Westbury High School opened in the fall of 1961. The three-story building with its main entrance facing Gasmer Street housed the administrative offices, classrooms, cafeteria, auditorium, library, and gym. Westbury's 1961 enrollment consisted of 813 students – seniors, juniors, and sophomores coming from Bellaire, Lamar, and San Jacinto High Schools; and freshmen coming from Johnston Jr High School (now Meyerland Middle School). After the first year, there would not be a freshman class until the late 1970s. Of that first year's class, 58 seniors received their diplomas in the Westbury High School auditorium. W. I. "Jim" Burns was Westbury's first principal. A lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Corps during
World War II, Burns had taught chemistry at
San Jacinto and
Lamar High Schools, and had opened
Bellaire High School as assistant principal. There were 73 teachers in the first year. The curriculum included the academic courses — math, science, English and foreign language; the fine arts — music and art, speech, drama, journalism, home economics; the commercial subjects—typing, business machines, and business law; the industrial arts—mechanical drawing—architectural drawing, woodshop and metal shop; drivers education, physical education and the National Defense Cadet Corps. The school set up the Oceanography/Living Resource Center to provide oceanography education and biological material for the district's science classes. Later, oceanography was phased out and it became the Living Resource Center (known as the "Frog Farm" around Westbury). W.L. Burns died in 1966 and John Brandstetter served as the interim principal until Kenneth Gupton was appointed principal in 1967.
The 2000s On May 18, 2001, the main education building was declared unsafe; renovation crews discovered that the concrete, intended to measure at 3,000
pounds per square inch, instead measured at 1,400 to 2,000 pounds per square inch. The district did not permit students to retrieve their belongings. The district tested the other schools built between 1956 and 1965 and did not discover structural problems. A new campus for Westbury was completed in the fall of 2004. Westbury collaborated (as have many other schools) with
Brown University to set up a magnet program
Coalition of Essential Schools. On February 9, 2006, a 15-year-old girl was
sexually assaulted in a second floor school
restroom facility. The suspect escaped detection and left the campus before administrators realized that a sexual assault had happened. When the suspect was identified, it was revealed that he was already incarcerated for an unrelated incident. Ronald Walker pleaded guilty and received 45 years of prison for this and other sexual assault crimes. In 2006, Charles Rotramel, executive director of the nonprofit program Youth Advocates, stated in a
Houston Chronicle article that
Lee High School, Westbury High School, and
Sharpstown High School had suffered from the actions of youth criminal gangs. On November 28, 2006, a 16-year-old 9th-grade boy named Julian Ruiz died from two gunshot wounds in the torso while walking to Westbury; he died at the 5400 block of Dryad as a result of a
drive-by shooting. A tan or gold 1990s
Mercury Cougar used as a getaway car for the shooters was discovered in
Stafford on November 30. The two 17-year-old suspects in the shooting were identified as Augustin Miguel Marquez and Aldo Aguilar Ramirez. In a response to the incident, district and school officials said that the incident had occurred outside of the school property, and had no bearing on the safety of the students inside. In fall 2007, Westbury admitted
Burundian
refugees who were resettled in Houston. A 2007
Johns Hopkins University/
Associated Press study referred to Westbury as a "dropout factory" where at least 40% of the entering freshman class does not make it to their senior year. During that year, 41% of high-school-age children zoned to Westbury chose to attend a different Houston ISD school. The district named the Rita Woodward Environmental Nature Park on February 14, 2008.
The 2010s In 2010 HISD acquired two apartment complexes in poor condition in order to expand Westbury. In 2011 the
Brays Oaks district expanded. Westbury High School became a part of the district. In 2014 the district announced that the school would encourage all students to take
Advanced Placement courses. Area residents believed that HISD wanted to acquire two more apartment complexes to further expand Westbury, By 2014 they discovered that the 2012 bond did not specify purchasing additional complexes; residents started an
online petition to ask HISD to acquire those complexes. He had served as the principal of
Scarborough High School for a three-year period. As part of the 2012 bond, the school was scheduled to have a $48 million renovation, to be completed in 2018. In April 2015, an HISD spokesperson stated that the district was investigating an incident in which a substitute teacher was asked to pass all students with grades of 80 or above. An HISD report stated that Catchings was responsible for the order, and the district reassigned him while the district's director of high schools, Justin Fuentes, temporarily took Catchings's position. The HISD board fired Catchings, who planned to file an appeal. Catchings was replaced by Susan Monaghan, who had been the principal of
Pin Oak Middle School. == Neighborhoods served by Westbury ==