San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Edgewood ISD expanding its programs
New high school, gendered tracks planned with nonprofit partners
Edgewood Independent School District is partnering with two education nonprofits to launch a new school and offer International Baccalaureate programming at two others.
The district’s board of trustees approved a contract with Learn4Life and two contracts with the Texas Council for International Studies in a meeting last week. Edgewood will work with Learn4Life to open a new, yet-tobe-named high school, and will collaborate with TCIS to establish Texas’ first gendered IB track schools — Las Palmas Leadership
School for Girls and Cisneros Leadership School for Boys.
“These partnerships are going to allow us to bring in expertise from the outside that we just don’t have,” said Eduardo Hernández, superintendent of Edgewood ISD. “Every partner brings with it opportunities ... and these are just the beginning years.”
The district is attempting to get additional state funding for the three schools by seeking Texas Education Agency approval for them under Senate Bill 1882, which gives districts incentives to contract with outside entities like nonprofits, charter networks and universities.
If the TEA signs off on them in the spring, they will bring to six the number of such partnerships in Edgewood ISD — the secondmost in Bexar County after San Antonio ISD.
Learn4Life is a growing California-based nonprofit that works with public schools to improve graduation rates. It provides personalized education plans for students with unique learning styles or those who are struggling with external challenges like housing insecurity, parenting and jobs.
The goal is for Edgewood’s Learn4Life high school, which is scheduled to open in August within an existing school building, to support the district’s neediest stu
dents and open pathways for them to graduate on time.
Edgewood’s ISD graduation rate has hovered just above 90 percent the past couple of years. Edgewood is the poorest school district in Bexar County, with about 95 percent of its students considered economically disadvantaged. About 97 percent are Hispanic and about 20 percent are English learners, according to TEA data.
“This is going to help us address the challenges associated with students who might be in danger of not finishing up high school in four years, and in some cases, catching kids up,” Hernández said.
TCIS is a nonprofit that aims to help grow IB programs in Texas schools by offering program development, training, marketing and scholarships. It already has partnered with eight schools in San Antonio, all of them in SAISD.
Its Edgewood partnerships will launch the Cisneros Leadership School for Boys at the existing Roy Cisneros Elementary School and bolster the curriculum at Las Palmas Leadership School for Girls, which was started last fall.
Like Las Palmas, the boys’ school will start with kindergarten through second grade and will add a grade level each year until it becomes a K-8 school. It will open in August.
The two schools will become the first gendered IB track schools in the state and will move Edgewood closer to achieving a longterm goal of increasing the number of national merit scholars in the district, Hernández said.
“That’s a lot of what the IB mentality is; it’s about creating that culture of going to college,” he said. “There’s a lot of heavy training for teachers in terms of (instilling) critical thinking skills, communication skills, all of the skills that are now deemed 21st century skills that all students must possess.”
The displacement of employees under changed management has made some SB 1882 partnerships controversial. Hernández said teachers and staff can decide if they want to stay at the Las Palmas and Cisneros schools under the new TCIS learning model. Those who want to stay will have to apply and do an interview with Edgewood and TCIS leaders, who will work collectively to hire more staff and principals as needed.
Teachers who stay will have to learn a different curriculum, and it may take more time and work than they are used to, but that is the price of providing a higher quality education, he said.
“I’ve been very clear about that, and unapologetic. If you’re not willing to put in the time, then this isn’t the district for you,” Hernández said. “I don’t tippy-toe around that conversation. It’s very black and white for me. You’re either here to work or you’re out.”
The principals who were at Edgewood’s Gus Garcia University School and Gardendale Early Learning Program before those schools began operating under SB 1882 partnerships stayed on afterward, he noted.
Hernández said Edgewood ISD’s efforts to collaborate with outside partners and improve student outcomes is an important part of a longer process of rebranding the district, which had been marred before he arrived in 2018 by failing schools and the replacement of its board with stateappointed managers.
“It takes years to repair the past and build a future, but I think we have the right people and we’ll continue to add the appropriate people to keep that vision moving forward,” Hernández said.
SB 1882 partnerships last 10 years and are renewable. Learn4Life and TCIS must meet certain school performance thresholds outlined by Edgewood ISD. If they do not after two years, Edgewood can cancel the partnerships.
“If the partner doesn’t meet the expectations of the school performance framework, then we can walk away, and we’ll exercise that power if we need to,” Hernández said.
The amount of additional state funding Edgewood stands to receive from the partnerships will depend on enrollment at the participating schools, and that has not yet been determined, he said.