West U Schools by the Numbers, and the Three Lines That Decide Which Campus

What do the two figures beside each campus mean, and when does each one change?

The Texas Education Agency publishes one overall A to F letter for each district and for each campus it rates. Its How Accountability Ratings Work page, read September 2026, gives the basis in a line: "Accountability ratings are based on three domains: Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps." The same page describes the campus letter itself: "This measures, for each individual school, what students are learning in each grade and whether or not they are ready for the next grade."

The letters are issued a year at a time, and so is the method behind them. That page sends a reader to the 2026 Accountability Rating System Manual for the technical detail of how the figures are produced, and to the 2027 manual for the most current methodology, and every letter below was read off the 2026 State Summary sheet of the agency's own multi-year file.

GreatSchools publishes a figure of its own, out of 10, at the top of each campus page, and describes itself at the foot of those pages as "a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization". The ten pages read for the table below were reached from the district listing GreatSchools publishes for Houston ISD, and every one of them carried the line "Last updated: May 29, 2026".

Both figures belong to a campus. Which campus an address is zoned to is a separate question, answered by attendance zone rather than by city, subdivision or place name, and that is what the rest of this page is about.

Which campuses does this page cover, and what did each one carry in 2026?

West U on this site means three places. The City of West University Place is one of them. The City of Southside Place next door is the second. The Houston addresses people also call West U, Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village among them, are the third, and they sit inside the City of Houston. All three sit inside Houston Independent School District, and the ten campuses below are every campus the district's 2026-2027 attendance-zone maps put over those three places.

The district's own 2026 letter is a B. Across the ten campuses the letters run A for six, B for two and C for two, and the table lists them alphabetically, so that a reader can find one, rather than in any order of figure.

Each column says what one body says about one campus, on that body's own scale, method and date. The state's letter and the figure out of 10 are separate readings, and neither one is a check on the other.

Which of the three lines is your address on, and what does each one change?

Each of the three places is drawn by a different body. The City of West University Place and the City of Southside Place are incorporated cities, and the outline used here for both is the Census Bureau's own incorporated places layer, which carries them as the January 1, 2026 vintage.

The Houston addresses have no city of their own. The closest line anybody official draws around them is the City of Houston's own boundary number 28, University Place, which covers Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village and stops at both city limits; this page calls that area the Houston side. The City says of the layer it comes from that it "is subject to change", and of its geographic data that it "is prepared and made available for general reference purposes only and should not be used, or relied upon for specific applications, without independent verification". The City's record for that boundary also reads No in its own field for whether the area has an active neighbourhood council.

The shares below are area rather than houses. Each one is how much of a place a zone covers, measured off the district's published 2026-2027 zone polygons against the outline that place's own publisher draws, so a share says nothing about any particular street.

The City of West University Place is one zone at every level: West University Elementary, Pershing Middle School and Lamar High School. Along the city line the district's zone polygons and the Census Bureau's city polygon do not trace quite the same path, and the slivers that creates are a difference between two agencies' drawings rather than a block of houses, which is why this page names one campus at each level for the whole city and quotes no percentage for it.

The City of Southside Place is split at two of the three levels. West University Elementary covers 70.18 percent of it and Twain Elementary 29.82 percent. Pershing Middle School covers all of it. Lamar High School covers 86.61 percent and Bellaire High School 13.39 percent, and both splits run well inside the city rather than along its edge.

On the Houston side the elementary zones are Roberts Elementary over 50.03 percent, Poe Elementary over 46.18 percent and MacGregor Elementary over 3.73 percent. The middle school zones are Lanier Middle School over 65.00 percent, Pershing Middle School over 31.02 percent and Cullen Middle School over 3.84 percent. Lamar High School covers 99.99 percent of it.

The middle school is what catches people here. Roberts Elementary's zone falls across two middle school zones, so two addresses zoned to the same elementary campus can be zoned to different middle schools, and nothing but the district's own answer for an address settles which.

What chains does the district's own feeder map print for these places?

Beside the three zone layers Houston ISD publishes a feeder pattern layer, and it prints a chain as one string per polygon: elementary, then middle, then high. The chains below are the district's own strings, read for each of the three places with the share of that place each one covers.

Read the table as a list of the routes that exist here rather than as an answer for an address. Three chains cover Southside Place and four cover the Houston side, and which chain a house is on is the question the district answers.

What happens to the 2026 letters between now and December?

Every letter on this page is preliminary. The agency's 2026 A-F Accountability Ratings Appeals Process and Timeline sets 12 August 2026 as the preliminary release and the day the appeals window opened, 5pm on 11 September 2026 as the deadline, and 11 December 2026 as the release of the final ratings, when, in the timeline's own words, "The outcomes of all appeals are reflected in the final ratings and year counts update."

