Scarlett Schmitz gathered with friends outside Heights High School on Monday morning to write in shoe polish the word “SENIOR” on the back of her SUV. She’s ready, she said, for her final year of high school.
Schmitz was one of more than 160,000 Houston ISD students who headed back to the classroom on Monday. She said she’s looking forward to taking aquatic science and walking the stage to get her high school diploma. She wants to go to college with her best friend Gabby Collette at Louisiana State University.
Colette said her words of advice for incoming freshmen are: “Stay locked in. Don’t get in any drama. Don’t skip. Get all your hard classes out of the way so senior year, you’re chillin’.”
Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles addressed the media at a press conference Monday evening and acknowledged complaints from HISD parents about bus delays for special needs students who were recently transferred to new campuses.
One parent wrote on Facebook: “Buses did not come or were 75+ minutes late in picking up special needs kids after the TEA decided to relocate special needs kids to campuses 20-plus miles away. After waiting 1.5 hours, [the transportation app] updated from ‘bus on the way’ to ‘no riding activity today.’ Another mom said the principal didn’t know if the buses would take them home so they needed to make a plan to pick them up today.”
Miles said HISD has a command center that is serving those who experienced delays. “I don’t want to discount how challenging it would be for some parents who only recently asked for transportation or moved and they didn’t give us their address and now they want transportation. That’s going to be first-week problems, anywhere, and I’m very sympathetic, but we have systems in place to try to help out.”
There’s a clear advantage for older students who can drive themselves to school and avoid dealing with buses. Some Heights seniors gathered on campus with about 100 of their peers to watch the sun rise and then left to grab a coffee before classes began at 8:30 a.m. Some sat in their vehicles because they wanted to check their cell phones, which they’re prohibited from using during school hours, or because it was too hot to wait outside for the first bell.
Some who started the day early would be on campus until 6:30 p.m. for football practice, which kicked off earlier this summer. Heights seniors who called themselves “Rossy Raey” and Jeremiah said it was going to be a long day but they were excited about the freedom that will come after graduation.
“I’m looking forward to going home and taking a nap,” Jeremiah said.
A Heights senior who provided her first name, Elena, said she was looking forward to “building structure for college” and all the upcoming senior activities.
The teens at Northside High School weren’t quite as enthused about heading back to the classroom. A group of girls said they don’t like that their campus is operating under Miles’ New Education System model, which requires daily quizzes and scripted lessons from the central office that critics say can’t be adapted to individual students’ needs.
“The teachers don’t care,” said a senior named Nevaeh. “Because it’s NES, they test us only on what’s on the slideshows. You can’t even look at your computer while the slideshow is on. Half the time the teachers admit that the slideshows are wrong.”
A Northside sophomore said she was excited about taking cosmetology classes at the Barbara Jordan Career Center as part of the campus’ Career and Technology Education program. Another student, a senior, said he wanted to take automotive courses at the Center.
Many of the kids at Clemente Martinez Future 2 School were all smiles as they stepped off the bus and high-fived English Language Arts teacher Ethan Whiturs. The campus is expanding this year from an elementary to pre-K through eighth grades. Teachers and some students arrived at the school on Hays before the sun came up and said they were looking forward to a great year.
A fourth grader named Laura showed up at Clemente Martinez early Monday with her sister Leslie, a seventh-grader who starts at YES Prep charter school later this week. Laura said she likes science and hopes she has teachers who challenge her. “I’m a quick learner and I don’t like to waste time,” she said.
Whiturs, who is in his first year as an educator for HISD, said he’s looking forward to teaching an “experience” course for fifth and sixth graders on teamwork and collaboration.
Over at Fondren Elementary in southwest Houston, the annual march of parents with their children was in full swing. As in years past, many of the families live close enough to the school at 12405 Carlsbad to walk instead of driving. That’s a bonus because with narrow streets and the ditches in the area, it can be as tough to get out as in. The special ed bus there hadn’t shown up by the starts of school.
At one point, the traffic was backed up all the way to Carlsbad and even the school bus with flashing red lights wasn’t getting through.Still, everyone took it in stride and with the exception of a child or two who broke into tears (as well as a few parents in the same state) everyone seemed happy with the day.
Houston ISD is the first in the area to go back to school but other districts are close behind. Fort Bend ISD goes back on Tuesday. Cypress-Fairbanks and Katy ISDs start Wednesday, and Spring Branch ISD returns to class on Thursday.
