School days

Special ed and the TEA takeover

This part of the reason for the TEA takeover of HISD is less well known and has some adherents among the key stakeholders, but it’s still quite controversial and far from clear that the TEA will do any better.

Many parents of special education students in Houston ISD who feel the school system has failed their children are deeply conflicted over news of the state takeover.

Some who say their children have been denied federally protected rights to an education believe a takeover is long overdue. Others agree accountability is needed, but question whether the Texas Education Agency has the capacity or track record necessary to execute change for the better. Both entities have received intense criticism of their delivery of special education services for decades.

“It’s a tall order to ask a failing TEA special education department to come and rescue a failing HISD special education department,” said Jane Friou, an HISD parent and co-founder of the Houston Special Education Parent Association. “I don’t understand how it’s going to get any better.”

The school system’s special education department’s “significant systemic compliance problems” was cited among the reasons in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s notice that a state-appointed board of managers will soon lead the district.

“The takeover is happening because our children’s rights are systematically and continuously violated through denial (of services) and the noncompliance of HISD,” said Marifi Escobar, a parent of an HISD ninth grader with multiple disabilities. “I want to see an overhaul of HISD. This seems to be the first time HISD is being held accountable.”

However, some advocates say they anticipate little change to the beleaguered department given that state-appointed conservators have overseen it for years.

“We, as parents, have not seen anything get better since the conservators got here,” said Fiou. “It may have actually gotten worse from a parent perspective. It’s as chaotic as ever and that makes me very concerned for whatever is coming.”

Other education experts say the state agency’s own failures to provide supports to students with disabilities doesn’t bode well for success in the district.

“TEA is the entity that receives funding from the federal government to implement (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and it is supposed to provide technical assistance, monitoring and professional development across the state,” said David DeMathews, associate professor of the University of Texas at Austin’s department of educational leadership and policy. “TEA has failed miserably doing this job for more than a decade.”

[…]

Criticism of TEA’s implementation of special education stems from its artificial cap on the number of students with disabilities who could receive services. The since-removed arbitrary 8.5 percent cap, which was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, led to the denial of services to tens of thousands of children with disabilities in Texas.

In January 2018, the federal Office of Special Education Programs announced it found TEA had failed to ensure all children with disabilities in the state were identified and evaluated. In October 2020, TEA told OSEP it believed it had completed all the required corrective actions. However, OSEP found the state had made only one of many required changes to its operations.

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education said TEA failed to put into place many of the corrective actions it pledged to make to comply with IDEA and threatened recourse of taking away special education funding. Among the alleged shortcomings was that there was no indication districts in the state were promptly referring children for dyslexia evaluations.

Currently, TEA officials say the agency has “exceeded” the corrective actions laid out by OSEP and has increased the number of students in special education 37.3 percent since 2015.

See here for all my previous blogging on special education, which includes both the many issues at HISD and the many issues with the TEA. I have not had to interact with the special ed system at HISD, but some of my friends have and they very much say that it is a huge hassle. These are educated professional folks with resources to deal with those hassles talking, so you can extrapolate from there for folks who don’t have such resources. If the TEA can make things better here, that’s unequivocally great. There are plenty of reasons to be dubious of that possibility. As I’ve said before, it’s now 100% on them to make it happen. We’ll see.

What was even the point of those TEA “engagements” with the public?

Mar 31st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

No comments yet

The public certainly doesn’t think it got anything out of them.

Teacher Monica Zepeda wrapped up an after-school tutoring session on Wednesday night and headed to a community forum at Delmar Stadium sporting her Pilgrim Academy lanyard. She stepped up to the microphone.

“I’m a highly effective teacher here at HISD,” she said, launching into several questions about prior state takeovers in Texas school districts. “Public education is the foundation, the bedrock of America. Do not take our education away.”

Zepeda, a public school educator of nearly two decades, was among several hundred teachers, parents and other members of the Houston Independent School District community who showed up at a third community forum hosted by the Texas Education Agency to demand answers from state officials about the takeover.

After this school year ends, the state agency plans to oust Houston’s elected school board and replace it with a nine-member board of managers appointed by Education Commissioner Mike Morath. The agency is now seeking applicants for the board of managers. The move has drawn ire from many.

“I have students from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico – and I’m making gains and growing them,” Zepeda said. “My school is an amazing little jewel in the southwest and there’s so many of us like that. There’s great teachers and I can’t believe that they want to do this.”

Morath did not attend the meeting. People in the audience immediately booed and questioned his notable absence.

“He could not be here tonight,” said TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado, who fielded questions from the podium during a meeting that ran for an hour and 20 minutes.

Morath told the Chronicle editorial board that he could not attend last week’s community forums because he was “under the weather.” Delgado provided no explanation for his absence this week. A final forum is scheduled for Thursday night at Kashmere High School.

“If he doesn’t have the respect for the people of this district – the teachers, the families, the children – to stand up and answer our questions, what kind of accountability is he really offering?” said Louisa Meacham, a teacher at Northside High School. “What kind of leadership is he really offering? None.”

I’m sorry, but if you can show up for an hour-plus interview with the Chron editorial board, you can damn well show up to the community engagement session. Not doing so is cowardly and disrespectful. Sure, the crowd has been rowdy at these meetings, but what did you expect? People have strong feelings about this, especially considering the overall health of HISD and the recent improvement at Wheatley, and they felt their voices weren’t being heard. Hell, the upshot here is to replace the elected Board with a Mike Morath-appointed Board, so of course people feel like they’re powerless. You either don’t care or you’re exceedingly dense to not realize or acknowledge that.

So again, these engagement sessions have been patronizing and useless in terms of actually addressing the concerns of the HISD stakeholders. If there was any chance of providing some assurance to students and parents and teachers that things would be all right, the TEA botched it completely. None of this should make anyone feel better about what is coming. Campos has more.

Chron editorial board interviews Mike Morath

Mar 30th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

There’s video and a transcript here. After explaining that he missed the initial TEA community engagement sessions because he was “under the weather”, he gets asked the key question:

Lisa Falkenberg 1:55
Mhmm. Okay, and then, so, we’re trying to figure out what resources will be used – as much as you can say – what resources would be used for the D and F schools that they don’t have access to now?

Mike Morath 2:10
Sure. I mean, this is the grand question: How does a school system – and certainly one as large as Houston ISD – organize itself as a system of 250-plus campuses so that the way that the district works does not allow an individual campus to lack the structures of supports for you know, a decade or more? You can’t have a situation where kids are going half a decade, or a decade, not learn how to read, write and do math at high levels. So you know, what people keep asking us is, ‘how is that going to change?’ And there’s sort of two answers to that question: The core answer of what TEA is doing is actually indirect. What we’re focused on is leadership. So we’re replacing the school board superintendent. My task is to find nine Houstonians of a character and integrity – that are student-focused – to be members of that governing body that will work together as a team and then find a superintendent that also works with that team that can then execute. Ultimately, that’s the sole focus of the agency, the way the law is set up, the way that our oversight structure is set up. It is that group of people that then have to make all of these changes. But that fundamentally doesn’t answer your question ‘what are the changes that you need to make?’ and so this gets you into all the key questions of how do you make schools work for students? Just think of the discipline of reading. So at an elementary school. There’s an elementary school in Houston, whose last acceptable performance was in 2011. So this is two entire generations worth of kids: Kindergarten through fifth grade. They have, never as a group, been exposed to a school that equipped them to rewrite or do math and do it well. So what needs to happen?

Lisa Falkenberg 4:08
What school was that?

Mike Morath 4:09
I’ll let you guys research that. So you think about elementary literacy instruction. So what we know – what evidence tells us – the evidence is compellingly clear on how the human mind acquires the gift of reading. You’ve got to make sure kids learn how to decode. That has to be taught. There’s a very specific way to do that. You do the ‘mmm’ sound before you do the ‘ph’ sound and you do that for a reason. There’s an explicit exposure, in order, to these concepts. You’ve got a bunch of random control trial-based instructional materials out there, and training, that shows this is the most effective way to do it. So you need to make sure that in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, that that kind of instruction is happening and with materials that have that kind of evidence base. That’s only part of the equation that helps kids learn how to read. Reading is also a function of background knowledge. All the words that you know and accumulate. And this is one of the reasons why you see such disparities by class in reading proficiency. Because if your parents are very well educated and have resources to take you on trips, and then you will learn things – a lot of things – outside of school, and much of that is going to affect your vocabulary and background knowledge. And that is a driver in literacy. So the question is, ‘are schools functioning as the great equalizer for literacy?’ Do they have a curriculum that is well-designed and intentional at building knowledge, about building vocabulary and is even designed to do so? So you think, well, what’s the evidence base? I’ll tell you that you need to have an instructional material and in a curricular environment the way classroom works in order for vocabulary to work. We know that if you have a set of lessons that are focused on say, ‘inferencing’ as a skill. You do something on ‘giraffes,’ and then you do something on ‘going to the ice cream store’ and then you do something on ‘World War II’ and then you do something on ‘your thoughts about balloons,’ that will not lead to any vocabulary growth. Instead, the evidence is quite clear. You have to read the same kind of texts over and over and over again. Same subject. So you read about ‘giraffes’ and you read about ‘zoos’ and then you read about the ‘African savanna.’ Then you read about the biology of necks. That sort of thing. That causes vocabulary growth. So the question is: “in the schools that have seen low levels of literacy for a decade, how well-designed is the instructional program in the curricular experience for kids so that that is actually happening?’ And this is not a new phenomenon. This knowledge isn’t even new to Houston. I think about the great Thaddeus Lott. He may be a principal y’all are familiar with. This epically famous principal that served, I want to say, at Wesley Elementary for decades. People came to his school, studied what he was doing, and he had a systematic, direct instruction on phonics. He had a strong, rigorous approach to background knowledge. Curriculum that was well-designed. Then, his approach to recruiting teachers focused on, of course, folks that had extremely high expectations; that if you come to school with a with a broken right arm and you can’t turn in a writing assignment because of it, you know, the teacher says, ‘well, your left arm is not broken.’ The high expectations that says, ‘No, we’re going to learn this. I’m here to support you, but we’re going to learn this’ and he creates a learning environment. He did this for 20 years at that school that got extraordinary results.

Gotta say, that’s an awful lot of words that sound suspiciously like the Underpants Gnome meme to me. To wit:

Step 1: Appoint Board of Managers
Step 2: ???????
Step 3: All schools are now passing!

I had to back away for a few minutes after that. I eventually went back and read some more, and he does get into specifics in a few places, so go read and listen for yourself. One thing he does say is that the Board of Managers is accountable to him, so to answer this question, if there’s a Board member that we the public think is dead weight, we need to convince Mike Morath of that. So, yeah.

HISD decides against appealing TEA takeover to the TEA

Mar 29th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

No comments yet

The decision makes sense, whether or not the headline to this post also makes sense.

In a close vote, Houston ISD board members decided late Monday to bypass its final appeal of Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s decision to takeover the district.

Earlier this month, the board overwhelmingly voted to end the lawsuit against the TEA. They still had the option to file an appeal to the state agency, considered a last-ditch effort at preventing state intervention. These appeals hearings are not held in court but rather by a committee the commissioner selects and often do not go in the district’s favor. The board ultimately voted 5-4 against the measure.

“When it was time to give up the legal fight because we didn’t have a legal basis to continue, I was on board with that,” Trustee Myrna Guidry said. “This is an appeal that is given by the commissioner himself, giving us one more opportunity … The outcome is on the commissioner, but I believe we should take the appeal so we as a board have done everything we possibly can.”

Last week, the TEA hosted a series of informational meetings about the state intervention, which was met with outcry from the community. Shortly after the TEA’s takeover plans were announced on March 15, the community rallied in opposition to the intervention. This type of response is worth listening to, said Trustee Patricia Allen.

“I’ve heard the voice of the people. I’ve been to the community meetings. My opinion as a trustee is to listen to the voice of the people,” Allen said. “This is not a ‘must’ on the part of the commissioner. We can appeal and the commissioner can decide.”

[…]

Trustee Judith Cruz agreed the district should not spend any more money on legal counsel regarding takeover issues.

Others said they felt their chances of success with an appeal were too slim to pursue.

“Whether we file an appeal or not, there is no changing in the outcome,” Board President Dani Hernandez said. “It’s time to make a smooth transition.”

I lean in the “not worth it” direction, mostly because asking the TEA to reconsider its own decision seems highly unlikely to work. I get where Trustees Guidry and Allen are coming from, though. There might be some symbolic value in making the TEA defend itself on the record. Basically, I agree with Campos, I don’t have a quarrel with anyone’s vote on this.

Don’t forget the teachers

Mar 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I hope the Board of Managers has a plan for this.

Teachers had been shuffling in and out of Traci Latson’s classroom all day the first day back from spring break, trying to make sense of the news that broke that Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, would be taken over by the state.

The effects of the soon-coming state intervention won’t be felt overnight. The current elected board and superintendent will be in place until the end of the school year to avoid further disruption. Then in June, a new board and superintendent will be appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

In the meantime, Latson, a teacher at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School, and her peers throughout HISD, have questions: How will this affect curriculum? Will schools close? What major changes will this board make?

“They’re just nervous, and they don’t know what to think,” Latson said of her peers. “We’re stuck in limbo hell.”

The Texas Education Agency started holding public hearings this week to try and quell some of these anxieties, but the first one was chaotic, interrupted by shouting and leaving many questions unanswered. In the first days back from the takeover, attendance among both teachers and students seemed to be fairly normal, multiple teachers told the Chronicle. The attendance rate for students was about 90 percent.

Latson has spent nearly three decades as an HISD teacher. She taught some of her students’ parents, and in another classroom one of her former students is now the one teaching the lesson plans. Despite her history with HISD, she has began to peruse other job postings.

“I don’t want to leave HISD. I love working in the city, I love our children, and, for the most part, I have been pretty happy with the district,” Latson said. “So, it does sadden me to even admit to myself that it might be time for me to leave.”

[…]

Although there is much left unknown in the district, teachers can likely count on having their jobs next year, said Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. Contracts typically go out in May, which are binding for the next academic year.

