Until this fall, nobody had ever seen the Forest Lane Academy Jaguar. That all changed when a six-foot-tall Jaguar arrived on campus for the first day of school this year.<\/p>\n
Assistant Principal Rebecca Herrera has been with Richardson ISD for 12 years and Forest Lane Academy for eight. The Title I school had 625 students in the 2024-25 school year according to Texas Education Agency PEIMS reports, with 593 economically disadvantaged and 199 listed as emergent bilingual.<\/p>\n
For students oftentimes dealing with uncertainties outside the classroom, teacher-led efforts to make sure even the little things are there can often make a big impact, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a high number of students who are either transient or without housing, and that\u2019s something where a lot of times, we\u2019re having to figure out, even though that is the situation that they\u2019re in, how can they feel safe and comfortable and ready to learn when they\u2019re entering our campus,\u201d Herrera says. <\/p>\n
Herrera lives by the three Es: Equity, Empowerment and Excellence. Those three words exemplify the \u201cworld-class experience\u201d Herrera says each Forest Lane student deserves.<\/p>\n
The school doesn\u2019t have a parent-run PTA. Instead, teachers take over fundraising and event planning for the school. As a result, FLA staff can have trouble going beyond the basics for their students. So, to help create that \u201cworld-class\u201d experience for the school, Herrera launched a GoFundMe in June seeking to raise $570 for a new mascot suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until this fall, nobody had ever seen the Forest Lane Academy Jaguar. That all changed when a six-foot-tall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-19797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}