portraits

    »     AMARILLO ISD

9

For Our Scholars, 
For Our Community

Visions for the innovation academy are both vivid and broad, 

as planning and development is in the very early stages of a 
three-to-fi ve-year process. But everyone involved feels strongly 
about one thing. They’re excited about the wide-open prospects 
and they want the community to be just as enthusiastic. “I think 
we’ll be able to say that in 2017 we began to totally revolutionize 
the way teaching and learning happen in Amarillo,” says Jay. 
“Education today has made students think if they don’t succeed 
at everything they do, their effort is not valuable. But you think 
back to great inventors and great thinkers of the past and some 
were utter failures in the beginning stages.” 

It’s a sentiment emphasized by Dr. West at every opportunity. 

“I really want people to think about what a day in the life of our 
scholars could look like. Does it have to look the same as it looked 
20 or 50 years ago? Does every student’s day need to look exactly 
the same?” she asks. 

Tracey sees an opportunity to reinvigorate growth for AISD. 

“For students who’ve made the decision to leave AISD, either to 
home school or for private school or another district, because 
maybe they weren’t being challenged in the way they wanted, I 
think this is an opportunity for them to come back to us,” she says.

As the project moves forward, Dr. West strongly views it as an 

opportunity to respond to what the local workforce demands as 
Amarillo evolves to be more competitive. “For many jobs, Amarillo 
has an adequate workforce. That’s why our unemployment rate is 
so low,” she says. “But for STEM jobs, businesses often have to 
go outside Amarillo to recruit. So let’s educate the scholars we 
have to a high level and keep them here when they graduate high 
school and college.”

Amarillo is ready to take the next step with the innovation 

academy project, says Jay. “Amarillo is absolutely ready for this. If 
we are to continue to thrive as a community, we have to create a 
pipeline where students are prepared for a technological society. 
We’ve got to show employers we have people waiting in line to 
take your jobs.”  

Adds Dr. West, “There are many places in our schools now 

where scholars are thinking, communicating, collaborating and 
contributing. You can see it in the buildings we’ve built in the 
last several years, in our libraries and across our curriculum with 
technology integration. Our scholars can do it. They already are 
doing it and it’s really fun to watch. The innovation academy 
offers us opportunity to go even further and really enhance how 
we educate in Amarillo.”

We envision

it to be an innovative kind of 

education, not based entirely on a bell 

schedule, not based entirely on seat time,” 

Dr. West says of the Hastings space. “It should be a 

space where you can create your own projects and solve 

problems within our community.”

“