Teachers actually have a great deal of job security, Anderson said, given the persistent teacher shortage compounded by the pandemic.

“I don’t care who runs the district. Somebody’s got to teach,” Anderson said. “It’s not like teachers are beating down the door. We started the school year with a teacher shortage that still exists.”

Houston ISD still has a vacancy rate of about 3.2 percent with roughly 336 openings, despite having one of the leading starting salary in the region at $61,500.

The district made an effort to persuade teachers to stay by awarding nearly $3.3 million in sign-on incentives for the 2022-2023 year to new teachers.

I don’t blame anyone for feeling adrift and insecure about what the future of HISD is. It would help greatly if the TEA held actually informative meetings rather than having PowerPoint shows that tell people things that are already publicly available, and it would help if Commissioner Morath could get his ass into town to talk to people. As long as there’s such a dearth of information, given how unprecedented this takeover is, it’s natural that fear and speculation would fill the void. The TEA owns all of this. It’s time they started acting like they understood the responsibility they have taken for themselves.

This is not how you win hearts and minds

Mar 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

18 comments

I don’t know what the TEA hoped to accomplish with its public outreach meetings about the HISD takeover, but it probably wasn’t this.

Houston community members were irate Tuesday night as state education officials tried to explain the process of taking over their school district. State officials did not take questions about the effects such a move could have on Houston Independent School District, which is the largest in Texas, but did try to recruit community members to replace the existing school board.

About seven minutes into the Texas Education Agency’s PowerPoint presentation on the impending HISD takeover, parents and community members erupted in shouts directed at TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado.

“We got questions,” attendees repeatedly yelled. “Y’all tryna take our community.”

It was the first meeting that the state agency held in Houston since it announced on March 15 that it would replace the district’s current superintendent, Millard House II, and its democratically elected school board with its own “board of managers” in response to years of underperforming schools, mainly Phillis Wheatley High School.

[…]

The TEA official attempted to finish his presentation without interruption, but community members would not stand down. They were upset that they had to write their questions down on index cards and then TEA officials would choose which questions to answer.

“This meeting was rodeo-grade BS,” said Houston ISD parent Travis McGee. “The community should have been able to speak.”

McGee and other community members were also upset that the TEA commissioner himself didn’t show up to the meeting.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, took the podium once the TEA could not take control of the meeting. She said she believes Morath has the ability to not take over the district and instead continue monitoring improvement within the schools.

“The board of managers will not be responsive to teachers, parents or children. I do want the school board to be responsive to you,” she told the audience.

The community meetings were mentioned in the earlier story about the requirements that HISD must meet to get out of takeover jail. I don’t know what I would have expected if I had been there, but 1) Mike Morath really needs to be at these things and talk directly to the people, it’s flat out disrespectful not to, and 2) “Rodeo-grade BS” is an excellent expression that I plan to borrow at some point. Stace, Campos, the Chron, and the Press have more.

PS – In re: that Press piece, I take issue with this:

Asked a direct question about why TEA thought it should take over the district, Delgado made the mistake of beginning his answer with a reiteration of all the good things about the district (like a boss talking to a disappointing employee before lowering the boom with a “but”) before starting to get to the point. The crowd, exasperated, shouted him down yelling “Answer the question.” Which he then tried to do but by then it was a lost cause.

(For the record, Morath determined HISD was in need of intervention after years of some low-performing AKA failing schools that didn’t meet state academic standards and board members that were not only dysfunctional but one convicted of corruption. Others engineered an aborted administration takeover in a private meeting in apparent violation of the Open Meetings Act. And while most of the board has switched out in subsequent elections, some members of the especially troubled times remain.)

Only two current members of the Board were there for the cited dysfunction. Only one of those two was involved in the Open Meetings Act violation. The other has not been associated with any bad behavior. Four of the five trustees associated with that Open Meetings Act violation were defeated in their subsequent election. I know that Margaret Downing, a longtime reporter of HISD doings and the author of this piece, knows all of that. I don’t know if she was just presenting the TEA’s case as they would present it without any additional context or if she chose to give it this shading. I don’t care for it either way.

UPDATE: The Chron editorial board was not impressed.

On being on the Board of Managers

Mar 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

When the TEA takeover of HISD was officially announced, I noted that the coverage included a link back to a list of people who had applied for the Board of Managers in 2019. I noted that there were some familiar names on that list, including three current Trustees, all prior to their eventual elections, as well as some other recognizable names.

I reached out to one of those people from the list, who I know in real life. I was curious if they had ever heard back from the TEA the first time around and if the TEA had gotten back in touch now that they were in the Board of Managers business again. They said they never went through the interview process back then because the injunction came down before that could happen, and that the TEA did reach out again via email last week about submitting another application; the deadline to do that is April 6, in case anyone reading this is interested.

I asked what motivated them to apply back then and whether they’d do it again now, and got this response:

My initial interest was really just fascination with the process and wanting to see how the interviews were going to be conducted. I never really thought I would be a serious candidate for the position. But, as you know, often times with these type of things people who are actually qualified just don’t apply because they don’t want to deal with all the BS and you end up getting a list of candidates who have extreme views one way or the other. I suspect given all that has happened that is what will be the case this time. It’s hard for me to see any real qualified candidates, wanting to deal with all the current discord between the superintendent, board, TEA, Union, community, etc.

I share that concern, though I’m perhaps a bit less pessimistic about it. It’s the TEA’s problem now, but it will very much be our problem if they make bad choices, or if they only have bad options from which to choose. We can certainly disagree about whether good people should apply to be on the Board of Managers or if good people can only get tainted by the things they would have to do on the BoM, but however it shakes out this Board is going to have power over HISD for two years or more. Whatever the risks are, I hope people who care about HISD will review the job description and qualifications and consider applying to be on the Board of Managers. I don’t think there’s any way around that.

The state’s requirements for HISD

Mar 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s their job to make it happen.

After forging ahead with a takeover of the Houston Independent School District, state leaders have outlined three conditions that must be met before transferring power back to the elected school board, a process that will likely take years.

Education Commissioner Mike Morath said he wants to make sure the underlying causes for intervention have been addressed before releasing the district from state control. Morath has outlined the following goals: No campuses should get failing grades for multiple years, the special education program should be in compliance with state and federal regulations, and the board should demonstrate procedures and behavior focused on student outcomes.

Local education experts say those criteria are reasonable and good benchmarks, although it will be important to hold the state accountable to those standards and get more clarity about how those goals will be met.

“They’re definitely achievable,” said Duncan Klussman, former superintendent for Spring Branch ISD. “The state’s now in control. It’s their responsibility to produce that result, and we’ll have to see what happens.”

Klussmann, now an education professor at the University of Houston, said the academic performance benchmark in particular is “a very strict requirement, a very high expectation.”

“The biggest challenge here is producing that level of academic outcome in a system that is as large as HISD, where you have those schools at that level,” he said. “In a system that large, it’s a very aggressive goal.”

The district has made academic progress in recent years under House’s leadership, lifting 40 out of 50 schools from the state’s D and F accountability list.

[…]

Catherine Horn, interim dean at the University of Houston College of Education, said the TEA’s outlined goals are actually similar to the current focus and ongoing efforts by Superintendent Millard House II and the elected school board.

“Those are really important indicators of the health of schools and the health of a district,” she said about the criteria. “I think that how those goals are achieved is going to be where the real challenge and opportunity lie.”

She said she hopes the appointed board will expand on the district’s ongoing progress and not pivot in a different direction.

Additionally, it will be important for teachers, parents and the community to get more clarity in the coming months about specific plans and decisions, she said.

“Teachers will want to hear from a board of managers their pathway for accomplishing those goals laid out by the commissioner and by the agency,” Horn said.

[…]

“The state is now responsible for their outcomes,” Klussmann said. “They’re now the entity that we all need to look at and say, ‘This is what you’ve said you expect of the system — and we’re going to hold you accountable to those outcomes.'”

Emphasis mine in all cases. For sure, it’s a big win all around if HISD meets these goals – the quicker, the better – and gets out from under the TEA’s yoke. Let’s just keep in mind two things along the way. One is that any delays, failures, hiccups, bumps in the road, what have you, are 100% the responsibility of the state of Texas. You wanted this, you got it. And two, HISD had already done a lot of the hard work to make this task easier for them, while already doing most of what the TEA says they need to do. The TEA will get credit if and hopefully when they succeed. But they’ll deserve a lot less credit for that success than blame for any failure that we all really hope doesn’t happen.

Federal complaint filed over TEA takeover

Mar 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

We’ll see if it can have an effect.

The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice this week filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that Texas is discriminating against Houston schoolchildren by taking over the majority-minority school district.

Johnny Mata, presiding officer for the coalition, outlined the allegations in a Wednesday letter addressed to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

The coalition filed the complaint on behalf of the Houston Independent School District and against the state of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, Education Commissioner Mike Morath and the Texas Education Agency, according to a copy of the letter shared with the Chronicle.

Mata said he believes the TEA is violating a federal civil rights law by taking control of HISD. The contentious takeover has sparked outrage and pushback in recent days among teachers, parents and community advocates who say the move is a political attempt to destroy public education.

“They’re asking for a fight,” Mata said about state leaders. “They’re playing games, they’re playing politics, they’re catering to their base, and that’s unconscionable.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin. This civil rights law and others extend to all state education agencies, schools and universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Anyone may file a complaint with the federal education department’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal civil rights laws in educational programs or activities that receive federal funding, according to the government website.

[…]

HISD may request an administrative review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings by March 30, according to the commissioner.

Mata, who is not a lawyer, said he disagrees with the state interpretation of the takeover law.

“State law is superceded by federal law and they cannot and should not discriminate against anyone,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has said she is also seeking federal intervention in the takeover by speaking with the Biden administration and other members of Congress.

A spokesperson for the federal education department confirmed that it has been in touch with Lee’s office.

“We cannot prejudge the effect of state and local decisions that have not yet been implemented,” the spokesperson said. “At the U.S. Department of Education, our most important focus is to ensure all students receive high-quality education. We always value and encourage community input in education decisions, and every school district should ensure that community rights are respected.”

See here for the background. I don’t know what the likelihood of federal action is, nor do I know what kind of timeline they might be on, or what procedural steps there may be along the way. I do feel confident that if the feds step in that the state would file its own complaint in federal court, and who knows what happens from there. It’s a lot, at least potentially. Or maybe it’s nothing, if the feds decline to act or decide they don’t have the authority. Like I said, who knows? It’s not boring, we know that much.

Asking the feds to stop the TEA takeover

Mar 18th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Can’t hurt to ask.

U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee said Thursday she is seeking federal government intervention to halt the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District.

Jackson Lee said she has been in contact with the White House frequently over the past years and is now speaking to President Joe Biden’s assistant secretary and the U.S. Office of Civil Rights

“I truly believe that this is a clearly defined matter of discrimination,” Jackson Lee said, adding that other districts have faired similarly to HISD but are not facing takeovers.

Wheatley High School, which received failing grades from the TEA for seven consecutive years, is at the center of the debate over the HISD takeover. While the TEA takeover remained in legal limbo for over three years due to a lawsuit from the district, Wheatley High School has since earned a C grade.

The TEA has said the performance of Wheatley High School is not the only reason for its decision to take over the district. TEA Director Mike Morath pointed to a corruption scandal in which trustees admitted to accepting kickbacks from district vendors as well as a state conservatorship the TEA had placed over HISD for over two consecutive years.

Lee said she has also been speaking with fellow members of Congress, and has distributed a letter criticizing the takeover.

The story notes that the Chron has not yet seen a copy of the letter; I’d have linked to it if there had been a link in the piece. I have previously suggested that federal intervention is the only possible means of stopping this now, given that passing a new law would take far too long and has at best an uncertain chance of happening. That doesn’t mean I think it has a good chance of success, or that the state would sit idly by if it did happen. My best guess is that the Education Department will review Rep. Jackson Lee’s letter but is unlikely to take action, unless they see a clear justification for it.

On that score, I will note that in a world where we still had a fully functioning Voting Rights Act, the TEA would almost certainly have had to get preclearance to sideline the elected Board of Trustees as they will be doing. (This thought is not original to me, I saw it mentioned somewhere else, maybe on Twitter, but I don’t remember where.) That doesn’t mean the takeover couldn’t have happened, just that it would have required more effort on the TEA’s part, or perhaps that the TEA would have gone about it differently. I will also note that if this is the scandal in question, it involved one Trustee who hasn’t been on the Board since 2020. It’s a thing that happened, but we should acknowledge that no current Trustees – you know, the ones who are going to be replaced – were involved.

UPDATE: The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education regarding the takeover. I’ll post separately about that but wanted to acknowledge it this morning.

So now we start processing what happened and what will happen with the TEA takeover

Mar 17th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The Chron editorial board points to three key items.

Still, if this takeover must happen — and Texas Education Agency announced Wednesday that it is indeed happening — we want it to work. Houston’s schoolchildren don’t have time for another failure. There’s no re-do for high school; these are precious years that even the most cynical politician shouldn’t endeavor to squander. Hear us on that, Governor Abbott.

Our skepticism and worry for the schoolchildren in the path of this takeover are tempered by other things: curiosity about how this experiment will work and even a glimmer of hope about what it could accomplish if TEA’s commissioner, Mike Morath, keeps his word to put kids first.

It won’t stand a chance, though, if there’s not some measure of buy-in from kids, parents and the greater Houston community. Right now, there seems to be largely outrage and fear. Trust, if it comes at all, will require transparency and integrity from Morath and the district’s new leaders.

