Blogs

The Houston Press has dedicated a lot of time and space to looking at Community Education Partners. Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program in New York City went into Atlanta, decided the CEP there was pretty much worthless and filed suit charging it with not educating any of the kids shoveled inside.

Creative Loafing Atlanta has done its own report entitled “Forest Hill Academy: The children left behind,” in which reporter Scott Freeman finds some of the same conditions in existence as the Press has written about in Houston. Students are warehoused with little real instruction going on. Most of the kids put inside the alternative facilities are minorities. Their test scores are lousy. And the ACLU calls it nothing more than a pathway to prison.

Much of the story goes into CEP’s background, which is intricately woven into the history of the Texas Miracle, No Child Left Behind, former HISD Superintendent Rod Paige and George W. Bush. – Margaret Downing

Theatre Under the Stars had its annual Tommy Tune awards Tuesday, the coveted Tonys for local high schools.

Judges saw 41 productions in the 2007-08 school year, God bless `em. The biggest surprise (to us)? A religious school did Urinetown. Those scamps at Episcopal, man.

It paid off, though, because they won the Best Musical award. The production also took home honors for Best Leading Actor (Ben Estus as Bobby Strong), Best Direction, Best Choreography, Best Ensemble/Chorus and Best Scenic Design.

More

A few Sensitive Sallies at Texas Tech have voiced their outrage over a game of “Catch the Illegal Immigrant” organized by the school’s chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas. Marshalling their collective powers of intelligence, entrepreunership and xenophobia, the kinderkonservatives made T-shirts that say “Illegal Immigrant” on the front and “Catch Me if You Can” on the back.

While this local paper vaguely describes the game as a variant of hide-and-seek, we actually checked the Official Catch the Illegal Immigrant Handbook and now provide the rules, so your school can join in on the fun!

1.) Put on the T-shirts (make sure “Illegal Immigrant” is on the front, or the point of the game will be lost on passers-by).

2.) Designate one person to be the aforementioned miscreant (ten bonus points if this person is, in fact, an illegal immigrant; five points if he’s at least brown).

More

MTV will be visiting Houston’s southwest side this afternoon to film students of the universally acclaimed YES College Preparatory Schools, who will be hosting a fundraiser to battle malaria.

The “Stayin’ Alive” dance, sponsored by Malaria No More, will feature local DJ Michael 5000 Watts. MTV plans to air footage from the event on April 25, Malaria Awareness Day, as part of MTV News, and online.

Malaria No More, a grassroots movement created by a group of high school students in Florida, hopes to raise $10 million during the next few years at school dances and other events to provide life-saving bed nets for two million vulnerable children in Africa. – Todd Spivak

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas wants the Beaumont Independent School District to explain why a “Big 3 Conference” at West Brook High which included topics such as “Thug Life” was required only for African-American, male students.

Other topics at the March 29 session included “Gangs – Wanna Be’s” and “TYC – small percentage of rappers.” Requiring only black male students to attend “smacks of targeting students based on gender and racial stereotypes,” said Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas.

More

I’ve written extensively on the small rural town, population 1,700. Hundreds of residents there are suing a massive wood-treatment facility that was once the nation’s largest for polluting the town for decades with all kinds of horrible toxic chemicals that may have caused a range of deadly, aggressive cancers and rare birth defects.

Dr. James Dahlgren, a health expert hired by the plaintiff attorneys who treated rescue workers at the World Trade Center site and served as lead toxicologist in the famous Erin Brockovich case, says the entire town should be evacuated immediately.

More

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Georgia have filed a class action suit against the Community Education Partners alternative school there saying that CEP (which has two locations in Houston) “Does not function as a school at all, but rather as a warehouse for poor children of color.”

“Academics at the school are virtually non-existent and students are inadequately supervised. Violence is rampant,” the lawsuit says.

The Houston Press has written several stories over the years reporting the same findings about CEP’s two facilities here. Some other districts such as the Dallas ISD and Pasadena have dropped the private program which takes in students sent there after running into trouble at their home schools. But the Houston ISD continues to support CEP, through a succession of superintendents and school boards, saying it makes the home schools safer and rescues the kids sent to CEP from expulsion and life on the streets. And cash-strapped HISD has spent millions doing so.

More

Reveille VII, the collie that has served as a mascot for Texas A&M University for seven years, is retiring. Purely as a protest for the firing of Dennis Franchione, we’re sure. A&M has appointed a committee to determine whether the next Reveille should be a collie too, or whether it’s time to go with a different type of dog. We’re here to help.

Fifi: She may look like pampered, soft, decadent Eurotrash, but put the A&M banner on her and she’s fearsome. Also, please change the A&M colors to pink and puce.

More

LULAC has been trying to get Beaumont ISD to change Fletcher Elementary’s name to Cesar E. Chavez Elementary. (Fletcher has an 81 percent Hispanic student body.) Seems LULAC tried getting a city park renamed after Chavez and struck out, so the organization thought it might have a better shot with BISD, since the school district had previously renamed a predominately African-American school after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

We dug around and discovered that several HISD schools are rumored to be scheduled for rechristening and a variety of monikers are supposedly being considered.

More

For the second time, activists from University of Houston Students Against Sweatshops stormed President Renu Khator's office to demand she sign the Designated Suppliers Program, which would help protect the rights of workers who manufacture University apparel. And for the second time, Khator was not in her office, but this time the group had a giant, cardboard cutout of a phone receiver. The following is Houstoned Theatre’s Simpsons-inspired take on what probably went down.

Students: (Ring bell.)

Khator’s Secretary: Who is it?

Students: An angry mob.

Khator’s Secretary: Do you have an appointment?

More

Student journalists – the unemployed of tomorrow! – often have a tough time with their school administrations.

The administrations write the checks that let the papers live, and they often don’t like having to read the kinds of stories that good reporters do.

The latest flare-up is at the University of St. Thomas, where Nicole Causarez, for 20 years the advisor to the student paper The Cauldron, resigned today.

More

Governor Rick Perry announced some additions to his Competitiveness Council today, including Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Never heard of the Competitiveness Council? Yeah, neither had we. Seems it's a group of " industry leaders, public and higher education officials, and representatives of key state regulatory agencies" who come together to identify "impediments to the state’s ability to remain competitive in a global marketplace and recommending steps the state should take to improve its economic footing."

More

Earlier this week two Pearland High School students were arrested, charged with disorderly conduct and sent to alternative school for a month after being caught early Tuesday hanging a noose in the high school parking lot.

On the very day that news was announced -- Wednesday -- in the next school district over, a Hightower High School student was caught placing signs above two water fountains in the Fort Bend ISD school. According to a memo sent out by Hightower Principal Patricia Paquin, “White” was written on one sign and “Colored” on the other.

More

I suppose if I were a parent, I would also be enraged by the unorthodox teachings of the fifth-grade substitute at MacGregor Middle School who had her kids call her Sister Jessica. But as it is, she just seems like fun. I can imagine us at happy hour together. Her chatter would be way more fascinating than the usual my-boss-sucks, these-are-my-weekend-plans, Barack-or-Hillary conversation.

This little story presents gem after gem from Sister Jessica. Among them:

More

That’s because the folks at Galveston ISD seem to have only the foggiest idea of what the First Amendment is about.

The school district’s lawyer is threatening to sue the Web site GISDWatch for having the temerity to criticize school board members.

Of course, the lawyer says, it’s not the fact that they’re being criticized that is causing the lawsuit threat. It’s because some of the criticisms are libelous, even if they involve publicly elected officials.

More