Fort Bend ISD Won’t Build New School On Top of the Graveyard It Accidentally Dug Up Last Summer

FORT BEND ISD WON’T BUILD NEW SCHOOL ON TOP OF THE GRAVEYARD IT ACCIDENTALLY DUG UP LAST SUMMER Fort Bend ISD agrees that the Sugar Land 95,” the group of black prisoners whose remains the ISD accidentally unearthed during construction on the James Reese Career and Technical Center on University Blvd. last June, “need to be memorialized at the site of discovery,” the school district’s board president Jason Burdine says in a statement. Accordingly, “The district’s plan to build the portion of the building that is within the cemetery area has been cancelled,” says Burdine, along with legal action the district had been pursuing to relocate the bodies to the nearby Old Imperial Farm Cemetary, an existing 1800s-era graveyard less than a mile away. Activists pushed for the remains to remain in their original spot for months after experts exhumed them and determined they likely belonged to convicts that the State of Texas leased out to work on a local plantation in the 19th century. (One vocal local, Reginald Moore, actually warned the district ahead of time to study the planned construction site before building on it, but to no avail.) Now that the remains are staying put, the ISD is brainstorming with Fort Bend County on how to get them back in the ground. County Judge K.P. George told News 88.7 last week that they’re aiming to redeposit them in the same spot where they’d been buried in the first place, however, there’s still chance they’ll be moved to a location in “close proximity” to their original resting place. [abc13; previously on Swamplot] Rendering of James Reese Career and Technical Center: Fort Bend ISD