Results tagged “abelardosaavedra”

Good morning, Houston. We admit that we have a thing for interview shows, so we thought we'd take a second to note that NBC's Meet the Press, the king of Sunday morning TV news, made its television debut 60 years ago today. Meet the Press began life as a radio show in 1945 and moved to TV a couple of years later, and it hasn't stopped since. Now, MtP is the longest-running show on...

Good morning, Houston. We suppose Tex-Mex is finally official: The New York Times wrote about it yesterday in an article that looked at famed Mexican joints in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. "Neon signs flicker above pastel storefronts promising excellent Mexican food in virtually every block of the city," the Times' Joe Drape writes of Houston. "The trick is to figure out which places will deliver on that promise." Indeed. Drape visited El Jardin...

Good morning, Houston. We've run into some, uh, active parents of student athletes in our day, but we can't remember remember hearing about one who was actually banned from his kid's sporting events — until now, that is. Meet Joe Dalton, who has been barred from his son's Stafford High home football games because school district officials allege he assaulted a student. It happened at the last home game Dalton attended, where he said...

Good morning, Houston. We just don't understand the entertainment juggernaut (or is it "juggernette?") that is Hannah Montana: Tickets to her Nov. 11 Toyota Center show sold out in five minutes Saturday, and now they're going for as much as $1,275 on eBay — granted, that's for a set of four tickets, but still, wow. The markup through eBay and ticket brokers has left some parents shelling out big bucks to give their kids...

Good morning, Houston. These days, when everyone and their dog has a computer, it's getting harder to remember the days when all "official" writing was done on typewriters. The practical modern typewriter was invented in 1868 by an engineer named Christopher Latham Sholes, but it wasn't until 121 years ago today — Sept. 14, 1886 — that George K. Anderson of Memphis got a patent for the typewriter ribbon. They were originally made of...

Bad news for Houston schools: according to federal ratings, 737 schools across Texas (including 155 in the Houston area) fall short of national standards set by No Child Left Behind. Those numbers are up a whopping 36 percent of last year - but why? HISD's low graduation rate could be to blame. Last year, the district graduated just 67% of students, a little below the national requirement of 70% (which still seems remarkably low to...

HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced Thursday that the district needs an $805 million bond issue this November to repair and replace aging schools — but the HISD trustees are expected to vote next Thursday on whether to put the issue on the ballot. Think that isn't much time to learn the details of a pretty big amount of money? You're not the only one: "I'm concerned about the timeline," school board member Greg Meyers told...

There is no word from HISD yet on whether three schools, Kashmere High, Sam Houston High and McReynolds Middle School, will open again next fall. HISD officials wouldn't discuss the issue, saying only that they're they're waiting on the Texas Education Agency to analyze students' test scores and decide whether or not these three campuses are "academically acceptable." The high schools are both located in north Houston, while McReynolds is east of downtown, just off...

Bad news for Jeff Foxworthy: It just got harder to be Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. More HISD fifth graders passed the math section of the recently-administered TAKS test this year. Last year, only 74 percent of fifth graders passed the section, but this year 81 percent passed: still lower than the statewide average of 85 percent, but called a "tremendous improvement" by HISD Superintendant Abelardo Saavedra in a statement he released Tuesday.

The HISD board is expected to consider a resolution this week asking the state Legislature to scrap the TAKS test in favor of year-end exams in core subjects. Legislators have been discussing the testing change for weeks, and we're sure the support of the state's largest school district wouldn't exactly hurt the push for a TAKS-free state. Teachers and parents have criticized the TAKS for years, saying too much rides on the test and that...

Could perception of HISD's merit-based bonus program get any worse? Yes, of course: Today, most of the district's principals will be getting bonuses, with Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra taking home a whopping $67,000 in extra pay. As you might imagine, the news isn't sitting well with teachers and staff members who already feel slighted by the bonus scheme. At least 250 principals — that's 83 percent of the principals in HISD, according to the Chronicle —...

We're sure HISD officials are feeling like they've had enough problems with the district's merit bonus system — but here's one more they're having to deal with: Because of a computer glitch, teachers were overpaid an average of $745 in bonuses. And now district officials are asking them to give the money back. Oops! The computer error led 99 part-time teachers and instructional personnel to be paid as though they were full-time employees, meaning they...

Big news in Houston this weekend: the Blessed Virgin Mary, that holy trickster known for showing up in all sorts of unexpected places, chose to make an appearance on a pizza pan in a local elementary school kitchen. It happened on Ash Wednesday when Guadalupe Rodriguez, a cafeteria worker at Pugh Elementary, was washing the pizza pan in question and noticed a stubborn stain. "On the third rinse I started watching it, trying to discover...

So the $14 million performance-based bonuses handed out this week to HISD teachers and staff aren't going over so well, apparently — some teachers are hinting that they'll call in sick next week to protest what they say are inequalities in the bonus system, and Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra had to apologize yesterday for calling teachers who got big bonuses "the cream of the crop."

An HISD bus driver is being hailed as a hero after she kept a gunman from boarding a bus carrying the Madison High School girls' basketball teams on Wednesday — by chunking her radio microphone at him. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

A 16 year old Westbury High School student was gunned down in a reportedly gang-related drive by shooting this morning, between 8:35 and 8:40 a.m. in the 5400 block of Dryad, adjacent to the Westbury campus, reports the Chronicle. The student was transported to Ben Taub Hospital, where "he died on arrival,'' said Evelyn Flouri, of the homicide division of the Houston Police Department. Police were not releasing the victim's name. Police told HISD superintendent...

HISD's Newcomer Charter School, designed to provide immigrants who must work full-time with an education, graduated it's first class on Sunday. Opened in January 2005 within Lee High School, the program has proved popular--currently there are about 200 names on waitlist to get in. Enrollment will expand after the school moves to it's permanent location, later this school year.

Photo: Flickr user ffhcd

HISD trustees voted 8-1 yesterday to shut down three of the district's worst-performing schools next summer if the schools don't improve test scores and keep students from dropping out. The three schools — Kashmere High, Sam Houston High and McReynolds Middle School — are three of the lowest-performing in the state; according to state accountability ratings released last week, Kashmere and Sam Houston were the only schools in Texas to earn "academically unacceptable" ratings for...

HISD teachers could get an average 8.6 percent pay raise — up 1 percent over previous proposals — if the school board approves a 4-cent property tax increase Thursday. The increase, which would be the largest in seven years for HISD teachers, was part of a presentation Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra made Monday.

Kids, if you're fans of questionable scrambled eggs, cafeteria-style biscuits, hash-brown sticks and those tiny cartons of milk, have we got some good news for you: All HISD students could get free school breakfasts every day under a proposal expected to be approved by the district's trustees next week. Breakfasts now cost 10 cents for students who qualify for reduced-priced meals and 90 cents for everyone else. Last year, nearly 70,000 HISD students ate breakfast at school, 14,000 of whom paid $1 million over the couse of the year for the meals. The others qualified for free meals because their families live below the poverty line.

Depending on a board vote later this week, HISD might crack down on bullying, cheating and classroom distractions — all the things that make school so memorable. A new code of student conduct under consideration by the HISD trustees would give teeth to the district's bullying rules, which now stipulates that students who bully or verbally abuse other students have reports sent home to their parents and might get detention. Under the new policy, principals...

In its quest for classroom innovation, HISD is finally asking the people who should be able to come up with the best ideas: The district is asking teachers to submit proposals for instructional strategies, and it's offering money as a reward.