Crosstown High vies for millions

Advances in innovation contest

Supporters of Crosstown High School are vying to use the proposed school in Midtown as the canvas to remake America’s high school in a national contest backed by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

The board of directors for the Memphis educational endeavor announced Monday that its application is one of 348 to advance to the next round of the XQ Super School Challenge, announced last September, inviting teams to reimagine how high schools can better prepare students for college, workplaces and life.

The competition received nearly 700 applications from 45 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Five winners will be announced in August and will receive $10 million each — $2 million annually for five years — to develop new educational approaches.

“Our XQ application was the result of months of hard work by a large and diverse group of volunteers, including young people, parents, educators and many other community members who all have a stake in the future of our city’s public education,” said Michelle McKissack, a member of the proposed school’s board of directors.

Backers want Crosstown High School to be a selective college prep program operated as a contract school in a partnership between Shelby County Schools and Christian Brothers University, which is part of a new nonprofit group called Crosstown High School Inc.

The school would serve 500 students who perform on or above grade level on state tests. It would open in fall 2017 and operate under an independent governing board.

Crosstown High would be located in Crosstown Concourse, a former Sears warehouse building undergoing a massive renovation with tenants from mostly educational, health care and retail sectors.

Powell Jobs created the XQ Institute in an effort to fix the biggest problems facing the nation’s high schools. The institute kicked off its work with the national contest.

Common themes that emerged from the first round of applications include a desire to make high schools the center of the community again; a desire to build school designs around involvement of the students themselves; and learning styles that focus on mastery of topic, project collaboration, blended subjects and applications in higher ways.

Schools chosen to advance to the next round of the contest must submit their next applications by May 23.