- Cedar Hill ISD
- Holdsworth Center Partnership
Holdsworth Center Partnership
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Cedar Hill Independent School is one of just six school districts in Texas this year to be selected for a five-year partnership with The Holdsworth Center, a non-profit organization started by H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt. It is a five year strategic partnership that will help the district grow its own bench of strong, skilled leaders who create conditions in which teachers thrive and scholars get the tools they need to succeed. All programming and support is covered at no cost through the generosity of the H-E-B Chairman and other philanthropic supporters.
That includes:
- Embedding Holdsworth District Support Team staff in each district for five years to help central office leaders design, implement and sustain their own leadership development systems
- Delivering two-year District and Campus Leadership Programs for multiple groups of central office and campus leadership teams
- Providing districts with robust tools to measure district-wide culture and staff engagement and better understand students’ social-emotional learning.
Holdsworth Center Fast Facts
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About
Based in Austin, Texas, we were founded in 2017 by Charles Butt, Chairman of H-E-B, with $100 million in seed funding. Charles named the Center after his mother, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth, a former schoolteacher and pioneering advocate for social justice.
The choice to focus on leadership is strategic. Great leadership is critical to the success of any organization, including public schools. In education, leaders impact every aspect of the system all the way down to student outcomes. Two decades of research backs this up.
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Partners
The Holdsworth Partnership includes 19 school districts across Texas; collectively, those districts serve 730,000 students at 956 campuses and employ 146,000 faculty and staff.
Superintendents, central office leaders, principals, assistant principals and teachers are included in Holdsworth’s 2-year leadership programs.
By 2028, we anticipate serving more than 4,500 leaders through the partnership alone and anticipate serving even more through events and additional program offerings
Cohort 1 (2017 - 2022)
Arlington ISD
Grand Prairie ISD
Klein ISD
Lamar CISD
Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD
Round Rock ISD
Southwest ISDCohort 2 (2019 - 2024)
Aldine ISD
Harlingen CISD
Judson ISD
Lockhart ISD
Mesquite ISD
Spring ISDCohort 3 (2021 - 2026)
Cedar Hill ISD
Dallas ISD
East Central ISD
Garland ISD
Laredo ISD
Victoria ISD -
Goals
Holdsworth goals for every district
• Grow individual leaders and deepen their capacity to lead themselves, lead others and lead change.
• Design systems that will produce a strong principal in every school by building a deep bench of talent poised to fill leadership vacancies as they arise.
• Build strong principal, teacher and overall staff engagement that creates emotional commitment to the mission of educating all children, demonstrated by stability and retention of the workforce.
• Meaningfully improve student achievement, measured not only by state ratings but also by student engagement and social emotional learning. -
Approach
The 5-year Holdsworth Partnership helps public school districts build their own bench of strong, ready leaders.
Public school leaders show up to the Holdsworth program as experts in education. We teach them to be experts in leadership.
Teams of leaders dedicate time to developing their personal leadership, growing and empowering others and creating change across their districts and schools.
Holdsworth embeds support within partner districts for five years to help central office develop stronger leaders within their own systems, building a deeper bench of leaders who are truly ready for the challenges of school leadership.
Over time, we believe stronger leadership is critical to moving Texas closer to excellent and equitable outcomes for all students.
