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Most clicked story of the week:
During a panel discussion at the National Conference on Education hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, a handful of district leaders described the need to humanize the superintendency while facing pressures from the job.
“I think it’s important for people to see us as humans,” said George Philhower, superintendent of Eastern Hancock Schools in Indiana, during the Feb. 12 discussion in Nashville. “Because that’s what we are.”
Panelists also advised district leaders to be open to different viewpoints and to acknowledge when they don’t know something or may be wrong.
Number of the week:
Over 70
The number of federal Democratic lawmakers who signed a Feb. 17 letter to the U.S. Department of Education asking about the agency's efforts to support school systems and students impacted by federal immigration enforcement. The most recent letter from the lawmakers followed a Nov. 21 letter with the same inquiry. "We remain deeply concerned about the effect these ongoing enforcement efforts will have on student health, well-being and engagement,” read the most recent letter. As of Feb. 19, the Education Department had not responded to the lawmakers' request.
Teaching and learning
- As teacher apprenticeship programs led by school districts and states have grown in popularity in recent years, there are opportunities to leverage local, state and federal dollars to support these efforts, said David Donaldson, founder and managing partner of nonprofit National Center for Grow Your Own, during a Feb. 17 webinar. Apprenticeships can strengthen the classroom talent pipeline by training paraprofessionals, high school students or other local community members in the classroom while they earn a teaching credential at no cost to them. The goal is to then ultimately hire these new teachers full-time.
- The popularity of dual enrollment programs has surged in recent years, rising 15% year over year in 2023-24 in New York state, for example, and reaching as many as 57% of students at Kingsborough Community College, according to a December 2025 report from the New York Alliance for Early College Pathways. To help ensure student success in these courses, schools and districts should design such pathways with factors such as an up-front assessment of goals and partnerships with high-quality providers in mind, according to a 2025 report from the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships.
- January ice and snow storms impacted school districts in 40 states, and those districts are now juggling school calendars to find ways to make up for lost instruction time due to the winter weather. Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools and North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System, for example, are converting previously scheduled days off into make-up learning days. Kentucky's Carter County Schools is adding 20 minutes to the school day from Feb. 23 through the end of the school year.
District watch: Closures and court orders
- Houston Independent School District officials have proposed closing 12 schools beginning in the 2026-27 school year due to declining enrollment and aging infrastructure. Over 13,000 students left the Texas district between the 2022-23 and 2024-25 school years, dropping enrollment from 189,901 students to 176,693, data shows.
- A 60-year-old desegregation case in Tennessee’s Dyersburg City Schools was dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division on Feb. 17. The Justice Department said in a press release that the district “no longer operates as a segregated system,” and U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the district had complied “in good faith” and that “the federal government has no legitimate reason to continue monitoring.”
