Category Archives: High Schools

Student laptop distribution underway as part of PowerUp initiative

Almost 19,000 HISD students are receiving laptops this month as part of the district’s one-to-one initiative that will eventually give every high school student a computer. The initiative – PowerUp – will not only give students 24-hour access to a laptop and a variety of software but to digital-age instruction that will transform teaching and learning both inside and outside the classroom.

“PowerUp is not about the device,” said Superintendent Terry Grier. “This is about creating anytime-anywhere learning for our students so they can have the world at their fingertips. We want to make sure they learn skills that complement technology so they won’t be replaced by technology.”

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Jordan HS dominates at 17th annual Hair Battle Royale

Jordan High School’s 17th annual citywide hairstyling competition took place on Jan. 13, and many of the prizes were claimed by students from the host school’s own cosmetology program.

The team of Maribel Covarrubias, Alexus McGee, Tamela Phylow, Angelica Punkett, and Arlett Sanders earned first place in the fantasy category with an elaborately braided design that resembled the curving horns of a ram. Jordan students also swept the rest of the fantasy category, with memorable designs such as the second-place entry, which paired a bright red-and-blue wig topped by a hair net of bright yellow cord, with a dress shaped like a hairstyling-themed carousel in the same vibrant colors.

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Board of Education to vote on policy update banning offensive mascots

Board of Education swears in HISD’s new District IX trustee

The Houston Independent School District Board of Education is expected to vote Thursday during its regular monthly meeting on the second reading of a policy update that would prohibit offensive or culturally insensitive school mascots.
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Design of new school auditoriums takes center stage

A space that’s usually reserved for student assemblies and performances will become more than a venue for special occasions. A year from now when the new Booker T. Washington High School is built with a new auditorium, the space will become a multifunctional theater with collapsible seating, moveable walls, and a walking grid. It will be a place where students can master production skills in stage lighting, sound, and special effects – like showering snow on an audience.

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Homeless family experiences Christmas ‘miracle’ just in time for the holidays

The three-bedroom apartment went from empty to furnished in 90 minutes, thanks to Gallery Furniture, Bethel’s Heavenly Hands, Harris County Youth Services, Westbury High School, and HISD’s Homeless Education Office. Melissa Smith and her seven children had been evicted from their apartment, and with no place to go, were sleeping outside recently on a cold, rainy night. A compassionate neighbor, Virginia Robinson, took them in, fed them, and gave them a place to sleep. “It hurt my heart to think of them out there in the cold,” said Robinson. “I had to do something.”

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Top hoopsters hit the courts in 74th annual HISD tourney

Thirty-one of the Houston area’s best prep teams will begin three days of action Thursday in the 74th annual HISD Boys Basketball Tournament at nine district locations – and they’ll combine play with holiday giving.

Fans bringing two nonperishable food items and one unwrapped toy will gain free admission, with no re-entry permitted. The toys will go to the U.S. Marines Toys for Tots Drive, and the food will benefit the Houston Food Bank. Collection points will be located at each site for those who want to contribute additional items.

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Voice of experience: Successful 1:1 school district praises PowerUp

HISD’s implementation of the PowerUp one-to-one laptop initiative is getting rave reviews from a North Carolina school district which successfully implemented a similar program six years ago. A team of educators from the Mooresville Graded School District recently visited classrooms at three HISD campuses which distributed student laptops in October.

“One of the things we were very impressed with was the rather extensive use of laptops for instruction in the classrooms,” said Steve Mauney, executive director for secondary instruction at the Mooresville Graded School District. “That is something we didn’t expect to see at the schools only two months after deployment.”

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Historic Milby High School yearbooks going digital

Florence Waters Schillaci, 95, displays her photo from the 1936 Milby High School yearbook "The Buffalo" on a tablet at her home, December 17, 2013. Milby students have been digitizing past copies of the yearbook for a class project. (HISD/Dave Einsel)

Milby HS alumna Florence Schillaci (née Waters) holds up an iPad with a photo of herself on it from the newly digitized 1936 yearbook, The Buffalo. (HISD/Dave Einsel)

Librarian Rowena Verdin has come up with an innovative way of handling the many requests she receives each year for copies of old yearbooks—she is taking Milby High School digital.

Verdin began digitizing the school’s old yearbooks in 2010, starting with two editions from each decade. “Right now, only the 1925 and the 1936 editions are online, but we’ve got about 15 of them in digital format,” she said. “We’ve even got one from 1920, back when Milby was still known as Harrisburg High School.”

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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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