Support Serenity High

This school has stayed open because McKinney decided it should.

In the 2002–2003 budget cycle, the cost of running a campus this small put Serenity High on the closure list. It survived because families, businesses, and donors in this community raised the money to keep it open — and that community support is still part of how it operates.

Founded: October 11, 1999
Graduates: 150+ in the first decade alone
Sending schools: More than 25 across North Texas
Recent breakfast: $41,000 raised at a single annual event

Why it matters

Small schools are expensive per student. That is the entire point.

A 10:1 ratio, daily one-on-one counseling, and recovery programming inside the school day cost more per student than a comprehensive campus. That math is also what makes the model work — and it is why recovery high schools depend on community support everywhere they exist.

Texas has seven recovery high schools for roughly 30 million people. Three are public. When one closes, the students it served do not disappear; they go back to campuses where the substance that nearly killed them is two lockers away.

Serenity High’s annual fundraising breakfast has raised tens of thousands of dollars in recent years — $36,000 at one gathering and $41,000 at another — entirely from people in this community who understand the arithmetic.

Ways to help

Give financially

Contributions support what district funding does not fully cover — recovery programming, student needs, service projects, graduation, and the extras that make a campus feel like a school rather than an institution. Contact the campus for current giving channels through McKinney ISD and its partners.

Attend the annual breakfast

The school’s signature fundraising event brings the McKinney community together each year and is the single largest source of community giving. Ask the campus for this year’s date and how to sponsor a table.

Mentor or speak

If you are in long-term recovery, teenagers in their first sober year need to see what ten years looks like. Mentors, meeting volunteers, and life-skills speakers are welcome — with the appropriate district screening.

Hire a student

Employment is a recovery asset. A local business willing to hire and mentor a student in recovery provides something no curriculum can: proof that the future is still available.

Refer a family

Counselors, clinicians, pastors, coaches, and pediatricians are how most families find this school. If you work with adolescents in Collin County, keep our number where you can find it.

Say the name out loud

Most families in this county do not know a recovery high school exists twenty minutes from their house. Telling one person who needs to know costs nothing and occasionally changes everything.

What a gift buys

Not a wing of a building. A year of someone’s life.

At a campus of fewer than twenty students, community giving is not symbolic. It shows up as a specific student who got a specific thing at a specific moment — a ride, a cap and gown, a college application fee, a week of a counselor’s time.

Get in touch about giving Read the school’s history