Alief Elsik High School
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Alief Elsik High School is a secondary school located in the Alief region of Houston, Texas.
Elsik is divided into two campuses: the main campus (12601 High Star in Houston, zip code 77072), and the Alief Elsik Ninth Grade Center (located at 6767 South Dairy Ashford, city of Houston, 77072), which serves ninth graders. Both campuses, which are in the Alief Independent School District, serve grades 9 through 12. The schools mascot is a Ram, and the school's basketball and football teams are well-known throughout Texas, as is the speech and debate team. The academic teams at Alief Elsik, Academic Decathlon, Star Academic Challenge, and various UIL organizations do participate in regional, state, and national competitions. Alief Hastings High School which is another high school sits adjacent to Elsik and is considered to be its sister school. The two schools enjoy a friendly rivalry that heats up each year in the final football game when they play each other in a shared football stadium.
All of Alief's High Schools, which includes Elsik, Hastings, and the "newer" Taylor High School now follow a 7 period schedule. On Monday through Friday there are 50 minute classes, with an hour and thirty minute lunch period (5th period). The one day with 40 minutes of class time is Wednesday, which is used to give teachers a meeting day after school. This has been in effect since the 2007-2008 school year began. Currently, Elsik has opened a night school, again, much like its fellow Alief high schools.
AP and Honors classes are graded on a 5.0 grading scale, while all other classes are graded on a 4.0 scale. Dual credit programs for English, Government, and Economics are also offered to seniors.
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[edit] History
Elsik opened in 1975 on the same campus as Hastings High School as what is now known as "Hastings South". While the two schools were divided by a large courtyard and bus run, there was frequent contact with students from the other campus, which made for very interesting times during sporting events between the two schools. Certain classes were shared by both Hastings and Elsik, such as Machine Shop classes, Art classes, and Accelerated Learning or "Honor Roll" classes.
A separate school building partially opened in January, 1982 one block away from Hastings. The original portions were known at the time as the "North House" and the "C Building." The remainder of the building, known as the "South House," opened in January, 1983. During the construction of the South House, temporary walls existed in the South Cafeteria and classroom wing, dividing the completed portion of the building from that portion still under construction. Even after the new building was complete, certain classes and sporting facilities were shared between the two schools.
In the late 1980's, a separate building was built bridging the two schools on land formerly used for Physical Education. This new building was almost like a separate school and included it's own cafeteria. It mainly filled the need for shared classes in one centralized, easily accessible location for students.
It is one of the largest high schools in the state. Its programs in biology and chemistry are considered the best in the Alief school district.
In 2007 John Hopkins University referred to Elsik as a "dropout factory" [1].
[edit] Feeder patterns
All Alief ISD elementary, intermediate, and middle schools feed into Elsik as high school placement in Alief ISD is determined by a lottery: the lottery can result in either Elsik, Hastings, or Taylor. If a student was selected by lottery to attend a high school different from the high school of a relative currently attending or graduated from, the student may opt to transfer to that respective school. Students may also complete an application for the district's magnet high school, Kerr.
The lottery system was originally developed as a method to create balanced demographics in Alief's high schools when it was found that there was no simple geographic method of dividing the school district that would be fair and equitable. As a result of the lottery, the demographics of Alief's high schools are virtually identical. However, it is common that neighbors who had attended the same elementary and middle schools must instead go to different high schools. Alief's relatively small geographic area permits the lottery in that anyone in the school district has reasonable access to the high schools. A similar lottery in a larger school districts would result in placing a much larger burden on students as they would have to travel farther.
Neighborhoods served by AISD include Alief, most of the New Chinatown, most of Westchase, Bellaire West, and most of Leawood.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Tony Styles (born Tyrone Thompson) (Houston radio personality, currently of 104.1 KRBE)
- Michael Burns, (Rooster Teeth Productions)
- Donovan Greer (NFL Football player)
- Warrick Holdman (NFL Football player)
- Jolanda "Jo" Jones (Olympic athlete, Survivor: Palau cast member)
- Beyonce Knowles (leader, actress, and music artist)
- Rashard Lewis (NBA basketball player)
- Gillette (recording artist, affiliate of pop/rap music group 20 Fingers)
- Rasika Mathur (stand-up comedian, cast member on MTV's Wild 'N Out)
- Chris Theofanidis (class of 1986), composer, faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory and Juilliard
[edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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