The Arlington City Council met in special session on April 22, 2025, beginning with an executive session at 11:45 a.m. The open work session reconvened at 3:49 p.m. and adjourned at 5:06 p.m. The meeting covered updates on Tarrant County College Southeast Campus and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, committee reports on housing, parks, and cemetery ordinances, a legislative update, and future agenda items. No public comments were heard and no consent calendar items were presented.
Okay, we're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session to order it. We're gonna go into a closed session. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session of the city council meeting to order. We're gonna move on down the three point one. There you are, sir. Come on up. Dr. Andy Bone. Good afternoon, Mayor Ross. Good afternoon, Mayor Ross, members of council, city manager. It is a privilege to come. And I've met most of you, but not all of you, and so I thought it might be helpful if I came and introduced what soon I won't be able to say as the new kid on the block. Um, but uh I wanted to come and give you an update on your community college. And so let's jump right in. So every um campus of Tarrant County College, we have six campuses across Tarrant County. Um every campus has a set of what I would call flagship programs for the South Campus, uh, heavily focused on the trades, uh, engineering, Trinity River campus, downtown Fort Worth is really centered in on healthcare, the Northwest campus on public service, the Northeast campus, the film industry, as well as uh dental and EMS, um, and a heavy transfer emphasis, our Connect campus, which is our completely online campus where degrees can be completed online or individual courses, they manage all that for us district wide. Um, and then for your campus here in Arlington, um our flagship programs are the culinary arts, hospitality management, nutrition and dietetics, IT and specifically cyber security, an engineering transfer uh program, and our first choice program, which is a program where we serve adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Um at our campus, um, we are a very heavy um transfer orientation. About 70% of our students uh come to us with the intention of transferring to one of our great four-year partners. Enrollment continues to um increase year over year. Um last year and this year we'll serve about 12,000 students in totality for the year. Um, if you look at what's on the on the graph here on the slide, um, those are fall head count numbers as of census date. So very early in the semester, we were just short of 950 students. Overall, as a college in the fall semester, we served about 48,000 students, and about for back to the Southeast campus, about a third of our students are dually enrolled students. If we look at some of the statistics, um, if we look at specifically the Arlington ISD, um, about 17 percent of the students are um enrolled in uh dual some form of dual credit at the high schools, um early college high schools, PTACs, um another 18 percent will attend TCC in their fall immediately after high school. And when you look at that in totality, um that's about 30 percent of either high school students and or recent uh high school graduates are being served by uh the Southeast campus. If we look at some of the statistics for um our community, um about a third of Arlington residents um have earned an associate degree or higher. Um that is a specific focus of ours as a college district wide and definitely um at the Southeast campus. About 14% of our residents have earned less than a high school diploma. Another 14% have earned less than an associate degree. So when you look at that, those two numbers specifically, that's about 110, 11,000. That's a prime sweet spot for Tarrant County College, either at our campus or another one of the campuses. If we look at um our early college and dual credit um partnership with Arlington ISD, um really good things are happening. Really good things are happening. This year, we're serving over 1,900 students in a partnerships between the Ireland and ISD and TCC Southeast. About 52 percent, if you look at recent years, about 52 percent of students, high school students involved in dual credit, will earn a 15 credits or more. Now, why is that important? That's important because uh from a state funding standpoint, the college community colleges in general, the performance funding model has changed from being what I would call input oriented, in other words, how many students are coming, how long do they stay with us, to a model which is very outcomes driven. Do they earn a credential from us? Do they earn a certificate or do they earn an associate degree? Or are they high school students that earn 15 credits or more from a dual credit relationship? Or our um these students who earn 15 credits or more with TCC and then transfer to a four-year school. Going back to the to the 15 credits of as dual credit students, why is that important? We fund um we charge zero dollars uh for tuition for Terrent County residents to take high school courses through TCC. So zero dollars. The way we're able to fund that historically is with backfill with some state funding that would have been paid on an input model. Today it's based on an output model. So our ability to continue to do that is um well, it really means we need to have more students earning 15 credits or more before they leave high school, and that becomes a critical partnership point for us together with Arlington ISD. Again, the numbers are showing we're doing a good job. About 52% looking at recent years are earning that 15 credits or more.