Momentum High School in Spring ISD Celebrates New Campus Home with Increased Capacity for Students
Students, faculty, families and supporters of Momentum High School gathered in the school’s gymnasium on Tuesday morning to celebrate a milestone nearly a decade in the making, as Spring ISD celebrated a ribbon-cutting for Momentum’s new campus home, in a recently renovated former office building just south of FM-1960 and T.C. Jester Blvd.
“Way back in 2015 we started a program called ‘ASAP,’ and now here we are with Momentum High School,” Spring ISD Superintendent Dr. Lupita Hinojosa told attendees, describing how the district’s Achieving Success Alternative Program (ASAP) planted the seeds that would eventually grow into Momentum. “This is a vision a long time coming.”
After housing other Spring ISD programs in recent years, the new Momentum campus – developed through a partnership between the district, Huckabee Architects and ICI Construction, Inc. – provides a purpose-designed setting for the school’s unique offerings, which include accelerated credit recovery and new-credit acquisition, a special partnership with Lone Star College to provide students with hands-on access to career training and valuable industry certifications, and flexible class schedules – including part-day and evening classes – for older students or those whose family and work obligations make a traditional high school schedule more challenging.
“At the end of the day, our board’s vision is to ensure that every single student has an excellent and equitable education,” Hinojosa said. “Students should be able to come to Spring ISD and get what they need, and it doesn’t always look the same for every single student.”
While ASAP primarily provided specialty credit-recovery and dropout prevention for students who remained linked to their home campuses, Momentum High School is now in its second year as a campus of record, awarding its own diplomas. More than 120 students graduated from the new school last year, with this year’s numbers only expected to grow.
“Momentum High School is the culmination of a dream our esteemed superintendent has had for a long time,” Principal Stacy Smith told attendees at the ceremony, “a place where students from all walks of life – most of whom are facing what seem to be insurmountable odds – can attend school and reach the goal of graduation.”
In addition to small classes, greater access to faculty, and a flexible and supportive learning environment to meet the needs of a range of students, each with their own unique challenges, Momentum also offers enhanced access to online coursework that allows students to make progress at a pace that matches their own needs, schedules, and goals.
“It is such an honor to help represent a school district that recognizes that while some students thrive in a large campus structure, others can feel more at home in a smaller setting,” Spring ISD Board of Trustees President Justine Durant told attendees during the ceremony. “Here at Momentum High School, those students get a place to shine.”
Momentum High School’s innovative offerings – including its blended-learning in-person program combined with off-campus college-level coursework and career training – have been attracting increased attention from district families and students looking for alternatives to a larger comprehensive middle or high school. Durant explained that the school’s new home will enable Momentum to roughly double in size, bringing the same unique opportunities and choices to even more Spring ISD students ranging in age from 13 to 26.
Also addressing attendees before the official ribbon-cutting took place was current Momentum senior Trinity Thibodeaux, who said that she and her fellow Momentum students were inspired this fall by their new campus home, and that she – like many of her classmates – was glad to have found out about Momentum and what it had to offer.
“Coming to Momentum wasn’t my idea and wasn’t something I was ready for,” Thibodeaux said. “However, it turned out to be the best decision for me. Being in this small environment has taken away the distractions that kept me from being as successful as I could have been.”
Since becoming a Momentum student, Thibodeaux has pulled out all the stops and accelerated her academic progress. She’s now on-track to finish all the requirements to earn her high school diploma in the next few months, enabling her to finish high school, graduate, and enter college a year early.
“I appreciate the opportunities that coming to Momentum has given me access to,” Thibodeaux said, “and I am thankful that Spring ISD had the vision to create an opportunity for students like myself that allows us to graduate – our way!”
Source: Spring ISD
