Harmony breaks ground on new Odessa campus

May 7—Educators and representatives from local government turned out Tuesday for the groundbreaking of a new Harmony Public Schools campus in Ector County.

Located at Mission Boulevard and Dr. Emmet Headlee Street, this will be the third Harmony campus in the Permian Basin. The cost for the school is about $60 million, plus land. The 22 acres it will sit on was close to $5 million.

Tegrity Contractors is the contractor for the project.

Permian Strategic Partnership contributed $10 million.

To be called the Harmony School of Innovation, it is expected to open in fall 2025. Construction is set to start in August 2024. The school will be part of the TEA-recognized "A" rated Harmony Public Schools of the West Texas district.

It will be a STEM focused school for pre-K through 12th grade students and have about 1,500 students all together when it is fully operational.

Harmony Public Schools West Texas District Area Superintendent Kamil Yilmaz said the charter system has schools in Odessa, Midland, Lubbock and El Paso in West Texas.

The existing school, at 2755 N Grandview Ave., has about 530 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. There is a waiting list of more than 800.

"We never had the high school in all this. For many years we had so much demand from our parents, (who) repeatedly asked us to have a high school here," Yilmaz said.

The new Harmony school will have two buildings with a University Interscholastic League field in between for sports. The school will also offer fine arts.

It will be a pre-K (4 year old) through 12th grade system. The first year they will have pre-K though second and sixth grade through ninth.

"There is a reason for that because our parents have been demanding a high school for many years, so we wanted to start with a ninth grade here as well. Eventually after two years or so, we will have our second building," Yilmaz said.

Mayor Javier Joven spoke about the growth Odessa is experiencing and how Bass Pro Shops, Tracker Boats and thousands of houses are in the works.

Tracee Bentley, president and CEO of Permian Strategic Partnership thanked Joven, the city council and county leaders because "a project like this doesn't happen without you making access to high quality education a top priority for our communities. And it's very clear that you've done that."

"We're so excited not only to do this project with you but many more things in the future to make sure that all of our students and families regardless of socio-economic background, regardless of of any background of any kind that you get access to the same quality as everybody else because our students and our families here in Odessa deserve that," Bentley said.

When PSP was looking for a partner to bring the best education seats to the area, they looked at several charter schools.

"Harmony quickly rose to the top. No. 1, they're already here. You're in Odessa; you're in our community. You know our families; you know our values. But No. 2, their ratings and their academic performance is unmatched," Bentley said.

Gina Gregory, chief development officer at Harmony, told PSP the strong demand here to expand it made sense for PSP to partner with them.

"It was a great decision on our behalf. But really it's going to service the entire community, not only for right now, but it's going to grow our future leaders, maybe our future mayor, maybe some future city councilmen and women, and county commissioners," Bentley said.

She added that it will also help serve the workforce needs in the region.

"This is another example of a public-private partnership that we're very proud of and we think it's a model for how we can do business in the future. We strongly believe that Odessa is the lifeblood of the Permian. So many great things happen here. We just think that if Odessa is strong, so goes the Permian Basin," Bentley said.

Phillip Bleecker, director of West Texas for Tegrity Contractors, said the groundbreaking is not the end. It's the beginning of a new chapter.

"Together we will watch this project grow and evolve and ultimately transform into the places where dreams take shape. We are excited and we look forward to a great school and a bright future for our children, for our communities, and for our parents," Bleecker said.

Gregory said Harmony had been working on the project for about two years.

"We did some school tours at our Odessa campus and we had some foundations at that time come and Permian Strategic Partnership was one of those," she said.

The new school will be STEM focused pre-K through 12th grade.

"It will be embedded in the master scheduling where students build robots. They're coding in elementary school. They're building and starting to learn the pathways for high school and college," Gregory said.

The existing campus will still be a Harmony campus.

"Harmony has a feeder pattern where two elementary campuses typically feed into a middle school because middle and high school families do choose to go back to the district. At this time, we will stay and we will keep the two elementary campuses and the one sixth through 12th grade campus," Gregory said.

Yilmaz said he is very happy that the new campus is going up because they have such a limited number of seats at the existing school.

He added that they have a lot of parents applying every year. They have to go through a lottery system and those that don't make it are put on a waiting list.

"With this new location we will actually provide more seats to Odessa and the Permian Basin," Yilmaz said.

"We are very excited that now it's not only going to be a k through eight system. It's going to be a pre-K through 12 system eventually. That means we're going to have high-quality STEM education supported by college-level courses (and) rigorous instruction. At the same time, we're going to make sure every one of our students stay enrolled to a four-year college or two years of community college. We want to be able to provide high-quality education to high school students so they are ready for college and career and can go to college and complete their college degree as well. That's our goal," Yilmaz said.