VicMan

Forum Park is zoned to the Alief Independent School District.

* Best Elementary School (K-4)

* Klentzman Intermediate School (5-6)

* Olle Middle School (7-8)

For high school Alief ISD residents go to a lottery to have a high school randomly assigned. Possible choices include: Elsik, Hastings, or Taylor. Location within AISD does not affect the lottery.

With that said, stay away from Forum Park. It is a low income apartment complex community plagued with crime.

http://www.firehouse68.com/district.aspx is a wonderful explanation of Forum Park's woes.

Answer: Lee Brown was/is an idiot.

Did Lee Brown order the annexation? Who is responsible for deciding on which areas to annex? How did he play into the role?

I never understood the purpose of annexing that far out. Kingwood is beyond 1960, which, at the time of annexation, was still considered far out of town. Much of close-in NW Houston is not even COH, but unincorporated Harris County with MUDs. How can they not annex an area that is inside the Beltway 8 (Fairbanks N. Houston, Gessner, Windfern), yet they annex an area that is beyond 1960? I guess the close-in NW areas are not valuable enough to the city, but attractive to people who want low taxes, so the status quo remains. I guess Houston will always be a strange city with no zoning and asymmetrical annexations.

The COH does not want the areas that it did not annex. The COH wants the areas with a tax base. It annexed suburbs like Kingwood; now it is choosing to go after businesses.

I would never have guessed that a company would try Houston-Aberdeen!

I live in one of the apartments across Stella Link from Westwood. I'm pretty sure Pin Oak MS and Bellaire HS are options here. I think that was on the handout I got (can't think of what I did with it) but since I have no kids it has no bearing on me personally...

Pin Oak is an option since the apartment complex is zoned to Pershing (all Pershing MS-zoned people have Pin Oak as an option).

I do not recall the apartments having Bellaire as an option. The apartments are within Madison High School's attendance zone (seen here): http://dept.houstonisd.org/ab/schoolbounda...s/MadisonHS.pdf

Nowadays Shearn does not have much of an academic reputation. Most of the kids from Shearn come from the apartment complexes east of Stella Link instead of the homes west of Stella Link. HISD states that it plans to consolidate Shearn into Whidby Elementary School and sell the current Shearn location. EDIT: That plan was later canned

The neighborhood is zoned to Pershing MS (but since Pin Oak MS was built in 2003, kids have the option of going there).

Nowadays the section of the actual Westwood subdivision north of West Bellfort is zoned to Bellaire High School; the section south of West Bellfort is zoned to Westbury High School. The apartments east of Stella Link are zoned to Madison High School.

Westwood seems to be better now than it was in the 1990s.

All that being said, I am less disturbed by the bi-lingual signs than I am having to press ONE for ENGLISH.

As Snopes points out in this article, the scenario you describe has always been the case in the large cities in the United States: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/newimmigrants.asp

The 2005 article about Hurricane Katrina mentioned that many New Orleans evacuees were taken by police: http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_houston.html

"Confronting New Orleans

It seems like the trend of "suburbanizing" has occurred for a long time; in the 1950s many Houston middle and high schools "moved" to the suburbs.

As of 2000 non-Hispanic Whites are Houston's largest minority with 601,851 out of 1,953,631 (31%) http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/suprnbhd...61_downtown.htm

* Hispanics are 730,865 (37%)

* Non-Hispanic Blacks are 487,851 (25%)

* Non-Hispanic Asians are 102,706 (5%)

* Non-Hispanic Two or More Races are 23,830 (1%)

* Non-Hispanic Native Americans are 3,234 (Less than 1%)

* Non-Hispanic others are 2,614

* Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiians are 680

With people 18 or older, the total is 1,416,973

* Non-Hispanic Whites are 499,473 (35%)

* Hispanics are 476,451 (34%)

* Non-Hispanic Blacks are 340,032 (24%)

* Non-Hispanic Asians are 80,191 (6%)

* Non-Hispanic Two or More Races are 16,137 (1%)

* Non-Hispanic Native Americans are 2,485 (Less than 1%)

* Non-Hispanic others are 1,707

* Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiians are 497

With people under 18, the total is 536,658

* Hispanics are 254,414 (47%)

* Non-Hispanic Blacks are 147,819 (28%)

* Non-Hispanic Whites are 102,378 (19%)

* Non-Hispanic Asians are 22,515 (4%)

* Non-Hispanic Two or More Races are 7,693 (1%)

* Non-Hispanic Native Americans are 749 (Less than 1%)

* Non-Hispanic others are 907

* Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiians are 183

KatieDidIt, I made a thread asking about how METRO ought to serve Kingwood:

http://www.kingwoodunderground.com/topic.j...opicId=10197171

It seems like some people in Kingwood still have "burb" mentalities.

