page_title: Fourth Ward, Houston
section_title: Primary and secondary schools
hierarchical_section_title: Fourth Ward, Houston / Education / Primary and secondary schools
caption_attribution_description: English: Carnegie Vanguard High School Español: Escuela Preparatoria Carnegie Vanguard Tiếng Việt: Trung Học Carnegie Vanguard
context_page_description: Fourth Ward is one of the historic six wards of Houston, Texas, United States. The Fourth Ward is located inside the 610 Loop directly west of and adjacent to Downtown Houston. The Fourth Ward is the site of Freedmen's Town, which was a post-U.S. Civil War community of African-Americans.
context_section_description: Area students attend schools in the Houston Independent School District, including Gregory-Lincoln Education Center for K-8 and Heights High School (formerly Reagan High School). Carnegie Vanguard High School, a magnet high school, is in the Fourth Ward.
  At Gregory Lincoln for the 2006-2007 school year, the student body was 68% African-American, 31% Hispanic, and less than 1% white.  Also, 94% of the school's 211 students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, while 78% of Gregory-Lincoln's attendants are classified as being “at risk." As part of the Houston Independent School District, schools like Gregory Lincoln have around the city average per pupil spending of $5,558 for the 2001-2002 school year, which is considerably lower than that of the state of Texas at $6,850 and the United States average of $7,548 for 2002.
  The Freedmen's Bureau opened schools for children in the area after the establishment of Freedmen's Town. The Texas Legislature authorized the creation of public schools for Freedmen's Town by 1870. By 1872 most of the students and teachers who were at the bureau schools, which were closing, left them to attend the state-managed Gregory Institute, named after Edgar M. Gregory, an officer in the Union army in the U.S. Civil War and the assistant commissioner of the Texas area's Freedmen's Bureau. The school, which first opened in 1872, was the first school for freed slaves in Houston. Mike Snyder of the Houston Chronicle said that it was "perhaps" the first school for freed slaves in the State of Texas. By 1876 the school became a part of the Houston public school system.
  The Edgar M. Gregory School, a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m²) elementary school building, opened in 1926. The community was also served by Lincoln Junior & Senior High School, which at a later point was solely Lincoln Junior High School. In 1980 the district closed the Gregory School and consolidated its students, including elementary ones, into Lincoln. The quoted document stated that area residents perceived the move as trying to destabilize the Fourth Ward and "The closing of Gregory and the shifting of its students to Lincoln was met with intense opposition from Fourth Ward residents." From that period the Gregory School was vacant until its re-purposing as a library. When it was vacant, it had broken windows, a leaky roof that allowed rain to pour into the facility, and pigeons living in the facility. In 2009 the facility was re-purposed as a research library.
  On March 21, 2002 the HISD board voted 5-3 to acquire a six block tract of land bounded by Andrews, Genesee, Taft, and West Gray, adjacent to Gregory Lincoln, for construction of a new school. 70 families were to be evicted from their houses. Anthony Pizzitola, an owner of one of the houses and a resident of Braeswood, started a campaign against the acquisition, arguing that the district was trying to take valuable real estate rather than genuinely trying to build new schools. In 2009 the HISD administration proposed relocating Carnegie Vanguard High School from a location near the Sunnyside neighborhood to the Fourth Ward. District administrators favored the move because students come from across the school district, and the central location would make transportation easier. During that year the school board approved of the plan.
caption: Carnegie Vanguard High School, a magnet school
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