Stratford High School (Houston, Texas)

Stratford High School is a secondary school in Houston, Texas, United States. The school is one of four high schools in the Spring Branch Independent School District (SBISD), the district's westernmost secondary school (serving grades 9 through 12). It is considered part of the Memorial district of the city.

Stratford High School serves several neighborhoods, including Westchester, Sherwood Oaks, Nottingham Forest, Nottingham West, Wilchester, Gaywood, Wilchester West, Yorkshire, Memorial Townhomes, Village on Memorial Townhomes, Memorial Way, Rustling Pines, Memorial Plaza, and the SBISD portions of Thornwood and Ashford Forest. In addition, several students from the surrounding area opt to transfer in to Stratford from the areas surrounding Fleetwood and the Parkway neighborhoods along local arterial road Eldridge Parkway. In 2005, Newsweek named Stratford one of the highest-ranked schools in the United States. In 2006, the school was ranked as 187th in the U.S. by Newsweek.^[2]

Stratford provides courses in the traditional academic subjects, as well as several foreign languages, technology, vocational education, athletics, and fine arts. Several different Advanced Placement (AP) courses are offered at Stratford.

In keeping with the theme of its mascot, Stratford's student newspaper is The Oracle while its yearbook is Mnemosyne.

Feeder patterns

Elementary schools that feed into Stratford include^[3]:

• Meadow Wood
• Nottingham
• Thornwood
• Wilchester
• Rummel Creek (partial)
• Sherwood (partial)
• Spring Woods

Middle schools that feed into Stratford include:

• Spring Forest Middle School
• Memorial Middle School (partial)

Feeding from private schools

Students of some private schools, such as John Paul II School, continue to Stratford.^[4]

History

Stratford first opened in the 1973-1974 school year though classes were held at Westchester High School until the students moved to the new Stratford campus in March 1974. It was built to relieve the overflow of students at the nearby Westchester High School. The overflow had been caused by of the rapid development of subdivisions like Yorkshire, Wilchester, and Nottingham. The school district quickly decided to open a new school when the student population at Westchester nearly tripled to 4,000. Prior to the opening of the Stratford facility, Stratford's students were housed in temporary buildings on the Westchester campus. The opening of Stratford was not completed on schedule due to construction delays, causing students to continue to languish in cramped quarters. The 1974 Freshman Class graduated in 1977 as the first four class of the school. The first class to graduate from Stratford was the 1975 Class.

In the 1980s, the population of Spring Branch Independent School District fell drastically. This was attributed to jobs lost to the oil bust that affected the Houston area. Many Houston families left or moved out of the upper, middle-class area, causing an underutilization of campus space. The school district voted to close four schools: Spring Branch High School, Westchester High School and two junior highs. Students from both high schools were sent to Memorial High School with most Westchester students going to Stratford. (Westchester students who attended Memorial Junior High were given the choice of attending either Memorial or Stratford.) Interestingly, students in the first mixed Stratford/Westchester graduating class of 1986 were given the choice of wearing their former Westchester High School color orange gown at graduation. Stratford, for many years, had a permanent display case dedicated to memorabilia from Westchester High School. In recent history, Stratford has maintained its enrollment at around 2000 students. Stratford also has improved its athletics programs recently, including a number of teams that are ranked at the state level and regularly advance to playoff rounds.

Stratford was named a 1983-84 National Blue Ribbon School.^[5]

In 2004, the building which housed Stratford was found to have massive structural problems which required immediate attention. The Stratford campus was closed, and the students were moved to the Westchester Academy for International Studies while repairs went on at the Stratford campus. This move posed a challenge because the Westchester facility could no longer handle a student body as large as Stratford's. Many noted the irony of the temporary move, noting that when Westchester was closed, many Westchester students were sent to Stratford, and now the situation had reversed itself. Stratford moved back into its regular facility in 2005.

In the 2006-2007 football season, the Spartans won the district title.^[6]

In February 2008 the UIL announced that Stratford would be realigned to Class 4A, District 23 effective in the 2008-2009 school year. The new alignment would affect not only football, but all UIL activities. The schools in the new district stretched from Richmond to Bay City and El Campo. Spring Branch ISD appealed the realignment, citing outrage at the loss of a 34-year long rivalry with Memorial High School, as well as concern that Stratford would have the most travel of any Houston-area school. In the appeal hearing, the UIL ruled that Stratford would be allowed to remain in Class 5A, and the Spartans were assigned to District 18, where they will face the three other SBISD schools (including Memorial), three high schools from Alief ISD, and private school Strake Jesuit.

Athletics

Stratford competes athletically with other schools in the sports of baseball, basketball, cross country running, diving, football, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track & field and volleyball.^[1] Stratford has a long-standing rivalry with fellow SBISD high school Memorial High School.^[7]

In 1978, the Stratford Spartans won the 4-A Texas State Championship with a perfect record of 15-0. They also were named the High School National Champion by many publications.

Realignment

The University Interscholastic League’s biennial reclassification and realignment was unveiled on Monday February 1, 2010. As part of the realignment, Stratford will move to a 4A classification along with two other SBISD schools, Northbrook and Spring Woods.

Northbrook, Spring Woods and Stratford will join 17-4A with Brenham, Magnolia, Magnolia West, Montgomery and Waller. All changes will take effect starting in the 2010 football season.

Notable alumni

Country Music singer Clint Black attended Stratford. ^[8] Stand-up comedian Bill Hicks attended Stratford.^[9] Stanford quarterback, Andrew Luck, was valedictorian of the 2008 class at Stratford.^[10] Former New England Patriots running back and current ESPN sports commentator, Craig James, was a member of the 1978 Class 4A State Champion Spartan football team.^[11] Author, marketing executive, and United Flight 93 September 11, 2001 victim, Lauren Grandcolas (née Catuzzi) was a graduate of Stratford.^[12][13] Marc Ostrofsky ('79) is a New York Times Bestselling Author of "Get Rich Click!", Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the sale of Business.com, and has appeared on CNN, ABC's 20/20 and several times on ABC's "The View".^{[14][15][16][17]} Notable Houston attorney Ian Goldberg graduated from Stratford in 2004.

References

External links

• Stratford High School