S04E03 - Rural Innovation Series | Mike Gonzalez, Executive Director, Rural Schools Innovation Zone

In this episode of Build Momentum, we are joined by Michael Gonzalez, executive director of the Rural Schools Innovation Zone out of Premont,Texas. He was also a former principal at Premont Collegiate High School. This is the first episode in a four-part series focusing on rural collaboratives that are developing opportunities for students in specialized career pathways.

Some Questions I Ask:

• What is the Rural Schools Innovation Zone? (01:16)
• Please tell us more about the three school corporations involved. (07:06)
• What are the challenges and successes in dealing with the higher education system? (09:27)
• How do you recommend the funding model to other education organizations and districts? (12:58)
• What are the outcomes of the zone and how are you growing this? (16:59)
• How do you address the potential barrier of transportation? (22:01)
• What about other logistics like bell schedules? (24:12)
• What advice can you give to school leaders about starting a real collaborative? (26:08)
• How do you share your story to the community and the whole educational sphere? (27:45)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• All about the Rural Schools Innovation Zone (01:31)
• The participating schools (07:41)
• The successes and challenges in dealing with the higher education system (09:49)
• Recommendations for the funding model (13:10)
• Student outcomes and growth (17:31)
• Ideas for handling transportation  (22:10)
• Making the logistics work (24:48)
• Mike’s advice to school leaders looking to start a collaborative (26:17)
• His way of sharing this story to the community (27:59)

Quotes:

“Be a champion for your community. Be a champion for the kids that are there that are underserved for a wide variety of reasons, whether it be resources or parity or scarcity, whatever the right word is. The local champions need to come to the forefront [and] advocate for the right things to do for kids. Start with your local school boards, your principals, your students, your superintendents, and then take it to the next step from there.”

“You can live in your community and take advantage of other resources and other programs away from your community but come back and still have community pride.”

“I’m trying to get to those organizations that reach the older members of the community that don’t have kids in school so they can understand what we’re doing, because they’re the ones going out and voting.”

Stay in touch with Michael:
RSISZ Website
LinkedIn
Email: mgonzalez@thersisz.org
Text: (361)-522-0261

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Transcript

Sarah Williamson: 0:05

Hello and welcome to build momentum, a Podcast where we explore thought leadership and education. I'm Sarah Williamson, the founder of SW PR group.

Chad Bolser: 0:13

And I'm Chad Bolser, Chancellor Ivy Tech Community College in Richmond, Indiana. This season, we will launch a series exploring global workforce development and K 12 school districts and the leaders who are bringing this work to

Sarah Williamson: 0:28

We hear from CTE directors, superintendents light. and thought leaders on the topic of workforce development, how it shifted throughout the last several years, who is employing strategies that are making an impact and how they're sharing those stories with the broader education community. We explore how to leverage key partners, your constituents and the media to authentically impact your organization and the leaders who champion them. We can't wait to get started. So let's dive in. In today's episode, we continue our global workforce series with Mike Gonzalez, the executive director of the Rural Schools Innovation Zone out of Premont, Texas. We're so excited to spend time with you today, Mike and explore some of the great work you're doing in the CTE space. Welcome to our show, Build Momentum.

Michael Gonzalez: 1:15

Thank you guys for having me. It's a pleasure.

Chad Bolser: 1:16

Mike, I know you have such a passion for this work. But will you explain to the audience and share more about the Rural Schools Innovation Zone and what schools are involved? And what kind of opportunities are you providing for your students?

