Inga Cotton has been voicing her support of school choice starting in the first semester of college at Trinity University, when she wrote her term paper on the subject. Little did she know how important this topic would be to her later in life. After graduating from Trinity University with a bachelor’s degree in history, she attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned her law degree. She began her professional journey as a practicing lawyer, but soon found herself using similar skills researching and analyzing school options for her children.
In 2011, Inga learned about new charter schools that were coming to San Antonio. Excited that families would have more school options locally, she was inspired to spread the word. Inga immersed herself in learning about these new schools and communicating updates with her network. Since she struggled to find the right school for her children, Inga wanted to share her lessons learned with families across the city. This led to the creation of the San Antonio Charter Moms blog in April 2012.
Since its start as a blog, SA Charter Moms has evolved into a nonprofit as of 2018. Today, Founder and Executive Director Inga Cotton ensures the website and social media channels offer the community balanced information about all types of schools in San Antonio. As a nonprofit, SA Charter Moms can now accept funding that enables it to grow in ways that support accomplishing its mission of being the most trusted information source on education in the region. This growth includes Spanish-language blog post translations, surveying target publics, holding meetings with decision makers, sharing knowledge via public speaking, and community outreach.
In 2019, SA Charter Moms launched San Antonio Charter Schools, a custom, free school finder app. Available for Apple and Android, and bilingual in English and Spanish, the app puts information in the hands of parents and caregivers so they can find the schools that are the best fit for their children. It includes nearly a hundred public schools of choice, including open enrollment public charter schools, in-district charter schools, and district-charter partnership schools.
When not running San Antonio Charter Moms, Inga and her family love going to the San Antonio Symphony, to museums like the Witte Museum and The DoSeum, and to parks like the San Antonio Botanical Garden.
