Director of DATA Soon to Say Goodbye
By Zakary Rodriguez | Advertising Manager |
On Tuesday, September 3, Christina Mank-Allen, director of the DATA magnet program, announced that she’d be leaving Roosevelt and the NEISD district at the end of October, 2019.
Allen was a teacher for four years in Austin before coming to San Antonio, where she would later become an administrator, and the director of DATA, overall being with NEISD for 16 years. However, Allen is going to SAISD where she will take over as CTE Director, and go from impacting 455 DATA students to impacting the 50,000 students that make up the SAISD district.
Mrs. Allen standing in front of a “#theDATAway” sign on the second floor in the DATA building.
“I always knew I wanted to have an impact on the success of students,” Allen said. “I felt that in the classroom I was able to impact my 20 to 25 kids and I wanted to be able to influence more.”
Allen isn’t going to leave Roosevelt and DATA without finding a proper replacement to fill her role as the director of DATA. She knows that the future director needs to be “innovative” and someone who’s “not afraid to take risks” because they’re going to be taking over a magnet program.
“In our environment and with a magnet school you have to think outside the box,” Allen said. “Technology moves so fast that if you don’t keep up, we’re going to be preparing our kids for something that is antiquated.”
Some teachers, like architecture teacher Katie Philbrick, agree that the director of DATA should be someone who can think outside the box. Philbrick has been teaching architecture for the past 12 years at DATA and is aware of what the future director needs to be able to have in order for DATA and its teachers to thrive, in part because of the progress Mrs. Allen and the way she’s lead in the director position.
“She encourages me to teach my class the way I feel it should be taught,” Philbrick said. “She’s an innovative thinker which is good because we’re an innovative program.”
Although being apart of the NEISD district for 16 years, Allen has been the director of DATA for the past five years, this year being the start of her sixth. Although she is leaving, Allen believes that DATA is “in a really good place right now” and just wants to “continue the momentum.”
“We are the best kept secret in North East,” said Mrs. Allen. “We have to share our stories so you have to be loud, you have to be bright, you have to be big.”