The decision has been made. The Dallas College board of trustees unanimously voted to pass the resolution that confirms the end of Richland Collegiate High School or RCHS. The meeting took place March 5.
Although the program is at its end, Kathryn K. Eggleston, Richland Campus president, said the program helped many students achieve their career goals earlier in life positively affecting families and the community. As a pioneer early college program, RCHS paved the road for other structures to follow. “Nothing will take that legacy away,” Eggleston said.
Eggleston has been involved in RCHS since its design and launch in 2005 and has been invested in the educations of the juniors and seniors that attended the school. The urgency in making this decision was because spring is when RCHS would normally be accepting applications. However, no junior class will be admitted for the fall of 2024.
The Texas Education Agency will continue funding RCHS until the program graduates the current high school class of 2025. In the meantime, RCHS will continue to operate as normal with events and activities until August 2025, at which point the current juniors would be graduating.
The transition will be gradual. Offices in Crocket Hall will still be used until December 2025. After that, the space would most likely be allocated to other programmatic areas. What exactly will become of the space is still undecided. “It’s too soon to make that decision now because, … we intend to fully operate until 2025,” Eggleston said.
Eggleston said Dallas College would like to keep as much of the staff as possible, however some may choose to continue their careers elsewhere.
“We will be looking at what the needs are in Dallas College,” Eggleston said. Dallas College offers different forms of early college experiences across its campuses. The end of RCHS is not the end of all Dallas College collegiate high schools.
In all the other programs, local independent school districts are taking accountability and managing student activity, which makes it easier for students to transfer within their school system.
RCHS is the only junior-and-senior-only collegiate high school within Dallas College. Eggleston said the structure worked for a long time. In that while, new forms of charter schools arose and became more popular and more accessible. Richland having an ISD-hosted collegiate program contract does not seem impossible, Eggleston said. “We’re already working with all the ISDs that are feeder schools to Richland,” Eggleston said. There most likely would not be enough demand to start that up.
Richardson ISD is also about to have significant consolidation in middle schools. Plans to close four middle schools by the end of the 2024 school year are in the works. Changing trends in demographics and birth rate affect the inner-city population as rural areas expand. Eggleston said she is hopeful demand will continue in other areas where Dallas College can focus on helping the community.
