Students at dozens of HISD schools from across the district observed Cinco de Mayo with performances and celebrations during the week of May 5, in recognition of the day Mexico’s army defeated a much larger French force in the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
See a photo gallery of the performances at several HISD schools below:
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GenTX Day returned to the Lone Star State for its second year today and all HISD students and employees were encouraged to show their support by wearing their favorite college T-shirt.
Check out which schools were represented and send us photos of your college shirt to hisdphotos@yahoo.com:
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All board meetings are posted for public viewing as required by the Texas Open Meetings Act. Regular meetings are held the second Thursday of every month, beginning at 5:00 p.m. at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center, 4400 West 18th Street, in the board auditorium. Dates are subject to change.
HISD live broadcasts of monthly Board of Education meetings are also available.
The board may go into closed (executive) session at any time during a meeting to consider matters regarding personnel, real estate, security, school children, negotiated contracts, consultation, and/or legal issues, as permitted under the Texas Open Meetings Act.
Click here (.pdf) to see a schedule of meetings and hearings for 2011–2012.
Prepared 4 Life, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the empowerment of middle-school-age children, will be holding its sixth annual Lemonade Day on Sunday, May 6, 2012—and HISD students and their families are encouraged to participate.
The communitywide event, which fosters entrepreneurship and character development among Houston’s youth, will teach children how to start, own, and operate their own business by setting up lemonade stands across the city.
Due to the success of the program in Houston, Lemonade Day has since been replicated in more than three dozen cities around the country.
Members of the public can purchase a sample of one of this year’s most unique lemonade recipes on Friday, May 4, 2012, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Paige Elementary School (7501 Curry, 77093), or visit one of the hundreds of other lemonade stands expected to be in operation that day across the city.
Paige students Gayla Powell and Dakota Merriweather, along with Gayla’s older sister Mary (Clifton MS), won second place in the 2012 Lemonade Day competition for their concoction, which earned its title by including a small piece of real cotton candy in every cup.
Kaitlin Nuñez, a second-grader at Lyons Elementary School, won the first-place prize in that same category for spicing up her recipe using cinnamon and two different types of sugar (white and brown).
Interested in what’s happening around HISD? Now you can catch up on the latest district news in Spanish at Blog de Noticias.
GenTX Day will be returning to the Lone Star State for its second year on May 4, 2012, and Superintendent Terry Grier is encouraging all HISD students and employees to show their support by wearing their favorite college T-shirt that day.
Generation TX (pronounced “Generation Texas”) is a statewide movement supported by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that is focused on building a college-going and career-ready culture.
Last year, Generation TX held its first statewide GenTX Day celebrating the achievements of Texas students, especially graduating seniors who are continuing their education beyond high school.
To learn more about how to participate in this year’s GenTX Day and access free GenTX Day kits and materials, visit http://gentx.org/gentxday.
HISD’s Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy became the latest HISD campus to cement its pledge to end bullying when it was designated a “No Place for Hate” school earlier this month by the Anti-Defamation League.
To earn the title, students had to complete three projects over the course of the past school year to demonstrate their commitment to ending intolerance.
At YWCPA, girls took part in a number of activities designed to help them appreciate and celebrate their differences, including one game called “planters and lumberjacks” in which students were encouraged to use their words to build each other up rather than cut each other down.
“We have a diverse student population, so it is very important that all individuals feel at home,” explained YWCPA No Place for Hate Coordinator (and art teacher) Lynne Bennett. “Our goal is to create a nurturing environment where we can learn from one another’s cultures and respect people for their unique qualities.”
To learn more about the No Place for Hate program, visit the ADL’s website. A full list of No Place for Hate campuses in HISD as of 2011 is here (.pdf).
Victoria Rodriguez
Victoria Rodriguez and four of her peers from across the state engineered a victory at the Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering (TAME) Statewide Math & Science Competition recently, using nothing more than four toothpicks, two rubber bands, a clothespin, and a few dozen other small items.