Michael Gonzalez: 1:32

Yes, there's not a problem. Well, I guess the deep dive into Microsoft is I'm passionate, like Mr. Bolser said about rural education. I grew up in a very rural community, population 600 Pre K through eight school district and got on a bus and traveled 20 miles to go to high school so I can completely understand what my counselors, administrators, superintendents go through on a daily basis dealing with roulette so it hits home and resonate. Well, with me doing what we're doing. So the Rural School Innovation Zone came to be in the fall of 2019. With three school districts originally three independent school districts, the first of its kind in the nation. We had Brooks county ISD, which houses buffer is high school. And then it's Freer ISD, which houses for high school and then Premont ISD, which houses Premont Collegiate High School. So that was the original, the godfathers for lack of a better term, the Rothko Innovation Zone. And the premise behind it the opportunities that Mr. Bolser was alluding to my superintendent, very innovative, decided to have some specialized academies because due to the rural situation and our lack of capacity for resources, both funding and staff, we had to pull our resources to give our kids opportunities that were being had in urban and suburban school districts. Though we firmly believe that our zip code should not dictate the amount of post secondary that our students are have the opportunity to deal with. So we have some specialized academies and for your high school, we have a next generation Medical Academy, which our kids start on their LPN RN dual credit program at their freshman year, and their junior senior year they graduate with EKG, phlebotomy and their senior year patient care tech and certified medical assistant certification. We're starting to implement a P Tech Academy or Pizzette model in free air. So it's going to take it to our next level, right? Our North Star is in your stick or your six (inaudible) or your you know, 1415 whatever that is add that being in the P20 model. We hope to have our kids with RN certification on their way to their masters, right. So you know, that's our North Star right now and getting ready to get that started. Then you can go an hour and 15 minute drive east southeast of Frio. And we go to Premont Collegiate High School, which is the house of our wildlife stem Discovery Zone, which we have a multitude of pathways there. We have a GIS pathway, we have a cybersecurity pathway. We have an unmanned aerial flight pathway with drones. And we have robotics pathway, all delving into one Academy. And we also deal with our dual credit, science and math courses that we deal with our Regional University Texas a&m University Kingsville. And then we have grow your own educator Academy, you know, with our situation and rule in the national shortage. It's something that everybody's dealing with, it's a headache for everybody, right. But we firmly believe that if we can start training our kids at a very young age, we have the capacity to build our educational system from the ground up embedding our rural values, our community values and the way we teach rural students are at a very early age. So we're excited about the Grow Your Own Educator Academy in Premont. And we have Premont promised and Premont's the only school board that's building this and hopefully it'll be a rural school innovation don't promise before the year then. The promise is that any student from for four years where Premont and our two new additional districts Mr. Bolser at the last time we talked, I will do the ISD and Benavides ISD. If any student from the five school districts representative rural school innovations don't apply to Premont, they will have some priority points. some bonus points for being a Grow Your Own educator Academy graduate once they graduate with their four year degree once they are certified in those things based on vacancy. So we're excited about those things and what better way to bring those people back in and actually get them trained within our situation that are sort of driving the zone we drive 20 minutes south of Premont Collegiate High School to Frio High School, which houses our JROTC program to Naval GRC program which we have a huge contingency of military veterans in our area. So we're very proud of that right very proud of bringing that military component to our kids that otherwise wouldn't be available, because not any one of our high schools is big enough to house a JROTC program by itself. But together combined, we have enough student capacity to do that. So the government allowed us to have a ROTC program. We're really, really excited about that situation going forward. And then we have our traditional 15 pathway. And I say traditional one quotations only. We have a P TECH welding Academy. We're going to graduate our first student this year with their with her associate's degree, and I did say her. So that's Garcia is a non traditional female student part of the best world that we have in the program. So she'll be the first one to graduate with an associate's degree in that program. Then we have our very vibrant electrical program, our kids graduate with two electrical three certification. We've graduated with core certification within all of our components, our national safety certification, but we have a construction program. We got core construction one and two certification, we have our heavy equipment operations where we have if you're a gamer, it's the ultimate gaming machine, right? We have 12 120 inch screen panels around a room. And we have a simulator for front end loader, backhoe kits, deer, bobcat, any simulator we can possibly purchase we purchased, and it gives her kids an opportunity to get tested. And once he turned to age of 18, they go tap on the real equipment, which has also been purchased in Perkins grants to our school districts that we have the stimulators, and we have the live equipment when our kids get ready to do that on our heavy equipment situation. So we're really excited about that situation that we have our construction program that just builds everything, we have 100, then that's out there and is getting ready to be sold. And that'll be used for scholarship money for our kids that are involved in ignite Technical Institute, which is our specialized Academy. In fact, though, like I said, I love to talk about this stuff. And that's the rural school Innovation Zone, all the opportunities we're giving our kids, you know, from drones all the way down to be a teacher to learn skills on how to be a self employed individual with learning a great skill. So that wraps up the Rural School Innovation Zone in a very long summation. Sorry about that.

