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Westside High School is a secondary school in Houston, Texas, United States. It serves grades 9 through 12 and is part of the Houston Independent School District. The school is located at 14201 Briar Forest in Houston, Texas, in the 77077 zip code. Westside High School is outside of Beltway 8, east of State Highway 6, inside State Highway 99 (Grand Parkway), and south of Interstate 10 (Katy Freeway) in the Briar Forest area. Westside is HISD's Magnet School for Integrated Technology. The program allows students to look at technology from one of five aspects: Fine Arts, Business, Media Relations, Applied Science/Health Science, and Computing Sciences. During the first year, all Magnet students take a technology survey course, a modular course that introduces them to the five strands of the program. The second year, students are asked to choose one of the five strands on which to focus their elective courses. Westside High School is also known for its academic programs, ranking #463, #196, #230, #245, and #1,958th in ''Newsweek'' magazine's 2005, 2006 2007, 2008, and 2013〔(America's Top Public High Schools )〕 lists, respectively, of the top 2,000 high schools in the United States. Among the school's faculty is the 2005 Houston Independent School District Secondary Teacher of the Year, Nobuo Cedric French. Many students in other parts of Houston ISD transfer to Westside to escape home schools that do not have a good academic performance, causing the attendance figures of those schools to suffer. Westside athletics compete as the Westside Wolves, and the school's mascot is Westley the Wolf. ==History== Westside opened in 2000 as a brand-new fifty-million-dollar building, taking about 1,000 students from Lee High School which was experiencing overcrowding.〔Viadero, Debra. "(Personal Touches )." ''Education Week''. June 16, 2004. Retrieved April 11, 2009.〕 Westside planned to compete with Bellaire and Lamar high schools in Houston ISD for "premier" status. It initially had a reputation as a school that could attract private school students to a public school.〔Spivak, Todd. "(The Also-Rans )." ''Houston Press''. March 2, 2006. Retrieved April 20, 2009.〕 When Westside opened, residents of the Lee attendance boundary were given the option to attend Westside instead of Lee, with no free transportation provided.〔"(Westside and Lee HS Boundaries )." Houston Independent School District. October 3, 2000. Retrieved on May 7, 2009.〕 The school at first had 1,772 students, including 340 students who, in the previous school year, were not enrolled in HISD.〔Hung, Melissa. "Going Public." ''Houston Press''. Thursday September 28, 2000. p. (1 ). Retrieved on April 2, 2014.〕 Westside is so-named because it is located in western Houston.〔"(School Histories: the Stories Behind the Names )." Houston Independent School District. Retrieved September 24, 2008.〕 On June 22, 2005, a prank attack involving Molotov cocktails thrown at the building in the middle of the night resulted in minor damage. One classroom sustained a broken window and fire damage. As it was during summer break, no school activities were interrupted. By March 2006, Westside had posted slightly lower SAT and graduation rates than Lamar and Bellaire. In a March 2006 ''Houston Press'' article, Dr. Robert Sanborn, the president and CEO of the organization Children at Risk, said that Westside's "slow progress", as paraphrased by the article's author Todd Spivak, was more disappointing than Lamar and Bellaire's dropout rates.〔 According to the October 2006 "For Your Information" newsletter, Westside was one of four high schools that took the most refugees from Hurricane Katrina. At about 2:30 pm on April 10, 2008, 17-year-old Vincent Agwuoke, scheduled to graduate from Westside that June after almost four years, entered the deep end of a school pool during a physics class. A news article stated that students could not see him, apparently unable to swim, as his dark clothing blended with the painted lane. Agwuoke's body was taken out of the water and emergency crews performed CPR. He was taken to Hermann Memorial City Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.〔Desel, Jeremy, Michelle Homer, and Carleton Cole. "(Westside student drowns in school pool )." ''KHOU-TV''. Friday April 11, 2008. Retrieved June 14, 2009.〕〔Leahy, Jennifer, Peggy O'Hare, and Jennifer Latson. "(HISD: High school student pulled from pool, dies at hospital )." ''Houston Chronicle''. April 11, 2008. Retrieved June 14, 2009.〕〔"(Student dies after being pulled from pool )." ''KTRK-TV''. Friday April 11, 2008. Retrieved June 14, 2009.〕 In fall of the 2008–2009 school year, a petroleum academy by the name of Westside Engineering and Geosciences Academy was opened at Westside High School. With a modern engineering laboratory class, it is funded by the IPAA and holds segregated classes solely for the 50 students allowed in this prestigious program each year.〔http://www.houstonisd.org/portal/site/HISDArchives/menuitem.8e2b79381bf69d9b00e45e10e041f76a/?vgnextoid=c01507e3e2b0c110VgnVCM10000028147fa6RCRD&vgnextchannel=e1b9393d9b623110VgnVCM10000028147fa6RCRD〕 In 2007, 6% of high school-aged children zoned to Westside chose to attend alternative Houston ISD schools.〔Radcliffe, Jennifer. "(Critics: In HISD, too many don't go where zoned / Black leaders argue bond has no fix to get kids back to schools in their neighborhoods )." ''Houston Chronicle''. Sunday October 14, 2007. B1 MetFront.〕 In 2009, when Barack Obama made a televised speech to American students, about 300 students (10% of the student body) were opted out of watching the speech. Ericka Mellon of the ''Houston Chronicle'' said that of the HISD schools, Westside "appeared to draw one of the largest protests from parents."〔"(Obama speech hit home for some, not for others )." ''Houston Chronicle''. Tuesday September 8, 2009. Retrieved September 8, 2011.〕 In 2010, Richard Connelly of the ''Houston Press'' said that Westside became "something of a success story for HISD."〔Connelly, Richard. "(Latest Principal Shifts In HISD Bring Grumbling )." ''Houston Chronicle''. January 27, 2010. Retrieved February 5, 2011.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Westside High School (Houston, Texas)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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