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Abilene ISD board reviews plan to shift Center for Innovation from STEM to fine-arts fifth-grade program
Summary
At a workshop meeting, Abilene ISD officials outlined a proposal to rebrand the Center for Innovation from a STEM-focused fifth-grade program toward a fine-arts–focused model that would provide daily arts instruction, specialty study time, field experiences and continued core academics; presenters said enrollment would remain voluntary and the district plans to roll the change next year.
The Abilene ISD board heard a proposal at a workshop to reorient the Center for Innovation — a fifth-grade program housed in partnership with McMurray — from its long-standing STEM focus toward a fine-arts–focused model while keeping state-required core instruction.
The change, presented by Carrie Thornburg, Abilene ISD's executive director of elementary, and Clay Johnson, executive director of fine arts, would keep TEA-aligned core coursework and add daily fine-arts instruction across art, music, theater and dance. "We don't wanna take away the experiences that the students are having, but instead to enhance an area that we think is really exciting," Thornburg said, adding that the district would continue to cover math and science even after the shift: "doesn't mean that we're we're ditching math and science. We're still covering those those core areas and still doing above and beyond in science and math."
Why it matters: the Center for Innovation…
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