Professional Experience

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Lifetime advocate and leader, Julia has spent her professional career supporting, inspiring, expecting & molding high standards for herself and others for improved self-efficacy, goodness & independence. Julia began her professional career working as a case manager for persons with mental impairments and disabilities in the early 1990s. Although rewarding, she felt like she would be more effective in helping children make positive choices through public education. In her 27 years as a public educator, Julia has taught English, special education, served students as a school counselor and has spent the last 13 years in administration-managing state and federal grants for Ector County ISD.

Her educational endorsements include holding a BA in Sociology, Master of Arts in Education Counseling, Principal Certification, and most recently obtained her license as a Texas Licensed Realtor. Other licenses held include State Board of Education licenses as an English teacher, Professional Counselor, and Principal Certificate.

Julia currently serves Ector County Independent School students as the Executive Director over Federal & State Grant programs. In her current position, she monitors, directs, and coordinates budgets and services for the students of Ector County ISD and ensures compliance with the following state and federal grants: Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title Programs, ESSA School Improvement Programs, ESSER (CARES ACT) funds, State Compensatory Education Programs, State School Safety funds, and other state grant programs as assigned. She advocates and educates with federal legislators on issues that impact the students of ECISD with the federal programs managed. She develops and negotiates grants to award, completes, and monitors all ESSA reports with the federal and state government. She develops administrative procedures, provides ongoing training and support, works with internal/ external and state auditors to assure fiscal and program compliance of grant programs. She provides staff development as appropriate with regard to accountability, campus improvement planning, and budgeting, etc.

 

Julia has received several accolades during her tenure while at Ector County ISD. She was named Administrator of Year in 2010 as well as having served in multiple capacities for the state-level organization, Association of Compensatory Educators of Texas (ACET). She has served as the Regional Director for our area, multiple terms as State Treasurer, President-Elect, and finally as ACET President in 2018 as well as having spent several years on the state’s conference planning committee. While serving as ACET President, she was presented by the National parent organization to ACET, National Association of Federal Education Program Administrators, (NAFEPA) the Texas Leadership Award in 2019.

 

Prior to joining Ector County ISD, she worked as a school counselor in Crane, Texas, as well as an elementary school principal. While there, she developed and implemented student leadership programs, designed a school-wide reward system, called the Prowd Crowd, and developed a positive daily highlight on Career Paths for students to consider as well as developing a therapeutic discipline management system to help students emotionally process their mistakes. Julia provided training sessions at the State Counselor’s conference (TCA) on how to implement the Proud Crowd at other schools across Texas.

 

Julia also has worked at the educational service center in Amarillo, Texas, as a Migrant Counselor serving 11 school districts in the region. While in this role, she helped author the shared service federal grant application for the school districts she served. She co-developed a migrant college handbook to provide migrant high school students with access to college regardless of where their farm work took them. She coordinated migrant student retreats where she brought in national-level speakers to work with migrant students on how to write successful college scholarship essays as well as led student training on FAFSA, what to expect when you get to college as well as taking students to Washington DC for leadership training. She provided training at state and national conferences while in this role and most importantly helped countless high school students gain the confidence needed to graduate from high school and then graduate from college. While at Region 16, Julia’s two-person counseling team was recognized by the state-level Sunset Review Committee and Accommodation from the state of Texas for their excellence in obtaining 98% post-secondary enrollment for graduating high school migrants seniors across the region.

 

Prior to working in the Texas Panhandle, Julia worked in the Dallas Metroplex area as both a teacher and counselor where she worked at the middle school and elementary school levels. While teaching special education functional skills, she pushed students with special needs to be as much a part of the school as possible, setting up reward systems and leveraging integration into regular classrooms for students with disabilities. Her proudest moments, include coaching a Downs Syndrome student to present before his regular education peers an oral report on the Lewis & Clark Expedition. His success moves her to this day.

 

Julia left the Metroplex to return to her childhood home in Bowie, Texas, to help her aging grandparents remain home in their last days. While in Bowie, she served students as a high school counselor and pushed to have regular classroom guidance counseling lessons among her many other duties. She wrote local grants to provide college resources to students as well as to obtain additional technology.

 

Her work for the students she has served has never stopped with a focus on self-improvement, support, and that kind of push that challenges those she’s influencing to be the best versions of themselves possible. As a licensed realtor in Texas, it is Julia’s hope to represent buyers and sellers of property with the same mindset of achieving the highest level of service in the most reputable way possible so that both parties get to a win/win.

 

On a personal level, Julia is honored to be married to her husband, Will Weekly, a teacher in Ector County ISD. Together they share 5 children; 3 adult children, and 2 boys still remaining at home. They are blessed with 6 grandchildren, 2 cats, 4 dogs, a box turtle, and a Leopard gecko named Pedro. Their hobbies include traveling as much as possible and spending time with their family.

 

Julia has always valued family and Christian principles. Her heroes include her late grandmother, Elsie Willett, a nurse, who believed that everybody deserves to be treated with respect and kindness, regardless of their position in life; her late grandfather, Ira Joe Wells, who pathed the way in nuclear safety as a nuclear health physicist, and her late father, Ezekiel Willett, who believed in working hard and standing up for what he believed in. Living by their examples, Julia strives to exemplify her personal motto from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”