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It’s not a teacher shortage yet

Aug 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

But you can see one on the horizon.

School districts across the Houston region are trying to fill thousands of teacher vacancies before most will be welcoming students back to classrooms in the coming weeks.

A review of about 18 area school districts’ job listings, including Alvin, Deer Park, Fort Bend, Galena Park, Goose Creek, Katy, Magnolia, Pasadena, Galveston, Humble, Spring Branch and Spring ISDs, as well as Lamar CISD, showed a need for more than 3,400 educators to fill a variety of vacancies as of Monday.

The Houston Independent School District, the state’s largest system scheduled to kick off its year Aug. 22, had about 870 openings for certified teachers listed on its career portal Monday.

Aldine ISD, which serves nearly 67,000 students and employs more than 4,000 educators, currently has 370 teacher vacancies. That number is “way up” from previous years, according to administrators, despite recruiting efforts that include signing bonuses, increased salaries and looking for applicants internationally. Klein ISD is searching for 120 teachers, according to its website. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, the state’s third-largest system, is trying to fill 472 teaching vacancies.

It is a nationwide problem as low pay, long hours and the politicization of education have taken their toll on the beleaguered profession.

“You look across the state and across the country, there are districts even smaller than us with even more vacancies,” HISD chief talent officer Jeremy Grant-Skinner said. “We’re all feeling the challenge together of staffing during this very unique time. We’re feeling like we’re going to get as close as we can.”

HISD, with roughly 195,000 students and 27,000 full- and part-time employees, had about the same number of vacancies at this time a year ago, Grant-Skinner said, before reducing it to about 400 by the time schools opened. To fill those openings until certified educators could be hired, the district sent central administration staffers who held teacher certifications into classrooms. Grant-Skinner said there have been no conversations about doing that again this year.

The 870 openings represent about 8 percent of the 11,000 teachers included in the upcoming year’s budget.

Since then, the district has raised teacher pay, hoping it will help recruit and retain educators. Several other districts, including Katy and Cypress-Fair ISDs, also have boosted teacher salaries.

Emphasis mine. I highlighted that to note that this problem, at least for HISD, is not unprecedented. The gap was more than cut in half least year, HISD was able to fill in other vacancies from within, and they have raised their pay as a way to attract new job seekers. There are obviously a lot of major challenges facing teachers now, most of which are the result of actions taken by Republicans, but it’s too soon to say for this year that the problem is getting worse. That may end up being the case, and it’s good to draw attention to this now, I just want to be a little cautious about getting ahead of ourselves.

That said, there are other danger signs out there that should be taken seriously.

More Texas teachers are considering leaving the profession than at any point in the last 40 years, according to new polling from the Texas State Teachers Assocation.

The survey found that 70 percent of teachers were seriously considering quitting this year, a substantial jump from the 53 percent who said so in 2018, the last time the typically biennial survey was conducted. Teachers attributed their grim outlook to pandemic-related stress, political pressure from state lawmakers, less support from parents and stretched finances.

The survey represented all grade levels and regions of the states. It was skipped in 2020 amid of the pandemic.

[…]

In the survey, which was completed by 688 Texas teachers, 94 percent said the pandemic increased their professional stress, and 82 percent said financial stress was exacerbated. Experts have pointed to better pay as a key way to recruit and retain teachers. Respondents taught for about 16 years on average, and their average salary was around $59,000. That’s about $7,000 below the national trend, according to the teachers association.

Besides salary, Texas teachers on average also receive some of the worst retirement benefits of those in any state, a separate study from June found. Teachers who have retired since 2004 have not received a cost-of-living adjustment, although the Legislature has routinely passed “13th check” bills that send extra annuity payments.

In addition to pay, 85 percent said they felt state lawmakers held a negative view of teachers, 65 percent said the public held a negative view and 70 percent said support from parents had decreased over the last several years.

If your job is more stressful than before, if you don’t feel respected by the powers that be or your stakeholders, and if on top of that you could make more money doing something else, well, that’s a pretty powerful combination. We can take this feedback seriously and try to do something about it, or we can ignore it and risk having to deal with a crisis situation later. Seems like a straightforward choice to me.

