Adrian Hernandez, principal at North Lake Early College High School, keeps a single Post-it note on his computer monitor. The ink is fading a little, but the message isn’t. It’s a simple “thank you” from a student who almost gave up senior year.
he student dropped out and disappeared. Hernandez and his team went to find him. And they convinced him that finishing high school and an associate’s degree was worth the fight.
“I told him, ‘I totally understand your position, but if we finish this right now, it’s something no one can ever take away from you,” he recalled.
The student came back, but it wasn’t a smooth ride. He struggled, pushed through, and walked the stage with both his Dallas ISD diploma and an associate’s degree. Now he runs his own landscaping business.
“The Post-it reminds me why I do this work,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez’s story starts in Dallas ISD classrooms. He enrolled in the district in third grade at Leila P. Cowart Elementary School, went on to L.V. Stockard Middle School, and graduated from Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center in 2002.
Hernandez admitted that education had not crossed his mind, but it took criminal justice instructor Severo Perez at Barefoot Sanders to nudge him toward the classroom.
“He told me after I graduated from college that I would be really good at teaching, and that’s when I began to really consider it.”
Hernandez spent five or six years in the private sector before realizing that the time he spent volunteering and working with students was the part of his week that felt most meaningful. He completed an alternative certification program, took a job working with dropout prevention students, and discovered he loved the work, especially the in-between moments—conversations, check-ins, the slow build of trust.
Years later, that quiet work is being recognized publicly. At this year’s State of the District event, Hernandez was announced as Principal of the Year for Choice/Magnet schools, a moment he still describes as “surreal.”
“I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be here,” he said. “This award is for my students and staff.”
Now as principal, Hernandez leads a campus that is reinforcing the expectations for what a Dallas ISD student can achieve. Under his leadership, North Lake has maintained an A rating and sits in the top 10% of schools in Texas.
Hernandez said the model itself is demanding. Students arrive as ninth graders and step into a blended schedule: traditional high school courses are paired with college classes taught by Dallas College professors. By junior and senior year, most of the students’ coursework is dual credit.
The reality of early college, however, can be jarring for freshmen who underestimate the academic rigor, or don’t yet know how to navigate email etiquette and time management.
“We progressively monitor our students every week,” Hernandez explained. “If we see any kind of drop in their grades, that’s when our interventions come into place. The teacher makes contact with the parent, and then we also just talk to the student. Did they just have a bad week, or is this something that they’re not understanding?”
Hernandez is very clear about how he wants students to see him.
“I don’t want them to see the principal as a disciplinarian but rather as somebody who’s just making sure that they’re successful across all facets of their educational journey here,” he said.
From the outside, early college might sound like a gated opportunity reserved for high achievers, but North Lake’s admissions process undercuts that assumption. There are no GPA cutoffs and no test-score thresholds. Admission is based on a student interview and a rubric, then a lottery.
Last academic year, around 400 students applied for 100 spots.
Hernandez is honest about the tension between demand and capacity. He wants more students to have access to what North Lake offers: small classes, bus transportation for about 90% of students, and a program that intentionally recruits from underrepresented schools.
“We have pipeline schools, and we also focus on schools that are underrepresented traditionally in choice and magnet programs,” he said. That means lunchtime visits, presentations on campuses, and open houses at North Lake so students and families can see the place for themselves.
For many of his students, the results are life-altering in very concrete ways, he said. Students graduate, on average, two years ahead of their peers and save about $40,000 in college tuition. His last graduating cohort—77 students—earned over $25.5 million in scholarships and grants. Two students received full-ride scholarships to Davidson College. This year’s valedictorian, also the school’s first National Merit Scholar, is starting classes at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in the fall.
As the son of Mexican immigrants and a native of the same part of Dallas as many of his students, Hernandez leans on that shared experience to build trust, especially with families who may not have seen college as a realistic path.
“Speaking to our Hispanic families in Spanish helps build buy-in because we can support them and walk them through the process,” he said.
On campus, Hernandez’s visibility is intentional and consistent. He’s in the hallways in the mornings and during passing periods, in the cafeteria at lunch, talking about everything from coursework to sneakers to sports. When he’s off campus for training, students notice.
“It sets them in place for a successful day,” he said of those routines.
Even while leading an A-rated campus and being named Dallas ISD Principal of the Year for Choice/Magnet, Hernandez is back in the student seat himself. He recently started work on a doctorate in education at the University of Oklahoma, with one big question circling in his mind for a potential dissertation: how to ensure that every student who starts at North Lake finishes.
“My goal is 100% freshman-to-graduation retention in each cohort,” he said. “Beyond that, I want Blue Ribbon recognition, a larger facility, and for North Lake to be one of the first names parents think of when they consider early college options in Dallas.”
He doesn’t frame this work as heroic. Instead, he circles back to his students, his staff, his family—and that Post-it on his computer monitor.
“I want to be remembered as an educator that worked incredibly hard for students to have a voice, for students to have the ability to do things that they otherwise may have not had the opportunity to do,” he said.
Cooks shares the responsibility of serving the entire district with three other colleagues in the O&M team: Barbara Mitchell, Briana Clarke, and T’Shaunda Davis. 
To combat isolation, Cooks and the O&M team organize events that bring students and families together. From a beeping egg hunt at Easter to Baby’s Day Out for infants and toddlers with visual impairments, these gatherings give students a space to practice skills and feel a sense of belonging.
Cooks has also become an advocate for early mobility. Working with infants, she saw that many blind babies were late to crawl because they are carried to where they want to go. She went searching for a solution and discovered Crawligator, a tummy-time mobility device originally designed for babies with flat head syndrome. She immediately recognized its potential for her students.