Demolition is underway at Milby High School campus

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A demolition crew is hard at work at Milby High School to complete the next phase for a new 21st century campus: bringing down the old building.

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Community partners pitching in to help students start off the new school year right

Thanks to the generosity of Houston-area companies and community organizations, many HISD students have the supplies they need to start the new school year.

For the fourth year in a row, NRG, formerly known as Reliant Energy, helped local students with a donation of more than $20,000 worth of school supplies. NRG executives were on hand at the Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center the week before school started to personally distribute the school supply packets to students. Four thousand more backpacks that include grade-specific supplies for students in grades K-12, such as crayons, notebooks, pens, paper, or folders, will be distributed to more than 35 HISD schools.

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New career-readiness tool offers students virtual job-shadowing experiences

CTE teachers explore VirtualJobShadow at job-alike training

In addition to traditional job-shadowing visits, HISD students in the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program will soon be able to use just about any computer or tablet in the classroom or at home to digitally follow engineering, health, oil and gas, and other professionals in high-demand careers.

The district’s Career Readiness Department has collaborated with VirtualJobShadow.com, an interactive career planning and exploration resource, to introduce students to career opportunities, prepare them for college and the workforce, and increase their awareness of local workforce development efforts. During the 2014–2015 school year, the tool will be offered to 100,000 students in the CTE program at 110 of the district’s secondary schools.

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Fifth-graders learning the difference between texting, every day, and academic language

ALIAS vocabulary program helping students build literacy skills, understand the concept of ‘code-switching’

For students to be successful in the Digital Age, they must learn to distinguish between the abbreviated syntax they use in texting, the casual way they speak to their friends in person, and the more formal style of communication called for when writing school essays or drafting a business memo.

Fifth-graders at more than three dozen HISD elementary schools will soon be making those distinctions while building their academic vocabulary this year, thanks to a partnership the district forged with two educators from Harvard University. Continue reading →

Walnut Bend ES and community raise awareness for National Literacy Month

Celebrity readers share stories, set an example for community involvement

Walnut Bend ES partner Phillips 66, along with the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation and Lone Star Sports & Entertainment, got together at the campus on opening day Monday to raise awareness about the importance of literacy for Houston’s children. The star-studded event kicked off HISD’s Literacy By 3 program, a movement designed to turn around and end the literacy crisis in Houston.

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Recent grads learn ‘It’s Not Too Late’ to apply for fall HCC classes

Westbury High School graduate Darling Romero’s busy work schedule kept her from registering for fall classes earlier this summer at a local community college.

“The summer went by fast, and I got caught up in work,” Romero said. “The next thing I knew, it was almost time for the (enrollment) deadline.”

The HISD College Readiness team helped students like Romero make the time to register for fall classes during the department’s “It’s Not Too Late” Application Day last week at Houston Community College-Southwest.  A second event was held at HCC-Southeast.

The event, in collaboration with HCC, is part of a new initiative to help 2014 high school graduates who have not enrolled in college apply for community college classes and financial aid. Continue reading →

Giving high mobility students the ‘Home Field Advantage’

Living up to a promise made by Superintendent Terry Grier during February’s State of the Schools address, HISD is enacting “Home Field Advantage,” a program to create educational stability among highly mobile student populations.

Students at 13 elementary schools where families are most transient are being offered transportation to continue to allow them to make that school their home, even if their families move. General mobility rates in the selected schools is about 30 percent annually, according to Susan Kaler, Student Services officer. Continue reading →

Togetherness at Jones: Three separate schools start the 2014-2015 year under one roof

“Morning. How’s everyone doing?” asked HISD Superintendent Terry Grier as he made a tour of the Jones Futures Academy on the first day of school Monday. “We are proud of you guys — you’re going to work hard this year?”

The enthusiastic students responded with a resounding, “Yeah!”

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Jones High School is experiencing a renaissance this school year. While it is now the official home of the Jones Futures Academy, the South Early College High School continues to hold classes on campus, and 10th- through 12th-grade students from Milby High School will go there for the next three years. Both of those schools have new campuses being constructed. Continue reading →

‘Early Matters’ to HISD, part of new coalition advocating for preschool learning

On this day when hundreds of thousands of Houston-area youngsters began the new school year, six local superintendents took time out for a news conference at HISD’s Rodriguez ES focusing on a segment for whom education is often hard to come by — low-income, preschool children.

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HISD Superintendent Terry Grier joined his fellow educators and a broad coalition of community, business, education, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations operating as “Early Matters.”  The more than 50 members have pledged to fight for increased funding, access, and quality of the area’s early childhood education programs over the next decade. Continue reading →