Category Archives: EMERGE

Board of Education votes to repurpose Jones and move Dodson

Jones to become specialized Futures Academy; Dodson students will move to Blackshear, Lantrip, and the Rusk School

The HISD Board of Education on Thursday voted 6 to 3 to repurpose Jones High School into a specialized Futures Academy with trustees Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Anna Eastman, and Paula Harris opposed. Trustees also voted 5 to 4 to close Dodson Elementary. Anna Eastman, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Wanda Adams and Paula Harris were in opposition. These votes come after weeks of debate and conversation including nearly 75 comments from concerned citizens during the board’s meeting and the removal of three schools from the original closure and consolidation proposal.

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22 acceptances — including 3 at Yale — for HISD EMERGE seniors

To familiarize them with life on the campus of a select school, HISD’s EMERGE program took a group of rising seniors on a tour of northeast campuses over the summer. Here, they’re at Harvard University.

The acceptance letters for select colleges and universities are rolling in for HISD seniors working with the district’s EMERGE program – 22 letters so far, as of Dec. 18. On Dec. 16 alone, three HISD seniors were notified they had been accepted to Yale University.

All students are either receiving full rides or are having 100 percent of their financial need met by the school accepting them, according to Rick Cruz, assistant superintendent of college readiness and co-founder of EMERGE.

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EMERGE Students See Significant Gains in SAT Scores

Although HISD will not receive SAT results from the College Board until later this year, individual seniors who retook the SAT in October after attending the EMERGE SAT Boot Camp in July are getting their scores and seeing significant improvement – more than 300 out of 2,400 possible points in some cases.

“We are very pleased with the results,” said Assistant Superintendent for College Readiness Richard Cruz, who launched EMERGE in 2011 and continues to oversee it. “We are about to expand the program from 100 to 300 students.” EMERGE is a districtwide initiative aimed at getting high-achieving HISD students in underserved communities into Ivy League and other Tier 1 schools.

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College Readiness Month Encourages Students to Plan Now for the Future

It doesn’t matter if your child is 4 or 14, it’s never too early to start planning for college.

That’s the message Houston Independent School District College Readiness Manager Yolanda Norman is spreading this October as the district celebrates College Readiness Month.

College Readiness Month is designed to get students thinking about college and prepare them to not just gain admission, but complete a degree and graduate. The goal, Norman said is to get students thinking critically about their future and long-term plans.

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Applications Now Available for Program that Prepares Students for Ivy League Schools

High school students in grades 9-11 are encouraged to apply for the HISD EMERGE program, which prepares talented HISD students from underserved communities to successfully attend and graduate from Ivy League and other top-tier colleges. The program, which was founded in 2011 at Chavez High School by Yale graduate and then-HISD teacher Richard Cruz, is expanding this year to include 13 additional school sites.

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EMERGE Helps Students Realize College Dreams

Students in the EMERGE program listen to a lecture at Rice University

Abel Diaz never imagined himself walking the centuries-old paths of Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Growing up in Houston and coming from a low-income background, Yale seemed like another world. But Diaz has studied hard and excelled at Eastwood Academy High School, and Yale is exactly where he found himself earlier this summer, traveling with a group of 80 HISD students. The trip was coordinated through the district’s EMERGE program that aims to help high-performing, low-income students into Ivy League and Tier I colleges.

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