Instead, Moshay picked Jones High School in his old south Houston neighborhood, attracted by its prestigious program for gifted students. He recalled the coordinator visiting his middle school.

"That got my attention," said Moshay, now 38.

More than two decades later, with the gifted program gone and the surrounding South Park neighborhood struggling, few students are choosing Jones. School district officials have proposed closing it, along with four other schools with low enrollments, at the end of this academic year.

As alumni, local residents and educators tell it, the fall of Jones - now HISD's smallest comprehensive high school, with 440 students - is a story of changing demographics, unappealing academic offerings and a stubborn reputation problem.

"Great schools, if you're not managing them and monitoring progress, they can become low-performing schools," said Moshay, who returned to the Houston Independent School District for a short-lived teaching career.

"I'm not saying it's one person's fault or a group of people's fault. Decline, it happens over a period of time."

'Clamoring to get in'

Jesse H. Jones High School - named after the famous Houston developer and philanthropist - opened in South Park shortly after Jones' death in 1956. Affordable, small, wood-frame homes had been built in the area, and returning World War II veterans snapped them up. Local streets have names like Iwo Jima and Eisenhower.

Tucked away, invisible from any major thoroughfare, Jones High School gained prominence when HISD started the Vanguard gifted program there in 1977.

"People were clamoring to get into Jones," recalled Tom Zakes, a Houston lawyer who graduated from the Jones Vanguard program in 1980.

The school, which once served mostly white students, was predominantly black at the time, though the Vanguard program drew a racial mix.

When Moshay graduated from Jones in 1993, the school was thriving, he said. Enrollment topped 1,300 - about 78 percent black, 14 percent Hispanic and a small Anglo population.

State data show roughly one out of 10 students came from low-income families, well below the district average at the time.

Today, nearly nine out of 10 students are designated low income, according to HISD data.

School lost 'prestige'

Andy Dewey, a former Jones teacher, points to 2002 as the beginning of the end of the school. That's when HISD moved the Vanguard program onto its own campus, miles from Jones. Controversy had erupted at Jones when parents of some gifted students wanted to oust the principal, and then-Superintendent Kaye Stripling decided it was time to split off the program and give it room to grow.

"It lost prestige. It lost students," said Dewey, who now teaches at the nationally recognized Carnegie Vanguard High School. "And the district never put a viable magnet program in again."

In 2010, HISD landed a federal grant to start a science, technology, engineering and math program at Jones. About $2 million was allocated for computers, science labs and teacher training. But few students from outside the neighborhood enrolled.

That same year, Superintendent Terry Grier included Jones in his multimillion dollar reform effort, called Apollo. Jones had failed to meet federal academic standards for the five straight years. So Jones got a new principal, new teachers and specially hired math tutors, plus a longer school day. Yet the school continued to struggle academically.

"We've tried all those things at Jones," Grier said this week. "What's also happened at Jones is a lot of the kids have chosen to leave the school."

Majority transfer

District data show that 915 students zoned to attend Jones enrolled in other HISD schools this school year, taking advantage of the district's transfer policy. Of those who left, more than three-quarters were Hispanic.

Luis Calisto, a Jones dropout, said fights between black and Hispanic students motivated several of his Hispanic friends to transfer to Milby or Chavez when they were in high school a decade ago. Both campuses are predominantly Hispanic.

Calisto's 16-year-old brother attends Mount Carmel Academy, a charter school under contract with HISD, even though the family lives across the street from Jones.

"He'd rather ride a bus," Calisto said. "I guess he just thinks it's low-performing or it has a bad reputation."

Moshay, who graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in math, returned to Jones in 2010 to tutor students in the subject. He said he immediately noticed freshly painted walls adorned with college banners.

The school, he thought, was poised for a turnaround, even if the gray brick building was aging in the midst of a neighborhood with abandoned homes, overgrown yards and few businesses.

If Jones must close, Moshay said, he understands.

"Change happens," he said. "The legacy is not the facility. The legacy is the students who graduated. I'm a living legacy of Jesse H. Jones High School."

Still, some current students don't see it that way.

"They shouldn't close the school," said Ayanna Wilmore, a sophomore at Jones. "For many people like me, it has become a second home."

HISD's proposal, subject to approval by the school board, would send the Jones students to Sterling and Worthing, which also are under capacity.

Reporter Mike Glenn contributed to this report.