The School that Shaped a Town

It’s early morning and West University is alive with motion. The hum of chatter. The whir of bicycle wheels. The slap of sneakered feet on pavement. Kids walk hand in hand with parents, backpacks bouncing as they go. The occasional bark of a dog trotting loyally alongside pierces the air.

When school starts, the community’s sidewalks lead like tributaries to West University Elementary (WUES), its red brick warmed by 100 years of sun and seasons. The pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade school celebrates its centennial this year with a slate of events planned to honor students, families, teachers, and alumni, a parade and gala among them. It opened the fall of 1925, thanks to a parent-led vision that led to the passing of a $55,000 bond. 

Generations of footsteps have since padded down these halls. Saddle shoes to sneakers. 

Jimmy Disch can name 21 of his schoolmates from this 1956 class photo.

On a recent day, Principal Scott Disch gave a tour, pointing out giant oaks on the grounds that have provided decades of shade and backrests. Once no taller than a shovel handle, they’re giant canopies now, rooted and strong. The school grew with them, student population now just under 1200. The principal’s father, Jimmy Disch walked these same halls as a kid. 

“West University Elementary was started by the parents as a school for the community. And 100 years later, it’s got that same special connection, the same small-town feel with amazing support from the community,” says the 43-year-old, whose daughters Blaire, 6, and Scarlett, 9, start first and third grade, respectively, this month. 

The last day of the 2024-25 school year was the first time Disch saw once gap-toothed kindergarteners fly the nest as long-legged, confident students headed to middle school. He started his post six years ago, the same time that class of graduates did. 

“Keep in mind, elementary school is a place where a kid is going to spend the most time in one school. Middle school is only three years; high school is four. They change so much when they’re in elementary.”

School principal Scott Disch’s father, Jimmy Disch, 77, attended West University Elementary. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

His father, a retired Rice University kinesiology professor, was there for a recent visit. He located his second-grade locker, no problem. He has a picture of his fifth-grade class in 1956, boys in neatly pressed button-down shirts; girls in swirling skirts, socks folded into Mary Janes and two-toned saddle shoes. 

“I could come up with 21 names from that picture,” says the elder Disch, 77. “Several I went to high school with.” 

Teacher Karen Miller has seen a lot of faces come and go. She has taught there 39 years, seven years in fourth grade, 32 teaching fifth. Her daughter, Paige, a WUES alum, graduates from Oklahoma City University next year. Karen plans to retire after this school year. “The 100th is a good year to go out on,” she states.

She feels privileged to teach children of her former students. “For the past five years, I have seen that. And I’ve also taught with teachers here that I had as students. They want to teach at the school they went to. That says a lot.” 

ONE SCHOOL, MANY MEMORIES Mariann Dunwoody and husband David shared childhoods at West University Elementary where relatives once taught, and some of their children are former and current students.  Pictured, top row, from left: David and daughter Claire, 10; bottom row, from left: David, 14, William, 11, Holden, 6, and their mother Mariann. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

Each year, Miller has fifth graders pen a letter to themselves that will be mailed to them upon high school graduation. They write about where they plan to go to middle school, to high school, where they hope to attend college and what they hope to study. They talk about the styles of the day, trends, their teachers. What’s the thing they’ll miss the most, the least?

Miller methodically logs the letters in sequential order in a Tupperware bin with the year they will graduate. And they’re mailed off, little treasures in sometimes lopsided, uneven writing, time capsules to their future self. It makes for great fun at the annual senior reunion when students visit WUES, a tradition started under former principal John Threet. 

The seniors gather on stage, in the cafeteria, a video of their fifth-grade graduation playing behind them. Teachers, principals, some family attend. “Sometimes, there are tears,” Miller says. “Some look exactly like they did, just a grown-up version of themselves, and others you don’t immediately recognize because they’ve changed so much.”

Elle Bradley, a graduate of St. Agnes Academy, was excited to receive her letter at the end of the 2024-25 school year, albeit it didn’t come by mail. It was handed off to WUES teacher Ami Bradley, her mom, who was bestowed that honor. 

Principal Scott Disch’s dad, Jimmy Disch, was a student at WUES, as are the principal’s daughters Scarlett, 9, and Blaire, 6. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

“I was so excited to get it!” exudes Bradley who starts her studies in early childhood education at the University of Texas this fall. Her dream? She wants to teach at WUE.

