Parents fight for school to thrive again
Stephanie Brown’s children have come and gone from Thurgood Marshall High School, but her days as an advocate for the struggling Fort Bend County campus are far from over.
“Our concern is we need something done for those students that are there,” Brown said. “If they’re struggling, then get them the support they need.”
Brown, the mother of three Marshall graduates, is among alumni and others from the Marshall community who remember its early years: a thriving campus with an engineering academy, invested teachers, a strong principal and other resources that helped students achieve and excel.
Now, Marshall is one of just two high schools in Fort Bend with a D- rating on this year’s school report card, according to the nonprofit Children At Risk; nine other schools in the district have higher ratings. Parents note that Marshall has had seven principals in
its 17-year history. They are calling for stable leadership and teachers invested in the students.
The multiple issues at play at Marshall — changing demographics, a rapidly growing school district, funding questions, leadership changes and other factors — illustrate the challenge of diagnosing and fixing the problems of a struggling campus. The issue is complex because, despite the recollections of a more successful school, Marshall had significant problems nearly a decade ago or longer, including academically unacceptable state ratings for two academic years.
Many parents believe federal Title 1 funding — available to schools, such as Marshall, with high proportions of economically disadvantaged students — would return resources and improve academic achievement. But another area high school that receives this funding isn’t performing better.
Strong leadership is essential to improvements at Marshall, said Bob Sanborn, the CEO of Children At Risk.
“Money can help, but that’s not going to be the silver bullet that a lot of parents think it is,” Sanborn said. “When we find a highperforming, high-poverty high school, or when we find a high school that’s been turned around, it’s all about the leadership and the support of the superintendent.”
A family atmosphere
Marshall, which opened in 2002 in Missouri City, is named after the first African American Supreme Court justice, the late Thurgood Marshall.
Alumni who attended in the early years recalled a family atmosphere. They likened the mostly African American school to a high school version of a historically black college.
“Everybody was very close-knit,” said Elizabeth Ross, 26, who graduated in 2010. “You were able to build relationships with your teachers. You knew that your teachers cared about you and they pushed you to try new things.”
The school’s demographic makeup has changed. Today, 30 percent of students are Hispanic and 66 percent are African American — down from 83 percent black in the 200304 school year. More than 75 percent of the students now are considered economically disadvantaged, compared with nearly 30 percent in 2003-04.
Blake Simon, a member of the school’s first graduating class in 2005, went on to become a successful entrepreneur and authored a book about how to succeed in college. He played football and baseball at Marshall, and he still helps at the school often.
Simon said Marshall doesn’t have the same resources as other schools in the district. He notes that Willowridge High and Marshall have similar demographics, but Willowridge can receive additional resources through Title 1 funds.
“A lot of these kids, they need more assistance than what the school can offer them,” Simon said of Marshall students.
Children At Risk’s annual School Report Card gave Willowridge a D- rating this year, identical to Marshall’s. The schools also had similar test scores last year on Texas’ standardized test, known as STAAR.
Guy Sconzo, a former Humble ISD superintendent who is the executive director of the Fast Growth Schools Coalition, said funding is only one factor in turning around a struggling school.
“If you don’t have good leadership in place, that additional money doesn’t make the difference,” Sconzo said.
John Fletcher, the father of 2005 and 2008 Marshall graduates, remembers strong leadership at Marshall. He says the school’s first principal, Bob Banks, hired teachers who were invested in the school and the students . He recalls watching a teacher tutoring football players on the field.
Fletcher wants his adopted grandchild, who will start ninth grade at Marshall next year, to have the same success as his children.
Fletcher believes the part of Fort Bend County where Marshall is located isn’t getting the resources it needs as growth and development shift to other areas.
“It’s like we don’t deserve your attention anymore,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher also notes that certain academic programs were removed from Marshall. He attributes this to pressure from parents who want their children to have access to these programs, but are wary of a predominantly minority campus.
Ni,Kole Taylor, the mother of a Marshall senior and an incoming freshman, had a similar viewpoint: “It was taken out because it was a black school and it was excelling.”
Committed to success
Superintendent Charles E. Dupre said the district remains committed to seeing Marshall High succeed. He said he could not comment on previous administrations’ decisions to remove academic programs from the school.
“I feel good about where we are,” Dupre said. “I do understand why some might feel as if we left them behind, but I can assure you that we have never left them behind. They’ve been on our radar and we’ve working to make Marshall an outstanding school every step of the way.”
Past news stories about fights at Marshall may have fueled a negative perception of the school, Dupre said.
“It drove a little bit of fear in the community,” Dupre said. “No matter how good some of the programs were, I think when you’re seeing a school on the news like that, it creates a problem.”
When he became superintendent in 2013, he said, the school’s International Baccalaureate program had just closed because it didn’t draw enough participation from other students within the district.
An Early College High School Program is scheduled to begin at Marshall in the fall. Students can earn up to 60 hours of tuitionfree college credit and graduate with an associate of arts degree in multidisciplinary studies from Houston Community College.
Dupre said students from other areas of the district are applying for the program, suggesting the concern about Marshall is dissipating.
Marshall senior Marquell Taylor said he heard negative comments about the school before attending, but he said he’s been successful in his four years and plans to attend Prairie View A&M University in the fall. Still, he said, Marshall doesn’t offer the same opportunities as other Fort Bend ISD high schools.
“They can’t reach that margin of what the colleges are looking for because we don’t have that type of help,” Taylor said. “So, when we get these tests from the state and these other tests, they don’t know what they’re looking at.”
Taylor’s mom, Ni,Kole, noted the frequent principal turnover and says the school often uses substitute teachers instead of permanent ones. The current principal, Ogechi UwagaSanders, started at the beginning of the 2018 school year.
“They have some regrouping to do at Thurgood Marshall,” Ni,Kole Taylor said. “It needs to be refreshed. It has to be revamped. You have to start from the top and work yourself all the way down.”
Funding concerns
Parents’ concern about the absence of federal Title 1 funding for Marshall has intensified since they learned the school was near the threshold to automatically qualify. Title 1, which began in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, was created to help students from low-income backgrounds achieve in school.
The school district has discretion to designate a campus as Title 1 if 40 percent to 75 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged, but it’s required to designate a school as Title 1 — or to provide equivalent funding — if above 75 percent are in that category, according to Fort Bend ISD’s response to emailed questions.
“Our reality is Title 1 is tightly regulated,” said Dupre. “If they don’t meet the qualifications, we can’t just simply say they’re close enough, we’re just going to give them the funding. They’ve got to meet the threshold and sustain the threshold.”
The school has become eligible for Title 1 funding, but Fort Bend ISD will seek community input to determine if Marshall will be deemed a Title 1 campus for the 2020-21 school year, according to Dupre. In the meantime, the school will receive equivalent funding.
Brown, the mother of three Marshall graduates, wants the school to receive Title 1 funding as soon as possible.
“Most of the Marshall community are not aware of the struggle and the fight we have endured (over) the years, so I find it very disheartening to know that they want to delay Title 1 to survey the community,” Brown wrote in a recent statement. “Now that we have finally qualified, please gives us the guaranteed funding that we deserve which will help our students now and in the future.”
Despite the setbacks, Marshall High School made strides throughout the year. The boys track team won its fourth state track title in five years. Students from Marshall’s theater department won awards as they participated in the 2019 Area UIL One-Act Play contest. The football team made it to the state championship finals even as they mourned the loss of a teammate.
As Ni,kole Taylor prepares to send her daughter to Marshall for ninth grade, she hopes solid changes will be implemented.
“We need some consistency with our school,” she said.