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HARLINGEN — The school district is revamping its at-risk student program while shutting down KEYS Academy after 32 years.
Now, at-risk students, or those determined at risk of dropping out of school before their graduations, are part of a new program aimed at helping them continue their educations through graduation, an official said.
”Harlingen CISD wants to assure our community that the transition for our KEYS Academy students has been carefully planned to ensure a smooth and supportive move into Harlingen High School and Harlingen High School South,” officials said in a statement.
As part of the new program, at-risk students are taking their educations into the district’s campuses, working with counseling teams guiding them through graduation.
“Upon returning to their respective schools, our students were welcomed back with genuine care from our students and staff,” officials said. “Each returning student is now accompanied by a dropout prevention counselor. These counselors have smaller student-to-staff ratios which allow them to provide targeted counseling services. Furthermore, we have added an at-risk counselor at the district level.”
As part of the transition, students are helping each other in programs such as Harlingen High School’s HOPE Squad, “a peer-to-peer suicide prevention program,” an official said.
“There is a strong peer support system in place at both high schools,” officials said. “The Harlingen High School HOPE Squad and the Harlingen High School South Student Council have met with these students and welcomed them to their respective campuses. Our commitment to each student’s well-being is evident in the additional support structures we have put in place.”
During KEYS Academy’s last semester, Principal Patti Muniz and a team of nine teachers were working with a paraprofessional, a counselor and a two-member administrative staff.
While Muniz retired, the school’s teachers and support staff were assigned to other campuses, an official said.
On Wednesday, officials did not have the number of KEYS Academy’s former students readily available.
Late last month, district officials shut down KEYS Academy, which had helped at-risk students with their educations through graduation.
In 1991, George McShan was on the school board when he helped launch the program out of a modular building.
Soon, officials had moved the program to Bonham Elementary School before building its campus off Loop 499 in the late 1990s, he said.
“The purpose of KEYS was to give students an alternative to completing their education in an alternative setting,” McShan said in an interview. “It was really a drop-out prevention program. You had a comprehensive curriculum, certified teachers, a supportive team of counselors, administrators and a school principal.”
The program was aimed at students such as those struggling in traditional classroom settings while helping pregnant students continue their educations as they worked toward graduation, said McShan, a consultant who served 30 years on the school board, retiring in 2018 during a career in which he served as Texas State Technical College’s dean of education.
“It was for students who fell behind in class, who were not performing at the level — it could be for attendance reasons, if they don’t fit in,” he said. “It was self-paced so they could catch up. For girls who got pregnant, where were they going to complete school? So we had a nursery for young teen mothers who could bring a child to school.”
In 2021, officials shut down the school’s nursery, offering its students child care services, an official said.
On Dec. 22, Muniz felt “heartbroken” as she hailed the school’s legacy as a cornerstone of the district’s program aimed at helping at-risk students continue their educations through graduation.
“After 29 years in education, today I bid farewell to my students at KEYS Academy,” she posted on Facebook to mark the school’s closing.
“While retirement is always a bittersweet chapter, I feel that now that I am no longer employed by Harlingen CISD, I can share the heartbreak I felt as we closed the doors to KEYS Academy for the last time,” she wrote.
Muniz questioned officials’ decision to shut down the school.
“KEYS Academy, which stands for Keeping Education Your Solution, has served the most at-risk and least-seen students who otherwise would not have graduated, worked with caring teachers to ensure that the doors of education remained open for them, like they deserve, just like anyone else, regardless of socio-economic status or family name,” she wrote. “Unseen and under-privileged, my students will have to continue and my heart breaks for them and for my selfless staff.”
On Dec. 14, school board President Dr. Belinda Reininger referred questions to district’s public information department.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the description of Harlingen High School’s HOPE Squad.
