2221 Pika Rd
Austin, TX 78734

WORST SCHOOL EVER!!! It feels like a prison here. School doesn't end until 4:15. Teachers are rude, controlling and do not teach!! We don't have lessons at all. We just sit silently on our computers. There are fights and the school has been threatened. I do not feel safe or happy here. Our lunch, which is our only break, is barely 20 minutes. The food is disgusting. We NEVER go outside at all. I've been here for over a year and have only gone outside maybe 2 or 3 times. The sports teams require extremely long hours. The school cares more about our test scores than what we learn. We have an EXTREME amount of tests and district tests. Everything here is for a grade. Every day we have a test in almost every class. The buses are terrible. They cram like 80 kids into the bus. Everyone sits 3 to a seat and it is miserable and gross. We have the same classes everyday, and everything is so repetitive. We aren't allowed to talk at all in class. It's like the teachers hate the students. This is the worst school I have ever been to in my life. Do NOT come here, you will deeply regret it. Sending your kid here would be cruel.

My daughter arrived at Byron Nelson High School at fourteen, braids neatly down her back, carrying ambition and pride. She was brilliant honor roll every semester, ten honors, over 100 hours of community service, and a wrestler who pushed through injuries. She had earned five choir solos at her previous schools without asking. Here, she never requested one but she was never offered.Her voice, rich and soulful, didn’t fit the school’s preference for acoustic, polished songs. Her efforts went unnoticed. Coaches rarely supported her on the mat; teammates celebrated victories she helped secure, yet she remained at the edges.Then came the humiliation. Police officers took her from class over an incident involving her younger brother without her parents’ knowledge. Video proved her innocence, but she was pressured to sign a no-trespass agreement. Her mother’s complaints only resulted in minor policy changes.Junior night arrived. Medals were handed out. Names were called. Hers was not. Her hard work academic, athletic, and artistic was ignored. Over $30 million in scholarships went to her classmates, yet not a penny to her. Her counselor never reached out.By the time graduation came, her diploma wasn’t ready. She wouldn’t receive it for two years. She left the school a proud young Black girl, dimmed by constant disregard. She stopped performing, stopped expecting recognition, stopped believing effort guaranteed acknowledgment.They could only apologize no but greatness doesn’t need permission to exist. She may have been invisible there, but her voice, her talent, and her future remain hers, untouchable by their failures.