Pasadena ISD trustees review four options to reshape dropout recovery campus amid TEA limits and high per-student cost

Pasadena Independent School District trustees on May 5 heard a staff workshop on options for the district's dropout recovery campus and flexible attendance services, as administrators outlined trade-offs between cost, compliance and student supports.

Dr. Alita Harrell, the district's chief of schools, opened the presentation and said the workshop aimed to align the district's practices with recent changes in funding and accountability and to surface options for the 2026'27 school year. Dr. Melissa McCullough, who led the program briefing, described the existing model: a dedicated dropout recovery—community school that operates as an alternative education accountability campus and offers optional flexible school day programming the board must review annually for submission to the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

McCullough told trustees the campus serves primarily 11th- and 12th-grade students and reported "about 215 students total" across the program, with roughly 55 overage freshmen included in the design. She flagged two central constraints shaping any change: the campus's high operating cost and TEA's limit on Individual Graduation Committee (IGC) graduates. "The state says you can't go above 10% of your graduating class," McCullough said, adding that TEA recently notified the district it was exceeding that threshold and that the district must plan remediation steps.

On cost, McCullough said the district's budget and allocated transportation and salary costs equate to "approximately $16,500 per student" for the current campus model, a figure trustees pressed staff to clarify with updated capacity and staffing scenarios.

Staff presented four options in the board packet and at the meeting: - Maintain the status quo: keep the standalone community campus (continuity and small-learning environment) but retain high per-student costs and continuing TEA accountability concentration; staff cited underutilization of the facility as a con. - Relocate the existing program to another building: largely the same model with predictable staffing and service continuity but with similar cost and compliance drawbacks. - Convert the program to a site-based program inside one comprehensive high school: shared staffing and program resources could reduce costs but risk losing the smaller learning environment some students need. - Hybrid, multi-site model: disperse students across comprehensive campuses and leverage shared staffing and virtual/hybrid options to reduce per-student cost and spread TEA accountability, while preserving flexible scheduling for some students; staff warned the model would require cross-site coordination and could limit the "fresh start" benefit of a separate campus.

Trustees questioned how large the campus could be if reconfigured and whether the comprehensive campuses could replicate supports that had been unique to the community school. McCullough said capacity estimates and more detailed cost-per-student projections would depend on the model selected and promised to provide further analysis.

McCullough also noted that the district has piloted flexible and hybrid schedules at some campuses (including Pasadena High School) and that those pilots inform potential transition plans.

Why it matters: staff said the district has improved overall graduation rates but must reconcile progress with TEA accountability rules and rising per-student costs at the standalone campus. Trustees requested additional data on capacity, staffing impacts and detailed cost projections before the board considers a formal recommendation.

Next steps: staff will return with a recommendation and the additional data trustees requested, including a capacity estimate if the program were run like a traditional campus and refined per-student cost calculations.