Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE) and its partner, Insurance One, are in a “full court press” getting their insurance portfolio comprising 49 ISDs ready for the international market for the 2024-2025 school year.
By Michele Greer – Junior Editor – Feb 15, 2024
A nonprofit aims to bring tailored, commonsense policies to Texas independent school districts to help ensure that a high-quality education is delivered to students.
The Dallas Express sat down with John Petree, the president of Texans for Excellence in Education (TEE), the very first provider of alternative services to Texas public schools. Since its creation, the organization has become a significant challenge to the longstanding monopoly of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB).
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, TEE offers a suite of services, including group insurance, legal assistance, policy templates, school board trustee training approved by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), cooperative purchasing agreements, and more. These services offer customized options instead of the TASB’s “one-size-fits-all” offerings, according to Petree.
Petree explained that TEE emerged in response to a glaring gap in the marketplace for services that left public school districts with no alternative but the TASB. Now with a newly appointed three-person executive board at its helm, the organization strives to put local control, local choice, and strict, nonpartisan adherence to state law at the center of its work.
“School districts are very interesting ecosystems and they’re specifically designed under our state constitution to reflect the morals and values of the local community and a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t satisfy that,” he told DX.
As a result, TEE’s offerings will be shaped by market demand, not politics, which will allow community stakeholders to decide where to spend time and spend taxpayer money.
So far some esteemed ISDs, such as Carroll and Princeton, have come on board with TEE, yet the organization is only just getting started.
Right now TEE and its partner, Insurance One, are in a “full court press” getting their insurance portfolio comprising 49 ISDs ready for the international market for the 2024-2025 school year.
“Capitalism definitely drives the economic engine,” Petree said. “It makes you have the best pricing. It makes you provide the best services. And so it was no surprise to me when we had such great interest [from ISDs] just right off the bat of, ‘Oh my gosh, yes, we want a quote.’ ‘We want to see what you guys can do for us.’”
Alongside this service, TEE will soon be rolling out several products, including Policy Connect, which is an online platform hosting school district policies for public review. This availability is required by state law in the interest of transparency.
“There was no competition for that product,” Petree explained. “We have custom-developed our own and we are about to launch with a couple of our client school districts. … It’s very exciting to see that moving forward.”
Another item in the pipeline at TEE is a product called “Training Connect,” an online learning management system that will allow school board trustees to complete all of their necessary training requirements.
Both products are already built and will be revealed in the coming weeks.
“We’re just testing and finding all the kinks before we roll back the curtain and have an official launch,” said Petree.
Petree also told The Dallas Express that while TEE is bound to grow exponentially, it will continue to be a lean organization and pass those savings on to its clients in a fiscally responsible way.
“With a very strategic staff and … very thoughtful, efficient use of taxpayer funds, that’s the core of our beliefs: schools need every penny they can get and they don’t need to be paying it on needless services and on over-complicated solutions,” he said.
“Let’s provide commonsense, simple solutions to districts at a very cost-effective rate.”
