One person who sees the families’ needs up close is Yvette Tercero, the school nurse at the center. It’s mid-afternoon on a Monday, and speaking to her makes it clear that her days are unpredictable and full. “I’m here at 7:15 a.m. because I have parents who want to drop off medication, tell me that their child had a fever but she’s good to go, and I have to tell them the child can’t stay in school,” she said. Somewhere between administering 22 daily medications every 30 minutes to children with ongoing conditions, seeing students for “small boo boos and scratches,” providing documentation for teachers, and occasionally calling EMS for more severe injuries, she has become the de facto community doctor for families at the center. “I juggle to keep everything balanced, and no two days are alike. There are days when it’s a total blur,” she said.

But there is method to the madness that sometimes engulfs this dedicated and caring nurse’s routine: Pre-K 4 SA has built and billed itself as a child-centered but family-focused early-childhood development and education effort, with an outsized emphasis on parents, the extended family and other caretakers. Now in its third year, Pre-K 4 SA is a pilot program started by former mayor and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro to provide full-time pre-k instruction for thousands of children in underserved neighborhoods. Considered a bold move by supporters and an overreach by detractors, the program was built on the recognition that less-advantaged families in the city would benefit from having their children attend full-day pre-k while also having access to services that could help them create a path out of poverty.

Ingraining a sense of belonging in children and parents, especially among this largely-Hispanic city, will likely have profound effects on San Antonio and Texas as both become increasingly diverse. By 2020, Latinos will be the majority among 25- to 44-year-old in Texas, the majority of 45- to 64-year-olds by 2030, and the majority of adults age 65 and older by 2050, according to joint report from the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Intercultural Development Research Association at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Today, Latino children make up the majority of Texas children ages 0-17, and in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, of 350,000 students, 64 percent are “economically disadvantaged,” 73 percent are “Hispanic/Latino,” and 70 percent of those do not meet the third-grade state reading standards.

The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media has written that “Programs with a strong focus on literacy, full-day preschool, and summer programs are showing promise among Hispanic students.” Overall, and notwithstanding their tremendous population growth, Hispanic children are not faring well in education. Hechinger described them as “the least likely of all children to be enrolled in a preschool program,” concluding that “Hispanic children enrolled in state-funded pre-k programs still lag behind every other ethnic group.”