Clements High School parents voice dissatisfaction with Global Studies Academy

Around two dozen parents adorned in "Save Clements High School" t-shirts packed the Fort Bend ISD Administration Building Monday, April 21, in a show of solidarity of their opposition the Clements' Global Studies Academy. less Around two dozen parents adorned in "Save Clements High School" t-shirts packed the Fort Bend ISD Administration Building Monday, April 21, in a show of solidarity of their opposition the Clements' Global ... more Photo: Zach Haverkamp Photo: Zach Haverkamp Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Clements High School parents voice dissatisfaction with Global Studies Academy 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

The Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees voted unanimously to adopt the district’s Facilities Master Plan Monday, April 21, a document intended to set a comprehensive framework for FBISD’s planning years into the future. But for the two dozen or so Clements High School parents present at the meeting, it was an opportunity to voice their fervent desire that Clements’ Global Studies Academy be moved to a different campus, which they say would remove an unfair burden from their children’s shoulders.

The Global Studies Academy began at Clements during the 2011-2012 school year, replacing the “Global Languages Academy” that required students to take two foreign language classes. When the change to the Global Studies Academy was implemented, the two languages requirement was dropped and, according to parents, so did its level of academic rigor, making it much easier for a student to get in.

Parent Asha Kaul said the academy’s enrollment has jumped since the more stringent academic requirements were dropped, and that its boost in popularity isn’t due to the desires of zoned students. Of 120 ninth graders currently enrolled at the academy, Kaul said, only nine are zoned to Clements.

“Nobody sees a good reason to join the academy if they are already zoned to Clements,” Kaul said. “The level of academic competition at Clements was already very high. Now the GSA has added many more high-performing students. This has brought the pressure to extreme levels.”

Other parents shared the feeling that bringing above-average students from around the district to Clements — already an academically high-performing school — has placed an excessive amount of pressure on zoned students aiming to secure a spot in the coveted top 10 percentile of their class, the qualifier that guarantees students automatic admission at all of Texas’ state-funded universities. The parents say academic rigor is one thing, but in the race to secure a quality higher education, many of their children have had to drop out of their extracurricular activities, discard their social lives and regularly stay up studying all hours of the night.

“They don’t have to,” parent Sherez Abbasi said. “They are good, high-performing students. But with the increased population coming in with the GSA Academy, the situation is getting worse. They’re not spending time in social activities, they’re not spending time in philanthropic activities, they’re not spending time in voluntary activities; they’re spending time in studying and keeping up with the GPA game. It’s also bad for the reputation of our schools. They might get good grades and they might be admitted to public universities in Texas. But Ivy League schools and top-ranked private schools do not see GPA only — they want well-rounded kids.”

Along with other parents, Timothy John referred to the academy as a “backdoor” method for outside students to attend a high-level school like Clements, without their parents’ having to pay First Colony-level property taxes. With many of the school’s best educators assigned to teach at the GSA, John characterized the advantages held by the academy students as discrimination against the student body zoned to Clements.

“All students need to have the same opportunities to get the better teachers as anybody else,” John said. “There are other teachers … that are reserved exclusively or nearly exclusively for the GSA students. That’s not fair. You’re creating second-class citizens of the very parents who are paying the most to be able to send their kids to Clements. That’s just wrong.”

When asked about parents’ concerns, FBISD Superintendent Charles Dupre noted that the trustees’ vote was only to adopt a facilities plan in and of itself. He said there will be an ongoing dialogue with the community on FBISD’s various academies going into the future, covering what programs are needed, how they should be operated and where they should be implemented.

The “where” is of most significance to Clements parents, who say the academy would make much more sense on an under-utilized campus like Willlowridge High School, rather than the much sought after Clements. But as FBISD works to implement House Bill 5 and its emphasis on academic endorsements, academy-style will maintain a presence in the district well into the future.

“We’ve heard concerns about academies since I’ve been here,” Dupre said, “from those who advocate for the academies and [from those] who have concerns about how they’re operated. So our commitment [is] … to put together a study group that’s really going to bring a lot of folks to the table. We want to handle this issue in the way we’re handling everything else; we want some community feedback in a collaborative, transparent way.”