Last week, parents at our Advanced Learning Academy (ALA) received a letter from San Antonio Superintendent Jaime Aquino informing them that, as part of a multiparty deal to bring a baseball stadium to downtown, the district had asked the development group to provide $45 million to build a new school for ALA-Euclid, which currently serves grades Pre-K through 3.
Parents who send their young ones to this campus are well aware of facilities challenges, including an elevator that is inoperable and ongoing issues with heating and cooling. However, it was the first time that many had been told that the district and CAST were looking for a new facility.
Conversations between CAST and the district about the adequacy of the Euclid facility, in fact, go back 5 years and have taken place with three different superintendents. The building is one of the oldest in the San Antonio Independent School District, and has faced multiple closure threats in its history because of its small size and condition. At one point, the district seriously considered building a new campus directly across the street from the ALA-Fox Tech campus, and shared renderings of that proposed facility. (That site is owned by Weston Urban and is now part of the proposed baseball complex.)
During the school district’s rightsizing process, it did address a number of schools with wait lists by combining or moving facilities, for example, Bonham Academy is now spread between Bonham and Green to give the popular campus more space; Mark Twain merged with Gonzalez Early Childhood Center, putting the school’s Pre-K through 3rd graders on a nearby campus to give Twain more room, and Steele Montessori moved locations to what was previously Forbes Elementary to give the school more space in a higher-quality facility. But the district was unable to come up with a solution for ALA, which has consistently had the district’s longest waiting list of any of the district’s choice schools, and currently has a wait list of more than 700.
In a parent meeting at ALA-Euclid on Wednesday Nov. 20, parents had an opportunity to discuss the building and its future with Deputy Superintendent Patti Salzmann, who shared data about the building’s condition and potential options, noting that while the district had asked the development partners to build a new school for ALA-Euclid, one that would serve grades Pre-K though 5, there had been no response to that request.
She also shared a map of the district’s available buildings as potential locations for a new ALA-Euclid, if the decision were made that it would be better to invest bond dollars in renovating a facility that would be more suited to the campus’s long-term needs, including combining 4th and 5th grades with Pre-K-3.
Parents expressed a strong desire for a campus as close as possible to the Euclid campus, and asked the district to explore ways in which the campus could accommodate more grades without sacrificing green space, including looking at surrounding properties, or petitioning the city to be able to build a third floor.
Parents also asked teachers to share their daily experiences in the Euclid building, and several teachers spoke of the daily difficulties in adapting their teaching to constant issues with temperature, leaks, and room changes.
The closest viable building owned by SAISD would be Burnet, near Hemisfair Park, on the opposite side of downtown.
Deputy Superintendent Salzmann noted that the purpose of the community meeting was to begin a dialogue with parents and the community, to ensure that whatever decision was made was informed by community voices. We encourage parents, community members, and all those who have strong views about the future of the ALA-Euclid campus to email the following key contacts:
Jennifer Barber, ALA-Euclid Principal, jbarber2@saisd.net
Sarah Sorensen, San Antonio ISD Trustee, District 1, ssorensen1@saisd.net
Click here to read Superintendent Jaime Aquino’s letter to parents.
Jeanne Russell
Executive Director
CAST Schools
