Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions is a medical secondary school located in the Medical Center area of Houston, Texas, United States. It is a part of the Houston Independent School District.
It has been named the number one public high school in Houston by the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Press, and Children at Risk and number 26 in best high schools in the United States by US News in 2013. DeBakey High School, which serves grades 9 through 12, is a part of the Houston Independent School District and is west of the Texas Medical Center. It is the only Houston magnet high school for health professions. The school was named after Michael E. DeBakey, a famous heart surgeon. DeBakey does not automatically take in students from the surrounding neighborhood; the surrounding neighborhood is zoned to Lamar High School. Nearly 1200 students take entrance exams for 200 to 300 spots each year.
DeBakey was a 2018 recipient of the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence award.
History
With an initial student body of 45, the High School for Health Professions opened in 1972 as part of a partnership between the Houston Independent School District and the Baylor College of Medicine. The curriculum was shaped in its early years as DeBakey was the world's first high school to specialize in medical professions. Perry Weston was the first principal.
In the 1984–1985 school year, DeBakey had the lowest percentage of failing grades in the Houston Independent School District. 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. In 1998 the U.S. Department of Education named DeBakey as one of ten "New American High Schools".
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 Houston Independent School District 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 district 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. The district 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. Deason began her term as the Houston DeBakey principal in 1989.
In 2012, four DeBakey juniors qualified for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, two of them placed second in their respective categories detailing chitosan nanoparticles.
On December 15, 2014, groundbreaking for a new DeBakey campus occurred. This campus opened in 2017.
The former DeBakey campus on Shenandoah hosted students from Braeburn Elementary School after Hurricane Harvey occurred in 2017.
Campus
The campus, with five stories and of space, is located on the ex-Hornberger Conference Center site, in the western side of the Texas Medical Center, near Holcombe Boulevard (which turns into Bellaire Boulevard). The campus's land was donated to the school district.
It has a price tag of $65 million, and the planned capacity is about 900–1,000 students. In addition to science laboratories, the facility includes mock hospital rooms and patient care, dentistry, and rehabilitation laboratories. The current campus opened in June 2017.
Admissions
The school uses the Otis-Lennon School Abilities Test to screen applicants. As of 2008 it is the only Houston public high school to use this test, and as of that year its annual applicant count is 1,200. DeBakey also appraises each student's conduct at his/her previous school.