Pearland High School

Pearland High School (PHS) is a public high school located in Pearland, Texas, located in Brazoria County. It is classified as a 5A large school, the main part housing grades 10, 11, and 12, each class having over 1,000 students as of the 2005-2006 school year. It's satellite campus is the Pearland Ninth Grade Center, which opened in the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year to alleviate freshman overcrowding at the main campus. As of the 2005-2006 school year, it's principal is Dr. Nyla Watson and is under the supervision of Bonny Cain, Pearland ISD Superintendent of Schools.

School and History

Pearland High School was founded in 1939, which allowed Pearland students to attend school locally instead of going all the way to Webster before then. Classes were first held at the school building on Grand Boulevard in the heart of Pearland which is currently the Pearland branch of Alvin Community College. Pearland High School was later moved to what is now the district buildings on Galveston Avenue in the 1950s and finally to the larger campus on State Highway 35 in 1993. A second building was added and opened in 1998. Locally, the 1993 building is known as the South Campus and the 1998 building is known as the North Campus.

The Ninth Grade Center, which is joined by Pearland Junior High South on the west side, opened in January 2003 to alleviate freshman overcrowding. The state of the art building features a 1,000 seat auditorium and security features. However, many of the students describe the school as a prison due to it's nearly isolated location 2 miles away from the main campus.

As of the 2005-2006 school year, Pearland High School boasts well over 4,000 students. And it smells like a dead dog.

Clubs and activities

Pearland High School has numerous clubs and activities, most of which have been said to be poorly funded and poorly supported by the administration, who shuns these clubs in favor of Football. Some of the more notable clubs include the Spanish Club, the Spanish Honors Society, the French Club, the French Honors Society, Front Row, the Pearland theatrical department, and the Thespian Society

Pearland's band department, The Pride of Pearland, is among one of the finest and one of the most modernized in the entire State of Texas. Although greatly underrated by many, the Pride of Pearland has been one of the most competitive and decorated bands of the past 40 years. It's many accolades including reaching the University Interscholastic League (UIL) state marching contest sixteen times, it's latest being in 2004 and placing 3rd in the 5A state championship competition in 1993.

Pearland's athletic department is considered to be one of the best operated in the state. The Pearland Softball team won the school's only state championship in any sport, 1996. However, it's state of the art football field, locally known as The Rig, home to the Pearland football and soccer teams and its state of the art, three court gym in the North Campus for basketball and volleyball is reveled by many. Pearland's other athletics include tennis, golf, and soon, ice hockey.

Pearland is also home to a branch of the Army JROTC program, which has been recognised as being in the top 10% of ARMY JROTC programs. Despite the amount of support the program pours into the school, it has gone mainly ignored by the school. Due to its meager budget, it remains one of the only self sustained programs at the school. The program boasts several teams within it, which do everything from spinning rifles to shooting them.

Contoversy

PHS has a series of controveries which has exploded exponentially over the past few years which have been the byprodct of teachers and students not seeing eye to eye with the administration. This includes the writing of the word penis in this article. As well as the word vagina. You see nothing is sacred in this good and majestic school. Someone has gone in and written penis and vagina in this arcticle. But I must say that they would not be met with such resistance if the administration were less of uber Nazis and such. However in some cases the Pearland High School administration is somewhat unfairly targeted and there is not enough empahsis on the administration of the Pearland Independent School District, which by many has been accurately described to be the most corrupt in recent memory. Mrs. Watson would like to apologize to the students for being so pretentious and for pretending to be a doctor.

The biggest (penis) controveries revolved around the dress code which was implemented in 2001. The dress code, which has been widely criticized from the start, has been penis well noted for being loosely enforced despite the stringent punishment laid out by the administration. Staff members whom penis were specifically hired for the enforcement of the dress code at the high school were first hired during the 2004-2005 school year by the outgoing principal Sonia Serrano. With Dr. Watson at the helm at PHS, Watson hired another dress code administrator, whom are dubbed "Dress Code Nazis" by students penis for their behavior (albeit slightly overexaggerated) and out of protest. The 2005-2006 school year saw the re-emergence of the picture identification card after a two year absence, however penis the temporary I.D. did not return. The $5 mandatory fee of replacing the picture I.D. or facing in school suspension (ISS) for not having it has struck an ire with many students.