Sarah Williamson: 7:06

That is so impressive. I'm so impressed by all of your offerings. But if I lent my three boys 10 and under in that simulation room, they would never leave. They would love to go work on some construction equipment in that room. That's very impressive. Thank you for sharing that overview. So I'm curious, we have heard some of the details about your rural schools Innovation Zone from Empower schools, who will be on the next episode of build momentum. But you also indicated there are three school corporations involved. And I'm curious how you all came together to partner would you share more about that? Sure.

Michael Gonzalez: 7:41

What the three macera are the original godfathers? Right? So it was again, Premont, Brooks county ISD. And Freer ISD, I was a Premont high school principal, and I'll give you the edited version of how it went down pretty much Mr. Steve VanMatre, who was the superintendent at the time. And being the next high school principal, he alluded to that our master schedule was not very vibrant and had very, very few offerings for our kids are pretty much the high school. So he was the ex-superintendent of Freer, understood the capacity of the Health Science Academy, which is next generation Medical Academy, and offered Mr. Cantu an opportunity that he could share the resource of paying for the instructor at the Health Science Academy. At the same time, he had a phenomenal relationship with Dr. Maria Rodriguez Casas, superintendent at Brooks County, because they shared some resources. And when they were no school districts, and Mr. Graham, he offered Dr. caughlin kind of the same opportunity, right that he could help pay for some of the welding instructors, if our kids from Premont were allowed to go to for four years. So there's a third of that as a handshake agreement, you know, we'll pay a little bit and we'll cover some material costs. And then it just transformed into a phenomenal idea with a supportive text education to be a formalized agreement. Right. So we use Senate Bill 1882, as an industry charter situations where it's just to provide some startup funding than a proclamation with the three school districts. And off we went right to gather some input about how we're going to do that. And so based on that, so you kind of realize how we formed our specialized academies, right? Because we were already doing some good things by ourselves for our individual community schools and Independent School District. But we weren't enhancing everybody right at the same time. So right now we're taking in five vibrant communities, four different counties, bands about over 1600 square miles. So the zones impacting a wide variety of people now, right, and given those things, students opportunity that otherwise wouldn't have been happy for them to get certification and be more employable at the end.

Chad Bolser: 9:27

You know, Mike, I'm a part of the community college system here in the state of Indiana. And I know from our visit down to your place, that you have several opportunities that are connected to the higher education system, what have been the successes in that area, and what have been the challenges for you in dealing in that higher making that connection with higher education?

