The Houston Independent School District Board of Education is scheduled to vote Thursday on a plan to hire a search firm to help find a replacement for outgoing Superintendent Terry Grier.
Trustees are recommending the hire of Ray and Associates, an Iowa-based firm that specializes in searches for educational executives and leaders. The firm was among four companies that responded to a request for proposals issued in October. All four were interviewed by the board last month. Continue reading
Sixteen HISD elementary schools advanced to the third round – the Sweet 16 – of the NCAA Read to the Final Four Literacy Program, thanks to some very determined third-grader readers.
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The students logged an additional 763,804 minutes of reading time for a total of 1,905,097 minutes since the launch of the literacy competition. Nearly 4,000 students logged reading time during this round.
Here is the ranking of elementary schools that made it to this round: Continue reading
In honor of Veterans Day, some 450 students, teachers, and parents from Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School (MCLIMS) performed at the “Celebrating Diversity & World Peace” at Minute Maid Park on Nov. 7, 2015. They were invited to sing at the event, which also included a host of other performers.
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Harvard ES fifth-grader Callie Bream took home a gift card for $150 as the inaugural first-place prize winner of a new monthly video contest.
Keeping email accounts secure with strong passwords is an important aspect of responsible digital citizenship, and students from two HISD schools have demonstrated their mastery of this concept by winning the top prizes in a video production contest co-sponsored by the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and HISD’s Educational Technology team.
Harvard Elementary School students won four of the five prizes available (first and second, as well as two honorable mentions), while a student from Eastwood Academy took home the third-place prize.
The competition was created as a part of Digital Awareness Month in October to increase students’ web savvy while also giving them an opportunity for creative expression. Continue reading
The Houston Independent School District Board of Education on Thursday approved the first reading of a proposal that calls for suspensions and expulsions to be considered a measure of last resort for elementary students.
Under the original proposal, campus administrators would not have been allowed to suspend or expel pre-kindergarten through second-grade students in response to behavioral or disciplinary issues — except as required by state law. Continue reading
The Houston Independent School District Board of Education approved the first reading of a policy revision that would provide students with more equitable access to the district’s gifted and talented program.
The proposal is designed to ensure that students identified as gifted are able to retain that designation and remain in the district’s gifted and talented program throughout their tenure in HISD, no matter which school they attend. Continue reading
The Houston Independent School District Board of Education voted Thursday to adjust neighborhood attendance boundaries at 10 elementary schools to address classroom overcrowding resulting from growth throughout the city.
The attendance boundary proposals were created in response to state law, which requires kindergarten through fourth-grade classes to have no more than 22 students per classroom. Classes that exceed that number must request a state waiver. Continue reading
Houston Independent School District students would have more equitable access to the gifted and talented program under a policy update being presented Thursday to the Board of Education.
The proposal would ensure that students identified as gifted are able to retain that designation and remain in the district’s gifted and talented program throughout their tenure in HISD, no matter what school they attend. Continue reading
The Houston Independent School District Board of Education on Thursday will consider a proposal that would ban suspensions and expulsions for students in second grade and below.
Under the proposal, campus administrators would not be allowed to suspend or expel pre-kindergarten through second-grade students in response to behavioral or disciplinary issues — except as required by state law. The policy revision further explains that students in third through fifth grades should only be removed from the school setting as a last resort. Continue reading
A student reads at Brookline Elementary School’s Literacy Night on Oct. 7.
Brookline Elementary School is on a quest to upgrade its campus library, and the “Books for Bobcats” kickoff it held on Oct. 26 has already received a boost from an anonymous donor, who promised to match up to $50,000 — or half of the campaign’s stated $100,000 goal.
“This person is a college friend of one of the faculty who has been very successful in the corporate world,” said Brookline teacher and capital campaign director Theodore Wills. “He has been a generous benefactor to public libraries and many other causes.”
Wills noted that Brookline devotes its resources to improving student achievement in math and reading each school year. This year, campus leaders determined that updating the library collection was critical to preparing students to be successful global graduates, so Brookline is devoting its entire library budget to the purchase of new STEM-focused (science, technology, engineering, and math) books. Continue reading