Houston Independent School District


The Houston Independent School District is the largest public school system in Texas, and the eighth-largest in the United States. Houston ISD serves as a community school district for most of the city of Houston and several nearby and insular municipalities in addition to some unincorporated areas. Like most districts in Texas, it is independent of the city of Houston and all other municipal and county jurisdictions. The district has its headquarters in the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center in Houston.
In 2016, the school district was rated "met standards" by the Texas Education Agency.

History

20th century

The Brunner Independent School District merged into Houston schools in 1913-1914.
Houston ISD was established in 1923 after the Texas Legislature voted to separate the city's schools from the municipal government.
In the 1920s, at the time Edison Oberholtzer was superintendent, Hubert L. Mills, the business manager of the district, had immense political power in HISD. He had been in the employment of the district over one decade before Oberholtzer started. By the 1930s the two men were in a power struggle.
The number of students in public schools in Houston increased from 5,500 in 1888 to over 8,850 in 1927.
In the 1920s, the school district expanded its infrastructure to accommodate a growing number of black students. There were 8,293 students in Houston's schools for black students in the 1924-1925 school year. In 1927, Houston ISD annexed the Harrisburg School District's colored school. The district also built new schools such as the former Jack Yates High School and Wheatley High School. The capacity of Houston's secondary schools for black children increased by three times from 1924 to 1929. The original secondary school for blacks was named Colored High School. At the time, the district's three secondary schools for black students had junior high and senior high levels. There were 12,217 students in the black schools in the 1929-1930 school year. William Henry Kellar, author of Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, and School Desegregation in Houston, wrote that conditions in black schools "improved dramatically" in the 1920s.
Houston ISD absorbed portions of the White Oak Independent School District in 1937 and portions of the Addicks Independent School District after its dissolution.
In the fall of 1960 12 black students were admitted to HISD schools previously reserved for whites. The racial integration efforts in HISD, beginning in 1960, were characterized by a lack of violence and turmoil as business leaders sought not to cause disruption. Prior to 1960 HISD was the largest racially segregated school system in the United States.
In the mid-1960s Gertrude Barnstone and Black board member Hattie Mae White, the sole politically liberal members of the school board, often clashed with more conservative board members in meetings held on Monday nights; the two women made efforts to racially integrate the schools. During the 1960s, HISD's school board instituted a phase-in with each subsequent grade being integrated. Local African-American leaders believed the pace was too slow, and William Lawson, a youth minister, asked Wheatley students to boycott school. Five days afterwards 10% of Wheatley students attended classes. In 1970 a federal judge asked the district to speed the integration process.
Simultaneously Mexican Americans were being discriminated against when they were being labeled as whites and being put with only African Americans as part of HISD's desegregation / integration plan. This kept both Mexican Americans and African Americans away from Anglos while satisfying integration requirements set forth by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court case decision. A number of Mexican Americans took their children out of the public schools and put them in "huelga," or protest schools. On August 31, 1970, and organized by the Mexican-American Education Council, they began three weeks of boycotts, protests, and picketing. This action lasted approximately three weeks, during which up to 75% of the student bodies of some high schools participated in the boycotts. During the protests MAEC demanded twenty issues to be resolved and HISD began rezoning school areas within its jurisdiction in response. However, this rezoning encouraged "white flight" since minorities were now entering "white schools" in large numbers. At first the district used forced busing, but later switched to a voluntary magnet school program in order to discourage "white flight".
The district eventually integrated races in a semi-peaceful manner. River Oaks Elementary School became the first school to implement the HISD's Vanguard Program in the fall of 1972, with a program for 4th-6th graders. This program was initially named the Elementary School For The Gifted. The Vanguard Program name was adopted a year later. A desegregation busing plan, protested by Anglo White westside neighborhoods not wanting their children bused to predominately black schools, was rejected by the court system but white flight began by the 1970s.
Circa 1972, a group of citizens in western Houston tried to form Westheimer Independent School District out of a portion of Houston ISD. It would have removed from the HISD territory. At the time 90% of the students in the area were white. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected the appeals after formation of the district was denied.
HISD once served the Harris County portion of Stafford, until the Stafford Municipal School District was established in 1982 to serve the entire city of Stafford. Most of Stafford was in Fort Bend ISD, with a small amount in Houston ISD.
In 1987 Olivia Munoz, the district's foreign language director, said that an increase in interest in foreign languages prompted the district to add foreign language languages to four high schools.
In 1992, the district, under superintendent Frank Petruzielo, massively rezoned Houston schools, moving students from overcrowded ones to underutilized ones. Donald R. McAdams, a former HISD school board member and author of Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools-- and Winning!: Lessons from Houston, wrote that Petruzielo accomplished this goal with a minimum of press coverage and controversy by using a participative process that minimized conflict between various Houston neighborhoods. McAdams credits the move with being the catalyst for the 1995 establishment of 11 geographic districts patterned around high school feeder patterns.
In 1994, after superintendent Petruzielo left the district, the school district voted 6-1 to make Yvonne Gonzalez the interim superintendent; the school district board members described this as a "symbolic" motion as Gonzalez was the first Hispanic interim superintendent. Gonzalez served until Rod Paige became the superintendent.
In 1995 HISD had a performance audit; this was the last such audit done.
In the 1990s, after voters rejected a $390 million bond package, Paige contracted with The Varnett School, River Oaks Academy, and Wonderland School to house 250 students who could not be placed in HISD schools. The schools were paid $3,565 per student. This was 10% lower than the district's own per pupil cost.

21st century

2000s

A 2003 The New York Times report which asserted that HISD did not report school violence to the police created controversy in the community as teachers, students, and parents expressed concern about the district's downplaying of campus violence. HISD officials held a news conference after the publication of the story. During the conference, HISD asserted that The New York Times published the story in an attempt to discredit the Bush administration's new accountability standards for school districts nationwide, which were partly modeled after HISD's system.
In 2005, HISD enrolled evacuees from the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina who were residing in Houston. The Houston Astrodome, the shelter used for hurricane evacuees, is located within the HISD boundaries. A number of Katrina evacuees stayed for the long term within the Houston ISD boundaries. Walnut Bend Elementary School's enrollment increased from around 600 to around 800 with the addition of 184 evacuees; Walnut Bend, out of all of the Houston-area elementary schools, took the most Katrina victims. Nearby Paul Revere Middle School, located in the Westchase district, gained 137 Katrina victims. Revere, out of all of the Houston-area middle schools, has taken in the most Katrina victims. Houston ISD's "West Region," which includes Walnut Bend and Revere, had about one-fifth of Houston ISD's schools but contained more than half of the 5,500 Katrina evacuees in Houston schools. At the start of the 2006-2007 school year, around 2,900 Hurricane Katrina evacuees were still enrolled in Houston ISD schools. Around 700 of them were held back due to poor academic performance. 41% of evacuee 10th graders and 52% of evacuee juniors were held back. According to the October 2006 "For Your Information" newsletter, the eleven HISD schools which took the largest number of Katrina evacuees were:
A University of Houston study concluded that the presence of Katrina evacuees did not impact the test score grades of native Houstonian students.
In 2007 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Communications Commission, and the United States Department of Justice began an investigation probing business relationships between Micro Systems Enterprises, a vendor, and HISD. Frankie Wong, former president of Micro Systems, and two Dallas Independent School District administrators received criminal charges.
As of 2007 several existing HISD schools were converting to K-8 school setups while other new K-8 schools were opening. Prior to the bond election in November 2007, the district abandoned a proposal to convert several schools into K-8 campuses due to African American neighborhoods communities resisting proposed school consolidations.