Kurt Micklo lost interest in academics after he failed to make the basketball team as a sophomore at Chapin High School. Soon after, he fathered a son and began to work full time, which put him further behind in his studies.
A counselor finally advised him during his junior year that he should withdraw and try to earn a GED. He dropped out and – through hard work – found professional success as a general manager of a subcontracting logistics company. However, the lack of a high school diploma haunted him. He wants one to give his family – especially his mother – another reason to be proud of him.
A busy work and family schedule have kept him from returning to school, but the flexibility of a new state program aimed at people aged 18 and older without a high school diploma will allow him to earn a diploma and a college career and technical education, or CTE, credential for programs such as health care, welding or computer science at the same time.
The concept of Opportunity High School Diploma was part of House Bill 8, which the state Legislature passed in 2023. The state funneled about $2 million into this program to help the approximately 4.3 million Texans as of 2023, including about 30,000 adult El Pasoans, without a diploma to earn the academic credits most of them will need to acquire higher-paying jobs. The program is scheduled to launch in spring 2026.
“If I could juggle it, I’d be pretty interested” in the program, said 34-year-old Micklo, a father of three ages 15, 10 and 5. He is the general manager of three warehouses, two in El Paso and one in Laredo, Texas, that offload commodities coming in from Mexico at international ports of entry in El Paso, Tornillo and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. “It would make my stepfather (a retired educator) and my mother happy if I earned my high school diploma.”
El Paso Community College is one of five community college districts in the state selected for the design and implementation phases of this program. The other institutions in the design phase are Alamo Colleges District, Austin Community College, Dallas College and San Jacinto College near Houston.
They work under the direction of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The board will review the instructional outcomes and performance expectations that the college collaborators created during an October meeting. Once finalized, the college faculty will begin to work with school districts to design the curriculum.
The program is flexible for students who probably work full time and have family obligations. Courses would have suggested timelines, but students would turn in assignments as their schedule allowed through the end of the term.
Micklo, a Northeast resident, said the promised flexibility is the only reason he might consider the program. As for his credential, he said he would need to review EPCC’s career and technical education options. The college offers more than 100 career programs such as HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and electrical, automotive or diesel technologies.
Students will be co-enrolled in competency-based high school curriculum such as math, civics, sciences and communication, and a career and technical workforce program. Competency based courses are focused more on a students’ mastery of a skill or subject than the amount of time spent in a classroom.
Isela Castañón Williams, professor and coordinator of EPCC’s teacher preparation programs, is in charge of the college’s 13-member team. She called the project a “monumental task” because of its scope and uniqueness. She said her team, and its counterparts, played a critical role in the design phase.
“Faculty at EPCC are very innovative,” she said. “I think that my colleagues have approached this process with a great deal of enthusiasm. We’re always looking to provide better services and educational experiences to the community we serve.”
EPCC faculty advocated for the program to be designed to accommodate English Second Language and English Language Learner populations, a THECB spokesman said in a July 1 statement. He said last year that the board selected EPCC for the project’s design phase because of its border insights, and because its CTE degrees and credentials are in line with the program.
While the state wants to attract students aged 18 and older, EPCC officials will aim for people 25 and older so as to not compete with K-12 school districts that have their own dropout recovery programs. EPCC, which will offer the program at its five campuses, expects some of the program’s younger students to come from rural areas outside El Paso.
Steven E. Smith, vice president of Instruction and Workforce Education at EPCC, said the state will provide funds to the colleges to cover tuition for initial cohorts. He expects the first groups will range from 30 to 50 students and scale up from there.
“We think this is a big market in El Paso, and I think once the word starts to get out, that will grow tremendously,” Smith said.
The administrator said that he would work on ways to market the program later this month with the college’s External Relations, Communication & Development Division. He said the college would work with school district partners to build lists of potential OHSD students.
“As you might imagine, that is a pretty difficult population to identify and reach out to because they are not in the system anymore,” Smith said.
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