So, how will we know if this takeover is really about improving schools and the future of Houston’s schoolchildren? Three things:

Leadership: Who will lead the district?
Morath said the next superintendent to lead the 187,000-student district would be appointed in the summer but the name of the person is less important than his or her qualifications and character. Ideally the person would have knowledge of Houston or at least Texas. Most important, though, is experience running a large district and overseeing a successful turnaround. The next HISD leader should be reform-minded but not for reform’s sake. Morath has acknowledged that much is working well in the state’s largest district and many kids are “flourishing,” as he told The Houston Landing’s Jacob Carpenter. The next leader should build on that and endeavor to scale it up across the district so that more kids can know the rigor and high expectations of a Carnegie Vanguard High School, the expertise of a Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions and the inspiration of a Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

As for the board of managers expected to replace HISD’s elected board of trustees in June, we implore Abbott to keep the cronies to a minimum. The state should appoint a good mix of educators, parents, business leaders – all of them ideally from the Houston area. They should have a stake in the results but be free of conflicts that could compromise their judgement. We’re glad to see that Morath, in his interview with The Landing, encouraged “people of integrity and wisdom” who are “interested in supporting kids, who truly love kids” to apply “soon” at the TEA website for positions on the board. When this takeover was initially announced in 2019, a diverse group of nearly 250 people applied to serve on the board of mangers and some underwent training. In the three years since, the process was paused by lawsuits. TEA is beginning anew, but not from scratch, given the pool of volunteers who have raised their hands to help.

Strategy: Is the plan based on evidence or politics?
We know what works in education, and no, it’s not merely more money, smaller class sizes or even parental involvement. Those things can help but only in certain contexts, as Amanda Ripley wrote in her 2013 bestseller The Smartest Kids in the World: and how they got that way. Generally, the ingredients to quality public education, according to research, are higher standards, better trained, supported and paid teachers to implement the higher standards, plus accountability to ensure that they do. The state, via the new leaders chosen, will have the space to innovate and perhaps make bold decisions that would normally be politically unpopular if an elected board were still calling the shots. But the guiding star must be best practices. What has truly been proven to work, not just in this country, but in other nations where student performance far outpaces our own.

[…]

End game: This takeover should lead to reform, not purgatory.
There’s a reason “independent” appears in the names of districts across this state. We believe, as do many Texans, that local public school should be run locally, by elected leaders accountable to the public. The TEA must outline a clear plan of action and a timeline to get the work done promptly. Morath told The Landing that he doesn’t expect state control over HISD to last longer than the typical two to six years. But how will we know when the problems that triggered this takeover are solved? It should be clear to all based on clearly defined standards and benchmarks that TEA sets for gauging success. The state agency has already articulated some of these: no campus should receive a D or F state rating for multiple years, the district’s special education program must comply with federal and state requirements, and, more generally, more time during school board meetings should be devoted to discussing student outcomes versus discussing administrative factors, the Chronicle reported. More specificity is needed but these terms seem relatively modest and doable.

I think we’ll know a lot from the announcement of the Board of Managers, and from the naming of a Superintendent. As I noted yesterday, three current Board members, all elected since that initial round of recruitment, were on that list of 243 names. We could get some decent selections, or we could get a bunch of hacks and cronies. The same is true for the Superintendent, and while Mike Morath says he’s bound by the law to pick someone, I don’t see why he can’t name Superintendent House as his choice. We’re in uncharted territory, if you really want to do what’s best then do the obvious here.

The other two items will flow from the first. A decent Board will want to follow best practices and implement genuine improvements – and here I will say that I’d like to hear what that Board ought to do that wasn’t already at least being discussed by this Board – and want to get out in a timely fashion. The first of these should again be clear to us from the beginning, the second may take time to become clear, though having clear objectives and metrics to determine them up front will help a lot. The less we hear from Greg Abbott and the usual crowd of enablers the better. I do actually think Mike Morath wants this to work, if only for his own legacy, and the best way for that to happen is for him to be more or less left alone by Abbott. Like I said, go put your own name forward for this Board if you can. Let’s put that first principle to the test now.

And keep up the pressure wherever you can.

With the news today of the Texas Education Agency taking over Houston Independent School District, Democrats in the Texas House warned that Houston ISD was set up to fail through a lack of funding and state support and that it could be the precursor to other state takeover attempts of districts around the state for political reasons.

“When it comes to TEA, you can’t be the arsonist and the firefighter,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat and chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Democrats argued during a Wednesday afternoon press conference that school funding in Texas has lagged behind inflation for years, that teachers are paid so poorly they’re leaving the profession in droves and that retired educators are languishing in poverty because of the lack of inflation adjustments to their benefits over the last several decades.

The underfunding has brought huge challenges for schools, especially those in large school districts like Houston ISD where there are many children from lower-income families, they said.

They pitched a plethora of fixes, including increasing the basic per-student funding number by far more than Republicans have proposed, shifting the funding model from one based on attendance to one based on enrollment and giving retired teachers significant benefit bumps.

Although Democrats are the minority party in both the House and the Senate, Martinez Fischer said he believes the House will need to vote on certain measures that require 100 votes to pass.

Since Republicans don’t have enough votes to do that on their own, he thinks he has leverage to press for some priorities — with investment in public education “at the top” of that list.

One bill they said they hoped to win bipartisan support for was brought by Rep. Alma Allen, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the House Public Education Committee. It would give the TEA the option to decide against the takeover of school districts, as is happening now with Houston ISD. The agency says its hands are tied legally, and it must move forward with the takeover.

As we have discussed, there’s not much that can be done about the current situation other than holding Morath and the TEA and the future Board of Managers to the promises that have been made about what the goals are of this whole thing, but using whatever leverage Dems have to pass the takeover modification bills is a good use of their time. At least we can try to prevent this from happening again. The Trib and the Texas Signal have more, as do Stace, who fears that any good people on the Board of Managers will be tainted by the bad things it is likely to do, and Campos, who encourages “good, smart, and decent folks to sign up”, have more.

The TEA takeover has begun

Mar 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

At least the suspense is over. That’s the extent of my optimism about this.

State education leaders notified the Houston Independent School District on Wednesday that they are resuming the process of stripping all power from the district’s elected school board and giving it to a soon-to-be appointed governance group – a long-anticipated move that faces strong opposition from many Houston-area politicians, educators and families.

The announcement, which largely stems from a state law mandating sanctions against districts with chronically low-rated campuses, follows a Texas Supreme Court ruling in January that lifted a temporary injunction blocking the elected board’s ouster. It now sets the stage for the largest state takeover of a public school district in modern American history, while also throwing the future of HISD into further doubt after years of board dysfunction and leadership upheaval.

“In each of these cases, we have to look at what is in the best interest of students and what are the root causes that require state intervention in the first place,” Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said. “In this particular case, it’s about the leadership at the top. Making sure that we have a school board that is focused on ensuring that all kids in Houston, not just some kids in Houston, have access to great schools.”

The replacement governance team, known as a board of managers, will assume responsibility for setting HISD’s budget and districtwide policies, among other tasks. State leaders have not announced who will serve on the board of managers, though Morath told the Houston Landing this week that he expects to name replacements and transfer control to them no earlier than June 1.

Morath also confirmed that he plans to replace HISD Superintendent Millard House II – an authority given to him when appointing a board of managers – with a yet-to-be-named district leader once the replacement board takes power.

Boards of managers in Texas historically have held power for roughly two to five years before transferring authority back to elected trustees. Morath said he sees no reason to expect the HISD board of managers’ reign would extend beyond that range.

The state’s planned takeover is primarily tied to a state law passed in 2015 with bipartisan support. The law mandates one of two sanctions – the appointment of a board of managers or closure of low-rated campuses – in any district with a school that fails to meet state academic standards for five straight years. HISD’s Wheatley High School triggered that law in 2019 when it received its seventh consecutive failing grade.

In moving to replace HISD’s elected board, Morath has also cited the prolonged presence of a state-appointed conservator in the district and a state investigation that found multiple instances of trustee misconduct, such as violations of Texas’ open meetings laws and improper attempts to steer vendor contracts. Morath has the legal authority to install a board of managers on both fronts – though he’s not required to do so.

[…]

Morath said state officials will soon reboot their process for identifying replacement board members, an undertaking they began in late 2019 before the issuance of a court injunction. He reiterated a commitment to appointing a replacement board composed of HISD residents, and added that he would “prefer people who do not have ideological blinders, one way or the other.”

“They need to come in with wisdom and eyes wide open and make decisions in a very complex environment that are in the best interest of kids,” Morath said. “And this requires people that can think very, very clearly. That have an understanding of creating a culture of servant leadership and systems leadership. There’s not any specific agenda other than what is in the best interest of kids that we want to see pursued.”

However, hundreds of attendees at several recent protests opposing the takeover have voiced fears about Abbott’s education commissioner appointing managers who will push for charter school expansion and other policies favored by Republicans.

“Ultimately, I am really confused about what the end game is for Morath and Abbott,” state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said earlier this month. “If your objective is to make sure schools are run correctly, this is not the right way to do it. The takeover of school districts in the past, in my experience, have been school districts that are completely dysfunctional.”

Ultimately, the appointed board will have some incentive to implement policies that curry favor with local residents. If the board of managers defies the popular consensus in HISD on major issues, the elected board could immediately reverse those decisions upon retaking power in the coming years – a scenario that would cause even more disruption in a district craving stability. Morath said he expects the replacement board to remain engaged with HISD residents, leaders and trustees.

Elected board members will retain their seats, though they will not hold any power. Board elections will continue uninterrupted, with four races still scheduled for November.

“We don’t know who’s going to be on the board of managers, what connections they will have to the community, so I’ll be making sure they have somebody letting them know what the community wants and playing an advisory role,” HISD Board President Dani Hernandez said.

Much of this article is taken from their interview with Morath. Heck of a scoop, I guess. We did have some indications of this late on Tuesday, as there were takeover docs briefly posted on the TEA’s website; they were later removed from view as this was apparently jumping the gun.

The Chron story on those prematurely-released documents also included a link to the list of people who had applied for the Board of Managers in 2019, which was the last time we went through this exercise, before the HISD litigation put it all on hold for what turned out to be three years. Of interest, and as a reminder that there’s been quite a bit of turnover on the HISD Board since then, three of those applicants are now incumbent Trustees: Patricia Allen, Kathy Blueford-Daniels, and Judith Cruz. Current HCDE Trustee Amy Hinojosa is in there as well. I recognize some other former candidates, and a parent of some former classmates of my daughters. I wonder if Morath had any favorites from that list, if there’s anyone that the TEA will encourage to apply again. Be that as it may, I’d say anyone who’s mad about this ought to apply to be on the Board themselves. May as well make sure there are at least a few people we can trust in the process.

On a related note, here’s another story about how state takeovers of school districts usually don’t accomplish anything worthwhile, not just in Texas but around the country.

From Massachusetts to Mississippi and California to Kentucky, state officials in recent decades have increasingly responded to school districts struggling with poor academics or financial woes by usurping local control and pledging to turn around the schools.

But these state takeovers, according to a recent study, are mostly ineffective.

“The best evidence we have shows that takeovers don’t often achieve their intended results, don’t improve student achievement and don’t yield better outcomes for kids,” said Josh McGee, an economist at the University of Arkansas. “There are cases where we have seen improvement — but those are few and far between.”

McGee, associate director for the university’s education policy office, was referencing a 2021 study conducted by Beth Schueler from the University of Virginia and Joshua Bleiberg at Brown University. In the first cross-state comparison of its kind, the researchers examined all state takeovers from 2011 to 2016 and, on average, found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.”

The study shows varying results among districts across the country. In general, state takeovers are far from uniform since officials making different policy choices within different contexts. Research shows that some schools appear to have benefited from takeovers while others have tanked.

The TL;dr of this is that the situations in which state takeovers tended to do best are those with school districts that are well below standards. HISD, with its overall B rating and 94 percent of schools rated C or better, does not meet that criteria. The main issues with schools that perform poorly are poverty and other socioeconomic factors, which are best dealt with via greater resources. I’m sure you can surmise what the odds of that are with HISD. Beyond that, and again stop me if you’ve heard this before, most state education departments don’t have the experience or the tools to make a difference. The best you can say is that they don’t really do any damage while they’re in charge.

We’re in uncharted territory here. I encourage you to read that Houston Landing interview with Mike Morath, and their FAQ about what it means. Whatever else I might say, he just doesn’t sound like he’s thrilled to be in this position. I don’t know if that means anything, but it was my impression. The takeover happens in June. In the meantime, apply to be on the Board, make a pledge to hold that Board’s feet to the fire, and let’s try to finally knock Harold Dutton out of the Lege next year. The Chron, Reform Austin, the Press, and the Trib have more.

HISD ends lawsuit against TEA

Mar 11th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A formality at this point.

The Houston Independent School District board voted on Thursday night to end its lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency, effectively ending the district’s legal fight against an attempted state takeover.

The motion passed with support of eight of the nine trustees following a brief closed session. Trustee Kathy Blueford-Daniels, who represents District II which includes Wheatley High, voted against the measure.

Superintendent Millard House II said he does not know what the board’s decision will mean for the state’s takeover effort because that agency has made no announcement or decision.

“That was a board decision in an effort to get to the table to have conversations with TEA,” he said in an interview following the meeting. “There hasn’t been conversation.”

Dani Hernandez, board president, said the board remains committed to students and student outcomes.

“We are now at the point where it is time for us to move forward,” she said during the meeting. “It is in our students’ and our employees’ best interest for us to end this lawsuit between HISD and TEA and navigate and build relationships between all the parties. … We look forward to bringing both organizations to the table soon for the best interest of children.”

The district is withdrawing from the lawsuit to “end further expenditure of district resources, as there is no further legal recourse,” according to the motion.

[…]

In theory the district could file for a rehearing and continue the legal battle. HISD did request more time to file a motion for a rehearing in late January, but never ended up following through on it.

Given the Texas Supreme Court decision, the board’s decision to stop putting resources toward the lawsuit makes sense, said attorney Christopher L. Tritico, who has represented three Houston-area districts — North Forest, Beaumont and La Marque — in takeover hearings.

“A rehearing is one in a million, and it’s just not worth it. I think they are making a prudent decision in public funds at this point in recognizing the decision is over,” Tritico said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t conceding that they think the commissioner is right, they just don’t have any legal maneuvering.”

I agree with the Board’s actions here. The one trustee who voted against was Kathy Blueford-Daniels, whose district contains Wheatley. I can’t blame her for that.

