Luis Mena, Chief Financial Officer
YES Prep Public Schools
YES Prep Public Schools
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YES Prep Public Schools — a Houston-area free public charter network — has reported record student enrollment during the 2024-2025 academic year, according to district data.
The Houston-based charter chain reported 19,473 students enrolled in its 25 schools this year, a 15% increase from the previous year. The enrollment jump comes after the network opened three elementary schools in August, which serve approximately 3,000 new students in pre-K through second grade.
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YES Prep is the second-largest charter district in the Houston area and the fourth-largest growing network in the area during the past decade. The district’s enrollment grew by nearly 9,200 students — or 109% — from the 2014-15 year to the 2023-2024 year, according to a Chronicle analysis of Texas Education Agency enrollment data.
Isy Castillo, YES Prep’s chief external officer, said the charter system is focusing on expanding by building enough elementary schools to establish feeder patterns for all of its 16 secondary schools. She said more families are seeking to enroll at YES Prep because they want their children to receive an education that prepares them for college.
“When we are in neighborhoods where historically, there are failing school systems or (a lack of) access to quality education, we bring that access into their neighborhoods, and families seek our support for that specific matter,” Castillo said. “They want their students to be led into preparedness for their future.”
The charter district’s growth comes as a growing number of Houston parents have opted to send their children to charter networks over other options, including traditional school districts. Over the past decade, Aristoi Academy, Odyssey Academy, Harmony Public Schools and Texas College Preparatory Academies have all doubled their enrollment.
According to the Chronicle’s analysis, enrollment at the average charter school campus in the Houston area grew by 25% from the 2014-15 to the 2023-24 year. By comparison, the 1,355 campuses within traditional public school districts in the same geographic area shrunk by about 3% on average during the same timeframe.
YES Prep is one of the most popular destinations for elementary and middle school students transferring out of HISD, according to district data. The state’s largest school district reported that nearly 12,400 students zoned to HISD attended YES Prep campuses during the 2022-23 year, according to HISD’s Campus Demographic Report.
“The majority of our students (will be) first-generation graduates, and so families are committed to that promise of opportunity that they seek for their families,” Castillo said. “We find that for the majority of our student base, the family engagement is pretty high as parents are seeking for this extended support that they don't see in the traditional zoned school.”
YES Prep opened two campuses — Southwest Oaks Elementary in southwest Houston and Hobby Elementary in southeast Houston — in HISD boundaries during this academic year, with plans to add a grade level at the school annually until the schools serve students from pre-K through fifth grade.
Both campuses are located near the edge of HISD’s district boundaries and less than 2 miles from at least one HISD elementary school that has faced yearslong enrollment declines, according to district enrollment data. YES Prep also opened North Rankin Elementary in northwest Houston within Spring ISD’s boundaries this year.
Ibia Faucher, the principal of Southwest Oaks Elementary, said she has noticed that students coming from other campuses are “really, really behind” and so the school has to focus on catching up students academically, although she did not speak to students from any specific local public school districts.
Families are “looking for something different for their kids,” Faucher said. “We've had a lot of families that told us, ‘My kids didn't learn anything last year, and they're learning so much right now,’ and so they're looking for something different that offers those programs for their kids, and then somewhere that feels like family.”
The charter network is projecting enrollment to grow by more than 2,000 students during the 2025-26 academic year as it plans to open two new elementary schools — Brays Oaks Elementary and White Oak Elementary — by August 2025.
“We have been committed to the neighborhoods that we're in for 25 years,” Castillo said. “We've been focused on secondary education, giving our students access to sixth to 12th grade, and recently, in the past four years, we have added elementary schools to all of our feeder patterns to become a full feeder pattern for pre-K all the way to 12th grade.”
Families can RSVP online for Yes Prep school tours, which will occur on Jan. 16, Jan. 29, Feb. 27, March 5 and March 21. Castillo said families can meet the principal, see lunch services and classroom instruction and observe the security systems during the tours.
Parents can apply for their child to attend a YES Prep school through a random lottery system, which closes on Feb. 17. The network will notify selected K-12 families on Feb. 21 and pre-K families on April 4, according to the charter district’s website.