Michael Gonzalez: 9:49

Great question was Mr. Bolser. So the successes, there's not enough time to talk about the successes that we've had right so we have seven different partnerships. With IHG? It's phenomenal because I still don't call And I see that people struggle with just trying to maintain one partnership, right, or getting that one partner to the table. Well, we've been very fortunate, you know, based on our superintendents and what they do for our kids, though, when we started dealing with, you know, we didn't do very well. And if that accountability system was PCMR, right, that college career military readiness component is 40% of the high school accountability, though, it's a big piece, and we want to maintain a beer. And as far as our campuses are concerned, though, our ITs provided us a track that would allow us to get our dual credit completion, which we do quite well and dual credit completion within the zone. But it also gave us a chance to offer industry based certifications, and the level one level two certification and coming together and building that partnership, that crosswalk that would enable our kids to be in a better spot and without them and without their guidance, we wouldn't have been in that situation. So we've been very blessed to have the community colleges and our four year university partners to being involved in structuring the crosswalk that enables our kids to be successful, like anything else. Mr. Bolser Yes, it does have some drawbacks. I mean, you know, the IT calendar is pretty stringent, you know, we there's not an independent school district that can that couldn't be able to change the it calendar, I consider it a blessing no matter what happens right with IT counter, because with a dual credit situation, we're stuck within the parameters of that counter. And we can make anything work, you know, registration preregistration situation is at a different level at the IHG at, you know, at the community farther than it is at the local school district, we have a full year to get our kids ready for pre registration for the following year. Whereas the IT semester by semester, right, I will tell you, we've gotten a lot better out of our IT partners come to the table with us. And they're actually pre registering our kids, they send their counselors to us, you know, and it's taken a completely different scope of very limited errors in pre registration now, as opposed to us doing it and emailing it and or, you know, scanning and send it to them. But now they're coming in very hands on. They're guiding our kids, they're guiding our instructors are guiding our counselors into the right frame of mind. Because I think that for instance, in our Ignite Pinnacle Institute, our welding Academy, it says individualized plan as you're going to get, you know, it Mr. Bolser, or Miss Sarah wants to get off in a quicker situation, that six to nine hours can be taken in a wide variety of ways, right? And so when they come at pre register wanting you to in the next level, you might be at a level three or four, but just your to have the model, right. And so it's very individualized. And we wouldn't be able to do that unless our IT partners are completely on board and providing that one to one registration process.

Chad Bolser: 12:24

So are those schools coming to all five districts now at this point? Yes, sir.

Michael Gonzalez: 12:28

They are. Well, actually, what the way we're handling. They're going through the academy. So basically all five districts are going to the academy, and they're just sending to represents that one Academy. So we're trying to make it as easy for them as possible. Right. So

Sarah Williamson: 12:40

Yeah that's great. So, Mike, you talked about the funding model and how you've been able to secure funding through some very creative means, particularly the Texas Education Agency and working with I think you said Senate Bill, you told me again, what you said

Michael Gonzalez: 12:55

1882, that was your original one. Yes, for sure that we can add to

Sarah Williamson: 12:58

1882 okay, how do you recommend other education organizations and districts think about kind of implementing a similar funding model or how they can tap into similar funds to do these programs.

Michael Gonzalez: 13:10

Again, based on innovation situations, you know, the state of Texas is at the forefront of innovation, especially for rural collaboration. We're very fortunate that we just passed actually another bill House Bill 2209 was called Our PET. Don't ask me what Our PET's stands for. I should know that but I don't. Okay, but it's been hashtag the zone bill. Okay, so we were very influential in doing that. So basically, what's happening the state of Texas starting next fall is that they're going to incentivize rural collaborative, but two or more districts will less than 1500 people, less than 600 students on the high school campus, partner up with an outside entity. And that outside entity can be an IHG partner, it can be a service center can be a nonprofit, like the zone is right now. And they're going to get 1.15 funding multiplier on top of their CPE funding for every collaborative course taken. So I'll just give you some numbers. So I have 192 spot, and Premont ISD that are taking a rural collaborative course. So take that 192 times$206 times 1.15. And, yeah, we're going to bring in some major cash before it's all said and done, major revenue is gonna be generated. So again, that's to our legislators, then that goes to people who are really prioritizing education to rural communities in the state of Texas. But if you're going on the on the ground floor, you know, go back five years ago, in the start, didn't do it. It was definitely intrinsic upon the inception of the zone getting started that seed money, we use off the school actually fund grant money, right to redesign, eco camp, the major step, there are very rural local communities because what's an ability to did and the industry charter that we started with, it basically told your local boards that we're going to give the rural school Innovation Zone, the autonomy to run that campus, the way they deem fit. And basically very hands off situation for local boards. It's tough, right? Just like any other place, you know, stop testing is very prideful in what we do and how we do it. So we kind of made a hybrid model of what was supposed to be done, we did everything collaboration, and together, right, there was not a decision made on an individual campus or collectively, that was not taken before my superintendent advisory committee before went to my board, right. So I got the support of the superintendent before we did anything that would jeopardize a calendar, a master schedule, a belt schedule, to take whatever it impacted, we made sure we're all in line and together in that situation, so that seed money is important, you know, I can't think of the cliche, you know, it's like, dreams without funding is basically daydreaming, you know, you don't have the funds to get it done, you can't do those ideas. So again, we're very, very fortunate at the cusp of permission morass in getting in there at the time that he did. And it takes education and skills being Commissioner, and it allowed us to go forward with some very innovative ideas. And again, going back to the local boards, and superintendents, very inspirational group of individuals that allowed this innovation to take place and look at the outcomes, it's evolved. We've now evolved into a self sustaining kind of situation fair right now. But we're calling it the tuition funding model, which basically, we take all expenses into incorporation of, you know, our financial services, our legal services, all the salaries of all the teachers that teach within the component of the academies. And we put it all into a funding model, right, and we distribute that out, we come up with an average cost of how much it cost per contact hour to attend a particular Academy. And we just multiply that by the number of kids you have, and that's the bill that gets sent to the school district. So we've come a long way, right? And we're hoping that our pet bill, House Bill 2209, is going to incentivize this enough, that we can use that extra weighted funding to completely be self sustainable, and not happy to tap into neither a local district resources going forward after next school year. So that's a pipe dream. Hopefully, it comes to fruition. I'm two years away from retirement. So who knows if I can see all that thing through, but we'll see what happens from there.

