Four BISD Schools Earn NCUST Awards

Four BISD schools have been ranked among the best performing urban schools in America by the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST). Benavides Elementary and Pace ECHS earned the coveted Excellence in Education Silver Award with the possibility that those awards could become Gold Awards when the final announcements are made on May 23-25 at the 2016 National Excellence in Urban Education Symposium in San Diego, California. Breeden Elementary and Veterans Memorial ECHS were both named Bronze Award winners. Castañeda Elementary and Resaca Elementary were named to the NCUST Honor Roll. All six BISD schools were visited by teams of educational experts in February. The NCUST finalists all serve low-income communities with an array of challenges but still boast achievement results that exceed state averages for all students. In 2015, Ortiz Elementary earned the NCUST Silver award and Benavides and Breeden Elementary Schools were Bronze award recipients. Paredes and Pullam Elementary Schools were both named to the Honor Roll.