Parker Elementary School At 10626 Atwell Dr.

[LarryDallas]

For young kids growing up in Westbury is still a great thing. I would encourage any young family to move here and stay for a long time if they are going to purchase a home here. Very few of the homes have been demolished and ugly McMansions put up as have been in other well established parts of Houston. There is a really ugly house like this at the SE corner of Willowbend and Chimney Rock. It looks very much out of place and lacks mature trees in the front yard like most homes have here. For the most part the area looks like it did back in the 50s and 60s where single family homes are located. Once off of the main roads it is like the 1950s with just a handful of cars passing by your house each day. There is tons of bird activity and things stay very quiet at all times of the day.

I've been a resident for 10 years and the young family next door has a child in Parker (K-5) Elm. School. They always say good things about it and mention that the teacher to student ratio is very good. Johnston middle school is not as praised but it is better than most middle schools in this town with the exception of Pershing and Lanier. Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) went to Johnston as a child and donated a computer lab to the school a few years ago. That does not make the school great but just some trivia for you.

You will have to pick a private school or get your children into an HISD magnet school for high school. Westbury High is a disaster. Last year a student was killed in a driveby shooting on campus and a female student was raped in the school by an alum that returned a few years after graduation to do this. They reconstructed the school (around 2000) due to one of the main areas being laced with asbestos and beyond practical repair conditions. IMHO, they should have just closed the school and leveled the land to break up all of the gangs and criminal element that has built up there. The slum apartments on that street (Gasmer) will probably stand at least another 25-50 years until they are so far in disrepair they are condemed. The lack of planning and how they clumped so many unit there to have a very high population density has caused the crime and low quality of life. The people who planned those projects were TOTAL IMBECILES.