🏫 A $40,000-a-Year K-8 School Just Opened in the Old Glade Gallery

🎨 46 Young Artists Are Getting Ready to Sell at Market Street

📦 A Family of Four Just Opened a Shipping Shop on Rayford Road

🩺 Conroe's Medical School Now Carries the Gordy Family Name

🌤️ Partly Cloudy with Showers and Isolated Storms · 96°F / 77°F

Humidity up to 95%, wind up to 10 mph.

A break from the near triple digits, but the humidity will make up for it.

Source: Vaisala Xweather

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Alpha School opened its Woodlands campus on Wednesday at 2000 Woodlands Parkway, in the building that was most recently an art gallery. Annual tuition is $40,000.

The campus takes students in kindergarten through eighth grade and is enrolling for the 2026-2027 school year. The company finalized its lease with Howard Hughes Communities on March 2 for the space, which sits about half a mile southwest of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, at the intersection of Woodlands Parkway and Grogans Mill Road.

The school day is built differently. Students do core academics in a two-hour block each morning using mastery-based software, with adults the school calls guides coaching pace and effort rather than lecturing. Afternoons go to workshops in public speaking, entrepreneurship, teamwork and leadership. The company says progress is tracked through third-party standardized assessments.

Alpha was founded in Austin in 2014 and now runs more than fifteen campuses nationally, with Texas locations in Austin, Brownsville, Fort Worth and Plano. Rachel Goodlad, the company's head of expansion, called the site a prime location at the meeting point of two of the community's main arteries. Jim Carman, President of the Texas Region for Howard Hughes Communities, framed the addition as expanding choice alongside the area's existing public and private schools.

Why it matters: A new private school at this price point tells you something about what a slice of this community is willing to spend on education, and it is now operating in a building most of us drove past for years.

Source/Credits: Community Impact · Houston Business Journal

Forty-six young artists from The Woodlands and Montgomery County spent August 8 at Woodforest National Bank learning a side of art that does not involve making any. The workshop covered entrepreneurship, customer engagement, and how to talk to a stranger about why you made the thing you made.

It was preparation for the third annual Young Makers Market, where students ages 9 to 18 set up an outdoor booth and sell their own work. That happens Saturday, August 29, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Market Street, free and open to anyone who wants to walk through. The rain date is September 12.

The keynote came from artist and architect Michelle Giuseppetti Old, whose public work sits around The Woodlands, including the You Are Loved Bench along the Waterway, completed in 2022 with the artist group O.M.G.

Noemi Gonzalez, who chairs the market and manages Market Street, said creating good art is only part of the job and the workshop is about the confidence to put it in front of people. Amber, a returning participant heading into her senior year of high school, said what she wants from her second market is to find out why the people who buy her work connect with it.

Why it matters: These are neighborhood kids running a real booth with real customers on a Saturday, and the whole thing costs you nothing to go see.

Source/Credits: Hello Woodlands

PostNet quietly opened on Rayford Road in early August, and the people behind the counter are all one family. Ron and Wendy Tish own and run it with their two sons, Peyton and Jordan. Peyton is the general manager.

The shop handles printing, shipping, graphic design and business services, plus mailboxes with a street address, virtual mailboxes, notary service, passport photos and shredding.

Ron Tish spent more than 35 years in information technology, supply chain management, warehouse operations and logistics. Wendy Tish spent more than 30 across financial services, social work, interior design and escrow. Both sons came in with logistics experience of their own.

Asked why, Ron Tish said they wanted to build something the family could grow together, and that the hope is a lasting legacy they can pass to their sons while becoming a trusted business in Spring. The family says it also plans to back local schools, churches and first responders through sponsorships and volunteer work. A ribbon cutting with the East Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is tentatively set for September 9.

Why it matters: A family betting three decades of experience on a storefront a few minutes from your house is the kind of thing that only shows up in a newsletter like this one.

Source/Credits: Community Impact

Sam Houston State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine in Conroe has a new name. At an August 6 meeting of the Texas State University System board of regents, the school was renamed the Russell and Glenda Gordy College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The Gordys are SHSU alumni and longtime supporters of the university. Russell Gordy is president of Gordy Oil Co. and was appointed to the Texas State University System board of regents by Governor Greg Abbott in 2023.

The college opened in 2020 in Conroe's Grand Central Park, at 925 City Central Ave.

In a statement, Russell Gordy said he and Glenda were honored, and credited a chain of people for the school existing at all: early conversations with Dr. Dana Hoyt, Chancellor Brian McCall carrying the case to state leaders, and President Alisa White seeing the work through. He said he was prouder of the physicians the college is preparing than of the name on it.

Why it matters: A six-year-old medical school in Conroe is still young enough that the people who argued it into existence are all still around to be named.

Source/Credits: Community Impact

🍽️ A bluefin tuna gets broken down at 3 p.m. Saturday: Ema Japanese Cuisine, which opened on Woodlands Parkway back in June, is marking its grand opening August 16 with a live bluefin tuna cutting by owner Henry Zhu and his team, plus a one-day omakase tasting at $49.99. Read more in Hello Woodlands

🤝 More than 700 granite tiles and counting: The Walk of Honor at The Way Home memorial in Town Green Park takes engraved tiles honoring veterans and active-duty service members, installed twice a year ahead of Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Read more in Hello Woodlands

🏛️ Industrial construction has more than halved: Fourteen industrial buildings were under construction in The Woodlands area as of August 4, down from about thirty a year earlier, and no office buildings were going up at all. Read more in Community Impact

🗓️ Storybook Theatre: Time for School, Little Blue Truck | The Woodlands Children's Museum | 11 a.m. | More info

🗓️ Parent's Night Out: Game Night | 4 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Cory Morrow | 8 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Back to the 80's with The Spicolis | Sawyer Park Icehouse | 8:30 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Train with Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson | The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion | More info

🗓️ Morning with a Mermaid, ages 3 to 10 | 8 a.m. | More info

🗓️ Fall STEM Festival | iCode The Woodlands, 4526 Research Forest Dr | 9 a.m. | Free | More info

🗓️ Summer Sillies Circus with Andyroo and the Andyrooniverse | The Woodlands Children's Museum | 10 a.m. | More info

🗓️ Spider Play Saturday | 11 a.m. | More info

🗓️ The Woodlands Chairman's Invitational Chairman's Ball | 6 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Already Gone: Music of the Eagles | Sawyer Park Icehouse, 314 Pruitt Road | 7:30 p.m. | More info

🗓️ SUP Yoga Class | 9 a.m. | More info

🗓️ Family Friendly Sing-Along Show | Two Tones Dueling Piano Bar, 27832 I-45 N | 2 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Running Club | 5:30 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Boogie Bash in August | 11 a.m. | More info

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The George Mitchell Nature Preserve runs nearly 1,700 acres as part of the Montgomery County Spring Creek Greenway. It exists because four parties agreed to it: The Woodlands Township, The Woodlands Development Company, Montgomery County Precinct 3 and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

"So dry the catfish are carrying canteens." Translation: the drought has gone on long enough that even the fish are making arrangements.

The grocery list is the only writing most people do every week for their entire adult life.

I would tell you a construction joke, but I am still working on it.