Alter Impact Center

Alter Impact Center in Buda, TX, is a small alternative high school serving 70 students in grades 6 through 12 within the Hays Consolidated Independent School District, located just a third of a mile from the much larger Moe And Gene Johnson High School.

This school is not a traditional high school and should not be judged by typical academic metrics. Its defining feature is an incredibly intensive, high-cost model designed to keep at-risk students in school. The school spends an extraordinary $137,935 per student—over 14 times more than nearby Moe And Gene Johnson High School—and has a student-teacher ratio of just 1.9 to 1. This investment has produced a remarkable result: a perfect zero percent dropout rate for five consecutive years, a feat unmatched by any other school in the area, including the high-performing Bowie High School (0.3% dropout rate) and the district's other alternative school, Live Oak Academy (2.8% dropout rate). While standardized test scores are very low—for example, 7th-grade math proficiency was 0% compared to the state average of 29.41%—the school's primary mission is clearly to prevent dropouts, and by that measure, it is succeeding flawlessly.

One notable bright spot is the school's exceptional performance for special education students, who ranked in the 56th percentile statewide in the most recent year, a dramatic improvement from the 5th percentile just a few years prior. The school also shows relative strength in Biology, with 39.29% of students proficient, though this remains below the state average. In short, Alter Impact Center is a highly specialized intervention program that prioritizes keeping students engaged in education above all else, and it has achieved a perfect record in that core mission.