The Lawson Academy
charter middle school in Houston, Texas
The Lawson Academy, formerly WALIPP-TSU Preparatory Academy (WALIPP Prep), is a charter middle school in the Third Ward area of Houston, Texas. It was established as waves of single sex public schools opened in American inner city communities circa the 2000s.
The school focuses on students living in urban communities, but does not have a specific focus on students deemed to be "at risk".
History
It was established by the 501(c)(3) William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity (WALIPP), headed by Audrey Lawson, the wife of the pastor emeritus of the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, William Lawson. The nonprofit had been established on April 15, 1996. After members of the U.S. Congress expressed support for male-only and female-only education at the primary and secondary levels, and a federal law passed making it easier for single-gender schools to get federal funding, WALIPP opened the school in fall 2002.
The school was initially boys' only, and a charter school affiliated with the Houston Independent School District (HISD). In the beginning it was given temporary classroom space at Dodson Elementary School in what is now East Downtown. In Spring 2003 it moved into its first dedicated facility at 3810 Ruth Street. In 2007 it moved to 3100 Cleburne, second floor, on the Texas Southern University campus.
The public source identifies “The Lawson Academy” as charter middle school in Houston, Texas. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lawson, Academy and charter.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85807699. Authority coordinates are 29.714, -95.356. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2002, 2003 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Lawson Academy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.