Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district trustees were briefed Monday on two redesigned campuses designed to meet a demand in industry training and — perhaps most importantly — bolster enrollment.
The district’s Collegiate High School Program in San Juan will be gradually phased into the PSJA Collegiate School of Health Professions, starting by recruiting a limited cohort of sixth- and ninth-grade students next semester.
Elvis J. Ballew in Pharr will transition to a school of business and energy serving ninth through 12th graders and starting out its first freshmen cohort next year.
Logos for the campuses have been redesigned: Collegiate’s has a caduceus now and Ballew’s has a wind turbine.
Other details, like application processes, are still in the works.
A release from the district says the new campuses will help meet projected critical training shortages in those fields and that feedback from the community indicated interest in focusing on those areas.
“We are excited to add these two unique campuses to our Portfolio of Schools at PSJA ISD,” PSJA School Board President Rick Pedraza wrote. “This is part of our efforts to provide life-changing opportunities for our students while also doing our part to help address global demand.”
Trustees who heard presentations on the campuses Monday seemed to have one thing on their mind more than any other: enrollment.
Boosting enrollment, trustees and administrators said, was one of the chief drivers behind the redesigns.
Trustee Carlos Villegas said the district is down on enrollment from last year by some 3,000 students.
“And that scares me,” he said. “If we don’t do a mass recruiting effort and bring all these students back, we’re gonna be in a bind come August.”
Trustees seemed pleased with the new campuses, but some fretted over where recruits would be drawn from. They worried some would be drawn from other PSJA campuses, a situation Villegas said would be akin to robbing “Peter to pay Paul.”
“Do we know how many students are out there that potentially could come back that belong to us?” Trustee Jesus Vela said. “That could or should come back, if we recruit them and make a strong effort to recruit them to come back to PSJA given this new model?”
Ruben Garcia, Ballew’s principal, said administration is not taking recruitment lightly. The district will rely on exit surveys, community door-knocking walks and going to events outside PSJA as ambassadors for the program “to let them know there are choices at PSJA, and adding to the portfolio of schools.”
The district, Garcia said, can even target social media ads for the campuses geographically, to people outside PSJA.
Besides, Principal Mari Saenz said, pulling students from other PSJA campuses isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Doing so can, she said, stem the flow of students leaving the district, even if it doesn’t add fresh faces to PSJA.
“I know we say we don’t want to take from the other high schools, but those are students that maybe were going to leave us anyway to go to the charter schools because of wanting that smaller early college,” Saenz said.