Precinct analysis: Other cities

Dec 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages

I mentioned in an earlier post that I might look at election results from other cities that had their own races in November. Turns out there were quite a few of them that had their elections conducted by Harris County, and thus had their results in the spreadsheet I got. Let’s have a look.


City            Trump  Biden  Lib  Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,879  2,394   55   21  61.10%  37.71%  0.87%  0.33%
Bellaire        4,553  6,565  115   29  40.43%  58.29%  1.02%  0.26%
Deer Park      11,192  3,622  167   39  74.51%  24.11%  1.11%  0.26%
Friendswood     5,312  4,357  144   24  54.00%  44.29%  1.46%  0.24%
Galena Park     1,026  1,614   18    9  38.47%  60.52%  0.67%  0.34%
Humble          5,084  6,274  107   53  44.14%  54.47%  0.93%  0.46%
Katy            4,373  1,918   82   17  68.44%  30.02%  1.28%  0.27%
La Porte       11,561  5,036  201   69  68.54%  29.86%  1.19%  0.41%
League City     1,605  1,196   38    4  56.45%  42.07%  1.34%  0.14%
Missouri City     457  2,025    8    8  18.29%  81.06%  0.32%  0.32%
Nassau Bay      1,433  1,003   32    4  57.97%  40.57%  1.29%  0.16%
Pearland        5,397  7,943   84   32  40.11%  59.03%  0.62%  0.24%
Seabrook        5,532  2,768  104   21  65.66%  32.85%  1.23%  0.25%
Webster         4,594  4,850  159   33  47.68%  50.33%  1.65%  0.34%

City           Cornyn  Hegar  Lib  Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,814  2,255  119   49  61.15%  36.16%  1.91%  0.79%
Bellaire        5,312  5,762   93   48  47.37%  51.38%  0.83%  0.43%
Deer Park      11,098  3,355  269   90  74.93%  22.65%  1.82%  0.61%
Friendswood     5,380  4,009  221   74  55.56%  41.40%  2.28%  0.76%
Galena Park       892  1,408   40   42  37.45%  59.11%  1.68%  1.76%
Humble          5,098  5,927  233   98  44.89%  52.19%  2.05%  0.86%
Katy            4,401  1,749  129   40  69.65%  27.68%  2.04%  0.63%
La Porte       11,361  4,743  365  108  68.53%  28.61%  2.20%  0.65%
League City     1,654  1,099   39   18  58.86%  39.11%  1.39%  0.64%
Missouri City     458  1,934   38   25  18.66%  78.78%  1.55%  1.02%
Nassau Bay      1,471    928   43   12  59.94%  37.82%  1.75%  0.49%
Pearland        5,432  7,551  190  113  40.89%  56.83%  1.43%  0.85%
Seabrook        5,561  2,545  190   43  66.69%  30.52%  2.28%  0.52%
Webster         4,625  4,541  230   82  48.80%  47.91%  2.43%  0.87%

City           Wright  Casta  Lib  Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================================================
Baytown         3,681  2,306  129   51  59.02%  36.97%  2.07%  0.82%
Bellaire        5,227  5,444  142  115  46.61%  48.54%  1.27%  1.03%
Deer Park      10,894  3,355  294  109  73.55%  22.65%  1.98%  0.74%
Friendswood     5,216  3,901  253  155  53.86%  40.28%  2.61%  1.60%
Galena Park       801  1,478   45   42  33.63%  62.05%  1.89%  1.76%
Humble          4,872  5,962  247  156  42.90%  52.50%  2.18%  1.37%
Katy            4,365  1,677  141   74  69.08%  26.54%  2.23%  1.17%
La Porte       11,057  4,773  393  175  66.70%  28.79%  2.37%  1.06%
League City     1,616  1,069   49   38  57.51%  38.04%  1.74%  1.35%
Missouri City     421  1,944   38   34  17.15%  79.19%  1.55%  1.38%
Nassau Bay      1,417    898   60   28  57.74%  36.59%  2.44%  1.14%
Pearland        5,205  7,571  189  172  39.18%  56.98%  1.42%  1.29%
Seabrook        5,477  2,439  232   83  65.68%  29.25%  2.78%  1.00%
Webster         4,488  4,416  283  165  47.35%  46.59%  2.99%  1.74%

