Back to school
Growing Cy-Fair ISD rooted in rich history
Lafaye Lee was surprised to learn that Cy-Fair ISD expects more than 115,000 students at 87 campuses this school year.
“When I left there were only 50 campuses,” she said.
Lee retired in 2003 after 35 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator. Her tenure began at what was then the “all-colored” Carverdale School, her alma mater, before court-ordered desegregation and spanned the onset of state testing and monumental growth that transformed a rural district once known as “Harris County’s Little A&M” to what is now the third-largest in the state.
Lee, who was routinely in contact with educators from other districts across the state, says CyFair ISD’s reputation for quality schools was a constant.
“I cannot begin to tell you how much I value that experience,” said Lee, who now lives in Tomball. “Cy-Fair was always ahead of the rest, but we were also able to pick up little nuggets that helped move us forward even further.”
Today, state ratings show CFISD is the only large school district where every campus has “met standard” and none are deemed “improvement required.” Its enrollment is two times that of the University of Texas or Texas A&M, says Superintendent Mark Henry.
Community spirit
Ask Lee or anyone who’s been involved over the years, and they’ll say the school district’s continued good ratings reflect the community’s high expectations and “all-for-one” spirit – something that, remarkably, hasn’t changed with the times.
“I became a much better superintendent because of the high-quality team we had in Cy-Fair ISD,” recalls David Anthony, who was superintendent from 2004 to 2011 as the district was adding about 4,000 students annually.
By team, Anthony means the entire Cy-Fair community, from aides to administrators, custodians to bus drivers and teachers to volunteers.
When hurricanes Katrina and Rita brought more than 2,500 new students to Cy-Fair schools, everyone stepped up to help, working through their churches, professional groups, apartment owners to find them shelter, clothing – whatever they needed, Anthony said.
“That’s the district’s heritage, its legacy – what they believe. Those folks just take care of busi-
ness,” he said.
During those same years, Anthony said the district’s economically disadvantaged population doubled. Still, CyFair maintained its recognized rating with the state.
“It’s a testament to what you can do when you have a supportive community, a strong board of trustees and a high quality staff at every level,” Anthony said.
Celebrating the past
That level of commitment echoes throughout the district’s history, which is well-documented online and was celebrated during last year’s 75th Anniversary. While Cy-Fair seems so “new” in terms of its development, amenities and state-of-the-art schools, its roots date to small, one-room schoolhouses that served the area’s rice and dairy farm families through the early 1900s.
Two school systems eventually emerged, one in Fairbanks and one further west, in Cypress. In 1939 they consolidated in an election orchestrated by Fairbanks Trustee J. F. Bane and Cypress Superintendent E. A. Millsap. Millsap, considered “the father of CFISD,” led the new district through 1942, when its first all-brick high school opened.
Remnants of the original building – described by the Chronicle as “one of the most modern-equipped and largest school buildings in Harris County” – are preserved in the updated Cy-Fair High School, including its façade and a terrazzo Bobcat from the original entry.
The district’s history notes that Cy-Fair High students distinguished themselves in literary competitions and athletics, and the high school was accredited within a year of its opening. Since many in the area lived on farms, the school system had a strong agricultural program that was possibly the largest in the country at one point. It became known as “Harris County’s Little A&M” and hosted an annual rodeo for years.
Changing times
But as growth continued in the area, school leaders recognized the need for strong academics. T.S. Hancock, a former teacher, coach and principal who was superintendent from 1955 to 1967, implemented individualized teaching methods and a complete testing program to measure scholastic achievement. Teachers received in-service training, and more emphasis was placed on science, math, electronics, foreign languages, and journalism. Cy-Fair was recognized nationally in 1966 after building Matzke Elementary, one of the country’s first open-space
schools.
“People move to this area because of the school system. There’s no doubt about it, and a lot of the people who live here work in the school district. It is the industry for the area,” said Shelly Hancock, the former superintendent’s son who graduated from Cy-Fair High and whose kids graduated from Cypress Creek High.
Now a retired Harris County criminal court judge, Hancock said he was present for the district’s first rodeo, which he describes as a goat-roping, held in 1944.
He describes his education in Cy-Fair as “wellrounded.” He took journalism and speech, which prepared him to be an announcer at games and on radio. He continues to announce at district football games.
School activities were the center of community life, Hancock said. That’s similar to what’s described in the history of Carverdale that Lee has helped to document. When Carverdale was closed in 1970, the allblack community surrounding it declined. The area is unrecognizable today, but many residents remain nostalgic about it, Lee said.
Hancock recalls that members of Carverdale’s championship basketball team joined the Cy-Fair High School team, which won celebrated state and national championships in 1971.
“What’s now subdivisions were rice fields and cattle country,” Hancock said, adding that the growth surpassed what his father expected.
“The leaders knew it was going to change. They wanted to get ready for it, and they did. There were a lot of people who were on the school board then who were thinking ahead.
“And a lot of that wasn’t popular. A lot of people would not acknowledge there was going to be this kind of growth,” Hancock said.
“We were, in terms of actual number students, the fastest growing school district in the state,” said Dr. Rick Berry, the district’s longest serving superintendent from 1992 to 2004.
Expanding enrollment
Growth in Cy-Fair is now projected at about 2,000 students per year. But under Berry’s watch, it reached as high as 4,000 per year. He recalls opening five schools in one year and building a large Class 5A high school every four years. The district will open its 11th high school next year, Cypress Park, and its 12th in 2017 in the Bridgeland masterplanned community.
“We were constantly finding and buying sites, building facilities and bringing old facilities up to date,” Berry said.
Enrollment grew from 44,000 students to 76,000, turning Cy-Fair from the 10th largest to the fourth largest district in the state, Berry said.
“We became more diverse, too. We also became a very high performing school district. We had always been high performing, but in my last five years, we were the largest recognized school district in the state.”
Focused on education
Both Berry and Anthony credit Deanna Swenke as “the guru” of Cy-Fair’s academic success, but by all accounts, she didn’t work alone.
Swenke was associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction when she retired in 2008. She had joined CFISD as an English teacher in 1970, a couple of years after Lee. At that time, there was no state curriculum.
She called it “a Herculean project” to sort out educational objectives as “need to know, nice to know and who cares.”
“We went through a process of sorting and selecting things most critical in each content area. It helped teachers to make better decisions and not to feel bad if they weren’t teaching certain things,” she said.
The process helped define “The Portait of Cy-Fair Graduate” and “The Portrait of a Cy-Fair Teacher.”
“The curriculum staff is very strong, and they are people who work many hours beyond contract time so that the experience for kids and teachers will be good,” Swenke said. “As big as the district has gotten to be, you’ve got to have a huge number of people completely dedicated to that.”
All say the area’s singlemindedness and focus on good schools has been the glue that holds northwest Harris County together as a community.
“What makes us different is, our resources are shared across the district,” Henry said. “All our schools have the same programs at every elementary school, middle school and high school. Our most challenged students have just as many resources as our most privileged.”