All HISD campuses and offices will be closed for the spring holiday on Friday, March 25, 2016.
They will reopen for normal business on Monday, March 28, 2016.
The HISD Police Department will still be patrolling district facilities. Emergencies may be reported by calling 713-892-7777.
HISD students in grades 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 will be taking portions of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) beginning Tuesday, March 29.
Students in grades 4 and 7 will be taking the writing portion, while students in grades 5 and 8 will be taking the math and reading portions. High-school students who are either currently enrolled in or have completed English I or II will also be taking the end-of-course (EOC) exams associated with those subjects.
The first spring test administration concludes on Friday, April 1. Additional testing will take place in May and July.
Questions? Visit HISD’s updated STAAR website, which has a list of FAQ, a complete schedule of spring testing dates, and other resources.
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The site of the new campus for Mickey Leland Young Men’s College Preparatory Academy is teeming with activity these days as construction crews are hard at work and making great progress on the school’s new $42.4 million building.
The new 139,000 square-foot-building, located at 1701 Gregg St. on the site of the former Wheatley/E.O. Smith building in Houston’s historic Fifth Ward, is being built as part of HISD’s current bond program and will accommodate 900 to 1,000 students. Continue reading
Students of all ages will enjoy hands-on career awareness and exploration activities, including the STEM Museum on Wheels, Home Depot workshops, the Career Ready Wagon, a gyroscope, and more. Students will have the opportunity to talk with local employers about future careers, experience the Mobile Oilfield Learning Unit, and compete in various student competitions in subjects such as cosmetology, movie making, construction and culinary skills. Food trucks will be on hand, and participants will be able to enjoy student performances by Waltrip HS Jazz Band, Lanier MS Orchestra, Davis HS Mariachi, and the MC Williams MS Orchestra.
Last year, more than 5,000 students, parents, and community members attended the annual expo, which featured a Houston Police Department SWAT tank, Houston Fire Department truck and, “BAT” (breath alcohol testing) van among other exhibits.
For more information, please see the Career Readiness webpage, or call 713-556-6981.
If you went to see a movie in the past week, chances are you might have seen several HISD teachers during the previews. HISD’s Human Resources Department recently launched an ad campaign aimed at enticing teachers who live in Houston and the surrounding suburbs to come “Teach in the City.” The recruitment campaign includes a 30-second segment currently playing at several movie theaters across Houston, four highway billboards, and a new website.
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“Teach in the City” features a half dozen HISD teachers, including Morgan Greco, a first-year teacher at Herod Elementary School. “I am thrilled to be part of this effort to recruit both new and veteran teachers,” said Greco. “I love working for HISD. As a first-year teacher right out of college, I have more support than I could have ever imagined.”
If you’re one of the parents who submitted one of the more than 60,000 magnet applications HISD received for the 2016–2017 school year, your wait is almost over.
Thursday, March 24, 2016, is the date on which parents who participated in Phase 1 of the application process (Oct. 1–Dec. 18, 2015) will be notified of the status of their submissions. Parents who created online accounts will be able to find the results posted on their dashboards, but application-status letters will also be sent out by U.S. mail to all parents who submitted an application.
Magnet notifications are going out via our online system, so you can start checking now. FYI, they can take up to 8 hours to send.
Don’t see any notifications for your magnet application yet? Don’t panic! Your notifications will be posted to the parent dashboard.
NASA astronaut Mike Fincke visited with Grissom ES students on March 10 to help HISD’s Nutrition Services Department celebrate National School Breakfast Week.
First, he presented a video that showed him and his fellow astronauts enjoying their mission on the International Space Station and fueling their bodies for space travel.
“We have fun with our food because it floats. Do you know why it floats?” asked Fincke. “No gravity!” shouted the students.
Fincke explained how space food needs to be packaged to stay fresh and nutritious so astronauts can remain healthy while in space. “We especially enjoy the fresh fruits and vegetables we get when a care package is delivered with a supply cargo from earth.”
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HISD’s efforts to have students reading at or above grade level by the third grade got a huge boost on March 10, when DonorsChoose.org launched a surprise “flash-funding” campaign to support teachers’ classroom projects.
Hundreds of HISD educators stand to benefit from the #BestSchoolDay campaign, as Houston Rocket Dwight Howard announced his intent to fund every Houston-area, Pre-K-through-grade-2 teacher’s existing DonorsChoose.org request for books or reading materials during an appearance he made on the Stephen Colbert Show Thursday night.
The Houston Independent School District this week received its third national Magna Award, an honor designed to recognize school districts and their leaders for taking bold, innovative steps to improve the lives of students and their communities.
The district received the first-place Magna Award for its Literacy By 3 program, which strives to have all students reading and writing fluently by the end of third grade. HISD is one of five first-place winners in the over 20,000 enrollment category. Continue reading
The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) unveiled its newly renovated Burke Baker Planetarium on March 11, and roughly 75 of HISD’s Southmayd Elementary School’s fourth-graders were the first to experience it.
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Through a long-standing partnership with the museum, all 14,000 HISD fourth-graders take a field trip there each year, but the planetarium now boasts a new seamless inner surface on the dome and a high-resolution, digital-laser projection system so powerful only astronauts will have a better view of celestial objects.