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Education Service Center Region 12 Celebrates 40 Years Of Service To School Districts, Students |
In 1965, Texas was focused on ensuring schools would have the necessary tools to teach its young scholars. The 59th state legislature set aside $1.7 billion of their $3.65 billion two-year budget, or 46 percent, for education. Monies allocated that year to the Foundation School Fund during that session were made available at the onset of the 1967-1968 school year which provided for 20 regional instructional media centers, now called Education Service Centers (ESCs), to be established across the state. This year, the ESCs, including Central Texas’ ESC Region 12, are celebrating 40 years of commitment and quality service to its school districts and students.
Originally authorized by Senate Bill 408 in 1965, the centers gave continuity to school districts to provide better purchasing power and distribution of educational materials. In addition, a lending library service was set up to provide all schools with educational motion pictures films, film strips, recordings, tapes, programmed instructional and other similar materials. The centers offered duplicating services for some of the resources, and provided professional consultation for effective and efficient use of them.
While technology has changed and budget cuts have occurred in recent years, ESC Region 12 strives to continue providing those services and many more as the needs of the regional schools it serves grow. Today, it also offers an array of quality educational support services in the form of conferences and training in educational technology opportunities, curriculum instruction and assessment, special education services and school support programs, as well as the educator preparation and certification, principal certification and award-winning videoconference and distance learning services.
ESC Region 12 employs 147 full and part-time employees committed to continuous improvement and enhancement of the programs they provide to the educators, parents and students in the 12 counties they assist; Bell, Bosque, Coryell, Falls, Freestone, Hamilton, Hill, Lampasas, Limestone, Mills, McLennan and Navarro.
Since moving to its current location in 1994, ESC Region 12 has opened five satellite sites in Central Texas to provide convenient locations for professional development training throughout the region. To keep up with the needs of its school districts, it also conducts workshops at offsite locations, such as area schools, churches and hotels.
The main office, located near IH 35 in Waco, currently offers 7,000 square feet of meeting rooms with built-in multimedia and audiovisual equipment and three state-of-the-art computer labs. The center is in the process of adding on to its existing building in order to offer more training space.
“We are excited about the expansion because it will offer more opportunities under one central location for our educators,” Tom Norris, ESC Region 12 executive director, said.
Construction is scheduled to be completed by year end. The new addition will be more than 20,000 square feet and include six meeting rooms, a room dedicated to the Texas Education Telecommunications Network (TETN) for videoconferencing and a large computer lab. It will also house the center’s print shop which offers economical printing services to schools.
ESC Region 12 is planning a grand opening for the new addition, as well as other events throughout the upcoming school year to celebrate 40 years of offering quality services in support of educators and the schools to develop the full potential of all its students.
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