Monthly Archives: March 2015

Status of all students’ magnet applications now available

New HISD School Choice website will guide parents through the acceptance process

The results of approximately 65,000 magnet applications from close to 21,000 HISD students are now available on the Magnet parent dashboard at www.hisdchoice.com.

Parents will also receive an email invited them to log in to their parent dashboard. The notifications will be sent starting at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 27, 2015. (This process will take several hours, so please do not be alarmed if you don’t see an email right away.) In addition, letters will be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to the address of record on file for each student’s application and should arrive a few days later.

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Four students win national recognition for their writing talent

Four students from HISD schools have been recognized at the national level this spring through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Bellaire High School’s Liana Wang and Carnegie Vanguard High School’s Victoria Songyang won Gold Key Awards, while Bellaire High’s Christina Tan and Gabriel CyPacht from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts won Silver Key Awards.

Only 39 students in Harris County earned awards at the national level of this competition, which is sponsored regionally by the Harris County Department of Education. To see a full list of winners, please click here.

The Gold Key winners will be honored at a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City in June.

Yates HS communications students begin massive video archiving project

Students in the magnet communications program at Yates High School recently launched a massive archiving project that will one day result in the digitization of more than 30 years of video footage.

Phase one entails the ingestion of hundreds of video tapes from the Yates magnet program dating back to 1980, containing footage of the school and its history, events, faculty, and students.

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce a digital archive on Blu-Ray discs that can be displayed at the school’s new facility and will be ready in time for the 40th anniversary of the School of Communications in 2018.

Yates’ new chapter of the Student Television Network is using the latest in digital content acquisition technology to ingest the legacy analog video into an updated iMac system. Students involved are acquiring skills that can be used in the media archiving industry, film and television non-linear video editing, and metadata management, which is an introduction to meta-tagging and understanding aggregate data for social media careers.

Deadline to register for free school day SAT administration quickly approaching

Juniors must sign up by April 1 to be able to take the test

Since the spring of 2010, HISD has offered 11th-graders the opportunity to take the SAT, a college entrance exam, at no cost on a normal school day, but students must register by April 1 in order to be eligible to take the test on April 15, 2015.

Students should see their high school counselor to get their free registration voucher and sign up as soon as possible.

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Student Congress members share their concerns with state legislators

Nine HISD students travel to Austin over spring break to make their voices heard

Nine students from various HISD high schools got a chance to influence Texas law last week when they traveled to Austin on March 17 for a visit to the state capitol.

The trip offered high-schoolers a behind-the-scenes look at the law-making process and a chance to express their concerns about various issues to state legislators.

Carnegie Vanguard High School seniors Raquel Douglas and David Valerio spoke with the staff of almost 20 representatives, focusing particular attention on members of the Public Education Committee.

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Telemundo celebrities connect the dots between literacy and life

On-air personalities visit select HISD schools to show connection between reading and careers

Telemundo Houston weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez visits with students at Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy.

Telemundo Houston weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez visits with students at Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy.

A popular Spanish-language television station is getting HISD students excited about reading in a whole new way.

Through Leyendo con Telemundo, five different on-air personalities—including newscaster Paulina Sodi and weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez—are visiting classes at select district schools once a month to talk about the importance of literacy.

The visits are part of an on-going partnership between Telemundo Houston and HISD, in support of the district’s Literacy By 3 movement.

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Thousands of students taking advantage of STAAR EOC tutorials

Last week, HISD announced it had created online tutorials for the five State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) end-of-course (EOC) exams that every student must pass in order to graduate.

More than 33,000 high school students have already taken advantage of this valuable resource, with most (about 40 percent of that figure) using the tutorials to prepare for the English I and English II exams, which are scheduled for next week.

A number of forward-thinking students have also been using the STAAR EOC tutorials in biology (5,180), algebra I (8,870), and U.S. history (5,891), although those exams will not take place until the beginning of May.

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Challenge senior wins dream trip to Disney World

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Earlier this month, Shaylah Cooper joined 100 “Disney Dreamers” at Walt Disney World. She was picked from 10,000 applicants to spend four days in Orlando, Florida, thanks to the Disney Dreamers Academy.

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Sanchez ES advances in NCUST award process

Sanchez Elementary has moved to the next level of competition in the 2015 National Center for Urban School Transformation’s (NCUST) National Excellence in Education Award. The school has now been named a Silver level winner for 2015, and is in contention to receive the Gold award later this year.

Among the thousands of urban schools in the nation, Sanchez won the honor by demonstrating exceptional academic results through achievement test scores and other indicators of academic accomplishment for every demographic group. After naming the finalists, NCUST sent executive coaches all over the country to visit schools, meet with principals, and observe lessons before determining the silver and bronze award winners.

Gold Level prize winners will be announced at the 2015 National Excellence in Urban Education Symposium in Dallas on May 21.