Adam Torres and Justin Terry discuss Opportunity Central (OC).
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Show Notes:
What makes Opportunity Central (OC) different from a traditional high school? In this episode, Adam Torres and Justin Terry, Superintendent at Forney ISD, explore the OC, a facility built around entrepreneurship in every career and college pathway for high school students.
About Justin Terry
As educators, our purpose is to provide each and every student with the tools and experiences they need to truly be ready for the global future that awaits them. To do this, they ensure that each child is supported with a plan, a purpose, and a community dedicated to ensuring his or her health and wellbeing. Working together as a connected, collaborative, learning community, we can make this vision a reality
About Forney Independent School District
Forney ISD is a Recognized District by the Texas Education Agency. The District’s mission is to work In partnership with parents and community to create and sustain an environment to maximize the potential of each learner. The vision of the District is to inspire students through innovative education.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to apply. All right, so today I have Dr. Justin Terry on the line, who is a superintendent over at Orny ISD.
Justin, welcome. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. We’re excited to be here with you today. All right, Justin. So I’ll tell you for the audience Justin obviously knows this story, but for the audience, I’ll , tell you how this interview came about. So Aaron Alejandro, who’s been on the show before, some of our long term listeners know who he, is, are long time listeners.
But he sent me this video of this amazing place called Opportunity also OC, which is just. A unique educational center model area. I’m just like, what, where was this at when I was growing up? So I was like who runs this like how’d this come about? So Aaron told me he could get me the guy Who’s behind this in terms of running it and otherwise and I was like, okay, let’s have him on the show And pick his brain and see what’s going on down there because I feel it’s very special.
So Justin, I guess, just to get us kicked off here , for the listeners that don’t know about it, maybe just tell us a little bit more about Opportunity Central also known as the OC. Sure. It is definitely a first for us, Adam, and you know , it’s really a first of its kind when it comes to a facility that we found in the nation, but also , just operational.
Because , we’ve kind of added a new spice to what education looks like. And I think that , it’s being really embraced by our community and our kids. And we hope that this is something that can begin to transform education, not just here in Forney, but across the nation as well.
, and really , the concept behind the OC revolves around , what we say the three C’s, career college, and community, and the community component , is really what makes this place a little different than most. , it is a career and college center, and so we’re very much focused on, , career aspects, but , the community integration is something new.
And so. Just a high level overview of the facility. It’s about 350, 000 square feet and it’s 3 stories and the 1st floor almost like a mall. It’s open to the public, , 6, 7 days a week from 7 am till 9 PM. And, , with that, , that’s unique in itself. Schools usually close from 8 to But we keep that first floor open and running. And then we built really a two story school on top of it. And so it is very much multi purposed in how we function. And so there’s a lot of different programming and components that go, run throughout the facility. It’s also the largest event center on the east side of Dallas.
So that’s high level but love to get into kind of some of the aspects of the why eventually as well. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I’m just I guess just taking it a step further on the facility. So when you say it’s a community event center, I mean, it’s hard to put this in pictures to see, but it’s huge.
Like, and there’s a lot of different spaces and areas and it truly is. So, and when I think about my high school or about when I was growing up, like the most for community event would be like maybe high school sports or something like that, right? Like that would be kind of where in my, where I grew up at least where the community would get together.
But this is like, a lot of different uses for the facility, right? Absolutely. , we’re kind of abnormal in the fact that we’re really advertising for our community to come into the facility but it’s also an event space and so we can serve within the facility.
, we have kind of a, we work type setup in the front that we call the mix and, from 2 people with a client from a realtor bringing in a client to kind of talk about coming to 40 or a group of pastors that would you know, Sit and kind of plan a meeting or a business group that would come in.
But we also have a 7, 900 seat arena. In the middle in the heart of the OC, and we can really serve within the different facilities, everything in between. , concerts, graduations , conventions, you name it, , we’ve got a space for it., the beauty of it is, our goal is that our kids are helping to facilitate and run all of the components of the facility. Wow. Yeah. What does that do for the culture and the community and like people coming together? To me, , it almost, I mean, when I was kind of looking at this play, I’m like, man, this is almost like old school.
