Houston ISD’s state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles announced Wednesday the district may borrow $180 million for a new career and technical education center, pending board approval.
Miles, addressing hundreds of teachers at an annual teachers’ convocation, said this is to have more than one career and technical education center in the district. The groundbreaking would be in 2026-27.
This move toward another career and technical education center follows the failed $4.4 billion bond that would have included $375 million for three new career and technical education centers — $125 million per center.
The Barbara Jordan Career Center will also see upgrades with more emphasis on the use of drones and cybersecurity in its CTE programs.
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Miles also said the administration is trying to hand a list to the Board of Managers with no more than 10 “small” schools for closure due to failing facilities.
“We are trying to whittle that down to get it under 10. Not sure I can do that,” Miles said. “But we’ll see. But that, we will give to the board probably in December, that list of schools.”
The mention of school closures follows the district’s decision to close an undetermined number of schools in 2026-27. The state’s largest school district lost nearly 7,400 students in the 2024-25 academic year, representing HISD’s largest enrollment loss since the COVID-19 pandemic. HISD reported that it had 176,731 students enrolled on Oct. 25, which is about a 4% enrollment decline from the previous year.
See here for some background on the recent school closure discussion. This is a topic HISD has danced around for some number of years. The update from February is that this time they have a possible number of campuses in question, though still no list or criteria to suggest what the targets may be. That’s when this goes from “troublesome” to “all-encompassing freakout”, for the very good reason that closing a school is disruptive to a neighborhood and people hate the idea of it. As I’ve said before, I don’t mind that it’s Mike Miles who will have to deal with this.
As for the new CTE center, I’m okay with this in principle, but, um, where is the money for it going to come from? Voters famously defeated that bond proposal, so either there’s going to be another, smaller proposal on a near-future ballot or Miles is planning to use a mechanism to finance it that is unclear and possibly nonexistent. I’m sure the Chron would have asked him some questions about that, but they were denied press credentials for the convocation where he was speaking, on the grounds that the event at Delmar Stadium was “at capacity”. Yeah, sure, no way they could have squeezed in one more person, even if they had to stand. Sheesh.
If they had closed one school, Miles would not be here. We can Jolando Jones for that.
Houston ISD is woefully behind most other Houston area districts in CTE. Katy , Cypress, Conroe , Pearland all have excellent programs dedicated to CTE. Clear Creek has one of the best CTE programs in the country.
Lots of local districts to learn from and build something that improves Houston ISD.
It must be the white race that brings those scores up, of course, they design the tests.
I design tests for myself all the time and get perfect scores all the time.