[9] Westside planned to compete with Bellaire and Lamar high schools in Houston ISD for "premier" status.

[15] According to the October 2006 HISD "For Your Information" newsletter, Westside was one of four high schools that took the most refugees from Hurricane Katrina.

[citation needed] By March 2006, Westside had posted slightly lower SAT and graduation rates than Lamar and Bellaire.

In a March 2006 Houston Press article, Dr. Robert Sanborn, the president and CEO of the organization Children at Risk, said that Westside's "slow progress", as paraphrased by the article's author Todd Spivak, was more disappointing than Lamar and Bellaire's dropout rates.

[17] In 2007, 6% of high school-aged children zoned to Westside chose to attend alternative Houston ISD schools.

The Westside Wrestling program has won Districts for the past 10 years and has had four individual state champions.

Westside is on a 50-acre (20 ha) campus,[22] located along Briar Forest Road, near Texas State Highway 6.

Melissa Hung of the Houston Press wrote in 2000 that "The eating area resembles a college food court more than a high school cafeteria.

[25] Asian Cultural Society, Bike Club, Black Student Union, BSA Advancement,

Club, SADD, Marching Band and Colorguard Canidae (yearbook), The Howler (newspaper) Westside has a three-year entrepreneurship program designed by the National Restaurant Education Foundation to teach students about how businesses run.

[26] Outback Steakhouse sponsors the program and helped build a full-scale commercial kitchen and dining hall directly into the school.

The school utilizes the restaurant as part of an entrepreneurship course,[27] titled "Entrepreneur 101: Realizing the American Dream.

[citation needed] Aside from the program itself, the restaurant is open to students and the general public during lunchtime hours in the school year.

Students residing in the Margaret Long Wisdom (formerly known as Lee) attendance zone,[33] including the Uptown district, the neighborhoods of Briargrove,[34] Briarcroft, Larchmont, Briar Meadow, Tanglewood, Gulfton, Tanglewilde, Shenandoah,[35] Sharpstown Country Club Estates, Woodlake Forest, West Oaks, Jeanetta, and St. George Place (Lamar Terrace) and small portions of Westchase east of Gessner, may go to Lamar High, Margaret Long Wisdom High, or Westside High School.

[36] In late 2005, the school absorbed more than 200 refugees from Hurricane Katrina who had moved into the Westside zone.

[citation needed] As of 2017[update], residents of the Westside zone are eligible for a transfer to Lamar High School.