Chad Bolser: 16:59

That's almost sounds like an entire podcast segment itself, how to fund all of this. super interesting. I know, you touched on this a little bit from the very beginning. And I'm almost scared to ask this question about what are the ultimately the credentials that you offer the students and I'm not sure that you can get through your entire list of those things that you're offering students, but more importantly, what are your outcomes since the beginning of the zone? How are you growing this? How is it producing at a higher level?

Michael Gonzalez: 17:31

So the CFP Mark component which both like I said, it's part of our accountability system, that's a huge measure of what we do so you can scores PCMR point a wide variety of ways. Nine hours of dual credit completion, passing a TSI, what's your Texas the fifth initiative, readiness test for college and retained attaining level one level two certification and or an IBC? Right, so between those four components, one of our students can score a CCMR point, okay, and you only score one point for your four year career. So last year's graduating class, but we only I can tell you that of from juniors, sophomores and freshmen. But the state of Texas only collect data on my graduating cohort, right. So the class of 23 98% within the zone, meaning we had 98.3% of our kids receive either nine hours ago credit completion level one or Level Two certification, an IBC and or pass their TSI. Right? So if you go back to the year 1718, prior to the zone, the average CCMR score for the three high schools that were involved in the zone in 23, was 51% we've almost doubled the CCMR score, just based on what we're doing within the last five years, right. And you talked about graduation attendance rate, if we were to skew the numbers and just pull out our academy data, it would be phenomenal, right? But because of 1882 the zone was in charge of all students at the high school campus. So we don't disaggregate Academy kids versus a regular high school kid, right? Or a non Academy kid, we just all pull them all together. And the we started looking at the numbers like that, in its totality, and holistically with all the kids. That's a phenomenal number. And we scored the state region one and region two by double digits in graduation rate in CCMR. And dual credit completion. IBC is I mean, what I firmly believe when we walk into a board meeting and we're asking to get renewed does don't ask to get renewed for another year, I should be able to punch play on the presentation, drop the mic and walk out, right. But that's kind of a biased opinion. That's me talking about that. But our data's spoken for itself. It's attributed to phenomenal principals that understand what we're doing that understand what the what we have to do for our kids. Oh my god, a dedicated teaching staff that fully grasp why we're there, right? We're there for kids trying to make sure they have a better opportunity to be a better human being and a better adult than what we had growing up. Right. So with all that taken into consideration with our leadership and our guidance, we've done a really phenomenal job of tracking our kids and put them in the situation for them to be successfully through, you know, National Core certification for safety in all capacities. You know, level one, level two for certification and electrical, and welding, our level one level two, certifications and welding are educational at level one certification or unmanned aerial flight certification, the bottom EKG patient character certified medical assistant, like I said, that's just that we pride ourselves on right. And we've looked at that situation and building our capacity in going forward.

