The New Westchester......

<DWest@eprod.com> wrote:

Bart,

The WAA Board met last night and it looks like we may be able to fund 6-7 scholarships this year with the support of all the alumni that rose to the challenge. I was roped into the board by Pam Mudd ‘73 who somehow found me and my soft heart. She invited me to the first graduation at Westchester which was several years ago. They only graduated something like 60 seniors and the enrollment is being kept small so I think the max graduation will be around 150 within a few years.

The easiest way to describe Westchester now is as a magnet school, but they don’t call it one. They intentionally keep enrollment small, I believe a total of 1000-1200 students for grades 6-12 and it is one of only 12 schools in Houston with an International Baccalaureate (IB) program and the only one in SBISD. Kinda like Awty International School but without the major bucks and big head requirement (and my parents were friends of K and Jack Awty). As an International Studies school, they drive the students to develop international skills, develop a second language, and the curriculum includes many accelerated courses also. The school naturally draws students that have moved to the SBISD area from other countries so it has become a melting pot so to speak. Not all students enter the IB program but it appears that the IB program pushes all Westchester students to excel.

I’ve met some of these students and they have all been more mature than I was when I was there. They have to apply to enter this school and that brings in a higher standard that is easily visible when talking with them. And the kids that we have applying for scholarships have all done extensive community and school service, way beyond what I did. These kids come from all over the Spring Branch district so many do not have the same parental backing that we enjoyed. That is one of the hard things to get out to the alumni. These aren’t rich brats, not that we were, but you remember that there were many students with silver and gold spoons in their mouths. Lots of these kids are from the other side of the tracks trying to make a better life for themselves by putting in the hard work and taking the risk of not going to school with their neighborhood buds. After Westchester effectively died, I am pumped that it has arisen again and with this caliber of student. As these new graduates start coming back to the area after college, we hope they join the alumni association and grow it. As it is, the new Westchester Academy for International Studies (WAIS) alumni association has rolled into the Westchester Alumni Association (WAA) so we are all one.

The WAA is a really new group, only 2-3 years old. We are trying to get in touch with alumni and start doing more functions. We already hold a homecoming outing which is the Stratford/Memorial game since WAIS can not support a football team with their student population. Let me know if you want me to and I can get your email into the organization so you will get emails of events in the future. And feel free to let other alumni know about us. Thanks again for the contribution. I’ll let you know who ends up getting scholarships and where they are headed off to for college.


David T. West
Enterprise Products/EPCO, Inc.