After the first half of the 2025-26 school year, Boerne ISD trustees on Feb. 23 reviewed the academic progress of elementary students taking third-party assessments.

Breaking it down: When gauging prekindergarten growth, Chief Instructional Officer Larissa Flores said the district uses the Circle Progress Monitoring System.

For pre-K students, middle-of-year test results show an increase in scoring compared to the beginning of the school year in the subjects of reading, language and math. Writing and health/wellness scores saw slight decreases compared to the beginning of the year.

For Spanish pre-K students, all scores, with the exception of reading and math, saw a decrease. Flores attributes this drop to the assessment rubric, especially for subjects such as health/wellness.

“The beginning of the year expectation for health and wellness is actually very low to be considered on track,” Flores said. “But for the middle of the year, the expectations for the students triple.”

Flores said students are still making growth, just not at the levels specified in the program rubrics.

An upscale cigar lounge and private membership club is making its way to Boerne, off I-10 before South Main Street.

• 32840 I-10, Boerne

T Bar M Camps & Retreats is continuing work on its multimillion-dollar expansion.

The $47.8 million expansion comes after a growing interest in family programming, T Bar M President John MacDonald said.

What’s happening: The camp is expanding from roughly 3.5 acres to a newly acquired 20-acre tract behind its existing campus. The land, which was purchased from longtime neighbors Sam and Mary Howard, will allow the organization to more than double its family camp capacity, MacDonald said.

About 20 families attend each week for six to seven weeks during the summer. Once complete, the children’s camp will host 44-45 families per week for 10 weeks in the summer, MacDonald said.

Demand for family camp has grown as parents seek shared overnight experiences rather than sending children away alone, MacDonald said.

“What we're seeing is families want to have these experiences now rather than sending their kids away. They want to experience it with them in an overnight family camp environment,” MacDonald said.

The focus of a national initiative to build climate resilience at the local level in Central Texas will focus on three specific climate hazards, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions announced in February.

What you need to know: The Feb. 18 announcement states that the triple threat of extreme heat, wildfires and flooding in the area will be the focus of the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator hub in the area.

This comes after months of meetings with area leaders, assessments of area disasters and other information-gathering.

What they're saying: This accelerator program will be the first through the CCES to include flooding, according to the news release.  

"Although the harmful impacts of any of these hazards alone can be very significant, the compounding impacts when they overlap can be devastating," the release states. "Extreme heat can amplify wildfire risk, and heavy rainfall immediately following wildfire can increase erosion and flooding due to soil and vegetation changes."