“I wrote about that, so it’s pretty crazy to see that’s happening,” she says of her college plans. Walking into her kindergarten class at the senior reunion brought back the warm fuzzies. “It was like ‘Oh my goodness, I remember all of this like it’s the first day of school!’”

Mariann Dunwoody and husband David shared childhoods as students at WUES, where her grandmother Martha Ann Finnegan taught for many years. The two had mutual friends. Wrapped each other’s houses. When she met David’s mom Kackie Dunwoody, a WUES teacher, she could never have dreamed she’d one day become her daughter-in-law. 

Two of the couple’s four children, Claire, 10, and Holden, 6, are WUES fifth and first graders this year. Son David, 14, spent his elementary years there. “What a gift it is that several of our children have gone there, along with quite a few of their cousins, from both sides of the family.”

WUES teachers pose in their Halloween costumes in 1987. Pictured, from left: Karen Rhodes, Mary Elizabeth Griffin, Karen Miller, and Vanita Reed.

A core memory for Dunwoody is the red brick pillared porch off a large kindergarten room where parents picked up their kids at end of day. They still do today. “It’s just so precious, so storybook.” 

“I loved that as a kindergartener. But it was a long day for me, so I switched to half-day kindergarten, which they had back then, and I was moved to another kindergarten room that’s now nurse Paula’s room,” says Dunwoody.

Paula Bottecelli started here as school nurse 25 years ago when her youngest entered fifth grade and her oldest went off to college. She’s seen her share of sniffles, scraped knees, and pint-sized maladies. 

Her office, near the front door, is a great pick-up spot for parents coming to get their ailing children. Not that all of them are ailing. She’s seen creative excuses, too. Stomachaches can suspiciously appear before a test.

 “And I’ve created a monster of my own doing giving out Aquaphor for chapped lips and cream for bug bites. A lot of students come in for that. 

Former teacher Andrea Weems (then last name Behrend) has fun with her second-grade homeroom students at the recess tree during the 2000-01 school year.

“I feel like this school is the heart of West University,” says the 73-year-old. “It’s very multicultural. We have people there from all over the world. And it’s a well-rounded school. Academically rigorous with social and emotional learning as well, a lot of high intellectual stimulation for the kids. Even though not everybody’s kids in West University go to school here, there’s still this amazing connection to the community.” 

Through Houston’s Spark Park program, WUES’ playgrounds exist as community parks, open to the public after school hours and on weekends. The PTO plans an upcoming auction to raise money for playground upgrades. 

“I’m very proud of our school and Principal Disch,” says former WUES teacher Cindy Lillard, who owns Little Matt’s restaurant with husband Bill across the street. “When that bell rings, I’ll look out and there’s people all over the playground visiting, no one’s in a hurry. That’s very special nowadays with how busy the pace of life is.” 

She taught from 2001-05, then subbed for a few years while her youngest child was a student there. She’s seen two grandsons graduate from the school and has two granddaughters there now. 

Lainey Seidel’s family cherishes a dress her godmother made for her first day of school, a cotton frock with mice carrying crayons running across it. Here she is, at 5, wearing that dress that her four daughters have worn for their kindergarten debuts, too.

“Of all the schools I’ve taught in, and I’ve done public and private, it is by far the largest but feels like the smallest because of the charm of it all, the number of volunteers, the incredible administration, the neighborhood and the walkability to it.” Lillard says. “It feels like Mayberry.” 

PTO board member Caroline Walter says the “Mayberry feel” attracted her and husband Kevin, a former Houston Texans wide receiver, to the community. “People ask me all the time why I love this school so much and I really don’t have an answer because it’s not just one thing. It’s everything,” she stresses. Her son James, 10, is in his final year there. Sienna, 15, and Vince, 13, are WUES graduates.

“It’s not the norm in 2025 to see most students walking or biking to and from school, stopping for an ICEE or cookie afterwards at the local businesses who welcome them like little celebrities. But we are living it in real time. It’s a wholesome, almost old-fashioned place with a sense of community and simple joys.

Lainey’s daughter Susie wears the dress for her first day at WUES.

“The building itself is amazing,” she adds. “It’s like getting to go into a big antique every day. It’s beautiful.” 

She came across a sealed box with some 1939-40 report cards, a 1939 class photo, teacher list, and other archival material while cleaning out a closet behind the school stage one day. Whiffs of history. 

