Author Who Wrote Of Struggle To Save Reagan High School Succumbs To Cancer

AUSTIN, TX -- Michael Brick, author of a book detailing the high drama behind efforts to save the East Austin’s Reagan High School from closure, died in Austin at the age of 41.

The New York Times confirmed with the author’s wife, Stacy, that Brick succumbed to colon cancer early Monday morning. At the time of his death, he was a senior writer for the Houston Chronicle.

Brick’s book about Reagan High was published in 2012. Titled “Saving the School: The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids, and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform,” the book was well received.

It’s the complex, real-life tale of a school trying to survive against the unforgiving benchmarks of the federal “No Child Left Behind” initiative, all the while trying to adapt to ever-changing demographics and socioeconomic status in a rapidly gentrifying part of the city.

His book detailing the struggle for the school’s survival was somewhat prescient: By 2015, the federal program was all but dismantled against near-universal criticism, its vestiges used as skeletal template on which states built their own basic skills assessments.

In 2013, Brick published “The Big Race,” a Kindle Single e-book about a nationwide motorcycle race.

Prior to that, he got a job on the business desk at The Times in 2001, covering, among other topics, the Enron financial scandal. In 2005, was covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina before returning to New York to cover crime and the courts.

He also was adept at feature writing, “...notably a ruminative, closely observed series in 2005 called ‘Summer at Ruby’s’ about a dive bar in Coney Island,” the Times writes in its obituary.

He became a senior writer at The Houston Chronicle in 2014.

After a childhood spent in Dallas, Brick attended the University of Texas at Austin.

In addition to his wife, Brick is survived by a son, John-Henry; a daughter, Celia; another daughter from a previous relationship, Sadie Aasletten; his father, Robert; his mother, Mary; and a brother, Jeffrey.