VicMan

Simmons got a $100,000 settlement https://www.click2houston.com/news/fired-furr-hs-principal-gets-100k-settlement-from-hisd

On 9/1/2018 at 9:29 PM, SG0403327 said:

Just curious.  My husband's mother Cherie Jacqueline Turner attended Lanier Junior High School in Spring 1946 - Spring 1949.  I wonder if anyone that attended during those years might remember her.  She was my husband's mother and she died in 1966.  I have been researching her childhood to make memories for my husband and his sisters, but am having a hard time finding anything about her high school years.  I do know she did not graduate, because she got married in April of 1950, her senior year.  It would be fun to find someone that knew her that could maybe tell a story about her.  Anyone?  

The best bet is to go to the school and ask to see old yearbooks, then checking who attended at the same time, and using zabasearch or people searches to find them. People who were aged 12 in 1946 were born around 1934, making them around 84 years of age right now.

Simmons was fired back in June - The board voted 5-1 in favor of getting rid of her.

She's suing on grounds of age and race. She is also asking for an appeal from the TEA, although HISD is not obliged by state law to follow the recommendations from the TEA hearing examiner https://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Fired-Furr-High-School-principal-fighting-13207168.php

On 12/6/2017 at 0:45 AM, Blue Dogs said:

 

VicMan: Any new developments on Simmons' case ?

 

HISD is stupid enough to do this!

There is now https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/bertie-simmons-houston-hisd-principal-furr-high-12934326.php

HISD concluded that some administrators (unnamed, and without providing evidence) had inflated students' grades. It didn't directly say Simmons did it, and it didn't provide any statement about her employment, but the Chron thinks it's a sign they want to fully terminate her.

4 hours ago, htownbro said:

Yes build a 40 plus floor housing high rise with units for singles, couples and families on different floors.  Family units occupy lower floors, singles and couples occupy higher floors.  

That sounds like a cool idea! A bit ambitious since the old Favrot tower was only 13 stories tall. Also if it's in the Pershing attendance zone TMC might have to have a talk with area homeowner associations so the building doesn't infringe too much on the neighborhood.

They could put more 2 and 3 bedroom units in the lower floors and more 1 bedroom units on upper floors. I heard from a poster on city-data that the old Favrot had a higher proportion of nursing students from Texas Woman's University and Baylor College of medicine compared to employees. Under your arrangement the lower floors could be a mix of families and unrelated nursing students who have roommates.

Previously the Texas Medical Center had the Favrot Apartments, http://web.archive.org/web/20100624063945/http://www.texmedctr.tmc.edu/root/en/TMCServices/Housing/Parking+at+Favrot.htm but they closed in 2012 http://web.archive.org/web/20120729225051/http://texasmedicalcenter.org/housing/ and were demo'ed in 2014. https://www.emporis.com/buildings/203699/laurence-h-favrot-tower-apartments-houston-tx-usa

I understand that the TMC probably wants/wanted a building of higher utility at 6540 Bellows. Also, I never lived there nor knew anybody who did, so I don't know what the housing quality/atmosphere was like. However I like the idea of the TMC building a new tower for employee housing. Perhaps some people want to be very close to work, or have the institution take care of their housing. Therefore I wonder if the TMC could build a new housing tower.

A few things:

• If possible have it be placed in the Pershing Middle School zone - Favrot was zoned to Cullen Middle, which wasn't attractive. Yes, people building institutional housing need to take school zoning into account. Florida State University's report on its former graduate school housing compound, Alumni Village, described the statuses of the schools that served that complex. http://its.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/imported/storage/original/application/a336fded2ae81ac62d958743b870d2c7.pdf (see PDF pages 154 and 155)
• Having a playground and/or a rooftop/similar swimming pool would make it more attractive to families.
• I wonder how the complex could attract singles and childless couples; I wouldn't suggest going whole Michael Pollack Colonial Park Apartments style, but taking cues from swanky Midtown/Montrose complexes could help.
• Since the Medical Center Kroger was demo'ed, it would be good to have ground floor and/or second floor space for a new supermarket and/or an attached parking garage with guest spaces. That way things would be super-convenient for tenants.

As they say, River Oaks Boulevard has two country clubs, and St. John's in fact isn't country club #2

2 hours ago, UtterlyUrban said:

Taking a walk through downtown these days shows countless “newspaper/alt paper distribution kiosks” that have long ago been abandoned.  The city needs to rip them out and recycle the steel.  As of now, they are simply industrial flotsam and raise potential security issues.