Sarah Williamson: 20:27

That's so impressive. I'm sure you've heard from the workforce community that this is making an impact. But I'm just curious if there's anecdotal feedback you can share about that.

Michael Gonzalez: 22:20

Well, we, and this is the tough thing. So because there's no, it's been around five years, right? So we basically really only graduated our first cohort that day. So I've learned the hard way, unfortunately, because I'm all about like, numbers. I'm a baseball guy. So I'm about the numbers. But I'm throwing out numbers and people like, that doesn't count. Like what do you mean, doesn't count say, Well, I don't have longitudinal data. I didn't really know what that word meant until a couple of years ago, right? I'm like, Oh, I don't know what that means. So just based on last year's cohort, I'll use our next generation Medical Academy. We only graduated seven seniors last year. Okay, total. All right. All seven, I had all four certifications, six or seven are now either going to school or are employed in the health science field right now. Where if you go back six years ago, and you talk to Mr. Cantu, the superintendent, school of Freer, or kids running around taking the test six years ago, much of the past and being employed. So, again, not enough time, I don't want to bore your audience with with some of the things that went on prior to the zone. There were a lot of situations, a lot of stories, a lot of behind the scenes work that had been that has been done by my superintendents and local boards, to make sure those opportunities are had been remedied. Right, because unfortunately, that that situation they were in prior to the zone, it wasn't funded correctly, or there wasn't no funding period. Right. So when we started pulling our resources, it does allow for opportunities for those things. So yes, we're workforces isn't a good situation in South Texas for the next couple of years, with some of the things that we're producing within the zone.

Sarah Williamson: 23:45

Yeah. Okay. And then real quick, will you just address transportation? It sounds like all these corporations are a little bit distanced from each other. How are you navigating that?

Michael Gonzalez: 23:54

Yes, metro stations for free. Everything that we do within the academy, and the zone Academy system is all free to our kids. So we transport a kid to and from which we're playing with whatever we need grub, pencils, pens, or whatever the situation is. So the longest distance we have for trips an hour and 25 minutes in a school bus, all of our school buses are either Wi Fi equipped and or enabled with hotspot, though we don't lose a situation, we never take advantage of a situation where our kids don't have resources to do some extra work. And we don't lose any time traveling. Right. So I'm just one of those people in this era that you know, travel is a barrier for some people, right, they want to put that wall up. And I'm saying you can make anything a barrier. If you really don't want to do this. Anything can be a barrier. We've just taken that barrier down brick by brick and is demolished it right because our superintendents have gone above and beyond to make sure our kids have everything they need, right if we are freshmen and sophomore kids are tasked with an online course usually, is to make sure their elective credits get taken care of at an early age, right, so we can open up work based learning situations for kids or junior senior year. So they're tasked with doing some online courses their freshman sophomore year, in route to their academy classes, right. So Wi Fi was huge for us. And then buying extra hotspot just in case the Wi Fi didn't work. So we make those things work, we make our metro schedules work. That's another topic of discussion for another podcast, unfortunately. So you can you can basically disassemble the zone and other capacity and do something to help anybody else out. Because we do pretty good master scheduling, we do very good when it comes to transportation schedules, we do pretty well when it comes to outcomes for kids for student outcomes. So like I said, I could go on forever. But that's basically how we make it happen to get together as principals to pretend once and say this is the time that our tests gonna be offered this make it all work. And we've gotten better at it, sir. I mean, I've gotten better at this principle gotten better at it, we're holding, you know, phenomenal organizational means we actually have our next one January 22, right, that we're bringing all of our counties, all of our principals, superintendents together, we're gonna hash this schedule out so there'll be no conflict, and there'll be no implications of a kid being left behind.

