne Drabicky

At their final meeting of the school year, principals wearing flower leis celebrated student successes, heard from district leaders, discussed professional learning opportunities… and danced in a silent disco, competed in a scavenger hunt and donned accessories for a photo booth. 

The work—and the play—is part of the district’s focus on re: ensuring that staff have time and space to recharge, refresh, re-energize and then return excited for another school year. 

Students took the STAAR tests earlier this spring as one of many ways to measure student learning. The STAAR tests will help schools and teachers better understand where students may have gaps from the disruptions to learning caused by the pandemic. Teachers will use STAAR results along with other information to co-create learning plans with families to jumpstart learning next year. 

STAAR scores will be posted to the Austin ISD Parent Portal based on the assessment, following the calendar below:

By Paul Stinson

Navarro Early College High School’s barbecue team is heading to Nationals this month after wowing state judges and seeing the meats from their fundraising cook fly off the virtual shelves long before the grill gets going.

“Everything is 100 percent pre-sold,” said agriculture department head Tracey Cortez, who leads the barbecue program, now in its fifth-year of competition. “It takes about an hour and we’re pretty much sold out,” he said.