Texas City Independent School District drives 21st century education with Microsoft 365 and robust collaboration

If you travel 50 miles southeast of Houston you arrive in Texas City, Texas. Known for its deepwater port, the city is home to robust petroleum-refining and petrochemical-manufacturing industries. Serving the community is Texas City Independent School District (ISD) with nearly 8,000 students across 13 schools. The district carries a strong commitment to collaborating on issues of technology and instruction, with a keen eye to what will matter for students as they grow and graduate. This collaborative spirit has helped shape decisions about everything from which devices to choose to best practices for security, and how to best incorporate learning technology into the classroom experience. These efforts are facilitated and supported by their choice to embrace Microsoft 365 and Windows devices as a gold standard across the district.

Getting the big picture

Anyone involved in educational technology purchase decisions knows that there are inevitably competing variables for a major purchase. One product may be less expensive while another product may have more functionality. One product may be easier to deploy while another product may be easier to maintain. Chief Technology Officers (CTO) will tell you that their role depends on being able to balance the benefits versus the costs of any given decision.

Gina Covington is the CTO for Texas City ISD. With 25 years of experience in education and another 15 years in industry, Gina is keenly aware of the challenges that come with technology purchases. In Gina’s experience, collaboration is the essential ingredient in making a technology adoption a success. “It takes a whole team effort,” she says. “You must work hand in hand with the key stakeholders that are developing the curriculum. I think that's really the big difference that helps explain the success of our district. I have seen too many instances in other districts where the people working in technology are not collaborating with the curriculum side of the equation.”

Take, for example, the decision to use Microsoft Education. According to Gina, the Texas City ISD started with the question, “What do our students need to know about technology to be prepared to make valuable contributions when they leave our schools?” After talking with teachers and local industry leaders, it became clear that the district should invest in Microsoft. “If you don't use Microsoft products, you are not prepared for the workforce. No one in industry says, ‘let's get into our Google Classroom.’ The other options don’t prepare our students for the real world, and they don’t develop digital citizenship skills,” she says.

Bobby Mills serves as the manager of network services for the district, and he also has a son in the school district. Not surprisingly, Bobby echoes Gina’s concerns when it comes to his son’s education. “I don't want my son to learn on a Chromebook and then go out totally unprepared for the real world,” he says.

After the district decided that the Microsoft Education was the right choice, the key stakeholders worked together to determine they would deploy Microsoft Surface devices to administrators, Microsoft Surface Go devices for early education students, and Hewlett Packard x360s for middle school and high students. They deployed, and now maintain, 10,000 devices using Intune and Autopilot. Bobby notes, “I love Intune. I love the management features and the administrative templates. It makes my job easier and more efficient. From a management standpoint, I love that even if someone takes a device home, I can still get my packages to it, and manage the security of the device.”

From collaboration to curriculum

Michael Myers is an educational technologist for Texas City ISD. Michael plays an essential role in facilitating the successful adoption of devices, Apps, software, and so much more. He is responsible for communicating with teachers and listening to their needs to help identify solutions. In many ways, Michael has a direct view into how the curriculum design plays out in the day-to-day opportunities for students. According to Michael, the collaboration between the technology stakeholders and the curriculum designers has produced excellent results for the teachers and students.

“We are absolutely getting the full potential of our license from the point of view of our educators,” Michael says. “Our educators could not do their job nowadays without M365 A5 license, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Teams, Excel, and OneNote. Our teachers live in those tools daily and keep our students learning regardless of whether they are in the classroom or at home.”

Hope Smalley-Jackson, business teacher for the last 8 of her 16-year tenure explains, “We teach students how to use Microsoft 365 tools to set them up for success in their adult life. For example, we teach them how to address and write an email, how to write a business letter, and how to develop a presentation. Microsoft 365 is easy on the Windows desktop, easy on the web, and it’s easy for students to prepare for the future.”

Hope’s ambitious curriculum also prepares English as a second language (ESL) students with real-time acquisition of language. “We found that Microsoft Translator is key to enabling ESL students to keep up and to learn along with the rest of the class. When they are hung up on a word or a phrase or want to learn how to say something in English, they can transition back to their native language and use Translator to quickly contextualize in English.”

From Gina’s perspective, Hope’s enablement along with Michael’s collaborations, are great examples of how the Texas City ISD team continually focuses on the long-term benefit of student outcomes. “If an educator wants an application or assistive technology, then we have a process in place to communicate with our instructional technology team,” Gina says. “The team asks them what their goals are, how it will help students, and if this is something we really need. Then we vet the technology before we roll it out. The benefit of this collaboration is that we get consistency across campuses to make sure everybody's getting the same opportunity with a crystal-clear focus on the students—and their outcomes in the future. With Microsoft Education and Microsoft 365 we have a large ecosystem of tools that we can leverage for that purpose.”

Today’s education requires supporting students beyond a course’s final grade or an impending standardized test. Educators must prioritize how the curriculum helps students to solve increasingly complex problems beyond the classroom, while ensuring that they learn the skills that empower them as digital citizens. Texas City ISD has found that Microsoft 365 along with HP Windows and Surface devices enable exactly the sort of 21st century education and future ready skills their students need.

“What do our students need to know about technology to be prepared to make valuable contributions when they leave our schools? If you don't use Microsoft products, you are not prepared for the workforce. No one in industry says, ‘let's get into our Google Classroom.’ The other options don’t prepare our students for the real world, and they don’t develop digital citizenship skills.”

Gina Covington, Chief Technology Officer, Texas City Independent School District