The San Antonio Education Partnership's Board of Directors announced a new executive director Wednesday who has a lifetime focus on education and a passion for increasing educational attainment in the Alamo City.
Ana Acevedo comes to SAEP most recently from Goodwill San Antonio, where she served as senior director for the Good Careers Academy, a vocational training program. Previously, she worked in multiple roles for the City of San Antonio in education and workforce development and played a key role in creating the Train for Jobs SA program at Alamo Colleges District and the city's Ready to Work initiative. Earlier in her career, she was an elementary school principal for the San Antonio Independent School District.
Acevedo has a B.A. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland College Park. She is in the midst of writing her doctoral dissertation, hoping to attain a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Some challenges schools — and SAEP — are facing right now in grades K-12 are less engagement among students overall and lower attendance.
College enrollment is also down, she noted. Historically, SAEP's programming has focused on high school but she plans to expand services to older individuals who finished high school but didn't go to college right away or dropped out.
"We're really trying to connect with students again after high school and encouraging them to look at college and post-secondary education as an option for their future," Acevedo told the Business Journal.
Specifically, she hopes to expand SAEP's Upgrade Program, one of its newer programs, which focuses on this post-high-school demographic and helps them navigate career planning, college applications and enrollment.
Acevedo said that increasing educational attainment is not only crucial on an individual level but will improve the local economy, economic mobility and quality of life.
As a community, San Antonio is finally more open to discuss and is aware of the economic health of the community, and understanding the challenges the city has historically faced in terms of education attainability, economic segregation and poverty, said Acevedo.
"How do we capitalize on the momentum in very strategic partnerships and collaborations that help us all move forward to reach that goal?" she said. "There's no better time than now, with the implementation of San Antonio Ready to Work." Acevedo added there's a focus on "increasing educational attainment across the community, and what that's going to take is very intentional partnerships."
