H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt announced a $100-million public education project Tuesday aimed at training and developing principals and superintendents to be better school administrators.
The Holdsworth Center, is being named for Charles Butt’s mother Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth, a long time advocate for public education and social justice.
Kate Rogers, the Holdsworth Center’s executive vice president says the center will serve as a transformational leadership academy for school district superintendents throughout Texas.
“We work with districts over a sustained period of time, five years. We start at the top of the organization with the superintendent and their key cabinet. They go through a very rigorous curriculum that lasts over two years, really focused on their personal leadership but also on best practices and talent-management to support the work of the district," Rogers explains.
Rogers says the Center, next works with each of the districts principals on how to improve leadership and teaching outcomes on their individual campuses. Rogers says the Center will also serve to help recruit talent for districts in need of school administrators.
“It’s a big challenge, you know because we have a shortage of folks coming into the classroom, we have a shortage of folks that actually want to step up into the administrative role because it’s very challenging in today’s world," Rogers says.
And while the Center will be located in Austin and serve 20 school districts at a time over a five year period, its efforts are meant to serve all of Texas’ more than 12-hundred school districts over time.
