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The University of Houston’s phone lines are in gridlock this morning – at least the ones going to the all-important Admissions Office which is where you check to see if your financials are all in order. And today’s the day UH says you have to settle up your bill or face dis-enrollment from your classes that start Monday for the fall semester.

Yesterday, the phones were busy all day, too. A lucky 1,200 people broke through to talk to someone, according to Eric Gerber, spokesman for UH. That’s out of a 35,000-plus student body so we’re guessing there were a few more people who – like us -- would have liked to have gotten through.

Today, it’s worse. Early morning busy signals have been replaced by the off-hours message. You know the one that tells you what to do when you’re calling before or after they are open for business. The one that tells you the hours they are open. The one you’re not supposed to hear repeatedly at 10 o’clock in the morning.

Finally, college presidents do something every student can endorse -- they're fighting to lower the drinking age to 18.

Something called the Amethyst Institute, obviously named by a drunk 18-year-old, has gotten more than 100 college presidents -- including those from Duke, Ohio State, Dartmouth and Whittier -- to sign a statement calling for the drinking age to be lowered.

Why?

HISD faced a tough decision on whether to renew its $18 million annual contract with Community Education Partners, the outfit some critics have accused of warehousing troubled students instead of helping them.

The school district had a deadline of August 15 to notify CEP whether they planned to renew the contract. Or to drop it, like the Dallas and Pasadena districts have.

So what did HISD do? They punted.

A fourth HISD elementary school has been approved to offer the highly thought-of International Baccalaureate program, and it's not like any of the others.

Right now only three HISD elementaries offer the IB Primary Years program, and they're the kind of schools you would imagine would be associated with it: Roberts, River Oaks and Mark Twain.

Those schools are near River Oaks (obviously enough) and West U. The newest school to offer the program will be in the slightly tougher neighborhood near Aldine & Tidwell.

The Houston Chronicle's education blog mentioned that the HISD board bid a fond farewell yesterday to longtime spokesman Terry Abbott, who is leaving at the end of the month to become a consultant.

"[A]s board member Natasha Kamrani put it: 'Terry Abbott is a junk-yard dog. He will stand in front of people who are shooting bullets at you,'" the Chron wrote.

HISD superintendent Abe Saavedra also praised Abbott: "You pretty much have been the shield for the district, specifically the superintendent," he said.

We always thought a public-information officer was supposed to help information get out, not act as a shield from annoying questions, but what do we know? After all, Abbott's the guy who somehow managed to spin a non-entity like Rod Paige into the U.S. Secretary of Education. He's the guy who mastered the art of never answering questions unless they were submitted in writing.

We would never, ever sink so low as to make a snarky comment, like the Chron did, about how Abbott gets $160,000 a year despite not having a college degree.

But we will offer up our list of Top Five Terry Abbott Moments:

Turns out Texas parents can opt out of having their children learn anything about evolution. All they have to do is send the kids to science classes at “virtual school” through the Texas Virtual Academy program offered by the charter school Southwest Schools in Houston.

Like lines from the old hymn “The fight is o’er, the battle won,” creationists have figured out a way to keep their kids away from all that monkey talk without further fights before the Texas Legislature. The Texas Virtual Academy buys its curriculum from K12 Inc., which was co-founded by former Education Secretary Bill Bennett (remember him for his Book of Virtues?).

Joyce Dauber, principal at generally respected Mark Twain Elementary, has been reassigned pending allegations she made racist comments.

HISD has now released a copy of the complaint that originated the investigation.

Part of the complaint stems from Dauber's insistence that her grandson be placed in a class with "good white neighborhood boys."

Tomorrow is supposed to be the big day -- will the Houston school district begin the process of cutting its bonds from Community Education Partners, the controversial company that gets $17 million a year to (supposedly) teach troubled students?

The current contract has a clause stating that if HISD decides not to renew, it must inform CEP by August 15.

So are they going to renew or not?

This is HISD, remember. Answers never come easily.