 

 

Aren't those now used by Greensheet and Spanish language papers?

5 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

 

Indeed, but the key phrase is "they weren't willing to do this with the resources they had." Other newspapers managed to overcome the obstacles imposed by the SCOTUS ruling, so why couldn't the Chronicle muster the institutional will to do so? It's pretty clear that the window for action has most likely closed, as newspaper revenues have sharply declined in the intervening years since the ruling.

The wording in the article itself was:

Quote

Read said. “When it was determined that identifying and blocking disallowed content was not going to be possible with the resources available for the task, we updated the notice in the “About Archives” resource box on the page to indicate this. "

... so I suspect newspaper revenues were already getting tighter and the company/parent company determined it would cost too much money.

13 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

 

Translation: the Chronicle would prefer to let the memory of the Post remain dormant, so as not to invite unflattering comparisons with the Chronicle. I subscribed to both the Post and the Chron for years, and there was no question in my mind that the Post was the better paper. It's depressing to contemplate that with each passing year, there are fewer and fewer people around who remember when Houston was actually a two-newspaper town, and was the better for it. 

 

As to Lomax, I defy anyone to read this piece and tell me honestly that he is not a truly gifted writer. Lumping him in with all of the other web-content aggregators who like to claim the title of journalist does him a great disservice, IMO:

 

Of Unknown Origin

The legal issues are explained here: http://blog.chron.com/aboutchron/2005/07/houston-post-archives-permanently-unavailable-online-maybe-likely-really/

They did put Post articles online, but yanked them after New York Times Co. v. Tasini was decided by SCOTUS in 2001; it held that articles written by freelance journalists can't be licensed for online databases by newspapers. The Chron said they wanted to sift through articles to determine which ones were allowable and which ones weren't, but decided they weren't willing to do this with the resources they had.

11 hours ago, IronTiger said:

 

The "driving down Katy Freeway" was supposed to be a slight exaggeration of what his articles often contain, and as for the latter complaint, the Texas Monthly snippets can be found on Google Books (search any of the quotes on that, you'll hit multiple 1983 volumes of Texas Monthly). It's okay to pull out these sorts of things, after all, there are whole blogs composed of newspaper clippings and others, and I know that I often use old ads and articles for discussion pieces in the Historic Houston section, but I don't pass myself off as a journalist while taking half of the content wholesale. (On the outside chance that you are John Nova Lomax under a screen name, I never said your content wasn't occasionally interesting).

I'm not Lomax, but I did enjoy his work. I particularly liked the derivative article "Seoul of Houston".

Yes, Texas Monthly archives are available online, but many publications are not. Houston Chronicle articles before 1985 are not online, and Houston Post articles are not available online at all (due to legal issues).

On 12/10/2017 at 6:40 AM, IronTiger said:

One of the things not covered in the weeping over Houston Press was how hacky the writing had become. John Nova Lomax stands out, half of his stuff is just stolen content ("hey, let me make commentary on this old article from 1982 I found") and the other half is just fluff ("hey, I'm going to drive down Katy Freeway, write an article, and make it sound really profound and unique to Houston").*

 

^{* A slight exaggeration, but not that far off. The articles below show what I'm talking about.}

http://swamplot.com/one-of-houstons-keenest-witted-local-explorers-once-rated-houstons-top-convenience-stores-and-heres-what-became-of-them/2014-12-05/

https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2013/8/7/houston-by-night-1983-style-august-2013

^{www.houstonpress.com/news/the-sole-of-houston-6545147}

^{www.houstonpress.com/music/houston-radio-still-sucks-6543898}

Actually he walked down the whole stretch of Westheimer. A bit different from driving.

While we instinctively know what he observes, he got it all in print. That means it's in the record, and his commentary can be cited in online references about Houston.

As for the "stolen content" (writing an article on an old article) that's a good thing because (without the retrospect article) a lot of these things are only in microfilms and not online.

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2017/11/03/houston-press-ends-print-product-cuts-staff

Houston Press cut almost all of its jobs, as it is now freelance-reliant, and it's going online only.

I will miss the old Houston Press. - It was fun going into a cafe and just picking up a free copy. Hopefully somebody else fills the void?

The students seem to favor Simmons http://cw39.com/2017/10/17/furr-high-school-students-stage-a-walk-out-to-protest-banning-their-83-year-old-principal/

Are there any pictures out there of the Oshman mural and the old Oshman buildings?

