Lanier Middle School (Houston) - History

History

Lanier opened in 1926 as one of HISD's first junior high schools. This school was named for a well-known Southern poet, Sidney Lanier. In 1926, the Purple Pup was adopted as Lanier's mascot.

In 1935, students from Lanier created a petition to rename Woodhead Street, named after John Woodhead, to Higginbotham Street, after the principal, Blanch Higginbotham. According to the article "Historic Houston Streets: The Stories Behind the Name," students at other schools used "Wood head" as a derogatory label for Lanier students, implying that they lacked intelligence. After hearing testimony about Woodhead's character, the Houston City Council decided to keep the previous street name. The students apologized to E. S. Woodhead, John Woodhead's brother and a Houstonian.

In 1973, Lanier's Vanguard program was instated. Lanier received a rededication after renovations in 1982.

In September 1991 Lanier was one of 32 HISD schools that had capped enrollments; in other words the school was filled to capacity and excess students had to attend other schools.

Lanier's campus has been expanded numerous times since it was first built. The most notable expansion was the addition of the area of the building housing the cafeteria and gymnasium. This expansion has resulted in some quirks in the building that are still visible today, most notably a door leading to stairs to the basement that is only half-exposed above the floor of the hallway. These stairs are no longer in service, as the door cannot be opened due to it being blocked by the hallway floor. Prior to this expansion, the cafeteria was located where the library is today, on the third floor. A dumbwaiter, located where the elevator is today, carried food to the cafeteria.

The windows at Lanier were upgraded at some point. Originally, they were 4-panel window panes that could each be opened. They were upgraded to standard slide-open windows. Possibly at this point, for currently unknown reasons, many of the windowsills in the back side of the school were bricked up.

Lanier's first floor flooded in 1998 due to Tropical Storm Frances. In the early 2000s (decade), to reduce echoing in the classrooms and to allow easier installation of network hardware, a false ceiling was installed in almost all classrooms and hallways. Sometime after 2001, televisions that were in every classroom were removed.

Prior to the 2008/2009 school year, Lanier had a third temporary building which housed bathrooms and water fountains, though only one water fountain out of three was operational as of 2005. At the start of this school year, the building housing the bathrooms was removed, and the other two temporary buildings were moved from the field to other parts of the campus.

Lanier was renovated during the 2008/2009 school year, with a new paint job, new interior signage, and new walkways to the new locations of the temporary buildings.

GSG (Guidance and Support Group) is a class similar to homeroom including students from each grade and each cluster, where students go to every day except Friday to discuss abuse, drugs, social problems, goal-setting, and other issues, and also play organized games, most notably handball (called Moonball among the students). Competitions in organized games between GSGs are very common. Students stay in the same GSG for all three years. Two or three students in the last part of their seventh grade year are elected to be the student "leaders for the next year's GSG class, and teach the class. Each GSG is a bit different and has a family type environment where all students are helped to feel comfortable and ask for help whenever needed.