We have reached the weekend and still no word from the TEA. According to Campos, “there was supposed to be a meeting in Austin yesterday that had to be postponed”. No rush, y’all, take all the time you need. The Press has more.

Wheatley’s fate

Mar 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

We may learn today of the TEA’s intentions with HISD. Whatever does happen, let’s remember that in the end this will affect a lot of people, and some of them are not happy with the position they’ve been put in.

Samuel Ollison, a junior at Phillis Wheatley High School, already has started working on his back-up plan.

He spends his free time looking into schools he should attend senior year because Houston ISD may be taken over by the Texas Education Agency at any moment, and he has heard rumors his school may close.

“I’m nervous, honestly,” Ollison said. “They say my school is the No. 1 factor in why TEA is taking over HISD …We just need to do better at this school because I really don’t want Wheatley to get shut down, or for the TEA to take over.”

It’s an uncertain time for students at Wheatley High School, as the 96-year-old Fifth Ward campus continues to be thrust in the spotlight for its multiple failing accountability grades that puts the district at risk of losing its superintendent and elected board. Meanwhile, rumors are circulating about what will come of a possible state intervention, leaving parents and students alike in fear of the school’s closure.

Ollison grew more concerned when read an article in which Mayor Sylvester Turner said Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath told him he has two options — appoint a board of managers or close Wheatley high school. Other public figures since have made similar comments.

State code indicates that closing a school is an option, but the TEA never has stated that it plans to. Morath has spent years pursuing the other option — appointing a board of managers, which temporarily was blocked by an injunction. However, the TEA declined to comment on the mayor’s remarks or if intends to close Wheatley.

[…]

Throughout the years, the school’s enrollment began to drop, and subsequently the dollars tied to that enrollment. By 1976, the school was in the bottom 12% for reading scores, according to a 1978 Texas Monthly article. In 1995, the Fifth Ward school had the highest dropout rate and lowest math score of the high schools in the Houston ISD.

From 2014 to 2017, it earned an “improvement required” rating from the state, and in 2019, under a revamped accountability system, the school earned an ‘F.’ Ratings were paused in 2018 for Hurricane Harvey and in 2020 and 2021 for COVID.

In 2022, the school earned a ‘C,’ but some argue that the standards were lowered.

Either way, the previous streak of failing ratings, in part, triggered a takeover battle that has been slowly making its way through the courts.

Joseph Williams took the helm of the school as principal in 2018, not long after the district was put on alert for a potential takeover. When Williams first took the job — he knew “time was of the essence.” His first priority was to improve the school’s culture and the morale.

“In some cases, there was apathy with some of the scholars,” Williams said. “We just wanted to revive the spirit. When you just keep hearing your name and its associated with this negative thing, it can kind of wear on you.”

He tightened up the attendance policy, restructured the classroom layout to make sure grades were grouped together, allowing administrators to better monitor students.

They implemented an online merit system, where teachers could award students points for good attendance or high scores. They could cash in the points they earned for snacks or a free hoodie. The school saw some modest improvements on test scores and earned a C for its most recent accountability rating. This is a point many education advocates, lawmakers, and critics of state intervention make when talking about the potential takeover.

There’s more in the story from current students and their parents, who are trying to figure out what their options would be if Wheatley is closed. I don’t think that will accomplish anything positive, especially with the school on a better path now. You know my feelings on this, so I’ll just leave this here. And I hope that tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that, I don’t have to write about what happens next in a post-takeover world.

“Shall” versus “may”

Mar 9th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Houston Landing touches on a subject I’ve mentioned before.

As concerns grow about the Texas Education Agency ousting the Houston Independent School District’s elected board, a question with major practical and political implications has emerged: Are state officials legally mandated to take over Texas’ largest school district?

Despite multiple years of legal and legislative battles, there’s still no definitive answer to this fundamental query – setting the stage for even more litigation that could delay or derail any state efforts to strip power from the district’s school board.

A strange confluence of recent events has left it unclear whether TEA officials must, or merely may, take drastic action against the state’s largest school district due to persistently poor academic performance at Wheatley High School, according to a Houston Landing review of state law and court rulings. While the uncertainty has lingered for the past several weeks, it’s taken on greater importance as the state nears a decision on whether to punish HISD for past failings.

The murkiness stems from state appellate rulings and legislative actions in the past several months that were supposed to clarify the state’s responsibility for punishing HISD, yet failed to plainly answer one key question: Did Wheatley trigger a state law requiring sanctions against the district when it received a seventh consecutive failing grade in 2019?

[…]

HISD finds itself in legal limbo largely due to a peculiar disconnect between Texas’ legislative and judicial branches.

The saga began in 2015, when Texas legislators passed a law that said the TEA must replace a district’s school board or close chronically low-performing campuses in any district with a single school that failed to meet state academic accountability standards for five consecutive years. The bill, championed by state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., a Houston Democrat whose legislative district includes Wheatley, aimed to punish school boards for neglecting long-struggling campuses.

However, the law spelled out specific years – including 2018 – for which schools must fail to meet state standards to trigger sanctions. And as a result of Hurricane Harvey, Wheatley received a “not rated” designation in 2018, which didn’t count as a failing grade.

Still, state officials moved to oust HISD’s school board after Wheatley fell short of state standards in 2019, its seventh consecutive failing grade without a passing mark. (TEA leaders have said closing Wheatley would not remedy the root causes of the school’s poor results.)

Wheatley’s “not rated” mark in 2018 set off a legal skirmish over whether the school technically triggered the law with its seventh straight failing grade the following year.

A Travis County judge issued a temporary injunction in HISD’s favor in early 2020, halting the takeover, but she did not elaborate on the rationale for her decision. Then, in late 2020, the Texas Third Court of Appeals ruled that Wheatley did not violate the accountability law because the “plain language of the statute” required a failing grade in 2018. TEA officials subsequently appealed the decision to the Texas Supreme Court.

While the case was pending before the Texas Supreme Court, state legislators passed a bill in mid-2021 clarifying that a “not rated” grade doesn’t count as a passing score for the purposes of calculating whether a school scored five consecutive failing grades. If a school receives four straight failing grades, followed by a “not rated” mark, it must meet state standards the next school year to avoid triggering a state takeover or campus closure. Texas legislators, however, did not make the law retroactive to the Wheatley situation.

“It was our legislative intent not to include any language that would have done that,” Dan Huberty, a Republican former state representative who helped usher the bill to passage, said in an email last week. Huberty added that lawmakers wanted to leave Wheatley’s fate to the courts – a point echoed this week in a statement by another key figure in the law’s passage, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

Yet the Texas Supreme Court, when given the chance, didn’t clearly address the unanswered question about Wheatley.

In an October 2022 written opinion, the justices unanimously overturned the temporary injunction, finding the TEA has the legal right to install a replacement board on two unrelated matters: the lengthy presence of a state-appointed conservator in the district; and multiple findings of misconduct by some board members, including violations of the state’s open meetings laws and attempts to steer vendor contracts, following a TEA investigation in 2019. On both fronts, state law says Morath can appoint a new board, but he’s not required to.

But for reasons never made clear, the justices didn’t explicitly rule on whether Wheatley triggered mandatory sanctions. The justices seemed to defer in their opinion to the Texas Legislature’s new law, which could bolster the state’s case for mandatory sanctions, but they never issued an unequivocal directive.

I’ve noted the “shall” versus “may” distinction before. I see two ways of looking at this weaseling by the Lege and the courts. One is that this is all a very thin technical reed on which to hang an argument that the TEA doesn’t have to intervene. I wouldn’t want to have to defend that in court. The other is that despite it being very clear that the Lege wanted SCOTx to be the decider, they declined to say one way or the other if the TEA was required to act. Thin it may be, it’s an easy to grasp reason for the TEA to take more limited action, which is at least what the locals want, and probably what they would prefer given the scope of the issue.

Will they do it? Like I said, it can’t hurt to have people talking to Mike Morath to try to persuade him to back off. Maybe the bills filed to prevent the takeover, along with such lobbying efforts, are enough to push him to that way of thinking. Or maybe not. Campos is “hearing the HISD takeover will be announced on Friday”. Which, I guess, still comes down to the meaning of “takeover”. But if you phrase it that way, I know where my mind is going. We’ll maybe find out tomorrow.

Bills filed to stop the TEA takeover of HISD

Mar 8th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Feels too late to me, but it can’t hurt to try.

State senators have filed the first bill to soften the law that triggers school district takeovers.

State Sens. Carol Alvarado, Borris Miles and John Whitmire filed Senate Bill 1662 in response to the threat of a possible takeover of Houston Independent School District by the Texas Education Agency. State Rep/ Alma Allen has filed companion legislation in the Texas House.

The bill modifies the current state law to provide TEA additional tools to address low performance ratings such as hearings before the commissioner, academic achievement plans, appointing agency to monitor, but not replace trustees, among other items. Under SB 1662, the TEA commissioner will have broader discretion to choose an alternative that does not require a school closure or the appointment of a board of managers.

Given Phyllis Wheatley High School improvement to a C and the district’s overall B rating, the TEA’s reason for initiating a takeover bid in 2019 is no longer valid, Alvarado said.

“It is unjust and unwarranted for TEA to move forward with a takeover,” Alvarado said in a statement. “S.B. 1662 offers the agency options to work collaboratively with HISD to address any current deficiencies instead of subjecting nearly 200,000 students and 27,000 teachers and employees to a takeover.”

Other leaders also made promises to get answers. NAACP president Bishop James Dixon said he plans to call a meeting with TEA commissioner Mike Morath. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said she intends to bring the issue to the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Education.

HISD Trustee Patricia Allen said the trustees, administrators and other HISD representatives will let their grievances be known when they go to the legislator March 20.

“We have been in this fight before we even came in office,” Trustee Patricia Allen said at a community meeting at North Main Church of God in Christ in the Heights. “The board has been working since we were elected. We have a lone star governors coach, a TEA program — we have tried our best, hired the best superintendent.”

See here for the previous update, and here for my discussion of things that could be done to stave this off. As I said then, even if these bills have the support to pass and are allowed to come to the floor, it would be at least weeks and more likely months before they would take effect. Thus, unless Mike Morath is agreeable to wait it out, the legislative process is just too damn slow. I appreciate the effort, but let’s not put our hope in something that can’t work unless Morath and the TEA are willing to let it work.

Now having said that, it’s Tuesday afternoon and the TEA hasn’t taken over HISD yet, so maybe Morath is waiting until something happens to take him off the hook. Stranger things and all that. I would encourage Trustee Allen and Bishop Dixon and whoever else can get a meeting with Morath to ask him nicely if he’d at least talk to these legislators before he does anything. As with the bills themselves, it can’t hurt. Getting the feds involved has a chance of achieving something, and it could be done quickly, but it would also be super antagonistic, so let’s try the “ask very nicely for a delay” option first, since it surely won’t work if we do it the other way around. Throw everything at the wall, but do so in the proper order.

Oh, and why wasn’t a bill like this filed in the last Lege? Well, maybe there was one – I’d have to look, I don’t know offhand. That would have solved the timing issue, but only if it was allowed to pass, as with this one, and we didn’t know we’d need it because of the then-ongoing litigation. I think it’s at best a tossup whether these bills get even a committee hearing now, and I’d say that was never in the cards in 2021. That’s easy to say, and if we give credit for trying now we do have to ask what we tried then. We’re in this situation now regardless, so let’s not waste too much energy on what could have been. What it is now is what matters.

The past history of TEA takeovers

Mar 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As of Monday afternoon there’s still no word from the TEA about the fate of HISD, so while we wait we ponder what history can teach us. Assuming that history doesn’t contain anything gay or CRT-related so we’re allowed to learn from it, of course.

As rumors of a looming state takeover of the Houston Independent School District cause uncertainty and anxiety for educators and families, many are looking to previous examples of the Texas Education Agency imposing control of local school systems.

There are 15 such instances over the course of three decades, according to state records. None likely offer a case study that would compare to a takeover of HISD, the largest school district in the state and the eighth largest in the nation. Still, some have likened the potential takeover of diverse HISD to that of the other school systems, all of which served predominantly Black and Hispanic student bodies or children from families considered to be “economically disadvantaged.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from HISD teachers asking me for advice,” said Jennifer Jermany, a former North Forest ISD teacher who was laid off when the district was absorbed into HISD. “Our cases are similar, but not exact. My heart really goes out to those teachers because we really don’t know what is going to happen.”

[…]

Of the 15 previous state takeovers, four — Kendleton, Wilmer-Hutchins, North Forest and La Marque ISDs — closed entirely after regaining local control. El Paso, Beaumont, Edgewood and Southside ISDs remain open after local control was restored.

Progreso, Pearsall, Hearn, Harlandale and Snyder ISDs each came to a settlement or did not proceed with a board of managers.

Two districts — Marlin ISD and Shepherd ISD — still have a state-appointed board of managers in place.

Seven of those districts were predominantly Black, including multiple districts with schools significant to Texas’ African American history. Another seven of the districts taught mostly Hispanic student bodies. Only one district — Shepherd ISD — was predominantly white. Around 66 percent of students in that district are economically disadvantaged.

Of HISD’s 187,000 students, 62 percent are Hispanic and 22 percent are Black. Nearly 80 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged.

None of the districts previously taken over by TEA come close to comparing in size to HISD. The smallest of those districts, Kendleton ISD, had less than 100 students and the largest, Beaumont ISD, currently has around 17,000.

In the previous takeovers, TEA gave reasons such as financial issues, administrators violating the law, fraudulent test score data, inability of school boards to properly govern, loss of accreditation status and poor academic ratings, among other causes.

See here, here, and here for the background. Beaumont ISD was taken over because of fiscal mismanagement. That at least would be an understandable reason, with clear goals for being returned to local control. Most of the rest of the story is about the takeover of North Forest, which followed a few years later by North Forest being absorbed into HISD. They had serious, long-term issues with their board of trustees, which again is a different issue than what HISD faces. It’s also a reminder that we didn’t have any real mechanism in place at the time to track the former NFISD students as they made their way through HISD. That was long enough ago that I’d expect none of those original students are still in HISD schools. Sure would have been nice to know what their outcomes were, or how those who followed them into HISD have been doing.

