Blasting off to 2014-2015 with new initiatives

For the past couple weeks, our web team has been running a “countdown” of the top 10 new programs and initiatives in HISD. The truth is they had to whittle down their list to just 10. There’s a lot happening in the district in 2014-2015 in our classrooms and in cyberspace to personalize learning, emphasize both college and career preparation, and engage families.

Everyone – families, older students, and staff — will be able to take advantage of one of our new communications initiatives. On Sept. 9, if you sign up, you’ll be able to get emergency notifications from HISD on your cell phone. This enables us to tell you immediately about everything from weather warnings and school cancellations to burst pipes and stranger dangers.

Our PowerUp digital transformation is expanding, with the addition of 21 high schools where students will receive their own laptops to use in the classroom and at home starting in January, and partial launch of the PowerUp HUB, our digital teaching and learning platform that will become fully operational next school year.

We’ve added two new Middle College High Schools to re-engage youngsters who may have disconnected from a traditional high school environment, put two of our outstanding Futures Academy programs at Jones HS to get those students ready for higher education and promising careers, and turned Westbury HS into our first AP-focused school.

Eight of our high schools are kicking off our new Linked Learning approach, bringing their 32 feeder campuses with them to expose youngsters to both college and careers from the youngest age. We’re adding 14 dual-language schools to get our students ready for global citizenship.

But make no mistake: Our biggest focus — our “main thing” — is literacy, literacy, literacy. Our Literacy By 3 program aims to have every HISD student reading on level by Grade 3. We’ve installed specialized libraries in every elementary school and classroom, and we have excited teachers who have trained over the summer and truly feel that this is the way to help turn the corner on Houston’s literacy crisis — and to make us #GreatAllOver.