b'E d u c a t i o nFoy H. Moody High School, on Corpus Christis near-west side near the SPID / CrosstownRendering of the new Mary Carroll High SchoolInterchange, opened its doors in 1967 as the districts fifth high school, the others being Roy Miller, Mary Carroll, W.B. Ray, and Richard King. For the ensuing 48 years, two and half generations of Corpus Christians would get by with those five high schools, but after the school building boom of the 1960s, few new campuses were built and the old ones aged less than gracefully. In 2004, a CCISD school bond proposal of about $200 million was rejected by voters, but over four subsequent elections from 2008 to 2016, voters approved more than $611 million to revamp the entire district, and results are emerging.The sparkling, new Veterans Memorial High School on the citys far south side opened in 2015, ending the near-half-century gap between new high schools in CCISD. Now the academic home to over 2,100 students, Veterans has ample capacity to accommodate hundreds of new kids who will be residing in the subdivisions being built in the area of Yorktown and Airline. The new school represents and investment of over $93 million.During the same period, several of the districts aging campuses were replaced withThe new Windsor Park Elementary Schoolbeautiful new, high-tech and ergonomically designed schools including Windsor Park Elementary on South Alameda near Airline, and the newly combined Cunningham South Park Middle School on McArdle between Kostoryz and Ayers, and the extraordinary Mary Helen Berlanga and Gloria Hicks Elementary Schools, both located on Carroll Lane in one of Corpus Christis more economically challenged neighborhoods.Veterans Memorial was originally intended to replace Carroll High School, but growth on the far south side motivated a change in the planning strategy to not just keep Carroll, but to replace it with the CCISDs largest, most majestic, and yes, most expensive campus. The new Mary Carroll High School is almost half complete at Saratoga and Kostoryz, and will set a new standard for school construction and outfitting in any community south of San Antonio. The 442,000 square foot facility is set on a sixty acre campus that will include a 3,000 seat performing arts auditorium. At a cost of $175 million, the new Carroll High School will take CCISD to the top echelon of Texas school districts.With some 35,000 students, the CCISD is by far the city and the regions largest district, by an exponential margin. It is also the Coastal Bends only urban district, where the highest percentage of students are living below the poverty line. While schools like Veterans and Windsor Park serve more affluent sections of the city, new, high-tech and high-quality facilities like Oak Park Special Emphasis Elementary on Leopard Street are delivering hope, mentoring and a nurturing setting, along with a quality education, to kids in the poorest and most at-risk neighborhoods in Corpus Christi. After more than forty years of stagna- New Cunningham South Park Middle Schooltion, the investment in CCISD is delivering right in time for the current wave of growth.62 THE COASTAL BEND TOUR+RELO+BUILD GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'