Chad Bolser: 25:56

So I hear you say this. And the next question that we had on the list is about things like just the logistics of Bell schedules and start times and some you know, when different Corporation calendars you've added into corporations, it sounds like you start with the end goal in mind, and then you just make it work, it seems I'm sure it's more complicated than that. But as you're describing this, and for school leaders that are listening this it sounds like you put together with an end product in mind and then just figure out the logistics and make it happen.

Michael Gonzalez: 26:32

That's a great way to put it Mr. Bolser that basically what happens, we prioritize our academy classes, you know, and make sure that our visiting schools have a good timeframe of when they can get there. Right so, our situation has always been because, you know, my (inaudible) not very technology competent. So we pre registered by Hanceville. You know, we're still voting, filling in little things and taking the screenshot and send it to another principal to to get spots and those things, well, we're coming together in January 22. And we're gonna have it all done, you know. So if you were to call me back in December of 24, I would have a really, really good methodology to share with different people, right, so we're trying to basically build a plane as we're flying it, we kind of glide to the last three or four years pre registration. But we have to have a better idea this year, right. But basically, our academy classes that we have our priority, we kind of know when they're going to be set according to our IT schedule, and our parameters are IT. And then from there, we kind of build out the rest of the schedule that we need for our kids to graduate. Because ultimately, no matter how good we want to make a theme for IBC, that's number one, number two certifications and those things, the ultimate goal is to make sure our kids graduate from high school, that's got to be a priority, unfortunately. Right? So like Mr. Bolser said, we kind of start with the end in mind, we want our kids to take these classes. And then we work from there. So

Sarah Williamson: 27:49

Yeah, Chad, do you want to jump in on that next one?

Chad Bolser: 27:52

Absolutely. So what advice would you give to school leaders that are listening on how they might go about starting a real collaborative,

Michael Gonzalez: 28:03

be a champion for your community, be a champion for the kids that are there that are underserved for a wide variety of reasons, right? Whether it be resources, or parity or scarcity, whatever the right word is, the local champions, need to come to the forefront, you know, advocate for the right things to go do for kids, start your local school boards, your principles, your students your superintendents, and then take it to the next step from there. Because like I said, together, everyone achieves more, of course, a theme, but the situation where I firmly believe once people start letting their guard down, and allowing other people's to suggestions and opinions to be taken in consideration what good is going to do for a kid, I think that's the best thing going forward, the zone model takes away and democratizes the consolidation, our kids get a chance to come back and represent the community every single day, no matter where they're taking their classes that they get to where grandma and grandpa school colors they can get to where their dads and moms numbers, you know, they're going to be the pride of file, it'd be the product being on the product, or the product, or what those are the profitability, there's nothing there, school identity is still theirs. And that's one thing that pretty resonates with me, because in our area, a lot of people leave their community go to another school district for a better program. Well, I think the zone model definitely just continued to master any of the parents situation of wanting to take your child someplace though, you can live in your community, and take advantage of other resources and other programs away from your community. But come back and still have community pride in what you're doing. So be local champion, Mr. Bolser, stand up for your kids, and be honest, right? We got to do what's right. And that's what needs to be done.

Sarah Williamson: 29:30

That's great, Mike, I'm curious, this podcast was ultimately created to help elevate thought leaders in education. So I'm curious how you are helping tell your story within your community and also the broader education sphere.