Douglas Britt from the Houston Chronicle wrote a blog entry about this thread and the relationship to the East End here: http://blogs.chron.com/eastend/2007/08/how..._in_the_la.html

Whatever happened to the Miller Junior High School (formed when Johnston moved to a new campus)?

I doubt that he will be fired - he already received his "suspended" sentence.

If he is fired, if he can pull this off, he should ALSO sue Quannel X.

The Smoking Gun has an article about the pamphlet: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...073ghetto1.html

Also, we should try to classify the Midtown homeless to see how to best deal with the issue.

We should determine what kinds of people are the "pestering" beggars and deal with them first in an appropriate manner. Private businesses can hire guards to shoo beggars. The municipal government should enforce its laws.

HISD is 8% White.

The White people in HISD are concentrated in the Lamar, Bellaire, and Westside feeder patterns and the feeder schools.

Hmmmm........interesting. "Last year of the 202,000 students in HISD, 30 percent were black and 60 percent Hispanic. " That leaves 10% OTHERS ? Where are all the white kids ? My guess, suburbs and private schools.

An HISD police officer created this "Ebonics" dictionary seen here: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/houstoned/20...sd_police_o.php

He found trouble with the district: http://www.chron.com/disp/commnts.mpl/head...ro/5097092.html

As of August 31 he has been suspended: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5097883.html

So, musicman, the issue is to determine where to build a center that can accomodate the mentally deficient homeless.

Which location is the best for such a center? Do you have an intersection in your head that would make a good location for a center?

Until the city agrees to enforce ordinances, should Midtown create a private security force that keeps the beggars away?

It should be authorized to place as many mentally deficient homeless into centers as legally possible. Instead of outright kidnapping/arresting mentally deficient homeless, is it legal for the force could use trickery (e.g. I'll give you the beer - just walk down a few blocks into this building and there is a whole cache of beer)?

I'm actually in favor of the city de-annexing large parcels of land way outside the loop, perhaps even allowing places like Kingwood or Clear Lake to form their own municipalities.

They would lose tax revenue but they would also not have to pretend to provide services for those places.

Clear Lake could stand on its own feet. Unfortunately, I don't think Kingwood will be able to stand on its own feet. Kingwood's businesses are concentrated in Humble.

I don't see why Houston would ever get rid of Clear Lake since it brings tax into the city.

If I was a council member, even if I wasn't representing Kingwood, I would still campaign for municipal ambulances and other services for Kingwood.

Clear Lake seems to be settled as a member of Houston. Kingwood needs a fire station with an ambulance (or two ambulances, or three), and along with the new library and community center, Kingwood should hopefully be "pacified" and become a distinct Houston community.

vic the ambulance problem has been a problem for yrs in kingwood, clear lake, etc. it has taken yrs for the city to even build fire stations. now that those are almost all in operation, now they need to have the proper apparatus, including ambulances.

guess you didn't see the expose' wayne dolcefino did earlier in the yr on this very subject.

I saw a Dolcefino expose, but it was concerning different areas of town. It mainly talked about a section of the northside of Houston in Aldine ISD.

Kingwood residents need to twist the city's arms a bit more to get a municipal ambulance, followed by a 2nd. Clear Lake needs its 2nd as well. Summerwood needs its ambulance.

In the Houston Chronicle article about the Woodlands self-government, the discussion veered towards Kingwood.

Check the four Kingwood fire stations, and you will see that none of them have municipal ambulances: http://www.houstontx.gov/fire/firestations/index.html

So, I said "What the COH needs to do is place an ambulance in at least one of the four Kingwood stations. Summerwood should also ask for its own municipal ambulance. Clear Lake should have a second ambulance."

And I got "Uh, it ain't gonna happen." as a reply.

I do not see how that attitude will carry one far in life. If one feels that the city is shortchanging him, he needs to raise awareness about it.

See: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/5094105.html for the discussion

I bet the friend also suffered from chronic hobobfobia.

He should have taken Zoloft.

BTW, Coog, please open a photobucket account and upload that pic to it. Something tells me that PhiladelphiaWeekly doesn't like having its bandwidth leeched. I could be wrong, but I would assume the former.

EDIT: Removed Zoloft image

“(The abortionist) delivered the baby’s body and arms - everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby’s head just inside the uterus. The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startled reaction, like a baby does when he thinks he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp.”

Isn't that a partial birth abortion? Isn't that action illegal? Also, CDeb, where did that come from? Who made the post?

I don't agree with partial birth abortions, but I wouldn't characterize most abortions as being like the one described above.