{"id":402748,"date":"2026-08-10T17:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402748\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T17:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:58:19","slug":"northside-isd-starts-school-year-as-mead-rebounds-from-three-f-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/402748\/","title":{"rendered":"Northside ISD starts school year as Mead rebounds from three F ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The start of a new school year, a time of hope and excitement for students and parents, has a special meaning this week at Mead Elementary School, which recently elevated test scores<\/a> to dodge a threat of school closure by the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After three straight years of getting an F from the Texas Education Agency<\/a>, the 20-year-old school near the South Texas Medical Center is projected to score an 87\u00a0\u2014 a strong B, above the C the school needed to be removed from the state\u2019s list of at-risk campuses, according to estimates by the Northside Independent School District. Had Mead scored\u00a0two more\u00a0Ds or Fs, the state would have been forced to order the school\u2019s closure or\u00a0place\u00a0the entire 95,500-student school district<\/a> under TEA oversight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mead is among 132\u00a0Northside schools that began\u00a0classes\u00a0on Monday, along with East Central and South San Antonio ISDs and\u00a0Harmony, Jubilee and KIPP charter schools. Boerne ISD, Edgewood ISD, Great Hearts Texas and IDEA Public Schools will reopen Tuesday. Other school systems start a new academic year in the next two weeks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Luis Estrada was the first parent waiting for Mead to open, arriving with his three children more than an hour before classes began. A steady stream of parents escorted their children up the hill to the campus, greeted by the principal and cheerful children\u2019s show tunes blaring from a loudspeaker.<\/p>\n

Despite its academic struggles with the state, the school has good reviews from parents, and the teachers are friendly, Estrada said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an open community for everyone. They have all kinds of races here. They have all kinds of people here. That\u2019s what I like about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Luis<\/p>\n

Luis Estrada III holds his son Luis, 7, outside Mead Elementary before dropping him off on the first day back at Northside ISD on Monday.<\/p>\n

Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News\"Luis<\/p>\n

Luis Estrada III hugs his daughter Addison, 9, before the first day of school at Mead Elementary on Monday.<\/p>\n

Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

Ayesha Jamalzai, 9, was ready to start third grade with a new backpack, a fresh, clean pair of tennis shoes and dreams of someday becoming a meteorologist. It\u2019s been nearly a decade since her family came to San Antonio from Afghanistan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI like the classes, and I like working on the computers,\u201d said Jamalzai, whose favorite subject is science.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mead, with a diverse student population that\u2019s more than 90% low income, and over 60% of kids learning English as a second language, serves hundreds of resettled international refugee children. The school was placed last year on a state-required turnaround plan to improve scores on state standardized tests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along the way, Amanda\u00a0Garner-Maskill, now starting her fifth year as principal, said she found her voice as a school leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, it was about breaking the mold,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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With help from the district\u2019s curriculum staff and bilingual\/ESL department, Mead saw a 15-percentage-point increase to 58% of students passing reading portions of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR<\/a>. About 62% passed the math portion\u00a0\u2014 a nearly 25-percentage-point boost.<\/p>\n

The improved\u00a0test scores remove the school from the TEA chopping block\u00a0\u2014 at least for now.\u00a0State letter grades at the elementary school level are entirely based on STAAR results.<\/p>\n

‘Closing gaps’<\/p>\n

Northside reported gains at other struggling campuses this year, but none compared to the dramatic breakthrough at Mead, named for a pioneering San Antonio educator who died in 2017. The school serves a broad cross-section of students from around the world, including the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Central and South America. The top three languages among Mead\u2019s families are Pashto, Arabic and Farsi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI know that we will be an example of, \u2018If Mead can do, anybody can do it,\u2019 ” said\u00a0Garner-Maskill. \u201cIt\u00a0gives us a great springboard to continue to invite families to have conversations about their child\u2019s academics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school applied research-based practices that suggest multilingual learners need to be challenged more to attain grade-level performance and used \u201caggressive coaching\u201d with its teachers, tossing aside slower, incremental coaching models, the principal said.<\/p>\n

\"Leelani<\/p>\n

Leelani Hernandez, center, 8, smiles at her\u00a0grandmother, Betty Gaytan, alongside\u00a0her mother Sasha Herrera, left,\u00a0on the first day back to school at Mead Elementary\u00a0on Monday.<\/p>\n

Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News\"Ayesha<\/p>\n

Ayesha Jamalzai, 9, left, and Mehnaz Khawri, 7, look at their class schedule on the first day of school at Mead Elementary on Monday.<\/p>\n

Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

The turnaround also involved confessions. Garner-Maskill acknowledged to her teachers her \u201cmisstep\u201d in applying accepted methods for academic improvement without a sense of urgency in past years. Last year, she asked \u201charder questions\u201d and demanded more from teachers and district staff.<\/p>\n

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She noticed one of her fourth-grade ESL classes, taught by veteran educator Amy Mendez, had the highest test scores at Mead and generated more student participation in classroom discussions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When cornered by her principal, who asked what she was doing differently, Mendez admitted she wasn\u2019t \u201cfollowing the curriculum step-by-step\u201d in English, math and other subjects. She was often giving students more time to grasp concepts before moving to the next topic. Sometimes, when the principal wasn\u2019t present, she\u00a0deviated from the lesson time frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did tell her, \u2018Once the classroom door closes, I just teach to support my students,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cWe\u2019re not only teaching fourth-grade students. We\u2019re closing gaps that they have, because some of them are coming straight into fourth grade from coming from another country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shaped by her own highly structured upbringing as a military child\u00a0who moved frequently and has since visited 16 different countries, Mendez said she uses student peer mentoring, daily homework assignments, extra credit opportunities and relationship-building with families to \u201clight their fire to do good for themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey want to do good. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to teach them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Garner-Maskill held up Mendez, who was recently honored as Mead\u2019s elementary educator of the year,\u00a0 as a model for other teachers at the school, and gave them flexibility to deviate from curriculum timelines, while providing instruction required under state guidelines. She said she\u2019ll continue working with Mead\u2019s educators to improve\u00a0academic performance.<\/p>\n

Although the state\u2019s accountability grades won\u2019t be publicly released by the state until Friday, Garner-Maskill said there\u2019s a new level of excitement among the teachers to start the 2026-27 school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are happy, but we also know that sustaining is just as hard as getting out, if not harder,\u201d she\u00a0said. \u201cWe cannot take our foot off the pedal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Parents<\/p>\n

Parents walk their children into \u00a0Mead Elementary on the first day of school on Monday.<\/p>\n

Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The start of a new school year, a time of hope and excitement for students and parents, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-402748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402748","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=402748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}