Dr. Kathy Rollo

To help fix this, they have appointed new leadership at the school with Stacy Hurst as the new principal. Additionally, it will be a steam focused school with an emphasis on the arts. Rollo said, "We're really excited about that. It will be something that we have not done in Lubbock ISD before."

"We want to go back again and have community meetings again, and again share what we have in place now, because we have a lot more in place now, a year and a half later, than we did then. But then also get some feedback on some things that the community would like to see moving forward," Rollo said.

The plan will require Smylie Wilson to close down after the 2019-2020 school year and reopen in the fall of 2020 as a magnet school with a new name.

Tonight, November 5th, the Advanced Technology Center will have an open house. Their target audience is 8th graders and their parents, but it will be open to the community as well. This will be an opportunity for people to go to all of the different programs and visit with the teachers. The event will be at the ATC at 3201 Avenue Q, and will go from 6-7:30 P.M.

Dr. Rollo was also asked about the report that came out that made the top salaries of LISD staff known to the public. In the report, there were several six figure salaries, and none of them were teachers. Dr. Rollo responded by saying, "Well if you think about our school district and compare it to a large business, our district serves 27,000 students, and we have over 3,000 employees. We are charged with safety and security of our students and employees, we are charged with ensuring that our students are academically successful, plus all the extracurricular things that we offer. It's a lot of work to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently, and so it takes a team of us to make that happen."

When asked if she thinks the student body will be larger compared to last year, Dr. Rollo said, "We're not anticipating it to be larger. We are hoping that it's about the same."

"We all agree that we believe we want to pay our teachers more. We know the value of our quality teachers in the classroom and they are where the rubber meets the road," said Kathy Rollo.

When asked how this would affect the tax rate, Rollo said, "It will not increase the tax rate. We can service this debt with our current tax rate."

With the first 9 weeks of school over, Dr. Rollo is happy with how the schools have been doing, and the changes that they have made. "We've had an excellent start. It's been great. Everything's been smooth, students are working hard, everything's going well."

"I will say, our board of trustees is extremely committed to doing whatever we need to do to keep our students safe, and so all things are being considered," Rollo said.