Math teacher Oscar Garcia works with students Mikaley Kester, left, Kailey Nenque-Cazares, Daisy Hernandez and Celeste Rodriguez at CAST Med High School last November. Northside ISD now is planning the network’s fifth high school with an emphasis on training future teachers.

Photo: Billy Calzada /Staff Photographer

The next CAST Network school is shaping up to be in Northside Independent School District and will serve students who aspire to be teachers.

District officials are also working with the University of Texas at San Antonio on an arrangement that would let students attend the CAST school on a yet-to-be decided Northside ISD campus for their first and second year of high school and at UTSA for their third and fourth year, officials told Northside trustees at a recent presentation.

“The goal is to launch the program at the start of the 2021-2022 academic year,” Superintendent Brian Woods said. As required by the CAST program, a percentage of seats will be available for students from outside the district.

H-E-B created the CAST Network – short for Centers for Applied Science and Technology – and has provided start-up funding for five of its career-themed schools in Bexar County, including CAST Lead in East Central ISD, projected to open this fall.

The hope in Northside is that students will leave school with “a fair amount of college credit” and return as teachers to the district, Woods said.

“You hear the phrase ‘Grow your own,’ and this is putting money behind that,” Woods said.

The project, he said, would be “taking high school kids who feel like it would be a good career for them, getting them trained at an education prep program, but also putting them in settings so by the time they’re sophomores or juniors in high school they know what that’s going to look like and make sure that’s for them.”

Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Krista, become a subscriber. Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva

Source: San Antonio Express-News, By Krista Torralva