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2025-05-12-alpha-high-staff-meeting

id: "2025-05-12-alpha-high-staff-meeting" date: "2025-05-12" location: "Alpha High School, Austin" participants: ["Gary Sheng", "MacKenzie Price", "Joe Liemandt", "Chris Locke", "Garrett Rigby", "Chloe Belvin", "Douglas Green", "Ron Roberts"] related_people: ["mackenzie-price", "joe-liemandt", "chris-locke", "garrett-rigby", "chloe-belvin", "douglas-green", "ron-roberts"] summary_type: "Staff Meeting"​

Alpha High Staff Meeting (2025-05-12)

Key Participants​

  • Gary Sheng
  • MacKenzie Price (Founder, Alpha Schools)
  • Joe Liemandt (Principal, Alpha School)
  • Chris Locke (Head of High School)
  • Chloe Belvin (College Counseling/Masterpiece Coordinator)
  • Douglas Green (Head of AlphaX)
  • Ron Roberts (Co-Director, Alpha Scale)
  • Garrett Rigby (Alpha Weekends Program)

Enrollment & Growth Targets​

Current Goals & Capacity​

  • School Scaling Target: "25 and 25" (25 schools with 25 students each this year)
  • Austin High School:
    • Current projected enrollment: 50 students for next year
    • Target capacity: 100 students
    • MacKenzie: "One of the things we've always said is real estate will never be our challenge. We will grow beyond and keep going. So there's no limit."
    • Joe confirmed Austin real estate is "easy because it's overbuilt"

Staffing Needs​

  • High School guides hired so far: Emily and Jack (not yet 100%)
  • Additional candidates: Mark Anthony (former medical school student) and Hardu (transferring from NextGen)
  • Plan to hire 2 more guides for 50 students, 4-5 more if enrollment reaches 100
  • Base compensation appears to be around $100K

Location & Transportation Considerations​

  • No plans for "archipelago high school" model with multiple locations
  • MacKenzie: "Driving, once you're middle school, is not, people expect, I might drive all the way out here, I might drive all the way here. There's no location issue at the high school."
  • 30-minute one-way commutes considered acceptable
  • MacKenzie emphasized that school size/density matters more than location: "Everything comes down to number of students, and that's true for parents as well as kids. They care about that, and so by far your best chance of success is creating density here."

Parent vs. Student Decision-Making​

  • Joe: "Middle school is where it transitions, where you sort of care about both. We have lots of parents who are like, I want my kid to go to Alpha. You talk to the kid, the kid's like, I don't want to go."
  • MacKenzie: "It is a kid decision at middle school, certainly at high school too"
  • Joe: "I don't care what the parent thinks at high school. I care, the only thing I care about in K-5 is what the parent thinks."

Academic Progress & Planning​

AP Testing & SAT Preparation​

  • Students currently taking AP exams with high expectations:
    • Human Geography: 4.5/5 average predicted
    • World History: All students expecting 5s
    • US History: All 5s except one 4
    • Biology: Trending above 4 average
    • Chemistry: One student (Elle) predicting 3-4
  • Plans for SAT prep for juniors following AP exams
    • Math Academy developing improved SAT prep program following previous issues
    • Focusing on helping students reach 750+ on math section
    • Special preparation for June 7th test date

Summer Programming​

  • Shadow days will be available with Chloe, who outlined the process:
    • "We do a mini passion purpose finding exercise. So every student does their ICHI guide and diagram"
    • "We convert that into a masterpiece one-liner, and then they start the MVP process"
    • Students finish MVP as take-home assignment
  • High School staff will maintain presence throughout summer with rotating coverage
  • Focus on Masterpiece projects during summer

Masterpiece Projects & Audience Building​

Current Project Challenges​

  • MacKenzie noted stagnation in several student projects: "Alex has been kind of telling the same story for many months on this. Sloan has, Elle has."
  • Gary highlighted reputational risk: "Someone that got excited four months ago, they check in 'Oh, how's it going?' And then like they still can't play with it."
  • Discussion of Alex's plushie project and Cruz's running app lacking progress

