 "Photo: Megan Peyton")
A banner above the main entrance and the message recorded on the main office's answering machine no longer say Johnston High School. But Eastside Memorial High School students will have to wait until Aug. 25 to see what else has changed at the facility that housed their former school only two months ago.
For the 2008-09 school year, Eastside Memorial will operate in the same format as other high schools in the district. However, a new campus will be constructed on the site for the 2009-10 school year, and the district will implement new instructional models for both Eastside Memorial and the new campus.
The Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees will pick the two new instructional models, most likely in the format of a new tech school and early college preparatory school, by Oct. 1.
On June 4, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott ordered Johnston to close after the agency found the school to be academically unacceptable four years in a row.
AISD applied in early June to repurpose the high school, and Scott granted the request on June 18. The school was renamed Eastside Memorial High School at the Johnston Campus earlier this week.
Eastside Memorial principal David Kernwein addressed community members outside of the new school Thursday and talked about developing and creating a new culture on the campus.
Kernwein said a significant number of faculty members are master teachers who have passed special examinations and serve as mentors to other teachers. As required by the Texas Education Agency, 75 percent of hired faculty are teachers new to the campus.
"You'll have an input of some new thoughts and new ideas and new blood, new energy, to help carry on the work that we started three and four years ago," said returning chemistry teacher Meri Bowie, who taught at Johnston for three years.
In 2005, AISD Superintendent Pat Forgione placed a redesign committee at Johnston High School as part of a districtwide effort to revise infrastructure at high schools.
As part of the redesign program, faculty from different disciplines meet regularly in small groups to share lesson plans and teaching techniques; also, students are assigned to administrative or faculty advisers who provide personal and academic support.
English teacher Laura Weigel, formerly a teacher at Bowie High School in Austin, chose to transfer to Eastside Memorial for the upcoming school year and said she is impressed by the tenacity of students, faculty and administration.
"[The students have] chosen to go to this school and [have] chosen to keep trying and [have] chosen to face whatever scrutiny," Weigel said. "There's going to be a lot of media attention, and that can be nerve-racking, and that can be a lot of pressure both for the faculty and for the students because it's ultimately the students whose results are going to show, are going to be looked at."
Senior Perla Arpero said she expects the school to improve academically with new teachers and looks at the upcoming school year as a chance to prove naysayers wrong.
"It's a different name, but we all know that it's still going to be Johnston," Arpero said.
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