The same timeline carries one more condition, and December does not end it: ratings and year counts "are subject to change due to the results of an audit, compliance review, or investigation". A letter is what the agency published on a day rather than a promise about a school year.

The timeline's own last line for that date is that "The TEAL and public websites are updated", and the agency's own ratings page carries a Find Schools button to TXschools.gov, so a reader who needs the letter as it stands today reads it there rather than here.

How does Houston ISD decide which campus an address is zoned to?

The district draws attendance zones and publishes them as map layers. Every campus on this page was read off three of them: the elementary school boundaries for 2026-2027, the middle school boundaries and the high school boundaries, all three published from the district's own account and last changed on 16 July 2026. The district describes the first in its own words as a service that "provides the boundary polygons for elementary school attendance areas for the 2026 to 2027 school year", and it attaches no accuracy statement of any kind to the three of them.

For a single address the district's own answer is its School Navigator. It is an application rather than a document: read on 18 September 2026, the district's schoolfinder address redirects to it and the page it serves renders as a loading screen until it runs in the browser, so no address was looked up for this page and none could be. Every campus here is read off a published map, which is what the district publishes rather than what the district will confirm for a named address.

Two more things the maps say, and both are worth knowing before an offer. The elementary layer carries a field for notes on a zone, and across all 156 elementary zones in the district it is filled in exactly once, for a zone nowhere near here, so none of the zones over West U comes with a choice of campus attached by the district's own map. And one record disagrees with itself: Twain Elementary's grades read EE, KG, 1-5 on the layer while the grades zoned to it read EE, PK, KG, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Both are the district's, in one record, so if pre-kindergarten is the question, put it to the district.

When does somebody have to apply for a place?

A zoned seat is one way into a campus, and the district runs another beside it. Houston ISD calls itself "an open-enrollment district of choice", and its School Choice page says in its own words what that means for a student already zoned somewhere.

Six of the ten campuses carry magnet programming, and the district's own three definitions decide what that means for a zoned address. A Separate and Unique School: "These schools do not have any students zoned to the campus. This means all students must apply to attend." A School Wide Program: "All non-zoned students must apply to these schools. Zoned students do not need to apply given the full school participates in the programming." A School Within a School: "Zoned and non-zoned students must apply to access this specialty programming. Zoned students do not need to apply to their zoned school to access the general education program." None of the ten is listed as a Separate and Unique School, so every campus here is one an address can be zoned to, and a zoned address reaches the general education program without applying.

What an application buys is a place in a process. The district's own eligibility page says that "Some programs require students to meet an entrance requirement", that "Priority status gives eligible applications a higher ranking in the lottery process", and that sibling priority "is available to families applying for entering grade levels (Kindergarten, 6th, and 9th) who already have a child enrolled at the requested campus and will be returning for the following school year".

Has the U.S. Department of Education recognized any of these campuses?

Not on the program's own lists. The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program's cumulative list, Schools Recognized 1982 Through 2019, its annual lists for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and its page of 2024 awardees were all read against the ten campus names above in September 2026, and none of the ten appears on any of them. The program's own host no longer serves those documents to this machine, so each was read in the Internet Archive's copy, and the links here go to the Archive.

What should you put to the district in writing before an offer?

Write to the district, and be specific: the exact street address with any unit or lot number on it, and the school year you mean. Ask for the zoned campus at all three levels, elementary, middle and high, because on the Houston side one elementary zone runs into two middle school zones. Ask when the district last reviewed the answer, and whether a boundary change is under consideration for that school year.

Do it before you list, as well. A buyer's agent will ask, and the district's own reply is what ends the question, where a recollection or a line in an old listing keeps it open.

The reply belongs with the rest of the address-level paperwork on a West U file, next to the appraisal account that lists the taxing units and the city that issues the permit.

What can this page not tell you?

The zone for one house. Houston ISD settles that address by address, through the lookup and in writing, and no address was put through the lookup for this page.

Which streets sit in which zone. This page reads three whole places against the published maps and gives the share of each place, and a share is not a street list.

Whether a campus has been recognized under a name the program's list prints differently. That list names a school by its own name and its mailing city, with no district and no campus number, so an award held under a former name would not be recognizable on it.

Whether these letters survive December. The agency publishes the final set on 11 December 2026, and an audit, a compliance review or an investigation can move one after that.

Whether an application will succeed. The district decides that in its own lottery, on its own priorities and entrance requirements, inside its own window.

Where any of these lines runs on the ground. The two city outlines here are the Census Bureau's and the boundary around the Houston side is the City of Houston's, while a parcel is settled by its recorded plat and its appraisal account.