When I was entering Seabrook Intermediate, there was an effort by district administrators to shift SIS over to Clear Creek High School. Looking back, I wish they had. Well, fifteen years later it looks like it might happen.

The CCISD has just held a bond election and all appearences suggest that it will pass (or has passed). Since I've got one foot out the door I declined to vote in the election, but I voted in favor of the previous, heftier bond election that failed. The main reason I did so was that the district needs a fourth high school and it was included.

Apparently, they've already had the property set aside for it. The curious part is that they set it aside in League City. Clear Lake High School needs some relief pretty badly. Creek might, too, but there obviously going to have to shift people around.

I'm not sure of the wisdom of the placing of the school. I suspect it had a lot more to do with politics than strategy. CCISD's is primarily a Galveston County district and League City seems to get a lot of priority. The district headquarters is there, the alternative high school is there, and now too will a second high school (for a town of 50,000).

The new high school (which I will just call League City High) will obviously pull a great deal from Clear Creek (which is located in LC as well) and perhaps some from Clear Brook as well. Somehow, someway they're going to have to figure out how to get rid of Lake students.

When I was leaving they started sending some students from Space Center intermediate over to Brook (which was odd since SCIS was, at the time, located in the old CLHS freshman building), but that's how bad the situation was. It's possible that they'll move the entirety of Space Center to Brook (if they haven't already).

Or, I suspect, they will move Seabrook Intermediate over to Clear Creek. From a geographic standpoint it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Seabrook people rarely drive across the Kemah bridge to do anything and Seabrook (as well as my own Taylor Lake Village) are seperated from League City by a body of water (the Kemah bridge being the only pass-through).

While I would have preferred go to Creek, it's not very good for Seabrook, which has always been the "poor town" (most of the troublemakers from Clear Lake High I knew from Seabrook Intermediate) and unless the new high school is in northern League City (and I don't think it is), they'll likely go to Creek (the "poor school" in the district, as LCHS will likely be as well, but it will be the *new* poor school).

It's also not very good for Clear Lake, though I suspect they're pretty happy to be rid of the Seabrook riff-raff. It'll make the school even more selectively wealthy. Snobbery was already a serious problem. Not crime (though as Clear Brook demonstrate even rich schools are not immune), but social development. There was always kind of a bubble at Clear Lake and I think that bubble is about to get a little more firm.

On the upshot, it appears that Clear Brook may finally get the rival it's been craving. CBHS has a Texas Tech complex (they even have the black and red uniforms!). Lake and Creek have been rivals for a long time. Brook only recently moved up to 5A and since they don't have a base (CCHS has League City and CLHS has Clear Lake City) they lack an identity. With the new school, League City High and Clear Creek would be more natural rivals because they'd be so similar and Lake and Brook would also be rather pristine copies of one another (for good and for ill).

On a lighter note, while I call the new school League City High School, it will probably not be named that. They have a name scheme going: Clear Creek, Clear Lake, Clear Brook, and Clearview. The problem is that they're running out of bodies of water. Actually, there is no Clear Brook body of water, they just thought it would be cute to get the name scheme going.

So what other "Clear" is there? Clear Bayou? That seems contradictory. Clear Springs? Other than being disgustingly suburban, I guess that would would. Clearhaven? Sounds like an alcohol detox center.