A few words of caution before we begin. Most of these city races were at large – they were for Mayor or were citywide propositions (some of these towns had literally an entire alphabet’s worth of props for the voters), a few were At Large City Council races. Baytown, Katy, and Webster were City Council races that did not appear to be at large; League City had a Council race that didn’t give any indication one way or the other. Some of these cities – Friendswood, Katy, League City, Missouri City, and Pearland – are not fully contained within Harris County, so these are just partial results. As with the city of Houston, there’s no guarantee that Harris County precinct boundaries match city boundaries, or that precincts are contained entirely within that city, so the results from the other races may contain voters who aren’t in the city specified. Basically, consider these all to be approximations, and we’ll be fine.

I had no idea what to expect from these numbers. With the exception of Bellaire and Galena Park, all of these place are on the outer edges of Harris County, so generally in the red zone, but not exclusively. I expected Galena Park and Missouri City to be blue, I expected Baytown and Deer Park and Friendswood to be red, and the rest I either didn’t have any preconceived notions or was a little surprised. I wouldn’t have expected Bellaire or Humble to be blue – Bellaire is squarely in the CD07/HD134 part of town, so while it’s not all that shocking, I feel quite confident saying that if I did this same exercise in 2012, I’d have gotten a different result. The Katy area is getting bluer, which is how Dems won HD132 in 2018, but apparently that is not the case for the city of Katy proper, or at least the Harris County part of it. I’d guess the Brazoria County part of Pearland is redder than the Harris County part. As for La Porte, it’s not that I’m surprised that it’s red, it’s more that I’d never thought much about it.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say here – I don’t have past data handy, so I can’t make any comparisons, but even if I did we already mostly have the picture from earlier posts. It’s the same geography, just different pieces of it. There’s been a push by the TDP lately to get more local officials elected in towns like these, which is often a challenge in low-turnout May elections. There clearly some opportunities, though, and we should look to support candidates who put themselves out there in places where they’re not the norm. I have a friend who ran for Humble ISD in 2017, and while she didn’t win, that’s the sort of effort we need to get behind. Keep an eye out for what you can do this May, and find some good people to work with.

Coronavirus and hurricane shelters

Aug 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Two things we have to be thinking about today.

Houston officials and public health experts are expressing concern that Tropical Storm Laura could amplify the spread of COVID-19 by displacing residents to public shelters or residences outside the area, increasing opportunities for transmission.

With that scenario in mind, Mayor Sylvester Turner on Sunday encouraged Houstonians to get tested for COVID-19 before the storm makes landfall. Forecasters have predicted it will come ashore late Wednesday or early Thursday, though the path remained uncertain by Monday evening.

Officials from Harris County and the American Red Cross began preparing for potential shelter needs months ago, County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Monday. At Red Cross shelters, officials will provide face coverings, conduct health screenings and follow federal social distancing guidance, the organization announced in a news release. It also will operate more shelters with a reduced capacity in each.

“This is not a situation where we would have the same kind of shelters we’re used to, where it’s completely open space and no division between folks,” Hidalgo said.

Turner, who urged people to get tested on Monday or Tuesday, tweeted, “You need to know your status for yourself, family members and friends.”

[…]

Dr. Peter Hotez, an immunologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that while disaster officials may come up with creative solutions to help contain the spread of COVID, public shelters would be “a nightmare even under the best circumstances.”

The effect may be especially pronounced, Hotez said, because those most likely to seek shelter in a public setting come from low-income communities where people are more vulnerable to the effects of COVID due to the prevalence of underlying health conditions.

It also would be difficult for contact tracers to follow the spread of the virus during an evacuation, he said.

“If you think about it, without a vaccine, what do we have? We have masks, we have contact tracing and social distancing — which are not great, but it’s all we have,” Hotez said. “With a hurricane, we’ve knocked out two of our three pieces of artillery equipment.”

