Houston ISD pays its state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, a base salary of $462,000, and the district also gave him a bonus of $173,660 approved by its state-appointed board in September. Yet, all along, the leader of Texas’ largest school district has also been moonlighting—earning another $190,000 over the past three years, according to receipts obtained by the Texas Observer, as a consultant for Third Future Schools (TFS), the Colorado-based charter school network he founded and previously led.
In February, he renegotiated his TFS consulting contract to receive $30,000 per quarter—a 58 percent raise over his prior pay, based on documents the Observer obtained from a source.
Miles’ contract with Houston ISD allowed him to do outside consulting. But his February agreement may have violated a 2025 state law that restricts moonlighting by administrators.
House Bill 3372, which took effect June 22, 2025, bans public school administrators from moonlighting for companies that do business with their districts. It also bans superintendents and assistant superintendents from moonlighting for other school districts, charter schools, or education companies that provide curriculum or administration services to any district. (The law allows lower-level administrators to moonlight for the latter group of entities if their school board approves.)
In response to a question about Miles’ February consulting agreement with TFS, an HISD spokesperson initially told the Observer in an April 7 email that Miles had complied with the new law: “Superintendent Miles has disclosed his prior affiliation with Third Future Schools, and all related matters have been reviewed to ensure compliance with HB 3372, District policy, and applicable legal requirements, with no impact on his duties leading Houston ISD.”
But after the Observer emailed questions to members of Houston ISD’s appointed school board, including a copy of the February agreement, the Houston ISD spokesperson emailed again, saying that Miles had cancelled the contract after it had “been carefully reviewed for compliance with HB 3372.” On April 8, the spokesperson wrote: “Following that review, Superintendent Miles proactively canceled his contract and will not accept any financial benefits from Third Future Schools, ensuring full alignment with the law. He remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.” No member of the Houston ISD board responded to the Observer’s questions.
HB 3372, which was pushed by lawmakers in response to complaints about a different moonlighting superintendent in Willis ISD, forbids school district administrators from “receiv[ing] any financial benefit for the performance of personal services” for “any business entity that conducts or solicits business with the school district that employs the administrator.” It allows some administrators—excluding “a board of managers, superintendent, or assistant superintendent”—to receive benefit for services for “an education business that provides services regarding the curriculum or administration of any school district” or “another school district, open-enrollment charter school, or regional education service center” only if their school board votes to approve it.
TFS does not do business with Houston ISD. But TFS is the Colorado-based parent nonprofit of Third Future Schools-Texas (TFS-Texas), also a nonprofit. TFS-Texas does not do business with HISD either, but it does provide curriculum and administrative services to other Texas school districts.
State Representative Christina Morales, a Democrat who voted for HB 3372 and is a participant in the Commission on the HISD Takeover, a group that addresses grievances with the state intervention, told the Observer: “Mike Miles is running the largest school district in Texas like it’s his personal consulting firm. Houston families deserve better. …This is what HB 3372 was intended to stop.”
Republican state Representative Will Metcalf, the bill’s author, said during an April 2025 hearing: “Concerns have been raised about administrators engaging in consulting work or other paid services that very well may be a conflict of interest or create the appearance of a conflict of interest. This undermines public trust and risks shifting focus away from the needs of students and our taxpayers.”
Beyond the 2025 state law, Miles’ moonlighting with outside organizations during his time as the leader of Texas’ largest school district poses other ethical questions, said Brett Geier, a former superintendent who teaches K-12 educational leadership at Western Michigan University. Even as leader of a smaller district, Geier told the Observer, he spent 10 to 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, fulfilling his regular duties. “It baffles me how he has the amount of time that he has invested in that charter. It does seem to me to cross an ethical line.”
See here for some background, and be sure to read the rest. I have one question about HB3372. The text of the bill says “An administrator who violates this section is liable to the state for a civil penalty in the amount of $10,000 for each violation”, but it doesn’t say what the enforcement mechanism is. I assume, in the absence of anything else, it’s the Attorney General who would bring an action against such an administrator. Which we know is laughable in the current context, though perhaps not forever. But perhaps someone could file a complaint with the AG, or maybe some other entity could file a lawsuit. I’m saying this because I see no reason to take Miles at his word that he’s now compliant with the law and that he never actually got any money from that arrangement in violation of that law. Maybe that is true, I’m just saying it should be verified. So I want to know, how does that happen? Someone should find out.
Two other stories of interest, which I’m putting here because I didn’t quite have a full post in mind for them. One is this Dallas Observer story about the ongoing Fort Worth ISD takeover, in which I am relentlessly interested in how it compares to the HISD experience. To that matter:
March 24 was also the day now-powerless board members lost access to their FWISD email account, said Roxeanne Martinez, the elected FWISD Board of Trustees president.
“To be able to not be able to share information that they need, right now, is frustrating,” Martinez said. “It’s also just deeply concerning to me that this information is not being shared with elected trustees. Even if we are sidelined, even if there is a takeover, we are still the elected trustees that should be able to provide parents and the community with information. We’re not getting any of that information.”