Dubbed “The Tower of Power,” the crane the Clifton Middle School eighth-grader and her teammates constructed with these materials could successfully pivot 90 degrees and lift 83 marbles up to six-and-a-half inches.
“We came up with our design by trying to imagine an actual crane and used the tools we had to make a smaller version,” said Victoria, who acted as her team’s project manager. “Our crane was successful because it did everything it was built to do.”
The team’s accomplishment is even more impressive when you consider that it got a late start. “We only had 10 minutes or so to build it,” she said.
Nevertheless, Victoria’s team took home the prize, and she was one of a dozen HISD students to place at the 27th annual competition, which was held at Texas A&M University on April 14.
Other students who received awards at the event were: Moises Tacam (Challenge ECHS), Desmond Titus (Jordan HS), Samantha Gomez-Mora, and Emmanuel Onochie (both from DeVry Advantage Academy), who closed out the second through fifth-place prizes in the Integrated Physics and Chemistry category; Jessica Salazar (Challenge ECHS), who won fourth place in Physics; Nicolas Xiong (East ECHS) and Jayvian Green (Jordan HS), who won fourth and fifth place, respectively, in Advanced Placement Physics; and four others who also placed with their teams in the design challenge.
The event brought together more than 300 winners in grades 6–12 from 11 regional competitions across Texas. In addition to testing student knowledge of math and science concepts, the competition promotes teamwork, leadership, and academic achievement.
The Houston Independent School District Transportation Department has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious national Larson Quality Award. The Leland E.G. Larson Quality Student Transportation Program was developed to spotlight school bus operations that provide high quality customer service in safety centered operations.
“We are honored to be one of two districts nationally under consideration for this award,” said HISD’s Chief Operating Officer Leo Bobadilla. “Our bus drivers, mechanics and all of our transportation staff deserve the credit for achieving this prestigious recognition and for their commitment to safely transport our students to and from school every day.”
There are three phases to the program. The Houston ISD Transportation Department received “exemplary” assessments in the first two phases of the program, which qualified the department to move to the third phase. Phase three of the program involves an unannounced two-day site evaluation conducted by representatives of the peer review committee, which the HISD Transportation Department recently completed. The HISD Transportation Department is one of two districts nationwide selected as a finalist for the Larson Quality Award.
“The passion, commitment, and dedication of every single bus driver, attendant, shop team member, and support staff has brought the transportation team to this incredible accomplishment,” said Nathan Graf, HISD’s transportation general manager . “Just being selected as a finalist is reason for everyone here to be proud.”
The HISD Transportation Department has earned three previous national awards. In May 2011, the HISD Transportation Department was listed among the 100 best fleets in the country ranked by Government Fleet, a leading transportation industry magazine. In October 2011, the HISD Transportation Department ranked as the top school district green fleet in the nation. The department was chosen based on documentation of key performance measurements. In April 2012, the HISD Transportation Department was listed again among the 100 best fleets in the country by Government Fleet, the only school district to make the list two consecutive years.
Each day, 875 HISD school buses travel 80,000 miles as they transport 30,000 students to and from school.
Reagan High School Principal Connie Berger was one of three campus leaders to be recognized as a 2012 Principal of the Year in HISD. Berger won at the high-school level.
On Wednesday, May 2, HISD recognized more than five dozen school administrators for their outstanding contributions to the district and their school communities by saluting them as nominees for Principal of the Year, First Year Principal of the Year, or Assistant Principal of the Year.
The administrators were nominated by colleagues, teachers, and students for their instructional leadership and efforts to boost student achievement.
Here are the 2012 honorees:
Elementary
Middle
High
Superintendent of Schools Terry B. Grier congratulated the administrators during a ceremony at the monthly principals’ meeting. “Any one of you could have been the recipient of these awards,” he said. “That’s just the kind of talented staff we have.”
Dr. Grier also presented “Team HISD” hats to two other principals—Charles Faust (Fondren MS) and Laquetta Kennedy (Cook ES), for their exemplary efforts to meet students’ needs at their campuses.