It’s kind of almost like the main street. It’s like a hub. And traditionally, at least again, where I was growing up, , Your parents would never go to your school unless it was like a parent teacher conference or something else. But to think about like kind of meshing all these things and experiences and other things, and to think that , you’re kind of going to the school too at the same time.
Right. But , you’re on another level, obviously in the layout, but it seems interesting to me for like the culture, the community, like people getting together, people sticking together, like. Am I off on any of this? No, you’ve nailed it., it is becoming and what we love to say is kind of the place to go.
And we hope that whether it’s a Monday morning for coffee or a Friday night or a Saturday, , where are you headed? I’m headed to the OC. But, , we actually have a two high school town, which is kind of rough sometimes, right? Because it’s always very competitive. And one of them is gold and one of them is blue.
And so we created our colors is green. And so our students, you know, you don’t know who’s who over there, but you really are, are our communities integrated into that as well. And, the great thing is, is that. It’s a learning facility, not just for high school students, but our goal is, and we’ve got programming from three years old all the way up to 103 years old.
So they’re all doing it together. It’s pretty fun. It’s amazing. , let’s get into some of that why that you were mentioning, , like, this come about? Well you know, it’s, been a, wish I could take all the credit, but it’s definitely not my thing. idea , of how this thing has really come together.
We’ve had an incredible community that supported it and a focus on career education and college, but also on, ensuring that our kids have the skills for the, for post secondary post high school, , in life basically. And so, , we had a, I had a great conversation about what is the future of education really look like?
Where did you learn best? What are the things you remember most about, your learning? Well, it’s experiential, right? So , what we were trying to do is, is really you know, get our kids out of the just day to day setting of sitting in rows and get them in the experiences themselves.
And we, we really believe that really the future of education is, it’s going to be integrated, it’s, we’re going to learn from each other, but it’s also not just about, obviously basic skills are important and vital , reading, writing and arithmetic, but, , what do you do out of daily in your job?
Well, you’re going to read, you’re going to write, you’re going to do arithmetic, but, , the core curriculum, a lot of what we teach is. Can be Googled now or I can create it’s not already there, it’s going to be so the focus is on , what we call and there’s kind of a parallel pathway for all of our career here of entrepreneurism or future ready skills, the focus is that our kids are learning.
These life skills that they’re going to need to be successful in their job and their career and what their families later on in life, they’re not just. On a daily basis, sitting in rows, they’re going to class checking in and going out and beginning to learn some of these skills like.
Personal finance and business finance and customer service and how to stock shelves and order and. , what is marketing and advertising look like in communication and collaboration and teamwork? And those are the focus areas that we’re trying to teach there at the OC. Yeah. And this seems like to me, the OC seems like a model for how many, , schools or systems may kind of lean on to get, , data and like, like what’s working and what’s not right.
Am I, am I off on that? I’m not in education day to day, but it seems like it’s just like, also like kind of like test facility almost. You know, it’s funny you call it a test facility because there’s a lot of experimentation on something that’s never been done before. Right? Yeah, and it is we’re learning a lot and we’re creating some models and there’s a lot of districts and now even businesses that are wanting to come see it.
And 1 of the things that we do, that’s really unique is we actually rent. , space out to, , some local small businesses within the O. C. So I think there’s a public private component of where I think not only education needs to go, but community does, that , we can work and live and share resources and learn together.
And so, you , it’s kind of a cool aspect that our small businesses are teaching our kids in that building, but also our kids are teaching our small businesses, you know, we had one of our kids teaching a small, you know, doing the advertising for one of our businesses, Pine and Ivy, and they, went viral on a few TikToks that the kids created and, , our business sales increased online.
And so , that’s one model, I think, too, that , we’re seeing is, , just , , it’s a challenge sometimes when it comes to things like safety right now in schools, right? And in everywhere. , but we’re also seeing some social behaviors that are really experimental , that are working out really well.
Because I’ve got more adults with eyes on kids in that building than any other school I’ve got in the school district. But our kids are responding as well to the environment that they’re in and, , they just you know, when you give them a little responsibility, they’re embracing that and they’re responding to it.
