Saving Starts at Home--ESC Region 12 Brings Conferences to Central Texas
School Board Conference to be Held Sept. 15-16
WACO, Texas – In an era when every dollar counts for schools, Education Service Center (ESC) Region 12 is increasing efforts to help them save money. The center will provide a number of local money-saving professional development conferences, otherwise offered at the state/national level during this school year here in Central Texas. These seminars will reduce travel costs and registration fees for area educators and schools. A School Board Conference, the first of these “at-home” seminars will be held Thursday and Friday at 2101 W. Loop 340 in Waco.
“While discussing ways that our center could help districts with budget shortfalls and provide the quality training school personnel need, one of our superintendents suggested the idea of bringing conferences to the local level,” Dr. Jerry Maze, ESC Region 12 Executive Director said.
Many of the board conference sessions will focus on understanding the impact of the new laws passed by the 82nd Legislature. Remaining sessions will cover new testing changes, finance, policy, leadership, holding effective board meetings and social media communications.
“These at-home conferences will be less expensive in several ways: the travel cost in terms of mileage will be much less in many cases, and there will not be hotel costs, since participants are within daily driving distances,” Maze added. “Our conference registrations are often less, and in some cases, much less than state conference fees--all while providing excellent and necessary training in a central location.”
The center is expecting more than 130 participants from 33 area school districts including: Abbott, Clifton, Crawford, Goldthwaite, Itasca, La Vega, Mart, McGregor, Meridian and Riesel.
State-level conferences can range from $250 to more than $1,000 in registration fees alone. ESC Region 12’s conferences cost as little as $140, for a two-day event. The center’supcoming “at-home” conferences will cover topics such as Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, Gifted & Talented Programs, Professional Learning Communities, Early Childhood, and Science, Technology, Engineering & Math.
In addition to offering these at-home conferences, ESC Region 12 helps schools by offering cost-saving cooperatives, centralized services and pooled resources. The center also provides school finance planning and cost-effective business services that cannot be staffed and funded internally.
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