Humble ISD had two main objectives when it learned Kingwood High School had sustained significant damage from Hurricane Harvey—keep KHS students together and in Kingwood, Assistant Superintendent Trey Kraemer said during a special board meeting Sept. 5.

After ruling out several options to keep KHS students in Kingwood, the district announced it would move the displaced students to Summer Creek High School Sept. 4.

When the school opens for classes Monday, SCHS will meet for classes from 7-11:19 a.m., while KHS will meet from 12:11 to 4:30 p.m. The approved plan eliminates homeroom and makes lunch an optional period from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

The decision, which was unanimously approved at the Sept. 5 board meeting, kept KHS students together but caused ire among SCHS parents who felt less classroom instruction time could be damaging to the students.

“This was the best of only bad options,” Kraemer said.

In addition to reducing instruction time, SCHS parents said the plan would be a logistical nightmare for parents with children at multiple schools and will cause a daily traffic jam at the intersection of West Lake Houston Parkway and Beltway 8, where SCHS is located.

“The current plan places the entire burden of Harvey on Kingwood High School students and Summer Creek High School students,” SCHS parent Paul Lesser said.

The district took note of several options before deciding to send KHS’s students to SCHS, Kraemer said.

HISD studied bringing 50 portable classrooms to the KHS site, but it could take as long as three months for the facilities to arrive, Kraemer said. It discussed sharing a school with Kingwood Park, but the high school is too small to house KHS’s 2,700 students.

The district also considered dissolving KHS and dispersing the students equivalent with space among the other four high schools. However, this option would have created overcrowding at several schools, Kraemer said. Humble High School is nearing capacity while KPHS and Atascocita High School are already over capacity, he said.

HISD was forced to make a decision between overcrowding and shorter class days, HISD board member Keith Lapeze said.

“If we were to move Kingwood [students] and dissolve it and bring it to different schools we would have classrooms that would be overcrowded, not only at Atascocita, but also at Summer Creek,” Lapeze said. “We have two sides of a bad coin that we have to make a decision from.”

The arrangement could last the entire year as the district works to complete renovations at KHS, said Director of Public Communications Jamie Mount.

"After insurance payments have been received, districtwide we believe the cost will be $3 million to repair damaged facilities,” Mount said. “The district has $4 million in reserves that were set aside in advance in case of a disaster such as this."