Find past award recipients here.
2025 Recipients
Gruver ISD - Gruver Farm Scholarship Foundation Program
Gruver ISD is recognized as a recipient of the 2025 Anita Villarreal Innovation in Engagement Award for its transformative Gruver Farm Scholarship Foundation Program. Established as a community-driven initiative, this program leverages a unique gift of land to provide every Gruver High School graduate with financial support for post-secondary education. Since its inception in 2012, dedicated community members have volunteered their time and expertise to plant, tend, and harvest approximately 405 acres of corn, with all net proceeds contributing to a scholarship fund. By uniting the school and local community around a shared vision, this initiative ensures that every student, regardless of financial background, has the opportunity to pursue higher education. The impact of the Gruver Farm Scholarship Foundation Program is profound. Beginning with the Class of 2016, the program has disbursed nearly $1.5 million in scholarships within its first five years, helping to create 23 first-generation college graduates in a Class 2A district. Beyond financial assistance, this initiative fosters a culture of giving, hard work, and educational empowerment, reinforcing the strong ties between Gruver ISD and its surrounding community. By engaging families, students, and local volunteers in a shared commitment to education, Gruver ISD exemplifies innovation in family and community engagement, making them a deserving recipient of this prestigious award.
San Antonio ISD - Family Hour
San Antonio ISD is recognized as a recipient of the 2025 Anita Villarreal Innovation in Engagement Award for its impactful Family Hour initiative, a program rooted in Dr. Karen Mapp’s framework for effective family-school partnerships. Family Hour provides structured, interactive learning experiences designed to empower families as active participants in their children’s education. By offering grade- level-aligned sessions that incorporate educational best practices, this initiative strengthens the connection between home and school while fostering a culture of collaborative learning. As a cornerstone of SAISD’s family engagement efforts, Family Hour equips families with the knowledge and skills to support student achievement in meaningful ways. Developed through a strong partnership between SAISD departments, teachers, families, students, and external community organizations, Family Hour embraces an interdisciplinary approach to family engagement. These collaborative sessions ensure that families receive valuable, research-based strategies tailored to their children’s academic needs. By making high-quality learning opportunities accessible to all families, SAISD is creating a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. This commitment to innovative and capacity-building family engagement makes SAISD a deserving recipient of this prestigious award.
Klein ISD - Measuring the Impact of Family Partnerships in a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Model
Klein ISD is recognized as a recipient of the 2025 Anita Villarreal Innovation in Engagement Award for its groundbreaking work in Measuring the Impact of Family Partnerships in a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Model. This initiative establishes a structured, data-driven framework that strengthens collaboration between families and schools to enhance student achievement. By integrating family engagement into the MTSS model, Klein ISD ensures that educators can assess and refine strategies to meet the diverse needs of students and their families. This innovative approach not only reinforces the vital connection between home and school but also provides measurable insights into how family involvement directly contributes to student success. Through its MTSS framework for family engagement, Klein ISD is transforming the way schools and families work together to support learning. By implementing tiered support systems, educators can identify effective engagement practices, tailor interventions, and ensure that all students receive the guidance and resources they need to thrive. This intentional and strategic method empowers families to play an active role in their child’s education while equipping schools with the tools to foster meaningful partnerships. As a leader in innovative family engagement, Klein ISD exemplifies a commitment to strengthening home-school connections, making them a deserving recipient of this prestigious award.
Cuero ISD - Magical Mondays
Cuero ISD is recognized as a recipient of the 2025 Anita Villarreal Innovation in Engagement Award for its outstanding commitment to fostering strong school- family partnerships through Magical Mondays. This weekly after-school initiative provides students and their families with enriching opportunities to engage in hands-on STEM projects, literacy workshops, cultural arts, wellness programs, and career exploration sessions. Designed to strengthen academic, social, and emotional support for students, Magical Mondays creates an inclusive space where families and educators collaborate to enhance student success. A key aspect of Magical Mondays is its accessibility and flexibility, ensuring meaningful engagement for families with varying schedules. Led by dedicated library managers, teachers, community partners, and volunteers, each session offers structured learning experiences and valuable resources for parents to support learning at home. With extended evening hours to accommodate working families, Cuero ISD’s Magical Mondays exemplifies the district’s commitment to innovative and inclusive family engagement, making them a deserving recipient of this prestigious award.
2024 Recipients
Aldine ISD - Family and Community University: Adult Education Beyond Boundaries
In its first year, the Office of Family and Community Engagement started virtual sessions to inform families about COVID-19. As the situation improved, they launched the Family and Community University (FCUniversity) in October 2021 to tackle misconceptions about parental involvement in education. FCUniversity, themed "Empowering Families Look Forward," offered lessons in English and Spanish, plus one in Vietnamese. The program's success, driven by collaboration and effective marketing, saw enrollment grow from 230 to 1,100 by December 2023. The program, which expanded to five new locations, including two churches, provided families with essential skills for employment and personal growth. Highlights include graduates achieving U.S. citizenship, earning Microsoft Specialist Certifications, and enrolling in higher education. The initiative has gained attention from other districts and underscores the importance of connecting with families to foster positive change. The ultimate goal is to transform FCUniversity into the “Aldine Adult Education Center.”
