Men's Breakfast, August 2017
The Men’s Breakfast Group met Saturday, August 12th with Richard Yoes, the new principal at Brazosport High School. Richard became a teacher while looking for better job and decided he liked teaching. After a few years he went into administration. From Assistant Principal in Pasadena he went to principal at Lanier Middle school for three years. He has just been named principal at Brazosport High School. He has recently been divorced. His ex-wife is a teacher at Pasadena and lives there with their children.
Brazosport High School has gone through several principals with each lasting three years or less. Brazosport is reputed to be the poorer high school of the district and Freeport is considered by many residents of Brazosport to be the “wrong side of the tracks” in the city. This is in spite of the fact that crime rates are no higher than in other parts of the city.
One way to increase the status of Brazosport High School and Freeport is to increase the academic standing of Brazosport High School. If Brazosport has more National Merit Scholars than Brazoswood at any time this would be achieved. Richard wants to increase the number of high achieving students. One way he will do this is to pay for any student to take the PSAT test and to encourage everyone to take it. This will increase the possible number of National Merit scholars and prepare students better for the college boards.
Vocational studies are important for Brazosport. They have an advanced welding program and modern facilities for teaching welding. Students can graduate with certification in welding and get an immediate job as a welder making good money. Richard says that Freeport LNG can use all the welders he can produce.
Discipline is always a problem in schools. Richard believes that the students will rise to whatever standards that are set. He believes that he can raise standards but that it will take extra enforcement, such as detention, in the short term until the students learn where the boundaries are.
Athletics are also a concern. The school is about 70 percent Hispanic, fifteen percent white and fifteen percent black. This means that students are generally smaller than students at competing schools. Athletic teams that rely primarily on agility, such as basketball and volleyball, do well. However, football relies a lot on size and power so Brazosport has not had successful football seasons. Richard thinks that this has been an excuse and that Brazosport can have a successful football season.
There was also a discussion of the need for volunteers in the schools. Richard and Robert Dohle said that volunteers were needed, especially in lower grades to help with reading. Volunteers can just read to students and listen to them read. Even a few hours per month would be helpful.
The men had an interesting discussion and a good breakfast. The next meeting will be Saturday, September 9th.