A group from Lubbock ISD is at Harvard this week as part of a Raise Your Hand Texas leadership program.

Raise Your Hand Texas is a nonprofit working to strengthen and improve public education by sponsoring summer leadership programs at The Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

They are supported by over 110 school leaders – including individual principals and school and district teams from 39 districts.

Associate Superintendent for Secondary Schools Doyle Vogler is in attendance with the group from O.L. Slaton Middle School. Principal Damon McCall, Assistant Principal Kris Ann Blodgett, and instructional coaches Britni Grandon and Jeffrey Mitchell are also in the program.

“We’re spending the week learning from the leading experts on the systematic steps required to lead change in a turnaround school,” McCall said. “We’ve also created a network of leaders through Raise Your Hand Texas.”

With this year’s group, Raise Your Hand Texas will have sponsored more than 1,000 school leaders to attend Harvard in the nine years of the program.

This is the first year the organization opened sponsorship to teams.

Raise Your Hand covers all expenses for those selected, including program tuition fees, travel, hotel and other discretionary funding – an average of about $9,200 per attendee, for a total of more than $1 million in sponsorships for 2017, and more than $8 million since the program’s inception.

Attendees will join education leaders from around the globe in one of the following six institutes, and engage in training and workshops led by international education and leadership experts.

  • National Institute for Urban School Leaders
  • Improving Schools: The Art of Leadership
  • Leadership: An Evolving Vision
  • Closing the Achievement Gap
  • Family Engagement in Education
  • School Turnaround Leaders

Each Institute lasts for 5-7 days, between June 5th and July 27, 2017.

Raise Your Hand Texas is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that identifies and pilots promising ideas to improve public education, and supports the conditions and public policies needed to scale proven approaches to benefit all Texas students.

More From News/Talk 95.1 & 790 KFYO