Martinez said she hasn’t received any information from officials, including Morath, on the details of the takeover process. She and other elected trustees, who are still in office, even if only in name, have pressed for more information about the transition to a state-appointed board in recent months.
Echoing Martinez’s concerns, parents have asked the board of directors, along with TEA-appointed Superintendent Peter Licata, for transparency on plans to improve student scores and eventually end the takeover of the nearly 70,000-student district.
At a March 28 board meeting, the state-appointed board’s first as directors, the Rev. Kristin Clade, a FWISD parent and secretary of Families Organized Resisting Takeover, appealed to the unelected officials to facilitate community engagement.
“One of our big priorities is transparency and accountability,” Clade said. “We urge you to intentionally create a culture of open communication and trust among the board of managers, superintendent, staff, parents, students and the wider community. Please welcome our input by creating both formal and informal opportunities for stakeholders to voice concerns, ask questions and provide feedback, demonstrating that our perspectives are heard and valued.”
Clade also asked that Licata let families “know what the goal posts are” and set clearly defined exit criteria for a return to local control, adding that she hopes “the goal posts won’t move.” Houston ISD has been under state control since 2023, with the TEA extending the takeover to at least 2027 in June as officials called for more progress before returning the district to elected leadership.
The superintendent has alluded to loose exit requirements. After his appointment on March 24, he cited the need for zero multiyear-failing campuses, test scores reaching state averages and governance changes.
[…]
Shortly after the October announcement, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker addressed Morath’s decision, telling reporters that “We’re not Houston.”
Houston ISD was placed under state conservatorship in June 2025 after years of failing to meet academic standards and allegations of official misconduct. While some metrics have suggested short-term academic improvement, enrollment declines have accelerated and teachers are leaving HISD at high rates, according to a report from the University of Houston Education Research Center.
Although enrollment has declined statewide, Toni Templeton, a University of Houston research scientist, said the district normally sees growth between the eighth and ninth grades as private school students enter the system. That hasn’t happened under state leadership, she said.
“One of the interesting patterns that we saw was that you typically think about families making school choice decisions at major cut points, right? So, kindergarten, fifth grade, seventh grade, ninth grade, where you would normally kind of transition from elementary school to middle school, from middle school, high school, so on and so forth,” Templeton said. “We saw a lot of students leaving in those middle years, and that was different than statewide trends and different than historical trends of HSD.”
She also said there have been more state interventions since legislators amended state law to codify requirements for district takeovers.
[…]
While Miles has touted academic gains under his New Education System (NES), critics have argued that the approach has created a military environment in which teachers’ classroom autonomy is limited, leading to turnover.
Templeton said it’s too soon to accurately assess whether there has been actual academic improvement or decline in HISD under state leadership, adding that the university expects to publish a report on the subject by early summer. Research on district takeovers nationwide has suggested test scores typically do not improve substantially under state control.
See here for some background. It very much remains to be seen how FWISD is or is not like HISD, at least in how the TEA treats it. That’s what I’m hoping to learn by following FWISD’s experience. And I am looking forward to Professor Templeton’s report.
And finally there’s this.
Houston ISD state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is tightening the path to school autonomy by requiring campuses to meet certain academic benchmarks for multiple years and, in some cases, hand over day-to-day operations to outside organizations to gain maximum control.
For years, HISD principals had largely controlled their campuses. But under the state takeover, Miles has reshaped who controls schools, creating levels of autonomy and moving many decisions on classroom instruction and staffing to the central office. The shift has made school independence a tension point, contributing to an exodus of teachers and principal turnover.
Miles’ latest changes set new rules on how schools can win some decision-making permissions back or expand it. His idea of tying maximum school autonomy to contracts with outside groups has concerned at least one of HISD’s state-appointed board members.
“Conceivably, 80%, 90% of the district could apply (to be run by an outside group),” board vice president Angela Lemond Flowers said Thursday at a meeting. “A board would have to manage innumerable other boards. And so I don’t see how that’s setting us up for success … where does it stop? And have we now then created a monster that a board cannot manage?”
Miles said he wants to structure school autonomy so that higher-performing schools have more decision-making power than lower-performing schools.
“Schools that have high performance should have more autonomy, and yet that autonomy should be earned,” Miles said.
Among the new guidelines, Miles said schools can apply to leave his New Education System of reforms after they earn three consecutive A ratings in the state’s A-F accountability system starting this year. HISD has around 130 schools in NES, which follow a strict instructional model and receive more resources.
Miles said schools’ requests to leave NES “will not be unreasonably denied.”
I’ll believe that when I see it. And I appreciate Trustee Lemond Flowers’ questions. Read the rest, there’s a lot more to this.
A local superintendent resigned about three months ago over this very law. He was also consulting for a company that makes energy efficiency consulting upgrade recommendations to school districts.
Update: The Observer says he cancelled it. http://www.texasobserver.org/mike-miles-moonlighting-contract-former-charter-school-network/
Side note on “cancellings.” Didn’t see anything here yet about Dems’ letter to Scudder.