School district upset over 'dangerous' label by TEA

(8/04/06 - KTRK/HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- Cypress Ridge high school is the first school in the Houston area to be deemed 'persistently dangerous' by the Texas Education Agency. It's a title that the Cy-Fair district says is unfair and unwarranted.

There are just over 3,500 students who attend Cy-Ridge located on Eldridge near West Road. Cy-Ridge is one of several schools in Texas labeled persistently dangerous this year.

Officials looked at data over a three year period and the criteria is that of a school report -- three incidents per 1,000 students that require expulsion on each of the three years. The district says that the school had a large percentage of incidents that involved drug possession, sometimes as simple as having a couple of prescription pills.

School officials say that those offenses are serious, but say that kind of crime is looked at equally in this arena as, for instance, murder. Officials thought that is a bit unfair.

We talked to one parent looking to move into this district.

"I have a 12-year-old daughter, that if we move to this district, she'd be going to that school," said parent Randall Warner. "Everybody has told us that this is one of the school districts in the area. We really haven't studied the area. We just went by second hand."

Warner says he'll be doing his research in a more detailed fashion after hearing the news.

Students are allowed to transfer and the district tells Eyewitness News that 90 students have asked to do so. A note was sent home about a week ago, telling parents they had an option to transfer their kids due to the new label the school was given. The district doesn't know how many of those transferring were specifically because of this designation. They say they haven't had a huge response to the letters from parents.

The TEA is going to make this designation permanent for this year and are not going to allow the appeal to go through because they say the district didn't present enough information that would show the data was an error or that there was some extenuating circumstance.
(Copyright © 2006, KTRK-TV)

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