Five HISD boys’ basketball teams will play Monday and Tuesday in the University Interscholastic League regional quarterfinals.
Defending state champions Yates will see the tipoff for their games against Pflugerville at 6 p.m. Monday at Rudder High School in Bryan. The game was postponed from the weekend because of weather that made driving hazardous.
HISD students kicked off Go Texan Day and Houston’s rodeo season by meeting some real cowboys and their horses. The trail ride tradition was brought to life for the students as Horseshoes from the Heart drove their wagons, along with wagons from the Los Vaqueros Rio Grande Trail Ride Association, the Bellaire FFA and the Alabama Coushatta Dance Troupe, past seven southwest Houston schools. Continue reading
Three Madison High School students have been rewarded for thinking creatively about the future. Luis Pineda, Idalia Castro, and Jennifer Valle Camacho earned the honor and $2,000 at the Energy City of the Future 2050 finals at the University of Houston last weekend for their concept of using biomass as Houston’s main alternative energy source.
As part of a 10-week extracurricular project, competitors were challenged with envisioning new ways of developing drinking-water sources, transportation, and energy sources through the use of models, PowerPoint presentations, and public-service announcements. The exercise was designed to develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
The Madison trio of Pineda, Castro, and Valle Camacho — who rank 1, 2, and 3 in their graduating class, respectively — were the only team who dressed up and produced a brochure and animated public service announcement for their presentation. The PSA also earned the team a medal for Best Technology Use, and a judge commented on the prudent use of recyclable materials in the students’ city model.
“My students were creative and really knew how to persuade and sell their product to the judges,” said their adviser, Amanda Torres, an HISD Career Technology Education health science tech.
HISD also fielded teams from Milby High School and Mickey Leland Preparatory Academy.
The competition is organized by the Harris County Department of Education’s Center for Afterschool, Summer, and Expanded Learning for Kids program and funded by the Education Foundation of Harris County.
“Energy City provides students the opportunity to explore energy professions while also studying energy and urban planning solutions,” said CASE for Kids Director Lisa Thompson-Caruthers. “Students collaborate through teamwork, a critical skill set for working within the energy sector.”
Madison HS seniors Jennifer Valle Camacho, Luis Pineda, and Idalia Castro won the Energy City of the Future 2050 finals and a check for $2,000 for their multi-part presentation on using biomass as an alternative energy source.
Dr. Roslyn Stiles Vaughn, principal of Anderson Elementary Dual Language School, was honored by the Houston Area Alliance of Black School Educators (HAABSE) with the 2015 Living Legend Award. Dr. Vaughn has served the district for 36 years, 28 of those at Anderson ES. She began her career as a teacher at Scarborough, Brookline, and then Anderson elementary schools, before serving as principal for 16 years.
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More than two-thirds of the high schools in the Houston Independent School District made the Washington Post’s annual list of the Most Challenging Schools in America — and four schools cracked the top 100.
Carnegie Vanguard High School took home top honors for HISD, ranking 11th out of the 2,156 high schools from across the country that made the list. Energized for STEM Academy came in 32nd place, the High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice ranked 52nd and Challenge Early College High School came in at 97th place. Continue reading
District to provide details, gather feedback on various proposals under consideration
Six community meetings are being held to provide HISD parents with more information about a series of proposals designed to right-size classrooms at certain elementary schools beginning with the 2015–2016 school year. Meetings are scheduled for 6 – 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 17, and Thursday, Feb. 19, at area schools. See below for a list of schools being affected and meeting locations. The district would like to gather feedback from parents before the Board of Education votes on the proposal in March.
For the current school year, HISD submitted nearly 1,500 class-size waivers to the Texas Education Agency, which requires no more than 22 students per classroom in all kindergarten through fourth-grade classes. District officials aim to cut that number in half next year and plan to continue to decrease the number incrementally through 2019.
Additional factors include housing development, shifting birth rates, and demographic changes in neighborhoods around the district.
Options under consideration range from readjusting attendance boundaries and program enhancements to limiting the number of students each school may accept from outside its own neighborhood. The district’s goal is to alleviate overcrowding while still maintaining the traditional demographic makeup of each affected school. The following meetings are planned:
6 – 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17
6 – 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19
District officials are also considering ways to improve internal practices such as the process to request class-size waivers, eliminating waivers for district charter schools, and limiting the number of transfer students that schools may accept from outside their attendance boundaries.
*Note to parents of students at The Rice School, Roberts, Twain, and West University: Attendance boundaries will not be changed for these schools.
For a list of Frequently Asked Questions, please click here (.pdf). (en Español)
For a list of proposed attendance boundary maps, please click here.
Guests at HISD’s 2015 State of the Schools luncheon got a side order of entertainment with their meal. Westside High School’s Wind Ensemble of 35 students provided music throughout the program under the guiding hand of Conductor Joey Brunson, and students from 19 HISD elementary schools sang the national anthem.
Their subjects ranged from starry nights and galaxies to water lilies and sunflowers, but the one thing all the orbs had in common was their inspiration: a desire to show how HISD is putting a “global” spin on education for all of its 215,000 students.
Children from 28 different campuses decorated Styrofoam balls this year to serve as the table centerpieces at the State of the Schools luncheon, and participating students were eager to share their artistic visions with guests.
Students whose families move during the middle of the school year are being allowed to stay at their “home school,” or the one they enrolled in at the beginning of the academic year, thanks to a innovative HISD program called Home Field Advantage. Since May 2014, schools involved in the program have seen their overall mobility rate drop by an average of 10 percentage points.
During his State of the Schools address last February, HISD Superintendent Terry Grier promised to create a program to build educational stability among highly mobile students. Subsequently, students at 13 elementary schools, where roughly 30 percent of families move in any given year, were offered transportation to their “home” school, even if their parents moved. Continue reading
On Feb. 7, hundreds of graduating seniors from around the Houston area got the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to go to college for free, and play their sport of choice, too.
The Greater Houston Senior Football Showcase took place at the NRG Stadium’s practice bubble from 8:30 a.m. until noon, and male students from dozens of local campuses—including almost every high school in HISD—had a chance to land an academic scholarship there just by giving a demonstration of their skills on the football field. Continue reading