How Do You Reinvent San Antonio’s Oldest Public High School?

San Antonio’s downtown Fox Tech campus is home to some of San Antonio ISD’s most successful and popular programs, three schools within a school – health & law, including P-Tech, CAST Tech and the Advanced Learning Academy, which serves grades 6-12 on the united Fox Tech campus. So people may not remember that enrollment at the city’s original public high school had dwindled to 353 students in 2015, when there were whispers of its possible closure. 

I wrote this piece for the online publication the Voice of San Antonio, examining what happens when you have the courage to reinvent the city’s oldest public high school.

Today, it is San Antonio ISD’s comprehensive high schools that are struggling to attract students.

In a time of deep cuts to public education, and steady declines in student enrollment in the urban core, Fox Tech offers a model of co-location, a path forward where students can have the experience of a small, specialized environment tailored to their interests, while still reaping the benefits of the fine arts and sports programs shared by the three co-located schools.

CAST Schools is a model implementor, and across our 7 schools we have experimented with a variety of types of co-location. We see the rebirth of Fox Tech as one proof point, offering a possible path forward. We believe co-location models offer the best of all worlds, allowing for a deeper, more relational and focused school experience with access to a full range of extracurricular activities. Across our network, we have piloted a variety of co-location models, and we see benefits for young people in each of them:

CAST Med & CAST Imagine: co-located middle school and high school

CAST STEM & Palo Alto College: high school co-located with community college

CAST Lead & East Central High School: small school adjacent to comprehensive, with shared athletics and clubs

CAST Teach and Stevens: small school co-located within a wing of a comprehensive high school.

We’re excited to offer these models at a time when we know there is a need to reinvent high school to meet the demands of a changing world, to offer engaging options to students who want to be able to make choices, engage in real-world, relevant learning and take ownership of their educational journey.

Jeanne Russell

Executive Director, CAST Schools

Image courtesy of Voice of San Antonio