Our team
The people who will know your student by name.
A campus this small does not have layers. The person teaching your student English is the person who noticed they were quiet at check-in, and the person who calls you about it that afternoon.
- Ratio
- 10:1 student-to-teacher
- Disciplines
- Teaching, counseling, recovery support, administration
- Oversight
- McKinney ISD leadership
- Partners
- Area counseling providers and the Collin County recovery community
Roles on campus
Four jobs, held by a handful of people who talk to each other daily
Recovery high schools are staffed differently than comprehensive campuses — teachers, counselors, and mental health professionals work as one team rather than in separate departments that exchange paperwork.
Allie Long — Assistant Principal
The person who answers when a family calls. She will ask where your student is in treatment and what they have said about sobriety in their own words, walk you through enrolment if Serenity is a fit, and tell you plainly if it is not.
Dean of students
Owns the daily reality of the campus — check-ins, attendance, the response when a student is struggling, and the relationship with families. The role that most determines whether a student feels caught or feels watched.
Teaching staff
Texas-certified teachers who deliver core content, supervise self-paced and online coursework, and manage credit recovery. In a room this size, teaching and noticing are the same activity.
Counseling & recovery support
One-on-one academic and personal counseling, facilitated recovery groups, relapse-prevention planning, and coordination with outside clinical providers and treatment teams.
Serenity High is administered within McKinney ISD; current staff assignments and contact details are maintained by the district.
How we work
One team, one conversation about each student
Every student at Serenity has an academic picture, a recovery picture, and a home picture. At a large campus those three live in different offices and rarely meet. Here they are discussed together, daily, by the same small group of adults.
That is why a teacher can adjust an assignment because a student had a hard group that morning, and why a counselor knows which class is generating the most anxiety before the student says so. It is also why families get coherent information instead of three different versions from three different departments.
What staff are trained for
- Adolescent substance use disorder and the shape of early recovery
- Co-occurring mental health conditions and trauma-informed practice
- Crisis response, including overdose risk and suicidality
- Texas graduation requirements, credit recovery, and state assessment
- Family systems — because the student is not the only person in recovery
Working with your outside provider
If your student has a therapist, psychiatrist, outpatient program, or sponsor, campus staff will coordinate with them where you have signed the appropriate consent. Aligned adults are worth more than any single intervention, and a student who gets the same message from every direction has far less room to negotiate.
Community partners
Serenity works alongside area counseling centers, treatment providers, and the recovery community in Collin County, and is a member of the Association of Recovery Schools. The campus is intentionally independent of any single treatment facility.
Local resources →Volunteers and mentors
Alumni, recovery community members, and local professionals contribute to meetings, life-skills sessions, and mentoring. If you are in recovery yourself and want to be useful to a room of teenagers who need to see what ten years sober looks like, get in touch.
Ways to support Serenity →Meet them
Put faces to this before you decide anything.
Campus visits are scheduled one family at a time so your student meets the staff without an audience.