This week, 49 6th grade students from CAST Imagine, CAST’s very first middle school, toured the Arboretum San Antonio, which is designed to be a world-class park on San Antonio’s Southside, and the first of its kind dedicated to preservation of native trees. 

The Arboretum has been hosting a series of focus groups and surveys with community members, listening to diverse voices and capturing perspectives from community members so as to ensure the park serves the needs of those around it.

CAST Imagine was the very first group of young people who visited the space. They went after completing the community survey, and they were able to offer their unique perspectives on what would make the space truly special.

When San Antonio ISD asked CAST Schools last year to open a middle school co-located at CAST Med High School at Brooks on the Southside of San Antonio, we were both excited and nervous.

Why those conflicting feelings?

After the pandemic, we saw enrollment at our high schools slow, and we held focus groups with families. We consistently heard that we needed to give students earlier access to our programs, so they could build the confidence that they could be successful.

CAST follows a design process similar to that of the Arboretum, working to co-create with the community over the course of a design year, before welcoming its first class of students.

However, with CAST Imagine, we had a compressed timeline. Nonetheless, we held focus groups with students and parents, and design sessions with the community, and pushed out a survey. 

In those focus groups, students shared their desire to take learning outside the school building, to learn more about their community, careers of the future, and engage in hands-on learning.

These sessions were so inspiring that one of our long-time teachers at CAST Med, Colleen Quirk, chose to move to the middle school, and she was joined by a rock star team including Eugene Jimenez, who came to us from the DoSeum.

SAISD projected the school would open with 58 students; instead we welcomed 78, and we are preparing to welcome another 20 from our wait list once we are able to hire an additional teacher and move some of our upperclass students at CAST Med into portables provided by the district.

There are always hiccups with a new school, but we are excited that our building and gym are under construction, and we anticipate being able to utilize those spaces in the second semester of the school year, allowing our new and growing middle school space to breathe and grow.

Jeanne Russell

Executive Director

CAST Schools