Marshall feels ‘blessed’ to be at Dowling

Having just completed her 30th year with Ector County ISD, Dowling Elementary School Principal Julie Marshall was recently recognized with the Elementary Principal of the Year award.

Along with her 30 years with ECISD, she served four in Lubbock.

Marshall, who grew up in Amarillo, said she earned her bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising, home economics education and early childhood from Texas Tech University, and a master’s degree in counseling from University of Texas Permian Basin. She went back and finished the hours required to be a school administrator.

She just finished her fourth year as principal of Dowling. They started at 330 students this year and ended up at 660, so they doubled in enrollment.

“We became a bilingual hub for the district. Dowling draws the bilingual students from Buice, LBJ, Blanton, San Jacinto and Alamo out north and northeast where all that new growth is. As they move in, if they are bilingual students, then they come here to Dowling so our bilingual enrollment is now about 53% of our total school enrollment,” Marshall said.

They expect at least the same number of students next year.

“San Jacinto is going to open up to host bilingual students that are in their neighborhood again and so we will lose about 30 kids to that. But if we continue to see the number of students moving in from out of the country into those areas that we serve then I anticipate our numbers will continue to rise next year,” Marshall said.

Asked if she has room, Marshall said they have had to be creative with the classroom space. They have 25 sections in grades kindergarten through five and they are gaining three next year. They also have PE, music and library teachers. The campus is expecting three teachers next year.

Marshall said she was really surprised about being named Elementary Principal of the Year.

“But it’s such an honor because your peers, other principals are the ones who nominate you. I think it means a lot when your peers recognize the work that you’re doing. I was proud of our teachers. Really, the award goes to our teachers here because they say that one sign of a great leader is that when you step away, or you’re not able to be there, that everybody just keeps doing their job. This year, we did not have an assistant principal at this campus so it put a lot of things on me that normally would be on the plate of an assistant principal. I was not able to be in classrooms near as much as in the past, coaching teachers and watching instruction, but yet that continued to happen. Students continued to grow. Our teachers here work very hard and they’re the reason that the school is successful,” Marshall said.

An assistant principal has been hired for next year, which will help balance out the workload.

“We’re also going to get a Principal Fellow at this campus. We’ve had one before, but it’s been a couple of years, so I’m excited to have someone else here to help distribute that leadership a little bit and maybe influence the career of an up-and-coming school administrator,” Marshall said.

The Fellows apply and then they are placed. They have to a chance to complete their master’s degree in a year.

“They have to balance going to school full time and working full time. It’s a lot for them,” Marshall said.

The previous fellow was a man and the one coming in will be a man.

“It’s very nice to have a male in leadership. Sometimes young people need a male figure in addition to a female figure, and so that’s nice for me. But it’s also nice just to have another set of ears and eyes to bounce ideas off and to watch, and to have eyes and ears out in the building of what’s going well, what do we need to fix to be even better? That’ll be nice. I’m excited,” Marshall said.

Marshall has three children and one grandchild and a dog, Sparkle, a therapy dog.

Chief of Schools Keeley Boyer noted that Marshall was selected by her peers because of her commitment to improving outcomes for students and her contagious positive attitude.

“She is open-minded, innovative, and willing to try new things to ensure students have an exceptional learning experience,” Boyer said.

Winning the award makes Marshall want to work even harder.

“I think I feel like when you’re recognized for the hard work you do, you want to prove that you deserve this award even more than before you received it. You want to prove that you’re worthy of your peers nominating you,” she added.

In her 34 years of education, Marshall said this has been the hardest, partly because she was without another person on the leadership team with her and also because of the campus doubling in size with recent immigrants coming to them.

The students not only came in unschooled, or below grade level, but they had a lot of social-emotional needs. While most children are still coming from Mexico, they are seeing children from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Central America. Marshall said she reminds the staff that these children did not choose to come here. Their families did, so they have to make the campus the best place they can and educate the kids and close gaps in their understanding.

“They’ve seen things while they’re traveling to America or getting here with their families that many of us don’t have any clue about what they’ve gone through. Trying to figure out how to meet the social-emotional needs of those children, as well as push them academically to help them make gains even if it is not on grade level, that was very challenging. Having bilingual classrooms that were extremely full. My third-grade classes had over 35 children each at the end of the year. They did have aides, but that’s a lot of kids in one room,” Marshall said.

“Those teachers were fantastic. They never complained. They tried to meet the needs of each student. But that’s a challenge and so this year was challenging. We never stopped enrolling kids. We enrolled four kids last week of school. There was never a lull, and so this year was challenging,” she added.

“It was also very humbling because I’ve depended on an assistant principal for a lot of jobs that either I have not ever done myself, or when I did them, they were all on paper and now they’re computerized. It was very humbling for me to be in charge of some of those things I haven’t been in charge of in a while and remind myself of the process and how time- consuming those jobs are and how important they are. So I definitely have a new appreciation when we get our new assistant principal of the jobs that she will be in charge of,” she said.

Since Marshall arrived at Dowling four years ago, it has gone from an F campus to a B campus in state accountability ratings. No ratings have been released this year due to litigation.

“I anticipate we will at least stay at B. The teachers here have worked really, really hard. They say it takes three to five years to turn around a campus, so I would say that’s true here at the the fourth year. I really felt like we have things going in the right direction. We have the right staff here, the right teams of teachers that put in way more work and hours than what they have to because they want to do what’s best for kids, and all of the support staff here is just wonderful. I’m blessed to work here and it was a good move for me. It’s been really fun to watch the growth that has happened over the last four years to do what’s right for kids and to make sure that every child is making a year of progress, no matter where they start,” Marshall said.