About Durkee

 

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About John Durkee

John Durkee Elementary School is located in the northern section of HISD and is in the Fonville MS feeder pattern. The school is surrounded by a mixture of single family homes, apartment projects, small businesses, churches, and undeveloped land.

Approximately eighty percent of the nine hundred students at Durkee are Hispanic; twenty-one percent are African-American; ten percent are white; and less than one percent is Asian. Ninety-four percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the mobility rate is twenty-four percent. Last year, the student attendance rate was ninety-five and six tenths percent.

All Durkee students are served by the Title I program. Special needs students participate in the Bilingual, S.I.G.H.T.S., or Special Education programs. The Open Court reading program is used in addition to the components of A Balanced Approach to Reading used in Kindergarten through third grade. Harcourt is used in grades four through five. All students benefit from the use of computers in our Computer Lab and in the classrooms. Soccer, computers, and academic tutoring are provided for Durkee students after regular school hours.

Title I parental involvement are active parents in the school, serving as reading tutors, classroom helpers, cafeteria aides, members of room parents and field trip chaperones. 

Decisions concerning budgeting, curriculum, discipline, safety, and school activities are made by a fifteen member School Decision Making Committee (SDMC) which holds regularly scheduled meetings.

Each elected or selected member of the SDMC will be responsible for soliciting ideas and concerns and communicating decisions and suggestions to a specified segment of the Durkee School community, i.e. grade level groups, parents, ancillary staff, non-instructional staff, and the community.

When it is determined that a need calls for an in-depth study of a particular issue before a decision or a plan of action is made by the SDMC, the SDMC will, by consensus of two-thirds vote, establish a task force to research and generate recommendations to the SDMC. Membership of task forces will be open to all interested members of the school community and will be chaired by a member of the SDMC.