Anyway. The one reason why I think HISD might maybe avoid a full takeover is that the TEA cannot possibly be prepared to handle the responsibility of running HISD, even if they outsource it to a board of managers. I don’t think they want it, and I think they will look for an exit ramp. I agree with Mayor Turner and Judge Hidalgo and many others that politics is at play, and I freely admit I am thinking wishfully when I say stuff like this. It’s what I’ve got, and until the TEA tells us what they’re doing we can at least hope for the best.

I don’t see any issue with HCC campaign contributions and the Maldonado vote

Mar 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I appreciate the reporting in this story, but ultimately I think it’s a nothingburger.

The four trustees who voted to extend Houston Community College Chancellor Cesar Maldonado’s contract received a combined $78,000 in campaign donations from a political action committee whose chair was found expressing interest in the renewal effort, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Questions have arisen about the potential involvement of Jonathan Day from the Houston Business Education Coalition, after a voicemail recording surfaced where a man identifying himself as Day asked to speak to Chairwoman Cynthia Lenton-Gary about the issue.

Maldonado’s contract extension still failed, with five trustees – including Lenton-Gary – voting Wednesday against re-signing. (Lenton-Gary’s available campaign finance filings do not show any contributions from the PAC.)

“I’d be very interested in talking with you briefly about the pending issues with the renewal of the chancellor’s current arrangement with the college,” Day, naming himself as the chair of the coalition, said in the voicemail. “Please give me a call at your convenience.”

The recording signaled a more drawn-out fight over Maldonado’s contract than was previously known: Conversations about the pending deal had largely taken place behind closed doors in executive session. But several administrative problems in Maldonado’s nine years as chancellor were part of the fight. Two of the trustees who voted against the renewal afterward cited steep declines in admission as well as lawsuits brought under the chancellor’s tenure – including one alleging discrimination against Black employees – as some of their personal reasons for opposing his continued leadership.

Trustees Monica Flores Richart, Eva L. Loredo, Charlene Ward Johnson and Adriana Tamez voted in favor of the extension. While they each reported campaign contributions from the business education PAC, all four denied financial influence in their decision making. Day also denied any ethical conflict occurred.

“We’re people who pay taxes, we have an interest in the performance of the college,” Day said in a phone interview. “That’s materially affected by the selection of the chancellor, the chief executive officer. We of course have an interest in that. I think it would be very disappointing if the business community here in Houston was not vitally involved in that kind of a matter at the college.”

[…]

The five trustees who voted against Maldonado’s contract extension did not offer any reasons immediately after the Wednesday vote, nor did the chancellor react. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In a letter issued to the HCC community, however, Maldonado cited several gains in student achievement and building a financial reserve of $256 million as some of his biggest accomplishments.

“I am proud of my service as chancellor of HCC and of the many accomplishments, awards, and recognitions we have achieved together since May 2014,” Maldonado said. “The best is yet to come and we must all keep advancing the institution’s goals – keeping true to our North Star, the ultimate student experience, which shines bright and guides us from good to great in every aspect of our college’s service.”

But in separate phone calls, two trustees pointed to a number of management issues in Maldonado’s administration as their reasons for voting ‘no.’ One of those is a systemwide decline in enrollment, with more than 12,000 students lost between fall 2019 and fall 2020 – although system officials say they expect more than 30-percent increase in enrollment growth through 2035.

“I voted not to renew chancellor’s contract because of the precipitous decline in enrollment, underperforming campuses, poor fiscal management, absence of a turnaround plan and an astounding number of lawsuits involving current and former personnel,” District IV Trustee Reagan Flowers said. “I fundamentally believe that we need to move this institution in a new forward direction under different leadership.”

One of those lawsuits is seeking $100 million from the system. Filed in 2020 on behalf of hundreds of current and former Black employees, the suit alleges that 90 percent of the longtime black professionals at the community college have either been terminated or demoted since Maldonado arrived, compared with 10 percent of white employees who have been displaced. Hispanic hires and promotions, however, have increased by 50 percent, according to court documents.

The plaintiff’s attorneys also claim that Maldonado used a list of tactics to undermine and get rid of black employees, including padding their personnel files with false complaints to be used as reasons to fire them, using the word “transformation” as a code word for getting rid of black employees, placing doubt on black employees’ claims, and forcing black employees to take leaves of absence without cause in order to use those as grounds for termination.

[…]

Several of the trustees with donations from the PAC said they took issue with any claims that their votes were cast under financial influences. Richart said she received many perspectives and opinions on the matter of Maldonado’s contract, but the decision was hers alone.

“As a Trustee bound by law, ethics rules, HCC bylaws and policies, and my own moral code, I made this decision, as I have all other decisions as Trustee, based on the best interest of the College,” she said. “To suggest otherwise is an insult to not only me, but each one of my colleagues who have received campaign contributions from individuals and groups who care about the future of HCC and Houston.”

See here for the background. It’s very easy to slide into whataboutism when arguing about the ethics of campaign contributions, so let me just say that I found the case for possible shenanigans here to be unpersuasive. You can feel however you want to feel about Mr. Day and his PAC – I’d have to take a deeper look at their donation history, but it would not surprise me if I viewed them unfavorably, given the context. Lobbyists lobby, it’s what they do. That includes lobbyists for causes and organizations that most of us here support. As far as this example goes, put me down as in agreement with what Trustee Richart says.

The thing here is that there’s a perfectly good case for casting either vote on this matter. I thought it made sense to move on from Chancellor Maldonado, for reasons mostly in line with those of Trustee Flowers. Against that, it’s clear that he did a lot of good work – read the comments on my previous post for a strong defense of Maldonado – and retained the confidence of a significant portion of the HCC community. I don’t see any reason at this time to doubt the sincerity of anyone’s vote. I’m happy to have this phone call come to light – more sunlight, please do bring it on – I just don’t think it made any difference. If there’s more evidence out there to suggest otherwise, let’s hear it. For now, I have no issues with what happened.

So is there anything that can be done to derail the TEA takeover?

Mar 5th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Probably not. I mean, I really appreciate the engagement and the passion, but we’re at the end of the road here, a road that started almost six years ago. Sometimes you just run out of things to do.

With time seemingly running out, Houston politicians vowed on Friday to file lawsuits and legislation — whatever it takes — to stave off a possible state takeover of Houston ISD that has been in the works for four years.

Mayor Sylvester Turner and state Rep. Alma Allen announced earlier this week that they’d heard reports that the takeover could happen as early as March 6. The Texas Supreme Court gave the Texas Education Agency final authority to assume control of the school system in January but has yet to take formal action to do so.

“We as a body, as state legislators, are standing before you to say ‘We are not asleep at the wheel,’ ” state Rep. Jarvis Johnson, said Friday during a protest at Discovery Green, one of a series of events held to highlight the urgency of the situation. “We are in the process of rewriting legislation. We are looking at every lawsuit we can bring to the doorstep of the governor, and the TEA, to thwart the efforts of the TEA.”

Turner called on TEA Commissioner Mike Morath and state legislators at the protest and earlier this week to amend the law so the state doesn’t appoint a board of managers.

During their conversations, Morath did not confirm nor deny takeover plans, but cited a provision in state code that he says requires the TEA to take over a district or close a school that has failed five consecutive years.

Turner is advocating a different option. “If there is something that is not in the best interest of the kids, you can go to the Legislature now, and make any modification that is needed and we can move further down the road,” the mayor said.

[…]

Friday started with a few dozen protesters in front of the district’s central office, also wondering why HISD should be taken over by the state instead of other lower-performing districts. They pointed to HISD schools’ current ratings, which show that 94 percent of schools earn a grade of A, B or C.

“Those who cannot stand on the right side of history, don’t deserve our shopping, don’t deserve our worship, they don’t deserve our tithes and offerings,” James Dixon, president of the Houston NAACP, said. “If you can’t stand up for public schools and for education, you don’t deserve our support financially, you don’t deserve our votes and you do not deserve our respect.”

Speaking via the phone from the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said she could not attend the protest in person but fully supported its mission.

“I’ve said to the Department of Education and to the president United States … this is a test case and we must win this case,” Jackson Lee said.

See here and here for the background. We’re where we are now because of a Supreme Court ruling, so a state lawsuit seems extremely unlikely to bear fruit. A federal lawsuit could be possible, and maybe there’s some way for the US Department of Education to intervene, but that all feels vague and undefined. Better odds than a state lawsuit, but nothing I’d want to bet on. And as far as legislation goes, we’re barely even into the committee-hearings part of the legislative session. Any bill to stop this takeover, assuming it had majority support in both chambers and wasn’t opposed by Speaker Phelan or Dan Patrick or Greg Abbott, would be at least a month away from getting signed. And even then, unless it passed with a two-thirds majority in both chambers, it would be another 90 days before it went into effect. This just cannot happen in time.

The one possibility I can see is someone convincing Mike Morath that the Supreme Court ruling just means that the TEA “may” take over HISD, not that it “shall” take it over. I don’t know what provision he’s citing, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know what’s in his head or what legal advice he’s receiving, but at least this is a plausible path. If Morath believes he has discretion, then we just have to persuade him to do something less drastic. How good are the odds of that? We’ll find out soon.

Superintendant House speaks about the looming TEA takeover

Mar 4th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Not much one can say in this position.

Superintendent Millard House II said it’s business as usual in the state’s largest school system until the Texas Education Agency pulls the trigger on its rumored takeover plan.

He used the start of a school board meeting to address the rumors regarding a potential intervention by the Texas Education Agency.

“As of today, the district has not received any official notice from the TEA,” House said Thursday. “I remain laser-focused on fulfilling my duties as Superintendent alongside our Board of Trustees to provide the best possible educational outcomes for all HISD students. My team and I will continue to implement our community informed strategic plan, which is delivering results for HISD students and families.”

He vowed to keep students, families and community updated.

[…]

The mayor publicly announced on Wednesday that he is hearing rumors regarding an imminent takeover, calling on the Texas Education Agency to clarify its plans. The Supreme Court also issued a mandate on Wednesday — the final legal step necessary — to allow the state takeover, if the commissioner believes it to be appropriate.

“He’s in a very uncomfortable position,” Turner said of the superintendent. “His future, like the district, is in the hands of the TEA, and it’s unclear. If you didn’t know you were going to hold on to your job, and the power was not in your hands to decide, I think you would be reluctant to say anything publicly.”

Turner reiterated that the TEA should make a statement publicly, due to the uncertainty around the situation.

“This is what I would say to the state: if there is no intention of (taking over) state your position clearly,” Turner said. “If you intend to do it there should be a certain amount of community engagement and transparency and not hiding behind office walls.”

See here for the background, and here for coverage of a protest about the takeover. In a different story, Superintendent House says he doesn’t know what the future will bring, which is not a great place for any of us to be.

The TEA is gonna do what they’re gonna do, and it looks like we’ll first hear about it from them when they do it. This sucks and is very likely to be harmful, but we have no control over the situation. All we can do is say it loudly. So let me be as clear as I can: There’s no good reason for the TEA to step in at this point. Nearly all of the HISD Board is different than it was when the issues that led to the takeover conditions occurred. The schools whose performance triggered the takeover conditions are now meeting the needed academic standards. HISD overall got a B grade from the TEA in the last accountability ratings. There’s nothing for the TEA to fix. But there’s plenty for them to break. The TEA won the legal battle to say that they could take over HISD. Please take that victory and be satisfied with it. The Press, the Trib, and Campos have more.

HCC will hire a new Chancellor

Mar 3rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Interesting.

The Houston Community College System Board of Trustees voted on Wednesday not to extend the contract of Chancellor Cesar Maldonado.

The trustees’ decision was close: Four voted in a special meeting to consider a new contract and five opposed. Board Chairwoman Cynthia Lenton-Gary was against the contract, as were District IV Trustee Reagan Flowers, District V Trustee Robert Glaser, District VI Trustee Dave Wilson and District IX Trustee Pretta VanDible Stallworth.

It was not immediately clear why the majority declined to continue their relationship with Maldonado. The trustees’ vote occurred after more than one-and-a-half hours in executive session, and neither Maldonado nor the trustees made public comments before the decision.

Maldonado’s contract expires Aug. 31.

“Chancellor Maldonado has had a notable nine-year run, in part, expanding student achievement, ensuring a high credit rating for our institution, forging value-added partnerships with the community, and expanding the mission, vision and strategic priorities of HCC,” Lenton-Gary, also the District VII trustee, said in a statement. “On behalf of the HCC governing board, we celebrate the successes of HCC under the leadership of Dr. Cesar Maldonado and extend our gratitude for his leadership and longstanding service as HCC’s Chancellor.”

While Maldonado oversaw several physical expansions at HCC, his time at the system will also be marked by multiple shakeups in the board and controversies in the administration.

[…]

At least one lawsuit rose to public attention in 2021, after a former instructor accused Maldonado and the system of retaliating against her for reporting that she was being sexually harassed by board member Robert Glaser. Most recently, the system has struggled to maintain steady enrollment, having lost more than 12,000 students between fall 2019 and fall 2020.

The contract vote on Wednesday passed without many visible reactions from the trustees. Only District III Trustee Adriana Tamez spoke afterward, saying she was upset enough to not participate in a subsequent vote to engage the Association of Community College Trustees for a new chancellor search. The item passed 7-0, with District VIII Trustee Eva Loredo also making herself absent for the vote.

“Chancellor, I sincerely apologize that you were brought out here like this,” said Tamez, who voted in favor of a new contract. “I’m just in disbelief and in shock right now in terms of conversations that we’ve had and your willingness to work with us in a transition. But to have you here and for the result to be this, I think you deserve more respect than that.”

Loredo, Vice Chair Monica Flores Richart, of District 1, and District II Trustee Charlene Ward Johnson cast the three other votes in favor of Maldonado’s contract.

