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Investing in QualityProduced by Todd Rodgers & Written by Jim BarlowWhen Houston Gateway Academy (HGA) was founded in August 1999 by a small group of state politicians and businessmen, little was known about charter schools and their intended design. A decade later, after growing pains and deep financial challenges, the Texas school, now offering Pre-kindergarten through 9th-grade, is on solid ground and about to move its middle school into new facilities.

HGA began in a local shopping center and eventually grew into a prefabricated building with several trailers as classrooms. Grade levels K through 3 grew into K through 5 at that first campus in southeast Houston. The school expanded in 2002 by creating a middle school in rented facilities nearby.

The early days were bittersweet financially as the school was operated by two out-of-state education management companies, said Richard Garza, HGA’s chief executive officer and superintendent since 2006. Monthly management fees and policy and governance challenges facing the school’s board of trustees, made up of volunteer businessmen, women and parents, proved difficult. The school went through two management companies, two superintendents and four principals from January 2000 to February 2006.

When Garza was hired a month later, the school was in serious financial trouble. “Our employees were running to the banks to cash their payroll checks,” he said.

Garza, an accountant for 25 years before entering education as a controller at another charter school, changed the fortunes for HGA’s.

The school, with a staff of 75, now has $1.8 million in cash on hand, $3.2 million in net assets, a $6.5 million budget, and is expanding its educational programs. “Once you’ve turned the finances around, you have the dollars to invest in qual-ity teachers, quality resources and materials, and then you can really start concentrating on the academic side,” said Garza.

The 756 students in grades pre-K through 9 are spread out over two campuses, and the school is current-ly in the pre-construction phase of building a new $10 million facility. For the first time in HGA history, financing for the construction loan was easily acquired

“The key thing in the turnaround is challenging the teachers and raising the bar,” he said. “Every week, there are no excuses for failure. We have to succeed. There isn’t ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ What is it going to take for us to get the job done? And I think that has raised the bar in the expectations for teachers and raised the bar in the expectations for the students and we keep continuing to challenge.”

In the 2007-2008 school years, HGA was commended by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for its 8th-grade social studies scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills (TAKS), which meets the

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Houston Gateway Academy

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requirements of No Child Left Behind. Reading scores, recently given an unacceptable rating by the TEA, have risen to achieve state standards thanks to a grant from Reading First that allowed for the implementation of Open Court, a program offered to need-based schools by education-publishing giant McGraw-Hill.

TAKS results for 2007-08 showed HGA’s 3rd through 8th graders with solid scores, exceeding statewide averages in some areas. Garza’s goal is to exceed current state regula-tions in all areas. “We make it mandatory that students have to pass their TAKS in every subject as well as their own class curriculum subjects to be promoted,” Garza said. “Lots of schools don’t do that; you can fail your TAKS but somehow pass your class curriculum and get promoted. We feel they both have to go hand in hand.”

“That may seem a little harsh because a student may fail

their TAKS test by missing only one point, but we do as much as we can to get a student prepared for success. That’s why I implemented our mandatory After School Program based on benchmarks. If a student’s scores are 85 percent or above, they get enrichment; if they are below, they attend mandatory tutorials specifically in the area they are having trouble in. In addition to that, individual students who are still having trouble get pulled out of their ancillary or recess classes for extra one-on-one instruction from their teacher,” explains Garza.

To add to that end, there is an extensive focus on staff development. Every Friday HGA dismisses students early and conducts in-service training for almost two hours. The school has cross-curriculum training -- often with an outside professional. “For example, McGraw Hill will come in and send their representative to provide training in Open Court,” Garza said. “Sometimes HGA will just have grade-level meet-

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ings and talk about strategies for specific challenges students are having.”

HGA is also pioneering a scheme in which teachers move up with their grades. This year the 4th-grade team moved up to 5th grade. “That’s been a big plus,” he said, “because as far as discipline is concerned they already know the students and they already know the parents. Teachers also know where student weaknesses are so there’s not that learning curve you have at the begin-ning of every school year. Teachers are getting to know their students and students are not challenging their teachers. You avoid the ‘this-is-a-new-teacher, let-me-see-what-I-can-get-away-with’ situation.”

Garza maintains the old adage “it takes a community to raise a child, everyone is responsible for that child’s welfare.” To make this happen, he implemented required

www.hgaschools.org

Founded : 1999 CEO : Richard Garza Budget : $6.5 million Students : 756

COMPANY AT A GLANCE

home visits. The entire school’s mission is reinforced through the mandatory home visits that each teacher has to conduct at the beginning of each academic school year. The home visits are an opportunity for the teacher to introduce themselves to the family and to enlighten them on all the services offered. Teachers get thoroughly trained at the school’s beginning of the year in-service training as to all the school’s programs and

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services.

This way, when they conduct the home visit, they are required to inform the parents of additional services which include the After School Program, the Adult Literacy Program, the schools’ partnership with Rice University for the Intensive Summer Program and the Partnership with Sylvan Learning Centers that provide additional free tutoring for students who are still strug-gling after these intensive services.

Other partnerships include the Mariners Sea Scouts program, the Boys and Girl Scouts program, our part-nership with IBC bank, McDonalds Restaurants, the Gulf Coast Community Services Association, Laredo National Bank, Met Life, and many others. The intend-ed result is to get the parents motivated and involved with the school and with their child’s education. This makes it easier for them to fulfill their requirement of serving 36 volunteer hours every year.

The school maintains a strict environment in which students must wear uniforms, behave responsively and make responsible choices. A guidance program, administered by school counselors, helps promote and enhance the learning process. Character development is also high on the list of requisites for HGA students. Mr. Garza is so determined to help students succeed in all areas of their life that he implemented manda-tory random drug testing and searches for students. He even went as far as making them mandatory for all teachers, administrators and staff. This keeps every-one motivated to stay away from drugs and prevents anyone from falling into a bad lifestyle.

The curriculum is set in meetings and modified and applied through a rigorous system, Garza said. “Our lesson plans have to be kept in a notebook and checked once a week by the lead teacher and every other week by the principal. This way when 4th-grade teachers go to 5th grade, they’re given the book and the whole curriculum and lesson plans are in place. They just need to modify it based on the students they have that particular year. So we really try to have everything in a systematic way that is easy for everybody. If a system

is working, we keep it in place; if the system is not working, we modify it or we change it.”

HGA’s goal is to be “Exemplary” at both campuses. The Evergreen Campus, with grades Pre-K through grade 6, will eventually be rebuilt in some fashion to move away from classrooms that now meet in trailers. The Coral Campus, with its impending new construction, will add 10th grade after the new building is completed,

“We’ll be adding one grade a year up to that within two to three years we’ll probably be opening up a third campus,” Garza said. “There’s a huge need here in the southeast end of the city.”

Houston Gateway is always looking to expand their services to the Hispanic community. “Plans are now being formulated to eventu-ally provide Housing Services to first-time buyers where we will construct single-family homes for our community as well as a Child Placing Agency that will license and certify foster homes to care for children who are abused and or neglected. We are an agency that wants to serve our community and bring about change for the betterment of everyone involved. We want to show the world that Houston Gateway Academy is a force to reckon with and is here to stay.”

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