A group of Houston ISD families is asking the state-appointed board of managers to pause the district’s overhaul of special education, citing concerns about transparency and the board’s own policy.
The changes, called the Special Education Success Program, would move around 5,000 students who spend at least half of their time in self-contained classrooms to new campuses next school year.
The plan has left parents scrambling and triggered a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.
In a letter, the Houston Special Education Parent Association warned the changes would disrupt students’ education. The nonprofit, which helps parents navigate special education in the state’s largest school district, also questioned whether the district can make such significant changes without community engagement or an evaluation of their impact.
“For students with disabilities, a campus is often much more than a building,” the nonprofit wrote in the letter. “It is a network of relationships, routines, supports, and trusted staff members that help students access their education successfully. For some families, these changes will mean leaving neighborhood schools and established support systems with little time to prepare.”
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In the letter, parents said their top concern was whether the board is following a policy under the state takeover — that state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles cannot make significant changes to “specialized programming or school options” without engaging with the community and analyzing the impact of the changes.
The group argued that the special education overhaul violates that constraint.
“If the program is legally sound, educationally justified, and supported by evidence, it will withstand scrutiny,” the nonprofit’s letter read. “If not, the Board still has time to prevent unnecessary disruption to thousands of Houston families.”
See here and here for some background. I couldn’t find a copy of the letter referenced in the story, which is from a week ago. There’s a Facebook page for the Houston Special Education Parent Association, and it has a link to the Change.org petition from the story, which now has almost 1000 signatures, and there’s a private Facebook group for the Houston SEPA, which is probably where the action is, but I’m not a member so I couldn’t see. Houston SEPA has been around since 2020 and was there at the beginning of the TEA takeover, since special ed has been in scope for it from the jump. It’s not clear when the appointed Board may vote on this, and it’s not clear that Mike Miles will give them the time of day. I wish them good luck, and good lawyering for when the seemingly inevitable lawsuit needs to be filed.