Lubbock Times

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $27.8 million Teacher and School Leader Incentive grant to Harmony Public Schools to be used to train, equip, and retain effective school leaders statewide.

Harmony Public Schools reports the grant will strengthen educational leadership by better positioning and supporting current and rising principals and by retaining and encouraging educational leadership teams to excel at the 50 Texas campuses Harmony has designated as high-needs schools.

Harmony was one of only 13 school systems in the country and the largest of three Texas recipients to receive the DOE grant.

“Great teachers deserve to be treated as the professionals they are and to be compensated accordingly,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statement. “All too often, though, they lack access to relevant professional development courses and are compensated on a step-scale ladder that treats them like cogs in a machine instead of as individuals with unique talents and interests. We’ve challenged today’s awardees to rethink all of that, and they have risen to the challenge.”

Lubbock is among the cities served by Harmony schools, a Texas-based public charter school system serving pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students in 23 cities across the state.