Lufkin ISD - Destination Hi-Impact Family Engagement - GPS to Success
In the past 2.5 years, Lufkin ISD has improved family engagement with a multi-tiered approach tailored to different needs. The 21st Century Texas ACE Lufkin ISD Family Engagement Advisory Team, including parents and community partners, meets regularly to plan and evaluate activities. Initiatives like Parent Cafe Family Chats, Discover with Me Math, and FIT Family Instructional Time were launched based on parent feedback. We offer GED, ESL, and Citizenship classes with Angelina College. Events like Family Night at the Museum and Raising Highly Capable Kids program have been successful. Our Family Engagement Dashboard tracks progress, showing significant increases in family interactions and parent involvement. We ended the first semester of 2023-2024 with 2,025 family interactions, surpassing the previous year's total. Partnerships with over 20 community organizations enhance our program, supporting activities like the Lufkin Living Library and College Readiness events.
Rockdale ISD - Creating Lasting Connections: Engaging Families through Winter Wonderland Events
The Winter Wonderland event, organized by Rockdale ISD, aims to boost parent and family engagement. This annual event brings together all campuses and food services for a memorable experience. It provides parents with valuable information about district programs and resources, while offering winter-themed activities for PK-5 students and a carnival for 6-12 students. The carnival also collects canned goods and donations for our Christmas Round-Up family support program, promoting community involvement and social responsibility. By combining informative sessions, engaging activities, and charitable efforts, Winter Wonderland fosters a festive and inclusive atmosphere that strengthens school-community bonds.
Spring Forest Middle School - High School Ready
Transitioning to high school is a big step, often causing anxiety for students and parents. To help, Spring Forest Middle School offers "High School Ready" workshops to prepare families for the changes ahead. These workshops feature expert speakers, including high school principals, counselors, and booster club presidents, and cover topics like academic expectations, social adjustments, and extracurricular activities. With high attendance and positive feedback, these workshops provide essential support, easing the transition and building a sense of community. This program ensures that students and their families are well-prepared for high school challenges and opportunities.
2023 Recipients
Klein ISD - Working Together for Our Families: Parent Education Program and Family Engagement Partnering Together
This practice provides family support for parenting students and their parents/guardians by creating a cohort of specific parenting classes that will enrich, equip, and empower these individuals to build their capacity as parents and provide a community of support.
Nacogdoches ISD - Alianza Conexión Hispana Advisory Committee
This practice provides students, parents, school staff, and community members an opportunity to be a part of the school district decision-making process, creates a safe space where they can have a voice, share their input to improve the quality of our district practices and make a difference in policies and regulation affecting our students. The Alianza Conexión Hispana advisory committee also seeks to bridge the gap between parents, students, community members, and our current school committees.
North East ISD - Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT)
This practice is a collaborative model of conferencing that engages families in student learning by aligning grade level learning concepts, student performance data, and family-teacher communication in a whole group/team setting.
St. Anthony Academy - Parent Preview Night
This practice is a dinner and program night where the teachers and principal present the coming six weeks curriculum and expectations. If parents are not able to attend personally, they may attend virtually.
2022 Recipients
Lamar CISD - Pink Elementary - Project Learn
Project LEARN exists to help at-risk children become successful and to provide the education and encouragement to their parents to become partners as well as strong and informed advocates in their children’s education.
The practice is identified as a need since parents have requested this service. District leaders have been active in providing equity for all stakeholders in Lamar CISD Title I survey and District Improvement Plan.
Nacogdoches ISD - Parent Family Community Engagement Activities to the Next Level
The goal of this practice is to increase parent, family and community involvement, engagement and empowerment by promoting effective customer service and communication in accordance with the needs of students and parents.
Needs we identified from different sources, including, but not limited to paper surveys, online surveys, community meetings, committee meetings, talking to parents to ask about their needs, looking at the effectiveness of our current practices and parent participation and engagement in events. The school team made sure that they provided a voice to the parents to determine their needs.
Pampa ISD - Back to School Bash
The goal of the practice is to provide access to needed supplies and resources for students and families to begin the school year with success. Additionally, another goal was to build healthy relationships with families from the very beginning of their student’s educational journey.
Following the Covid 19 pandemic, Pampa ISD families, just like many other families, suffered job loss and pay cuts. There was a significant increase in the number of students needing services such as school supplies, immunizations, health screenings, and clothes.
Connecting with families before the school year began was essential to build the foundation for building healthy school-home relationships throughout the year. Additionally, building partnerships with businesses, civic organizations and churches helps to build bridges and provide greater opportunities and resources for students and families.
Waller ISD - Smart Money Program
The goal of this practice is to provide students and families with experiential learning experiences that teach students how to develop a business and market a product, while gaining the knowledge required through the process of buying, selling, spending and saving.
Student Improvement in mathematics has been an ongoing growth goal as evidenced in the Local District Plan. Connecting Math concepts learned in the classroom to real life situations by providing students with practical experiences is a strategy the LEA utilizes to focus on district needs, specifically as it relates to financial literacy.
