HISD opens with 2 new high schools

By MELANIE MARKLEY

August 17, 2000 Web posted at: 4:09 PM EDT (2009 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (The Houston Chronicle) -- On the first day of school, in the canary yellow wing of the spacious new Chavez High, Jonathan Cisneros was sizing up the $50 million facility in his eastside neighborhood.

"It's cool being in a new school," he said.

An hour's drive away, on the far side of the Houston school district, 18-year-old Brooke Tangney was thinking about her senior year at the new state-of-the-art Westside High.

"It's good to be the first graduating class," she said.

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Westside, at 14201 Briarforest, and Chavez, at 8501 Howard, were among the 300 schools in the Houston Independent School District that started the 2000-2001 school year Wednesday. At day's end, HISD officials said 177,142 students showed up the first day of classes, slightly below last year's 177,550. The district anticipates a peak enrollment in October of 210,000, similar to last year's figure.

The two new high schools, located in communities that had long anticipated their openings, represent the district's new building surge.

Both schools have all the amenities -- swimming pools, gymnasiums, theaters, computer and science labs, food courts and a large commons area for students to gather.

Both are divided into five "houses" with color-coded hallways, each of which can hold 500 students. The houses are separated by grade level, with two occupied by ninth-graders.

Both schools, too, have the same mascots, but with a different twist. It's the Westside Wolves and at Chavez, with a higher population of Hispanic students, it's the Lobos.

At Westside, Tangney's mother, Candy Tangney, said her neighborhood has been waiting 30 years for the new high school.

The red brick school is in an area of growing residential tracts and business malls.

"It's amazing for me to actually see the children here," Candy Tangney said. "I'm glad we finally have a school."

Her daughter could have completed her senior year at Lee High School, which is about a 30-minute drive from home. But she opted for Westside, a 10-minute drive, because her friends chose to go there. Beside, she said, Lee has done away with football and most of the other sports.

Tangney does worry, though, that the senior class at Westside will be more academically competitive than it was at Lee.

Only about 200 seniors chose to attend Westside the first year, so only 20 students will make the top 10 percent and be guaranteed admission to the state's best universities. With some of Westside's new students coming from private schools, Tangney said it will be harder to make the cut.

"My goal is getting in the top 10 percent so I can go to the University of Texas," she said.

Westside, which is projected to have about 1,800 students when enrollment peaks in October, had 1,118 on the first day of school Wednesday.

The school was built to relieve crowding at Lee, which had 3,105 students last year.

On the east side, Chavez, in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, will help ease crowding at Milby High, which last year was crammed with 3,312 students.

Chavez, also projected to have 1,800 students this year, opened its doors to 1,163 on Wednesday. No seniors are attending Chavez this year. The school was named after the late Cesar Estrada Chavez, a union activist who fought for the rights of migrant farmers.

Lucia Meza, a sophomore at Chavez, attended Milby last year and admits she wasn't thrilled about leaving. But Chavez is bigger, newer and nicer, she said. She's looking forward to the coming year.

"I want to get to know the school," she said, "get into clubs, things like that."

Meza, like many of the students, has heard of the concerns raised by a local environmental group that the school may be hazardous because of its proximity to petrochemical plants.

Meza said the students don't worry about that. "Most of the kids going here live in this area," she said. "The smells? We are used to the smells."

Juan Parras, with Unidos Contra Environmental Racism, said he has contacted the Environmental Protection Agency with his concerns about the air quality and the soil quality at the school.

"These communities are being overburdened with chemicals and pollution," he said. "Why do you want to build another school now even closer to the polluting industry instead of taking us away from the problem?"

HISD officials said independent studies have found that the air and soil are safe, but Parras argues that the studies are based on old data.

EPA spokesman Dave Bary said the agency has agreed to take a look at the concerns that Parras raised.

HISD spokesman Terry Abbott downplayed the issue, saying that 37 other schools are within a three-mile radius of Chavez.

"If there is danger there, give me the name of even one student who has somehow been harmed by that at any of those other 37 schools," he said. "They can't do that because there aren't any."

Chavez Principal Margaret Acosta said the environmental concerns are not coming from the community, and she said many people are annoyed by the outside group's involvement.

"This community supports Chavez High School," she said. "This community has waited close to 15 years for this high school."

For the students Wednesday, the biggest concern was getting scheduling snafus straightened out and learning how to get from one class to the next.

Cisneros, for one, admitted that it was no easy task.

"It's confusing, knowing where to go, finding classes," he said with a shrug. "But I'll get used to it."

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