The Houston Independent School District’s Ascending to Men (ATM) Project will host simultaneous roundtable discussions next week with students and community leaders to foster dialogue centered around issues impacting today’s male students.
The discussions will take place from 6 – 8 p.m., on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at both Furr and Sharpstown high schools. Participants will discuss challenges for male students in the district, while sharing sustainable solutions to those challenges.
Continue readingTransportation Services is conducting a comprehensive review of bus ridership at schools with high transportation eligibility to identify opportunities for route consolidation and increased efficiency.
The review is focused on 15 schools with low ridership, despite having a high volume of students who are eligible for transportation and have been assigned routes.
Transportation Services General Manager John Wilcots IV explained that requests for transportation are often at their highest at the start of the school year. Once a request is made and the student is found to be eligible, the department is required to assign that student to a route and stop — even if they end up choosing not to ride the bus.
Continue readingHISD will host its next Parent University workshop from 5:15 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at four locations throughout the district: Oak Forest and Emerson elementary schools, Thomas Middle School and Furr High School.
The theme for the session will be “Digital Citizenship.” The workshop will begin with a dinner and resource fair and will include information on district programs, parent engagement, community resources, and how parents can become active partners in the successful education of their children.
This district-wide initiative was launched last September with a mission of connecting HISD parents and children to resources that support successful academic careers, as well as safe and healthy environments at home and at school.
Continue readingEvent to help students apply for college, financial aid
College Readiness and Multilingual Programs will be hosting the fifth annual Dream Summit to assist students with college applications and the financial aid process on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center, 4400 W. 18th St., Houston 77092.
High school students and their families are encouraged to attend the free event. Students should contact their campus college-access coordinator, counselor, or college and career readiness advisor regarding transportation. Five seniors will have a chance to win a $500 scholarship.
Continue readingTransportation Services is strengthening its focus on student and driver safety with the implementation of a new practice to address student conduct concerns on the bus.
The practice, which is being implemented this fall, addresses the procedures that bus drivers and Transportation Services leadership must follow when student conduct issues arise.
The new policy requires drivers to complete a Student Conduct Form and submit it to their terminal manager when a student incident — such as eating and drinking, fighting, or defacing the bus — occurs.
Continue readingCompleting the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and TASFA (Texas Application for State Financial Aid) is the first step toward receiving the various types of financial aid for school, and finishing your FAFSA/TASFA early is the best way to maximize college-award packages.
But how much do you know about these financial aid applications? Here are 10 reasons why students should submit their FAFSA ASAP! For info on TASFA, see below.
Continue readingA new state law enacted by the 86th Legislature, HB 3884, requires school districts to provide information on bacterial meningitis to students and parents.
Information on symptoms, how bacterial meningitis is spread, prevention, healthy habits and more can be found on HISD’s Health and Medical Services website. For downloadable PDFs in English, Spanish, Arabic and Vietnamese, click here.
As a reminder, school nurses, family doctors, and the staff at your local or regional health department office are excellent sources for information on all infectious diseases. You may call your family doctor or local health department office for more information.
HISD will host its next Parent University workshop from 5:15 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at four locations throughout the district: Cook Elementary School, Lawson and Pershing middle schools, and Westside High School.
The theme for the session will be “How to Get Involved.” The workshop will begin with a dinner and resource fair and will include information on district programs, parent engagement, community resources, and how parents can become active partners in the successful education of their children.
Parents can look up locations and select the most convenient one to attend. Registration is available at HoustonISD.org/ParentUniversity.
Free dinner, interpretation services, and child care will be provided.
Transportation Services is updating the SafeStop bus tracking app to reflect temporary changes made to bus routes that do not yet have a permanent driver assigned due to an ongoing driver shortage.
Of the department’s 828 routes, about 10 percent — or 87 routes — do not have permanent drivers due to the shortage, which is impacting transportation organizations across the region.
As a result, stops on these open routes were temporarily reassigned to nearby staffed routes to ensure all students have safe and reliable transportation to and from school. This has caused some staffed routes to run longer than originally expected.
Continue readingThe district has designated five “Staff Development Days” for the 2019-2020 school year to be utilized for professional development at the school level. As a result, schools will release students early on those days throughout the school year.
On the following dates outlined below, elementary schools will be dismissed at noon, and middle and high schools will be dismissed at 1:10 p.m.
HISD Transportation Services will be adjusting bus schedules to ensure students are picked up at the early dismissal times, which will result in earlier delivery times to bus stops.
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