Hello East Harris County and Crosby ISD families,
Welcome to the new year. We are off to an amazingly great start! Thank you to everyone who approached the new year with patience and grace and contributed to making the first two days of the school year a success. The new routines went fairly well. There are always things upon which to improve. We will work to get better each year.
The start to the new year was met with some challenges the night before the first day of school, but Crosby ISD responded to the challenge. You might remember we had a storm that blew through the night before the first day of school. The storm caused some serious problems. Our technology, maintenance, and transportation teams leaped into action Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The storm knocked out power, internet, and phones at our Operations Center. Our transportation team relocated to Crosby High School to finish entering routes late into the night. Our staff members were making phone calls to parents past 10pm to ensure families had the information they needed for Thursday morning. Our Crosby Middle School team arrived at work extra early Thursday morning to print schedules since the storm disrupted that process Wednesday evening.
I traveled to each Crosby ISD campus on the first day of school, and what I saw inspired me. We picked up right where we left off! At Crosby High School and Crosby Middle School, the new security screening processes went relatively smoothly considering these were entirely new routines for everyone. At all of our elementary campuses, learning was happening on Day One as if we had been doing this all summer. In fact, I saw a teacher instructing his students about parallel lines in the hallway less than 2 hours after the arrival bell at Drew Elementary. At Crosby Kindergarten Center, the staff dealt more with tears from the parents than from the little ones. It is refreshing to see a return to a sense of normalcy.
A tip of the hat to our custodians and grounds crews for making our campuses ready to welcome our students. Thank you to our bus drivers who start the day and end the day with a smile for our students. They are the bookends to a total team effort across Crosby ISD.
I also want to thank the community for the outpouring that improved traffic flow along FM 2100 near Newport. The construction zone at S. Diamondhead Blvd. opened just in time for the start of school. Your calls, texts, and emails made a big difference for our school buses and commuters. The District reached out to transportation officials at the Precinct 3 Commissioner’s Office and at TxDOT. It’s clear we were heard, and we appreciate the opening of new lanes.
The school year’s success cannot happen without our families. We appreciate your support at home, and we are looking forward to a great year.
We are Better Together! Go Coogs!