Elsa-Edcouch High School is a relatively new campus located near an elementary school, the Boys and Girls Club, which had been a CSO, and a new school for three-year olds that is just being completed a few hundred yards away. The gigantic bleachers for the athletic field attest to the dominance of football in Texas. Although there is "no pass-no play" rule in effect for Texas schools, the power of the sports and its supporters made the enforcement of that rule rather uneven. As you enter the school there is a policeman standing in the lobby. The lockers all have clear plastic doors, and all the backpacks are made with an open mesh for easy inspection. I sensed that there must be violence and frequent inspections of lockers, but I was told this was just a symptom of post-Columbine policies to protect districts against lawsuits by worried parents. There is day care on the high school campus because of the number of single mothers on campus. Having a kid this young affects the girls' ability to pursue education, and the more education a woman has the less likely she is to have a large family.Other than this, Edcouch-Elsa High School did not appear very much different from the suburban schools across the nation. However, the student enrollment varies greatly as families follow the crops. Approximately 40% of the students are in families of migrant agricultural workers.

However, what was going on inside a cluster of rooms was different from most other high schools.. Llano Grande was formed after Francisco and the teams were involved in MIRA. It is a separate non-profit agency situated inside the high school which also serves as its fiscal agent. Francisco teaches some classes, but the relationship between Llano Grande and the school is innovative, fluid, and seems to depend on Francisco's ability to maintain good relations with the school administration and raise money for special projects. It attracts students who don't take part in other activities such as ROTC, band, or sports.

The activities taking place within Llano Grande suggested to me that young people in all schools needed to see and sample many options. Llano Grande offered many different ones including graphic design, database work, video production and editing for digital presentation, writing, health surveys, and radio production. Different rooms were devoted to one or more activities, and each was filled with young people working on projects, sometimes alone, but many times with an adult or a returned alumnus who was in college in Texas or on the East Coast.