History
With an initial student body of 45, the High School for Health Professions opened in 1972 as part of a partnership between HISD and the Baylor College of Medicine. Perry Weston was the first principal.
In the 1984-1985 school year, of the HISD campuses, DeBakey had the lowest percentage of failing grades. In the fall semester, 7% of grades were failing, while in the spring semester, 6% of grades were failing.
The school was renamed after Michael E. DeBakey in 1996.
The school was a National Blue Ribbon School award winner in 1997-98 and 2003.
Plans for the school to be relocated within the Texas Medical Center were made but soon canceled because the Houston Independent School District decided to renovate instead. Renovations started August 2006 and ended in 2008.
In 2006 the HISD board considered moving the Kay On-Going Education Center, a special school for pregnant girls, to an unused area within DeBakey High School. DeBakey had around 30 unused classrooms, and HISD administrators argued that the Texas Medical Center location would be of use to pregnant students. Jennifer Radcliffe of the Houston Chronicle said that the proposed plan yielded a "mixed" reaction in DeBakey parents and students. Some signed a petition asking the district not to merge Kay On-Going into DeBakey. Ultimately HISD did not go forward with the plan. Instead it moved into Kay On-Going into the Carter Career Center in the Fifth Ward.
The Supreme Education Council of Qatar opened a branch version of DeBakey, DeBakey High School for Health Professions at Qatar, in its country, with Charlesetta Deason, formerly principal of the Houston school, as the head of the Qatar school.
In 2012, four DeBakey juniors qualified for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and two--Thomas Kuncewicz and Andy Tran--placed second place in their respective categories detailing chitosan nanoparticles.
Read more about this topic: De Bakey High School For Health Professions
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
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—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)