Being a young person in San Antonio carries a unique set of challenges — a truth exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s steady poverty rate.
In Bexar County, there’s more than 33,000 people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are disconnected from work, education, social services and sometimes family, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. These individuals are known as “opportunity youth,” and many in the city are working to fill in the gaps for them.
Rebekah Solis, 23, knows those gaps more than most. An American-born citizen, she came back to the country in 2020 from Mexico to enroll in college and tap into the “greater opportunity,” she said. However, Solis struggled a lot.
NXT Level Opportunity Youth Center is a program under the city’s Human Services department working to connect and reconnect those young people to work and education. It’s also the only nontraditional pathway into the city’s Alamo Promise, a last-dollar scholarship for Bexar County high schoolers who enroll in the Alamo Colleges District right after graduation.
Solis joined NXT Level in December of 2020, setting out to achieve two goals through the program: enroll in college and find a job. Facing financial and academic struggles, it took her a while, but she graduated from NXT Level last year.
“I felt like I needed a lot of help when I just came here, because there were so many things that I didn’t know,” she told the Report. “I feel like it would have taken me a lot longer to be where I am today than if I hadn’t been in the program.”
Housed at the Frank Garrett Multi-Service Center on the West Side, the program currently serves more than 200 participants with stories similar to Solis, but NXT Level used to have two homes.
Northside ISD location closes
Bexar County’s number of opportunity youth more than doubled during the summer of 2020 to about 75,000.
After the pandemic, officials at Northside Independent School District noticed many older students didn’t go back to school, and many who graduated in 2020 were struggling moving on to jobs and college.
The issue really struck Gerald Lopez, who served on the district’s school board from 2015-2024, when he was approached by a young man in a gas station. He needed money, and Lopez recognized him as a Northside ISD student.
“Students were losing connections with friends and teachers … Everyone was seeing what students were going through,” Lopez recalled. “They shouldn’t have been lost in that space between leaving school and not having a home.”
The student, who Lopez didn’t name, had graduated during the pandemic and was struggling to find housing. Lopez brought the issue up with the rest of the board, asking what could be done for the district’s disconnected students.
In 2022, Northside ISD partnered with the city to offer the program for Northside students and residents for three years. The district committed $500,000 annually, giving NXT Level space to run the program, a food pantry and donation center.
Facing a $38 million budget deficit, Northside decided not to renew its agreement with the city, effectively closing down the center and transferring all of its current participants to the West Side location.
Kimberly Ridgley, assistant superintendent for whole child development at Northside, said ending the agreement after three years was always the plan. It was a way for the district to reconnect with “leavers,” students who didn’t return to high school.
Ridgley said the program was “nice to have” but not manageable to run along with the programs the district is already running.
“Northside has never been afraid to try programs it thinks will help kids … It’s sad that it’s over, but it’s not really over,” she said.
The district does have other specialized services for students struggling to finish their high school diplomas and students dealing with homelessness.
In its three years, more than 200 students went through Northside’s NXT Level center. When the contract period ended in April, 104 participants continued to receive services.
Lopez, who now sits on the board for the Alamo Colleges District, was not part of the decision not renew the agreement between the city and Northside, but he says he understands.
“It served its purpose,” he said. “I was proud that the board recognized that we needed to do more for students in the first place.”
Efforts for opportunity youth continue
Closing the Northside location did put some strain on the program’s current capacity. There are about 260 current participants, but average capacity sits at 240.
But Angel Lerma, program manager for NXT Level, said city staff can handle it. It helps that several of their services can be offered virtually, especially since many participants struggle with having reliable transportation.
NXT Level currently has a waitlist of 140 young people. Depending on their goals, participants are usually actively in the program a few months to a year.
Most participants belong to a minority or marginalized population. About 70% are Hispanic or a person of color, 11% are homeless at the time of entry to the program (a number Lerma said swelled in 2020), and 80% have a yearly income of $10,000 or less.
Several are also young parents, and NXT Level helps by finding low-cost or free childcare options for those participants.
The program’s average “reconnection” rate, meaning how often participants are able find work or continue their education through NXT Level, is 60%.
Participants’ paths aren’t linear, Lerma explained. For many reasons, participants may drop out of the program and then re-enroll, especially when dealing with housing insecurity. NXT Level also serves as a prevention program, he added.
The county often refers low-level criminal offenders who meet NXT Level’s eligibility criteria to the program instead of taking more punitive action.
For Lerma, who’s worked with youth at the city level for several years, the program is about breaking the stereotype that young people are unmotivated.
“I think all of the younger people that we serve are very resourceful, very motivated, very compassionate,” he said. “I think some adults failed them in their lives. And really they’re just working to get back on their feet and in being successful like any of us really.”
Nontraditional path to Alamo Promise
When Solis, an alumnus of NXT Level, tried to apply for college in the U.S., she realized she didn’t have a valid high school diploma, since she graduated in Mexico. She also didn’t have a Texas identification or the shot records needed to enroll at a college campus.
“It was like academic shock,” she said. But Solis soon found Restore Education, a local program offering GED completion classes, who then referred her to NXT Level.
With the help on an education coach and a life coach — most participants get assigned both coaches to help meet their needs — Solis got her ID and later her driver’s license, enrolled in health insurance, found low-cost vaccines for school and enrolled at San Antonio College’s biology pre-medical program with an Alamo Promise scholarship.
NXT Level is the only pathway into the Alamo Promise program that doesn’t require students to be traditional freshly-graduated high school seniors. This fall, Alamo Colleges District has 37 NXT Level participants enrolled through the scholarship program.
Since opening the scholarship to NXT Level students in 2020, Alamo Colleges has served 138 participants and annually targets 25 students. A spokesperson for the college district said there are currently no other plans to further expand access to Alamo Promise.
Solis has been trying to finish her associate since the fall of 2021. She said she still has another year to go, since she takes breaks from school to be able to focus on work — she’s worked at a blood bank since December of 2023.
She achieved the goals she set up for herself when she joined NXT Level, Solis said. Now, her goals are finishing college and continuing her education to one day be a pediatrician.
Solis has a message for young people in a position similar to hers a few years ago: challenge yourself at a doable pace.
“It can be small steps. It can be big steps,” she said. “Whatever they can manage to do.”