Campos is pissed about this. I can understand that, and I will say that any time Dave Wilson is your fifth vote for something, you should maybe question what you’re doing. On the other hand, there’s that sexual harassment lawsuit, for which Maldonado is one of the defendants (as is Trustee Robert Glaser, who was also a vote for not extending Maldonado’s contract) and for which a settlement agreement was not approved by the Board. The matter is headed for trial, which raises the possibility of a significant judgment against HCC as well as who knows what potentially embarrassing evidence coming to light. Given that, it’s easy to see why the Board may have been reluctant to extend Chancellor Maldonado’s contract. We’ll see who they bring on as the successor. In the meantime, I thank Chancellor Maldonado for his service and wish him well with whatever comes next.

So it looks like that TEA takeover of HISD is going to happen

Mar 2nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Welp.

Mayor Sylvester Turner sounded alarm bells Wednesday when he announced that he has heard from multiple sources that the state intends to take over Houston ISD as early as next week.

“I’m talking to legislators, and what they’re saying to me is that the state intends to takeover the district, replacing the entire board, replacing the superintendent … And they intend to do it next week,” said Turner, who spent three decades as a state representative.

Turner questioned how the state would take over 273 schools successfully, and urged the community to sound speak out against the takeover.

“We can’t be silent on this one. The state is overreaching on this one,” Turner said. “It is a total obliteration of local control, and when you take it, you own it… You are destroying the public education system.”

Rep. Alma Allen, who had also been hearing various rumors of a soon-to-be takeover, asked TEA commission Mike Morath about the possibility at a Public Education Committee meeting Tuesday.

“The streets have it…that it’s going to be March 6, and there are already persons that have already been asked to take over the position of superintendent,” Allen said. “Do you have any idea (if this is true)?”

Morath did not give a timeline.

“All I will say is we’re waiting to evaluate the Supreme Court’s ruling that has not yet been finalized,” Morath said during the meeting. “What we’re going to do is going to be a mandatory action under state law, not a discretionary action.”

Houston ISD did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Texas Education Agency said: “TEA continues to review the Supreme Court’s decision in order to determine next steps that best support the students, teachers, parents, and school community of the Houston Independent School District.”

See here and here for the background. The Trib also quotes Morath at that same hearing saying they “have not made any final decision and not announced any final action”. There’s nothing here to contradict what Mayor Turner says, but it’s not totally clear what Morath means. This Chron story lays out some possibilities.

What is the TEA’s likely first step?

The Texas Education Agency likely would choose one of the following options: It could:

1) Appoint a conservator, effectively a state-appointed manager to oversee district operations.

2) Replace Houston ISD’s 9-person elected board with a state-appointed “board of managers.” If this happens, based on previous experience, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath would select those new trustees and potentially pick a new superintendent.

3) Allow the district to remain autonomous but retain a degree of oversight.

The state agency will have to release the details after they pull the trigger on the takeover.

Door #3 is the obvious choice, if we have one. My thought on trying to parse Mike Morath’s words is that the TEA and its lawyers want to read the SCOTx decision before they do whatever it is they will do. Depending on whether that decision says or implies that the TEA “shall” take over HISD or that it “may” take over HISD could be the difference between a conservator and an appointed Board on one hand, and a monitoring situation on the other. Or maybe I’m full of hopium and Morath already has a full-on takeover plan at the ready and he’s just waiting for the ink to dry on the SCOTx decision before they hit Send on the press release. Hell if I know. But if the Mayor’s threat intel is accurate, and I tend to think he has the goods, then we’ll know very soon what’s up. Reform Austin has more.

HISD facing budget cuts

Feb 20th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Gonna be a rough couple of years.

Amid declining enrollment and a looming $215 million deficit, the Houston ISD is eyeing budget cuts that would slash funding to the central administration and cut campus budgets, especially at high schools.

The initial cuts would cover about $60 million of the deficit in the proposed $2.28 billion budget. School closures may also be on the table in the long term — not in the upcoming school year — to make ends meet, according to discussion at a budget workshop this week and district documents. Thursday’s meeting was the first in a series to be held before the budget is adopted in June.

For years, the district has relied on its savings, which currently stand at $660 million, to cover deficits. But that won’t work going forward, officials say.

School districts’ funding is allotted from the state based on enrollment and attendance rates, both of which have been drastically dropping in HISD amid the pandemic. The district started this year with roughly 186,000 students, an 11 percent decrease from its pre-pandemic 209,309, according to Texas Education Agency data.

The district can’t continue with the status quo and needs to move with a sense of urgency, Superintendent Millard House II told the board.

“We’ve heard it before: There was a loss of 13,000 students in one year, the first year since COVID,” House said. “That’s a major piece of why this deficit has continued to grow. We’re here to address it.”

Improving attendance is one way HISD can increase revenue, but that wouldn’t have a major impact on the budget until fiscal year 2025, House said.

The HISD board also has the option to ask voters to approve a 3-cent property tax rate increase, which would generate about $65 million in additional revenue. However, it’s unlikely they would be able to hold an election in time for budget approval, House said. The district has also had pause in asking for a bond, out of fear a possible state takeover would erode support.

One option that has been top of mind for many parents during budget talks is whether there were be school closures, something the superintendent has hinted at in the past. There are no school closures or consolidations planned for the next academic year, but it is a tool that could be used in the future, HISD officials said.

Let’s be clear about two things. One is that nobody is going to like this, for the excellent reason that it sucks. None of the solutions, no matter how sensible and reasoned, will be well-received. Trustees may lose election over it, and Superintendent House may have a hard time holding onto his job, assuming he’ll want to stick it out till the end of his contract. I can’t stress enough how much this is going to suck.

And two, if HISD is now permanently at a lower level of enrollment, then the truth is that we almost certainly need to close and consolidate some campuses. We don’t have to rush into that – by all means, do everything possible to get students back and market to new students – but if the district really now has ten percent fewer students, then we have too much capacity and we need to scale back. Again, this sucks and everyone will hate it. No one wants their school to go away. I sure wouldn’t. Whatever we can do to minimize this reality, we should. But numbers don’t lie. And these numbers are telling us things we don’t want to hear. Let’s say it one more time: This sucks.

Three stories on Uvalde and gun control

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

First, a story about locks and why an obsession with locking school doors is not really going to improve safety.

In the aftermath of school shootings like the one in Uvalde, what can get overlooked is basic: Schools need doors that work and don’t require special knowledge or keys to secure; they need locks that can be accessed from inside classrooms; and a system for accessing master keys swiftly when minutes matter.

The day of the Robb Elementary School shooting, a teacher had propped open the west exterior door of the school’s west building—added to the school campus 23 years ago—to get food from a colleague, when she saw the shooter heading toward the building. She slammed the door shut, according to the teacher’s attorney, Don Flanary. The door should have kept the shooter out—or at least delayed his entry. It didn’t. Contrary to school policy, all three of the west building’s exterior doors were unlocked that day.

The west building’s exterior doors weren’t the only problem on May 24. Several of the classroom doors had problems latching, including room 111—the classroom through which the shooter “most likely” entered, per the Texas House of Representatives investigation report. KENS5 further reported that the door’s bolt didn’t fit its frame. In addition, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said that the strike plate that allows the door to latch was damaged.

Whatever the cause, securing the door required extra effort to ensure the latch engaged. Room 111 was not the only classroom whose door had problems. The fourth-grade teacher in room 109 testified in the Texas House report that she also “slammed [her] door shut because otherwise the lock would not [otherwise] latch.”

According to the Texas House report, Arnulfo Reyes, the teacher in Room 111, had alerted school administrators multiple times about the issue with the door prior to May 24. Yet a work order was never issued nor was there documentation of Reyes’ complaint in Robb Elementary maintenance records.

[…]

Part of the reason doors were propped open or left unlocked was because of a key shortage. The manufacturer had discontinued production of the door locks used at Robb; the school district had acquired a supply of key blanks, but those were gone by May 2022, Uvalde CISD Maintenance & Operations Director Rodney Harrison said in the Texas House report. Because of the key shortage, substitute teachers were told to use magnets and other methods to get around the locks in violation of school district policy.

Reading this story, and because I have a cybersecurity mindset, reminded me of two things. One is that there’s always a tradeoff between security and ease of use. Think about passwords. People use simple passwords and reuse the same password on multiple systems and fail to enable two-factor authentication because it’s easier that way, and because there’s a big price to pay for forgetting a password and getting locked out of an account or application that you really need. Finding shortcuts and conveniences and workarounds is human nature. You can spend a ton of money on fancy security systems – the story talks about how much money school districts have had to spend, usually via bond issuances that can be hard to convince voters to support, to meet new state requirements for physical security in schools. But if these systems don’t take the human factor into account, a lot of that money is wasted.

And two, no single security measure is ever sufficient on its own. This is why effective cybersecurity for an enterprise network is all about multiple layered, redundant, overlapping defense mechanisms. We expect there to be gaps and failures and weaknesses, which is why there are backups in place. You can “harden” schools all you want, but you can’t make them safe until you address the gun problem, and that’s something our Legislature just won’t do as things stand now.

It has become a mournful pattern. Following mass shootings, lawmakers in many states have taken stock of what happened and voted to approve gun control legislation to try to prevent additional bloodshed.

In Colorado, the Legislature passed universal background checks in 2013 after a shooter at an Aurora movie theater killed 12 people. After 58 people were shot dead during a 2017 concert in Las Vegas, the Nevada Legislature passed a red flag law that allows a judge to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat. And in Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 after a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a Parkland high school, killing 17 people.

But not in Texas.

In the past six decades, the state has experienced at least 19 mass shootings that have killed a total of nearly 200 people and wounded more than 230 others. Yet state leaders have repeatedly batted away measures that would limit access to guns, opting instead to ease restrictions on publicly carrying them while making it harder for local governments to regulate them.

As the state Legislature convenes for the first time since the Uvalde school shooting last May, lawmakers have once again filed a slate of gun control bills. If history is an indicator, and top legislative leaders predict it will be, they are unlikely to pass.

An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune of hundreds of bills filed in the Texas Legislature over nearly the past six decades found that at least two dozen measures would have prevented people from legally obtaining the weapons, including assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, used in seven of the state’s mass shootings.

At least five bills would have required that people seeking to obtain a gun undergo a background check. Such a check would have kept the man involved in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa from legally purchasing the weapon because he had been deemed to have a mental illness.

Seven bills would have banned the sale or possession of the semi-automatic rifle that a shooter used to kill dozens of people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

And at least two bills would have raised the legal age to own or purchase an assault weapon from 18 to 21 years old, which would have made it illegal for the Uvalde shooter to buy the semi-automatic assault rifles.

A state House committee that investigated the Uvalde massacre found that the shooter had tried to get at least two people to buy a gun for him before he turned 18 but was unsuccessful. Immediately after his birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, which he used to kill 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

“If that law had been 21, I guarantee you he would have continued to be frustrated and not be able to obtain that weapon,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso who served as vice chair of the House committee.

It’s funny, in a bitterly ironic and painful way, that the first line of argument advanced by the legislative gun-huggers and the paid shills they listen to is that this one specific gun control law would not have stopped that one particular mass shooter, so therefore all gun control laws are useless. Yet there they are in the Lege going back to the same “harden the schools” well, time and time again. It takes a comprehensive approach, but the Republicans just won’t allow it.

Despite that, the work continues.

As a new legislative session kicks into gear, [Rep. Tracy] King is working on a bill that would increase the age limit to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. The Uvalde gunman had tried to get at least two people to buy him firearms before he turned 18. Days after his 18th birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles before invading the school and targeting students and teachers. In August, Uvalde residents and relatives of the shooting victims protested at the Capitol, calling on lawmakers to raise the age limit to buy the kind of firearms the Robb Elementary gunman used.

“In this particular case, that guy had tried to buy a gun,” said King, who previously wouldn’t support the legislation he plans to champion for his constituents. “It sure might have made a difference.”

Still, King’s legislation is a bold proposal in the state that leads the nation in gun sales and whose lawmakers have steadily loosened firearm restrictions amid eight mass shootings in 13 years. And it’s coming from a Democrat who previously voted to allow people to carry a handgun without training or a license. King hasn’t yet filed his bill, though other lawmakers have filed similar pieces of legislation this year.

Gov. Greg Abbott has dismissed the idea of raising the age limit as unconstitutional. In December, Texas dropped a fight to protect an existing state law that required people who carry handguns without licenses to be 21 or older after a federal district judge said it violates people’s Second Amendment rights. And Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan has said a proposal such as King’s lacks the votes to pass the lower chamber. But Phelan also said that “will not prevent a bill from being discussed and being debated.”

King knows he faces an uphill battle. But he’s also committed to trying, after spending nearly eight months helping folks — some of whom he knew before the tragedy — grapple with a staggering amount of loss.

“We have to go in it with our eyes open,” he said during a recent interview in his Texas Capitol office. “It’ll be a challenge. It’ll be a difficult conversation for a lot of people.”

King isn’t the only lawmaker who represents Uvalde and is pushing to limit access to semi-automatic rifles. State Sen. Roland Gutierre, a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, has already filed a bill in the Senate that would address the same issue.

Gutierrez has publicly criticized the law enforcement response, Texas’ loose gun laws and officials who have withheld information about the investigations into the shooting. Gutierrez has also filed legislation that would create robust mass shooting response training for all public safety entities and improve radio communication between certain agencies.

“I’m for Tracy’s bill, I’m for my bill, I’m for anybody’s bill if a Republican wants to come up and have a bill that raises the age limit on long guns right now to 21,” Gutierrez said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. We’re regulating guns for what I would argue are minors, just like we do alcohol, just like we do cigarettes in Texas.”

I greatly respect what Sen. Gutierrez has been doing, and I’m glad to have Rep. King on board. I’ve also seen this movie before and I know how it ends. You know what my prescription for this problem is. If Gutierrez and King can change a few minds along the way, that will help. We have a long way to go.

HISD in TEA limbo

Jan 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

No one knows how long this might take.

Houston ISD is in limbo as the Texas Education Agency weighs how to proceed with a possible takeover of the state’s largest school system allowed under a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling.