Many students have voiced their displeasure about the school's administration, which also included the 2004 PHS Valedictorian lambasting the school and the district and a profanity-laiden speech. Those who knew about the event cited that, and not the time constraints from holding graduation at Reliant Stadium, as the reason why the 2005 Valedictorian speech was axed. In addition, in 2005 ten sophomores walked out in protest of the dress code. The protest, which already had reached school officials the day before, was quickly suppressed in the matter of minutes with the police and school official presence. It was considered to be one of the most embarassing and highly ridiculed event of rebellion in many of the students' tenures at PHS.

Teachers have not been left out of controversies either. The 2004-2005 school year saw the arrival of as many as 40 new teachers, most of them replacing the scores of teachers who left due to being unhappy with the Serrano-ran administration. Teachers have also been frustrated by the administration's empahsis on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. The test, which takes away from emphasis on the Advanced Placement (AP) and the SAT tests especially in the honors courses, have struck a nerve with teachers and some students. The administration often defends itself by saying that students cannot graduate unless passing the TAKS test, a mesaure made Texas law by then Governor George W. Bush in 2000.

An 20 month period spanning 2004 and 2005 calendar year saw the eruption of four sex scandals, two of which made the news. Many are now beginning to question the hiring practices conducted by PHS and the school district since the latest was by far the worst. Many feel this only adds to the atrociousness that Pearland High School and the Pearland Independent School District is being ran.

Even principals have been involved in controversies. It has been now revealed in 2003 Dr. Diane Martin was forced into retirement by the administration, a move which struck an ire with many teachers and students. The overly popular Dr. Martin was replaced by the negatively accepted Sonia Serrano. Serrano's tenure, described by many teachers and students, was among the most hellacious and disruptive tenures. However, there was a minority of teachers that liked the fact that Serrano's administration brought down the lawlessness that was rampant in 2002, including as many as 10-12 fights in a week. Serrano struck a nerve with many clubs, incluidng the Debate team, when she drove out the ever popular debate coach, Paul Peterson, for a more conservative, by the books teacher (who was later fired do to yet another sex scandal). The move has proven costly as Pearland continues to get slayed in debate competitions according to some accounts. Even Watson being named PHS principal for 2005-2006 recieved mixed reactions.

Security has been a major concern at PHS. Several bomb threats and death threats to certain members of the administration (the most imfamous being the threat against Principal Serrano in 2003) have marked the past few years, and in 2005, a broken window was believed to be the result of a shotgun blast, which was supported by the finding of shotgun shell casings. However, it was later dismissed as to be a baseball thrown through the window. The administration had tried as hard as possible to cover each incident up, however, teachers freely passed the information on to students, which in the end gave them more of an incentive to comply with the emergency procedure.

PHS students suffer from extreme bullying which is a major concern in the school. Some frquently bullied PHS students often feel like there is no hope for them, amy of them leave the district, and often live with realatives in other states. This School is really stupid All district computers are censored by Websense filtering software based on the ISD's server. Many staff and students have issue with the software. The main complaint is the blocking of all internet email including Yahoo, Google and Hotmail. Because of this, staff members are forced to use district email inboxes that are monitored, and more importantly, severely limited in their size, while students are forced to use complicated services in order to send documents from home to school since removable disks (such as CDs and floppies) are banned due to virus concerns.

Another issue with Websense is its overzealous and often innacurate blocking. For example, researching ancient Asian may return 'alternate religion'. Many feel that it is too favored towards Judeo-Christian religions and that struck a nerve with followers of minor religions and other beliefs.

Several sites are blocked incorrectly. http://www.ytmnd.com is blocked under 'GPORN', a websense keyword that filters pornagraphy and all related words, such as pr0n, pron, p0rn etc. While censoring pornagraphy at school is debatably neccesary, critics point out teachers and parents should be responsible and almost everyone agrees that Websense's keyword blocking hampers the use of the Internet.

Another issue is fair rights. The 69-69 internet use agreement prohibits .mp3 flies, .exe files, and all other executable or media files. While the administration feels that students should be working instead of being entertained, they do nothing to help teachers fill up class time, which generally results in a lot of free time for the average student. Because of this, music, movies and programs find their way on to the computers regularly, much to the chagrin of the administrators, which is generally ignored by students and teachers. And this school sucks, a lot.