Kashmere High School is a secondary school in Houston, Texas that serves grades 9 through 12; it is a part of the Houston Independent School District. It is located in the Trinity Gardens neighborhood, and its namesake is the nearby Kashmere Gardens neighborhood.
Kashmere contains the Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a Houston ISD magnet school program.
History
Kashmere High School opened in 1957 at Hirsch Road at Kelly Street. In 1968 Kashmere moved to a new campus at 6900 Wileyvale Road and the Hirsch Kelley campus became Key Middle School.
In 2013 the North Forest Independent School District was annexed into HISD. Portions, including Settegast, were rezoned from North Forest High School (the only remaining comprehensive high school in NFISD) to Kashmere.
By 2016 Kashmere underwent remodeling. The total cost was $19,000,000. The remodeled campus opened in 2018.
The school got failing grades in state accountability measures in the period 2013-2016, and so the Texas Education Agency appointed Doris Delaney as the conservator of Kashmere High. In 2019 the school got a passing score and it got failing scores in 2022.
Administration
From about 2008 until 2016 the school had four principals and one interim principal.
HISD superintendent Abelardo Saavedra attempted to demote one principal, but the board of education reversed his decision. Saavedra's successor, Terry Grier, fired that principal.
In 2010 HISD accused principal Mable Caleb of stealing school property and facilitating academic dishonesty, and the board voted to fire her. However an administrative law judge ruled in 2014 that Caleb was not guilty of the charges. Caleb sued HISD, and in 2016 the two parties agreed to a settlement in which she received $550,000.
By 2016 Nancy Blackwell was the principal. She had previous experience with low income teaching environments in the Aldine Independent School District. The principal prior to Blackwell was relatively new to being a principal, as was Blackwell herself, although Blackwell had previous experience as an administrator. Circa 2018 Reginald "Reggie" Bush began his principalship.
Curriculum
students may take courses with Houston Community College (HCC) as part of a partnership.
Academic performance
Beginning in 2002 and continuing as of 2016 Kashmere had repeated issues with academic performance. From the period 2005 to 2015 members of the surrounding community protested reoccurring plans to close Kashmere stemming from its low performance. In 2016 HISD academic officer Grenita Lathan stated that issues at the elementary school and middle schools which feed into Kashmere contribute to the academic issues at the high school. Margaret Downing of the Houston Press wrote that the school has had a "lasting stigma" due to its poor academic performance.
Kashmere, with Jack Yates High School and Sam Houston High School, were the three high schools in Houston ISD which were consistently low-performing in test scores from 2001 to 2004. Because of this problem, there were movements to have the state or another organization take over the schools for a period so the test scores will be at acceptable levels. While Yates got an acceptable rating in 2005, Sam Houston and Kashmere continued to get unacceptable ratings. In August 2006 the school learned that it again was getting an unacceptable rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA). When the Houston ISD administration threatened closure if another "unacceptable" rating came the following year, the local community protested. In summer 2007, Abelardo Saavedra, the superintendent of HISD, formally requested that all of the schools under consideration for closing due to academic performance should stay open. Kashmere received an acceptable rating in 2007 because the Texas Education Agency has a provision allowing for a school to receive an acceptable rating even if the school fails in some of its criteria as long as the failures are within five points of the passing rate. In 2008 it also received a scores other than the lowest possible rating from the TEA, but in every other school year from mid-2002 to mid-2016 it always received the lowest ratings.
In 2007 a Johns Hopkins University/Associated Press study referred to Kashmere as a "dropout factory," meaning that at least 40% of an entering freshman class does not make it to their senior year. During that year 58% of children zoned to Kashmere chose to attend a different Houston ISD school. As of 2015 many students zoned to Kashmere transferred to Barbara Jordan High School.