The court lifted an injunction on Jan. 13 that had halted Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s 2019 move to take over the HISD school board, after allegations of trustee misconduct and repeated failing accountability ratings at Phillis Wheatley High School.

The state agency is now tight-lipped about the possible next steps, saying only that the “TEA continues to review the Supreme Court’s decision in order to determine next steps that best support the students, teachers, parents, and school community of the Houston Independent School District.”

While the state Supreme Court kicked the decision back to the lower courts, the Texas Education Agency could take action independent of the court. Experts say a few possibilities could play out: the TEA could appoint a conservator, replace the elected board with a board of managers, or allow the district to remain autonomous.

Even when well-intended, takeover efforts cause a great deal of chaos for parents, students and teachers, said Cathy Mincberg, president and CEO for the Center for the Reform of School Systems, a Houston-based nonprofit that provides consulting services for school boards.

“My impression when you look at takeovers across the country, they have not yielded the results that people wanted,” Mincberg said. “They swoop in trying to make a huge change in the system, and sometimes that’s just not possible.”

Mincberg, who has worked with school districts during takeovers, describes them as resulting in “highly confusing times.”

[…]

Attorney Christopher L. Tritico has represented three Houston-area districts — North Forest, Beaumont and La Marque — through their takeovers and due process hearings, which he described as “not a winning proposition.”

HISD will have a right to due process hearings, per state code, a move Tritico anticipates it will take. However, that hearing will be held by the TEA and overseen by a hearing officer the commissioner selects, making it difficult for school districts to get a ruling in their favor, he said.

Action may come soon, Tritico said.

“The time they are trying to buy is over,” he said. “I expect to move forward fairly soon now. There is nothing really standing in the way of (the TEA) moving forward in what the commissioner wants to do.”

[…]

In Houston ISD’s case, some legal and education experts raised the question of whether its still appropriate for the state to attempt a takeover. They say the issues that triggered a takeover — Wheatley’s failing accountability grades and board dysfunction — are now dated after the case has been deliberated in the courts for the last four years.

Since the initial announcement of a takeover, and the following lawsuits, Wheatley has increased its accountability grades to a passing score, and most of the board has been replaced.

Mincberg, president and CEO for The Center for the Reform of School Systems, said the threat of takeover gave the issues the public attention they deserved, and resulted in the board members being voted out.

“To me the Houston (ISD) problem got fixed,” Mincberg said. “The board members who were doing things that the TEA had trouble with were turned out and the district has become a lot more stable.”

See here for the background. As you know, I am of the same mind as Cathy Mincberg. I’m not even sure what the TEA would try to accomplish with a takeover. It seems very unlikely that they would be able to achieve any measurable improvement that wouldn’t have happened anyway. That’s assuming that the takeover would be about tangible results and not political aims. It’s hard to say at this point, and won’t be any clearer until the TEA says or does something. Until then, we wait.

Spring Branch ISD to discuss a book ban today

Jan 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I don’t post stuff like this often – it’s not really my remit, and timeliness usually works against me – but this one really annoyed me, so here it is. Via Facebook:

PLEASE CONSIDER SPEAKING ON TUESDAY @ 1PM! (If you cannot make Tuesday, consider speaking to the topic at tonight’s board meeting instead)

This is the first book complaint that has been elevated to a level-3 for consideration under our new school board. This book complaint was reviewed by a committee of 7 (1 middle school librarian, 1 middle school teacher, 1 high school librarian, 1 high school teacher, 1 secondary campus administrator, 1 parent that has both a middle & high school students, and 1 district admin. The committee voted unanimously that the age recommendation and content were appropriate and recommended retaining the book at SBISD libraries in both middle and high school.

Level 2 Review: Denise Thompson Bell appealed the decision made by the reconsideration committee so the book was escalated for review by upper administration. Dr. Kristin Craft reviewed the comments and work of the review committee and upheld the decision that the content and age recommendation were appropriate and retained the book in SBISD libraries.

Denise Thompson Bell has since appealed the decision again, escalating this to a level 3 complaint to be heard by the board for final decision. There will be a public comment period and I ask that if you can participate at all, that would be incredibly helpful!

We know that the right to have access to books that are meaningful to a student support literacy efforts and have shown increased rates of reading. Being able to read books on different subject matters refines a student’s critical thinking skills. Parents have always had the right to restrict the reading of their own children, but this personal parenting choice should not be imposed upon the general public.

In most cases, school board meetings should be restricted to those who live in district. In this case, however, it would be beneficial for the board to hear why and how this book is important literature that should remain available to our students, regardless of the district residency of the speaker. If you or anyone you know have been affected by the more subtle aspects of racism that are described in the book, either as the target of racism, or as an individual who has actively worked to educate themselves on anti-racism, then there is benefit to you speaking up. The board needs to know that limiting books on racism and other helpful topics will cause students to feel alienated from their own school district, which will have a deleterious effect on their education and mental well being.

Speakers will need to arrive at 12:30 in order to fill out paperwork and have it submitted PRIOR TO 1pm. Public comment opportunity will be at the beginning of the meeting. Then, the board will sit with their attorney and hear the grievance as presented by Denise Thompson Bell and deliberate. After deliberation, and hopefully consideration of public comment, the decision will be made to either retain the book in SBISD libraries as has been recommended by the specialists that review books and the specialists in our district, place the book on their newly enacted restricted shelf, or ban the book from district libraries altogether.

Spread the word, far and wide! We need speakers to stand up. This will not stop at one book on racism. A book complaint for a book that has a wedding with two brides has already been escalated to level 2, and likely will be appealed again (as John Perez requested). This affects all people, whether or not they have experienced any form of bigotry or not.

I have included information regarding the board meeting in the pics attached, as well as supporting documentation of the complaint and appeal process. Documents acquired via public information request. Hope to see you then!

That’s from a closed Facebook group, so I’m omitting the link since many of you would not be able to see it anyway. The book is called The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person. Here are the pictures mentioned, which include some information about the meeting:

Here’s the public notice and agenda for this meeting; general info about SBISD meetings is here. I said this annoyed me because SBISD normally holds meetings at 6 PM, a time when many working people can attend. This one is for 1 PM, in the middle of many people’s work days, and it was called on Friday afternoon for this Tuesday, so there was very little time for anyone to even hear about it. You probably can’t be there, if you even see this in time, but if you do and you can, you can show up and push back. Good luck to those who do.

Pushing the panic button

Jan 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This feels like security theater to me, but it’s what passes for progress these days.

All school districts in Montgomery County will soon be using panic alert technology during emergencies, including an active shooter situation, a security measure Texas education officials have proposed to in the wake of the deadly Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde.

Conroe, Willis, Magnolia, New Caney, Montgomery and Splendora school districts will roll out the Rave Panic Button that will allow users to summon police, medical or fire personnel with the touch of one button on their cell phone.

The Montgomery County Emergency Communication District is partnering with the school districts to fund part of the $170,000 cost for three years.

Andrea Shepard, associate director at the emergency district, said the technology allows a faculty or staff member to push a button for help in an emergency and immediately be connected with 911 dispatchers. The app alerts other faculty and staff on the campus of the threat as well.

“The safety and wellbeing of our students and staff is and will always be our No. 1 priority,” Shepard said. “Our school community should be focused on learning, not worrying about their safety.

[…]

The partnership comes after the Texas Education Agency released more details in November regarding panic button technology to beef up school safety after the shooting deaths of 19 children and two adults in May at Robb Elementary.

Currently, districts in 46 states are using the panic button technology, including several in Texas.

I can understand why schools and school districts find this kind of solution appealing. It feels like you’re doing something, which in an environment where not much is in your control has to provide some comfort. It’s not clear to me what the practical advantage of using this app is over just calling 911, especially if you still have to describe the reason for pushing the button. I’m sure some academic is currently collecting data to try to find the effect of one of these apps – there are several options, apparently, with Montgomery schools choosing a product called Rave – so we’ll eventually see a study or two to tell us. The bigger issue – well, one of them, since the root cause problem is only mentioned at the end of this story – is what happens once the button is pushed.

Uvalde had a similar panic system in place when the gunfire erupted in May. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) told KHOU that panic buttons work to a degree but won’t solve the gun violence in schools.

“It did work to a certain degree. It warned people and law enforcement there was an intruder,” said Gutierrez, whose districts represents the Uvalde area.

He said the technologies are just a band-aid to the real problem.

“There are remedies on both sides of the aisle but they are not really addressing the real core of the problem, which is we are putting assault rifles in the hands of 18-year-olds,” said Gutierrez.

Calling law enforcement in a more efficient manner is only an advantage if law enforcement’s response is up to the challenge. The example from Uvalde is not promising. Maybe Montgomery County is up to the task. I’m sure Uvalde would have said they were up to it as well, and we haven’t even mentioned DPS and their manifest failures. I mean, I dunno, maybe putting in some effort on the prevention part of the equation might be worthwhile? Just a thought.

HISD asked to hold off on redistricting

Jan 8th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

There are still concerns about the proposed map.

Community members and advocates are asking the Houston ISD board to redraw its redistricting plans to keep communities in southwest Houston together so that the votes of Latinos and immigrants are not diluted.

The Gulfton, Mid-West, Westwood, Braeburn and Sharpstown neighborhoods are split among three different districts in the proposals being made to rebalance the district’s nine trustee districts to account for 2020 census figures.

“We believe southwest Houston is compact enough to keep it in one district,” said Juan Cardoza-Oquendo, director of public policy for Houston in Action. “It’s not big enough where these immigrant communities would have power in multiple districts.”

[…]

Maria Benzon, a parent who works at Sugar Grove Academy, a middle school in Sharpstown, urged the board to not vote until these concerns are addressed.

“I’m here today to ask that you delay any votes on the district plan, and consider a more equitable version than (the proposed plans),” Benzon said. “I know these areas. Historically, these communities have had voting power diluted by three districts — 5, 6 and 7, and they have not been represented by people with similar backgrounds and experiences.”

This is the first time advocates have asked the board to delay. In December, the sent a letter to the board to hold off on voting claiming informational meetings were not well publicized and were at inconvenient times.

“As you can see by the majority of speakers, there is still some concern about redistricting,” Trustee Patricia Allen, who represents District IV said. “I think we need to take time to listen to the community in case we need to adjust.”

See here and here for the background, and here for the HISD redistricting page, which includes the two proposed maps. I don’t know enough about the area to comment on the feedback, but I favor HISD taking the time to iron out as many points of conflict that they can. The realistic deadline for getting this done, to allow time for the elections office to update all of its files and give potential candidates the opportunity to consider their options before the late August filing deadline, is in February. I’m hopeful we can get it done.

Katy ISD challenged over at large districts

Jan 4th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

This was from before Christmas but I didn’t have a chance to write about it until now.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund sent a letter Tuesday to Katy ISD accusing the district of disenfranchising Black and Latino voters by adhering to an at-large voting system in violation of federal civil rights law.

The letter, addressed to Katy ISD board of trustees President Greg Schulte, says the at-large system — in which board members are elected to represent the entire district, by voters across the entire district — “dilutes the votes of Katy ISD’s voters of color and may violate the Voting Rights Act because it prevents Black and Latinx voters from electing their preferred candidates to the Board of Trustees and from participating in the electoral process on an equal footing.”

The Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or LDF, filed the letter after being approached by a group of Katy ISD parents concerned with the lack of diversity on the district’s seven-member board. Currently, the letter says, all seven trustees “reside in a concentrated area of the district south of Interstate 10 and do not reflect the geographic or racial and ethnic diversity of the district,” where Black and Latino children make up nearly half of the student body, according to the Texas Tribune.

The letter was first reported by NBC News.

Cameron Campbell, a former Democratic candidate for state legislature and a Katy ISD parent, said debates over book bans and other “microagressions” and “dog whistles” led the parents group to think critically about the makeup of the school board and who it serves.

“We can all agree on keeping our kids safe, learning and prospering, but if there’s not equal representation, it is absolutely impossible for our school boards to serve our kids adequately,” Campbell said. “I’m a proud Katy ISD parent and the teachers do a fantastic job, but the school board is broken and it’s an embarrassment.”

You can see a copy of the letter and a proposed district map at that NBC News tweet. The district had no comment in the story and I didn’t see any followup news since this ran in the Chron, but there are some more details given by the Katy Times.

According to its website, Katy ISD has an enrollment of 92,914 students as of Dec. 26. Here is a breakdown of students by ethnicity:

Asian: 15,542, or 16.7%.
Black: 13,204, or 14.2%.
Hispanic, 33,766, or 36.3%.
Native American: 208, or 0.2%.
Pacific Islander: 108, or 0.1%.
Two or more races: 3,963, or 4.3%.
White: 26,123, or 28.1%.

Much of the growth is taking place in the north and northwest areas of the district. The district’s northernmost high school, Paetow, 23111 Stockdick School Road, opened in 2017. It has a student population breakdown that is 49% Hispanic, 23% Asian, 17% White, 6% Black, and 3% two or more races, according to the district.

[NAACP assistant counsel Antonio Ingram II] provided an example figure that illustrated how a single-district representation map might look. Under this plan, Ingram wrote that four of the districts would be majority-minority districts.

Ingram wrote that the example was one of several versions of a seven-single-member school board map that can be drawn with multiple majority-Black and Latinx districts in northern Katy.

While most school districts in Texas have at-large representation exclusively, not all of them do. Richardson ISD, near Dallas, recently adopted single-member districts. According to its website, five of the seven trustees on the Richardson ISD board are elected from single-member districts. The other two trustees are elected at-large.

The single-member district issue has been raised in at least one previous Katy ISD trustee campaign. Local attorney Scott Martin called for single-member districts in an unsuccessful 2018 trustee campaign.

Not immediately clear now is whether the NAACP is approaching only Katy ISD for such changes, or whether it is approaching other school districts in a similar fashion.

But other options are available to trustees, Ingram wrote. Among these are:

Cumulative voting in at-large elections.
Requirements for more diverse representation on the board, such as a requirement that all board members reside in different school attendance zones. According to the map Ingram provided, all seven trustees live south of Interstate 10.
Moving the election date to November, when other significant races are on the ballot, therefore increasing voter turnout.

