of Rice University employees. McAdams wrote that this caused controversy. McAdams stated that because students not previously enrolled in HISD were allowed to enter into the Rice lottery if they were entering Kindergarten or the 6th grade, area private school parents were unsatisfied. In addition, he stated that "Parents in an older, affluent community" immediately to the school's east had no dedicated entry into the lottery system so they were also unsatisfied. Furthermore he stated that principals of area schools perceived the Rice School to receiving extra resources, making them unsatisfied. Also, according to McAdams, Rice was taking more students from nearby area neighborhood schools than anticipated had angered leaders of those schools. McAdams added that "there were charges that the lottery was fixed and so-and-so got in because of backroom influence." In 1994 Melanie Markley of the Houston Chronicle said that Rice, "with its distinctive architecture and its progressive curriculum -- promises to be a kind of flagship school for a district hoping to replicate many of its already apparent successes." McAdams wrote that the controversies over placements dissipated after the school opened. Decline in the 1990s By 1997 not very many of the teachers who were at the school during its start had remained. Many affluent parents had stopped sending their children to The Rice School, saying that the "integrated" freeform curriculum neglected basic mathematics and reading skills. In August 1997, the Texas Education Agency ranked The Rice School as the sole "Low Performing" school within the Houston Independent School District. Fleck stated that the statistic was "somewhat misleading" since it measured the performances of economically disadvantaged pupils in the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS); Fleck said that the ranking was "a major embarrassment for the school district and served to underscore the gap between the children of affluent white parents and minority students that the Rice School was designed to bridge." McAdams wrote that the divide in terms of class and neighborhood origins between the White affluent parents and the low income Black and Hispanic parents were more significant than the differences in ethnicity, and the differences contributed to the decline of the school. In June 1997 Koonce was removed as principal, and Sandra Satterwhite took her position at that time. According to Fleck, "many Rice School parents turned against her because she had not found a way to enforce consistency on the quality of teaching