Cypress Ranch High School

Cypress Ranch High School
Cypress Ranch High School
Location
	10700 Fry Rd.; Cypress, TX 77433; United States
Coordinates	29°56′23″N 95°43′10″W / 29.9397°N 95.7195°W
Information
Type	Public high school
Established	2008
School district	Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District
Principal	Michael Maness
Teaching staff	216.69 FTE (2023-2024)
Grades	9-12
Enrollment	3,498 (2023-2024)
Student to teacher ratio	16.14 (2023-2024)
Color(s)	Navy blue & gold
Athletics	UIL 6A
Athletics conference	University Interscholastic League
Team name	Mustangs
Website	www.cfisd.net/cyranch

Cypress Ranch High School is a secondary school located in Cypress, which is an unincorporated area in Harris County, Texas, near Houston. It is a part of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.

History

Building and opening of the school

Trustees approved of the construction contract for Cypress Ranch High School and Warner Elementary, located on the 130 acre multi-campus site at Fry Road and Cypress North Houston, to Pepper-Lawson Construction, L.P. in the amount of $68,673,095.00. Both Cypress Ranch and Cypress Lakes High School were designed by PBK Architects, Inc. with modifications to existing plans used in the construction of Cypress Ridge High School, Cypress Woods High School, and Cypress Springs High School. Finally, Cypress Ranch opened for the 2008–2009 school year.^[2]

Viral anti-bullying video and South Park's spoof of anti-bullying video

On March 29, 2012, Cypress Ranch High School released a lip dub video on YouTube called "Who Do U Think U R." for their anti-bullying campaign and for competing in the Great American No Bull Challenge video contest. According to the video's YouTube page, the entire project was created by Cypress Ranch students.^[3] A student at Cypress Ranch named Kaitlyn Knippers, who uploaded the video under the name "Kaitlyn K.", wrote and sang the song herself at just 15 years old. She teamed up with the student council president Triple Oswald to film the "lip-dub" of her tune. They enlisted the help of more than 1,000 students at Cypress Ranch High School and put it all together after school in less than two hours.^[4]

Furthermore, the video became a small meme when it was parodied in the highly popular Comedy Central animated series, South Park, in the 2012 episode, Butterballs. In the episode, Stan Marsh produces an anti-bullying video called, "Make Bullying Kill Itself", after finding out that his friend, Butters, was being bullied by his grandma. The anti-bullying video in the episode is loosely based on Cypress Ranch's original anti-bullying video, using the similar cinematography style of filming the kids lip sync throughout the school in one take and recreating the beginning scene before the song comes. The episode pokes fun at this music video, along with other pieces of media that are meant to tackle bullying, such as the 2011 movie Bully. ^[5]^[6]^[7]