The Rice School () is a K-8 school (the school serves grades kindergarten through 8) in Houston, Texas. Rice is a part of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The Rice School is an HISD magnet school for a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), serving grades Kindergarten - 8th grade. The Rice School is a part of a collaboration between Houston ISD and Rice University. Students living near Rice are not zoned to Rice, as Rice is an all-magnet school. Individuals living near Rice are zoned to either Twain or Roberts elementary schools and Pershing Middle School. The Rice School is located east of the Braeswood Place neighborhood. It is across from the City of West University Place Sewage Plant and Animal Pound, which itself is located in the Houston city limits. The school was named after William Marsh Rice, the founder of Rice University. History Planning Joan Raymond, then the superintendent of HISD, envisioned The Rice School as a way to relieve overcrowding at West University Elementary School, to stem the decrease of White and affluent students, and to gap the performance division between affluent White students and low income minority students. The Rice School was originally planned as a regular zoned school with an attendance boundary. In 1989, as "Operation Renewal," a school construction program, progressed, Raymond thought about how to lure West University Elementary School-zoned parents away from West University Elementary; she decided that a partnership with Rice University would allow this to happen. Rice's education department had no experience teaching younger students, so the laboratory school was made into a K-8. Tim Fleck of the Houston Press stated that the Rice University label "sold like Lacoste." The district planned to find a site for the school; plans to put the school on Brompton Road failed, and an attempt to buy land at Bissonnet Street at Newcastle Drive in the City of Bellaire failed since City of Bellaire officials and parents living in Bellaire complained when they learned that they would not be zoned to the new school while losing what Fleck described as "a prime chunk of taxable property." Raymond settled on a site on North Braeswood Drive, fulfilling what Fleck described as "minimal expectations." The concept was sold to the school board. Don McAdams, an HISD school board member who had supported the development of the Rice School from the time of conception to