This is the 'Rice' of the Houston ISD. It's a small magnet high school of about 600 that draws students from across the district. Carnegie Vanguard is regularly placed in the top ten of all high schools in the United States. The students there have been involved in UIL sports for over a decade. Now the district is trying to take that away. These kids built their own baseball field on a small landlocked campus. They don't deserve this slap in the face.

Chronicle Article:
http://www.chron.com/news/education/arti...620082.php

Sign the petition:
https://www.change.org/p/tell-hisd-not-t...uil-sports


Full disclosure: Both of my kids are CVHS grads. And my son played baseball there.

My gifted magnet school in Florida (grades 2-12) had a similar issue. We had competitive middle school sports, but not at the high school level. If students wanted to participate in sports in high school, they had to play for their district school. Partially as a result of this policy, many students left the school after 8th grade and went to their district high school for 9-12. I seem to recall we had about 140 kids in my 8th grade class, but were down to 75 or so in the graduating class.

Loki, I just saw that article last night.

I'm a fan of Carnegie Vanguard from afar; we don't have kids, but I read about when it moved to its new campus in my neighborhood a few years ago, and it sounds really neat*. I think your description of it as the 'Rice' of Houston ISD is probably pretty apt.

I'm interested in what the real motivation is behind the change. All the article says is that other magnet schools don't offer sports teams, and "HISD is working to address inconsistencies related to non-comprehensive high school participation in University Interscholastic League sports".

My first thought was that there may be opportunity for abuse, with a magnet school able to go out and get kids from all over the district to populate its teams. But when the article mentioned that the school only offers 5 sports and that the petition was excited that 2 of the teams had made playoffs, I figured the problem isn't that the Carnegie Vanguard was out there dominating on the field.

Maybe it's that there are complaints from the other magnet schools -- those schools might want their own sports programs as well. I suppose it would be cheaper to level the field by cutting sports at Carnegie Vanguard rather than adding sports to the other magnets.

Separately, the article doesn't mention a baseball team. Did they lose it in the move to the new campus, or is it not governed by UIL (or did the article just fail to mention it)? I'm pretty sure the new campus has at least a baseball diamond.

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*So like a year ago we had an Uber driver who was from somewhere in the Middle East, and a gym teacher at Carnegie Vanguard. My wife alwalys likes to chat with Uber drivers and engaged him about himself. (Interesting guy, he was thinking of trying to get into freelance Arabic translation for oil companies.) Anyway, as we chatted we tried the few Arabic words we knew and had him teach us the proper pronunciation of his name; at some point he mentioned that the kids at school loved him speaking Arabic with them. I initially thought that was a joke/sarcasm, but he was serious. He said that kids there asked him to speak/teach Arabic, because as he put it they understood the commercial value of it with all the oil business in Houston. Fascinating.

(11-10-2015 12:14 PM)JOwl Wrote:  Loki, I just saw that article last night.

I'm a fan of Carnegie Vanguard from afar; we don't have kids, but I read about when it moved to its new campus in my neighborhood a few years ago, and it sounds really neat*. I think your description of it as the 'Rice' of Houston ISD is probably pretty apt.

I'm interested in what the real motivation is behind the change. All the article says is that other magnet schools don't offer sports teams, and "HISD is working to address inconsistencies related to non-comprehensive high school participation in University Interscholastic League sports".

My first thought was that there may be opportunity for abuse, with a magnet school able to go out and get kids from all over the district to populate its teams. But when the article mentioned that the school only offers 5 sports and that the petition was excited that 2 of the teams had made playoffs, I figured the problem isn't that the Carnegie Vanguard was out there dominating on the field.

Maybe it's that there are complaints from the other magnet schools -- those schools might want their own sports programs as well. I suppose it would be cheaper to level the field by cutting sports at Carnegie Vanguard rather than adding sports to the other magnets.

Separately, the article doesn't mention a baseball team. Did they lose it in the move to the new campus, or is it not governed by UIL (or did the article just fail to mention it)? I'm pretty sure the new campus has at least a baseball diamond.

---------
*So like a year ago we had an Uber driver who was from somewhere in the Middle East, and a gym teacher at Carnegie Vanguard. My wife alwalys likes to chat with Uber drivers and engaged him about himself. (Interesting guy, he was thinking of trying to get into freelance Arabic translation for oil companies.) Anyway, as we chatted we tried the few Arabic words we knew and had him teach us the proper pronunciation of his name; at some point he mentioned that the kids at school loved him speaking Arabic with them. I initially thought that was a joke/sarcasm, but he was serious. He said that kids there asked him to speak/teach Arabic, because as he put it they understood the commercial value of it with all the oil business in Houston. Fascinating.

Yes, Carnegie does have baseball. We built a new field on the new campus. It doesn't really fit but is good enough for infield work. The parking garage in left field is only about 180 ft away. We parents and the team dismantled the old cages and other things at the old campus and moved them to the new. The baseball team is usually not competitive in district. Bellaire and Westside are huge schools with top end programs. The Rhinos often get run-ruled in those games. But they compete decently with the other inner-city schools. If CVHS didn't have a baseball team few of these kids would make the team at their zoned schools.

From conversations with some people off the record it sounds like they want to kill Carnegie so that the other district-wide schools don't set up as sports magnets by recruiting. There is a fear that one of them will attempt this if they get sports. The entry requirements at Carnegie are such that they can't/won't do that.

I guess that could be a reasonable concern. But seems like it makes more sense to wait until after that starts happening to kill the sports programs at all the magnet schools.

(11-10-2015 09:11 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  This is the 'Rice' of the Houston ISD. It's a small magnet high school of about 600 that draws students from across the district. Carnegie Vanguard is regularly placed in the top ten of all high schools in the United States. The students there have been involved in UIL sports for over a decade. Now the district is trying to take that away. These kids built their own baseball field on a small landlocked campus. They don't deserve this slap in the face.

Chronicle Article:
http://www.chron.com/news/education/arti...620082.php

Sign the petition:
https://www.change.org/p/tell-hisd-not-t...uil-sports


Full disclosure: Both of my kids are CVHS grads. And my son played baseball there.

HISD's approach here is very similar to Rice's approach to our not very competitive (non scholarship) men's swimming program that existed until (another "visionary") AD decided that we should fire a dedicated (and currently swimming HC and an AP teacher at Bellaire HS) coach in 1998-1999. Kill it! No transparency with that decision, only one or two athletes transferred and Rice is poorer for not having our circa 1961-1964 hapless NYMets here as training partners for our strong mid-major women's team we have using our new Olympic pool (inadequate facilities,the old Rice pool was the reason the AD stated for killing the program!)