Edgewood ISD holds public hearing on 2023–24 Texas Academic Performance Report; special education labeled 'needs assistance'

Edgewood Independent School District officials presented the district’s 2023–24 Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR) at a public hearing on Feb. 18, 2025, telling the board that statewide accountability ratings and campus distinction designations were withheld because of ongoing litigation with the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

Dr. Robert Russo, a district staff presenter, opened the presentation: "Today is our public hearing on the Texas academic performance report, what we call taper, for the 2324 school year." He described the TAPR as a TEA compilation of PEIMS and student-assessment data that districts must publish annually and said the full report and a glossary would be posted to the district website within two weeks and made available in print at the central office and each campus.

The TAPR presentation covered multiple required elements, including accountability ratings (withheld for 2024), the 2024 special-education determination and the Results Driven Accountability (RDA) framework TEA uses to evaluate districts. Russo said Edgewood ISD’s 2024 special-education determination status is "needs assistance," and he told the board the district’s overall determination level moved from level 3 in 2023 to level 2 for 2023–24. "Based on the information that I shared with you today is we moved up a level determination level," Russo said.

Board member Michael Valdez pressed for specifics on that status, asking, "The special education needs assistance. ... What are we doing about the special education needs assistance?" Russo answered that the district and TEA meet quarterly under the RDA process, that a cross-department collaborative group (special education, academics, school leadership and other stakeholders) meets to devise and monitor corrective strategies, and that the district has trained special-education inclusion staff on rubrics and instructional supports to improve student writing and other instructional outcomes.

Russo emphasized that some TAPR indicators are lagging measures drawn from earlier years. He said attendance and dropout figures in the 2023–24 TAPR use 2022–23 data; for example, the district’s reported attendance rate is 85.1% (based on 2022–23), the annual dropout rate for grades 7–8 is 4.3% (2022–23) and for grades 9–12 is 5.2% (2022–23). The presentation listed a 4-year longitudinal graduation rate for the class of 2023 at about 85.8% and described other college, career and military readiness (CCMR) indicators and postsecondary enrollment snapshots for the class of 2023.

Russo also reviewed district profile and program data the TAPR publishes. He noted the district reported 7,916 students at the PEIMS snapshot, 93.1% economically disadvantaged, 25.1% English learners, and a special-education population of 14.7%. Staff metrics included an average of about 10.1 years’ experience in the district, 6.8 average years for teachers, and a teacher turnover rate of about 27.6%.

On campus safety, Russo said the report lists 10 violent or criminal incidents districtwide for the reporting period; he said seven of those incidents involved vaping and occurred before a legal change that altered how vaping incidents are categorized. He described local prevention and intervention work including campus participation in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), nonviolent crisis intervention training for staff, counseling services, bullying-prevention efforts and teen-dating-violence protocols.

Russo pointed board members to the TAPR’s linked financial standard reports (PEIMS/financials for 2022–23) for revenues, expenditures, tax rates and fund balances; he also said the district’s accreditation status remains accredited and that TEA accountability ratings remain on hold because of statewide litigation.

The public hearing included questions from board members but no public speakers identified in the transcript. The board voted to open and later close the public hearing and then adjourned; those were procedural motions recorded by the presiding officer.

The TAPR materials will be posted online and distributed in paper form as described by Russo, and board members were advised to contact Dr. Robert Russo for additional information.