Michael Gonzalez: 29:43

So we just got off a phone call with text education as a while ago, right. And I'm realizing we don't do a very good job locally, right, we do a very good job with the school community, right. But as far as the local situation, I don't have enough of me to go around. So I'm trying to get to the Chamber of Commerce, I'm trying to get to the Lions Club, I'm trying to get to those organizations, where the older members of that community that don't have kids in school, and understand what we're doing, right, because those are the those are the people that are going out and voting. Those are the role models that our younger parents are looking up to the grandparents, great grandparents to the school to the students that we're dealing with. So I want to be sure that when you know little Mikey goes home for Christmas break. And he started talking about his welding program to a great grandpa. He can definitely exemplify and demonstrate exactly what we're doing in the welding program. And his great grandpa is gonna have no idea what he's talking about, right? Because he's gonna stand about what his own is that we're trying to do a better job of that on a regional state National Foreign Minister, we've been extremely blessed before you got on to talking to Mr. Bolser. I hate to be the chief, I really want to be an Indian 99% of the time. But if you look at the rules for innovation, don't stop directory, there's only one person on there. But I get blessed to be the person that spokesperson. So we've tried to take this model to definitely the state, regional and national levels communicate what we're doing a different situation. Like I said, National PTA podcast last week, we're at the National Rural Education Association forum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I get a chance to talk side by side with Mr. Bolser SXSW. In March, though, we'd like we want to take our horse on the road, right? We like I said, I firmly believe this the model that you can pack up and unpack at any other place in the US. I don't think it can just happen in South Texas. I really firmly believe that this is a model that can be replicated, and a scalable, all the trigger words that anybody wants to know about. The zone can bring that to the to their communities, right. And I just stand firm with that.

Sarah Williamson: 31:33

Yeah, that's great. Well, how can people reach out to you to help understand how they can replicate this for their community?

Michael Gonzalez: 31:40

Well, I'll be honest with you, I hate doing this on a podcast right but the best way to get a hold of this is by phone, so my phone number is 361-522-0261 Text me, don't call me and I probably won't answer first, if you're gonna get a hold of me email, it's m Gonzalez M Gon, z a l e z@thersisz.org. And like I said, Whatever I can do to help out, we're here to help. Like I said, I got a phenomenal group leader that I surround myself with extraordinary teachers, and just exceptional kids, our kids, they do a great job preaching about what we're doing right. And so it's a good situation, we host force as much as we can, you can get to empower school to schedule a tour in call me to schedule a tour we'd be looking we'd love to have people come down here, you definitely get good. That's for sure. We definitely roll out the red carpet for you for sure. So you'll get a taste of South Texas if you come down here. So

Sarah Williamson: 32:33

that sounds great. Okay, well, hopefully you won't get too many calls. But the ones that you want to get. Hopefully, it's all good. Thanks for sharing your phone number. No spam. Okay. So thanks, Mike, again, for joining us. And for our podcast audience. As part of our global workforce series that we're doing this season, we'll be taking this show and then the next three after this one to highlight rural collaboratives in the CTE space that are developing opportunities for students, and areas that really haven't traditionally been there to serve students with specialized career pathways. So we're excited to dive into that.

Chad Bolser: 33:07

Yeah, absolutely. Our next episode will feature our friends from Empower school, Warren Hall, Riggins and Sarah Rob and power schools, a national leader in assisting schools and developing and maintaining the sorts of entities like rural collaboratives. And they're making noise with corporations and higher education institutions, state policymakers, we will follow that episode with some school leaders, as Mike indicated from Indiana, Tennessee, Colorado, who are in all different phases of developing startup sustainability of these rural collaborative. So very exciting. couple of episodes to come.

Sarah Williamson: 33:46

Thanks again, so much to both of you for joining us. And Mike, really appreciate it. This has been a really interesting episode. And I'm sure our listeners are going to really apply a lot of the learnings that you've shared today.

Michael Gonzalez: 33:56

Well, thanks again. I pleasure and great meeting you and Mr. Bolser. We'll see each other in March and in Austin, and let me know what else I can do. I'm here to help.

Sarah Williamson: 34:04

Fantastic.

Chad Bolser: 34:05

Thanks a lot. Thanks for joining us for the build momentum podcast today. If you enjoyed listening, we would love to hear your feedback, and would be grateful if you would leave us a review.

Sarah Williamson: 34:18

This helps us to share these powerful stories with even more people. If you liked what you heard, we would be honored if you could share this episode with someone in your network. We look forward to seeing you next time on build momentum.