‘Roses and Knights’ take first place in robotics tournament

Students from Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy and Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy won the National Society of Black Engineers’ inaugural National VEX Robotics Championship this past weekend in Anaheim, California.

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Fourth-graders visit Texas A&M and University of Texas at Austin

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It’s never too early to get students excited about college. Shadowbriar and Mading elementary schools took fourth-grade students on college visits recently. Close to 150 Shadowbriar students, teachers, and staff, as well as some alumni parents, traveled to Texas A&M University (TAMU), and 55 Mading students went to University of Texas at Austin (UT).

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Teacher-produced STAAR videos motivate students for testing

Gallegos Elementary School and Wheatley High School teachers and staff created videos to get their students focused on doing their best work on this week’s STAAR tests.

Fourth- and fifth-grade Gallegos ES students saw the videos at a STAAR Pep Rally on Friday, March 27.

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Up Close takes a look at district’s move online for state testing

HISD is making the move toward online assessments that help teachers better determine what students know so that they can personalize the learning experience.

HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones addresses the transition in this month’s edition of Up Close with Chief Academic Officer Dan Gohl, Formative Assessment Manager Betty Garcia-Hill, and Carol Mosteit, principal of the High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Continue reading →

Status of all students’ magnet applications now available

New HISD School Choice website will guide parents through the acceptance process

The results of approximately 65,000 magnet applications from close to 21,000 HISD students are now available on the Magnet parent dashboard at www.hisdchoice.com.

Parents will also receive an email invited them to log in to their parent dashboard. The notifications will be sent starting at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 27, 2015. (This process will take several hours, so please do not be alarmed if you don’t see an email right away.) In addition, letters will be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to the address of record on file for each student’s application and should arrive a few days later.

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Four students win national recognition for their writing talent

Four students from HISD schools have been recognized at the national level this spring through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Bellaire High School’s Liana Wang and Carnegie Vanguard High School’s Victoria Songyang won Gold Key Awards, while Bellaire High’s Christina Tan and Gabriel CyPacht from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts won Silver Key Awards.

Only 39 students in Harris County earned awards at the national level of this competition, which is sponsored regionally by the Harris County Department of Education. To see a full list of winners, please click here.

The Gold Key winners will be honored at a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City in June.

Yates HS communications students begin massive video archiving project

Students in the magnet communications program at Yates High School recently launched a massive archiving project that will one day result in the digitization of more than 30 years of video footage.

Phase one entails the ingestion of hundreds of video tapes from the Yates magnet program dating back to 1980, containing footage of the school and its history, events, faculty, and students.

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce a digital archive on Blu-Ray discs that can be displayed at the school’s new facility and will be ready in time for the 40th anniversary of the School of Communications in 2018.

Yates’ new chapter of the Student Television Network is using the latest in digital content acquisition technology to ingest the legacy analog video into an updated iMac system. Students involved are acquiring skills that can be used in the media archiving industry, film and television non-linear video editing, and metadata management, which is an introduction to meta-tagging and understanding aggregate data for social media careers.

Deadline to register for free school day SAT administration quickly approaching

Juniors must sign up by April 1 to be able to take the test

Since the spring of 2010, HISD has offered 11th-graders the opportunity to take the SAT, a college entrance exam, at no cost on a normal school day, but students must register by April 1 in order to be eligible to take the test on April 15, 2015.

Students should see their high school counselor to get their free registration voucher and sign up as soon as possible.

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Student Congress members share their concerns with state legislators

Nine HISD students travel to Austin over spring break to make their voices heard

Nine students from various HISD high schools got a chance to influence Texas law last week when they traveled to Austin on March 17 for a visit to the state capitol.

The trip offered high-schoolers a behind-the-scenes look at the law-making process and a chance to express their concerns about various issues to state legislators.

Carnegie Vanguard High School seniors Raquel Douglas and David Valerio spoke with the staff of almost 20 representatives, focusing particular attention on members of the Public Education Committee.

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Telemundo celebrities connect the dots between literacy and life

On-air personalities visit select HISD schools to show connection between reading and careers

Telemundo Houston weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez visits with students at Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy.

Telemundo Houston weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez visits with students at Wharton K-8 Dual Language Academy.

A popular Spanish-language television station is getting HISD students excited about reading in a whole new way.

Through Leyendo con Telemundo, five different on-air personalities—including newscaster Paulina Sodi and weekend anchor Antonio Hernandez—are visiting classes at select district schools once a month to talk about the importance of literacy.

The visits are part of an on-going partnership between Telemundo Houston and HISD, in support of the district’s Literacy By 3 movement.

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