Hunt Family Foundation awards $10 million grant to CREEED, aimed at boosting El Paso college completion rates

A nonprofit group that grew El Paso’s charter school network and invested in teachers in traditional public school systems is receiving a $10 million grant as it marks its 10th anniversary.

The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, will receive a $10 million grant from the Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Foundation, which previously gave $12 million to the organization.

A key part of CREEED’s mission has been to increase the number and percentage of El Paso County students completing a college degree or credential, said Woody Hunt, the El Paso businessman and philanthropist whose family foundation has provided most of CREEED’s funding since 2014. That has meant changing expectations and measurements of success, he said. 

“An academic’s going to say, ‘We’re doing a great job given the student population we have and given their economic impairment challenges.’ The business community is going to say, ‘We’ve got to get out of this environment. The way we’re going to get out is we’re going to have to not let that be an excuse, and we’re going to have to outperform the parental income levels,’” Hunt said.

He said a number of El Paso schools have shown over the past decade that students from predominantly low-income backgrounds can out-perform students from wealthier districts across the state. That has required a commitment from the business community and school leaders, Hunt said.

A major early focus of CREEED was expanding the number of charter schools in El Paso. But Hunt said a number of factors – particularly a declining student population in El Paso – may mean charters will play a more limited role in El Paso education than originally planned.

Charter school investments

In 2018, CREEED provided $12 million to recruit IDEA Public Schools, a charter school network that began in South Texas, to El Paso County. That effort continues to draw criticism from those who say that the expansion of charter schools in the region drew funding from and undermined traditional public school systems.

“What they want to do is have business drive what is taught and what is created in terms of products coming out of the school system,” said Ross Moore, president of the El Paso Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel, a union in the El Paso Independent School District.

Moore also said CREEED has amplified the emphasis on student testing, which “focused more classroom time on testing or test prep than on learning and developing critical thinking skills.”

Hunt said expanding charter schools was necessary for two primary reasons – to make El Paso more attractive to businesses looking to move to El Paso from areas with extensive charter school networks, and to push El Paso traditional public schools to improve from additional competition.

“I think that competition, which we’re all used to in the private sector, is generally beneficial,” he said.

Hunt noted that El Paso’s traditional public school districts are now open enrollment districts and competing with each other for students, much as charter schools compete for those students.

Texas Education Agency data shows that El Paso students attending school outside their home districts are as likely to go to another traditional school district as a charter school.

TEA records show that about 15,000 El Paso County students – about 9% of all students in the county – were enrolled at eight charter school systems last year. Hunt acknowledged that falls short of CREEED’s expectations of charter school enrollment.

“We’re behind that and that’s all attributable to where IDEA is versus their original plan,” he said. 

IDEA Public Schools is the largest charter system in El Paso, with about 5,900 students last year. TEA has been investigating IDEA’s statewide operations since 2021 over allegations of improper spending, and earlier this year assigned a conservator to help oversee IDEA.

“They were expected to do 20 schools and 10 campuses (in El Paso), and they’re half of that, 10 schools and five campuses. We still have expectations that they will resume, but it hasn’t happened yet,” Hunt said. 

Moore offered a different explanation for charter school enrollment struggles.

“Because those that do go to charters, more often than not, have a bad experience despite the publicity, and they share with their friends. And honestly, the school districts have been fighting back. Not as much as I’d like them to, but they have been fighting back,” he said.

Public school investments

Both Hunt and CREEED’s CEO, Eddie Rodriguez, said an important step for the organization and educators was defining successful school achievement. 

A decade ago, El Paso school districts touted the number of students who scored at least “approaches standards” on state tests, they said. Now, the districts focus on the number of students meeting or exceeding the statewide standards set on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR tests.

“I think one of the things that’s happened over the 10 years is the recognition from the standpoint of the leadership in our region — I’m talking about the academic leadership, superintendents — that, no, we’re going to measure ourselves against the ‘meets’ or the grade level standard. So I think in that respect, we can think of the last 10 years as a positive movement,” Rodriguez said.

Hunt said the focus on students “approaching” standards was misguided.

“That really had no correlation to post-secondary success, whereas meeting standards or mastering standards … could have a correlation there with post-secondary success,” he said. 

Hunt and Rodriguez said El Paso’s traditional public schools had been closing long-standing achievement gaps with the state averages until the COVID pandemic closed in-person schooling for parts of two school years starting in 2020. Student test results showed the gap widening again in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, though the gap narrowed the past couple of years.

CREEED’s investments in public schools have focused on improved teacher training, expanding the number of teachers qualified to teach classes that allow students to earn college credit in high school, improving parent engagement, and getting more students to take and pass Algebra I in eighth grade instead of the traditional ninth grade.

The TEA also now is pushing the teaching of Algebra I to eighth grade.

“I think the reality is that we started in that direction before the state did. And so as a consequence, I think that that speaks well to the recognition (by El Paso schools) that this is something that needs to be done,” Rodriguez said. 

The future for CREEED, El Paso education

A common outcome driving CREEED’s investments has been getting more El Paso students to earn a college degree or credential after completing high school. Historically, El Paso has had the highest rates in the state of students who enroll in college after high school, but the lowest rates of students completing college.

“So you’ve got this question: What happened here? Are you turning out graduates that want to go on to post-secondary but haven’t been prepared to go on?,” Hunt said. “Or do you have graduates that want to go on, but because of family circumstances, family support income, are unable to sustain their post-secondary to completion? Or do you have a job market that doesn’t have the right pricing signals that’s telling someone, if I stay in school, I complete, I can translate that into a monetary uptick on my financial circumstances?”

Hunt believes all those factors play a role and have to be addressed. Improving educational attainment levels is crucial if El Paso is to be economically competitive with other areas, including other border communities, he said.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for El Paso County schools in the coming years will be declining enrollment. The number of children born last year to El Paso County residents was 21% below the number a decade earlier, according to state records.

Declining enrollment will reduce state funding. That will increase the need for schools – whether charters or traditional school districts – to compete with each other for a shrinking number of students.

“I think the open enrollment (for traditional school districts) will probably reduce the growth of charters. I think going to open enrollment at our traditional public schools is forcing more competition,” Hunt said. “I see that all being positive and really accomplishing the same thing as a charter system would do.”

Hunt said that with increasing competition among traditional school districts, “charters, instead of being 15 or 20% of the student population, end up at 10% or something like that.”

Rodriguez said in the next decade, CREEED will focus on institutionalizing increased college completion – whether technical certificates, associate degrees, or four-year degrees – as the goal for El Paso’s education system, from the youngest grade levels through college. 

That will make El Paso – and El Pasoans – more competitive for the higher skilled and higher paying jobs of the mid-21st century, he said.

“The objective from our standpoint is we want to make sure that in these next 10 years, we really establish this process as so instrumental to what makes our community and our society work that people take that as an accepted component,” Rodriguez said.

Disclosure: The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Economic Development and the Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Foundation are financial supporters of El Paso Matters. Financial supporters play no role in El Paso Matters’ journalism. The news organization’s policy on editorial independence can be found here.