North Forest Independent School District

North Forest Independent School District (NFISD) was a school district in northeast Houston, Texas. Established in the early 1920s in a low-income white area, it later became majority-black and black-run. The district had a history of financial and academic issues from the late 1980s until 2013. On July 1, 2013, it was closed by order of the state and absorbed into the Houston Independent School District.

The district was established sometime around 1923 as the Northeast Houston Independent School District. It was also named the East and Mount Houston Independent School District. It began with a single school.

The district originally had a low-income rural white population. Schools were segregated until the late 1960s. By the 1970s, when the area was suburban and still mostly white, the state mandated racial integration of schools. African-American families moved to North Forest for the schools. After desegregation, many white families moved to other communities along U.S. Highway 59, such as Aldine, Humble, and Porter, and African-American families became the majority and gained political control of NFISD. By the late 1970s it was one of the largest black-run school districts in the state; on October 12, 1989, it became the largest.

In the 1970s Billy Reagan, the then superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, considered bringing North Forest into his district, but the Texas Education Agency told him that desegregation laws made it illegal for two minority-population school districts to merge. In addition, area residents wanted to maintain local control of their schools. According to Reagan, he also asked the superintendent of the Humble Independent School District to check whether the state would allow Humble to annex NFISD, but no action resulted.

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