Legacy Taking Applicatons for '08 Class
Registration is nearing at Legacy Early College High School for Taylor and Hutto high school students who want to get a head start on a postsecondary education.

Students will begin as freshmen and take college-level classes at Temple College at Taylor.

Application materials are available at www.ewchec.com.

There are three rounds of applications and they must be postmarked by Nov. 16, Dec. 14 or Feb 1.

The program is geared for underrepresented, under served or first generation college students. Eighth-graders in both Taylor and Hutto are encouraged to apply.

Students in the program will attend their regular high schools in the morning for electives, then be transported to TCAT's campus in the afternoon to take their core classes.

The program, which will be tuition-free for students, was developed with a three-year, $600,000 grant from the Texas Education Agency.

Students can earn up to 60 hours of college credit while still in high school.

There are up to 100 available spots for incoming freshmen. This first year there are 54 students enrolled in the program.

Richard Kolek, principal at Legacy Early College, said he hopes to see more students attending next year.

“Because there are only 500 (Taylor and Hutto eighth-grade) kids to pull from to begin with, it's difficult,” Kolek said. “Larger schools have an easier time.”

But this year students from surrounding cities within the Temple College district will also be considered, according to East Williamson County Higher Education Center director Chuck McCarter.

Next year, he said, Taylor and Hutto will have a smaller eighth-grade class so accepting kids from other schools will help reach their goal of 100 students.

Even if the school does not fill all 100 slots next year, McCarter said space is beginning to get tight at Temple College's Taylor campus.

“The capacity of the [Temple College] facility is for 1,000 students,” he said. “Right now we're right around 900.”

In addition to the anticipated 100 Early College students, McCarter estimates a 10 percent increase in regular Temple College students next year.

“We feel pretty confident that we can handle another 100 students,” McCarter said. “But we are really going to have to be creative with the scheduling, and after that we are praying we can get a deal with either Hutto or Taylor and we can get the EWCHEC building up by fall of ‘09.”

McCarter plans to dedicate about 10,000 square feet of general purpose rooms and labs in EWCHEC to the Early College program, which will hold about 400 students.

EWCHEC is scheduled to be built by fall 2009 but debates about the location between Hutto and Taylor may slow down the process. If that is the case, McCarter said they may have to set up portable class space on the Temple College campus.

“It's one of those good and bad things; we are meeting our expectations in terms of anticipated growth but we are just running out of room,” he said.