So, absolutely a model we hope others see and begin to replicate. So when we think about like this big, beautiful facility, when we think about some of the things we’re talking about, and even just, you know, modeling, like what I normally think like expense, that’s where my head goes like, this must be, , tremendously expensive, but am I often like some of the things that I’ve read to say that, like the cost of doing this and I’m building this was actually less than many traditional high schools.
Am I often like that cost comparison? No, it’s actually also another model that I think people really can begin to look into. And When we were pricing out and bidding out this facility, it’s a, like I said, it’s about a 350, 000 square foot facility. , we went ahead and looked at a comprehensive high school with the same enrollment the time and.
You know what we built this facility for is about a hundred million dollars less than what that comprehensive high school. Yeah, that’s that’s pretty significant. It’s crazy. Yeah And you know a lot of it’s just getting creative going after a two for one deal what like?
Had to Well, absolutely. You know, construction costs and inflation is killing everybody right now. Right. But for sure. Yeah, no,, it’s been a great experiment there. And a lot of it’s just about how to use space and, how many times we can use that 1 square foot for how many different things between 7am and 9pm at night for how many different people.
And that’s the goal. It’s been, it’s been fun to watch. And when you think about like a normal, just, don’t know, school, , like you said, during school hours, it’s going, maybe there’s an afterschool program or something else, but the rest of the time, , it’s just dead space, right? Like there’s nothing really going on there.
It’s just another facility, another piece of land. It’s not doing anything. So being able to use that for off hours for events or otherwise based on the design and the way it was laid out, I mean, to me, it’s genius. It’s like, , when I saw it, I’m like, Why hasn’t this been done before? Can you imagine all these schools, all these, I mean, it’s just obviously when they were built many a long time ago, right?
That’s a given and there was a whole different world back then, maybe in terms of what it didn’t have to be, but nobody thought of it. But now I feel like we’re going to see more and more of this happening. And I’m I’m excited to see it. I know Aaron told me he was like, yeah, we’re going to have a meeting there.
I’m for him and his staff. I mean, they’re going to have a meeting there and use the facilities at some point for some, I don’t know if he said it was a statewide thing or what, which one they were going to do, but something, but I’m like, wow, that’s pretty cool. That’s going to be really cool to see that happen.
And to see people there and to see it continue to grow and just be a, , a core pillar of the community. That’s going to be amazing. It’s pretty exciting to watch it. Well, Justin just want to say it has been a lot of fun having you on the show today. Thank you , for giving me and, also my listeners some peripheral or some view into what’s going on over at Opportunity Central and OC just to see what’s going on in education and how people are out there working to pioneer.
That being said, if somebody wants to learn more or follow the OC journey or yours in general how do they do it? , how do people connect? Oh, thanks for asking Adam. And we have a great website. We have a wonderful app. The website is theoc. net. And you can go online , and check us out, download the app and see all the different functions.
If you like to ruin a space, come out , or maybe you’re interested in putting a business in the OC, there’s opportunities still available there too. So, I’d love for them to explore and we can answer any questions that they’ve got through that website. Is there a podcast studio in the OC, Justin? I had to throw that one day, I’d love to have you out. It’s about to open. We’ve got another podcast studio and recording studio. So, we got a chair waiting on you, Adam. I love it, man. I knew it. I love it. Oh, I think that’s a great way to end it. Just for everybody listening, we’ll put all the links to the OC and everything that Justin mentioned in the show notes.
So that you can just click on the links and head right on over and check out , what we’ve been talking about visually. It’s just something else to see. It’s hard to kind of describe this in over audio, but when you look at it and look at it, go to the website, look at all the videos, all the other stuff they have up there, you’re going to be blown away.
You’re going to say, why didn’t I know this? I go to school here. That’s what I said. And ,if you’re a new listener, just letting you know if you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new shows, new content new ideas, and we don’t want you to miss anything.
So again, hit the subscribe button and just finally, thank you again so much for making some time for us. Appreciate it. And thanks for having us out and look forward to seeing you in that podcast studio soon.