Metrocare Services is currently a tenant in one of the buildings Texans Can Academies plans to buy and convert to a charter school on Skillman
When seeking a new location to build one of their charter schools, Texans Can Academies looks for distressed properties. Such sites are cheap to buy, and it’s easy to rip out the inside retail or office finish-out and reconfigure them as a school. Their thinking is the same when it comes to filling their schools. Distressed kids who’ve failed in class and are on a path to failing at life are Texans Can’s “target market.”
That’s why Richard Marquez, President and CEO of Texans Can, doesn’t understand meeting resistance from school districts such as Richardson ISD.
“We don’t compete with the high school,” says Marquez. “We compete with the streets.”
Marquez spoke to the Lake Highlands Chamber of Commerce Thursday.
Texans Can has a contract to purchase a 4-building property at 9708 Skillman, where Skillman meets Forest Lane in north Lake Highlands. The charter school will serve about 600 kids, with half coming for morning sessions and half after lunch. The flexibility of the shortened day is favorable for students who have babies to care for or a job to get to. Some have been emancipated from abusive parents, he says, or must care for disabled ones. Others have dropped out or been kicked out of traditional schools in nearby RISD, DISD or Garland.
“Teens are stupid,” says Marquez, a former principal at Sunset High in Oak Cliff, “but when they make one mistake, we can’t ruin their whole life because of it. They want to succeed, and if we ask them back, they’ll come back. At Texans Can, we don’t give up on them.”
Coursework focuses on “reading and thinking,” which Marquez says is the key to economic independence. Admission is free to the student, and the school receives funds for each student from the state like a public school and supplements with their “Cars for Kids” campaign and other fundraising. Class sizes are low and advisors help provide accountability. They work to develop partnerships with community colleges, trade unions and employers to help students get internships and jobs in nursing, construction trades and other fields in high demand.
“There are kids in seats right now [in traditional classrooms] just causing problems who really need to be with us,” says Marquez.
In 2017, RISD established its own non-traditional high school, featuring half-day schedules, flexible learning styles and online options. Former LHFC Principal Bill Gallo leads the project, called Memorial Park Academy, and touts the accomplishments of each student on his Twitter page.
Texans Can’s purchase of the property on Skillman is contingent upon the City of Dallas approving its application for a specific use permit (SUP) for the site, and Dallas City Councilman Adam McGough says he supports RISD. He’s encouraging Texans Can and RISD to work something out – which they’ll seek to do at a meeting Feb. 6th.
Jocelyn Pokropinski was celebrated as the first graduate of Memorial Park Academy, RISD’s non-traditional high school
