Northside Independent School District is a school district headquartered in Leon Valley, Texas. It is the largest school district in the San Antonio area and the fourth largest in the State of Texas. Northside serves of urban landscape, suburban growth and rural territory in the San Antonio suburbs and the Hill Country. Northside is roughly 50 percent built out with the center of the district's boundaries near Helotes, just north of the Bandera Road and Loop 1604 intersection. Because of fast-paced growth, the district envisions possibly another four high schools over the next few decades, including far west areas off Potranco Road and Hwy 211, Culebra Road past Talley Road, I-10 near Boerne Stage Road and far north Bandera Road near the Pipe Creek/Bandera County/Medina County areas. Northside ISD serves a portion of the city of San Antonio as well as the cities of Grey Forest, Leon Valley, Shavano Park, Helotes, and the unincorporated communities of Cross Mountain, Leon Springs, and Scenic Oaks. The district also serves some unincorporated portions of Bexar, Bandera and Medina counties. In 2011, the school district was rated "recognized" by the Texas Education Agency for the fourth consecutive year.
Campuses
Northside ISD has over 110 campus locations:
Traditional high schools
Northside has chosen a unique method of naming its traditional high schools; each school is named for a former or current United States Supreme Court justice. Under current district policy, eighth graders who will be part of a new high school's first graduating class are encouraged to research prior justices and submit nominations. The justices so honored are Louis D. Brandeis, Tom C. Clark, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Jay, John Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens, William Howard Taft, and Earl Warren. The district's 10th high school, which opened in 2010, honors justice William J. Brennan. The newest high school in the district is named after John Marshall Harlan and was opened in 2017.
The school district has spent over $500,000 on a system whereby students wear an RFID chip and barcode around their necks, allowing the school to track their location during the school day. The students need the tag "to use the library or cafeteria, vote in school elections, and in some cases for toilet breaks". One student was expelled in 2012 after refusing to either wear the tag or to wear a version of it that included the barcode but not the RFID tag. Her objections were for reasons of religion, privacy, and freedom of expression; the school had also forbidden her from handing out leaflets criticizing the program. She later returned to the school following a federal judge's injunction. The school district's website was brought down in retaliation for the program. An individual claiming responsibility for the website disruption described the school district as "pervs" for their policy of RFID tracking children. Effective for the 2013-2014 school year, the RFID tracking program has been discontinued. Even during the controversy, the program was very limited in scope. The schools chosen have the fewest percentage of white students.
History
The district was formed in 1949 via consolidation of several rural school districts, having a mere 823 students:
