An entire senior class at a far Southeast high school is set to complete an internship this year, a career move most students wait for until college.
“There’s been an ongoing debate about what’s the point of education. Is it academics? Is it to get ready for the workforce?” said Roland Toscano, superintendent for East Central Independent School District. “It’s both here in East Central ISD. It’s about advanced academics for every kid, but equally important, it’s about employability.”
On Tuesday morning, 40 seniors at CAST Lead High School signed on for yearlong internships: most with five local hotel groups and eight students with other employers, including different East Central ISD departments.
Part of CAST Schools Network, which operates seven campuses across different San Antonio school districts, CAST Lead at ECISD focuses on pathways into retail and business management, e-commerce, hospitality and agribusiness.
The school opened in 2020 and serves around 300 students in grades 8-12 and sits right across the street from the district’s flagship East Central High School.
This school year marks the first time that every single CAST Lead senior will complete an internship.
“It’s our CAST promise lived out to the fullest,” said the network’s Executive Director Jen Maestas. “We promise that every student that comes through a CAST school has at least one meaningful work-based learning experience.”
CAST Lead first started partnering with the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter to offer internships three years ago, expanding the partnership to five other hotels this year, including Hilton Palacio del Rio, The Westin Riverwalk, Hotel Contessa, the Grand Hyatt San Antonio Riverwalk and the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk.
To celebrate the event, CAST Lead held a signing ceremony with students, their families and the employers taking them on for the year. Donning their best professional attire of slacks, dresses, loafers, heels and the occasional black Nike Air Force, students stood one by one to sign with a hotel and take a picture.
High school senior Elmer Castro’s internship starts next week, where he’ll be learning from employees of the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter. He’s a photography enthusiast and eventually wants to work in digital marketing.
“I want to know everything,” Castro said when asked what he hopes to take away from his internship. “I want to know what sales and marketing do. I want to know accounting. We’ve already done that stuff here [at CAST Lead], but to apply it in the real world and see how it works for my future.”
Castro interviewed with three hotel groups and got an offer at every company, but chose Marriott because of the company’s global presence.
At the start of the school year, employers pitched their workplaces to CAST Lead seniors, who then picked where they wanted to interview. Students interviewed, like any other job interview, and then received offers.
As part of their class schedules, seniors will now spend a couple hours at their internship every week. Most will be traveling into downtown San Antonio from the far Southeast Side of Bexar County. A handful will only need to walk across the street, where ECISD’s central offices are located.
“We have kids going into technology. We have kids going into the library, so they’re going to serve as an intern for the librarian. We have some that are going to the business office to learn about accounting and how the business office works,” said ECISD assistant superintendent Shane Mckay.
A couple of students also landed internships with the CAST Schools Network communications and marketing department.
CAST Lead was designed for students to have availability during their senior year for opportunities to work and learn in the field, said Mckay. It’s part of the reason that the school opened up to eighth graders years after it first opened, and why students start taking advanced academic courses and core credits early.
“We have to backwards map it, knowing that we want these experiences to culminate by their senior year,” said Mckay.
Those experiences also have to be aligned with industry demand, officials said, which is why CAST Lead partners with the San Antonio Hotel and Lodging Association.
Michelle Madson, the association’s president, said hospitality is one of the fastest-growing industries in the area and 1 in 8 residents work in hospitality.
CAST Lead’s signing ceremony also fell on the same day that the University of Texas at San Antonio launched a task force — including SAHLA — to shape the creation of a School of Hospitality for the fall of 2027.
“We want to show kids the opportunity that there is in hospitality,” said Madson. “There are so many career pathways. There are over 200 in hospitality career pathways.”
