Thank you to those of you recommending your teammates as Superintendent MVP’s and celebrating students and colleagues and their contributions to help create a strong climate and culture here in Alief ISD. Thanks for recognizing their hard work and commitment to excellence. Many of our campuses with a strong climate and culture also have strong results in student academic achievement. Research shares that “persistent positive school climate has been linked to positive student development, learning, academic achievement, effective risk prevention and health promotion, high graduation rates, low dropout rates, and teacher retention.” Please take some time to check out our MVP’s here.

This past week, the Kendra Scott Foundation partnered with us to support our literacy efforts by providing her signature Little Yellow Library with more than 100 new books to the Best Elementary Library. Sheryl Swoopes, former Houston Comet and Olympian, also visited the campus to read to our students. Our teachers were celebrated, and the Kendra Scott Foundation provided gifts to them. Partnerships like this will help us continue to improve student achievement – thank you, Principal Branden, for your leadership and advocacy for your faculty, staff, and students at Best Elementary. Please enjoy the photo gallery here.

Our Angel Tree initiative with the Boys and Girls Club has been greatly supported. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and shown such heart for our community. Thanks to Principal Lewis and the Kerr High School Student Council for adopting 75 students. We began with 40 students who needed to be adopted, with a waiting list of 400. Thanks to your compassion, more than one hundred students have been adopted.

Celebrations

I am thrilled to announce the results of our recent district-wide #EndCyberBullyingAlief Cyberbullying Awareness and Prevention student digital poster contest. Winners include Olivia Kanatzar from Rees Elementary (Elementary winner), Caleb Obisesan from Mata Intermediate (Intermediate and Grand Prize winner), and Leyna Bui from Kerr High School (High School winner). Congratulations to these talented students and their campuses for actively participating in this digital poster contest and taking a stand for cyberbullying prevention and awareness. All campuses will receive a copy of the Grand Prize poster, along with the grade-level winning poster to hang at your campus. Community business partners both judged poster entries and will also hang posters in their business.

Alief Early College (AECHS) Mock Trial Club participated in the Texas Youth and Government Trial Court competition. The two teams from AECHS placed 1st and 2nd place and will advance to the State Conference in Austin in February. Additionally, Roberto Albarran (12th grade), Shathra Thamer (10th grade), and Grecia Valle (12th grade) competed as trial court student judges and will advance to State. They are the only Mock Trial Club in the district!

CANstruction Club from Alief Early College High School (AECHS) participated in the structure competition at George R. Brown Center. Not only does the canstruction build raise tens of thousands of pounds in canned food donations for the Houston Food bank, but it also affords our students to work with a premier Architecture firm, Zeigler Cooper Architects, and learn about the engineering design process from an architect’s eye. This year’s build stemmed from the Sriracha shortage of 2023.

Share your Alief ISD good news here.

Dr. Anthony Mays
Superintendent
Alief ISD

Looking forward