By Alia Malik STAFF WRITER
The North East Independent School District has bought a vacant Walmart next to MacArthur High School and will convert it into a center for a cybersecurity magnet program.
Next school year, the new program will accept 150 freshmen from across the district, who will remain enrolled in their high schools but spend two class periods in the cybersecurity building every day.
New freshman classes of 150 students will be added in each subsequent school year, selected by lottery if interest exceeds capacity.
“This is going to be a natural fit for our kids of the future,” Anthony Jarrett, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, told NEISD trustees this week.
The district is also revamping its math and science curriculum from elementary school up to include more cybersecurity and computer programming.
San Antonio has become the nation’s second-biggest market for cybersecurity jobs after Washington, D.C., fueled in large part by the U.S. Air Force and the University of Texas at San Antonio. But the numbers of data breaches, and of unfilled cybersecurity positions, grow every year.
The Engineering & Technologies Academy at North East’s Roosevelt High School includes cybersecurity classes, and students at other high schools learn it through Junior ROTC.
“We have a pretty robust program right now in the district, but we would like to grow that program even larger,” Jarrett said.
NEISD has formed a cybersecurity advisory council with industry professionals and UTSA. High school students will be able to get industry certifications, college credit and internships through the magnet program, preparing them for in-demand jobs with eventual median salaries of $82,000 to $92,000 per year, said Ben Peterson, the district’s senior director of career and technical education.
The magnet program will be housed at the NEISD Cyber Security Center next to MacArthur High, which will be open to the community. It will include a 700-seat competition arena with a stage where robots can fight each other, said Garrett Sullivan, executive director of construction management and engineering.
NEISD closed on the building Aug. 31 for about $2.2 million, which came out of leftover funds from the district’s 2015 bond issue. Walmart has removed a gas station from the property and cleared the 39,000-square-foot building. There are 185 parking spaces, but MacArthur’s parking lots could also be used during community events, Superintendent Sean Maika said.
Trustees voted unanimously Monday night to approve a schematic design and authorize staff to develop construction documents for the first phase of renovations, which will create two classrooms, an open space termed the “collaboration area,” a lobby and administrative offices. It will cost $3.2 million, of which $2 million will come from 2015 bond funds and the rest from the district’s operating budget and career and technical education grants.
Sullivan expects design documents to be complete by the end of the year and the board could approve a contractor in the following months. The first phase would be constructed by summer, in time for the magnet program’s August kickoff.
For the next three renovation phases, NEISD’s design team proposed more classrooms, network laboratories where students can learn to wire and program servers and routers, a robotics lab and the competition arena. That construction, estimated to cost an additional $8 million to $10 million, might be funded through a future bond or donations from industry partners.
In deciding students would remain enrolled at their home campuses and be bused to the cybersecurity center for part of the day, NEISD followed the model of the Construction Technology Academy it opened last year. Teens often decide against full-day magnet high schools because they want to remain with their friends and participate in sports and clubs at their neighborhood campuses, administrators said.
NEISD has enough teachers for the program’s first year but will have to recruit more over time. The district decided to consolidate its cybersecurity programs in one facility, rather than growing them at each high school, because high school cybersecurity teachers are hard to come by — they can make a lot more money working in private industry, Maika said.
Josh Beck, a programming teacher at the ETA magnet at Roosevelt, is known for leading the Army JROTC team there to win national cybersecurity competitions. He will be “the driving force” at the new facility, Maika said.
Peterson said administrators might find other interested teachers already in the district and train them to switch subjects.
“This program might attract some of the strongest in the state to come down,” Peterson said. “If they realize how devoted we are to making this the greatest, I think we could attract the greatest.”
In time, Maika said, the center will also teach parents and community members how to keep their information private and monitor their children online.
Districtwide, administrators plan to create robotics and cybersecurity lessons for elementary grades and expand robotics clubs at elementary schools. Middle school career technology courses will be redesigned to reinforce the foundations of robotics and cybersecurity.
NEISD also plans to promote middle school robotics classes and competitions and develop an outreach program for nontraditional science and technology students, such as girls and minorities.
NEISD trustee Terri Williams is director of the Procurement Technical Assistance Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she runs two cybersecurity programs for small-business owners. She said many small- and medium-size businesses are looking for apprentices or interns to help implement the cybersecurity measures they learn in the training sessions.
“This is great,” she said of the new magnet program. “This is definitely needed.” amalik@express-news.net