These are obviously not the best of circumstances. Tropical Storm Laura is now officially Hurricane Laura, and it’s already a pretty strong one. Jefferson County, Chambers County, Orange County, and Galveston County are under mandatory evacuation orders, with parts of Harris County issuing a recommendation that areas in the storm surge zone evacuate as well.

Harris County officials urged residents of some coastal areas to evacuate Tuesday as Hurricane Laura could strike the Houston region Wednesday evening.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo issued a voluntary evacuation order Tuesday afternoon for zones A and B and urged residents to leave immediately. She warned of a storm surge of three to five feet and high winds that could knock out power.

“All of us need to be prepared for the very real potential of a direct hit from this storm,” Hidalgo said. “Of course, we hope for the best, but we don’t want to find ourselves unprepared for the worst case scenario.”

These zones include part or all of Deer Park, La Porte, League City, Friendswood, Seabrook, El Lago, Morgan’s Point and southeastern portions of the city of Houston.

[…]

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner warned residents of congested traffic on freeways heading away from the coast and urged non-evacuating residents to avoid traveling if possible. Residents in the evacuation zone should not delay, he stressed, because Laura could change course unexpectedly.

“At this point in time, if it veers further to the west and becomes more of a direct hit on Houston-Harris County, we don’t really have a lot of time,” Turner said.

The mayor urged residents to be prepared for extended power outages, and noted that some households were without electricity for two weeks after Hurricane Ike in 2008. He said people should be off the streets by 8 p.m. Wednesday, but stopped short of calling for a curfew.

Immediate safety concerns take precedence over more theoretical longer-term safety concerns. In the meantime, we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. As of last night, it looks like the worst will probably (though not 100%) miss Houston, but that means Beaumont and Port Arthur are directly in its crosshairs. We’re going to need to mobilize a strong response, because it’s going to be bad.

As a programming matter, it is certainly possible that power and/or Internet outages will have an effect on my publication schedule. That’s a pretty minor consideration, but I wanted to note it just in case. Stay safe, everyone.

Harris County sues ITC over Deer Park fire

Mar 27th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Go get ’em.

Harris County has sued Intercontinental Terminals Co. for failing to prevent a massive chemical fire that burned for more than 60 hours last week and spewed an unknown volume of hazardous chemicals into the air and nearby waterways.

The county is seeking a temporary injunction and restraining order against the company, alleging that it violated the Texas Clean Air Act and the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act, among other rules.

The lawsuit accuses ITC of violating the state’s water code, health and safety code and administrative code on multiple days, by “causing suffering or allowing the discharge of at least one air contaminant without a permit and in such concentration and or such duration as to be injurious to human health, welfare or property, or as to interfere with the normal use and enjoyment of property.”

[…]

First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard said his office will hire an in-house auditor to review ITC’s actions during and after the fire.

Soard also said Harris County will demand ITC cover the cost of the government’s response, which included frequent air and water monitoring, mobile clinics sponsored by the health department and an ongoing activation of the county’s Office of Emergency Management.

You can see a copy of the lawsuit here in the updated version of the story. I hope the county collects on every last penny. These guys need to be held accountable for their failures. Yes, I know, there is a state lawsuit as well, but this is about reimbursing Harris County, in the same way that your insurance company collects from the other guy’s insurance company when the other driver is found to be at fault in your fender-bender. If ITC doesn’t like it, they can do a better job of fire prevention in the future.

Meanwhile, on a semi-related note:

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been holding continuous press conferences on the Intercontinental Terminals Co. fire in Deer Park, delivering updates in both English and Spanish.

Despite the effort to communicate with Hispanic viewers, one area commissioner publicly criticized her use of Spanish during a recent press conference.

“She is a joke,” Chambers County Precinct 2 Commissioner Mark Tice said in a comment under a live feed of a press conference Monday afternoon. “English this is not Mexico.”

Tice admitted to making the comment Tuesday afternoon during a phone interview with Chron.com. He also doubled down on the message.

