Vaccines, transcripts and more: How educators combat the summer melt threatening college enrollment

About a month after Daniella Garcia crossed the stage with her infant daughter in arms to receive her high school diploma, she was determined to finish her college enrollment. But the longer she waited after graduation, the more daunting the task became.

Garcia,19, who graduated from the Healy-Murphy Center in June, was one of about 30 high school graduates who hopped on a school bus Thursday for a field trip to Palo Alto College with the sole purpose of finishing their enrollment process and leaving the college with their fall schedule on hand.

“As a single mother also, it would have been a lot harder for me,” Garcia said about getting through the enrollment process on her own. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

The trip was part of the San Antonio Independent School District Foundation’s Beat the Heat enrollment program, intended to get students through the last hurdles of enrolling and attending college immediately after high school graduation.

The program seeks to address what officials call the “summer melt,” the period over the summer where that new class of graduating seniors get sidetracked or overwhelmed by the college enrollment process once they lose the support of an academic advisor, explained Andrew Cervantes, SAISD college alumni coordinator.

“The summer melt phenomenon, which is not unique to SAISD, is where students have established a post-secondary intent. Maybe they’ve even worked through some of those goals throughout their senior year,” Cervantes said. “[But] once the students have graduated, they typically do not lack motivation, but where the student lacks support sometimes [is in] the micro-barriers.”

The micro-barriers are anything from not knowing how to access their transcripts, or are missing documents, vaccine records, even transportation to a campus during working hours. That’s where the foundation steps in to facilitate that transition.

The foundation hosted three Beat the Heat campus visits over the week to San Antonio College, St. Philip’s College and Palo Alto College for 208 recent high school graduates.

Once the students arrived on campus, SAISD Foundation facilitators were on site helping them access transcripts, fill out forms, and guiding them through the entire process.

At Palo Alto, officials were also ready to get these students enrolled and were holding their own Countdown to College enrollment campaign.

Michael Ximenes, Palo Alto College director of academic advising, said they understand that one visit can make a difference in a student attending college immediately after graduation or even at all.

“We want them to register now,” Ximenes said. “Get through the enrollment process, verify their financial aid, meet with an academic advisor to talk about prospective majors, careers, select some courses, and then our peers will help them register for their courses so that they’re set to go.”

Records and transcripts tend to be some of the biggest hurdles once the students show up at their office, Ximenes said. But with this in mind, college officials have even made it a point to visit high schools before the end of the school year to get students as far into the process as possible to get ahead of the summer melt.

Jessica Estrada, 18, a graduate from Burbank High School, was among the students who had completed most of her enrollment during a Palo Alto College visit to her high school this spring. She had her classes selected, records and assessment results logged, but she needed to return to submit her Social Security Number to finish the financial aid application.

“That last day that they came I forgot to bring [my social security number],” Estrada said. “So I was worried the whole summer about how I was going to get my social to them to finish the application.”

The barriers keeping students from completing their enrollment process might look different in other regions, Cervantes said. Here in San Antonio, it is common for many of their students to be the first in the family to attend college and they may lack that knowledge and guidance at home.

“Roughly speaking we have about 80 to 90% of our students fill out college applications, about 70 to 80% of our students get accepted,” Cervantes said. “But historically SAISD’s college enrollment after graduation, for a graduating class, has been around 50%. And so for us, we realize that we have a responsibility to the students.

“They had a goal and we are missing about 20% of the students that never even started,” Cervantes continued.

That Thursday morning, as Cervantes explained these barriers, he got notice that a couple of students — one of them Garcia — needed a meningitis vaccination to complete their enrollment. A few minutes later the students were being driven by the foundation’s staff to a nearby H-E-B Pharmacy to get the vaccine.

“I kind of knew you needed the shot,” Garcia said as she was en route to the pharmacy. “But I didn’t know if you could do it once your classes started… but I guess they’re strict.”

At the H-E-B, Garcia didn’t skip a beat. She walked to the front of the line on her own, asked where she could sign up for the shot, picked up forms for her and the other students, and even called her insurance provider to verify her coverage.

Moments later, her name was being called from a small booth inside the pharmacy to get the vaccination taken care of. And just like that, she was on her way back to the college campus with her new record in hand to move on to the class schedule.

That day her one goal was to enroll in the college’s cosmetology program with a long-term vision of opening her own salon one day.

“I’m just ready to go in, do what I gotta do and see where life takes me,” Garcia said, adding she wasn’t nervous at all about starting college.

The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.