Relocation plan announced for Willowridge students displaced by … – Chron.com

Willowridge High School

Willowridge High School

Relocation plan announced for Willowridge students displaced by mold infestation

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 an aggressive mold infestation had taken over the nearly 40-year-old campus.

According the district officials, the mold ravaged almost the entire high school destroying nearly everything in it when the school's air conditioning was turned off for several days during construction earlier in the summer. The district expects remediation efforts to cost upward of $2 million.

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Willowridge staff has been housed at the 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," said Graham 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."

Thurgood Marshall High School Principal Alfred Holland said in the district video that students of the two high schools, which are about five miles from each other in Missouri City, already interact with each other 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 to interact even more so."

Graham added that 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 and celebration to share further details about the remediation and transitional plan next Wednesday, Aug. 16 at 7 p.m. 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 it is updated daily at 3 p.m.

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Relocation plan announced for Willowridge students displaced by ... - Chron.com