Seventeen San Antonio high school teachers just cleared a major hurdle: they wrapped up a new certification program at St. Mary’s University that now lets them teach college-level dual-credit classes on their own campuses. It is the first visible payoff from a partnership between the Alamo Colleges District and St. Mary’s that is designed to open far more free college-credit seats for teens across Bexar County.
Partnership and funding
Alamo Colleges reports it committed $550,000 in each of the 2025–26 and 2026–27 academic years from its Student Success Fund, roughly $1.1 million in all, to pay for the teacher-training pilot that launched in June 2025, according to Alamo Colleges District. An education network that profiled the project described the effort as a $1.4 million investment over two academic years and noted that it covers two fully funded routes for educators: an 18-hour content pathway for teachers who already hold a master’s degree and a two-year master’s pathway for those who do not, Achieving the Dream found. St. Mary’s is providing the graduate coursework and is rolling out a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction to anchor the initiative, St. Mary’s University says.
Certified teachers and cohorts
The first batch of 17 teachers has finished the one-year, 18-credit pathway and is now cleared to teach dual-credit English, government and history in Northside, North East and East Central ISDs. Another 38 educators are in the middle of the two-year master’s track, and a second cohort of roughly 35 teachers is signing up now. Leaders say they expect the collaboration to yield about 90 dual-credit instructors by summer 2027. At a recognition ceremony on Wednesday, Vice Chancellor George Railey Jr. thanked participants for juggling full-time teaching with online graduate work, and St. Mary’s provost Jason Pierce called the model “the go-to model” for tackling the shortage of qualified dual-credit faculty, as reported by Express-News.
Scale and student impact
Alamo Colleges projects that the Dual Credit Faculty Expansion Project will reach around 1,750 students by its third year and help many high schoolers walk across the graduation stage already holding roughly 15 hours of college credit, according to Alamo Colleges District. The work folds into a broader “29 by 29” campaign to boost dual-credit enrollment from about 21,922 students in fall 2025 to 29,000 by 2029, a countywide target tied to increasing postsecondary attainment that Achieving the Dream and local leaders have highlighted.
Teachers’ experience and district reach
The grind to get there was real. Frank Hernandez, a social-studies teacher, estimated he logged about 15 to 20 hours each week in online classes and assignments to earn his new credential. Educators such as Ebony Tinajero say they hope the certification will help Latina students and other underrepresented groups gain an advantage in getting to college and finishing a degree. The program’s second cohort is open to teachers in Alamo Heights, Edgewood, Harlandale, San Antonio, Jourdanton, Boerne and Southwest ISDs and at Somerset Academies of Texas, and officials caution that there are only so many seats, as reported by Express-News.
What’s next
Partners expect these newly credentialed teachers to start offering dual-credit sections on their high school campuses in the coming academic year, even as Alamo Colleges and St. Mary’s continue to recruit and enroll more educators into the funded pathways. St. Mary’s has program pages outlining both the graduate certificate and master’s options and is inviting districts and interested teachers to learn more through its website, St. Mary’s University.
