TSTC Plans Good News for Legacy
Legacy Early College High School is halfway through its third school year, but one big cloud has been looming over the successful program since its beginning.

When Legacy opened its doors in 2006, it was established as a half-day program to best fit the resources and school districts it served, but the Texas Education Agency has always expected it to move to an all-day program.

“The early college high school initiative nationally has always been designed for urban schools, where you have an urban ISD like Houston on an urban community college campus like Houston Community College,” Executive Dean for East Williamson County Higher Education Center Chuck McCarter said. “It has always been supposedly an all-day program and the idea is to have students on a college campus so they can immerse themselves in the college culture.”

The original plan did not fit well in what was to become the state’s first rural program, so Legacy opened its doors as a half-day program shared between Taylor and Hutto.

“We realized that Hutto and Taylor are rural communities and there are a lot of rural communities that just don’t have the critical mass to go one on one,” he said. “We had to make all kinds of adjustments. To us each early college high school should reflect the community, it just so happens that our communities here are rural.”

This fall, TEA told both Hutto and Taylor school districts a plan needed to be in place by the end of the school year to make Legacy an all-day program. Without the new EWCHEC building under construction that posed logisitical issues due to the lack of classroom space in the current facility on Main Street in Taylor.

“Our whole idea was that by the time TEA starts putting the squeeze on us for that all day designation we’ll have the higher ed center phase one built and students can go over there to an all day program,” McCarter said. “Of course, lenders went south and the economy went south.”

One option would be to move the campus to Hutto, occupying an empty wing at Hutto High School. But with the pending Texas State Technical College contract for the former Intercraft Building in Taylor, it appears the issue of space will be resolved.

“The saving grace is that TSTC has got a contract now with the old Intercraft building, and we’re going to have a full day program there,” McCarter said. “We’re looking at 200-400 students there eventually. TEA is happy and we’re happy.”

McCarter said the hope is to have Legacy operating out of the new facility as early as the fall of 2010 as a full day, standalone campus.

“We feel like there will be a lot more students attending because it will be a full day and they can create their own culture on their own campus instead of being bussed back and forth,” McCarter said.

Legacy currently occupies four classrooms and has freshmen, sophomores and juniors.

McCarter said 80 percent of the juniors at Legacy are on track to get an associates degree from Temple College before receiving a high school degree.

In addition to the educational benefits, the program comes with financial ones as well. Temple College waves all tuition and fees for enrolled students and the number of hours students will have completed by the end of this spring is valued at an estimated $123,000 over the first three years.