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San Antonio’s cafécollege celebrated its 15th anniversary Friday with a quinceañera.
The city-funded education resource center was founded in 2010 under the leadership of then-mayor Julián Castro.
Cafécollege serves as a bridge between high school and college by providing free advice and assistance filling out college and financial aid applications.
Usually the downtown advising center on El Paso Street hosts workshops and one-on-one advising sessions. But Friday the center was instead decked out for the festivities, with papel picado, balloons, a margarita station, and a taco truck. And, of course, live mariachi music.
Cafécollege is operated by the nonprofit San Antonio Education Partnership, or SAEP, which also provides scholarships and embeds college advisors in local high schools.
SAEP CEO Ana Acevedo said cafécollege has helped over 70,000 San Antonians since its launch in 2010, including both students and adults.
"We really wanted to mark the occasion that cafécollege has been operating for 15 years, and it was started by the vision that Julián Castro had when he was the mayor, and it's just really about continuing to build a college-going culture in San Antonio, and making sure that everyone in San Antonio has access and success in higher ed," Acevedo said.
In remarks during the celebration, Castro said cafécollege was born out of a belief in the young people of San Antonio.
"Whether they were from the West Side, the South Side, the North Side or the East Side, however much money their parents made or didn't make, wherever they came from, and whatever their first language is, that we have the brains and the talent. And if you match that with the opportunity, that these children could go anywhere," Castro said.
"Cafécollege was also born out of necessity and out of data and research," he added. "We found that the ratio of students to counselors in our public high schools was more than 400 to one, and so the idea that students had the opportunity to sit down and just spend half an hour getting great advice from their high school counselor about going to college just really didn't exist for a lot of kids anymore, and this was one way to fill that gap."
CAST Schools Executive Director Jeanne Russell said Castro showed that education was his top priority as mayor by making cafécollege a reality early in his tenure.
"He knew from personal experience, growing up in Edgewood at Tafolla Middle School and at Jefferson High School that young people who were the first in their family to go to college needed more than just guidance to succeed. They needed a different level of support to crack the code of scholarships, financial aid and college applications," said Russell, who served as Castro's education policy director when he was mayor.
"We were so excited that this building had a huge sign that you could see from I-35," she added, the noise of the highway overpass behind her underscoring her point. "Cafécollege signaled to our community that our city valued college, and we would do everything we possibly could to wrap our arms around the young people who aspired to it.
Fifteen years later, Russell said the importance of additional support for college advice is once again becoming more important as school dollars get stretched thin.
"We're hitting another point in our city where the advising resources are stretched," Russell said. "And that was one of the concepts. The idea of a one-stop (location) was it's not just San Antonio Education Partnership here, but UT outreach can come here, Alamo Colleges can come here, Communities in Schools can come herem so they could rotate through and access people.
Attendees — both in the audience, and those who spoke during the ceremony — were a who's who of former and current city leaders who advocate for education, including Castro's fellow former mayors Henry Cisneros, who launched the San Antonio Education Partnership, and Ed Garza, who is longtime board member of San Antonio ISD.
