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BASIS Charter Schools are some of the highest performing schools in the United States and the world, and San Antonio is fortunate to host a cluster of BASIS campuses. On October 23, 2024, BASIS Texas Charter Schools will begin accepting applications for enrollment for the 2025–26 school year. We have put together a guide to help you learn more about BASIS schools in San Antonio and take steps to enroll your child.
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San Antonio, Texas
BASIS San Antonio – Shavano Campus opened in 2017, combining both the teachers and students from BASIS San Antonio Medical Center and BASIS San Antonio North Central into one 6–12 grade campus. In its first year, the school operated in a temporary location in Castle...
BASIS Charter Schools offer students something no other American public school does: An education that prepares them according to the highest, most rigorous international standards. Our schools have been ranked consistently among the best schools in the United States...
In 2017, BASIS San Antonio Primary – North Central Campus transitioned from a middle and high school to a primary school serving kindergarten–grade 5 and adopting the Blue Jay as its mascot. In our first year of operation, we established a reputation as one of San...
BASIS San Antonio—Northeast Campus opened in August 2020 offering advanced education to elementary and middle school students. Read more in our enrollment guide.
BASIS San Antonio—Jack Lewis Jr. Campus opened in August 2022 on the Far West Side of San Antonio. Read more in our enrollment guide.
Since its founding in 1998 in Tucson, Arizona—and continuing with its expansion to Texas in 2013—the network of BASIS Charter Schools has offered students a high-level education via an advanced curriculum that is benchmarked against the best education systems in the world. BASIS Charter Schools teachers are experts in the subject matter they are teaching, and the network’s curriculum provides students with deep content knowledge at an accelerated pace.
BASIS campuses have a long history of exceptional performance in local, state, and national rankings. BASIS San Antonio Shavano appeared in the 2024 US News & World Report rankings as the #1 high school in San Antonio and the #7 high school in Texas; among charter schools, BASIS San Antonio Shavano was the #2 charter high school in Texas. Along with IDEA Public Schools, BASIS Charter Schools are among the few top-ranked high schools in Texas that are open-enrollment public schools—that is, campuses that anyone can attend simply by applying, and which are tuition-free; the other highly-ranked schools in Texas have selective admissions policies. Across the network, BASIS Charter Schools rank highly among US News & World Report’s best high schools, best charter schools, and best STEM schools. BASIS students also earn AP Scholar awards at high rates. Many BASIS graduates go on to attend selective colleges and universities.
Under the BASIS Charter Schools curriculum for kindergarten and grades 1–3, primary grade students work with two teachers in each subject or class: a Subject Expert Teacher who is an academic expert on a specific subject and only teaches the students that particular subject, and a Learning Expert Teacher who is an expert in elementary education and pedagogy, and stays with the students for the entire school day. Students are exposed to subjects that they would generally not encounter in traditional public schools, including engineering, science literacy, and a course called “Connections” which brings different subjects together; the curriculum is designed to make connections across different subjects, and does so consistently, by working on related projects.
Students in the BASIS Charter School Curriculum learn quite specifically how to take ownership of their own learning. They keep a planner called a CJ, short for Communications Journal, to write down their assignments; teachers across different courses use CJs to communicate with students and their parents. By middle school (grades 4–7), students use those organizational skills for subjects including Physical Geography, Introduction to Science, Engineering and Technology, Physics, and World History.
In high school (grades 8–12), students begin to take AP classes, but will complete most of them by 10th grade. After 11th grade, some students choose to graduate early, but most students stay to take college-level Capstone courses, as well as to complete Senior Projects—a months-long deep dive into a thesis of the students’ choosing. The Senior Project is the true culmination of the network’s curriculum, and can involve research at a university lab, an internship at a corporation, think tank, or government entity, and may involve travel. Besides the obvious academic aspects, the Senior Project encourages students to pursue their special interests, requires that they learn to present their research findings to their peers and teachers, and supports building self-reliance and independence.
BASIS Charter Schools have a culture of hard work and celebrate individuality. Students observe a casual dress code—a visitor walking down the hallway during a passing period might encounter purple hair, band T-shirts, and superhero gear. As we discussed in our earlier post about the BASIS San Antonio—Shavano Campus, students can participate in a broad array of extracurricular activities in the realms of academics, arts and culture, and sports.
For more information about BASIS Charter Schools, we recommend you read some of the news stories linked at the bottom of this post. Also, we invite you to join the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group on Facebook and ask questions; the group includes current BASIS families who can comment with answers about their own experiences.
First Day:
Last Day:
Watch Ken Tyrrell, Vice President of School Operations at BASIS Ed Texas, and David King, Associate Vice President of Academics for BASIS Ed Texas, speak with Inga Cotton on Charter Moms Chats on November 8, 2023 at 4:00 PM Central live on Facebook and YouTube.
Ken Tyrrell has spent the last 10+ years as a Senior Operator and fellow school choice advocate. During his tenure he’s managed regional/network operations for several large high performing charter networks. This includes the opening of a total of 31 schools, of which 18 are located right here in San Antonio. He currently serves as the Vice President of Operations for BASIS Texas. When not supporting schools, he enjoys spending time at the beach with his two kids—Maddison, 8 years old, and Hayden 6 years old—and his wife Juri, who is a high performing high school math teacher.
Dave King is a former USAF Officer and has been a teacher and education administrator for the past 16 years, including working as a consultant for school districts and state departments of education across the country. At BASIS, he has been a teacher, counselor, and Director of Academic Programs, as well as the Head of School at BASIS Ahwatukee in AZ and the founding Head of School for BASIS Shavano in San Antonio. He is currently the Associate Vice President of Academics for BASIS Ed Texas.
The BASIS Charter Schools network and BASIS Ed were co-founded in Arizona by a married couple of educators and economists, Michael and Olga Block. When it proved difficult to find high-level education for their daughter, the Blocks decided to open a public charter school with world-class academics, benchmarked to the high-level learning of the best schools in Europe and Asia—because they saw international students working at a higher level than most American students. They quickly found that if they raised standards, students would rise to meet those standards. BASIS has been raising the standards for student learning even since.
In her 2013 book The Smartest Kids in the World (also a film), education journalist Amanda Ripley compared high schools in the United States with their counterparts in South Korea, Poland, and Finland by looking through the eyes of American exchange students visiting those countries. She mentioned BASIS Charter Schools as an example of an American school system that is trying to raise standards and graduate students who can compete on an international level. Here is our earlier post about Ripley’s 2015 visit to San Antonio.
BASIS Texas Charter Schools is a partner of Choose to Succeed, a nonprofit organization working to attract the nation’s best public charter schools to San Antonio. If you like what you have learned so far about BASIS Texas Charter Schools, we recommend that you make plans to apply for enrollment. You are also welcome to join the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group to learn more and interact with current BASIS families.
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