A local teachers union is suing Houston ISD’s Superintendent Mike Miles and the Board of Managers after the district decided to distribute new teacher pay raises from the state by performance, not years of experience.
The $3.7-billion Teacher Retention Allotment, signed into law in June under House Bill 2, provides $2,500 raises for each teacher with at least three but less than five years of teaching experience and $5,000 for teachers with five or more years. The union argued that the district is not distributing the Teacher Retention Allotment money as required by law and noted that there is no mention of the allotment in HISD’s compensation plan for 2025-26.
HISD officials said the money will be used to distribute amounts ranging from $250 to $2,500 to teachers based on performance, not years of experience.
The union seeks a temporary restraining order to preserve what the lawsuit calls status quo and to prevent HISD from using any of these funds from the state for 2025-26 for any purpose other than payment of the Teacher Retention Allotment. Teachers start work Friday, according to the lawsuit.
The teachers’ union — the Houston Federation of Teachers with approximately 6,000 members employed by the district — pointed to the legislation’s use of the word “shall” as it pertains to raising teacher salaries. The organization argued that there are no exemptions that apply to HISD that would allow HISD “to avoid using the funds for their intended purpose.”
The union has approximately 1,800 teacher members who qualify for the money, according to the lawsuit filed in Harris County District Court. The filing indicates the union sought answers from district administration and requested an emergency meeting, but the administration did not respond.
“The law is the law. No one, not even the governor’s right-hand man in Houston ISD, is exempt from it. Mike Miles mismanaged Texas taxpayer dollars at his charter school network, and now he’s messing with teachers’ hard-earned salaries in Houston ISD,” the union’s president Jackie Anderson said in a statement Wednesday. “Mike Miles has disrespected this district’s teachers from his very first day on the job, but both the law and our Legislature’s intent are crystal clear. If Mike Miles won’t come to the table to pay Houston ISD teachers what they are owed by law, then we’ll see him in court.”
The union argued that the only exception to House Bill 2’s requirements for the Teacher Retention Allotment applies to districts with an approved system, called the Enhanced Teacher Incentive Allotment, that designates educators for performance-tied rewards. Citing separate webpages by the Texas Education Agency and HISD, the lawsuit indicated HISD applied but was not yet approved for a Teacher Incentive Allotment designation, which is a stepping stone to that new Enhanced designation.
That was the initial version of the story. I thought the teachers had a decent case, but they did not succeed.
Civil Court Judge Donna Roth on Wednesday denied the union’s request for a temporary restraining order that would require HISD to not spend that state money on anything but teacher raises.
Following Roth’s disclosure that she was friends with state-appointed Board member Edgar Colon, which no side took issue with, the union’s attorney presented the points outlined in the lawsuit. Quinto-Pozos emphasized the union’s request was urgent because teachers start work Friday and that the district’s 2025-26 compensation plan is effective July 1.
Paul Lamp of Spalding Nichols Lamp Langlois — a firm that frequently represents the district’s interests in employee grievance cases — described HISD’s intention to distribute raises by performance “a fork in the road” and a different way of using the state funds under the law’s exception. He said that HISD has not received the debated money from the state and the requirement in discussion from House Bill 2 will go into effect in the future, on Sept. 1.
Roth calculated that the money in question would be at least $4.5 million if all 1,800 member teachers with at least three years of experience received $2,500. That estimate does not account for the additional money for teachers with at least five years of experience.
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HISD commented Wednesday evening: “We are pleased with today’s ruling and believe that the judge followed the law in denying HFT’s request for a temporary restraining order.”
HFT’s Anderson said after the hearing that the purpose of the Teacher Retention Allotment was to show appreciation for the teachers who stay as the state faces a teacher shortage.
“I believe that for HISD to do anything other than that — it’s not what was intended by the legislation,” she said. “And I’m very disappointed.”
Seems like that’s the end of it. It’s not fully clear to me whether this was a matter of the law in question being sufficiently vague that there was room for interpretation that HISD took advantage of, or if the HFT’s argument was just not sufficient. Either way, I assume once HISD is able to make those payments there’s nothing left to litigate.
Why, oh why, would bonuses be solely based on tenure and not on performance ? That’s akin to the continuance of campaign monies being sent to Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell or Diane Feinstein because ‘they’ve been there forever’… and we know how that’s turned out.
CL: The point of a retention program is to retain the employees. Giving the money as a performance bonus to a fraction of the teacher population does not accomplish that. Seems simple enough. (We already have ways to be rewarded for teaching STEM or SPED; or for being in the 1% who are certified “master teachers.” Just doing that again misses the fundamental problem.)