Willowridge HS students to start year at Marshall

Fort Bend ISD announced Wednesday that the students displaced from Willowridge High School due to a severe mold infestation will start the school year at nearby Thurgood Marshall High School.

The announcement comes less than two weeks before the first day of school and three weeks after Willowridge Principal Thomas Graham sent a letter to parents explaining that aggressive mold had taken hold at the nearly 40-year-old campus.

According the district officials, the mold ravaged almost the entire high school — destroying nearly everything when the school’s air conditioning was turned off for several days during construction earlier in the summer. Remediation is expected to cost upward of $2 million, the district said.

Willowridge staff has been housed at the Thurgood Marshall campus since the mold was discovered in early July.

“Marshall High School has done a tremendous job of welcoming us into the campus and helping us in our time of need,” Graham said in a video posted by the district Wednesday. “By having all of our students on one campus under one roof, we can ensure that all of those educational needs are met during this very difficult time.”

Principal Alfred Holland said in the district’s video that students of the two high schools, which are about 5 miles from each other in Missouri City, already interact in the community.

“They hang out on weekends together; they go to church together,” Holland said. “So I think that this opportunity will help to bring the students even closer together in that they will be under the same roof.”

Graham said the two student bodies will become one as long as the Willowridge students are housed on the Marshall campus.

“For this transitional time, we will not have Willowridge students and we will not have Marshall students,” he said. “We will have students that we will all service.”

Fort Bend ISD will hold a community town hall meeting to share further details about the remediation and a transitional plan at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Marshall High School, 1220 Buffalo Run in Missouri City.

The district has created a page on its website about the Willowridge remediation and relocation that is being updated daily. It can be viewed at bit.ly/2vn9FGd.