“Whatever method or methods the Katy ISD Board of Trustees chooses to ensure a more fair and equitable electoral process for choosing its members, we urge the board to act with all deliberate speed, as failure to act could expose the Katy ISD to liability under the VRA (Voting Rights Act),” Ingram wrote.

This caught my eye for a number of reasons, including of course because of the LULAC lawsuit over Houston City Council at large districts. There’s no indication at this time that the NAACP LDF might file a lawsuit, but that is certainly a possible outcome if there’s no movement from Katy ISD. A similar lawsuit was filed against Spring Branch ISD in 2021. There hasn’t been much news about that since then – the law firm representing Spring Branch ISD withdrew from the case a few months after the suit was filed, and there’s a Fairly comprehensive update on the SBISD website, the short version of which is that there was not one but two changes in who the presiding judge was and as a result there hasn’t been a hearing yet – one for October was cancelled – and nothing has been set yet. Federal lawsuits move at their own pace, y’all.

Anyway. I’ll keep an eye on this. I don’t have a lot of optimism about any use of the Voting Rights Act these days, but you never know. Katy ISD will have its next election this May, and the filing deadline is January 18.

Department of Education investigating removal of LGBTQ books from Texas school library

Dec 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Good.

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.

Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified Granbury school officials on Dec. 6 that it had opened the investigation following a July complaint by the ACLU, which accused the district of violating a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The ACLU complaint was based largely on an investigation published in March by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune that revealed that Granbury’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.

“I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men,” Glenn told librarians in January, according to a leaked recording of the meeting obtained, verified and published exclusively by the news outlets. “I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”

Later in the meeting, Glenn clarified that he was specifically focused on removing books geared toward queer students: “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books,” he said, according to the recording.

The comments, combined with the district’s subsequent decision to remove dozens of library books pending a review, fostered a “pervasively hostile” environment for LGBTQ students, the ACLU wrote in its complaint. Chloe Kempf, an ACLU attorney, said the Education Department’s decision to open the investigation into Granbury ISD signals that the agency is concerned about what she described as “a wave” of anti-LGBTQ policies and book removals nationally.

“In this case it was made very clear, because the superintendent kind of said the quiet part out loud,” Kempf said in an interview. “It’s pretty clear that that kind of motivation is animating a lot of these policies nationwide.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the investigation and said it was related to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, gender and sexual orientation. The Office for Civil Rights doesn’t comment on pending investigations, the spokesperson said.

If the investigation confirms violations of students’ rights in Granbury schools, the agency can require the district to make policy changes and submit to federal monitoring.

[…]

Education and legal experts said the Education Department’s decision to open an investigation in Granbury is significant because it sets up a test of a somewhat novel legal argument by the ACLU: the idea that book removals themselves can create a hostile environment for certain classes of students.

“It’s certainly the first investigation I’ve seen by the agency testing that argument in this way,” said W. Scott Lewis, a managing partner at TNG, a consulting firm that advises school districts on complying with federal civil rights laws.

The ACLU of Texas made similar legal arguments in another civil rights complaint filed last month against the Keller Independent School District in North Texas in response to a policy banning any books that mention “gender fluidity.” The Education Department has yet to decide whether to open an investigation in Keller, Kempf said.

Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education at the nonprofit PEN America, which has tracked thousands of school book bans since last year, said the same legal argument could be made in districts across the country where parents, school board members and administrators have expressed anti-LGBTQ motivations.

“It’s not uncommon to see people explicitly saying that they want to remove LGBTQ books because they believe they are indoctrinating students,” said Friedman, who cited a case in Florida in which a teacher called for the removal of a children’s picture book about two male penguins because, she said, it promoted the “LGBTQ agenda.”

Granbury isn’t the only North Texas school district facing federal scrutiny.

The Office for Civil Rights over the past year has opened five investigations into allegations of discrimination at the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, a wealthy Fort Worth suburb that has been at the center of the national political fight over the ways schools address racism, gender and sexuality. If the Education Department finds Carroll students’ rights have been violated, experts said, the federal agency could require the district to implement the same types of diversity and inclusion training programs that conservative activists have fought to block in Southlake.

Part of the problem here is that Granbury ISD just elected a couple of self-righteous censors to its Board of Trustees, which makes this a bigger political issue. Maybe the voters there will get tired of this fight, or at least of the expense of fighting it, and start to fix their mistakes in the next election. That’s far from a guarantee, of course – it could easily get worse instead. Ultimately, changing hearts and minds is the best long-term solution, but in the meantime doing whatever it takes to protect the rights of the marginalized kids is paramount.

I’m glad to see this, and I absolutely hope these investigations will happen in the other named districts and more, but I fear that the penalties that the DOE is able to impose will be inadequate. Part of that problem is that often the biggest stick that the feds can wield is the threat of withholding funding, but doing that ultimately just hurts the people who most need the help, and doesn’t really affect the politicians in question. There are already plenty of local and state officials who are happy to defy the feds on all kinds of civil rights matters, which they can do because they have voter support and no fear of the potential consequences. The days when officials could be shamed into compliance, or at least into reverting to normative behavior, are over. We need to have a conversation about better and more effective ways to get the modern day segregationists to comply with federal law.

More information about HISD redistricting, please

Dec 17th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A reasonable ask.

Several local nonprofit and advocacy groups penned a letter asking Houston ISD to postpone its decision on how to redraw trustee district boundaries.

Initially, the board was set to vote on the plan Thursday, according to a meeting agenda. Local advocates decried the move, stating the community was not given enough notice, and demanded it be moved to Feb 2.

Judith Cruz, president of the board, said the original posting was incorrect, and the item was only meant to be discussed, not voted on. It was possible that they could have voted Thursday if they felt they had sufficient community feedback, but that wasn’t the intent.

Typically, these items are voted on at regular board meetings, and the next one will be on Jan. 12. Cruz said they will only take a vote once they feel they have an adequate amount of community feedback.

The district is required to adjust those boundaries when the census reflects a significant population shift. Houston ISD hosted several town halls where officials presented two fairly similar plans, and hoped to decide by mid-December. Both aim to return each district to within 10 percent of a predetermined ideal size of about 164,000 people.

Houston in Action, a network of over 50 organizations promoting community leadership and reducing barriers to civic participation, wrote the letter, alongside other Community Voices for Public Education, Emgage, Latinos for Education, Migrant and Refugee Leadership Academy, Institute for Civic Education, and Texas Federation of the People.

“Like you, we believe that all communities in HISD, and especially those who have historically been excluded, deserve a quality education and the ability to elect a representative who will be responsive to them,” Juan Cardoza-Oquendo, director of public policy for Houston in Action, said. “Therefore, we request that you allow the public more time to assess the draft plans. While you held town halls in your districts, few people attended them.”

[…]

“The Board published its redistricting plans online, to the best of our knowledge, less than a week ago,” Cardoza-Oquendo said. “The public needs more time to acquaint themselves with the redistricting plans and provide input.”

See here for some background. I noted at the time that I couldn’t find anything about the proposed redistricting plans on HISD’s website. I did find this page when I went looking again when I drafted this post. I didn’t see it when I first looked but it’s there as the bottom item in the dropdown menu for “Board”. They don’t have a link to it on the Board of Trustees page or the 2023 Election page, which were the first places I looked before I noticed it in the dropdown. Could definitely be better, but at least it’s there now. Perhaps ironically, I couldn’t find the cited letter on Houston in Action’s website or its Twitter page.

Anyway. All of the public meetings have been held, but apparently there was very little attendance at them. As far as I can tell, there was no mention of them in the regular emails that HISD sends out. I found one mention in an email I got from the Heights HS PTO, whose dist list I’m still on. How about another round of public meetings, with more publicity for them before they happen? That sounds like a good way to get the desired feedback needed to have the vote on the plan. What do you say, HISD?

HISD to get funding for electric school buses

Dec 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Some good news.

Houston Independent School District is hopping on the city’s net-zero carbon emissions bus, so to speak, thanks to more than $6.2 million in funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The funds are part of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program Fiscal Year 2022 rebate competition, which will award nearly $51 million in funds from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to Texas school districts, and $965 million in total to districts around the country.

Houston’s $6.2 million will go toward 25 new school buses, according to a statement from the EPA. Fifteen of the vehicles will be brand-new electric buses.

[…]

HISD must now submit Payment Request Forms with purchase orders that shows the district has ordered the new buses and eligible infrastructure.

The district is among 13 Texas school districts to receive funding. Dallas ISD, the second largest school district in the state behind HISD, was awarded roughly $7.6 million. Killeen ISD and Socorro ISD received the largest sums among the districts, totaling nearly $9.9 million in funding each.

The first – and last – time I blogged about electric school buses was a decade ago. It’s fair to say this has been a long time coming. There will be another billion dollars in federal funds available for applicants next year as well, so hopefully HISD can bump up that number. Metro has used a different pot of money to get their own electric buses. The more, the better.

If all we ever do are defensive measures, we’ll never make any progress

Nov 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do these things, although some of them definitely should be questioned. I am saying we can’t just do things like these.

The Texas Education Agency announced Thursday a plethora of proposals that would, among other changes, require public schools to install silent panic alarms and automatic locks on exterior doors.

Other proposals include inspecting doors on a weekly basis to make sure they lock and can be opened from the outside only with a key. Two-way emergency radios would also have to be tested regularly. Schools would need to add some sort of vestibules so visitors can wait before being let in, and all ground-level windows would have to be made with bulletproof glass.

These proposed requirements come about five months after a gunman killed 21 people, including 19 children, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The gunman entered a door that had been closed by a teacher, but the automatic lock failed.

If approved, schools would have to start putting in place these safety measures starting in 2023. Before the end of this year, the education department will collect public comments on the proposed rules.

The state has allocated $400 million for increased safety measures that will be disbursed to districts. In the coming weeks, the education department will make a grant application available to districts. Districts will receive those grants based on enrollment, while smaller, rural schools will receive the minimum $200,000.

Proposing these safety measures is the latest action the state has taken to secure schools in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. In June, the education department announced that it would check all the locks on exterior doors prior to the start of the 2022-2023 school year and review every district’s school safety plans.

[…]

As Texas moves forward with different safety measures, experts have said there is no indication that beefing up security in schools has prevented violence. Rather, they can can be detrimental to children, especially Black and Hispanic children. Black students are overrepresented in all types of disciplinary referrals and are more likely to have their behavior addressed by school police officers than their white peers.

School districts also expressed concerns about the cost, because the Lege is famous for under-appropriating funds for things it mandates, and the ability to get this done by the deadline since every other district will be scrambling to do the same and there will be some competition for resources. I share the concern about how effective any of this is – remember that a lot of school shooters are current or former students at the schools in question and can often get through security checkpoints because of that – and of the negative effects on the children at the schools. We’re still dancing around the questions of law enforcement’s response to mass shooting incidents at schools, as certain key players continue to evade accountability. And we can’t even talk about restricting gun sales to people over the age of 21, for reasons that make no sense. There’s an extremely limited range of “solutions” to this problem that are politically acceptable to Republicans, and as long as they remain in power those are the only “solutions” we’re going to get, whether they have any effect or not.

More on hoax school shooter reports

Nov 7th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I don’t know when this ends, but I continue to be worried that they will cause a major problem eventually.

This year has seen a significant number of hoax calls across the country. In the three weeks between mid-September and early October, according to an NPR analysis, local news reports documented 113 false calls across the country. Experts say this increase isn’t surprising given that most school shootings inspire copycats to call in false reports of shootings to law enforcement.

The source of these fake threats remains largely unknown. Law enforcement said some originated from local agitators, while others appeared to come from as far away as Ethiopia, NPR reported.

Regardless of the source, Texas law enforcement agencies say all threats are treated as credible until an investigation proves otherwise. But before threats are deemed hoaxes, law enforcement and parents must grapple with the very real fear that another mass shooting could be underway.

The families with children at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, also clashed with police outside the building on the day of the tragedy. Law enforcement took over an hour to confront the shooter, despite the fact that some officers knew children were calling 911 from the classrooms. Police outside the building prevented parents from entering the school, even putting some parents in handcuffs.

Prior to the shooting in Uvalde, the chaotic scene outside of Jefferson High School last month wasn’t the norm, said Deputy Chief David Hightower with the San Antonio Police Department.

“Now we see an increase in parents wanting to sort of take matters into their own hands in order to retrieve their children,” Hightower said.

He said the protocols for responding to active-shooter threats have not changed since the Uvalde shooting, but the heightened anxiety of parents and officers reflects the trauma still resonating across Texas. As a result of elevated fears, Hightower said there have been more officers assigned to communicating with parents.

One of the most recent examples of false active shooter threats in Texas was on Monday, when there was a false active-shooter call at Central Catholic High School in San Antonio. Police evacuated the roughly 500 students from the campus in response. After the lockdown was lifted, school officials said they would make counseling available for its students.

“Events like this shake everyone to the core,” said Kathy Martinez-Prather, the director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University. “It is definitely a situation that is at the top of mind of parents right now.”

Martinez-Prather added students are sharing in the anxiety, which she sees as an opportunity to teach schools about how to remain vigilant. Communicating with teachers and students about how to identify potential threats or concerning behavior is one area Martinez-Prather said schools can target to improve school safety. She also pointed to a guide for parents that details key components of school safety as another communication tool.

See here for some background. I couldn’t get all the ay through that story about the 911 calls from Robb Elementary, it was too upsetting. As I said before, when one of these happened at Heights High School, I think the first job is for law enforcement to make extra sure they not only know what their response procedures are but also that they know how they will operate with other agencies that arrive – at HHS, there was HPD, the Sheriff, various Constables, and I’m sure HISD’s police force in response – and who is in charge. And they very much need to communicate that to the parents, who have a justifiable fear following the tragedy at Robb that they can’t simply rely on law enforcement. That’s a problem in itself, and one of many other things that our state leadership has failed to address after this massacre. It’s on the locals in their absence, and I hope they realize that.

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