Joe's Perspective on Project Development​

  • Emphasized product management over technical development: "I'm going to be at the product manager line. They would be able to do the product management. I don't have to be a developer."
  • Stressed need for "spiky points of view" in student projects
  • Critical of blaming lack of development resources: "Blaming app building is never the issue."
  • Emphasized market validation and expertise demonstration

Audience Building Strategy​

  • Ron Roberts offered to help create "some level of a playbook that is handed to the kids that could check their audience growth and best practices for how they develop community"
  • Joe challenged claims that technical barriers prevent progress: "If they can't create the screens, right, and he's shown them to all the running clubs, and they're like, yes, they totally agree, this is awesome. No, his issue's not building an app."
  • Gary suggested: "When I have felt compelled to follow somebody, usually it's because I've seen them demo something that I just feel like is very cool."
  • Doug mentioned creating "pre-launched content strategy documents" to help students "begin to publish content around their domain and continue to build the audience"

BrainLift Implementation​

  • Only 10% of UATX interns fully understand the BrainLift-first approach
  • 60% of Alpha X students grasp the concept (up from 40%)
  • Joe emphasized this as critical: "Are they A, becoming an expert, building out their brain lift where they're spending time in a stream of expertise, right?"

Weekend Program & Scholarship Students​

Current Progress​

  • Garrett reported progress with SAT math prep
  • Implementing team competition with four "captains" for motivation
  • Estimation that 45-50% of weekend students will be successful by August 1st

Scholarship Management​

  • Discussion about using scholarships as accountability tool: "You should be willing to use the scholarship as a way to kick the kids out. You need high success rate."
  • Garrett: "If a kid doesn't engage, of course, we're going to have to charge you $25,000."
  • Joe emphasized treating spots as "sacred" and "super scarce"

Plan II Vibe Marketing Internship​

Structure & Expectations​

  • Six (potentially seven) UT Plan II interns
  • Each intern working on individual projects focused on vibe marketing
  • Joe outlined project areas:
    1. Brand and graphics
    2. Website
    3. SEO
    4. SEM (paid search)
    5. Vision videos
    6. Influencer network
  • Goal: "Become a vibe marketing expert by summer's end (documented via Brain Lift)"
  • Joe expects interns to master existing tools: "There's an LLM wrapper for everything"
  • Noted successful interns could either identify perfect existing tools or potentially manage development of new solutions

Alpha University Concept​

Current Ideas​

  • Joe mentioned three Super Builders projects focused on higher education:
    1. SideQuest
    2. Philosophy project (by "Roger Hunt")
    3. Alpha University
  • Gary expressed interest in helping with Alpha University
  • Joe described Elle's vision: "She's going to go recruit the 30 best kids in the country. And it's not going to be teacher-led."
  • Elle's model includes $150,000/year tuition with scholarship funding
  • Gary mentioned interest from Shane Fan and Eric Zhu in "trolling UATX" by "blowing up Alpha-U"

Additional Discussion Items​

Workflow Tool Issues​

  • Gary reported mobile app issues with Workflowy
  • Joe suggested workaround: "You can delete the app and reinstall it"
  • Joe clarified Trilogy doesn't own Workflowy but has "supported workflow-y pretty good"

Trump Affiliation Question​

  • Gary: "If Trump was interested in doing something with alpha schools, would that be too radioactive, or would we be open to something?"
  • Joe: "We are not going to be Trump's school" but open to other arrangements
  • Joe mentioned upcoming meeting with Trump Jr. and Ivanka in Miami
  • Gary suggested possibility of "a Trump school powered by two-hour learning"

Upcoming Events​

  • UATX summer kickoff: Wednesday, 5-6:30pm
  • Dinner with Peter Tia mentioned
  • Parent outreach efforts underway through ParentSquare

Key Insights & Takeaways​

  1. Alpha High prioritizes student commitment and expertise-building over technical development hurdles in projects.

  2. The Austin flagship is targeting significant growth (up to 100 students) with real estate constraints not considered a limiting factor.

  3. Student audience-building and Brain Lift understanding remain key challenges across programs.

  4. Clear tension exists between creating finished products and developing expertise/unique perspectives.

  5. Alpha's higher education strategy is evolving with multiple competing concepts.

  6. Location is less important than student density for high school success; student buy-in remains critical.

  7. Multi-tiered accountability systems and defined expectations are being developed for scholarship students.