The Mercedes ISD community is continuing to struggle with the future of its Mercedes Early College Academy, or MECA, after the school district moved students and staff from the institution from a separate facility onto the Mercedes High School campus last semester.
The district’s administration describes that move as one necessitated by lacking facilities at MECA’s previous location, and says Mercedes High has adequate facilities to accommodate the extra students and personnel.
Some parents and teachers, on the other hand, describe a significant amount of friction caused by the move and advocate for MECA having its own campus.
Superintendent Carolyn Mendiola said Friday that the problem of MECA’s previous home at the old Graham building on Ohio Street has been an ongoing topic since she joined the district in 2019.
Lacking HVAC infrastructure and poor roofs had called the condition of the elderly building into question and raised safety concerns, Mendiola said.
The pandemic and virtual learning gave the district a reprieve in deciding what to do about the campus, but in the spring of 2021, the district’s administration decided to move MECA’s students into Mercedes High.
Mendiola says moving MECA to Mercedes High was the best solution to the dilemma, and that on paper, it works.
There’s a little less than 400 students enrolled at MECA and about 1,000 at Mercedes High. Mendiola said the high school campus is designed to hold between 1,600 and 1,700 students.
Mendiola did acknowledge that the transition hasn’t been easy for everyone, saying right now students are in an “adjustment period.”
“These are all of our students,” she said. “This is one district, one community. I think the parents are maybe concerned that it’s a little overcrowded at the high school; and the students were used to being housed in their own facilities. Now there’s an adjustment.”
Those adjustment issues were significant enough to prompt a special board meeting in December to discuss the future location of MECA.
Most of that conversation happened in executive session and the board voted to take no action, although the board faced mostly critical comments about the move beforehand.
Some on the board did pledge some sort of action after those comments.
“As we heard this evening, this item that was presented before this board of trustees, it’s a complex item,” Trustee Brian Acosta said, adding that he felt the board hadn’t received enough information to make a sound decision.
“I know that we have a commitment for this board to look into the matter a little further, and to do that for this community.”
Board President Oscar Hernandez also indicated some sort of action is needed.
“In life we have to make decisions, right or wrong, I respect that … what I will not accept: people that don’t make decisions,” he said. “And here where we’re at, this should have never happened. Now it is our responsibility to make it right.”
Comments from parents and teachers at the meeting illustrate some of the concerns the board is facing.
Cynthia Quintana, a Mercedes Early College English teacher, advocated for moving MECA to a separate facility.
“Mercedes Early College has created an atmosphere where students feel respected, cared for and welcome,” she said. “They have a sense of belonging, and most importantly, they feel that they matter. A place where they do not need to feel stressed or feel anxious about being bullied, harassed or singled out.”
Quintana said she thinks that’s why MECA has been a success, and it does seem to have been a success.
In 2019, 95% of MECA students scored STAAR Performance Rates at Approaches Grade Level or Above, compared with 70% districtwide.
U.S. News & World Report ranked MECA 3,672 in high schools nationally last year; Mercedes High ranked 10,858.
Since the change, Quintana says the atmosphere MECA students are learning in has changed drastically. She described crowded halls and classrooms, with a lack of storage rooms, meeting rooms and bathrooms.
“We are literally bursting at the seams,” she said. “MECA needs their own school.”
Vasquez described uneven floors in the portables MECA students have been placed in at the high school campus, warped by rainwater.
Brenda Vasquez, a parent of a MECA student who sometimes substitutes for the district, echoed those facilities concerns.
“You talk about the rough beginning needed to fix; you moved them to a building where they still need to fix the roof, they still need to do all of that stuff,” she said. “So you didn’t do them any better … water is still falling on their heads.”
To a significant degree, advocates for a move described a campus culture at Mercedes High that was significantly different from the culture at MECA’s standalone campus.
Jazlyn Colunga, a MECA senior, said generally MECA students were allocated a degree of freedom and responsibility they don’t have at their new campus.
MECA teachers don’t generally issue hallpasses; security guards roaming the halls of Mercedes ISD certainly expect them.
Colunga said she saw a fight break out her first day at her new campus, and that she’s seen fights break out most days since then. She says that wasn’t the case at her former campus.
Joining the new campus resulted in scheduling issues, a difficulty getting access to bathrooms and often a spirit of animosity between MECA students and Mercedes High students, Colunga said.
“Everything was really, really different,” she said Monday.
Facilities were lacking at MECA’s previous campus, Colunga agreed, but she thinks the district could have found a better solution than adding her and her classmates to Mercedes High.
Not everyone sees the move to the high school campus as a bad thing.
The move to the high school did have supporters at the meeting, namely CTE personnel.
Debbie Winslow, the district’s CTE director, said moving MECA students away from Mercedes High was a major concern to her.
Placing those students at the high school, she said, has given them ready access to career and technical classes. Moving them away, Winslow said, would deprive them of those courses and could jeopardize the future of some of the programs.
“Having both campuses under one building … gives an opportunity for CT programs to excel, but also allows the students the opportunity to have these courses available to them without any travel or time restriction,” she said.
Superintendent Mendiola said not all parents disagree with putting MECA at Mercedes High. She said it simplified things like transportation.
Freshmen, Mendiola said, also seem to be adjusting better to the new campus than upperclassmen.
Mendiola disagrees with that characterization of a culture clash between MECA students and Mercedes High students. She does acknowledge that the early college is trying to preserve the learning environment they had as an independent campus on a much larger one, and says the district has worked to facilitate that.
“It’s still a smaller learning community within a larger school environment,” she said.
MECA has its own hall at Mercedes High and its own portable building, Mendiola said. The high school has added a lunch period and provides an outdoor lunch area.
Issues over bathroom availability were often more about bathrooms being locked or maintained than an actual lack of bathrooms, she said.
Longterm, the district’s goal is likely to separate MECA from the high school, at least to some degree, Mendiola said.
Eventually, MECA students may move back to that old Graham building.
“Eventually our goal is to try to renovate that old building,” Mendiola said. “It’s a beautiful, historic building, and I know the community wants to try to keep it, so we’re going to try to look at eventually renovating it, making it secure and safe for our kids.”
The district may also add a building at or near the high school. Mendiola said either of those initiatives would take millions of dollars and a bond issue.
That investment would take board and community support, and Mendiola said she couldn’t provide a timeline for when that might happen.
“I can’t say what’s gonna happen in the future,” she said. “All I know is we want to have enough space for our early college and their own facility, whether it’s housed at the high school or a little further than the high school.”
It’s unclear whether the board will consider another move, and Mendiola did not recommend one at that December meeting. Board President Hernandez did not reply to an interview request last week.
Unless the board or administration decides to again move MECA students to an existing facility, it looks like parents, students and staff will have to keep adjusting.
“I would tell them be patient,” Mendiola said. “Please know that we have nothing but the best interest of their children in mind, and we will adjust as we go.”