Recent decades have included chickens. WUES art teacher Jenny Wood, who formerly taught second grade for 14 years, was also a student here. Her mom, Ruth Bohannon, taught Spanish at the school from 1974-1990. 

Wood has the advantage of in-laws with a ranch. 

Chickens are a highlight in art teacher Jenny Wood’s class, where students learn about them, egg on up, sketch them, and take guardianship of a pair for the evening, via sign-up sheet. Here, one has come to roost on Wood’s head.

“We have an incubator in the classroom and, hopefully 21 days later, we have some chickens. But the whole thing is, you know, you can’t count your chickens before they hatch,” jokes Wood who teaches the fundamentals of chicken rearing, egg on up. 

In her classroom, art lessons fly on tiny wings. Chicks launch on desks, fluffy and golden, and the students sketch them and name them. They peep and perch on heads. 

When they’re teen chickens, she gently tosses them out the first-floor art room window to do their foraging and exploring. Food before the class bell easily entices them back in. Two renegade chickens, Bandit and Star, inevitably go rogue, sprinting all the way around the school to the front, by the flagpole. “We’d get texts from mothers in the office. Pretty soon, everyone knew their names.”

Parents and their kids sign up to take guardianship of two chicks for a night. 

Quinn Hughes, 11, loved caring for them. They foraged in the bushes and strutted over his math homework. Wood got a new incubator lamp, and more chicks hatched than usual, says his mom, so they had more than a pair – more like a flock – for the peep-over. Quinn’s sister Emmeline, 8, was equally enthused. “It was my favorite thing!” 

Quinn Hughes, 11, and sister Emmeline, 8, were thrilled to take some chicks home for the night.

“These are the kind of things I just love about the school and the teachers,” exudes outgoing PTO president Lainey Seidel. Daughters Greta, 11, Barbara, 9, Susie, 8, and Mary Elaine, 6, were under the same school roof “for one glorious year” for the 2024-25 school year, laments their mom,  former student along with brother Kyle Behrend. She started kindergarten the year her mom, a second-grade teacher, began a 22-year stint there.

Seidel’s second-grade classroom was next to her mom’s. She made fast tracks to her mom following the one and only time she had to sign the conduct book. She wasn’t cut any slack. “Mom asked why I had to sign it, and I told her I was talking in class when I wasn’t supposed to. Mom was like, ‘Well, yeah. Sounds like you needed to sign the conduct book.’”

Seidel loves the school’s traditions, especially Boo Bash where streets are roped off for a carnival-like fall experience with giant inflatables, food, and games.

A cotton dress with Peter Pan collar made by her godmother, mice carrying crayons running across it, is somewhat of a family heirloom. It was Seidel’s first-day kindergarten dress. Her daughters wore it their first day of kindergarten as well. “Maybe one day, if they have daughters, it will be worn again.”

West U Elementary parents, alumni, and teachers will celebrate the school’s centennial this year. Pictured are principal Scott Disch with dad, Jimmy.

Lainey’s mother, Andrea Weems, loves that her daughter is so involved in the school through the PTO. She lauds the group for their fundraisers, providing once-a-month teacher lunches, all manner of activities. “She grew up as a teacher’s child, so she knows how hard teachers work and how much support they deserve to get a job done,” she says.

Weems (last name Behrend when she taught there) recalls doing Fairytale Theater with her second-grade classes, putting out a call for large boxes and canvas for their stage props. “They had the best time painting them!”

The aesthetic draw of the school is undeniable, she says. A local Ford dealership shot a commercial in the community in the late ’90s because they wanted the red brick school in the background. Weems and her students participated, barely visible in the commercial, but the kids were thrilled. When she retired, a church friend painted a watercolor of the second-grade playground as a parting gift. It hangs in her home.

Seeing her granddaughter Greta graduate from WUES in June was a heart tug, she says. Her throat caught a lump. Eyes welled up. Time folded in on itself. Here she was again, the next generation. It came so fast.

The school isn’t just a building, she says. It’s part of her family, a living testament to what parents – and grandparents – want for their child. 

“Every time I walk into that school, it’s like coming home.” 

See www.westupto.org/centennial for information about upcoming alumni events in celebration of West University Elementary’s centennial, including the Centennial Parade, Sat., Aug 23, and the Centennial Celebration Gala, Sat., April 18.