West U Residents Invited To Take Part In Pershing Middle School Discussion

HISD Trustee Mike Lunceford and Pershing Middle School Principal Robin Lowe will be meeting with parents on Thursday to discuss how to get more West U students to attend Pershing.
The gathering will be held at Adrienne Vanderbloemen’s home, 4230 Judson, on Thursday, Oct. 14 at 8 a.m.
West U residents Adrienne Vanderbloemen and Christi Young recently started a blog called “West U Middle School” in an effort to get a conversation started about how to get more students to attend Pershing.
“The meeting is to discuss the reasons West U kids are going to different schools and how we can change this by getting parents and kids interested in attending Pershing. We’d like to carry the momentum of West University Elementary to Pershing,” Vanderbloemen and Young said in an email to parents.
The blog points out that few 5^th graders go on to attend Pershing Middle School, the school West U Elementary is zoned for. Other students go through a lottery system to get into a middle school or parents opt to enroll their children in private school.
The blog breaks down the number of students that are zoned to Pershing:
• Pershing has 1810 students
• Of those 1810, only 1136 from the Pershing zone attend Pershing
• The other 674 are coming from areas zoned for other middle schools in HISD altogether
• Lanier has 230 kids attending that are zoned to Pershing
• Pin Oak has 398 kids attending it that are zoned to Pershing
“What would happen if everyone that is zoned for Pershing actually took advantage of this excellent Middle School in our neighborhood? We’ve come to think, there is a LOT more potential here than we had originally considered,” according to a West U Middle School blog post.
Parents interested in joining the discussion are encouraged to attend Thursday’s meeting.