Can’t pry your kid off the computer long enough to get him to school? Well, actually, you don’t have to. Enroll your computer geek in HISD’s Virtual School, which is run completely online. Started under then Superintendent Rod Paige in 2000, Virtual School follows the regular HISD calendar and offers a full range of subjects. (Kids can even take seldom offered classes like Japanese or Latin.) Students are paired with counselors and teachers so they aren’t completely on their own. And protocols are in place to discourage cheating (finals are taken in person, not online). Mark Grubb, program manager for the Virtual School says students can’t complete their entire high school coursework online, but for students who need to make up credits or want to get ahead, VS works well. “Some students want take some courses that might not be offered at their school. Plus, we have a wide variety of AP courses and foreign language courses,” he says.

The Houston school board may decide the fate of Wharton Elementary this week, and after a bit of a scare from a misinformed e-mail blast, the news is good.

The board is voting to take Wharton off the list of schools to be closed. For now.

An e-mail blast that went out to members of the group Friends of Wharton delivered the wrong message earlier this morning, claiming HISD was trying to pull a fast one by slipping a motion to close Wharton on the agenda at the last minute.

In fact, superintendent Abe Saavedra met with Wharton leaders Friday and informed them of the decision to keep the elementary open.

But, given the sometimes ugly controversy over what to do with the school, a little suspicion on the part of the parents or Wharton supporters is perhaps justifiable.

This just in: Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra will ask the school board this week to double the price of reduced-price lunches from 20 cents to 40 cents.

Full-priced lunches will go from $1.40 to $1.60 for elementary students and from $1.50 to $1.70 for secondary. Adult lunches will go from $2.35 to $2.65.

The good news: HISD will hold the line on breakfasts and continue to offer those free to all students. (In these economic times, some students may actually eat those breakfasts now.)

HISD, like other school districts, is not immune to the increased food costs in the past year. Produce is up 20 percent, milk 14 percent and bread 8 percent. The district estimates it will spend $41 million on food in 2008-9, up from $36.4 million just last year.

The school board will vote on the proposal Thursday.

– Margaret Downing

Once again, it seems, there's a move at the University of Houston to change the name of the UH-Downtown campus.

Grumbling downtowners say that the powers at UH's Bauer School of Business are getting awfully proprietary about being THE business school in Houston, and they don't want the downtown campus diluting that brand.

UH spokesman Eric Gerber says the Board of Regents will take up the matter tomorrow, but only as a discussion item. As with most things in academia, no action is expected anytime soon. Indeed, the idea's been under consideration periodically for years, but a new, stronger push seems to be going on.

The talk is that a blandly generic name may be in the offing, one that tends not to emphasize the UH-ness of UH-Downtown.

"Renaming Options for UH-Downtown" is the agenda item, and we have a few suggestions.

A study prepared for the Association of Texas Professional Educators says that schools that pay and train teachers better attract better teachers, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.

Hmm, do we really need another study to tell us teachers go where the funding and support is?

Not according to Francis Smith, region 3B president of the Texas State Teachers Association and a Cy Fair English teacher. “I don’t know why they keep doing [studies]. It seems it’s a way of putting off what they need to do. With our legislature being very right-wing and Republican, public education is not thought of as a priority.

"They keep forgetting that you can’t run education like a business. There’s a famous phrase, 'kids are not widgets.' Parents name education as one of the priorities of what we should spend money on, but they haven’t put the pressure on political leaders to do that.”

Rice University, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, Houston Baptist University and the University of St. Thomas are all closed today.

We'd suggest grabbing some booze and having a house party. We've even put together a few playlists for your enjoyment.

Or you could always use the time to study. Your call. -- Keith Plocek

“Vindicated.”

That’s how former TSU student Justin Jordan said he felt an hour after hearing that he and two other former students at the college won their federal lawsuit against the university earlier today.

“I was very happy,” says Jordan. “It proves that if you stand up for what you believe in, even though the road is tough, at the end of the day, you’re able to say, ‘We did it; we won; they were wrong.’”

Jordan, Oliver Brown and William Hudson sued TSU in 2005, accusing the university and its administrators of having them falsely arrested and thrown out of school in retaliation for the students’ public criticism of school officials.