Nancy Bernardino, principal of Solar Preparatory
Nancy Bernardino has deep East Dallas roots. The new principal of the all-girls Solar Prep Academy on Henderson Avenue, formerly James Bonham Elementary, attended Lipscomb Elementary and J.L. Long Middle School. Then for high school, she attended The Hockaday School for girls, and it dawned on her that women — the ones sitting in desks around her — had the potential to become future engineers, mathematicians and scientists.
“When I arrived at Hockaday, all of a sudden there was no limits to what we could be,” she said at a recent Vickery Place Neighborhood Association gathering.
So when Bernardino and her team applied to open a school of choice in Dallas ISD, they chose to pursue an all-girls school with a STEAM curriculum — science, technology, engineering, arts and math. They also wanted to focus on the years leading up to high school, kindergarten through eighth-grade.
“For us it was really important to give access to all girls, and starting in middle school was too late,” Bernardino says.
Before Solar, Bernardino had a track record of turning around struggling Title 1, or predominantly low-income, schools, so when DISD’s Office of Transformation and Innovation received Bernadino’s pitch, they chose it without hesitation. “We saw a proposal from one of our exemplary principals and it was pretty much a no-brainer,” says Mike Koprowski, the district’s chief of transformation and innovation.
The school is receiving all kinds of attention, not only for its unique approach as an all-girls school (one of five single-gender schools in Dallas ISD) and its STEAM curriculum, but also its demographic make-up: Solar is the first DISD school to use socioeconomic status in its enrollment process. Its half-and-half makeup — 50 percent economically disadvantaged students and 50 percent affluent — is an incredibly unique situation not only in Dallas ISD but in most places.
“On a micro level, it gives lower-income students the rare opportunity to go to a mixed-income DISD school,” says The Observer’s Eric Nicholson in another recent story on Solar. This is “a big deal,” he says, because studies show that academically, “poor kids tend to benefit when they can rub elbows with middle-class classmates.”
Only a few of the district’s 227 schools are socioeconomically diverse. The district’s schools of choice are trying to increase that small percentage.
Though Solar is in our neighborhood, it is not a neighborhood school, per se. Enrollment is open to girls across the district, and they are admitted by lottery, with no admission criteria except their families’ income. Unlike other neighborhood schools of choice Mata Montessori and IDEA High School, Solar doesn’t have a priority radius.
But its location near engaged neighborhood associations such as Vickery Place and Greenland Hills, and its history as the Blue Ribbon James Bonham Elementary, which DISD closed in 2012 as a cost-saving measure, mean that even though its students come from all over, its future success matters greatly to neighbors.
Mike Koprowski, DISD chief of transformation and innovation
And, because Solar eventually will be a kindergarten through eighth-grade school (it currently goes up to second-grade and will continue to add a grade each year), its historical campus also will be expanded using funds from the 2015 bond election. A community meeting will be held today, Aug. 24 at 5:30 p.m. at Solar to discuss the $20 million addition. The school’s current capacity is 420 students; Solar eventually will house 1,000 students so the addition will be, “basically, just another Bonham,” Koprowski says.
As far as how big the building will be and what the architecture will look like, “we have plenty of time to have those conversations because the school will grow slowly,” says Koprowski, a Vickery Place resident himself.
For neighborhood residents interested in seeing Solar in action, Bernardino says she plans to open the school for scheduled tours this fall, as early as October.