In that case they reopened it in 2015! Holy cow! http://aacc-houston.org/new-australian-consulate-general-in-houston/

Now we just need the Netherlands and Switzerland back. Nigeria would be a good one too.

13 hours ago, brucesw said:

Hadn't ever thought about Westbury Square.  Is there room for an 85,000 sf store and parking lot?
 

They could try to make a two story store. Many grocery stores in East Asia use a two story format.

On 2/19/2009 at 4:43 AM, rsb320 said:

The Australian consulate used to be in the Post Oak Towers, but it looks like they're on Feagan now.

It's only an honorary consulate - no actual consul general. I think the original consulate general closed in the 1990s.

I'd like to see HEB actually design the store to look like Westbury Square - give it the Italian style, make the storefront look like the old development. If it became a part of a strip center (with other major store) why not rename it "Westbury Square"?

The Houston Press published a series of articles about the suspension of Bertie Simmons, principal of Furr High School on Houston's east side (serves the Songwood, Northshore, Pleasantville, Clinton Park, and Jacinto City areas).

• Furr High School Principal Sent Home | Houston Press
• As Second Probe Launched into Principal Bertie Simmons, Supporters Protest at Board Meeting | Houston Press

As did the Chron: Houston ISD investigating new allegations against Furr principal - Houston Chronicle and Houston public media: Without Its Storied Principal, What’s The Future Of Furr High? – Houston Public Media

TLDR:

• Simmons went out of retirement to be principal of Furr since 2000 and is known for turning around the school (she took students to New York City to prove 9/11 happened as a reward for them being good for the school year)
• Simmons wanted to continue using school uniforms after Harvey to deter gangs, but HISD admins wanted to suspend uniforms because kids' clothing was damaged by the storm
• HISD admins accused Simmons of threatening tickets (court action) over uniform non-compliance and argued that it would expose illegal immigrant parents to court scrutiny, while Simmons stated she'd never suspend a student for uniform non-compliance
• HISD admins accused Simmons of threatening students w/ a bat, while her supporters and students say it's a commonly understood joke - students once presented a bat as a gift to the principals
• Simmons's lawyers accused HISD of trying to take $10 million in grants meant for Furr and to give it to other schools - Simmons says the grant organizer (Steve Job's widow) only intended the money for Furr and wouldn't give it if the money didn't go where it was supposed to go
• Simmons's lawyer accused HISD of trying to replace her (older white woman) with a non-white, younger principal

15 hours ago, JLWM8609 said:

They usually prefer private schools and magnet schools.

It reminds me of "Dilemma of the Black Middle Class," an Op-Ed from Sheryl Cashin about one of the problems with many African-American wealthier areas: their schools aren't as good as comparable areas in white communities: https://web.archive.org/web/20080307065330/http://www.americancity.org/article.php?id_article=135 - Her thesis is that an overall "external prejudice against black neighborhoods" means black middle and upper class neighborhoods are at a disadvantage, and on the school front one of the issues was that the schools serving black middle and upper class communities larger numbers of poor children (something that Lockhart has). The other aspects that such black neighborhoods often faced were higher crime rates and a lack of high-end retail.

It would be great to see Lockhart Elementary become a neighborhood and/or magnet school on par with Roberts, River Oaks, Twain, Horn, etc. but it may be an uphill battle. I would also like to see the likes of Ruggles and Local Foods to set up shop near Riverside Terrace.

And here is the attendance map: http://www.kleinisd.net/users/0063/docs/Zoning/Approved HS Zones.pdf

As a result of the shuffling a sliver of area was rezoned from Klein Forest to Klein High. I wonder if their property values will go up?

From my understanding Spring High School and the three middle schools in its territory are more highly ranked than the Westfield and DeKaney area schools. If so, then it looks like the 2021 plans are going to damage property values in Spring.

Why doesn't Spring ISD just build HS#4 in Spring?

And Jollibee. I had the pleasure of trying some when I was last in H-town.

I wonder if there will be an impetus to improve Lockhart Elementary as Riverside Terrace gentrifies.

http://www.houstonisd.org/cms/lib2/TX01001591/Centricity/domain/32468/boundarymaps/Lockhart_ES.pdf is the attendance boundary.

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/TX/schools/2364002521/school.aspx states that free and reduced lunch students make up 70% of the enrollment. Its academic performance seems to have declined dramatically from 2009 to 2016; its student body merged with that of Turner Elementary in 2011. I wonder where the wealthier black parents prefer to send their children.