You know the old bit about how every New Yorker cartoon could be captioned “Christ, what an asshole!”? Well, as of today, anything Mark Tice says can be responded to by saying “Christ, what an asshole!” as well.

UPDATE: Tice has apologized following some blowback. My assessment of him has not changed.

State sues over Deer Park fire

Mar 23rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Too big to ignore.

Late Friday, the state of Texas sued Intercontinental Terminals — the Houston-based company whose petrochemical storage facility in the suburb of Deer Park caught fire last weekend and burned for days, sending a dramatic plume of black smoke over the nation’s fourth-largest city.

The lawsuit, filed in state district court on behalf of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, alleges that air pollution released during the fire is a violation of the Texas Clean Air Act.

It seeks a permanent injunction and civil penalties that “could exceed $100,000.”

“The state of Texas works hard to maintain good air quality and will hold ITC accountable for the damage it has done to our environment,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “ITC has a history of environmental violations, and this latest incident is especially disturbing and frightening. No company can be allowed to disrupt lives and put public health and safety at risk.”

Were you able to read that statement with a straight face? Then read this.

The TCEQ, the agency responsible for protecting the state’s environment and public health, has been criticized for letting large corporate polluters off with a slap on the wrist. An analysis of its enforcement record by an environmental nonprofit found that the agency imposed penalties on violators in just 3 percent of cases. ITC appears to have benefitted from the lax enforcement. In 2016, for instance, the company released more than 1,500 pounds of benzene — a carcinogenic chemical — for over five days and failed to notify the state agency within the mandated 24-hour deadline. The fine: roughly $4,000.

I’m just saying. Maybe some day when there aren’t new fires breaking out every time an old fire gets put out, we can get to the bottom of what happened here. And then sue these assholes out of existence. More broadly, maybe we can demand that our state take enforcement of environmental regulations seriously. If they had done so before, maybe we wouldn’t be in this position now. The Chron has more.

What are the elections of interest this May?

Mar 14th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

That’s a question I’m asking as well as one I’m trying to answer. Normally, there are no elections in May of any kind of year for Houston folks, though there are some for parts of Harris County and surrounding areas. This year for the uniform election date of May 5 we do have the special election in City Council District K to succeed the late CM Larry Green. The filing deadline for this is March 26, so we should know in very short order who is in the running.

We should also know by March 26 whether that firefighters pay parity proposal will be on the ballot or not. The firefighters would like to know about that, too.

There is one legislative special election on tap for May 5. State Rep. Leighton Schubert in HD13 stepped down earlier this year, so this race is to fill out the remainder of his term. That doesn’t really mean much unless the winner of that race also wins in November, in which case he or she will have a seniority advantage over all the other members of the class of 2018. If I’m reading this list correctly, there are three candidates – Democrat Cecil Webster, Republican Ben Leman, and Republican Jill Wolfskill. Webster is on the November ballot – he also ran in 2016, getting 21.4% against Schubert in a district that voted 76.8% to 20.4% for Donald Trump. Leman and Wolfskill are in the runoff for the GOP nomination. If Webster can somehow make it to the runoff for this, even with the low stakes, it would be quite the achievement.

Closer to home, I know there are elections in Pearland for Pearland City Council – they have three-year terms, so they have elections every year – and Pearland ISD – I don’t know offhand what their terms are, but as you can see on the election results page, they have those races every year as well. Dalia Kasseb, who ran a strong race for Pearland City Council last year, is making another run this year. She is on the list of TDP-endorsed Project LIFT slate, as is Al Lloyd for Pearland ISD.

There are other races on that slate, though none in the Houston area. I’ve seen ads on Facebook for a candidate running for Deer Park ISD, but at this time I know nothing about her. Ballotpedia says these are three-year terms but there isn’t a page for 2018 yet. These elections are apparently not conducted by the Harris County Clerk, and I’m not seeing anything on the DPISD Board of Trustees webpage, so I’m throwing this out to y’all – if you know anything about this, please leave a comment and let me know.

So there you have what I know about elections for this May. What am I missing? Please fill me in.