Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of Parent Shield Fort Worth, said she’s excited about the program and the opportunity for parents to get access to additional instruction for their child outside of the classroom.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, founding Executive Director of the advocacy organization Parent Shield Fort Worth, has two children in the Fort Worth school district. She joined NTX Now hosts Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning to share her insights about how the takeover has been going.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins asked FWISD to provide transportation for students at the four Stop Six campuses, while Parent Shield Fort Worth separately requested service.

FWISD mother Adrienne Haynes watched kids walk warily alongside speeding cars, creep through construction barriers and hesitantly make their way across makeshift crosswalks.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of parental advocacy group Parent Shield, questioned FWISD’s plan for providing the services, ranging from speech to the process for securing specialized student support.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of parental advocacy group Parent Shield, said FWISD’s communication is stuck in the same cycle: the district tells parents what happened after it has gone wrong.

With so much attention given across Fort Worth and Tarrant County to the reading and literacy crisis, the district’s subpar performance in math has become a quieter problem, said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, founder and executive director of the education advocacy group Parent Shield Fort Worth.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of parental advocacy group Parent Shield, said she remains concerned about cuts to special education

"We need an update"

During public comment, Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, who is executive director of the nonprofit Parent Shield and has a daughter who attends Fort Worth ISD, said the number of teacher resignations makes her nervous for the upcoming school year.

This is our final board meeting before school starts, and I have to be honest, I'm a little nervous," Trenace Dorsey-Hollins said.

Parent Shield Fort Worth

Dorsey-Hollins said she understands the reason for high turnover, especially because the district has to make sure the best teachers and principals are working at struggling schools to ensure they’re equitably distributed

At that moment, something shifted. It was no longer just about my child. It became about every parent who has ever walked into a room, asked for help and been dismissed. I became a “power ambassador” with Parent Shield Fort Worth, helping other families navigate the system, because I needed to ensure no other parent experienced that kind of disrespect when advocating for their child’s education.

I am a mother of four children, two of whom attend Fort Worth ISD schools.

“If our kids are successful in being able to read, then that correlates to them being successful adults to read applications, to read contracts, to just being able to read pieces of material that will help them in everyday life,” Dorsey-Hollins told the Star-Telegram.

Dorsey-hollins, who has expressed optim­ism that the takeover could provide the reset the dis­trict needs, told Licata and the board that par­ents need inform­a­tion about how stu­dents are pro­gress­ing under the takeover. Par­ents plan to

hold the dis­trict’s new lead­ers to their prom­ises of trans­par­ency, she said.

As a parent of a first-grader who is nonverbal and receives various therapies at school and at home, Dorsey-Hollins is able to bridge the gap by asking for notes from clinicians on what was accomplished during sessions, so Dorsey-Hollins can build on it further at home. Dorsey-Hollins acknowledges she is more engaged than the average parent because of the nature of her work, and other parents might not know how to bridge those gaps.

Fort Worth ISD’s stubbornly low academic performance is not a new phenomenon, said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of parental advocacy group Parent Shield

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of Parent Shield Fort Worth