The Texas Education Agency has removed and replaced four of the appointed members of Houston ISD’s Board of Managers two years into the state takeover.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath wrote that he removed board Vice President Audrey Momanaee, Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Rolando Martinez and Adam Rivon from their roles as of Sunday. The four new board members will be Edgar Colón, Martyn Goossen, Lauren Gore and Marcos Rosales.
The four departing members had served on the district’s nine-member appointed school board since the state takeover of Texas’ largest school district in June 2023. The TEA removed oversight of the district from nine elected trustees when Wheatley High School triggered a state law by failing to meet the state’s accountability standards for seven consecutive years.
“I have nothing but praise to offer to these amazing individuals, and I want to extend my sincerest appreciation for their dedicated service to Houston ISD,” Morath said in a Monday press release. “I am extremely grateful for the exemplary servant leadership displayed by these departing board members over the grueling first two years of this intervention.”
[…]
[Elected Trustee Dani] Hernandez said it’s concerning that HISD is going to be losing four board members that ask questions, bring a parent perspective and give the community more insight into what’s going on. She said they were the voice HISD community members had on the board, and now they’re gone.
“It takes a long time to figure out how to be a board member, and they’ve all already gone through the governance model, and the questions that they were asking were part of being a board member and were in line with good governance, which is part of the exit criteria for HISD and the takeover, so it’s concerning and not necessarily transparent either,” Hernandez said.
Morath said in an interview with the Chronicle that he was replacing the members for a “mix of factors.” He said the new board members would help ensure that the board has “an environment that is representative of Houstonians” and would allow HISD to build off the academic progress of the last two years.
“What continues to be important is that we select people to serve on the board of character and integrity that bring their individual life experience, perspectives (and) their views. … The new people that are coming on bring on new perspectives, and sometimes that can be advantageous to have new insights (or a) new lens on different issues,” Morath said.
[…]
The four replaced board members have nearly always joined the remaining board members to approve proposals from Miles’ administration since the beginning of the state takeover, except in a few rare, limited circumstances.
The appointed board’s first significant public rebuke of Miles occurred in June 2024, when members approved the district’s $2.1 billion budget in a narrow 5-4 vote. Rivon, Martinez and Auzenne Bandy all voted against the measure, along with Cruz Arnold, although none publicly said why they voted “no.”
In a largely symbolic 3-4 vote two weeks later, the board rejected a progress report from HISD where the district stated it had not made any significant changes to programming or school options without a research-based analysis.” Auzenne Bandy, Martinez and Rivon all voted to reject the report, as well as Garza Lindner.
HISD wrote in the report that it had made five changes to school options or programming, but they had all been done with an analysis. However, at the time, several board members appeared to dispute the district’s interpretation of whether it had conducted appropriate analysis, and they later voted to finalize stricter limits on when and how Miles could make changes.
Morath said the decision to replace the four board members was “not at all” related to any potential criticism of the superintendent or the current direction of the district. He said the change was made to ensure “that we have the best representatives from Houston that we can during the entire process.”
Well, yeah, but as the story notes the takeover law also allows Morath to hire and fire the Board of Managers, and there was no actual process followed here, just Morath going by vibes. It’s the opposite of transparency. I don’t care about any of the individuals involved – frankly, the Board is an indistinguishable mass to me – but in the absence of a clear and understandable process, we’re all left to guess what’s going on. And from where I sit, who knows what that was. The Press has more.